GUNDAM has come, too!! (Part 1) of Yukito's room

I became a junior high school student in April 1979.
Generally, a 12-or-13-year-old boy already becomes ashamed to watch robot animations, which are mostly childish.
However, in the autumn of that year, I happened to watch a robot animation and got an extraordinary feeling from it.
It was Mobile Suit GUNDAM.
At that time, I had no way of knowing that this work would dominate the world in the future.

I think the first episode for me to see was that the Gundam entered the atmosphere and then fought during free-fall. In the episode, Char says, "Free fall is not so free as it is said".
It was novel that the robot that can’t fly fought while falling. I was strongly fascinated by the design of Zaku.
First of all, the term "Mobile Suit" impressed me. I understood immediately it was the very homage to Heinlein's powered armor.

One year before watching GUNDAM TV program, I had met with a book called SF Wonderland authored and edited by Studio Nue.
Those days the small books with A6 format (a little less than 13 cm long, 9 cm wide) called "mame bon", or miniature books, were in fashion, and it was one of the series named Mame Tanuki No Hon (mini raccoon's books) published by Kosaido.

SF Wonderland was so to speak a guidebook of SF and introduced various ideas and gadgets in SF novels, which were mostly foreign ones. The ideas and others were illustrated by the illustrators belonging to Studio Nue, or shown by quoting the illustrations from the novels already published by Hayakawa Publishing Corporation etc..

On of those illustrations in the book was powered armor from R.A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Mr. Kazutaka Miyatake illustrated it.
Captured by the idea and its design, I had been drawing many variations of the powered armor of the Kazutaka Miyatake style on my freedom book for the sixth grade of elementary school six years.

Now let my story go back to the days after one year.
It is just natural that I was fascinated by GUNDAM, because I had already been a powered suit maniac at the 6th grade of the elementary school.
However, to watch GUNDAM, I had to manage a lot of difficulties.

You might not be able to imagine from the standpoint of the current 21st century when the government has come to positively promote "Otaku market", but in those days it was the most shameful thing for a boy growing up from a kid to an adult that he was seen watching a robot animation by his parents.
In our house there was only one TV, and of course no useful stuff such as videocassette recorders in the sitting room.
Therefore, if my parents went out while the program was aired, every time I watched it stealthily (and with my heart beating fast) in front of the TV.
When parents came back in the midst of the program, I prepared myself to be sneered at but kept watching to the end.
When a visitor came at the time of the episode with Sayla's bathing scene, I cursed God.

So I missed quite a many episodes in the first run, but was able to enjoy the last one to the full. I was greatly impressed, thinking "I must be the only person in the world that watch GUNDAM so eagerly," and intending to keep the memory forever, clipped the area printed as "Mobile Suit GUNDAM (end)" on the TV program table of the evening paper and scrapped it.

After the series finished, I browsed in the bookstore and surprised to find a magazine with the cover depicting Amuro and Char.
The magazine I picked up was Animage. I recognized for the first time there were animation magazines.

It had a feature article of GUNDAM's last episode and an interview with Director Tomino.
I was glad to know there were more people who admired GUNDAM.
Director Tomino declared, "I won't make the sequel of
GUNDAM." As a former Space Battleship Yamato fan who was getting disgusted in those days with the commercialism of the producers making sequels and reviving the dead Yamato again and again, I was fascinated with his words.

Of course, I had no way of knowing in those days that they would continue making sequels over more than 25 years after that.

As the piece of the GUNDAM fan in my mind is still in the state at the time of 1980, I have never watched nor accepted its sequels.
Because... though it may sound exaggeratedly, as a 12-year-old boy, I had truly fought war with Amuro and others for one year.
Therefore, when the war finally ended, I blessed from my heart. I believed finally the peace came.

In spite of it, do they resume war for the sake of sponsors' convenience!?
I never admit.
That's my stance.