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Japanese kids are allowed to pilot sections of the life-sized Gundam in Yokohama [1]
['Devin Nealy']
Date: 2022-06-26 00:00:00
Gundam is one of those franchises I always thought should be bigger- no pun intended. In its native Japan, Gundam is a massive property that boasts no shortage of fans. In America, Gundam received a brief spike in popularity in the early 2000s thanks to model kits. Despite the number of model kits sold, Gundam never reached the insane levels of fan fervor that IPs like Dragonball, Pokemon, or Yugi-Oh garnered in the same era.
What's not to love about a story of giant war robots that surreptitiously serve as a poignant anti-war allegory? You get to have your cake and eat it too. And since Americans are obsessed with keeping the wheels of its war machine freshly lubricated with the blood of brown people, you'd think that Gundam would be a massive hit in the States.
I guess I'm miffed about Gundam not being a cultural institution in America because it deprives me of awesome experiences. Take the life-sized Gundam in Yokohama, for example. If the Gundam franchise had taken root in America years ago, I might've been able to pilot one as a kid. Yokohama's Gundam base offers youth robotics classes and even allows kids enrolled in the program to operate the life-sized robot. Sometimes life just isn't fair.
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