Term · Mobile Suit Gundam
Gundam
The most famous name in giant robots started life as a compound word about holding back a flood.
In Otakana the clue reads: The white prototype mech of the original 1979 series
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Mobile Suit Gundam
- Letters
- 6 · Easy
In the 1979 series the Gundam is one machine: the RX-78-2, a Federation prototype with a white torso, red and blue trim, and a face that has become the default shape for a giant robot's head. It is not mass produced, it is barely finished, and the boy who flies it is a civilian who happened to be standing next to it when the shooting started.
Yoshiyuki Tomino built the show around the idea that mobile suits are equipment. They run out of fuel, they are shot down in numbers, they arrive in crates and get repaired by mechanics who complain about it. That one decision separated Gundam from the superhero robots that came before and created the realistic mecha genre more or less on the spot.
The name joins gun to dam, a barrier holding something back. The series was cancelled at 43 episodes over poor ratings, then Bandai's plastic model kits sold in quantities nobody had predicted, and three compilation films in 1981 turned it into a franchise. Gunpla has since shipped hundreds of millions of boxes, and a new Gundam series has arrived in almost every decade since.
Spelling GUNDAM
GUNDAM is six letters and behaves itself. Two English-looking syllables, gun and dam, no silent letters and no long vowel waiting to be dropped. The Japanese ガンダム matches it kana for kana. If the row is fighting you, the spelling is not the reason: GUNDAM is one of the cleanest answers in the whole game.