A book from Mark Simmons and Benjamin Wright
Price - $12.95 (US) Max - Find it on www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk

What's in the book

This book is 128, bigger than A4, high quality colour pages that attempt to provide an overall guide to the Gundam universe, the model kits, toys, games, background information, side stories and most importantly every animated production. The introduction section begins with a consideration of the Gundam phenomenon as a whole and then goes into a long and reasonably in-depth production history. That covers Gundam from its inception to the present day, giving valuable insights into the minds of the creators, the production companies & backers and the state of anime into which each production was born. It then continues to cover each of the main contributors to Gundam/creators of Gundam in a short paragraph each, detailing their work. The main section of the book then covers each and every animated Gundam production. It lists the format, air date, lengths, and staff for each of them. It also gives some of the reasoning behind the production of each work and the choice of creative team. Mecha line art and character profiles for most of the main Suits and stars are given, as well as high quality pictures from the animation itself.

After the main section there are a few pages devoted to most of the main side-stories of Gundam (that includes novels, photo novels and manga work). Brief histories and descriptions are given or each with pictures. Following on from that comes sections giving brief yet reasonably detailed coverage to Space Colonies, Politics, Mobile Suits and Newtypes. After that comes the model kit section - describing the background as well as listing the kits. It covers the American kits, Japanese kits and a comprehensive detailing of all the various Model Kit series that have been produced in Japan, along with their dates and numbers. The same is done, albeit less detailed, for Action Figures, Video Games, Comics and finally Misc. Merchandise.

Opinion

I felt that a detailed description of everything this book covers was an essential companion to my opinions on the volume. Now I bought this primarily for completeness, as well as wanting to see what Mark Simmons was up to post-Gundam Project. For an experienced and/or well knowledgeable Gundam fan it doesn't sound like a worthy purchase. That's not true. I found the introductory sections excellently written and give a great overview to the history of Gundam. The information there is very interesting and always worth coming back to. The later sections on side-stories, kits, comics and video games are also a very good read and very informative, as well as providing invaluable references. The coverage of each animated work is very well done and interesting to read once but is less of a section to regularly return to for the experienced fan. The "Gundam World" sections cover their subjects very well but not as comprehensively as the other source material I have (though that is to be expected), though there are some very interesting extra parts I hadn't got before.

So, what you may think is more of a book for the newer Gundam fan is actually a very worthy purchase for both old and new fan alike. If you're a new fan I think you should definitely not be without this. If you're a more well-read, older fan then I still think it's an essential purchase at the price. My gradually more and more worn copy should be proof of that!