Kidou Senshi Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky

It does what it says on the tin. All movies here can be seen stand alone with no context needed.

Mobile Suit Gundam is probably the most influential anime franchise ever, and contrary to common opinion, it is no a meathead action kids' show full of repetitive robot fights. Gundam is a very flawed but very meaningful work of art, full of thought provoking sociopolitical commentary on war as well as interesting supernatural conceptualization.

The Universal Century Timeline is the original Gundam "universe" conceived by Yoshiyuki Tomino, as well as the best Gundam timeline, but sadly it has a bad reputation for being extremely inaccesible due to the myriads of installments it has and the watch order that tends to confuse many with many remakes, alternative versions and branching spin-offs. The series is however easy to watch if you just have a clear order, and this interest stack is an attempt at offering a concise and simple list of the of the most important and best installments so you can watch the best stuff without having to plow through the admittedly abundant trash.

I will include all essential works and add a few ones that are not essential but still highly recommended for either high quality or thematic significance, but I'll make it clear when an installment is not *really* essential and just recommended. My criteria for essential is most of the time being crucial to the timeline or simply so high in quality that it makes no sense to skip it.

If you want a COMPLETE watch order including every installment and go deep down the rabbit hole I recommend the interest stack called "Mobile Suit Gundam: Universal Century Timeline Watchorder" by user giffica, as I found it to be a very thorough and well put together list.

The "Scotland Loves Anime" film festival takes place annually in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was started in 2010 and includes the "Golden Partridge" jury award and audience-voted awards.

The past winners of the Golden Partridge Award are as follows.

2016: Kimi no Na wa.
2017: Yoake Tsugeru Lu no Uta
2018: Penguin Highway
2019: Kimi to, Nami ni Noretara
2020: n/a

In 2017, the live action Tokyo Ghoul film had its UK premiere at SLA.

In 2019, Isora Iwakiri's film The Sacrament had its UK premiere at SLA.

In 2020, the festival was hosted online. It also included Penguin Highway, Production I.G.'s short film collection and Weathering With You.

This is a canonical watch order that is geared towards a first time viewer of Gundam. I myself experienced the series in this order, which preserves the canonical order, but mends it slightly to preserve watching experience and prevent burnout. Included will be double-ups of series, which means the TV and Compilation movie versions and/or OVAs. Most of those "rewatches" will come after a period of time, slid into the timeline in a way that prevents serious burn-out. Realistically you can swap around any of them for their relative compilation, but first will always come the "preferred" version.

There is nothing in this list I would call spoilers, but I do give some slight generalized opinions which may lead, or alter your own experiences. If you want to go in blind, just look at the show. The blurbs are there to decide if you aren't sure when you want to watch something, not to give you anything before you watch.

I will also be forced to keep a side list since the max number of items in a single list is 50. Until more Gundam content is released, it mostly has small 5-10 minute things that don't really add to the canon in anyway. However, Gundam is approaching a point where if 2-3 more series release this list will get tight. Here is a link to that list: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/12271

I want to clarify that I am not some super Gundam fan, and I began making this list from the beginning of my watching experience. It thus offers a glimpse into what watching Gundam in 2022 should be like for the open-minded, anime history inclined weeb. If you know nothing (or very little) about Gundam this is the perfect place to start in order to grind out the main Universal Century timeline.

If you have any questions (or suggestions to improve since I'm not a hardcore Gundam fan) please feel free to message me.

just from some quick research. almost certainly incomplete.

A compilation of anime that began airing during the month of June.


Most notable for the Academy Award Winning Short film Tsumiki No Ie, as well as the airings of Great Teacher Onizuka, Netflix's Baki and the first two seasons of Kingdom.

See Also:

January: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15005
February: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15006
March: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15017
April: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15029
May: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15033
July: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15044
August: ttps://myanimelist.net/stacks/15051
September: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15053
October: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15101
November: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15102
December: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/15104

2005 - 2016

All these anime have leading characters that have no problems killing other people!


Feel free to DM or message me about any questions, suggestions, or opinions about this stack!

Full list of all Gundam anime in order of release date. List will include EVERY entry including summaries

☆ = Mandatory Viewing

My preferred timeline order:
☆ Gundam: The Origin
☆ Gundam I
- Gundam: Cucuruz Doan no Shima
☆ Gundam II: Ai Senshi-hen
- Gundam Thunderbolt: Bandit Flower
- Gundam: Dai 08 MS Shoutai
- Gundam 0080: Pocket no Naka no Sensou
☆ Gundam III: Meguriai Sora-hen
- Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky
- Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory
☆ Zeta Gundam
☆ Gundam ZZ
☆ Gundam: Gyakushuu no Char
☆ Gundam Unicorn
- Gundam NT
☆ Gundam: Senkou no Hathaway
- Gundam: Senkou no Hathaway 2
- Gundam: Senkou no Hathaway 3

Anime with months in the titles.

This happens more often than you would expect-

*I will not be counting titles using a character’s name which just happens to also be a month (May is a common one). These must be EXPLICITLY REFERENCING THE MONTH to count.

**In addition to this, I will also exclude any songs which just have (year, month) in their entry titles to distinguish them from others of the same name.

Gundam anime I've watched that is worth your time. Arranged mostly in production order.

UC MS Gundam watch order by Conflict Order in the canonical timeline. I will be updating the battles covered in each listing eventually as I get caught up.

2/4/24 Update: Still working on a lot of the timeline dates for this, so please check back later for revisions and added information and material.

Anime featuring mainly traditionally animated, hand drawn robots made between the year 2010 and now. As by this point in time, they had become a rarity in favor of CGI robots, I think this list would be really helpful.

Note: the Gundam Build shows get excluded because those are plastic models, not robots.

These are extremely good, high quality mecha anime picked across 5 decades of the medium you can get emotionally invested in, creating a genuine level of immersion to their masterful work. They are meaningful, real life influencing works, with themes that serve as important life lessons, with characters so connectable they might as well be real people, with fully realized concepts and fantasies, with stories worth the gravitas and seriousness they demand. While they might be on different levels in the immersion scale, they're all pieces of art that with their good animation, writing, directing, sound direction, art direction, and theming are well worth a watch even for non-mecha fans.

This is my guide to the Gundam mega-franchise, including all major entries in release order, not including some spinoff series like the build and SD Gundam series.