One of the many texts I acquired from M while in Hyogo, this being one of the earliest Gundam fanzines/groups ever made. This early text, launched by its relatively small team high school age fans and artists, mainly female, was published during the earliest inceptions of Gundam's original broadcast. Many of the observations in this zine were made real time with 0079 Gundam's broadcast time and this particular issue features tons of otherwise internal documents, such as the script for ep. 1 of 0079 and settei that no other club had access to.

Written with a mix of hand and professionally set text, the Gundam Fun Club's mascot was that of an anthropomorphic Kikka who sported both cat ears and a tail. This in turn introduced yet another subcultural element to the fanzine as is, which I found charming. Reading further, fans were quick to account for "important" characters, their traits and personalized observational data that blurred the lines between that of canon and the "head canon", or ideas surmised to fit personal ideas for fictional characters than delineate the ones set by the actual production staff / creators. This zine has a very proactive presence like vol. 2 and the group were far more integrated in Sunrise's studio system and seem to have had access to things before magazines even did.

To quote the editor, known simply as "The Chairman" and their co-editor Mari; Mom and Dad, Mari has become a good girl once again. She made the magazine properly this time during her summer vacation, please praise her! However, the number of people writing here is gradually decreasing already. I'd hate it if there was only one who was writing in the next issue, and I wish someone would come on as my helper (dad). This issue was hard because everyone went back to their hometowns during their summer vacation. By the way, the three dimensional illustration in the fold out (of Sayla) is amazing! It was drawn by Takioto Ryuji (滝音竜士), who draws for a certain Harlock fanzine.

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Website backup - https://retroanimechris.blogspot.com/2024/11/mobile-suit-gundam-fun-club-white-base.html
Archive backup - https://archive.org/details/gundam-fun-club-vol-3

Questions? Comments? Contact me via [email protected] or @retroanimechris on X.
I told you I got over 300 books; I'm still translating a ton of them and scanning others in months later, and I keep buying because I'm mentally ill lmao

very based!!!!

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Thanks so much @GigantRegis! I have more, so I'll upload them when I can.

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Thank you so much @adoggo! I've heard about those extremely rare early Gundam fanzines (one of them got reissued at Winter Comiket some years ago, I think), but I never thought that someone would scan them. Now I am extremely curious. I really want to see what kind of strange mobile suit designs fans came up with during the 80s.

Last edited on 21 November 2024, 09:38.

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many fc doujinshis are not just publish in comiket. A lots of them were published though animage or some offical fan club created by the anime studio

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@fireminer you're welcome! Not sure if this was reprinted but these particular issues are from 1979.
@yinxianbi You're correct, many of the books I own are from fanclubs and not circles/doujinshi proper. This group was a fanclub of highschool age girls primarily.

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So the original title of ep.1 was Mobile Suit. I guess some exec along the way decided that was dull.

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Thank you for preserving this piece of history. I really think that the behind-the-scenes stuff of Gundam '79 are fascinating.

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I wish I could read this. The comments of the fans of the original Gundam made while the show was still airing sounds so interesting. One of my hobbies was find old anime review blogs with entries about some seasonal anime from 10 years ago and compare.

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