The beloved series Mobile Suit Gundam has a lot to offer by way of fun characters, cool robot designs, and awesome settings. But at its heart, the franchise is about war, and in wars, there are a lot of battles.
When those battles are primarily fought by hot-headed young characters in giant robot suits, the battles tend to be truly epic. Some of the Gundam fights really stand out from the crowd, with great action as well as a strong backstory that makes them feel really important and special to the franchise. Here are our picks for the 10 best fights, ranked.
10 Mobile Fighter G Gundam: Burning Gundam vs Shadow Gundam
We can’t make a list of the best fights in Gundam without including a fight from G Gundam, the Street Fighter-style spinoff series. While opinions on the show itself are divided, no one can deny that there are some truly amazing fights. This match, between Burning Gundam and Shadow Gundam, the robots from Neo Japan and Neo Germany, respectively, is an awesome showdown.
Burning Gundam is stylized in the awesome red, white, gold, and blue we’ve come to recognize as Gundam colors, and Shadow Gundam is an intimidating tank with swords standing up from the gauntlets of both arms. The epic abilities of these two Gundams coming face to face is really awe-inspiring to watch.
9 Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory: Kou vs Gato
Stardust Memory takes place following the end of the One Year War. Telling the story of a small band of Zeon loyalists who steal a Gundam, Unit 1, equipped with the ability to carry and deploy a nuclear weapon, the major faceoff is between Kou, the one person allowed to fly the Unit 2 Gundam that matches Unit 1, and Gato, the Zeon pilot who flies the stolen Gundam.
The fight is a battle of wills and philosophies as much as a battle of skill and the match ends in a draw, with both Gundams destroyed in a truly tense battle.
8 Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin: Char vs the Federation
This entry is unique, as it doesn’t involve Char, who we best know as the pilot of a Zeon mobile suit who is constantly giving Amuro a run for his money, actually piloting a mobile suit. Instead, he’s here as a child, in a tank with his sister, as they attempt to escape Zeon following the death of their father.
Char, with the look of determination and resolve in his eyes that we come to know so well of his character, blasts his way through the Federation troops trying to stop him from leaving. The fight is brutal, especially considering that Char is a child, and his crying sister and her cat are in his arms as he annihilates everyone who gets in his way.
7 Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz: Gundams vs Dekim’s Forces
Gundams often fight by themselves, with pilots lonely people who have to take on a huge burden all alone. Part of the fun of Gundam Wing is that there’s a whole crew of Gundam pilots who learn to work together, Sailor Moon or Power Rangers style, to defeat their enemies.
So the big battle at the end of Endless Waltz is really exciting, as the boys all come together to fight as one unit. The best part is that, unlike a lot of our other Gundam series, nobody dies at the end.
6 Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team: 08th MS Team vs Norris Packard
The fun of The 08th MS Team is that the mobile suit pilots aren’t the super-smart, preternaturally talented pilots that we follow through Mobile Suit Gundam. They’re just the military grunts who happen to have to have the jobs of piloting mobile suits in the Federation army.
When they face off against Norris Packard, we see how severely outclassed they are by the more experienced pilots in this war and just how badly they can lose. Their loss is a great learning moment for the team and a solemn blow to the Federation.
5 Mobile Suit Gundam: Amuro vs Ramba Ral
We see Amuro face off against a lot of Zeon pilots over the course of Mobile Suit Gundam. Since he has the best mobile suit out there, and because he’s a New Type, most of them, with the one big exception of Char, are no match for him. Ramba Ral is the only other opponent who gives Amuro a real run for his money.
On top of that, as one of the few members of the Zeon army that we come to realize is a good guy, it feels that much more important, and heart-wrenching, that Amuro has to face him in battle.
4 Turn A Gundam: Turn A Gundam vs Turn X Gundam
Turn A Gundam is meant to be a love letter to the entire Gundam franchise, as well as a final pondering on the horrors of war and whether it’s necessary in this world. To that end, the battle between Turn A Gundam and Turn X Gundam is incredibly metaphorical, with each mobile suit equipped with a weapon called Moonlight Butterfly, which has the power to completely disable technology.
This means that they can each use this to disable the other’s suit, but at the potential cost of all of the technology on Earth and the moon, putting millions of lives at risk. It’s an incredibly tense battle, both philosophical and physical, with tragedy a possibility on both sides.
3 Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: Mikazuki vs Carta
This battle can barely be called a battle because it’s more like a massacre. Still, the face-off is iconic, completely unique in the way Gundam battles usually go down Mikazuki faces off against Carta in a mobile suit duel, essentially fighting over the freedom of the children who have escaped from the security company where they were forced to work and used as cannon fodder.
When Carta offers Mikazuki five minutes to prepare for the duel, Mikazuki uses the time to launch a surprise attack on Carta, destroying her instantly, and leaving us completely stunned. We’ll probably continue talking about this battle for years.
2 Mobile Suit Gundam: War in the Pocket: Christina MacKenzie vs Bernie Wiseman
The final battle in War in the Pocket is devastating, and for that reason, ranks high on our list. Bernie, a Zeon spy who has arrived on a neutral colony with a mission to destroy the Federation Gundam unit stored there, has befriended an elementary school kid, Al, who lives there. When he’s told by his superiors that the entire colony will be destroyed with a nuclear bomb should he fail to destroy the Gundam, he attacks, even though he’s become friends with its pilot, Christina, Al’s next door neighbor.
As the battle rages on, Al finds out that the ship carrying the nuclear weapons was captured and the colony is no longer in any danger, but he can’t intervene in the battle before tragedy strikes. This battle is a powerful metaphor for the senselessness of war and the danger of romanticizing it.
1 Mobile Suit Gundam: Amuro vs Char
As the original great rivalry of Gundam, the final battle between Amuro and Char is still the most epic. The two have faced off several times at this point in their mobile suits, and as a rule, have been pretty evenly matched. The coolest part of this battle is that their mobile suits are both disabled in the course of the fighting, leaving them to both leave the safety of their robots and fight each other face to face with fencing rapiers.
The visual of the sword fight in space, with Amuro and Char both in spacesuits, bouncing through the rubble of the battle around them in zero gravity, is one of the most awesome things in Gundam, and for that reason, is at the top of our list.