Follow TV Tropes

Following

Anime / Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
aka: Zeta Gundam

Go To

All spoilers for Mobile Suit Gundam are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zeta_gundam_1401.jpg
Believe in a sign of Zeta.

"Men are perhaps born to fight each other. And women are perhaps fated to be their tools."
Reccoa Londe

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (Kidou Senshi Zeta Gundam) is the second installment in the Gundam franchise, and one of the most well-received. It is also one of the darkest installments. The original sequel to Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam's story follows Teen Genius Kamille Bidan, who joins the rebellious AEUG out of hatred for the Federation. Following the One Year War, the Earth Federation has created a special, elite branch of the military to police the space colonies and prevent anything like the One Year War from happening again. Unfortunately for all involved, this group, the Titans, are oppressive, corrupt, and elitist, believing that those born on Earth are inherently superior.

Zeta Gundam features a much older and mature new cast; however, this new cast is also supported by many characters from the original series such as Captain Bright Noa, Amuro Ray, and Char Aznable wearing a Paper-Thin Disguise as Quattro Bajeena.

In 2005, a series of movies titled Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation began, which remastered the series' animation and added new animation as well. In addition, the story was given a new, Lighter and Softer Bittersweet Ending that would have apparently retconned Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ and possibly Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack, if not the entire rest of the Universal Century timeline, out of canon, if not for Tomino explicitly saying it's just an Alternate Universe retelling of Zeta.

Zeta is a mainstay in Super Robot Wars, being in every game (minus Shin) until Judgment, where after that all UC was excluded from the handheld titles, but reappears in Z and Another Century's Episode R, as well as returning UC to handhelds in Z2.

During its initial run, Zeta had the highest rating of any Gundam series before and since. The show continues to be extremely popular in Japan, and its model kit sales continually get near the top of the Gundam lists. As a result, the show is also more or less the single most important production, from a meta-textual perspective, in the entire Gundam franchise; While Mobile Suit Gundam kicked the franchise off, it is Zeta Gundam that established the tone and ideal of what "Gundam" should be in the zeitgeist, and every single Gundam show that's followed in the decades since Zeta aired owes something to it. Every single one. Yes, even SD Gundam.


Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam has examples of:

  • 2-D Space: Usually Played Straight but the series does shake things up. During episode 30 Gady engages the AEUG ships by deploying a team of MS's to attack them front and center while the Titan ships position themselves below the battle and fire at an upward angle.
  • Ace Custom: Amuro's MSK-008 Dijeh, which is basically a souped-up Rick Dias.
  • Adapted Out: Several characters and Mobile Suits were cut from A New Translation due to the story being condensed and made easier to follow.
    • Jerid no longer gets a Galbaldy Beta in this adaptation. He'd originally gotten it to honor Lila after she was killed but due to her dying much later he's already in a Marasai by the time she passes and afterwards goes directly to his more advanced suits.
    • The Kilimanjaro arc cut, Amuro's Dijeh was absent from the movies. Four may have also suffered Death by Adaptation as a result.
    • With Rosamia's role greatly reduced she does not return to antagonize the heroes after her first arc and thus the Psyco Gundam Mk. II was removed.
    • With Rosamia's reduced role, Gates Capa never appears in the movies either.
  • Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Audhumla.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Several antagonists get this treatment.
    • Lila who's faith in the Federation had been shaken ultimately falls to Kamille's superior piloting.
    • Mouar who dies defending Jerid from a fatal blow, and visits him in a short vision after death encouraging him to fight on. Even Kamille, their killer, felt bad about having done it.
  • Animation Bump: The compilation films, being made twenty years after the original series, feature considerably better animation in some places. Unfortunately, Sunrise wouldn't give Tomino the budget to completely re-animate everything, so the new animation is mixed in with hefty amounts of the original footage and there is a stark contrast as a result.
  • Anti-Villain: Though not as clear cut compared to the last series, most of the antagonists that aren't completely jerkasses end up here.
    • Jerid hates Kamille with a passion and does many terrible things as a result, but if he does come to care for someone besides himself, he does so very deeply.
    • Sarah is introduced as not being willing to take lives if she can help it, only rescinding this notion due to Scirocco's manipulations, and even then, not completely.
    • Assorted antagonists like Lila and Ajis are shown to only follow orders when they're under the impression it's for the greater good and for keeping peace, but when Kamille gives them reason that it isn't the whole picture, their consciences have them hesitate accordingly.
  • Anyone Can Die: One of the series where Tomino easily lives up to his "Kill 'Em All" reputation.
  • Armor Is Useless: Actually something of a plot point. With the widespread use of beam weaponry, conventional armor became largely... well... useless. This resulted in the advent of 'movable frame' technology, where mobile suits were no longer made of big blocks of metal, but freely-moving armor plates over a flexible, agile 'skeleton'. Not only did this boost their maneuverability tremendously, but it eventually led to suit engineers figuring out that you could contort the frame into a non-humanoid shape if you wanted... and thus the Transforming Mecha was born.
    • Finally averted with the PMX-003 The-O, which was simply too big and tough for beam guns to make a dent in its armor. Scirocco's engineering genius probably helped, too.
  • Artistic License – Physics: Subverted in episode 3: The Titans send an MS with a white flag to the AEUG. At first, the flag seems to be flapping...in space. But after it lands on the Argama, there's a shot of the flagpole which shows a set of gasjets de-activating.
  • Author Appeal: Zeta Gundam was the first Gundam anime in which the themes of overpopulation and environmentalism featured in a major way. In real life, Tomino himself is deeply concerned with these issues, and they appear in every Gundam anime that he writes from this series onwards.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The Titans walk the path of Zeon not just in their extremist methods but the flashy but counterproductive approach to technology.
    • The Titans research into new experimental weaponry produced a number of powerful Mobile Suits... that saw only limited production. In terms of mass-produced grunt suits, the Titans were significantly lacking, with the GM II outdated before the start of the Gryps Conflict and the Galbaldy Beta and Hi-Zack not being that great in terms of performance (supplementary materials noted that the Hi-Zack's power input was especially poor with the model only being able to wield a beam rifle or beam sword, never both, something which the inferior GM II could do). The Titans produced a handful of powerful prototypes and individual units but one powerful soldier backed by a squadron of subpar grunts wouldn't cut it against the powerful AEUG and Axis mechs backed by grunts that were up to snuff. The Barzam, Marasai, and, to a lesser extent, Asshimar were much better mass-production units, but, like the Principality's Gelgoog from the OYW, they ended up being produced too late into the conflict.
    • Cyber-Newtypes produced some especially powerful soldiers capable of becoming a One-Man Army when given the right suit. Unfortunately they were unstable, unruly, difficult to control, and most test subjects died before they could be put to use. Jamitov himself considered ending the program because he felt the benefits didn't justify the procedure's poor track record.
    • The Colony Laser. Despite its huge power, the firing angle can't be controlled too precisely, and its loading time is quite long, so getting a direct shot on a target in the middle of a fight would be difficult.
  • Awful Wedded Life: Kamille's parents. His dad's affair weighs heavily on the family but Kamille mentions that his mother was too interested in her own work to care that much.
  • Backup from Otherworld: During the duel with Scirocco, Kamille uses his psychic powers(powered up by the Zeta's bionsensor) to summon the spirits of Four, Emma, Rosamia, Katz, Sara, Reccoa and even Lila to jam Scirocco's mobile suit The-O and then ram into it with the Waverider.
  • Badass Normal: If a character isn't a confirmed Newtype, and can hold their own in this series, they qualify.
    • Lila quickly establishes herself here when she manages to consistently put up a fight Char whenever they fight.
    • Emma doesn't do anything too flashy, but she's the most consistently reliable of the pilots the Argama has to offer and easily qualifies as The Ace after her first few battles.
    • Hero Killer Yazan Gable has no Newtype powers and doesn't pilot a Gundam. We don't recommend throwing down with him anyway.
  • Badass Bystander: During the Titans' takeover of Granada, one civilian boy does his best to keep Jerid from pursuing Kamille and Katz as they try to escape during a fight in the city.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: Jamitov and Bask. Initially set up as the main villans, they're soon supplanted by Scirocco.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Occassionally, when Kamille’s Newtype powers and awareness are kicked into high gear, he or his opponent are shown having an Out-of-Clothes Experience and are depicted like this. Averted whenever female characters are shown naked outside of battle such as Lila in the shower or Womanchild Rosamia forgetting to put a shirt back on after a physical.
  • Battle Couple: Jerid and Mouar, and possibly Jerid and Lila. neither one ends well.
  • Beware the Superman: Amuro's exploits during the OYW have instilled in the Federation a healthy fear of Newtypes, to the point where they have placed Amuro under house arrest and have much of the former White Base crew under surveillance. While this results in some unforgivable acts of cruelty, the ambitions and exploits of Scirocco and Haman show the audience what evil Newtypes are capable of.
  • Bird Run:
    • Sarah, in one scene where she imagines she's a civilian.
    • Four prominently does this during her meeting with Kamille on a Hong Kong rooftop, and this ends up being associated with her in the second opening.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: The Titans are mostly characterized by a combination of being power-hungry, selfish, bigoted, and smug, with a few exceptions like Jerid, Mouar, Sarah, Ajis, and Reccoa. While the AEUG opposes the Titans as their agenda, their members and supporters aren't paragons of virtue either. Kamille makes his MS piloting debut bullying a Titans officer and laughing about it, Katz very frequently makes his own impulsive and selfish decisions—such as launching without permission—that end up endangering both himself and others on multiple occasions, Wong and Beltorchika's abrasive behaviors end up causing more strife than necessary, among others.
  • Bland-Name Product: MacDaniels, a "hamburger restaurant."
  • Bling-Bling-BANG!: The Hyaku-Shiki, to Memetic Mutation levels.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • The Methuss, probably the weakest and least polished of the AEUG's mobile suits, goes on to lend its transformation mechanisms to a variety of superior models like the Guncannon Detector and ZII from the Mobile Suit Variations line, and the ReZEL from Gundam Unicorn.
    • Scirocco's third mobile suit, the PMX-002 Bolinoak Samaan. It's the least striking of his designs and probably the weakest, but it's equipped with a sophisticated surveillance radome which entirely justifies this trope - it's intended to gather information and report back, not engage in protracted conflicts.
    • On the character side, there's Gates Capa, the third and last Cyber-Newtype. He's a stark contrast to Four and Rosamia - while not nearly as powerful as either of them, he's also immune to the mental breakdowns both ladies are cursed by.
  • Break Out the Museum Piece: Hayato has a functional pre-UC rocket that he uses to send Kamille and Quattro back to space. Justified in that he runs a museum around what used to be the Kennedy Space Center as a cover for his Karaba activities.
  • Broad Strokes: A New Translation to an extent. Many of the story's events still happen over the course of the films, though not quite exactly in the same way it did in the original show. But the most significant departure, however, is the ending that has Kamille surviving his battle with Scirocco in one piece.
  • Broken Bird: Four, Rosamia, Sarah, and Reccoa.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Happens once, at the end of the third movie.
  • Can't Catch Up: Applies to both pilots and mobile suits.
    • Fa always tries to establish herself among the other pilots of the Argama and only manages to do it a handful of times rather than consistently. It's even worse when the most she's able to get her hands on is the Methuss, which also qualifies for this trope.
    • And on the other side of the war, there's Jerid. He gets more mobile suit upgrades than any other pilot, but no matter what the Titans give him he can't compete with Kamille, whether the latter is in the Mk. II or the Zeta.
    • Despite being developed after the Mk. II, the Hyaku-Shiki doesn't have the specs to match due to being a Flawed Prototype. The only thing that keeps it from being destroyed in the later stages of the conflict is because Char is piloting it.
  • Call-Back:
    • Bright somberly notes that he lost "another" ship when he's forced to abandon the Temptation after he and the rest of the survivors from the Green Noa attack meet up with the Argama.
    • To try and play up the idea that he's a person separate from Char, early in the series, Quattro feigns either ignorance or some admiration when he refers to characters and plot beats from the last series, such as saying he knows he can trust Hayato's and Kai's expertise because they were former members of the White Base.
  • Cartwright Curse: Between Jerid and Kamille, Mouar, Lila, Four and Rosamia are killed off. The first three get killed off by their love interest's rival, and the last is simply killed by Kamille to prevent her from destroying the Argama. As a point of interest, this is just one of the reasons Kamille and Jerid become rivals.
  • Chick Magnet: Scirocco. He manages to end the series with a harem of Newtype women ace pilots, most of which had defected to his side. He basically makes bishie charm a newtype power. Kamille gets a bit of this as well, with Fa, Four Murasame, Rosamia, Sarah and arguably Emma...
  • Cliffhanger: Kamille's mind is crushed by Scirocco, and even though the Titans have been defeated, Axis Zeon has not. Thankfully, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ gave us a proper conclusion.
  • Color-Coded Characters: Unlike the Federation uniforms worn by the main cast of the last series, and to contrast the Titans, the AEUG dress code isn't as strict by allowing members to choose their own colors if they want, resulting in this. Kamille's uniform is blue, Emma's and Katz's are green, Fa's is yellow, and of course, Char's is red.
  • Compilation Movie: Three of them... produced twenty years later; the show is that popular. Being twenty years older than the series they were based on, the new footage demonstrates considerably better animation.
  • Continuity Nod: All over the place.
    • Most prominently is the majority of the first episode, which has:
      • Three mono-eye mobile suits being sent to a Side 7 colony where a Gundam is being kept.
      • The son of the Gundam's foremost engineer(s) seizing the opportunity to pilot it.
      • Recreating the exact framing from when the RX-78 took its first step off its transportation vehicle.
    • During one battle, Emma in the Mk. II faces off against a Hizack, and eventually the Hizack is directly pushed up against the Mk. II, face to face, in a way to evoke Char and Amuro's infamous last charge against each other in the final episode of Mobile Suit Gundam, complete with the exact same framing.
    • During the battle to protect the shuttle launch, the Hyaku-Shiki recreates "Last Shooting" by shooting a beam rifle directly skyward with its right arm. Thankfully, the Hyaku-Shiki is fully intact when this happens.
    • When Haman uses her funnels against Scirocco, the method and framing for Scirocco destroying them is mirrored from when Amuro did the same thing against Lalah. To top it off, Sarah takes the bullet for Scirocco when Katz attempts to kill him, much like Lalah did for Char.
  • Cool Big Sis: Emma to most of the younger members of the Argama, though for Kamille in particular she also borders on being a mother figure on top of it. Reccoa was also one for Kamille. Until she defected, that is.
  • Cool Starship: The Argama.
  • Corporal Punishment: Everyone. The one who gets hit the most would probably be Kamille.
    Emma: "Correction. That's a military term for hitting someone."
  • Corrupt Politician: The series is loaded with them, Jamitov perhaps being the worst.
    • The Earth Politicians cede more and more power to the Titans which Blex feels shows a lack of care for those suffering in space. Notably Colony Politicians are far more distrustful of the Titans.
    • This trope is Played With in Episode 29. The Mayor of a group of colonies is under extreme pressure when one colony is targeted by the Titans for a gas attack. The Mayor goes full Obstructive Bureaucrat and repeatedly fights the AEUG sympathizing staff in his colony, to the point of having one (non-fatally) shot. He's attempting to reason with the Titans, an act which everyone derides as especially foolish. For all of his actions, the man isn't portrayed unsympathetically, he's acting out of the concern of innocent civilians who're about to be killed (and since he's safe he isn't acting on self interest) and he does have a point in that the AEUG can barely protect them with so few units. The problem is that the AEUG knows if he bows to Titan threats they'll just be submitting to fascists who'll kill them if given the chance. When he reappears during the Titans next attack, he refuses to negotiate with them and keeps faith in the AEUG.
  • Creepy Crosses: Present only in A New Translation. To further highlight his Dark Messiah nature that was barely touched upon in the original, Scirocco's The-O emits a cross-shaped beacon from its head to guide the Titan fleet with. He winds up getting distracted by the Char/Haman psychodrama and leads his fleet right into the path of the colony laser.
  • Crucified Hero Shot: The Zeta Gundam does this in the final battle as Kamille uses the Biosensor to channel the souls of his deceased friends.
  • Cumbersome Claws: The RX-160 Byarlant was designed for aerial superiority and intercepting enemy forces entering Earth's atmosphere from orbit. However, the unique shape of its hands (basically three articulated claws) meant that it couldn't use the mass-produced weapons of other Mobile Suits and so was completely reliant on its built-in palm-mounted beam cannons or uniquely-shaped beam sabers.
  • Cyber Cyclops: Most mobile suits look like this, since by this point the majority of mobile suit designs are based on and incorporate Zeon tech.
  • Dark Action Girl: Sarah Zabiarov, Mouar Pharaoh, and Reccoa.
  • Darker and Edgier: Compared to the original Mobile Suit Gundam, which was already pretty dark in itself. Zeta has been called one of the darkest Gundam series ever made, with the only other franchise entries that can compare are Victory Gundam and Thunderbolt. Its darkness is at least partially what makes it a fan favorite.
  • Dating Catwoman: Katz tries this with Sarah. It... doesn't work, to say it lightly.
  • Deal with the Devil: In order to get help in disabling a Titan superweapon before it can destroy Granada, the AUEG is forced to promise Haman their support in restoring the Zabi family to control of Side 3 (Zeon), setting the stage for the sequel series.
  • Death Trap: Befitting their often-cartoonish level of evil (especially early in the series, when this happens), the Titans react to Kamille's joining the AEUG and helping them steal the Gundam Mk I Is by locking up the boy's mother (who wasn't even an enemy MS designer, but someone on their own payroll!) and putting her in a coffin-sized cylinder in space with minimal life support and demands for Kamille to surrender himself by a certain time or they'll destroy the capsule. Jerid is tricked into destroying the capsule, being told it contained a bomb.
  • Designated Girl Fight: Avoided throughout most of the series, but done in the Grand Finale with Emma and Reccoa. Emma wins, but she dies soon afterwards.
  • Deus ex machina: In the final two episodes the Newtype powers that up until this point had been portrayed as a weird form of telepathy suddenly escalate in both power and utility without any prior hint at this even being possible, leading to things such as the Zeta Gundam being protected by an energy barrier as well as having it's weapons powered up to even disabling enemy machines. All this is ultimately what allows Kamille to defeat the superior opponent Scirocco and his machine The-O.
  • Died in Your Arms Tonight: Four and Emma both die in Kamille's arms.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • The episode where Reccoa is captured by Yazan. It seems like the entire scene is that of a woman getting raped/being beaten. Far from enjoying it, Reccoa seems to stand for abused significant others who have become resigned to what they see as their fate (or who have become victims of Stockholm Syndrome).
    • Kamille and Four are Star-Crossed Lovers that are kept apart both because they happened to be on opposite sides and because Four is torn over whether she values her past memories that the Titans can possibly get back fod her or Kamille more. While the story frames Four as a tragic character that’s torn between two desires, the fact that she either leaves or forces Kamille to leave her by threatening him with violence and actually tries to kill him on multiple occasions combined with her own statement that “I love you but sometimes I turns into a different person” likens the relationship to an abusive one.
  • Dodge the Bullet: Jamitov dodges a pistol shot from Quattro when they accidentally meet at Kilimanjaro.
  • Downer Ending: Although Kamille succeeds in destroying Scirocco for good, he goes insane in the process. The evil Titans are finally annihilated for good, but save for Fa, Quattro, and Bright, all the other heroes of AEUG die a horrible death, and Haman successfully gives Zeon a chance to rise to its former power, endangering the future of Earth once again.
    • A New Translation changed this to something more bittersweet: yes, most of the cast still die. Yup, there's still a lot of bloodshed. However, Kamille doesn't get mind-fried, we see other characters reacting to the news (which includes Amuro, the Kobayashi family and Mirai), Haman retreats and arranges for Mineva to go to school on Earth, and the last scene is of Fa and Kamille hugging in space happily.
  • Dubtitle: On the original Region 1 DVD release. Subsequent re-releases fixed this.
  • Electric Torture: Courtesy of the electrified whips and netting used by Hambrabi pilots.
  • Elite Mooks:
    • For the Titans it's the Marasai and the Barzam both much more powerful and maneuverable than their standard machines (Hi-Zacks, GM IIs, and Galbaldys) the Marasai's initially debuted as commander suits. As the series goes on they become much more standard grunt suits, the Titan's previous suits being dated by the start.
    • For the AEUG it's the Rick Dias. The suit's heavily armed and highly agile; surpassing the performances of the standard issue AEUG GM's and Nemos. A number of the named characters utilize it, including Char and Amuro.
  • Embarrassing First Name: Kamille and Four both discuss their names and what they mean to them after they meet.
  • Enemy Civil War: A covert one. Scirocco and his followers disrupt the Titans leadership from within, and Scirocco ultimately kills the higher-ups that oppose him and takes over the group.
  • The Engineer: Astonaige serves this role to the AEUG, and befitting his indispensable nature he sticks around through ZZ Gundam and Char's Counterattack.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Scirocco, who starts the series as The Starscream, opposes the actions of his superiors Jamitov and Bask, and even sends Sarah to disrupt one of their plans. Granted, it was for self-serving purposes...
    • Reccoa might be a traitor, but they were real happy to kill Bask as soon as they could. In fact, more than one Titan was NOT pleased to see the effects of the mass gassings: Gady Kinsey even gets a CMOA for managing to bullshit his way out of one and living to tell the tale.
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • Reccoa, to Emma. The differences in their motives for defecting from their respective factions give a demonstration of the difference between following your heart and conscience vs. simply following your feelings.
    • Scirocco to Kamille as well. They're both ambiguously autistic, mobile suit engineering geniuses, and powerful Newtypes. The difference between them is compassion - Kamille is driven by it, while Scirocco has none of it.
  • Evil Is Bigger: The Psyco Gundam, Psyco Gundam II, and anything designed by Scirocco will subscribe to this trope.
  • Evil Wears Black: The Titans have distinctive black uniforms to emphasize their State Sec nature and military rule, while Haman's black clothing goes with her status as Evil Chancellor of Axis and would-be conqueror of Earth.
  • Fanservice:
    • There's a bit here and there, such as the brief shot of Lieutenant Lila in the shower, or Fa being in the shower while trying to wash Qum and Shinta, or Four taking a bath, or Rosamia with her shirt off.
    • There's a little bit for the ladies, as well: Kamille is seen in his underwear a couple of times and is also seen removing his shirt at least once. In addition to that, he gets a short shower scene. Quattro's bare arms can also count.
  • Fairytale Motifs: Invoked by the title of episode 19, "Cinderella Four." Four poses as a civilian to escape the restricted life she has under her superiors and caretakers, but ends up meeting and falling in love with a boy she meets in the process. However, the pretense is broken upon the stroke of midnight, when Four has to meet back with a Titans officer and Kamille is there to witness it. One could make the argument that the Psyco Gundam acts as her own morbid equivalent to Cinderella's glass slipper, as it's shown that the Psyco Gundam can only be effectively piloted by Four alone.
  • Fake Shemp: Sunrise used You Inoue's voice-over clips for Sayla Mass' appearance in A New Translation, allowing Inoue to reprise the character one last time.
  • Famed In-Story: The surviving White Base crew in general are this, being treated as veterans and war heroes in public. In private however, The Federation see likes of Amuro and Bright as a threat, in part due to and in spite of said reputation.
  • Fantastic Racism: Titans and a few members of the non-Titans Federation members towards Spacenoids, who aren't even a splinter offshoot of humanity like Newtypes, but simply humans who live in space.
  • Fascist, but Inefficient: The Titans rival the old Principality of Zeon when it comes to wastefulness and inefficiency. They pump out Super Prototypes by the hangar-full), gas colonies wholesale instead of attempting to make any other use of them later on, and spend so much time fighting amongst each other that they squander their early superiority over the AEUG and eventually allow Axis to play them like fiddles.
  • Final Boss Preview: Scirocco sorties against the Argama crew a couple times early in the series. After that he's not seen piloting a mobile suit again until the last five episodes.
  • First Girl Wins: By default, because Kamille's only other love interest is dead.
  • Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The five main pilots that we see throughout the series encompass all the types.
    • Quattro/Char as The Cynic, as his experience as a pilot ends up lending itself to not just a sense of practicality to battle and the overall conflict, but also a pronounced lack of guilt and empathy, both of which he ends up trying to impart to Kamille.
    • Fa as the Optimist, as she takes up piloting in order to try and contribute what she can and to support Kamille, but unfortunately sorties with a lack of forethought and outright stubbornness that can endanger herself and others. Conversely, she's still decidedly loyal and maintains her moral core even as the series gets progressively darker.
    • Emma as the Realist, as she is far and away the most reliable and the most consistently level-headed of all the AEUG pilots. She's more of a disciplinarian than Bright is in the last series, a consummate professional, and tries to instill the idea that people's impulses and emotions are secondary to the bigger picture.
    • Amuro starts off as the Apathetic, as he recognizes the Titans aren't in the right, but has insisted on staying uninvolved from the Titans' inception until partway through the series due to his terrible experiences from fighting in the last war.
    • Kamille as a particularly vocal version of the Conflicted, as he's highly emotionally dependent and driven and begins fighting for the AEUG for selfish reasons. Despite this, he has an prominent sense of empathy, which leads him to sympathize with a few Titans' members regardless of his self-pronounced hatred of all of them.
  • Foregone Conclusion: The moment that the EF Parliament outlaws the Titans, there is no longer a way for them to win. With nowhere left to turn except Haman (who is simply using them for her own ends), the Titans are going down, no matter who wins out. The question is not if the Titans will lose, but rather how many of our heroes they are going to take down with them.
  • Fragile Speedster: Most of the mobile suits in this series sacrifice durability for mobility. Since beam weapons have become commonplace and can rip through most armor with ease, the mobility to dodge attacks is more important than armor.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Quattro tells Roberto in the first episode that his overconfidence will get him killed some day. Not even halfway through the series, he underestimates the new Assimar mobile armor, and gets killed.
    • The second opening to Zeta has a shot of Quattro removing his sunglasses and then has his face framed in shadow, with a contemplating look. Fast forward to Char's Counterattack, and...
    • Similarly, it is quite noticeable how almost no one is smiling in the second Opening, with Four being one notable exception and Kamille's thumbs-up animation recycled from the first opening has been edited to remove his smile. We all know where they were headed.
    • When Reccoa is first sent to try and infiltrate the Jupitris, only to meet Scirocco, she's still able to give very detailed sketches of what she saw of the ship's interior, save for one particular mobile suit that she strangely can't recall and leaves blank in its placement in the hangar in her sketches. This mobile suit is the Palace Athene, which she will eventually pilot come her Face–Heel Turn.
  • Gender Is No Object: The series showed strong female characters and lampshaded gender in/equality on both sides. Which would become recurring elements in later Universal Century works and a number of Gundam shows in general.
  • Genocide Backfire: The Titans gas colony after colony hoping to crush Spacenoid dissent, but all it does is outrage those not just in space, but all across the Earth sphere to rise up against them. Most villains stop when they're stupid enough to Create Your Own Hero, but the Titans go one further and Create Their Own La Résistance.
  • Gilded Cage: It's revealed that Amuro and a number of the surviving White Base crew are kept under watch by the Federation authorities. That they're given rather comfortable lifestyles doesn't really distract from the overbearing dread.
  • Gold-Colored Superiority: Char Aznable of Gundam fame changes his usual color from red in the original Mobile Suit Gundam to gold here where he fights for the AEUG, piloting the Hyaku-Shiki under the alias of Quattro Bajeena. The idea being that the Gold paintjob as actually an anti-beam coating. He goes back to using red for Char's Counterattack though. Even more iconic about this change is that Char caused an entire trope in part about his normal color scheme.
  • Grand Theft Prototype: The AEUG stealing three Gundam Mk. II early on is the first example of this trope in the series. Notably, their original plan was to take just one, and Kamille's use of this trope allows them to nab all three.
  • Gratuitous English:
    • In the opening: "I wanna have a pure time, everyone's a noble mind!"
    • "Captain Quattro, he is a CHAR!" eventually became a victim of Memetic Mutation.
    • "Believing a sign of Zeta/Beyond the hard times from now"
    • Also, sing along: "Oh, I can't help believe in you..."
      • Of course the way it's actually sung sounds more like "I can't help believing you", which is very fitting for a series where many characters repeatedly let each other down.
  • Green Aesop: Played with. For a straight example, it's mentioned that any more nuclear detonations on the Earth's surface could cause irreparable damage to the Earth's ecosystem. note  Other than that, whenever a character is promoting an environmentalist agenda, it's a rhetorical position that's tied in with Zeon Deikun's spacenoid ideology (which holds that humanity should leave the Earth for the space colonies, evolve into Newtypes, and bring an end to warfare), rather than an end in itself.
  • Gut Punch: Twice over.
    • Both of Kamille's parents dying so early on in this series lets the viewer know that this series is going to much darker and much less forgiving than the last series was.
    • Starting with Katz dying, the final episodes of the series get progressively more bleak as more and more of the named cast get killed off and Plot Armor isn't shed so much as blown up along with the characters.
  • Happy Ending Override: The original series ended with an armistice signed between the Earth Federation and the Republic of Zeon, and Amuro happily floating towards his adoptive family. Come Zeta, and the Earth Federation is at war again in a Mêlée à Trois, and Amuro is under house arrest and cut off from most of his friends.
  • Hard Truth Aesop:
    • Staying on the sidelines and remaining safe in a conflict is ideal, but you have to be willing to fight—even when and especially because it's difficult—because the world is full of people that will torment others who can't fight for themselves and they won't stop unless they're forced to.
    • When you look up to or idealize someone or something, sometimes they're not nearly as amazing or flawless in reality as they were in your head. You have to be able to acknowledge and reconcile these differences.
  • Hate Sink: Whereas the Titan leaders Jamitov and Scirocco have some leeway to be viewed as Well Intentioned Extremists, and Haman Used to Be a Sweet Kid, these four subordinates are far more detestable:
    • Bask Om, the second-in-command of the Titans, is introduced beating war-hero Bright Noa for opposing a dangerous order. Favoring brutality in his army, Bask takes Kamille Bidan's mother as a hostage to retrieve the Gundam MK-II before lying to his soldier to get him to shoot at her capsule, killing her in front of her son. Using the Titans to commit multiple atrocities against them, the Titans use nerve gas against whole space colonies—killing all of their inhabitants—and experiment on teenagers to create Cyber Newtypes, unstable soldiers in semi-perpetual agony. Murderous, hateful and violent, Bask's brutality makes him stand out as the worst of the leadership of the Titans, leading to their being outlawed and eventual downfall. Notably, even the other Titans hate this guy — including fellow Hate Sink Yazan!
    • Jamican Danigan, while not as powerful as Bask above and not as flamboyant as Yazan below, still stands as one of the most reprehensible characters in the cast and is a fine example of the Titans at their most banally evil. A Smug Snake supporter of Bask who thinks he's much more clever than he is, Jamaican advances his boss's "Kick the Dog at every opportunity For the Evulz" plans, earning the enmity of fellow Titans Jerid, Scirocco, and Yazan in the process. Those latter two come back to bite him, as Scirocco schemes with Yazan to have Jamaican offed by Unfriendly Fire.
    • Yazan Gable is a sadistic warmonger who joined the Titans to be able to kill people legally. Uncaring about the rules of war, he participates in an attempted Colony Drop on a populated city and later arranges the death of an officer trying to prevent unnecessary bloodshed. Joining Scirocco purely for the promise of cash, Yazan kills many heroes from the Anti Earth Union Group—whom he considers "full of women and children"—and even kills one of his own allies while showing no concern at the deaths of his most friendly subordinates. Defeated by Kamille, Yazan survives the battle and several days later, he persuades a group of poor teenagers to infiltrate the Argama to steal the Zeta Gundam, taking the opportunity to kill another AEUG soldier before failing. Pathetically trying several attempts to steal the Zeta Gundam, Yazan joins Neo Zeon's soldiers, betraying the very purpose of the Titans. A beast in the skin of a man, Yazan earns the hatred of both Kamille and Judau.
    • Kamille's father Franklin Bidan is a negligent and abusive workaholic who cheats on his wife. Taken as a hostage by the Titans and saved by the AEUG, Franklin betrays them and tries to escape back to the Titans even after they killed his own wife, wanting to continue his work creating Mobile Suits and being willing to shoot at his own son. A man without concern for anything or anyone but his work, his only passion in life, Franklin is the main reason behind Kamille's notorious anger issues.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Not so much Newtype powers as a whole, but it's Kamille's ability to truly connect with others—a facet of Newtype abilities that is deemed insignificant and discarded by the Titans in their creation of Cyber-Newtypes as well as seen as a weakness by Char and Amuro and even a source of pain for Kamille himself—is what ultimately allows him to defeat Scirocco and end the Titans conflict even though his opponent is an even more powerful Newtype, has more experience, and has a technologically superior mobile suit.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: The Titans were formed to prevent Zeon from reemerging, but they turn to be just as great a threat to the Earth sphere and even go so far as to ally with the Axis Zeon against the AEUG.
  • History Repeats:
    • The story begins with Char and his men infiltrating a Side 7 colony which is housing a new Gundam. A local teenage boy becomes involved in the mess. Very familiar. But instead of fighting back the invaders, our new protagonist helps them steal the Gundam and joins their cause.
    • An ace pilot falls in love with an enemy soldier. During a fight between the aforementioned pilot and his greatest rival, the woman sacrifices herself to save the man she loves. Char and Amuro quote this trope directly shortly afterward.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: The bulk of the Titan fleet is destroyed by a captured Titan Wave-Motion Gun.
  • Hot-Blooded: To a degree, Katz. Kamille starts off like this, but simmers down over the course of the series at least partly due to Katz.
    Kamille: "Kamille's a man's name, and I'm a man!"
  • How We Got Here: Downplayed. In A New Translation Kamille is introduced being interrogated by the MP he will later try to bully with the Mk. II unit that he hijacks. The reason for Kamille's incarceration is left unknown until Jerid has a flashback showing how Kamille punched him in retaliation for a perceived insult and was subsequently arrested.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: Bask tells Reccoa at one point that the Titans want a peaceful Earth Sphere, and their extreme methods are a result of impatience. However any possibility of a spark of goodness is extinguished when he laughs maniacally after firing the Gryps Laser for the first time, killing an entire colony worth of civilians.
  • If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Bask assigns Reccoa to "prove her allegiance" to the Titans by leading a gas attack on a colony. She obeys.
  • Improvised Scattershot: Kamille invents the "Beam Confuse" maneuver as a defense against fast but lightly-armored missiles and Attack Drones - he first throws a spinning beam saber then shoots at it with his beam rifle, causing the shot to be deflected and spray outwards.
  • Incest Subtext: On the one hand, Rosammy thinks she's Kamille's little sister, and thinks Fa is his ideal girlfriend. On the other hand, while the way she clings to him would be normal for little kids to do, the way she clings to him at their current ages isn't unlike someone being very flirty, and Fa doesn't like it one bit. This is all justified by Rosammy not being right in the head.
  • Intellectually Supported Tyranny: Seems to be Scirocco's endgame, if his Motive Rant in the final episode is anything to go by.
  • Interservice Rivalry:
    • The regular Earth Federation Forces and the Titans have no love lost between each other.
    • The AEUG and Karaba are, in and of themselves, a faction within the Earth Federation.
  • I Resemble That Remark!: In the first episode, Kamille tells a Titans officer that he doesn't like being bullied by thugs. The Titans' response is to beat him up some more.
  • I Surrender, Suckers: Karaba pulls this when the Titans take Amuro, Mirai and Mirai's kids hostage; they surrender to distract the Titans while Kamille deploys in the Gundam to free the hostages.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kamille is an insane Mood-Swinger, but he does genuinely care for others and tries to do what he can for them. Possibly Jerid Messa as well; see Anti-Villain, above. Perhaps what best exemplifies the difference between the AEUG and the Titans is whether they're characterized by this or just plain Jerkass with some exceptions.
  • Karmic Death: If you saw Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory before this one, Jamitov and Bask are both killed by people they tried to manipulate, which can be seen as overdue payback for their manipulations during the Delaz Fleet incident. Scirocco was also killed by Kamille when he used the latent powers of various women, including his subordinates, for a final attack with the Zeta.
  • Kick the Dog: When Jaburo is evacuated, only Jerid and a few others know that the reason is because a nuclear device is about to detonate underneath. Jerid takes the opportunity to attack his comrades just so he can board the escape plane.
  • King Incognito: Downplayed. But it's revealed that Emma actually met Amuro a few years earlier while on a road trip on Earth. At the time, she mistook him for a rich kid with a troubled past instead of the famed war hero who piloted the original Gundam, but only realized in hindsight who he was upon talking with Kamille.
  • Klingon Promotion: Scirocco becomes leader of the Titans after killing of Jamitov and arranging Bask's death.
  • Lady of War: Haman, Emma.
  • La Résistance: The AEUG.
  • Last Villain Stand: Episodes 46-50 can be seen as one for Scirocco and the Titans as a whole, as the AEUG, the EF, and Axis all try to find a way to co-opt or destroy what remains of the once mighty elite military force.
  • Latex Space Suit: As with the last series, all of the pilot suits. Averted with the much bulkier space suits that all non-piloting crew wear during battle.
  • Law of Chromatic Superiority: The AEUG invokes this with the Rick Diases. The Rick Dias's initial paint scheme is black, with Char/Quattro using a red paint scheme as is his custom. The Titans quickly realize that the red Rick Dias is a greater threat than the black ones and start to realize that the Red Comet has returned. The AEUG responds by painting all of their Rick Diases red to intimidate the Titans.
  • Lensman Arms Race: Not only does the series have gradually escalating models of mobile suits with more and more power and capabilities as the AEUG and Titans face off with eachother, but by sheer nature the advancement in weapons tech since the One Year War has resulted in mobility being emphasized over durability since almost everyone either has a beam weapon that can ignore most defenses, or heavy ordinance explosives that can punch holes in even Gundams. It's better to simply not get hit because of the terrifying destructive potential.
  • Light Is Not Good: Scirocco wears a variant of the standard black Titans uniform - guess what color he picks?
  • Lightning Bruiser:
    • This is the idea behind the transforming mobile suits that are introduced in this series and used throughout the rest of the Universal Century, as most are equipped with beam weaponry that made the original Gundam a force to be reckoned with, but they have all the speed and maneuverability of core fighters when in mobile armor form.
    • PMX-003 The-O, Scirocco's final mobile suit. It was built to operate in the gravity well of Jupiter, where it would be a Stone Wall, but with its fifty thrusters it becomes this in the Earth sphere.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Most characters are only seen with maybe three outfits max due to the justification that they're all usually wearing their military uniforms and seldom have enough time off to justify wearing casual clothing.
  • Love Hurts: Reccoa with Char, though the latter isn't as reciprocal, Katz and Sarah, and Kamille and either Fa or Four.
  • Lucky Charms Title: Uppercase zeta (as in the Greek letter, and is the basis for the letter Z) can be written as just "Z." The official logo of the series thus stylistically renders the title as "Mobile Suit Z Gundam," with "Zeta" fully spelled out, but minimized and placed over the Z.
  • Machiavelli Was Wrong: Bask's logic for the more extreme atrocities he orders (which would result in the death of entire colonies) is that if they violate the laws of war and human decency just this one time, everyone will be too afraid of the Titans to resist them anymore, and the war will finally end. The possibility that even attempting such actions will just anger people into more determined resistance doesn't occur to him.
  • Madonna-Whore Complex: Played with. The series makes it clear that it is Sarah's and Reccoa's wanting romantic attention from Scirocco that makes them willing to carry out war crimes, and Emma, being a foil to the latter, makes it a point that personal feelings and romantic attachments have no place on the battlefield or a soldier's heart. At the same time, Sarah's romantic sentiment towards Katz keeps her from completely throwing away her conscience, and for Four, her love towards Kamille is what redeems her.
  • Mauve Shirt:
    • The AEUG's Rick Dias is basically the designated suit for these. One of the Argama's Dias pilots, the unfortunately-named Lieutenant Botty, even manages to survive the show in one piece.
    • Zeta also produced a couple of mauve shirts for this section of the Universal Century with the crew of the Argama. Torres, Saegusa, Astonage, Keithron, Anna Hanna, Dr. Hasan and others become recurring characters throughout this series, ZZ, Char's Counterattack, and Unicorn.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Psyco Gundam & Psyco Gundam Mk. II, piloted by Four & Rosamia, respectively. Technically, "psyco" is short for psychic communicator and refers to the machines' OS, but of course brings to mind the more immediate connotation...
    • Also Four herself, considering Four Is Death.
    • Paptimus Scirocco's first name is a corruption of the Latin word for a baptism, while his last name references the powerful Mediterranean wind.
    • All of Scirocco's Mobile Suits have these: the first, the Messala, is a reference to a Roman charioteer, while the other three are all named in reference to deities.
    • Zigzagged with the Methuss. Most people think it's a reference to Methuselah because it kind of looks like a bent old man, but it's actually supposed to be "me-tasu", Japanese for "many-eyed". The five-eyed mobile suit design that eventually became Yazan Gable's Hambrabi was originally meant to be a support mech for the Zeta Gundam piloted by Fa, using its supernumerary eyes to act as an artillery spotter for it's Hyper Mega Launcher. Tomino (or possibly somebody else on the creative team) decided it was too sinister-looking for one of the most unambiguously good characters in the series to pilot and handed it over to a gleeful Yazan "I'm gonna violate you" Gable instead, sticking the poor girl with the diminutive yellow rustbucket we all know and love, but for some reason they kept the name.
      • The Hambrabi itself, meanwhile, is named for Hammurabi, the ancient Mesopotamian king best known for developing the first codified laws in recorded history. Combined with its blue coloration, multiple cameras and the distressingly phallic design of some of its weapons, it stands as a living embodiment of the oppressive police state the Titans hoped to create.
  • Mecha-Mooks: The Titans have an extraordinary array of suits, but the humble RMS-106 Hizack is the most common and iconic. Being based on Mobile Suit Gundam's legendary Zaku II helps, too.
  • Mêlée à Trois: Titans vs. AEUG vs. Axis Zeon. This situation was so memorable that homages to this set up appear numerous times in the franchise as a whole.
  • Mid-Season Upgrade: This is the first ever animated Gundam series where the protagonist switches from one Gundam to another, superior one mid-season. Kamille first piloted the Gundam Mk-II and then later on, the Zeta Gundam.
  • Mildly Military:
    • A dark variation. The Titans, being a State Sec organization, have no respect for any military protocol that isn't their own; Bright is beaten half to death for trying to bring them into line.
    • The AEUG meanwhile are a more benign example. It's also justified as a way to maintain order given how it's comprised of various groups in addition to disgruntled Federation personnel.
  • A Million Is a Statistic: Bask attempts several different attacks on cities and colonies in his bid to establish the Titans' power and threaten the opposition with varying degrees of success, which includes a colony drop on a moon city, two different gas attacks in colonies, and the use of the Gryps 2 colony laser, and endangers at least hundreds of thousands to potentially millions of lives.
  • Mind Rape: Scirocco hits Kamille with one of these as he dies. It works in the series, not the movies.
    • Also implied to be a part of the training for the Cyber Newtypes. Considering what happened to Four and Rosamia, it's very likely.
  • More Hero than Thou: In the final episode, both Kamille and Quattro are adamant about being the one to hold off Scirocco and Haman while they and Fa make their escape from the Gryps 2 colony laser. Kamille makes the argument that someone likes Quattro is necessary to lead and eventually save the world, while Quattro insists that Kamille escape because he thinks it's ultimately the newer generation that will build the new era.
  • More than Mind Control: Scirocco's modus operandi seems to be this. In addition to his immense reserves of personal charisma he can use his Newtype abilities to influence the emotions of others, as seen with Sarah and Reccoa in episode 28.
  • Mythology Gag: When Quattro's personal red Rick Dias is destroyed, he uses the Gundam Mk. II until he gets the Hyaku-Shiki, which is a nod to how Char ends up allying with White Base in the Mobile Suit Gundam novels and gets his own personal Gundam to pilot after beginning any continuity on the mission to investigate or destroy it.
  • Nerves of Steel: Only two pilots in Zeta have nerves of steel sufficient to pilot their MS without wearing Normal Suits: Scirocco and Haman. Everyone else, Kamille, Quattro, even Yazan, all wear Normal Suits unfailingly. This seems to be a quirk of advanced Newtypes, as Quess Paraya of Char's Counterattack and Iron Mask of Gundam F91 would follow in their footsteps.
  • No Accounting for Taste: Played with. Amuro's relationship with Clingy Jealous Girl Beltorchika baffles both Char and Kamille. Amuro knows how Beltorchika comes across to others, but still allows her to get away with her behavior both because she genuinely believes in the AEUG's cause and because she helps motivate him to fight again, something he struggles with for several episodes. This trope is even downplayed to the point of subversion when her clinginess is toned down and briefly reappears as an Intrepid Reporter in episode 37, recording a brutal Titans skirmish, which lets Char show the world how horrible they are.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Despite being called the Anti-Earth Union Group, the AEUG is in fact a faction within the Earth Federation.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: Yazan's Crew. After the general incompetence of Jerid and Adol's doomed attempt, it comes as quite a shock how brutally efficient Yazan, Dunkel and Ramsus are.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: A point of criticism that Scirocco brings up is that Jamitov's ambitions seem to involve the abandonment of Earth and moving everyone to space a goal that's similar to the AEUG. Scirocco himself has a similar goal and argues the difference between himself, Jamitov, and the AEUG is who gets to be in charge when everyone moves to space.
  • Not Too Dead to Save the Day: In the final battle between Kamille and Scirocco, the spirits of the dead Newtypes join forces with Kamille. Sarah, however, still stands for Scirocco, but is taken aside by Katz.
  • Not With the Safety On, You Won't: Amuro gives Katz the very same gun he shot at Char to force Quattro and the Hyaku-Shiki onto the vessel bound for space. Katz even mentions that he's a bigger danger with a live gun since he's never handled one before. Quattro just waits until they're on board to casually mention how far off he was.
  • One Degree of Separation: A conversation between Kamille and Quattro early on exposits that Amuro's location has understandably been kept secret by Federation officials since the end of the One Year War. Emma ends up revealing later that before graduating from the academy, she happened to meet Amuro by chance, but didn't realize who he was at the time.
  • On The Next Episode Of Catchphrase: "You will see the tears of time."
  • Opportunistic Bastard: Something of a recurring characteristic amongst most Titans. Jerid is less concerned about quelling dissent in the colonies than he is about climbing the ranks, Yazan great pride and excitement in getting to shoot down as many enemy pilots as he can, Sarah and Reccoa are primarily motivated by gaining Scirocco's attention, Four doesn't hesitate in bombing a city full of innocent civilians if it means she might get her memories back, and Scirocco guns Jamitov down when he gets a chance since it would mean the former gets to lead the Titans in his place. Contrasting, the lofty goals and ideals of Zeon, the majority of the Titans are highlighted by their relatively banal cruelty that's overlooked by the Federation because it's in the pursuit of a justified goal on paper.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: Kamille is such a good pilot that he makes everyone else in the AEUG look like Red Shirts, even if Apolly, Emma, and Reccoa are all good pilots taken on their own merits and Quattro is only hampered by his being saddled with a sub-par mobile suit. And on the Titans' side, Jerid looks like nothing but a joke for losing over and over again, but as his rare performances when not going up against Kamille (he almost sinks the Gwadan in an Unstoppable Rage during one mission and even Haman is intimidated by his pressure), he's not so much a bad pilot as cursed to go up against one of the best of them in the entire Universal Century history.
  • Parental Abandonment: Kamille is one really tragic version of this. Fa was also forcibly separated from her parents because of the Titans, with the heavy implication they were Killed Offscreen when they are never seen again.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Char. Has a lampshade hung on it when Haman outs Char in front of the rest of the AEUG. While all the other present AEUG members seem shocked by the revelation, Kamille's reaction is basically just to say "Yeah yeah, real big surprise there." Probably because he saw Hayato confronting Char with the infamous letter.
    • One should keep in mind though, that the disguise is only paper thin to the viewer... the AEUG is genuinely surprised, since Char normally wore a mask during most of the One Year War, so there are only a handful of people who know him by looks.
      • Given Char's penchant for Red (Quattro always wears red and initially pilots a red mobile suit) and his piloting ability, it probably still counts as a paper-thin disguise. The first hint of his real identity is that everyone who fought in the previous war who sees him fly is reminded of the Red Comet.
  • Pietà Plagiarism: When Four and Emma die, Kamille holds their bodies this way.
  • The Plan: Scirocco pulls these off with frightening ease. Jamaican... not so much.
  • Playing Both Sides: Axis is allied with both the AEUG and the Titans at the same time, and they end up on top after both sides are exhausted.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: Both Psyco Gundams are not so much vehicles as they are drone weapons that have Artificial Newtypes wired into them in order to take advantage of their Psychic Powers.
  • Pretty Little Headshots: In A New Translation Four is fatally shot in the head at point blank range. The entrance wound is small and the slightly larger exit wound is very clean.
  • Psychic Powers: Newtypes have these, though most of them are not very in control of their abilities. Haman and Scirocco represent two of the only Newtypes who are fully in control of their gifts, and their appearances show the Muggles of the UC world why they should Beware the Superman.
  • Putting on the Reich: Axis, having been formed from what remained of Zeon after the last series, naturally falls under this trope.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: The standard Titans uniform is black with red accents. Of note is that Scirocco is introduced wearing this uniform, and later goes on to subvert this by dressing mainly in white when he appears in the second half of the series.
  • Red Shirt: The AEUG's Nemos serve this purpose admirably.
  • Renegade Splinter Faction: The Titans to the Earth Federation. Once they were exposed by the AEUG, the group goes full renegade.
  • Re-Release Soundtrack: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam lost its theme songs for its US release, replacing them with standard BGMs played over the same opening animation. This is because Neil Sedaka composed the songs, and thus his family has been holding out on the rights; this is the same reason Super Robot Wars hasn't used either of the openings as Zeta's battle theme in years.
  • Retcon: The third Compilation Movie gives us a Bittersweet Ending instead of the original Downer Ending: Kamille survives the duel with Scirocco more or less unscatched and is reunited with Fa and the rest of the Argama crew. Also, additional footage includes the reactions of characters like Amuro, Beltochika, Fraw, Retsu, Kikka, Mirai, Sayla and Kai. Despite some fans' insistence, Word of God is that this does not retcon ''Gundam ZZ out of existence.
    • There's an even earlier example of this: originally, all the fancy stuff the Zeta did (like the mile-long beam saber) was just Kamille's raw Newtype power. Later on it was retconned that the Zeta has a device called the biosensor that amplifies Newtype powers and causes incredible phenomenae, such as freezing Scirocco's Mobile Suit and making it so that the Zeta Gundam can ram into it without being crushed by the impact. Scirocco's The-O was also retroactively given a biosensor, for all the good it does him.
    • Several mobile suits gained ancestors from later animated productions. For example, the AEUG's Nemo was made into a descendant of the GM Sniper II, while the Rick Dias incorporates elements of the Gundam GP02 "Physalis".
    • The New Translation movies in general also retconned some of the more infamous scenes out (like the absurd number of "people punching/slapping each other" scenes), possibly reflecting Tomino's more upbeat tone since ∀ Gundam.
  • The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: The AEUG.
  • Rule of Symbolism: Downplayed, but the fact that a significant majority of the mobile suits and mobile armors used by the Titans, nominally a Federation force, have integrated Zeonic aesthetics (most notably the debuting RMS-106 Hizack) is also a short-hand to the growing moral and institutional corruption/oppression inside the Federation. Of note is that there are suits that belong to unambiguously heroic characters that also have the distinct Zeonic mono-eye, such as the Rick Dias, the Dijeh, and the Methuss.
  • Sealed Orders: When the Titans negotiate with the Argama's crew over returning the stolen Gundam Mk IIs, the message Emma delivers is sealed until delivery. The same for Jerrid's order to shoot the object being sent to the Argama if they fight back. Bask did this to conceal from his own troops that he was holding Kamille's parents hostage, so Jerrid wouldn't hesitate to kill Kamille's captive mother (as he assume it was a bomb he was meant to detonate).
  • Self-Made Orphan: Subverted: Kamille hesitates when his father Franklin tries to kill him in battle, so someone else had to do it; it's implied to be Quattro in the original, and the Titans in the movie remake.
  • Sequel Hook: Anything to do with Haman and Axis/Neo-Zeon, who are the main antagonists in ZZ. Even the New Translation version of events have Haman's forces pulling back from the Earth Sphere along with some AEUG and Titan sympathizers.
  • Smart People Build Robots: Both The Hero and the Big Bad of this series build their own Mobile Suits.
  • Smug Snake: Jamaican Danigan, from the Titans, and Ben Wooder.
  • The Social Expert: Scirocco's skills in this field border on the legendary, to the point that even some 30-odd years later Gundam has yet to produce an antagonist as socially manipulative. He comes into the Titans as a complete outsider, and usurps the chain of command so effectively that by the end of the series he is their undisputed leader (though he does rely on a Klingon Promotion towards the end to give him that final push).
  • So Last Season: Mobile Suit production moves quite quickly in the series and models are often left in the dust. The GM, while a fairly disposable suit, was one of the key weapons in the Federation arsenal that ultimately won the war against Zeon. In this series, the GM II (which was made to outperform the GM in every way) is hopelessly outdated in the face of all of the new and better Mobile Suit technology. The Titans largely rely on the Hi-Zacks or any other late developed suit and even the AEUG tends to field Nemos, which are upgraded and heavily modified versions of the GM, instead.
  • Spell My Name With An S: One of the worst offenders in anime history - pick any character on the cast, and you're guaranteed to find at least three different variations on his or her name. Special mention goes to Quattro Bajeena, whose last name has been romanized in a very... interesting way on occasion.
  • Spell My Name with a "The": Scirocco's personal ride, the PMX-003 The-O. Yes, those two 'the's were intentional.
  • State Sec: The Titans started out as this.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: Yazan Gable is a mean-spirited example, given his very sexist treatment of women. Kamille is a much milder example, though that's mainly due to him wanting to keep his female comrades out of harm's way after seeing his blameless mother killed in the very beginning of the series.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
    • Throughout the series the Titans and AEUG repeatedly clash, but due to constant damages and limited ammunition on the field they often fall back so they don't lose all their forces in one fell swoop. While this keeps several protagonists and villains alive a lot longer than one would expect, both sides being forced to fight to the death once and for all in the finale results in most of the cast dying because they can't afford to retreat.
    • The Titans are supposedly all-powerful among the Earth Federation forces, and big enough to proclaim they "rule" Earth with no one being able to disobey their orders. They're also reviled enough for their atrocities that multiple La Résistance forces have cropped up in their own supposed backyard, are similarly inefficient to the original Zeon due to the behind-the-scenes grabs for power among the commanding officers, and eventually lose all of their power when recordings of their atrocities and gratuitous collateral damage destroy what public perception they have left and force the Federation to disband them to avoid association with what's effectively become a failure of a State Sec.
  • Taking the Bullet: Happens quite a lot.
    • Mouar for Jerid
    • Four for Kamille.
    • Sarah for Scirocco.
    • Apolly for a Red Shirt in the series, and for Fa in the third Compilation Movie.
  • Taking You with Me:
    • Kamille evokes this trope when Sarah tries to make a getaway after failing to disarm the bombs on a moon city. He angrily shouts this trope word for word as he punches her in the stomach to knock her out, but ends up bringing her back to the Argama before they take off safely, presumably to get Sarah to understand the severity of her actions without letting her have a Karma Houdini.
    • In the finale, Kamille fully intends to go down holding off both Scirocco and Haman in the Gryps colony laser when it fires, banking on all three of them getting killed. Upon fighting with Scirocco, Kamille makes this even clearer:
    Kamille: "Even if I must sacrifice my life, my body for it... I'll never forgive him!!"
    • Also attempted in the finale when Char triggers an explosion that engulfs both the Qubeley and Hyaku-Shiki, but it fails and both survive.
  • Teacher/Student Romance: Jerid crushes on Lila, who's teaching him a few things about piloting. Lila is okay with the idea and uses it as a carrot to help turn him into a real soldier. She dies before this goes anywhere.
  • Terrible Trio: Yazan's crew are a particularly competent and scary example.
  • Team Mom: Emma Sheen and Reccoa Londe. Fa is also a bit of this towards the Bratty Half-Pint orphans, though she only takes up the Team Mom mantle full-time in ZZ.
  • Teen Genius: Kamille was famous for winning several suit design contests before going to the AEUG, and in fact he actually designed the Zeta Gundam. Sarah also counts for being a teenaged soldier in the Titans' ranks that can manage to keep up with Kamille in a mobile suit, when Emma and Jerid are in their early twenties but also are straight out of the academy in the beginning of the series.
  • The Enemy Weapons Are Better: Played with. Like the Zeon before them, the Mobile Suits of the Titans are bigger, flashier, more colorful and most often just cooler than the relatively bland and boring Mobile Suits the AEUG brings to the field. However, all of that doesn't make them better, and more often than not those cool Titans weapons also have a serious flaw or weakness for the heroes to exploit, like the Gaplant's blind spot or the Byarlant's serious deficiency of weaponry.
  • Theme Naming: Scirocco likes naming his custom mobile suits after deities. Pallas Athena is named for the Greek war goddess, Bolinoak Samaan is named for a Mesopotamian god, and The-O is a play on Theo, a name derived from the Greek word for 'God'.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: When the Hyaku Shiki takes a shot for Kamille and are forced into an uncontrolled re-entry, Quattro comments, "I don't think this is gonna end well."
  • Time Bomb: Several of these appear during the story to endanger our heroes. In all cases, they are unable to disarm them, and only survive by fleeing before they explode.
  • Took A Level In Bad Ass: Let's see, Jerid did eventually come to even footing with Kamille in some parts of the show and eventually became a personal bodyguard to Jamitov. While Kai was no slouch in the One Year War, Kai took another one offscreen, cemented with a visual Call-Back to Mobile Suit Gundam wherein he twirls his gun when first seen in Jaburo without it breaking apart like in the last series. Hayato got a level too, he pretty much become a cool and confident Team Dad for Karaba on Earth. Amuro himself has taken a few notches despite being under house arrest and not having set foot in a mobile suit for several years.
  • Transforming Mecha: The Zeta Gundam and the greater majority of Mobile Suits; in fact, Zeta still holds the record of having the largest percentage of transforming robots in the entire saga.
    • Scirocco's Messala is in fact the first transformable mobile suit ever seen in a Gundam series.
  • Truce Zone: Not respected. The Titans don't mind starting fights in neutral colonies, or even intentionally attacking them.
  • Tsundere: Both Fa and Four are Type B, aka Type Dere. Fa is mostly cute and gentle, unless around Kamille, though she gets better about this as the series goes on. Four genuinely enjoys Kamille's company, but when the idea of getting her memories back is dangled over her head, she's quick to turn against Kamille.
  • Tyke-Bomb: Four and to a greater extent, Rosamia.
  • Unusual Euphemism: From the Zeta-to-English dictionary:
    • Correct (verb): To beat the crap out of a subordinate for reasons ranging from gross incompetence to tardiness.
    • Recreation (noun): Having a screaming row with your tsundere girlfriend for the third time that morning.
  • Vanilla Unit:
    • The GM II, successor to the original GM, is a completely bog-standard, unremarkable Mobile Suit. It's also effectively the same as the original, with only slight improvements like improved thrusters and reactors. It's quickly phased out as the series progresses due to its lack of special features making it easily out-paced by the various newer machines, but due to sheer numbers it still appears all the way up to the finale.
    • The Nemo is AEUG's trademark Mobile Suit, introduced to replace the GM IIs they'd been utilising. Like the GM II, there's nothing particularly remarkable about the Nemo save that they're significantly more powerful than the GM IIs they were replacing but still simple enough that pilots trained on the GM II could easily transition to them.
    • In-universe, this is what causes the Barzam to be rejected by the Titans. On paper, it's quite powerful for a mass-production suit. However, by the point of the series where it was being considered for mass-production (in order to replace their current mainstays the Hi-Zacks and GM Quels), it was considered too vanilla and rejected. Among other problems were the fact the Barzam could only be equipped with weapons specifically designed for it, but that also meant that specialised factories and facilities would be needed to build and maintain them.
    • An in-universe complaint about the Gundam Mk II is that it's a completely vanilla version of the original Gundam. Where the original Gundam was a quantum leap in terms of Mobile Suit design, the Mk II had nothing special about it. In fact, AEUG had to develop the G-Defensor support mech to combine with it to form the Super Gundam, just to give it a chance of keeping up with the Titans' increasingly powerful Super Prototype machines.

  • Vasquez Always Dies: Ultimately averted. This series has a wide variety of female characters of varying levels of femininity, and out of the main and supporting cast, only Haman and Fa make it out alive by the end. Emma and Reccoa are tougher compared to Four, Rosamia, and Sarah, but all of them die.
  • Vertical Mecha Fins: the Rick Dias, Hyaku Shiki, and several other mobile suits sport large back-mounted fins. Justified as Wing Binders, extra limbs to aid in AMBAC.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: The Titans gained power and prominence by riding on anti-Zeon sentiment and presenting themselves as the saviors of humanity. By the start of the series however the peoples' goodwill is waning. The space colonists view the Titans as thugs and fascists, and the AEUG and Karaba are at least partly formed from former Federation officers sick of them. Gradually the people of Earth lose faith in them as well and the series ends with the Titans lose all Earthside support, forcing them to propose an alliance with Axis (the exact sort of faction they were created to destroy).
  • War Comes Home: The Federation fully turns on the Titans when the latter launch a full-scale assault on Dakar, the Federation capital, while the Federation assembly is meeting. Their objective was to silence Quattro Bagina, the leader of the AEUG, who was addressing the assembly in order to publicly denounce the Titans and their heavy-handed tactics. Crucially, the stark contrast between members of the AEUG-aligned Karaba non-violently taking control of the Parliament building versus the Titans (the Federation's supposed defenders) blatantly attacking in an attempt to Leave No Witnesses causes the assemblymen to loudly denounce them while several Federal forces units actively join AEUG in the defense. Worse still, the attack is broadcast live throughout Earth sphere, resulting in support for the Titans almost completely evaporating nearly overnight.
  • We ARE Struggling Together: As Quattro puts it, "there are a lot of people who wanna be in charge" of the AEUG.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Most of the Argama crew, and the AEUG in general, didn't really have too many ace pilots. Most of the pilots were at best, average. Yet, Fa held her own in the Methuss, Roberto actually had some really great kills early on, and Apolly managed to save the day a few times, most notably sacrificing himself for Fa and bringing the Zeta Gundam to Kamille.
  • Wham Episode: Literally happens when Katz slams into a piece of space debris and dies. This begins the mass culling of the cast in the ending of the series.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?:
    • Yazan's wingmen, Dunkel and Ramsus. Despite being little more than Those Two Guys, and their boss being a sadistic Sociopathic Soldier, Yazan surprisingly loses his shit when they are killed.
    • Kamille admits to having an aversion to killing pilots and the times he goes for headshot could be considered him trying to take down the mech without killing the person inside. It's especially clear during the attack on Jaburo where he looks distressed when a disabled GM's cockpit bursts into flame and relieved when a Federation Pilot escapes a Gouf that he had just shot down.
    Kamille: "These days I spend a lot of time thinking about the pilots who died at my hands."
    Emma: "Do you pray for them?"
    Kamille: "Yes, but in my own way."
    Emma: "If you're sincere, it'll work one way or another."
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Rosamia and her fear of Colony Drops. "The sky is falling! NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!" It is a known problem in this universe, but the poor girl panics at the slightest provocation.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Again, Four and Rosamia. They're artificial Newtypes, so that's expected in a sense.
  • Worf Effect:
    • The original series Gundam model suffers this at the beginning of the story. Several of these suits engage Char's forces, who are piloting standard Rick Dias suits. They are all easily defeated, showcasing how far mobile suit tech has advanced since the One Year War. They are even labeled as antiques by their own pilots.
    • Char, ultimately. Despite being one of the most experienced pilots, he is usually knocked out or suffers damage. Hell, despite being arguably a better pilot than either Haman or Scirocco, he can't score ANY decisive blows on them. It doesn't help that his mobile suit, the Hyaku Shiki, is a failed prototype (Delta Gundam) that, while a high performance unit, is also plagued with frame defects from being an experimental transforming mobile suit. He has more experience than either Haman and Scirocco, but the two of them are both stronger as newtypes, and their respective mobile suits were each superior to Char's Hyaku Shiki. Also, they initially double-teamed him, and by the time Kamille entered the fray Hyaku Shiki was already heavily damaged.
    • Emma is introduced as an elite pilot, but there are many occasions when she's outmatched, such as the first sortie against Scirocco and pretty much every fight she has against Yazan.
  • World Half Empty: This show was cynical even when compared to the rest of the UC Gundam series. Considering how UC is most of the time, that's saying a lot.
  • Xtremely Kool Letterz: The Psyco Gundam's name deliberately spelled without an 'h', as it's a contraction of "psychic communicator".
  • Yandere: Just about any woman who encounters Scirocco, but most notably Sarah and Reccoa.
  • You Are Not Alone: In a very depressing way of playing this straight, Emma tells this to Kamille at the very start of the last episode. The depressing part about this is that up to that point, Kamille has lost his mother, his father, his lover, his (sort-of) little sister, and almost all of his friends and comrades. To top it off, Emma says this while dying. The important thing to note is that Emma is completely right - the Zeta Gundam's biosensor, coupled with Kamille's Newtype powers allow him to channel the powers of the dead to defeat Scirocco once and for all in the finale.

You will see the tears of time.

Alternative Title(s): Zeta Gundam

Top