The Best Gundam Series On Hulu Is Also The Darkest
The Gundam franchise has always been about the horrors of war, but its use of teenage characters is often treated as a minor detail. Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans became one of my favorite series by making the fact that its protagonists are child soldiers the central theme. Exploring that theme also makes it one of the darkest series in the franchise, delving into the conditions that create child soldiers and the trauma implicit in that experience.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans
Originally airing in 2015, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans was the 14th series in the franchise, consisting of two 25-episode seasons. It follows a group of child soldiers on Mars who revolt against the leadership of their mercenary group to form a new organization, called Tekkadan.
Tekkadan becomes embroiled in the Martian independence movement, fighting against the Earth’s international military organization Gallarjhorn which is trying to quell the Martian rebellion.
Human Debris
By spending the bulk of its time with the child soldiers of Tekkadan, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans is heavily focused on the ramifications of being child soldiers. Many of the characters were explicitly forced into being child soldiers by poverty or outright slavery.
Called “human debris” throughout the show, their trauma also leads Tekkadan to engage in violent war crimes to achieve their goals rather than making them purely heroic martyrs.
Tekkadan
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has a massive cast, but the members of Tekkadan are my favorite characters in the franchise, each being a distinct individual. The organization’s leader Orga is a politically-minded revolutionary, while the protagonist Mikazuki is a loyal fanatic.
Other members of Tekkadan include a sensitive bodybuilder named Akihiro, the information officer Biscuit who is notable as one of the few members who can read, and too many more to list in this review.
Amazing Combat
It’s the humanization of its central group of characters that makes Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans my favorite entry in the franchise. It gives the show an emotional depth that is sometimes lost in the lofty ideas the series explores.
The unambiguously immoral acts committed by Tekkadan also demonstrate one of the franchise’s central themes, that war brings out the worst in humanity.
In typical style for the franchise, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans also features beautifully animated, engaging mecha combat. Many characters, including the protagonist Mikazuki, use cybernetics to connect directly to their mobile suits.
This system provides an in-universe explanation for exceptionally human-like and fluid movement, giving the show’s action a unique aesthetic.
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GFR SCORE
For all its strengths, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans does have a major weakness, which is its antagonists. While the members of Tekkaden feel emotionally realistic, the soldiers of Gjallarhorn feel like broad archetypes that the series has already explored dozens of times over.
The show’s obligatory masked pilot, McGillis Fareed, is the perfect example of this lacking any compelling character traits and only distinctive for his troubling marriage to a child bride.
With over a dozen series, the Gundam franchise has covered a wide variety of tones and themes. While I love the campy fun of G Gundam and the political drama of the original series, I think the series is at its best when it’s at its darkest.
You can see the bleak masterpiece that is Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans for yourself on Hulu.
