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Gundam 0080
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“Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket” (1989) is a 6-episode OVA side story to the original “Mobile Suit Gundam” TV series. This OVA features character designs by “Macross’” Haruhiko Mikimoto, and a screenplay from Hiroyuki Yamaga, writer and director of “Wings of Honneamise”.
Ten-year-old Alfred Izuruha is an elementary school student on a neutral Space Colony, Libot, in Side-6. While the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon wage war on each other, he innocently marvels at the new Zeon and Federation Mobile Suit killing machines.
While going to the spaceport to meet his father, Alfred unknowingly catches a glimpse, and snaps a photo of, the Earth Federation’s New-Type modified Gundam Mobile Suit, which has been smuggled into the colony, and, without knowledge or approval of the local government, is about to undergo secret battle testing on Libot. On his way back home, he also meets Christina MacKenzie, a returning teenage neighbor who had left the Colony and joined the Federation. Unbeknownst to her family and friends, Christina has been brought back to the colony as the top secret test pilot for the new modified Gundam. With the war drawing closer to the colony and its neutrality stressed, a mobile suit battle is suddenly waged on the mundane, everyday, pedestrian streets near Al’s school. While gawking in awe at a downed Zaku in a nearby park, Izuhara meets rookie Zeon Zaku pilot, Bernie Wiseman, and trades him the pictures of the NT Gundam for Wiseman’s genuine Zaku Pilot patch.
With the photographic evidence that a secret Federation weapon is on Side-6, Colonel Killing (now with that name you know he’s no good) assigns Bernie to Cyclops, the Principality’s four-man special Ops team, and sends them to destroy the new Gundam. If Cyclops fails in this mission, Killing will get his opportunity to call in a nuclear strike and destroy the whole “neutral” space colony. While undercover in Libot, through a coincidental and potentially dangerous meeting, the young Bernie further befriends and eventually becomes an older brother figure to Alfred, and meets Al’s lovely neighbor--Christina (can you say fraternizing with the enemy?). After a futile raid on the Federation Base, all but Bernie of the under-manned Cyclops team are killed, leaving rookie pilot Bernard the nigh impossible task of destroying the Earth Federation’s most powerful mobile suit, with his salvaged, earlier downed, Zaku. With seemingly everyone’s lives at stake, Bernie and Christina take part in a mobile suit fight to the death… unknowingly against each other.
“Gundam 0080” is a moving, human, stand alone OVA series that (if they were to ever find out about it) even Gundam haters could enjoy. The lives of the young, the old, the guilty, and the innocent are all affected by the hideous glamour, allure, and unthinking, traumatizing insanity of war.
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8.65/10 
9.12/10
8.70/10 
65 votes