Mobile Suit Victory Gundam

Do not trust the openings.


Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, or just V Gundam, is an anime television program set in the Gundam universe. It consists of 51 episodes, and was directed by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino. It is the fourth complete series set in the Universal Century time-line, and is widely regarded as the most depressing show of Tomino's U.C. saga.

Victory Gundam takes place in the year U.C. 0153 of the time-line. Char's rebellion 60 years ago and the Crossbone Vanguard 30 years ago have reduced the Earth Federation to complete impotency. The Zanscare Empire, taking advantage of the situation, proceeds to invade Earth so that they can bring it under their control. In response, a group called the League Militaire rises up to defend the Earth in the Federation's place. Uso Evin, the youngest Gundam protagonist yet and believed by some to be Char Aznable's great-grandson, finds himself the pilot of the League Militaire's frontline mobile suit, the Victory Gundam, in an attempt to defeat the Zanscare forces.

Tropes used in Mobile Suit Victory Gundam include:
  • Amazon Brigade: The girls from the Shrike Team. And Marvette isn't amused that their boss is... her ex-boyfriend Oliver.
  • Ambiguously Brown: Shakti.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: The Zanscare heads are mostly just bad bad people.
  • Awesome but Impractical: Early on Uso uses a massive Gatling gun with equivalent destructive power to the beam weapons, but it runs out of ammo quickly and the massive recoil makes it impossible to aim properly.
  • Ax Crazy: Lupe Cineaux and Fuala Giffon.
  • Badass Biker: Duke. His girlfriend and partner Renda is a Biker Babe.
  • Bait and Switch Credits
  • Battle Couple: Duke and Renda
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Katejina is very, very surprised when Uso actually tries to kill her.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The Zanscare are defeated and Uso and Shakti live happily ever after but at the cost of the lives of the Shrike Team, Odelo, the Reinforce Jr. crew, Uso's parents...
  • Born Lucky: Uso, despite his absurd skill for his age, frequently wins via the Hand of God.
  • Combining Mecha: The V and V2 Gundams use the Core Block system similar to the ones used by the Gundam/Guntank/Guncannon trio and Double Zeta Gundam, except now they can combine mid-air without extra pilots to control the separate parts. This was also a feature in some Zanscare empire designs, but was progressively dropped as the series progressed.
  • Cool Big Sis: Marvette and the Shrike Team girls, specially Mahelia Merill.
  • Cool Ship
  • Crapsack World: The absolute low point of the Universal Century... which is saying something.
  • Creator Breakdown: Can be considered the low point of Tomino's depression.
  • Cute Shotaro Boy: Uso, who at 13 succeeded the 14-year old Judau Ashta as the youngest protagonist in the Universal Century. He was also the youngest period before Prayer and Kio Asuno came along.
  • Dark Action Girl: Fuala, Lupe, Katejina, Renda.
  • Darker and Edgier: Second only to Zeta Gundam.
  • Deconstructor Fleet: The show is made to deconstruct the rest of the Universal Century Gundam franchise.
  • Disposable Woman: There's a lot of this.
  • The Empire: The Zanscare Empire is a pretty classic example of this.
  • Easy Logistics: Interestingly, this is the greatest advance of this era; The Zanscare's Beam Rotor's as well as the League Militaire's Minosvky drive systems allowed them to fly without refueling (and thus operate independently) since propulsion is powered directly by nuclear reactors, giving the users a major tactical advantage.
  • Evil Chancellor: Fonse Kagatie is the source of all evil in Zanscare.
  • The Federation: The Earth Federation is still running things and is truly useless for most of the series.
  • Everything's Better with Princesses: Shakti Kareen is the long-lost daughter of Queen Maria of Zanscare.
  • Everything's Better with Spinning: Once on screen the Tyre-type mobile suits (mobile suits in... you guessed right, tires) are a damn pain in the ass for a while.
  • Eyecatch: the mid-episode intermissions feature Uso's Haro gradually getting larger and larger over the series... two frames at a time.
  • Face Heel Turn: Katejina
  • Fate Worse Than Death Katejina survives... but is blinded, broke, and amnesiac. Word of God, however, has said that this is also her best chance at salvation, so this trope won't necessarily hold for long.
  • Flawed Prototype: The Abigor, namely its life support functions and thrusters. Its fighting ability, on the other hand...
  • Gundam vs. Series: Uso pilots the V and V2 Gundams starting in the first Gundam vs Gundam game. Katejina joins him in NEXT piloting the Gedlav and then gets dropped for Junko and the Gun-EZ in Extreme VS.
    • Katejina in the Gottrlatan became DLC for Extreme Vs., while Full Boost includes the original Victory Gundam alongside the V2.
  • Gratuitous German: A bunch of Zanscare mobile suits (probably due to Zeon's German references) have German names: Motorad -- motorbike, Ein(e)rad - unicycle.
    • It gets better: There's a mobile armor called the Birkenau. Tasteful.
  • Heroic BSOD: Katejina sends in the Bikini Babe Assault Team to attack Uso, who goes into one before he kills the entire team. Katejina needed to be insane to think such an idiotic excuse for a plan could work... Oh, Wait!.
  • Holy Halo: The Angel Halo, naturally. The Zanneck that shows up late in the series also has a halo motif, most notably in the twin particle accelerators it uses to charge its Mega Beam Cannon.
  • Hot Amazon: Everyone in the Shrike Team, especially Junko Jenko and Mahelia Merrill. For the baddies, we have Lupe and Renda.
  • Hot Dad: Hangelb Evin, Uso's dad, certainly counts.
  • Humongous Mecha: If you weren't expecting this one then you're watching the wrong frachise.
  • Infant Immortality: Subverted. After 50 episodes of all the teenage protagonists consistently surviving with little more than scratches, the barely teenaged Odelo bites it in the last episode as Katejina's final victim. The other kids and teens (including Odelo's girlfriend Elischa) get relatively happy ends with peaceful futures.
  • Improbable Age: Uso pilots Gundams at age thirteen. Justified Trope, tho: Uso's skill as a pilot come from being raised with mobile suits, like some children being raised surrounded by guns. It's mentioned that he used actual mobile suit simulators as video games. His status as a Newtype and having a mom who designed and built these suits certainly helps as well.
    • Played for Drama with characters noting the horror of children becoming involved in the war.
    • One Mook even kills himself with a mouth held hand grenade after getting shot down by Uso (who also has him at gunpoint) because he's so horrified that things are so bad on earth that supposedly he can't stand the thought of earth forces being so desperate they use children as fighters/pilots.
  • Kavorka Man: Oliver Inoue is a subversion: he's quite ugly, but aside of the Love Triangle with Marbet and Junko, he's a pretty decent dude.
  • Kill'Em All: Made during Tomino's depression years (80's-mid 90's). We all know what happens.
  • Kill Sat: The Keilas Guilie.
  • Killer Rabbit: Boy, this series' Haro is badass.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Uso's ridiculous age for piloting is frequently commented on.
  • La Résistance: The League Militaire is meant to be the good guys... it doesn't quite work out that way.
  • Laser Blade: It's Gundam; beam sabers are the sine qua non.
  • Latex Space Suit: The pilot suits.
  • Light Is Not Good: Angel Halo.
  • Lightning Bruiser: The V2 itself - 20 g's of max acceleration is nothing to sneeze at; for reference, the Saturn V could at best give 5 g's of acceleration, while most state of the art fighter jets can at most corner at 10 g's (any more and they would crush the pilot).
  • Love Hurts: Nearly every single couple on both sides of the war ends up with one of the two dead, unless they both die, and not even married couples are safe.
  • Made of Plasticine: The Titular Victory Gundam. It is barely Super Robot, and it is the Gundam that is most damaged in any series. A running joke seems to be 'How long will it take for Uso to just abandoned the busted legs?' over the course of every episode.
    • Ironically, the final shot of the last episode show both the victory and the victory 2 in the scenery, which would make it one of the few gundams to have survived intact the entire series.
  • Marshmallow Hell: Uso, when Mahelia gave him a ride... In fact, to see Uso get a face-full of boobage seems to be quite a Running Gag.
  • Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: While the series itself is most likely fated to stay in Japan, various Gundam games featuring characters and mobile suits from this series have made it to the West. Examples being the Dynasty Warriors: Gundam games and MS Saga.
  • Mecha Expansion Pack: The V Gundam has the Hexa and Dash packs, while the V2 has the Assault and Buster packs. In an interesting play on the trope, the packs can actually be combined with each other when necessary.
  • Mid-Season Upgrade: The V2 Gundam.
  • Minovsky Physics: Yup.
  • Mind Rape: The effects of the Angel Halo. More exactly: it basically uses twenty-thousand Newtype "psychikers" to amplify the powers of a single Newtype (in this case, Queen Maria Armonia) who can then use it to Mind Rape the whole of the Earth Sphere if she so desires. Zanscare planned on using it on Earth to regress people to an infantile state of mind so they'd all die off and leave the Earth "purified". Fortunately for everyone involved, they had the bad judgement to place none other than The Messiah of the series, Maria's daughter Shakti, in control of it. Earlier, when testing its effects, they tried to use it to cause Uso to lose his will to fight, first by bombarding him with images of peace and happiness, then with scenes of terror and pain.
  • Monowheel Mayhem: The Einrad, a colossal monowheel used as a transport vehicle for the Zanscare Empire's mobile suits.
  • Mood Whiplash: Uso and his girlfriend Shakti are stock child anime characters... set in a bleak and brutal series.
    • There are quite a few bizarrely comical moments midway through the series: League Militaire using microwave frequencies to trigger ship-wide Zanscare indigestion, groin kicks and your typically overexaggerated facial expressions. Of particular note is episode 29: The episode that introduces the V2 Gundam also has Uso interrogated in a bath by Lupe Cineau (complete with accidental groping) and escaping Side 2 completely naked. In his core fighter. With Haro and Flanders. In the middle of a space battle. In front of his teammates. Yeah...
  • Multinational Team
  • No Export for You: Considering the lack of attention it gets in comparison to other series, even in Japan, it isn't really surprising that the show still hasn't gotten an English dub.
  • Nuclear Physics Goof: Particularly Egregious in a few episodes where the protagonists must refrain from destroying the enemy mobile suits during the second Earth invasion arc in order to prevent their reactors from going nuclear and contaminating the landscape...
    • Actually it's not: When a beam weapon pierces the field preventing the reactor's heat from melting the mobile suit and vaporizing the pilot, all that heat and radiation escapes. Into the surrounding environment.
      • It's a goof in that the reactor shouldn't "go nuclear". The disappearance of the I-field releases the plasma into the surrounding environment, which would indeed cause an explosion, but the release of the plasma would cause the pressure within the reactor to drop, decreasing the rate of fusion and pretty much ensuring that there wouldn't be a nuclear explosion.
      • Note that the setting is so bleak that it's entirely possible that the engineers of both sides specifically designed the reactors to violently explode in order to dissuade attackers with the threat of a massive explosion as well as providing a self destruct mechanism that in addition prevents enemies from capturing and copying the more advanced machines.
  • Out of Order: Due to Executive Meddling, the order of the first 4 episodes was rearranged in order to show the titular gundam in the first episode, which does confuse the viewer.
  • Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Chronicle Asher is the best pilot in Zanscare yet gets mocked repeatedly for getting shot down by Uso -- which is pretty much what would happen in real life.
  • Power Gives You Wings: The V2 Gundam's Wings of Light are fantastically powerful, both as defensive shields and offensive weapons.
  • Psychic Powers: It's UC; Newtypes are a given.
  • Psycho for Hire: Fuala Griffon is a female example.
  • Putting on the Reich: Oh my. The Zanscare do this in full force.
  • Rescue Romance: Chronicle saves Katejina from being raped and she falls for him.
  • Royally Screwed-Up
  • Senseless Sacrifice: So many, but Oliver's kamikaze run into a battleship's tire takes the cake. Not only was the ship on the moon, so it didn't need the tire to function, but the Zanscare make a throwaway remark in the next episode along the lines of "the damage can be fixed in about twelve hours".
    • It's additionally senseless when you realize that while there are a large supply of Core Top and Boots for the Victory 2, only a grand total of two Core Fighters were built, Uso's and Oliver's... which meant that not only was Oliver sacrificed, but so was a potential second Victory 2 Gundam...
  • Sequel Escalation: In this series the weapons have gotten some serious upgrades; the beam rifles destroy the scenery as if they were Zeta's Mega Beam Rifles, the mega beam rifles are powerful enough to destroy six mobile suits in one shot, the mega beam cannons can level a city with 3 shots and even the vulcans can uproot forests. Small wonder that even though armor can endure the now much more violent core explosions, it simply cannot keep up.
  • Shout-Out: At least three members of the Shrike Team are named after famous singers: Connie Francis, Peggy Lee and Kate Bush.
    • Two of them - Helen Jackson and Maheria Merill - have their names swapped around with famous singers Helen Merill and Mahalia Jackson, so you could call this Theme Naming.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: The two OP are happy songs that you might expect to hear attached to a public school video about living life to the fullest or some such (or the kind of show you'd normally expect to find character archetypes like Uso and Shakti). And then the actual episodes begin...
    • Nowhere near as bad as the music playing during some fights. It's so... peaceful. It brings to mind calm meadows and green pastures... while cockpits are being punched in and the pilots crushed to death. It's brutally effective.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Like Gundam X, this is a by-product of not having an English Release. For example, the ship Reinforce Jr. was rendered as Lean Horse Jr. in a fan translation of Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden, ruining a shout out in the Nanoha series, which depended on a certain character sharing the same name as the aforementioned ship.
    • Even the staff at Sunrise couldn't agree on how to spell Uso's name! While official sources have apparently settled on "Uso Ewin", he's shown to spell it "Uso Ebbin" in a Gratuitous English e-mail he writes in one of the first episodes.
    • There's some confusion over his first name as well. The spelling "Uso" is used a lot, but the katakana actually read "Usso" (ウッソ), while Dynasty Warriors: Gundam uses "Üso".
  • Subsystem Damage: The Gundams are far from untouchable; a few well placed hits can impair hand operation for example which adds to the realism.
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: Many examples. Marvet and Oliver (they get married, then he dies); Elischa and Odelo (he's killed in battle right before the end); Chronicle and Katejina, even though it was one-sided (Chronicle dies in battle, and Katejina... well..); Uso's parents, in a way (both die in the second half of the series and were unwillingly separated due to their work in La Resistance); there were even two one-shot characters from the Zanscare side, Karinga and Kisharl, who were entirely made of this trope...
  • Stock Footage: Averted. Aside from the occasional full-screen explosion, this series makes relatively little use of stock footage, which is surprising when you consider when it was made.
  • Stupidity-Inducing Attack: The "Angel Halo", Zanscare's ultimate Doomsday Device. Designed to permanently reduce the entire population of Earth to an infantile mental state... or worse.
  • Super Prototype: Subverted. The V Gundam's design was later mass produced down to the last bolt, and the V2 was meant for a limited production run but ended up being unique due to the destruction of the other suits before they could be assembled (one of which in the Senseless Sacrifice mentioned above).
    • It's even further subverted when we consider the Zanscare empire designs; The Shokew prototype (the one that Uso GundamJacked mid-air) was far weaker than the finished production version, being only on par with the older grunt suits.
  • Super Robot Wars: Hasn't appeared as many times as other Gundam series but nevertheless has appeared more than others. It has been used in 2G, Alpha, Alpha Gaiden, D and Shin Super Robot Wars.
    • It was originally planned to be in Z[1], but got cut for yet-unknown reasons.
  • Team Mom: Marvette Fingerhut, in addition to being an Action Girl. And she's pretty much the only Action Girl who survives in the series. Both she and the baby she's pregnant with.
  • Transforming Mecha: The Victory (and V2) Gundam can operate as fighter, provided that it doesn't have both the arms and the legs attached at the same time.
  • War Is Hell: More so than in any other Gundam series.
  • Weaponized Exhaust: The V2's Wings of Light.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Zanscare Empire believes the Solar System will be a better place under the rule of their God-Queen. It's also subverted as said God-Queen is really nothing more than a powerless figurehead for the Evil Chancellor and his political party from Jupiter to exploit for their revenge on the Earth.
  • Women in Refrigerators: See Disposable Woman.
  1. ↑ Fans hacked the game data and discovered unused voice clips of Amuro supporting Uso (and Judau).
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