"This hand of mine glows with an awesome POWER! Its burning grip tells me to defeat you! Take this! My love, my anger, and all of my sorrow! SHINING FINGER!!!"

In the early 90s, Gundam was on a decline and needed a breath of fresh air outside the previous shows. Thus, Sunrise came up with the idea of alternate universes where new shows would still carry the Gundam name alongside tropes, but be set in their own timeline. With their own unique worlds, mechanics, lore and tones, the AUs have become the standard formula for new mainline Gundam entries ever since. The show to kick off this trend was and remains the most hot-blooded and passionate entry in the franchise, G Gundam.

G is what you would get if you took many pre-established elements from past Gundams and turned it into a super robot battle shounen. The show is heavily inspired by both martial arts movies and 80s action anime. The main story is basically one gigantic tournament arc using Gundams. The first massive diverging point from past entries is how the universe of G functions. Unlike the Universal Century timeline, the Future Century timeline has its wars and conflict decided by a tournament. One country brings out a representative fighter who pilots their Gundam, and whoever wins the tournament gets to rule both the Earth and space colonies until the next showdown.

The concept of each nation participating in this grand tournament allows for a much more diverse cast, Gundam designs and world in general. There is a lot of thought put into our main team of fighters and the reasons for why they are fighting in the first place. Each one of the shuffle alliance members, the core cast, and those closest to them have incredible depth to them that we get to learn more about as the story progresses. Even the characters from countries we only see for an episode or two have clear motives behind their actions.

While a large amount of the Gundam designs do incorporate a lot of stereotypes of their respective nation, it also gives the show a special charm. No other Gundam or even anime has this much representation for the diverse world cultures, even if some of them can be insensitive. They only look bad when taken out of context as the stories where they get used in and the background of their fighters are far more interesting.

Like many super robots that G is taking inspiration from, the story starts off as more episodic. Domon travels around the world encountering a new fighter who is either an enemy or future ally. Along the way, we get to learn more about the backstory and plot about the Devil Gundam which correlates to the tournament storyline. This allows for the show to not feel boring as we’re constantly getting new bits of information and new interesting stories are being told. The first half may be a little jumbled, but the many plot points will come together at the middle climax point. It can feel like nothing is happening, but there is always progression in some way across the whole show.

Above everything else, G has a certain quality that no other Gundam has matched since: Pure hot-blooded passion. The creators put their heart and soul into this, at the time, riskful project and it paid off. You can feel the love of martial arts and action stories throughout the whole run. They wanted to make a Gundam that was unlike what came before, and they put all their eggs into that basket. The battle shounen traits greatly complements the super robot nature of the show making it one of the most fun and heart filled entries in all of Gundam. There are so many insane and ridiculous moments across the whole story but you can’t help but bump your fist to them, because of the presentation. It fully commits into being a super robot martial arts shounen anime and the passion the creators put into it is infectious.

With that being said, G still manages to carry the unique identity of a Gundam. There are messages of anti-war, environmentalism, corruption, the dark side of humanity and much more. The hype nature of the action and tournament is dominant but those themes are as integral to the story as any other Gundam. Such is also the case with the important theme of understanding and building connections to achieve peace. It may be Gundam meets Dragon ball, but G is still a Gundam anime nonetheless. The super robot nature does not get in the way of the core message of the franchise which is an incredible feat considering how much it deviates on the surface.

G Gundam will always be my favorite alternate universe main entry in the whole franchise. It represents what an AU should accomplish in the best way possible. Being a completely new take on previous entries while both carrying their spirit and carving its own unique identity. It is also the most passionate and fun Gundams to be made that still carries the darker themes of the franchise.