Today, April 7, marks an epoch-making moment in pop cultural history: the debut of Mobile Suit Gundam. It wasn’t the first anime to find an older audience, but it was the first anime to trigger a full-fledged societal phenomenon. (1/9) 
Gundam didn’t do well at first. In fact it was a ratings disaster. Written for teens, it was marketed towards kids, as nearly all anime was at the time. The sponsor, a toy company named Clover, pulled the plug as piles of its silly-looking merchandise sat on shelves. BUT! (2/9)
Older fans, teens and young adults, weren’t ready to give up. They poured out their souls in impassioned missives to what was then the best method of connecting to other fans: the pages of anime magazines like Animec, The Anime, and OUT. (3/9)
A movie company took note and funded a theatrical version of the show. They threw an event, “The Anime New Century Declaration,” in Shinjuku to promote it. They figured maybe a couple hundred die-hards would show up. But that’s when things got weird. (4/9)
Thousands streamed into the square on the West side of Shinjuku station. By late morning, the crowd numbered to twenty thousand. Police, tense from a decade of conflict with similarly-aged student radicals, feared a riot. (5/9)
But these kids weren’t here to fight. They wanted to declare their love for a show that spoke directly to them. They cheered the animators onstage, turning a PR event into an anime Woodstock. It was the first time many fans saw cosplay in public. (6/9)
These guys and gals took cartoons VERY seriously. At the end, two costumed fans took the stage and gave a dramatic speech. The closing lines reverberated through Shinjuku: “we the assembled declare this our era, the dawn of a new century for anime.” (7/9)
It was a coming-out for fans but so too anime as a medium, rather than just a vehicle for selling merch. The film sold millions of tickets. Proof of the huge market for “mature” anime profoundly shifted the industry. (8/9)
Without Gundam, the anime world wouldn’t look anything like it does today, nor achieved anywhere near its global pull. I talk about this in a lot more detail in my book “Pure Invention,” due in June. Thanks for reading! (9/9) penguinrandomhouse.com/books/609076/p…
