This growth made it seem that the Cosmic Era had just as much room for development and growth as the classic Universal Century timeline, but a failure of an entry stopped that from ever happening.
This series further fleshed out the Cosmic Era timeline, as well as introduced the popular mobile suit known as the Gundam Astray Red Frame. SEED's popularity led to the manga spinoff Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray. This all combined to see young girls making up over half of the show's DVD sales. Revolution and Tatsuya Ishii, artists that had a sizeable female fanbase. The male character designs had a bishonen element to them, and there was more of a focus on strong female characters in the show. In terms of the mobile suits, sales for Gunpla figures and other merchandise was very high, and the show's suits continue to be popular to this day. Likewise, the designs for both the humans and their armors were popular with fans. For one, the premise was essentially a sort of reimagining of the original series, recapturing that show's spiritual essence for a new generation of audiences. SEED was very popular in Japan, especially at the time of its release, for a number of reasons. The protagonist is Kira Yamato, a student who pilots the Strike Gundam mobile suit to combat the forces of ZAFT, a military organization made up of Coordinators.
A third neutral faction eventually enters the fray, tipping the balance of power and peace in the solar system. The story centered around the war between normal humans and genetically enhanced subspecies called Coordinators, who battled using advanced mobile suit robotic armors. And It WalksĪiring from 2002-03, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED was the first entry in the franchise's "Cosmic Era" timeline. RELATED: Japan Has a 60-Foot Gundam Robot. Here's a look back at how a successful modern revamp of the franchise turned into a best-left forgotten controversy. Though there was initially a lot of hype behind the SEED series' universe, various circumstances saw it fall by the wayside due to poor reception. While one-off shows in the '90s like G Gundam and Gundam Wingtook place in their own continuities, it wasn't until the start of the Gundam SEED subfranchise that there was a full-on developed timeline separate from the original. Throughout the '80s, all the various anime and manga within the Gundam franchise took place in the Universal Century timeline. Starting back in the 1970s, the series jumpstarted the "Real Robot" subgenre of mecha anime, focusing on politics, character relationships and war, with a greater sense of realism than the "Super Robot" shows that had dominated anime until then.
In the world of mecha anime, no franchise is more influential than Mobile Suit Gundam.