Let’s talk a little bit about the time period in which the Victory Gundam existed. It’s important to understand that the mobile suit was designed and engineered in a very different environment than those that came before it.
About Late UC Technology
Victory Gundam (the TV show, not the mobile suit) is unique, in that it takes significantly later on the Universal Century timeline than any other major UC story. For reference:
- The original Mobile Suit Gundam takes place in UC 0079
- Zeta Gundam takes place nearly ten years later, in UC 0087
- Char’s Counterattack is set in UC 0093, and Gundam Unicorn in UC 0096
- Hathaway’s Flash is another decade’ish after that, in UC 00105
- Gundam F91 is 18 years later, in UC 0123
- Finally, we have Victory Gundam, which takes place three decades after that, way off in UC 0153
It’s so far into the future that you might reasonably assume that mobile suit technology is in a much different place than it was in the decades immediately after the One Year War of 0079. And you would be mostly right, though maybe not in ways you’d expect.
Minovsky Craft Systems
Firstly, you should know that at this point in the timeline, Newtype-based technologies - such as Psychoframes, bits, funnels, etc - are essentially a lost art. The stories of Gundam Unicorn and Gundam Narrative heavily imply that the devastating power of these weapons spooked the powers at be from ever using them again. Not only did they stop, but it also seems they tried to bury their existence entirely.
But that doesn’t mean the March of Progress halted. Instead, it simply began to churn out other, different technology. In the early UC 100’s, the hot new tech was the introduction of the Minovsky Craft System to mobile suits.
Basically, a Minovsky Craft System uses Minovsky Particles to allow a machine to defy gravity and hover within atmosphere, as well as to leave atmosphere without having to launch like a traditional rocket. It was first used all the way back during the One Year War, and could be found on ships like the White Base, but it took about twenty years for engineers to figure out how to make it small enough to fit onto a mobile suit.
And when I say “small”, I mean that in relative terms. The first two mobile suits to be equipped with such a system were ridiculously large.
Pictured Right: The 26 Meter tall Xi Gundam
Indeed, the general trend in mobile suit design was to make them bigger bigger. Case in point - the original Gundam was only 18 Meters tall, while the Nu Gundam was 23 Meters, and the Penelope 26 Meters. Eventually something would have to give, but we’re not quite there yet …
Miniature Mobile Suits
between the events of Hathaway’s Flash in UC 0105, and the events of Gundam F91 in UC 0123, there’s an 18 year gap in the timeline in which we don’t have any official stories (or at least not any meaningful ones), so it’s hard to tell exactly what happened with mobile suit technology in the interim. But based on what we see in F91 we have an idea of what didn’t happen. Namely:
- It seems that everyone gave up on the Minovsky Craft System as viable mobile suit tech
- It seems that mobile suit tech in general began to stagnate, likely due to the Earthsphere falling into a period of relative peace. We know this because at the start of F91, the Earth Federation is still guarding a colony with Jegans, a suit that was at that point several decades old.
But the conflict in F91 gave rise to another sea change in mobile suit design, in the form of miniature mobile suits. Simply put, after decades of MS getting bigger and bigger, miniature mobile suits were an attempt at a course correction. They were the start of an eventual trend in which suits were made smaller, faster, and more efficient (and also presumably cheaper). The most iconic of these early miniature mobile suits was the F91 itself, which stood at just 15.2 Meters.
Conclusion
We’re not done yet, but all the pieces are in place. In part 2 of our introduction, we’ll see how the Victory Gundam combines all the aforementioned advancements in technology (in addition to a few more surprises) in order to usher in another new era of mobile suit combat.
Other Thoughts
Technically speaking, the events of F91 weren’t what lead to the sea change. There are side stories that depict the “Formula” project that produced the many, many predecessors that eventually led to the F91 itself. But for the sake of simplicity, it was easier to just credit the film and its story as being the turning point.