The Unending Echo of the One Year War: Gundam’s Enduring Obsession
Almost every episode of the original Mobile Suit Gundam begins with a stark reminder and a dire warning. A stoic narrator informs the audience that it is the year 0079 of the Universal Century, a timeline defined by humanity’s expansion into space. This opening establishes the crucial context: the last nine months have been consumed by an interstellar war of terrifying scale. On one side stands the Earth Federation, the governing body of Earth and its colonies. On the other, the Principality of Zeon, a coalition of space colonies that have violently declared their independence from their terrestrial overlords.
The initial momentum of the war, however, had largely devolved into a stalemate, only broken by the specific events that unfold within the narrative of the show itself. Prior to the series’ commencement, only a single month of the conflict, poignantly named the "One Year War," had witnessed any true combat. And within that single month lies the warning, hammered home episode after episode: half of all humanity had perished. The stalemate wasn’t born from strategic genius or impressive military advancements; instead, humankind had essentially decimated itself in mere weeks, unleashing unparalleled horror upon itself.
The roots of this cataclysmic conflict lay in the deep-seated discontent festering within the space colonies, known as "Sides," concerning Earth’s pervasive control. These Sides, seven in total, were strategically positioned across the Lagrange points of the Earth-Moon system, each boasting its own name and administrative framework. Decades before the outbreak of open war, simmering tensions threatened to boil over. Twenty years prior to 0079, Side 3, the furthest of the colonies from Earth, declared its independence. Rechristening itself the Republic of Zeon, it honored its leader, Zeon Zum Deikun.
Deikun was a staunch proponent of "Contolism," a compelling philosophy that blended environmentalism and nationalism. It argued that humanity’s evolutionary destiny lay in the stars, beyond the confines of Earth, and that the burgeoning colonial system possessed the inherent right to self-governance, free from the perceived tyranny of the Federation.
However, Deikun’s untimely and mysterious death in 0068, and the subsequent rise of the Zabi family, headed by the iron-fisted patriarch Degwin Zabi, dramatically altered Zeon’s trajectory. Under Zabi’s leadership, Zeon transformed into a militaristic entity, declaring itself a sovereign principality and launching a full-scale mobilization for war against Earth. They poured resources into technological advancements, specifically developing the Zaku, the first bipedal humanoid Mobile Suit designed explicitly for combat, to bolster their naval and ground forces. While Mobile Worker units had seen civilian use previously, military applications of the technology were largely dismissed by the Earth Federation. They foolishly believed their overwhelming naval superiority would deter Zeon from any actions beyond displays of nationalist fervor, a delusion that would be swiftly and brutally shattered.
Zeon formally declared war on January 3, 0079, and immediately launched devastating attacks on Sides 1, 2, and 4, the colonies closest to them. The Zaku, particularly its improved successor, the Zaku-II, proved to be a game-changer in Zeon’s assaults, overwhelming traditional capital ships with their unprecedented maneuverability and firepower. However, the initial phase of the conflict was characterized not by Mobile Suits, but by Zeon’s calculated and ruthless deployment of nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction.
Millions upon millions perished in the opening days of the war as colonies were saturated with poison gas. In a direct assault on Earth, Zeon launched "Operation British," a horrifying scheme involving launching a depopulated space colony cylinder into Earth’s atmosphere, aiming to obliterate the Federation’s command headquarters at Jaburo in South America. Though Federation forces failed to prevent the launch, Operation British proved to be a hollow victory. The colony broke apart in the atmosphere, with the largest remaining fragment crashing into Sydney, Australia, wiping the city from the map and causing catastrophic ecological damage.
In a desperate counterattack, General Revil rallied the remnants of the Federation fleet to prevent Zeon from launching a second colony drop on Side 5, known as Loum, initiating the first large scale fleet battle in space. Again, Zeon’s utilization of weapons of mass destruction proved decisive, Loum was completely obliterated by nuclear bombardment. But the battle of Loum also exposed the Federation’s colossal miscalculation in dismissing Mobile Suit warfare. It was here that Zeon ace pilots rose to prominence, making their names in the conflict. Among them was Char Aznable, famously known as the "Red Comet" for his personalized Zaku, who was in fact the son of Zeon Zum Deikun operating under an alias. The Federation fleet was decimated by Zeon’s Mobile Suit forces, and General Revil himself was captured.
Just weeks into the war, the scale of loss of life was almost incomprehensible. Representatives from the Earth Federation and Zeon met in Antarctica for peace talks. The Federation was on the verge of total surrender, but the dramatic liberation of General Revil from Zeon captivity, who exposed the unsustainable impact the war was having on Zeon, bolstered the Federation’s resolve. Instead of surrendering unconditionally, they sought to negotiate new terms of engagement. The resulting Antarctic Treaty formally prohibited the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry, as well as the employment of colonies as weapons of mass destruction. It also established guidelines for the humane treatment of prisoners of war and enshrined the neutrality of several colonies.
Despite signing the Antarctic Treaty, Zeon retained a significant advantage over the battered Earth Federation forces due to its Mobile Suit technology. By March of 0079, Zeon began deploying ground forces and Mobile Suit divisions directly onto Earth. Within months, they controlled vast stretches of the planet, including the Federation’s military-industrial complex along the West Coast of America, using it to resupply and maintain their armies.
While the Federation’s ground forces resorted to guerrilla tactics to fight Zeon’s mechanized units on Earth, secret operations began in space to rebuild the Federation’s navy. The key development was Project V, a research program focused on developing military Mobile Suits for the Earth Federation, along with weaponry to match Zeon’s capabilities. Project V produced three Mobile Suits: the long-range Guntank artillery platform, the Guncannon support suit, and the close-quarters combat-specialized Gundam. The suits used compacted beam weaponry based on the technology used by Federation capital ships, giving them a major advantage in firepower compared to the ballistic weapons of the Zaku, while maintaining the mobility that Mobile Suits had over fleets.
Zeon’s forces nearly destroyed these prototype suits when they discovered them at Side 7 in September of 0079, along with the newly developed Pegasus-class carrier "White Base." However, the early deployment of the Gundam in combat by Amuro Ray, a civilian whose father was a lead researcher on Project V, began to shift the war in the Federation’s favor. Operating from the White Base with a mix of military personnel and civilian refugees from Zeon’s attack on Side 7, Amuro led a vanguard that carved a path through Zeon forces back to Earth. His actions were crucial in liberating key Federation facilities across the Americas and helping advance Federation forces back into Europe and Asia as part of Operation Odessa.
By December, the White Base’s successful campaigns and the increasing deployment of the Federation’s new RGM-79 line of Mobile Suits (known as "Jims") allowed the Federation to launch a new space fleet from Jaburo, pushing into Zeon’s defensive lines. Military defeats at the asteroid fortress Solomon and internal power struggles within the Zabi family pushed Zeon’s war efforts to the brink. The One Year War ended on New Year’s Eve at the Battle of A Baoa Qu, Zeon’s final remaining asteroid base. With the deaths of most of the Zabi family and the scattering of Zeon’s remaining forces, Zeon restored its republic status and formally surrendered on January 1, 0080, bringing an end to the One Year War, just two days shy of the first anniversary of the beginning of the conflict.
The One Year War left an enduring mark on the Gundam franchise, influencing its evolution from a niche anime to a legendary multimedia phenomenon over the subsequent decades. Beyond its direct impact on the shows and spinoffs set within the Universal Century timeline, establishing a foundation for future conflicts, the sheer devastation of the One Year War has continuously influenced the franchise’s recurring themes of the cycles of conflict and the tragic human cost at its core. Gundam seemingly cannot escape this historical period. Over and over, OVAs, movies, spinoff manga, and novels delve further into this time frame, revisiting its iconography and setting instead of simply echoing them.
And now, almost a half-century after its initial depiction, Gundam is revisiting it once more in a new light with GQuuuuuuX. Set in an alternate version of the Universal Century where Zeon won the war, it simultaneously acknowledges the echoes of the franchise’s most famous conflict and boldly diverges from it. It is an opportunity to directly revisit and retell that story once more while extrapolating a potential future where things went differently. In many ways, it is the ultimate expression of the franchise’s ongoing commentary on the enduring conflict, but it would be naive to consider this latest iteration as the final word on the war that defined Gundam.
