Where to watch Mobile Suit Gundam in Australia (and in what order)

Gundam isn’t just anime. It's the anime. Originally airing in 1979, Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam has gone on to inspire countless sequels, spin-offs, movies and a popular line of hobby-grade miniatures known as Gunpla. 

If you’re not sure where to start with the franchise, I wouldn’t blame you. There’s a lot to get your head around. To help guide you through this confusion and towards an appreciation of one of Japan’s most iconic anime franchises, we’ve put together this guide that covers not just where you can stream Gundam in Australia but also how you might want to tackle the sprawling saga.

Where to watch Gundam

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If all you’re after is a signpost for where to stream a specific Gundam series, feel free to scroll down to the table below. However, if you’re coming to Gundam afresh, then it’s worth taking a beat to touch on the basics.

Most of the early Mobile Suit Gundam TV shows and films were part of a shared setting known as the Universal Century. If you’re going to start watching Gundam, this corner of the franchise is definitely the best place to start. The most important entries here are the first three TV shows and the first movie, Char’s Counterattack.

The table below shows every major TV show and movie in Gundam’s Universal Century timeline, plus where to stream them in Australia.

The breakdown seen above is by no means encyclopedic. It’s not even every single piece of Gundam media that takes place in the Universal Century. For the sake of keeping things straightforward, it omits smaller projects like short films, VR movies, and compilations.

How to watch Gundam in order

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As mentioned above, the simplest place to start with Mobile Suit Gundam is the original series, which is sometimes called Gundam 0079. If you're at all a fan of science fiction TV series like Battlestar Galactica or The Expanse, you’ll probably find a lot of similarities in the setup for the storyline here. 

Mobile Suit Gundam is set in a future where mankind has ascended to the stars but descended into a war that pits the bureaucratic Earth Federation against the fascist principality of Zeon. The series follows a group of teenagers who are caught up in the conflict, the most significant of which is a young boy named Amuro Ray, who quickly distinguishes himself as an adept pilot for an experimental war machine known as the Gundam. It isn’t long before he finds himself on the frontlines and in the sights of an enigmatic Zeon officer named Char Aznable. 

Although this science fiction saga may initially seem a little old-fashioned, there’s a ton to like about it – and it’s actually a lot darker than many might expect given the franchise’s famously toyetic tendencies. 0079 and its sequels might come across as meandering or messy by modern standards, but the core themes that the series taps into around war, violence, and the ways that adults exploit children have stood the test of time surprisingly well. 

After watching the original Mobile Suit Gundam, the purest path onwards is to watch each series in the order that they were originally released. That means that you want to go straight into Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and then Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (which is actually called ‘Double Zeta Gundam’ but don’t get too caught up on it) before capping things off this era of Gundam with Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack.

Once you’ve done that, you should ask yourself whether you want to go forward or backward in time. If you want to fill in some of the blanks between the original Mobile Suit Gundam and its siblings, then there are more than a few Gundam series that offer exactly that. Although shows like 0080: War in the Pocket and Thunderbolts aren’t directly tied to the main plot, they provide new perspectives on the events and world depicted in Mobile Suit Gundam. 

If you’re ready to move past the gravity well surrounding the original Gundam, more modern instalments like Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn and Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway are going to be right up your alley. Both are based on novels written by series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino and pick up many of the thematic threads left hanging by the original saga. In contrast, Mobile Suit Gundam: F91 and Mobile Suit Gundam Victory err in the other direction. Technically, they are part of the broader Universal Century saga. However, they’re distant enough from the bulk of the franchise in time that they may as well be their own thing. The former is a TV show that was crunched down into a movie mid-production. The latter is regarded as one of the more divisive instalments in the saga, and the original creator has disowned it in the years since. Completionists will likely want to watch them anyway, but your mileage may vary. 

Nevertheless, the Universal Century is merely a fraction of the Gundam franchise. The rest of the Gundam franchise takes place in what are called alternate universes or AUs. Some of these tie loosely to the timeline of the Universal Century, but most are self-contained stories. The various Gundam universes tell similar stories in different universes, reusing imagery, themes and nouns without necessarily committing to a singular chronological timeline. 

There’s very little in the mainstream entertainment landscape quite like it, but it’s not entirely unlike how the Spider-Man movies work. You can safely expect a Gundam to show up in every instalment, but the context and tone might be radically different from one series to another.

Still, some spin-offs are better than others. Here are the ones that should be on your radar if you’re looking to go beyond the boundaries of the Universal Century. 

Turn A Gundam

After the back-to-back misfires of Mobile Suit Gundam F91 and Mobile Suit Gundam Victory, Turn A Gundam is a fantastic return to form on the part of Gundam’s original creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino. It’s very different to the original series, and a lot slower in terms of pacing. However, that gear shift pays off in a fantastic, fascinating and fresh take on the series’ themes and iconography. Although there are ample robot battles, Turn A Gundam is less interested in war than it is in peace. Also, there’s a Gundam with a moustache.

Turn A Gundam is streaming for free on YouTube. 

Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

Right from the beginning, Mobile Suit Gundam has always been about child soldiers but Iron-Blooded Orphans dials in on this specific aspect of the series. It’s set on a futuristic colonised Mars and follows a group of orphaned children (colloquially known as human debris) that strike out on their own and form their mercenary outfit after they are abandoned by their corporate overlords. The animation is lavish, the mech designs are deliciously greebled and the series’ bet on underdogs is a winning one.

Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans is streaming on Crunchyroll. 

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury

While The Witch From Mercury quickly made headlines for being the first Gundam series to center on a female protagonist, that gender-bending is far from the only thing to like about it – though it can feel like a pretty big departure from the grim war stories of earlier Gundam shows. 

The series starts off as a fish-out-of-water comedy about a talented young pilot who ends up accidentally engaged to the daughter of the most powerful trade guild in the galaxy. The Witch From Mercury is more focused on the relationships between its cast than the typical Gundam anime, but that investment in character development helps the eventual robot battles soar even higher as a result.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury is streaming on Crunchyroll.