Mobile Suit Gundam Interactive VR Anime First Look Is The Future Made Real
One of anime’s most iconic sci-fi series is using new technology to tell its classic story. Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom will bring the popular mecha series to VR as an interactive anime movie. Originally announced in 2023 with no details, Bandai Namco has finally released a first look at the innovative new VR movie.
The trailer also has plenty of visual nostalgia to build excitement for their VR version of Mobile Suit Gundam.
For many Gundam fans, the biggest revelation of the teaser trailer was confirmation that the movie will be set in the Universal Century 0096 timeline. This puts it within the same period as Mobile Suit Gundam: Unicorn and its various spin-offs. Attaching the new VR movie to one of Gundams pre-existing settings is a great way to hype fans up.
The trailer also has plenty of visual nostalgia to build excitement for their VR version of Mobile Suit Gundam. With familiar designs like the iconic Zaku and what appears to be a sketch of a Pegasus-Class ship, there looks to be plenty of Gundam fan service. Many VR properties use this type of property to showcase why it’s special, giving fans a unique perspective on a familiar and beloved property.
When the original series Mobile Suit Gundam first debuted in 1979, the idea of VR was science fiction.
Even for those who don’t have any nostalgia for the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, the trailer for this VR movie has obvious appeal. Massive space battles are a huge part of Gundam’s appeal, but seeing those battles play out in VR is the sort of spectacle that even new fans can appreciate. The shots of those space battles in the trailer perfectly convey the epic scale, chaos, and terror of the scenario.
While the trailer gave fans a better idea of what to expect in terms of setting, it’s still unclear exactly how an interactive anime movie will work. Nothing in the trailer showed any interactive elements, making the interactive elements something of a mystery. The fact that Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom is using VR is exciting, but it’s the fact fans could directly impact the story that makes it stand out from other VR projects.
The term interactive movie generally refers to games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead or classic FMV games, where gameplay comes down mostly to making narrative choices. But setting such a game in VR gives Bandai Namco the ability to experiment with that formula in interesting ways. If done well it could make the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise immersive in ways that the franchise never could be in the past.
Massive space battles are a huge part of Gundam’s appeal, but seeing those battles play out in VR is the sort of spectacle that even new fans can appreciate.
Bandai Namco is the perfect company to split the difference between anime movies and games, as the company has been involved with both for decades. Mobile Suit Gundam is one of their biggest properties, and it will be interesting to see how they use it to bridge the gap into VR. While doing something new is always risky, at least the project is in good hands.
It seems like an obvious choice for the legendary sci-fi anime to be engaging with new technology to innovate its storytelling. When the original series Mobile Suit Gundam first debuted in 1979, the idea of VR was science fiction. Seeing the franchise lean into the technology is exciting and fitting.
The interactive movie will be exclusively available for Quest. No release date has been announced for Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom yet, so fans of VR and anime will have to be patient. Hopefully, this big swing from the beloved Gundam franchise knocks it out of the park.
