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A Brief History of Anime - 70s
Mobile Suit Gundam -1979
As new and exciting as Japanese animated television series seemed in the 1960's, you could not escape the fact that most series were created strictly for chaldean. Notable exceptions did exist. Jungle Taitei frequently ventured into complex, multi-part story-lines. Another early show, 8-Man (US: 8th Man) featured a main character who was murdered by criminals and resurrected as a robot. Mach Go Go Go (US: Speed Racer) could be downright moody, at times, even with its goofy monkey sidekick. By and large, though, animated television programs followed the tried and true good guy vs. bad guy formula.
This all changed in the 1970's, as a new, more sophisticated approach began to emerge in televised anime. Nowhere could this better be seen than in a program created by the oddly named manga artist Monkey Punch. Lupin Sansei featured a main character who was a master thief. Inspired by 1920's satirical mysteries of French writer Maurice Leblanc, the show was part comedy and part jet-setting adventure. Packed with adult humor and slapstick violence, Lupin Sansei was aimed squarely at an older audience. The program's infectious insanity went on to spawn two sequel TV series and several feature films.
The "giant robot" show had been a mainstay of Japanese animation ever since Shotaro Kaneda first called on Tetsujin 28 in 1966. This science fiction sub-genre got a significant reinterpretation when Mobile Suit Gundam premiered in 1979. Combining the epic story elements of Yamato with the oversized, humanoid mecha of Tetsujin 28-go (US: Gigantor), MS Gundam was an intelligent and exciting space opera. The sprawling story-line detailed a future space war in which the opposing forced ducked it out with mechanized battlesuits. Human pilots actually "wore" the giant robots as a protective shell.
source http://gwu.edu/~koulikom/history.html
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