The thread kicked off with a post asking, ‘Is it weird to be 40 and have never watched Gundam at all?’ The original Mobile Suit Gundam aired in 1979, so people around age 40 missed the live broadcast and instead grew up with the plastic-model and gachapon capsule-toy culture of SD Gundam and BB Senshi kits. Posters kept bumping into a mismatch between the assumption that ‘if you’re from the SD Gundam generation, you must have watched the actual show’ and the reality that plenty of people only played with the toys and never watched the anime itself. Regional differences in which stations aired reruns were also pointed out, and opinions ended up split along generational lines.
What people said
1AnonymousNov 15, 2026 13:57
Is it actually normal to have watched it?
3AnonymousNov 15, 2026 13:58
If you were born around '86, you're basically the SD Gundam generation.
4AnonymousNov 15, 2026 13:59
More and more people just don't watch anime at all these days.
It also feels like the genre's been milked dry.
And even among anime fans, Gundam feels like old media.
7AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:01
No need to watch it.
Only the original is actually good, and even that's way too dated at this point.
8AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:05
If you're in your early 40s, you're kind of outside the sweet spot for this.
9AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:08
Wasn't the late '90s kind of a dead zone for Gundam?
10AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:09
If you're going to watch it, you figure you should start from the very first one—then give up a few episodes in.
11AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:10
A bit too old to be the SEED generation.
12AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:12
I've never watched [Detective] Conan either… sorry.
13AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:12
Stuff like the 'Destroy Gundam' orders has real flavor, lol
Beats the whole 'merge with aliens and reach mutual understanding' route
15AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:32
I'm nearly 50, but the original aired before I was even born, so aside from SD Gundam I've basically never 'done the coursework' (slang for having actually watched/experienced something).
16AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:35
I was in 3rd grade, but I watched Victory Gundam even though I couldn't really understand it.
17AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:35
The Famicom/Super Famicom generation basically only knows BB Senshi [the SD Gundam model-kit line].
18AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:37
No problem at all skipping it.
If you really want to watch something, just the original theatrical trilogy and Turn A should cover you.
19AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:37
I've never watched One Piece or Demon Slayer either.
Just don't let it bother you.
20AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:38
That was the era of BB Senshi, Carddass trading cards, and SD Gundam eraser figures.
21AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:41
Knight Gundam and Musha Gundam were huge back then,
but I've barely watched any of the actual Gundam series.
22AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:44
The Gundam in Bandai/Banpresto's The Great Battle on the Super Famicom was based on F91.
23AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:44
If you were in club activities, you couldn't get home in time to watch it as a kid—not having seen it isn't weird at all.
24AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:45
Being so cut off from other people that you can't even tell whether it's weird to be 40 and never seen Gundam—that's the actually weird part.
25AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:46
I've covered every Jump manga, but Gundam? Not a clue.
26AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:47
I don't even remember seeing the reruns,
and anything after Zeta Gundam just wasn't my taste.
27AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:48
I at least recognize some of the famous lines from the original.
28AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:51
Lol, we've got an old-timer here who watched the original live.
29AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:54
Even if you did watch it, plenty of people never finished it—that's me. I rented the DVDs for Zeta and ZZ Gundam
and watched them, but never got to the final episode.
30AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:55
You can catch Gundam's famous scenes on Niconico [Japan's answer to YouTube].
31AnonymousNov 15, 2026 14:57
Not many people in their 40s have watched the original or Zeta all the way through.
By the time you get to ZZ, basically nobody has.
Most people caught a bit of one of the V-through-X series as a kid, and if they were into anime in middle or high school, they watched SEED or 00.
32AnonymousNov 15, 2026 15:06
The SD Gundam boom was really a generation slightly older, so 40-year-olds might just barely miss it.
And Victory, G, W, and X weren't exactly massively-watched shows to begin with.
33AnonymousNov 15, 2026 15:07
I was born in '83, and Zeta was airing right around when I became aware of the world.
I got in through SD Gundam, then kept at it with gachapon capsules, SD model kits, and reruns on Saitama TV and Chiba TV, and the Super Robot Wars games sealed the deal.
34AnonymousNov 15, 2026 15:07
It's basically an anime that cranks out tons of robots just to get you buying plastic models and toys—no need to watch it.
35AnonymousNov 15, 2026 15:09
I'm in my late 40s. SD Gundam was huge when I was in elementary school,
and I watched the original through ZZ in reruns during junior high and high school.
I talked about it with several friends,
and even after college and starting work, there were plenty of people my age who knew Gundam well—
so I don't get the sense that this generation is some rare exception.
36AnonymousNov 15, 2026 15:09
The only robot anime I've watched all the way through is Martian Successor Nadesico.
37AnonymousNov 15, 2026 15:10
There was a stretch where Chiba TV or some station ran evening reruns of Sunrise anime on a loop two or three times over—Daitarn 3, then Gundam, then Zeta, then ZZ.
I just kept watching that endlessly.
89AnonymousNov 15, 2026 16:04
I mean, the cockpit of a humanoid weapon flying through space
has an analog hydraulic pressure gauge in it.
95AnonymousNov 15, 2026 16:07
Re: #89
If you think of it as AI advancing so far that people circled back to analog gear like that,
it's like how the White Base is steered with a ship's wheel.
90AnonymousNov 15, 2026 16:04
Meanwhile I worry whether kids who just escape into isekai reincarnation stories or nothing-but-moe anime are going to turn out okay as adults.
106AnonymousNov 15, 2026 16:13
Re: #90
Now that you mention it, there were actually quite a few isekai-reincarnation shows back then too—
like Wataru, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Ramune & 40.
93AnonymousNov 15, 2026 16:06
Honestly, there's no real need for it to be humanoid in the first place.
No matter how you look at it, a fighter-jet shape would be way more cost-effective.
102AnonymousNov 15, 2026 16:11
Re: #93
But if everyone's thinking that, and then a crazy-strong humanoid robot shows up and attacks, that'd be terrifying, right?
112AnonymousNov 15, 2026 16:16
Bandai, ripping us off now that we're grown men with actual money to spend
Re: #112
Seeing stuff like this hits me with nostalgia, but it doesn't make me actually want to buy it.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Gundam has been a long-running franchise since the original series aired in 1979, continuing through reruns, OVAs, and new installments, but it’s easy to overlook that the “SD Gundam” and “BB Senshi” boom of the late ’80s through early ’90s was mainly about plastic models and gachapon capsule toys—separate from actually watching the main anime. What split opinion in the thread was that this “SD Gundam generation” doesn’t actually line up with the “generation that watched the show.” Reruns also depended on the lineups of regional stations like Chiba TV and Saitama TV, so even people around the same age of 40 had different viewing opportunities depending on where they grew up. Someone who’s 40 now (born around 1986) missed the original broadcast and spent their childhood during the Zeta Gundam-to-ZZ rerun period, which is exactly why both the “of course you’ve seen it” camp and the “I never had the chance” camp can coexist.
Leave a Reply