The Official Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance Anime Thread Mk I

[gxb]

Yeah the whole “universal century is grey on grey “ has always felt like revisionism. It’s people taking their bothsiderism view of modern (western) politics and applying it to their favorite anime.

[Mafty]

Even in the origional show there was some grey, TBF that was actually followed on in quite a few Sunrise anime , granted it was more on the level of you could understand someones motivation even if you disagreed with their actions.

Has anyone who worked at Sunrise ever spoken on their origional intention for Gundam?

[Seto Kaiba]

Even in the origional show there was some grey, TBF that was actually followed on in quite a few Sunrise anime , granted it was more on the level of you could understand someones motivation even if you disagreed with their actions.

Not on the Zeon side, really. The Principality of Zeon was partly inspired by the Garmillas from Space Battleship Yamato. Like the Garmillas, the Principality forces had a few noble demon-type characters in their ranks... but, like the Garmillas, when the chips are down they're still space fascists hellbent on committing genocide for their own gain.

A few later titles have attempted to soften Zeon's image a bit, but giving characters a freudian excuse for genocidal intent or depicting the commander leading an oppressive occupation force as a momma's boy doesn't really detract from the fact that they're still genocidal bastards and the aggressors in the One Year War.

The Federation have a virtual monopoly on the grey in the original series, being officious jerks whose governmental corruption created the conditions for Zeon to flourish and become an existential threat, but they're still undeniably The Good Guys fighting the good fight against evil invaders to save Earth and innocent civilians.

Has anyone who worked at Sunrise ever spoken on their origional intention for Gundam?

Excessive amounts.

[MythSearcher]

Even in the origional show there was some grey, TBF that was actually followed on in quite a few Sunrise anime , granted it was more on the level of you could understand someones motivation even if you disagreed with their actions.

You can say that they have some fair people, especially people like Ranba and Doan. And the Federation is shown to have corrupts, at least sounded pretty grey, like Gopp(though he is shown to be much better in later retcons and not really that bad in the original)
But Zeon's cause was not really that clear in the original show, and over all pretty black if you do not consider information given later(at least until Gundam Century)
So it was more like Grey vs Black at the time more than grey vs grey.
or something like vantablack with some grey specks vs dubious greyish white.

Has anyone who worked at Sunrise ever spoken on their origional intention for Gundam?

You will want to look at the book called Gundam Archives.
https://www.kadokawa.co.jp/product/199978021211/
They have the original Gunboy proposal of the show from Apr 1978 where not even Tomino have joined yet and was only listed as the director(TBC) as he was still working on Daitan3. Red comet was still a girl.
You also get a lot of the original mecha designs from that time, it is a heavy book.
Here are some photos of the book
https://tobiuo72.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-3385.html
https://paypayfleamarket.yahoo.co.jp/item/p1135444570
https://jp.mercari.com/item/m86316020441