Ever since the I blogged about "How's Gundam gets it Name", I have been getting many response from Gundam fans. Some commented and some even email me. I was very glad to see the responses.
As the need to find out the truth, I decided to get to the source for the answer with the questions and facts that I found. If there is anyone who knows the answer, it should be Bandai. Through some connections, the questions went up to Bandai South Asia. Below is their reply in italic. :)
As I checked, the information is almost correct. but I had found some detail info, so I add it...
The first concept of Gundam was just story of boys and girls who ride on to space ship during the space war against alien and support each other and survive. There was no robot (mobile suit) at this moment.
But to make more story exciting, Mr.Shichiro KOMATSU / president of Clover requested production side to add robot. Also SF novel author Mr.Haruka TAKACHIHO introduce SF novel which is "Starship Troopers (Robert Anson Heinlein)" and get a idea from book illustration "Powered Suit" and based on this illustration Mr.Kunio Ogawara designed the "Assault Attack Mobile Troops(突撃攻撃型機動歩兵)".
This design was about 2.5m almost same size as "Powered Suit". But they feel it too small and not acceptable to kids, so they had change the size to 18m which is not too big for Powered suit and not too small for robot. Based on this concept, they had designed 3 types of robot, which is for long-range battle, middle-range battle and combat battle (This 3types of idea became a Guntank, Guncannon and Gundam in future). For the naming for this robot, first they had planned to use "Powered Suit" but due to the licensing problem, they decided to use "Mobile Suit". Also they plan to have a space station, but due to mobile suit size, they plan to have a space colony which mobile suit can go inside. This idea was based on Gerard Kitchen O'Neill, who is physical scientist.
During its conceptual phase, the series was titled Freedom Fighter Gunboy, or simply Gunboy for the gun the robot was armed with, and the primary target demographic were shōnen (boys). In the early production stages, there were numerous references to the word "freedom": the White Base was originally "Freedom's Fortress", the Core Fighter was the "Freedom Wing", and the Gunperry was the "Freedom Cruiser". The Yatate team combined the English word "gun" with the last syllable of the word "freedom" to form the name Gundom. Tomino then changed it to the current title, suggesting that Gundam signified a powerful unit wielding a gun powerful enough to hold back enemies, like a hydroelectric dam holding back floods.[8]
So I guess the wiki on Gundam is correct for the early origin of Gundam name. It is only the later Gundam series then trying to give relevancy to the name of Gundam. So there we have it people. Some of our understand seems correct and I was glad now we can straighten things out...at least for me personally. LOL
As the need to find out the truth, I decided to get to the source for the answer with the questions and facts that I found. If there is anyone who knows the answer, it should be Bandai. Through some connections, the questions went up to Bandai South Asia. Below is their reply in italic. :)
As I checked, the information is almost correct. but I had found some detail info, so I add it...
The first concept of Gundam was just story of boys and girls who ride on to space ship during the space war against alien and support each other and survive. There was no robot (mobile suit) at this moment.
But to make more story exciting, Mr.Shichiro KOMATSU / president of Clover requested production side to add robot. Also SF novel author Mr.Haruka TAKACHIHO introduce SF novel which is "Starship Troopers (Robert Anson Heinlein)" and get a idea from book illustration "Powered Suit" and based on this illustration Mr.Kunio Ogawara designed the "Assault Attack Mobile Troops(突撃攻撃型機動歩兵)".
This design was about 2.5m almost same size as "Powered Suit". But they feel it too small and not acceptable to kids, so they had change the size to 18m which is not too big for Powered suit and not too small for robot. Based on this concept, they had designed 3 types of robot, which is for long-range battle, middle-range battle and combat battle (This 3types of idea became a Guntank, Guncannon and Gundam in future). For the naming for this robot, first they had planned to use "Powered Suit" but due to the licensing problem, they decided to use "Mobile Suit". Also they plan to have a space station, but due to mobile suit size, they plan to have a space colony which mobile suit can go inside. This idea was based on Gerard Kitchen O'Neill, who is physical scientist.
During its conceptual phase, the series was titled Freedom Fighter Gunboy, or simply Gunboy for the gun the robot was armed with, and the primary target demographic were shōnen (boys). In the early production stages, there were numerous references to the word "freedom": the White Base was originally "Freedom's Fortress", the Core Fighter was the "Freedom Wing", and the Gunperry was the "Freedom Cruiser". The Yatate team combined the English word "gun" with the last syllable of the word "freedom" to form the name Gundom. Tomino then changed it to the current title, suggesting that Gundam signified a powerful unit wielding a gun powerful enough to hold back enemies, like a hydroelectric dam holding back floods.[8]
So I guess the wiki on Gundam is correct for the early origin of Gundam name. It is only the later Gundam series then trying to give relevancy to the name of Gundam. So there we have it people. Some of our understand seems correct and I was glad now we can straighten things out...at least for me personally. LOL
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