Gundam is a Japanese military science fiction media franchise. Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise, the franchise features giant robots, or mecha, with the name "Gundam". The franchise began on April 7, 1979, with Mobile Suit Gundam, a TV series that defined the "real robot" mecha anime genre by featuring giant robots called mobile suits in a militaristic setting. The popularity of the series and its merchandise spawned a franchise that includes 50 TV series, films and OVAs as well as manga, novels and video games, along with a whole industry of plastic model kits known as Gunpla which makes up 90 percent of the Japanese character plastic-model market.
Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., formerly and still famously known as Sunrise Inc., is a Japanese entertainment company owned by Bandai Namco Holdings with its business focused on production, planning and management for anime, founded in September 1972 by former Mushi Production employees.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack is a 1988 Japanese anime science fiction film directed and written by Yoshiyuki Tomino. It is set in the Universal Century timeline of the Gundam franchise. Featuring the talents of Shūichi Ikeda, Toru Furuya, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Maria Kawamura, Nozomu Sasaki, Kōichi Yamadera, among others, it focuses on Char Aznable's attempt of genocide on the planet Earth by pushing the asteroid called Axis into a collision with the planet. As a result, Char's rival from the Earth Federation Amuro Ray tries to defeat him in combat and avoid a slaughter in the process.
Bandai Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational toy manufacturer and distributor headquartered in Taitō, Tokyo. Its international branches, Bandai Namco Toys & Collectables America and Bandai UK, are respectively headquartered in Irvine, California, and Richmond, London. Since 2005, Bandai is the toy production division of Bandai Namco Holdings, currently the world's second largest toy company measured by total revenue. Between 1981 and 2001, Bandai was a manufacturer of video game consoles.
Bandai Visual Co., Ltd. was a Japanese anime, film production, and distribution company, established by Bandai and a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings. They focused mainly in international distribution of anime properties in North America.
The Pretty Cure series is a Japanese magical girl anime franchise created by Izumi Todo and produced by ABC Television, ABC Animation, ADK Emotions and Toei Animation. Each series revolves around a group of magical girls known as Pretty Cures who battle against evil forces. Starting in February 2004 with Futari wa Pretty Cure, the franchise has seen many anime series, spanning nearly 1000 episodes to date, as well as spawning movies, manga, toys, and video games. Its most recent iteration, Wonderful PreCure!, began airing in February 2024 as part of TV Asahi's Sunday morning children's television block. As of December 2022, three series have received English adaptations.
Super Robot Wars, known in Japan as Super Robot Taisen, is a series of Japanese tactical role-playing video games produced by Bandai Namco Entertainment, formerly Banpresto. Starting out as a spinoff of the Compati Hero series, the main feature of the franchise is having a story that crosses over several popular mecha anime, manga and video games, allowing characters and mecha from different titles to team up or battle one another. The first game in the franchise was released for the Game Boy on April 20, 1991. Later spawning numerous games that were released on various consoles and handhelds. Due to the nature of crossover games and licensing involved, only a few games have been released outside Japan, and in English; Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation and its sequel were the first of these in 2006. The franchise celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2016, and its 30th anniversary in 2021, and Super Robot Wars 30 was also released overseas.
Banpresto Co., Ltd. was a Japanese video game developer and publisher headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. It had a branch in Hong Kong named Banpresto H.K., which was headquartered in the New Territories. Banpresto was a partly-owned subsidiary of toymaker Bandai from 1989 to 2006, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings from 2006 to 2008. In addition to video games, Banpresto produced toys, keyrings, apparel, and plastic models.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash, also known as Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway, is a novel series created and written by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Officially part of the Gundam metaseries, it was first published by Kadokawa Shoten under the Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko label from February 1, 1989 to April 1, 1990 with a total of three volumes. The story revolves around Hathaway Noa, who now goes by the name Mafty Navue Erin, as he starts a terrorist group to stop the abuses of the Earth Federation. The novel was notable for being the only semi-canonical Gundam work by Tomino. A three-part theatrical film adaptation was formally announced by Bandai Namco Filmworks as part of the "UC NexT 0100" project. The first film was released on June 11, 2021.
Ocean Productions, Inc., is a Canadian media production and voice acting company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is part of the Ocean Group of businesses. Ocean Group is involved in intellectual property acquisition and development, co-production and the creation of English versions of animation for worldwide distribution.
Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., commonly known as Bandai Namco and formerly Namco Bandai until 2015, also known as Bandai Namco Group, is a Japanese entertainment holding company founded in 2005 by the merger of Namco and Bandai. The company specializes in toys, video games, arcades, anime, restaurants, and amusement parks. They are also unofficially nicknamed as "Bamco" by some. The conglomerate is made up of:
Unforseen Productions, Inc., doing business as Bang Zoom! Entertainment is an American audio post-production studio with its headquarters in Burbank, California, in Greater Los Angeles. Founded in 1993, it has worked on anime, video games, television series, feature films, and original animation projects.
Kidō Senshi Z Gundam: Hot Scramble, also known as Mobile Suit Z Gundam: Hot Scramble, is a 1986 rail shooter video game developed by Game Studio and published by Bandai for the Family Computer. It is based on the anime Mobile Suit Z Gundam, and is one of the first Gundam video games.
Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc., formerly Bandai Namco Games until 2015, is a Japanese multinational video game publisher, and the video game branch of the wider Bandai Namco Holdings group. Founded in 2006 as Namco Bandai Games Inc., it is the successor to Namco's home and arcade video game business, as well as Bandai's former equivalent division. Development operations were spun off into a new company in 2012, Namco Bandai Studios, now called Bandai Namco Studios.
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE is a 2011 Japanese science fiction anime television series and the twelfth installment in Sunrise's long-running Gundam franchise. The series was first announced in the July issue of Shogakukan's CoroCoro Comic, and has gaming company Level-5's President Akihiro Hino in charge of the story.
Bandai Namco Studios Inc. is a Japanese video game developer headquartered in Kōtō, Tokyo and founded in 2012, with divisions in Singapore and Malaysia. Bandai Namco Studios is a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Entertainment, which itself is part of the wider Bandai Namco Holdings group. The company works under its parent company as a keiretsu; Bandai Namco Studios creates video games for home, arcade and mobile platforms, while Bandai Namco Entertainment handles the managing, marketing and publishing of these products.
