Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is probably the most important Gundam Series in my life – yes, even though I was very invested in the off-the-wall wackiness of G Gundam and would absolutely sacrifice myself so that Tieria and Neil Dylandy (the first Lockon Strators) could live happily ever after together. Gundam Wing was a series I was obsessed with as a teenager… and as a young adult… and now in my thirties. 

Who worked on this series?

I don’t wanna be like “who didn’t work on this series”, but Mobile Suit Gundam Wing has huge crew behind it. Produced by Sunriase and Directed by Masashi Ikeda and Shinji Takamatsu, this series’ script and story were written by Katsuyuki Sumizawa while the iconic character designs were done by Shukou Murase. If you’re a long time fan of mecha anime, you probably already knew that the best Gundams in the history of the franchise – and all the other mech and tech – were designed by Hajime Katoki, Junya Ishigaki, and Kunio Okawara! 

These dudes pretty much built out the Gundams we can’t stop thinking about – and one day I will get a good Deathscythe model kit and put that bad boy together while drunk!

What’s this series about?

I’m literally pasting in the Wikipedia plot summary here:

In the distant future, Mankind has colonized space, with clusters of space colonies at each of the five Earth-Moon Lagrange points. Down on the Earth, the nations have come together to form the United Earth Sphere Alliance. This Alliance oppresses the colonies with its vast military might. The colonies wishing to be free, join together in a movement headed by the pacifist Heero Yuy. In the year After Colony 175, Yuy is shot dead by an assassin, forcing the colonies to search for other paths to peace. The assassination prompts five disaffected scientists from the Organization of the Zodiac, more commonly referred to as OZ, to turn rogue upon the completion of the mobile suit prototype Tallgeese.

The story of Gundam Wing begins in the year After Colony 195, with the start of “Operation Meteor”: the scientists’ plan for revenge against OZ. The operation involves five teenage boys, who have each been chosen and trained by each of the five scientists, then sent to Earth independently in extremely advanced mobile suits (one designed by each of the scientists) known as “Gundams” (called such because they are constructed from a rare and astonishingly durable material called Gundanium alloy, which can only be created in outer space). Each Gundam is sent from a different colony, and the pilots are initially unaware of each other’s existence.

The series focuses primarily on the five Gundam pilots: Heero Yuy (an alias, not to be confused with the martyred pacifist), Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner and Chang Wufei. Their mission is to use their Gundams to attack OZ directly, in order to rid the Alliance of its weapons and free the colonies from its oppressive rule. The series also focuses on Relena Peacecraft, heir to the pacifist Sanc Kingdom, who becomes an important political ally to the Gundam pilots (particularly Heero) over the course of the series.

If you could recommend this series to any fictional character, celebrity, or historical figure, who would you choose?

Not to be absolutely ridiculous on main, but I’d love to know what BTS’ Jungkook’s thoughts are on this series so if he hasn’t watched it yet… I want him to watch it.

List three of your favorite things about the series.

• “Omae wo korosu”
• The designs of the Gundams
• Zechs’ dramatic ass

List three of your least favorite things about the series.

• I can’t get the sequel novel series in English
• Treize really didn’t have to die like that…
• The fandom is mostly dead at this point (and was so pre-Omegaverse that it’s rare to find my thing… not an issue with the series but I wanted to complain anyway!)

What’s your favorite episode in the series?

It’s not actually an episode: it’s the epilogue film Gundam Wing Endless Waltz. I used to be able to do a great impression of Mariemaia Kushrenada from the dub because of how often I watched it on repeat back in the day. 

What’s your least favorite episode in the series (if you have one)?

Also… that. Because it was the official end to the series for the majority of the fandom. 

Who are your favorite characters in the series?

• My terrible son Wufei Chang
• Zechs Merquise
• Mariemaia Kushrenada

Who are your least favorite characters in the series?

• The Gundam Scientists (yes, all five of them)
• Duke Dermail
• Tubarov

Bonus: when I was a teenager wrestling with internalized misogyny, I hated Relena Peacecraft. Now that I’m older and wiser, I recognize that she’s actually one of the best characters in the series and has a really satisfying character arc and some super cute designs!

Let’s talk about series’ romantic ships, both canon and fanon:

Do you have an OTP across the series? What do you like about them?

I think the closest that I come to having an OTP in Gundam Wing is that I do still ship Treize Kushrenda and Wufei? When I was a teenager shipping them, not a lot of thought went into ages or the “morality” of shipping them – but I’m a villain fancier anyway so this is fine. Now that I’m older than both characters, I’m definitely more attached to post-series stories that fix Treize’s ending and show a hopeful, better world, but I also look fondly at the series I once read that were set during the series.

For me, this pairing works because they’re both “wounded warriors” separated by a significant ideological divide. It’s a ship that can follow the trajectory of enemies to reluctant allies to friends to lovers real easily. I’m also obsessed with the fact that in canon, Treize basically chose Wufei to kill him after they’d already had several duels before in the series. It’s fucked up, but it’s also poignant that this was a thing that happened?

If you have a NoTP in the series, why do you dislike them?

I’m not actually a huge fan of Relena/Heero. It’s very cute and I can’t get over her absolute refusal to utlize her common sense where Heero is concerned… but it does nothing for me as a ship.

I also don’t like the other “canonical” male/female pairings in the series very much? So no to Treize/Lady Une. No to Duo/Hilde. No to those people that shipped Trowa with his sister before they realized they were siblings. No to Zechs/Noin. No to Wufei/Sally Po – who were pretty much only shipped together as a way to pair the spares. And of course… no to anyone daring to say Dorothy Catalonia wasn’t a huge honking lesbian.

I will accept fix-it fics that give Wufei and his late wife Meiran the ending they deserve but that’s because she seems fantastic and I want her to have a happy ending.

What other ships do you ship? Are they canon?

God, aside from the M/F pairings I mentioned up there… I pretty much ship everything and most of it is not canon. (Except maybe Trowa/Quatre if you squint…)  I was a huge fan of Treize/Zechs, Duo/Wufei, Dorothy/Relena, and just various combinations of the pilots. I think my ideal is a Treize/Zechs/Wufei polyamorous relationship but I don’t think fandom writes that anymore and I keep forgetting that I want to mess around with that.

What is your favorite friendship in the series?

Trowa and Quatre.

Yes I ship them and tinhat a bit in that direction, but they also have such a cute friendship across the series? They’re soulmates. I adore them.

Are there any characters that you just wish were friends?

Stares in *apparently in Frozen Teardrop, the creators went full Harry Potter epilogue years after Rowling did*

All of them.

Any potential series datefriends/squishes/queer platonic peeps in this series?

As we’ve covered: Wufei is my son. I imprinted on him when I was younger than he is in canon and now that I’m older than him at his oldest in canon, yeah… that’s my baby. I love Wufei because he is so abrasive. He’s a teenager, maybe just shy of 15, and he has so much attitude. I lose it cackling every single time I watch the one episode where he attacks the base in Lake Victoria and after committing what is basically a war crime, Noin sees him and is like “wait, but that’s just a child”. Like she has the exact reaction I would to seeing Wufei do anything: a gaspy little “okay but that’s a baby” only she is infinitely more prepared to blast Wufei out of the sky than I would be. 

All of the different characters in the Gundam franchise as a whole are dealing with trauma and an inability to deal with it effectively. They’re all hurting and lashing out at various points across the different series. For some reason, Wufei is the one who sank his surly little hooks into me this time around. It’s been twenty years and I am still as obsessed with this angry little dude as I was as a tween. Let me snuggle him!!!

If you could tell the creators one thing about the series, what would you say?

Why isn’t Frozen Teardrop available in English anywhere?

I need to understand what’s going on with my babies??

Is Kathy Po Wufei and Sally’s daughter?

WHY ARE ALL THE M/F PAIRINGS CANON??

*ahem*

That is all.

Thank you.