This was originally posted on June 17th, 2010.
Did you know that the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime was so popular that many sequels were produced due to popular demand from reruns on Japanese television, into the powerhouse that it is to this very day? It’s also popular enough to warrant a Gundam-inspired anime series developed in South Korea for Korean television, called Space Black Knight. While you could call it one of the very few Korean anime series to come out from the era, there is something off about this show…
Space Black Knight: Wait, This Isn’t Gundam…
During a round of watching YouTube videos for hours on end one night, I found this one video where the cast of characters looked eerily familiar. Now, you’ve probably heard the story of how Mobile Suit Gundam got to where it is today. For a refresher: when the original Gundam anime aired in 1979, it was canceled and cut short of its promised nearly 50-episode run due to low ratings. But thanks to curiosity and reruns airing at the turn of the 1980s, Gundam was given a second chance to the franchise everyone knows and loves to this very day.
But let’s say that the characters are real actors and they struggled to find jobs to pay the bills after the series ended. They needed any job they could find. Well, the show you’re about to see could have been where Char, Amuro, and Sayla were reunited—and had to speak a different language.
The show is called Space Black Knight. Let’s say it’s a bootleg of the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime. It’s a Korean made animation series made in the same era as Gundam. Instead of using mobile suits, elements from American cartoons are incorporated into the show… But let’s pretend that Space Black Knight never happened; it appears to have been produced due to the ban on Japanese imports in Korea during this era. So the solution to the problem was to produce a show that no one would think to connect the dots to years later.
For now, we’ll view how the original cast of MSG did outside the show as if it were a wacky, predictable sitcom.
On the bright side (it would have been awesome to see a form of a Bright Slap in the show), sales of the original Gundam series in the anime’s original country encouraged more Gundam series to be made, so everybody got their jobs back, except for a few characters in ZZ Gundam.
Check out what I was able to find on YouTube of Space Black Knight. Credit goes to the unofficial SBK archive channel for the uploads!
Discover more from Centaku Media
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Affiliates
