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The entire 'Gundam' franchise is coming to US on home video for the first time

The entire 'Gundam' franchise is coming to US on home video for the first time

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Home video distribution deal announced at New York Comic-Con

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Mobile Suit Gundam statue in Tokyo
Mobile Suit Gundam statue in Tokyo
Shuichi Aizawa/Flickr/CC-By-2.0

If you're a fan of giant fighting robots (and really, who isn't?), some great news emerged from New York Comic-Con this past weekend: the entire Mobile Suit Gundam franchise is being officially released on home video (DVD/Blu-Ray) in the United States. The Gundam franchise, a collection that spans over 25 different anime series and spin-off manga, video-games, models and other toys, focuses on a bunch of futuristic space wars fought by different human pilots in giant robotic "mobile" suits. It is the grandaddy of the "real robot" concept in science fiction, where giant robots are treated as just one of many tools of interpersonal conflict. American viewers may be more familiar with later iterations of Gundam thanks to the re-airing of Gundam Wing on Cartoon Network in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

Now Sunrise, the Japanese animation studio that owns the rights to all the Gundam properties, announced an expanded deal with its distribution company, Right Stuf, to re-release the original series that started it all back in 1979, Mobile Suit Gundam, on home video in early 2015. Right Stuf will also issue the first-ever North American releases of Turn A Gundam and Gundam ZZ next year, with subsequent series to follow. Pricing, video format, and exact availability details have yet to be announced, but for collectors and mecha buffs, the announcement alone is a big victory.