Yoshiyuki Tomino
In 1979, Tomino directed and wrote "Mobile Suit Gundam", which was highly influential in transforming the Super Robot mecha genre into the Real Robot genre. Mark Simmons discusses the impact of "Gundam" in his book, "Gundam Official Guide":
In an interview published in "Animerica" magazine, Tomino discusses what he was trying to accomplish with "Mobile Suit Gundam":
Although the last quarter of the show's original script was canceled and it had to be completed in 43 episodes, its popularity grew after three compilation movies were released in 1981 and 1982. "Mobile Suit Gundam" was followed by numerous sequels, spin-offs and merchandising franchises, becoming one of the longest-running and most influential, popular anime series in history, being chosen as No. 1 on TV Asahi's "Top 100 Anime" listing in 2005.
Gundam Universal Century technology
Although fictional technologies seems to carry no real-life significance, these technologies are referred to in almost all of the series of Universal Century. They became a normal reference of the serial story and attracted publishers to publish books on them. These technological settings have also since influenced a lot of anime and manga to have their own technological background to a certain degree. Although it could be viewed as following the "Star Wars" trend, nothing similar has started before the 1981 publishing of Gundam Century. Bandai (with its branch Sunrise) noticed the tradition and has hired writers to write articles for other Gundam series too. In the Cosmic Era time line, one of the authors of Gundam Century articles (while still a high school student at that time), Shigeru Morita, who had become a regular employee of Bandai, was assigned to write these kinds of technological articles, possibly a method used by the company to attract Universal Century techno fans to watch the new series. The series' technology is now serving as the inspiration for academic research in different fields, which could include moon settlements and mega-particle cannon.