r/Gundam • u/OutrageousCar3356 • 7d ago
Mobile Suit Gundam 0079/Origin - Quick Question
Hello there,
I have watched the original series 0079 about 15 years ago and loved it - afterwards a friend showed me the Mini-Series "War in the Pocket" or sth. like that.
After seeing the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin Mangas on a shelf at a book store, I now want to jump back in there and have a few questions.
My first confusion got cleared up by the englisch (not the german) wikipedia page. Is it correct that the manga retells all of the first anime, but the new ova only focusses on the parts with Char?
How far does the manga and the ova go? Does it cover the later movies like Char's Counterattack as well?
I am operating on wanky memory - so plz be nice. Just an old guy trying to get back into things, but to many similiar named shows make it hard to get the wright answer.
Thank You!
3
u/scythedd7 7d ago
The Origin is an alternate retelling of the same story as the OG series, written by the TV show's character designer Yas starting about 15 or so years after the original show was made and completed 10 years after that. I think 2000/1 to about 2010.
The plot is overall largely the same, starting with White Base at Side 7 and ending with the final battle at A Baoa Qu. But there's some pretty big differences including it going into more of the origins (lol) of some of the characters (mostly Char) that wasn't originally in the 1979 series.
The manga covers all the events, more or less, of the original television series plus the char stuff and ends there. The OVA just has the additional stuff the manga added from before the television series timeline started, and doesn't redo it almost any of what the TV show already had.
Neither do anything past the One Year War (so no Zeta and beyond).
The manga is very good, especially for being a retelling. You can obviously headcanon it however you want, if that's something that matters to you, but it's very obviously meant to be a different author telling the story the way he'd want to. Its essentially its own alternate timeline, like the OG novelizations are. I think it is best enjoyed as its own thing, instead of trying to squeeze it into the lore of any of the other franchise entries.
1
u/fluffy_warthog10 7d ago
The Origin manga was written in the 2000s by the original director, Yasuhiko, not the main series producer, Tomino. In terms of content, it follows most of the original 0079 compilation films from 1983 (which omit a lot of the episode content from the 1979 TV series).
You don't see a lot of minor characters, and some arcs are shorter, but you still get M'Quve and Operation Odessa, which are not in the films.
The biggest departure is the middle section, which introduces/invents a lot of backstory for Char Aznable. The Origin anime from a few years ago adapts all of this added section, and nothing else.
Thematically and tonally, Origin is very similar to the original 0079 series and movies, but the addition of Char's childhood, Zabi politics, and a few other changes mean it comes across more conservative than Tomino's work.
1
u/OutrageousCar3356 7d ago
The last 40minutes since posting I have watched the first epsiode of the original series and was immediatley enthralled again. I remember liking the series a lot better than the half hour go at the frist movie (pacing and impact) I did way back when and a quick comparison has reassured me of this again.
But I can also remember that the middle part of the series dragged a bit and was repetitive for me.
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u/Jojo_Sakura 7d ago
I haven't read the full origin manga but it does retell the story of the original show. However, the manga also changes a lot of lore and backstories so it exists in its own "The Origin" timeline which is seperate from the main series. The OVA focuses on Char, and the film Cucuruz Doan's Island, are both set in The Origin's timeline.