Over a decade ago, the Gundam franchise entered a new phase of its life with Gundam Unicorn. Revitalising the Universal Century timeline, it has left its mark on the global fanbase and resulted in a life-size statue of the titular mecha in Tokyo. In short, Gundam Unicorn is genre defining.
To understand what makes Gundam Unicorn so special, it’s worth going back to the heyday of the Universal Century timeline, that of the late 80s.
Following series such as Gundam ZZ and movies like Char’s Counterattack, Gundam Unicorn fits snugly after those in terms of the continuity and tries to explain the shift in the politics of the Earth Sphere that would occur in Gundam F91 around thirty years later.
In order to do this, Gundam Unicorn goes right back to the start of the Universal Century and that the values it was founded on weren’t what everyone thought. Starting with this premise, we fast forward to U.C. 0096 and are introduced to the Vist Foundation, the remnants of Neo Zeon called the Sleeves, an absent-minded boy Banagher Links and the mysterious RX-0 Unicorn Gundam.
Banagher is your typical daydreaming schoolboy but events transpire that bring him into contact with Audrey Burne and her desire to avert a war. This is because the Vist Foundation is guarding a secret as old as the Universal Century itself and vested interests in the Federation don’t want that secret to come to light. The key to unlocking this secret lies with the Unicorn Gundam itself and it’s here where this story turns into a treasure hunt.
This is because within the Unicorn Gundam is the La+ program, which in turn will lead whoever solves its clues to the Laplace Box and that will unlock the truth of the Laplace incident from almost a century ago.
The Unicorn Gundam is no ordinary mobile suit either, as its construction aggressively utilizes a Newtype active material called psycho-frame. To the extent that at full capacity it transforms into Destroy mode, showing its glowing psycho-frame within.
To be honest, the story of Gundam Unicorn is one massive spoiler, to the extent that it resolves decades of narrative elements from the prior Universal Century timelines installments.
This is not to say that you cannot watch Gundam Unicorn as a standalone anime, as the story does work well enough on its own, but it was always intended as a love letter to fans of Universal Century Gundam and is vastly improved if you know the backstory behind the events in the narrative.
Based on a series of light novels by Harutoshi Fukui, with character designs by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and mecha designs by Hajime Katoki, no-one really expected Gundam Unicorn to end up as an anime. In fact, for the longest period, it firmly stayed as a novel only series and with good reason.
This is because while Gundam Unicorn does follow on from Char’s Counterattack, it does so from a different version of the timeline. In that, Gundam Unicorn follows on from other novel spin-offs, namely Beltorchika’s Children and also acts as a prequel to Hathaway’s Flash.
So to animate Gundam Unicorn would surely cause all manner of timeline issues but it was clear that the fans loved the story and the mecha designs, as the model kits and toys sold like crazy, and that in turn resulted in the anime being made.
The only issue with this OVA though was that it tried to cram the ten main light novels into seven episodes. For the most part, it works but Fukui added a great deal of exposition to the story in the novels. This exposition was all but omitted in the anime. From character development to key plot points and technological foreshadowing.
The result of these omissions in the anime makes for events in the story as well as decisions made by characters to be a bit baffling. Not to mention the almost magical aspects to some of the technology later on.
Broadly speaking, the OVA of Gundam Unicorn does hold together but much of what makes you overlook these faults is the fact that it is beautifully animated and also has a fantastic score by Hiroyuki Sawano.
While Sunrise tried to solve some of the exposition issues from the novels in Gundam Unicorn RE:0096, which was an extended 22-episode television series that re-used elements from the OVA. In reality, I still think the OVA version makes more sense and holds together better.
So that means this new set by Right Stuf Anime is basically the one to get. Not least for the fact that it contains all seven episodes in one collection. Previously, we had to buy each episode separately and at truly eye-watering prices.
The good news is that this new Gundam Unicorn anime release is affordable and comes brimming with extras, mostly there to explain the backstory for people coming in cold to the Universal Century.
The audio and visual quality is also excellent and what I have come to expect of all Gundam related releases from Right Stuf Anime at this point. So if you want to appreciate all of what Gundam Unicorn has to offer in terms of its lovely animation and gorgeous musical score, then this Blu-ray release most certainly delivers on those.
Overall, Gundam Unicorn is an important entry in the Universal Century saga due to all the narrative aspects it resolves. It is also very nicely animated and has a lovely orchestral score to go with it. However, if this is your first exposure to Gundam you may be left asking a lot of questions but to be honest, that’s half the fun of getting into Gundam anyway.
Gundam Unicorn is available on both Blu-ray and DVD over at Right Stuf Anime.
Disclosure: I was sent this Gundam Unicorn Blu-ray collection by Right Stuf anime for the purposes of this review.
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