The introduction to nearly every episode of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series serves as a stark reminder of the devastating conflict that sets the stage for the story. A narrator solemnly informs viewers that the year is 0079 of the Universal Century, and that humanity has been embroiled in a brutal interstellar war between the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon, a group of space colonies seeking independence from their home planet, for the past nine months.

However, the reality is that the conflict had been stagnant for most of that period, with the exception of the initial month of fighting, known as the “One Year War,” which would later become a pivotal event in Gundam‘s history. The war’s stalemate was not due to clever strategies or technological advancements, but rather the fact that humanity had decimated itself in a matter of weeks, inflicting unimaginable horrors upon itself. The warning repeated at the beginning of each episode serves as a harsh lesson: in that single month, half of all humanity perished.

Prelude to War

Decades of growing discontent among the space colonies, which were divided into seven “Sides” with their own administrative branches, had been simmering beneath the surface. The colonies were under the direct control of Earth, and the desire for independence had been building. Twenty years prior to the outbreak of war, Side 3, the furthest of the colonies, declared its independence from the Earth Federation, renaming itself the Republic of Zeon in honor of its leader, Zeon Zum Deikun. Deikun was a proponent of “Contolism,” a philosophy that emphasized the importance of environmentalism and nationalism, arguing that humanity’s future lay in space and that the colonies had the right to self-governance.

However, Deikun’s mysterious death in 0068 marked a significant shift in Zeon’s trajectory. The rise of the Zabi family, led by Degwin Zabi, brought a more militaristic approach to the colony’s leadership. Zeon declared itself a sovereign principality under Zabi and began a full-scale mobilization for conflict with Earth, developing advanced technologies to supplement its naval and ground forces. The Zaku, the first bipedal humanoid Mobile Suit designed explicitly for combat, was one such innovation. Although the technology had previously been used for civilian “Mobile Worker” units, the Earth Federation had dismissed its military applications, believing that its naval forces would deter Zeon from taking aggressive action.

The One Month War

Zeon declared war on January 3, 0079, launching a series of attacks on the nearby colonies of Side 1, 2, and 4. The Zaku, particularly its successor, the Zaku-II, proved to be a significant advantage for Zeon’s forces, outmaneuvering traditional capital ships. However, the conflict’s opening days were marked not by the deployment of Mobile Suits, but by Zeon’s liberal use of nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction.

The initial stages of the war were catastrophic, with millions killed in the opening days as colonies were filled with poison gas. In an early assault on Earth, Zeon launched “Operation British,” which involved propelling a depopulated space colony cylinder into the planet’s atmosphere in an attempt to destroy the Federation’s headquarters at Jaburo in South America. Although the Federation failed to stop the colony drop, the operation ultimately proved to be a pyrrhic victory, as the colony broke apart in the atmosphere, and the largest remaining fragment landed on Sydney, causing widespread destruction and ecological damage.

In a desperate counterattack, General Revil rallied the remnants of the Federation fleet to prevent Zeon from launching a second colony drop at Side 5, known as Loum. This marked the beginning of the first open fleet battle in space in human history. Although Zeon’s use of weapons of mass destruction once again proved overwhelming, the battle also highlighted the Federation’s underestimation of mobile suit warfare. The rise of Zeon ace pilots, including Char Aznable, dubbed the “Red Comet” for his customized Zaku, demonstrated the potential of mobile suits in combat. The Federation fleet was decimated, and Revil himself was captured.

Just weeks into the war, the loss of life on both sides was staggering. The Earth Federation and Zeon met in Antarctica for peace talks, with the Federation on the brink of surrender. However, the liberation of Revil from Zeon custody and his exposure of the war’s impact on Zeon’s forces led to a change in the Federation’s approach. Instead of surrendering, the Federation negotiated new terms of war, resulting in the Antarctic Treaty, which prohibited the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, as well as the use of colonies as weapons of mass destruction.

Project V: The Turning Point

Despite signing the Antarctic Treaty, Zeon maintained a significant advantage over the Earth Federation due to its mobile suits. By March 0079, Zeon had begun deploying ground forces and mobile suit divisions directly on Earth, and within months, it controlled vast swaths of the planet, occupying the Federation’s military industrial complex across the West Coast of America to resupply and maintain its armies.

As the Federation’s ground forces resorted to guerrilla tactics to combat Zeon’s mechanized units on Earth, the Federation secretly worked on a two-pronged operation to redevelop its navy. The breakthrough came with Project V, a research operation aimed at developing military mobile suits for the Earth Federation, alongside matching weaponry. The three mobile suits developed under Project V – the Guntank, Guncannon, and Gundam – utilized compacted beam weaponry based on the batteries used by the Federation’s capital ships, outgunning the ballistic weaponry of the Zaku while retaining the maneuverability advantages of mobile suits.

Although Zeon forces discovered the prototype suits and the Pegasus-class carrier “White Base” transporting them at Side 7 in September 0079, the early deployment of the Gundam in combat by Amuro Ray, the civilian son of one of the lead researchers on Project V, changed the tide of the war in the Federation’s favor. Operating from the White Base with a mix of military and civilian personnel, Ray led a vanguard that saw the Gundam carve a path through Zeon forces back to Earth, playing a crucial role in the liberation of key Federation facilities across the Americas and helping to advance Federation forces back into Europe and Asia as part of Operation Odessa.

By December, the success of the White Base’s campaigns and the increasing deployment of new Federation mobile suits in the RGM-79 line saw the Federation launch a new space fleet from Jaburo, pushing into Zeon’s defensive lines in space. Military defeats at the asteroid fortress Solomon and internal infighting among the Zabi family left Zeon’s military operations on the brink of collapse. Eventually, on New Year’s Eve, the One Year War came to an end at the Battle of A Baoa Qu, Zeon’s final remaining asteroid base. With the deaths of much of the Zabi leadership and the scattering of Zeon’s remnant forces, on January 1, 0080, Zeon restored its republic status and formally surrendered, bringing an end to the One Year War.

The Legacy of the One Year War

The One Year War has had a lasting impact on the Gundam franchise, shaping its trajectory over the past 45 years. The conflict’s influence can be seen in the shows and spinoffs that follow in the Universal Century timeline, setting the stage for generations of conflict to come. The parallels between the One Year War and the devastation it represented have informed the franchise’s ongoing examination of the cycles of conflict and the human cost that lies at its heart.

Despite this, the franchise seems unable to escape the gravitational pull of the One Year War, with numerous OVAs, movies, spinoff manga, and novels revisiting the wartime period, often exploring new storylines and settings within that era. The latest incarnation, GQuuuuuuX, is set in an alternative version of the Universal Century where Zeon emerged victorious, offering a fresh perspective on the conflict while pushing the story in new directions.

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