Mobile Suit Gundam and Star Wars have a lot in common. Both are sprawling sci-fi sagas sparked at the end of the 1970s that have continued to this very day; start in the middle of a great war fought across space, and both received prequels that helped lay the groundwork for that war while offering greater context for audiences eager to understand more about the strange new worlds depicted in the originals.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin and the Star Wars prequel trilogy also emerged around the same time, with The Phantom Menace releasing in 1999 and the manga for The Origin starting in 2001. Again, it is hard not to compare how these two franchises define and outline the origins of their main continuity's inciting conflict. However, The Origin does a far better job at this than the Star Wars prequels (an admittedly low bar anyway), in part, because it matches its original in regard to both tone and style, but also because it's much more successful in enriching the history behind its most iconic antagonist: Char Aznable -- in many ways, the Anakin Skywalker of Gundam.
Gundam: The Origin & The Star Wars Prequels Focus on Trade Disputes & Separatists
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin and the Star Wars prequels focus on trade disputes, military conflicts and the idea of one political entity seceding from another. But The Origin succeeds where Star Wars fails because the politics are actually made interesting in the former. The Phantom Menace, in particular, presents its politics as almost entirely disconnected from the plot, presented in dry technical language. Generally, politics in the prequels are consistently presented as ineffective at best and malignant at worst, ultimately serving to empower Palpatine, and Palpatine alone.
By contrast, the various conflicts presented throughout The Origin feel potent and immediate. We see the impact of how the Earth Federation has failed Zeon, which has resulted in genuine harm happening to its people. The Origin's politics matter because we see their impact on the people directly. The politics in Star Wars matter less because we don't see any of this; therefore, they have less emotional impact on the audience.
In addition, there is no one central evil person who is orchestrating the whole war in The Origin. Part of what makes the conflict between Zeon and the Earth Federation compelling is that it develops, like most wars do, organically through a series of events. The war becomes an inevitable conflict as problems pile up. It isn't just a result of Palpatine manipulating matters from behind the scenes. When we focus on the trade disputes in The Phantom Menace or the civil war in Attack of the Clones, we're just not really given a reason to care about these topics. We only care about how they factor into Palpatine's plans. By contrast, The Origin puts the dramatic weight on the actions in front of us and not on the schemes of the evil, individual villains.
Gundam: The Origin Establishes Its World & Antagonists Better
The Origin started life in 2001 as a manga telling the stories leading up to the start of the original Gundam series. The series outlines tons of different points in time during the Gundam saga, but the initial anime adaptation -- a six-part OVA -- adapts Volumes V to VII, centering on the experiences of Amuro Ray's primary rival, Char Aznable. Like the manga, each episode takes place at various points in the timeline, showcasing the development of Casval Rem Deikun, the boy who would become Char, and his younger sister. While this is unfolding, we also witness the origin of the conflict between the separatist Principality of Zeon and the Earth Federation.
Looking at how this prequel series handles its iconic villain, it becomes even clearer how much Star Wars failed to develop Darth Vader effectively enough in its own prequel series of films. While The Clone Wars managed to elaborate a little on Anakin Skywalker's days as a hero and slow decline into villainy, The Origin outlines Char's experiences in a lot more depth, detailing his growth from the orphaned son of Zeon Zum Deikun -- the chairman of the Autonomous Republic of Munzo, the government that would become the Principality of Zeon -- into an ace mobile fighter and fearsome fighter.
In this regard, The Origin beats out the Star Wars prequels in through its laser-sharp focus. Due, in part, to its limited episodic format, each long episode captures major events that contributed to Char's development and plays them out in detail. On the other hand, the prequels capture key moments in the Star Wars universe's development more as a whole -- though, problematically, often end up covering more ground than we need in order to understand the original trilogy.
The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones do little to actually convince us of how Anakin fell. Attack of the Clones, in fact, fails to show him as much of a hero beforehand, making him too creepy around Padme to be relatable. Most of the content centers, instead, on how the Old Republic fell. How Anakin became Vader is concentrated in the last half of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. There is so much wasted time. The Origin, however, wastes absolutely no time. We only see what directly matters to Char's growth and to the development of Zeon, both of which are closely intertwined.
Good & Evil is Actually a Point of View in Gundam: The Origin... But Not in Star Wars
Arguably, and most important of all when comparing these two prequels, is that we actually empathize with the antagonists, Zeon, far more by the end of The Origin than we do in Star Wars. In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine tries to impress upon Anakin that morality is a relative concept. While the Jedi Order is a corrupt system, they are rarely criticized in-film in a meaningful way. It isn't until The Last Jedi that anyone -- other than a clearly evil villain (Palpatine, Count Dooku) -- in the mainline Star Wars films actually criticizes the Jedi Order and its flawed practices.
Gundam has always excelled at showcasing how war is destructive for all parties involved and The Origin is no exception. In fact, in it, we side with the separatists -- the very same separatists who go on to be the main villains in the original series. This forces us to understand how they work and view the world through their eyes. Part of why this works is that Gundam has always been a series about how morality is a matter of perspective and not rooted in any cosmic Dark or Light side. Ultimately, the reason why The Origin works is that it never loses track of what Gundam is. The same can't be said for the prequels and Star Wars.
