Ah, you finally appear. I was waiting for the slap in the face. Here we go.
Except in 1979 it was incredibly different. So different in fact it actually created it's own genre of mecha anime. Granted, it didn't do very well (In fact, MSG was actually cancelled short of it's originally-intended 52 episode run) but instead of 'super robots', Gundam introduced 'real robots'. Very few mecha anime if any at all (that I'm aware of anyway, feel free to enlighten me...and no that's not sarcasm) can tell the kind of stories MS Gundam can. Even to this day (with few exceptions like SEED and G-Saviour...which is just ass; SEED is just re-telling a contemporary version of the OYW) many of them still can't. Wanna know why?
Despite the robots being the mainstay, that's not the point of the story being told. Not one bit. That's the one thing many people either miss or completely misinterpret.
I won't argue with that. I never said it was not influential nor important to the culture, altough I don't think it "created it's own genre of mecha anime". I think it just made it technical and more or less science-explainable... relatively speaking of course. The mecha genre had been there for a while already. It added a twist when it came out, just like Evangelion did.
Of course it hasn't. Why alter what isn't severed?
And at the same exact time...the story being told has changed several times.
Nope.
Depends on what you interpret as being "stuck".
Because it stops being interesting, that is why it should change or be altered, and that is why it should have ended 20 years ago. More on this on the last lines of my post.
And it's still influential to this day. Show me another anime that has actually inspired/spawned a real-life science academy. Show me another anime that has it's own cafe. Show me another anime that has actively inspired scientists to explore the possibilities of space migration and the construction of actual, inhabitable space colonies. I'll give you an easy one: show me another anime that has it's own airplane.
That last one is a joke (although it actually does have it's own airplane, and models based off of the color scheme). Fallen into a black hole? Not even remotely.
Lol. You are such a fanboy, haha. You aren't talking about influence here. You are talking sheer popularity, which is undisputable.
Again, I ain't saying Gundam wasn't influential, but all this plane and real-life science academy stuff is just popularity. Gundam stopped being influential 20 years ago, because it's formula is incredibly wasted by now. It's all the same over and over and over and over again. If anything, it may still be influential because, if you ever try to make a mecha anime, you try to differ from Gundam as much as possible or your series will be called a Gundam rip-off/spin-off. Yes, it broke new grounds to the genre. It was very influential. It has it's own lore, culture if you want. But it has been enough by now.
The problem with Gundam is how much it has endured. It's almost 40 years. It's like Elvis. He could have died young, when he was a living legend, and it would have been perfect. But no, he survived well into the 70s, overweight, with drug problems, died pathetically. By now, the stories being told in Gundam could be told without the goddamn robots and they would be the same. They are not the breaktrough like they were in the early 80s. And while the stories might be good, them being told with yet again the saaaaaaaaaaame robots from 40 years ago is a BIG turn off for a lot of people, just as it is a magnet for the fans of the series. But therein lies the problem.
Gundam is now interesting to just the fans of the series, people that have been watching it for a very long time. If there is some newcomer to the genre, they will find Gundam of course, but they will move on unless they are really caught by the damned things and the lore and all that, but that would be a exception. From Gundam, you move to Macross to Lagan to whatever the heck else, because Gundam jsut repeats itself. Gundam has lived too long for it's own good.
And I'm saying this from own experience. I know a lot of people that watches anime, and every time something new Gundam comes out, they are like "oh god, not again". However, there is one guy in the bunch who gets all giggly, but he is the resident Gundam fan so we know already he's gonna love it. It's like he doesn't count. Gundam fails to capture interest because it's concept is old, and because it hasn't been able to reinvent itself, or the genre, again, which is what shows like Lagann or Evangelion have done.
AND, and here comes the sad part: if ever there has been such a twisting plot like those seen in Evangelion or Laggan, for example, in any of the several Gundam series, it has gone unnoticed but to the few people that are Gundam fans, because when you hear the name Gundam, you assume it's gonna be more of the same it has been for 40 years.
Goddin summed it up really well: it's like an old friend... if you like it. If not, it's another piece of bore, the same it has been for 40 years. It demonstrates that I'm not the only one who feels like this about Gundam. And it is also why you can't even come to tell me it is influential now. It was. Now everyone is trying to run away of that. That is still an influence, but I don't know if it can be called positive.
That channel also has a recording of the "History of Anime" panel if you'd like to watch that too.
