Whats Gundam?
Gundam (ガンダム)is a Japanese military fiction media franchise. Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise (now Bandai Namco Filmworks), the franchise features giant robots, or mecha, with the name "Gundam". The franchise began on April 7, 1979, with Mobile Suit Gundam, a TV series that defined the "real robot" mecha anime genre by featuring giant robots called mobile suits (including the original titular mecha) in a militaristic setting. The popularity of the series and its merchandise spawned a franchise that includes 50 TV series, films and OVAs as well as manga, novels and video games, along with a whole industry of plastic model kits known as Gunpla which makes up 90 percent of the Japanese character plastic-model market.
So they're not transformers?
Nope! The Gundam series predates Transformers by about 5 years. The two series are unrelated to eachother.
How Do I Get Into Gundam?
It depends on what aspects interest you the most. If you want to know the characters and the world, I reccomend starting with the original anime from 1979. If you're interested in the model kits, browse until you find one with a design that you really enjoy. More information regarding buying kits is in the Buying Guide section
About the Anime
Watching the Gundam anime is somewhat tricky because of how many different Gundam anime have been made. The anime is split into two: The Universal Century timeline and alternative timelines. Alternative timelines are the easier of the two. They are all seperate universes that can be enjoyed independantly from eachother. The UC timeline consists of several anime that tell one big story over the course of them. Regardless, I still reccomend anyone new to the series to start with Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) as it is important to not only the mecha genre, but to anime as a whole.
Who Is the Greatest Gundam Character?
Char Aznable.
In addition to him being the best character to ever grace our world he was also part of a McDonalds Japan campaign which you can watch below