Mobile Suit Gundam (1979)

The 1979 original that turned giant robots into military hardware. The Principality of Zeon launches a war of independence, the One Year War, against the Earth Federation, and a 15-year-old civilian, Amuro Ray, ends up piloting the Federation's new Gundam from the warship White Base. It is credited with introducing the Real Robot genre, where robots are weapons in a war rather than superheroes, and it treats a teenager in combat as a cost, not a fantasy. Low ratings ended it after 43 episodes, and in 1981 Yoshiyuki Tomino reworked the footage into three compilation films, which are the quicker way in.