“Mobile Suit Gundam” is one of the longest running anime franchises and it first became a hit in Japan when the original series was edited and re-released into three movies. This is the first of that trilogy and my first experience of the “Gundam” franchise. This is a fun and exciting sci-fi and for those of you unfamiliar with it, it is like “Transformers” meets “Star Wars”.

Set in the year Universal Century 0079, humans have colonised areas of space between the Earth and the Moon. A teenage boy by the name of Amuro becomes an important player in an interplanetary war fought between the colonies. He becomes the pilot of a new giant battle robot, known as ‘Mobile Suit Gundam’.

The Amuro character is actually really sympathetic. The movie is quite long and has lots of action sequences so we really get the sense of how tiring fighting a war can be and therefore we become understanding of the challenges Amuro faces. The other characters are okay but most of my attention was on the robots. Giant robots fighting makes everything more entertaining and we get to see them battle on land and in space. The animation is fairly impressive considering the age of the original “Mobile Suit Gundam” and the fact that this was originally for a television series and not a movie.

If you have never heard of “Mobile Suit Gundam” then do not be surprised because it certainly has not reached mainstream audiences. However, if you are remotely interested in giant robots fighting then you need to do some research. Fans of shows such as the original “Transformers” will find themselves right at home with “Mobile Suit Gundam”. I do get that a lot of people are not going to like this, which is a shame because it is surprisingly quite legitimately entertaining.