Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, on TV Asahi
aka "New Mobile Report Gundam Wing"
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streaming sites: Crunchyroll; Hulu

49 episode series made in 1995-96. Well, this was the first Gundam series I ever saw, and the one that really popularized the franchise in the U.S (for general audiences, anyway). Set in the year After Colony 195. The politics of the story are kind of complicated... there's this whole backstory I don't even want to go into, about what was going on down on Earth, which by the time the show starts is basically controlled by this military organization called OZ, which had helped support and build the Earth Sphere Alliance, before taking over for itself. And there are these space colonies which are independent, but OZ tries to take them over. Meanwhile, the colonies had this secret project to build five very advanced mobile suits called Gundams, which are sent to Earth to fight back, at the start of the series. But the story and the Gundams themselves keep moving between Earth and space... There are these five teenagers who each pilot one of the Gundams. The main character seems to be Heero Yuy, but my favorite Gundam pilot is Duo Maxwell. The others are Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner, and Chang Wufei. And later there are a few more advanced mobile suits developed by the original Gundam engineers...

I suppose this was probably my favorite Gundam series (in any era/universe), at least until I saw Gundam SEED. Plenty of cool action and interesting characters and relationships and stuff. Of course, there's also alot of philosophical sort of stuff about the nature of war and all that (which you'll see to one extent or another in pretty much all Gundam series)... which I'd say here is pulled off rather well, though that's a matter of opinion, and some will disagree. But I thought the series was kind of interesting and well done, myself. I wish I could tell you more of the plot, I'll have to watch it all again someday and update this entry extensively. I'm afraid I don't remember the details very well.

Anyway, the series was followed up by a 1997 OVA movie called Endless Waltz (GundamOfficial (archived); IMDb; Sunrise; Wikia; Wikipedia) which continued the story, as well as providing a bit of backstory for the series. I should like to see that again someday, as well, and give it its own separate review....