Amazon.com has begun listing the Blu-ray edition of Gundam Unicorn Volume  1 as available for pre-order at the same time that Anime News Network, Crunchyroll, and YouTube are set to stream Gundam series from across the franchise’s over 30-year history. The series planned so far are classics such as Mobile Suit Gundam (i.e. the original) and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, the western-popular New Mobile War Report Gundam W, as well as the more recent Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, and  Mobile Suit Gundam 00.

The original Mobile Suit Gundam is one of the most influential anime in history. It changed things. It is a point that cannot be argued.  The reality however is that Gundam has not been popular in the United States, and as  a long-time fan I’ve always had to wonder, “why?” What heppened? I kind of regret not asking the man himself, Tomino Yoshiyuki, creator of Gundam, about it. There were plenty of questions about why Gundam succeeded, but none about why it saw hardship in certain markets.

But I know that my path to Gundam fandom is not the one taken by most fans in the US, with mine consisting of old VHS fansubs before a single series was ever even licensed, and a great many people coming in with New Mobile War Report Gundam W, or as it was called when it broadcast on Cartoon Network, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

Wing was a success. It aired twice a day, with a censored version in the afternoon and an uncut version late at night which would pave the way for Adult Swim. There, young anime fans were introduced to the legendary mecha designs of Ookawara Kunio and the mix of politics, war, and insight on human condition that all but defined Gundam.

It made perfect sense to introduce the US to Gundam through Wing. The older series risked looking too dated. Mobile Fighter G Gundam was too unorthodox, and After War Gundam X failed to do well in Japan. The safe bet was Wing. But by having it be the very first US Gundam series, it inadvertently created the first theory on why Gundam doesn’t sell in the US.

Detractors of Wing will say that the series, as similar to classic Gundam as it is, created false expectations in people’s minds about Gundam. Key among these expectations was that Gundam was full of handsome and mysterious bishounen characters on all sides. While Wing had the mecha, the politics, the human drama amidst war that characterizes Gundam, Wing’s reputation was in the pretty boys, and the new-ness of it all. And sure enough, the original Mobile Suit Gundam aired on Cartoon Network as well but failed to make the same splash.

While the original had its own share of handsome men, namely Char Aznable and Garma Zabi, it just wasn’t the same as Wing in the eyes of fans. It also didn’t help that Mobile Suit Gundam, or “First Gundam” as it’s called by fans, got canceled shortly after 9/11. Naturally, theories abounded that the material present in the original would hit too close to home shortly after the World Trade Center attack, though I personally never saw proof of this. The closest thing to evidence was the fact that Canada aired the entire series. And it especially didn’t help when the Mobile Suit Gundam DVDs were English dub-only, with Japan claiming that the original audio was damaged or unusable. Of course here in 2010 we know that this was just an excuse and the real cause was fear of reverse importation from the US to Japan, as at the time there were no Japanese DVDs of Mobile Suit Gundam. This is especially clear when just a few years ago Mobile Suit Gundam was released in Japan with audio and all.

So that was three conspiracy theories already, and Gundam had only spanned two series in the US! To make a long story short here, no series in the Gundam franchise has had anywhere near the success of New Mobile War Report Gundam W. The other classic “Universal Century” series suffered from the original not doing as well as anyone had hoped. Mobile Fighter G Gundam managed to attract its own fanbase, but like Wing its differences compared to classic Gundam are what really drew people in, instead of any similarities. Even SEED, which I had assumed would do well due to its similarities to Wing, failed to make a sizable splash, though this might also have to do with the fact that SEED aired only once a week and at odd hours, unlike Wing which was almost daily and aired twice a day on top of that. Gundam 00 only finished airing recently, and I have yet to truly see its effects.

Where did it go wrong? What does it take to make Gundam succeed in the US? It all comes back to me not being able to answer this million dollar question. And that’s what it is; if you could figure out a way for Bandai to make strides, then you could be a very wealthy person.

Now having taken in all this information, consider the fact that it has been almost ten years since Gundam Wing appeared on US television. The junior high and high schoolers who fell in love with it back then are now college-age and beyond, and there’s a whole generation of anime fans who were never really exposed to it. Is there something inherent to Wing that made it succeed where others could not, or was it merely a perfect storm when Heero Yuy and his four allies initiated Operation Meteor, the mission to go to Earth to stop war?

My hope as a Gundam fan of many years is that if one hooks a fan, then they might just be curious enough to check the others out. Maybe, now that so many of them will be streaming, we’ll see those connections finally happen. If not with Wing, then perhaps with another.