Gundam Wing

By Julie Miyashiro

Before the television series that deals with Operation Meteor, Gundam Wing manga, known as Episode Zero, portrays the backgrounds of the Gundam pilots and Relina Darlian. After Colony (AC) 175 on April 7th, the colonial leader Heero Yuy was assassinated. It was this colonial leader whom Heero was named for. An active assassin, Odin Lowe, who was not his father, raised Heero. Odin taught Heero how to master his profession, but it was his last words �live according to your emotions� that would make the Heero Yuy of the television series. Heero�s first and Odin�s last mission was completed after the death of Odin Lowe. Dr. J. made Heero a Gundam pilot after being satisfied with the look he saw in the young boy�s eyes.

AC 187, Duo Maxwell grows up as an orphan on the streets of colony L2 until he is told to live at the Maxwell church after being caught stealing food. Sister Helen braids Duo�s hair and learns that Duo believes in Shinigami, the god of death, rather than God, who would have stopped the war that had made him an orphan if He existed. Angry colonists attack the priest of the Maxwell church who stood up for Heero Yuy�s ideas on peace, but Duo steps in and promises to steal the mobile suit they will need to destroy the Federation if they will leave Sister Helen and the priest alone. When he returns, he finds the Maxwell church in flames, the priest dead, and Sister Helen dying. AC 192, Duo, the only surviving member of the Maxwell church, declares himself Shinigami to the scientist who would make Duo Maxwell a Gundam pilot.

AC 181, Catherine Bloom loses both parents and her infant brother who would be saved then raised as a soldier by the Captain and known as no name. AC 190, no name discovers a lost girl Midii Une who he had thought was like him in every way. He saves her life, she betrays him and the people who raised him by giving away their position to the Federation and letting them die, and then she spares his life. They part, with her explaining how she envied him for his freedom and because he had nothing that could be taken away from him. While he had emptiness, she had a family and a home to protect. He denies the blissfulness of emptiness that she had declared and proclaimed that at least she had somebody to go home to. He leaves for space in search of a place to call home, going by the new name, Trowa Barton.

AC 180, Quaterine Winner dies giving birth to Quatre Rebarbera Winner. Without a mother, he grows up in a test tube with the belief that he was worthless. AC 193, Quatre is taken captive by the Maguanac Core en route to Earth even though he doesn�t think he is much of a hostage. The Maguanacs tell him to gain a little pride for they too are test-tube babies. When the shuttle is attacked and Rashid is hurt, Quatre decides to take the Maguanacs advice and help them out by fighting in Rashid�s place. Quatre leads the Maguanacs to victory and let them return to Earth, while he takes two years to make himself stronger and worthy to be known as a Maguanac. Rashid had given Quatre his goggles and demand they call him Master Quatre instead of boy.

The members of the Dragon clan are required to marry at age fourteen. AC 194, Chang Wufei, who is of the Dragon clan marries Meiran, who later calls herself Nataku, which is Chinese for �strong one�. The married couple doesn�t get along too well, for Meiran is headstrong and passionate to helping her people while Wufei is a scholar that finds war senseless. The Scientist asks Wufei what an appropriate name for a Gundam should be called, and he gives it the name Shenlong. When the Dragon clan is attacked, Nataku pilots the Shenlong even though she wasn�t strong enough to handle the power of Shenlong. Wufei takes the other mobile suit to rescue his wife, but she dies in the field of flowers she had tried to protect from the Federation. Wufei renames Shenlong for Nataku declaring that her spirit lives on in the mobile suit and that he will fight to bring justice.

AC 191, Relena Darlian encounters two incidents that would remain forever outlined in her memory. One day she hears her friends laughing at a dirty boy outside of their school and is upset that they would laugh at his folly. The boy would be Heero Yuy who she would meet again much later. Wandering into a terrorist attack, she is captured by a soldier and rescued by a soldier Zechs who declares her to be a princess. When she asks who he is, he says that he is the prince that had fallen from among the stars. She returns to find out the boy who had been ridiculed for being poor had left.

After the completion of the forty-nine television episodes, which follow Episode Zero, Endless Waltz is the concluding movie to end the series. I reveal only one secret about the television series and the movie; good does prevail.