During the 2023 Anime Expo industry panel, Bandai announced a new anime project called Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance. This will be a six-episode miniseries, with around 30-minutes runtime per episode. Unlike the other Gundam series that comes before it, this one will be made entirely with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5.
This announcement comes right around the time when another major Gundam series, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, aired its final episode. The franchise enjoyed a lot of success with The Witch from Mercury, both in terms of viewership and merchandise sales. So it is certainly the best time to announce a new project while the hype for this franchise is at its highest.
The story of Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance takes place within the iconic Universal Century timeline, specifically in U.C. 0079. The accompanied trailer also mentions that the story happens about eleven months after the Revolutionary War. Similar to Mobile Suit Gundam: Origin, Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance will also tell the story from the perspective of the Zeon army, specifically through the eyes of a Zaku pilot named Iria Sorari. She was active on the European Front during the One-Year War.
Furthermore, the writer of this series, Gavin Hignight, also mentioned that Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is heavily inspired by the Mobile Suit Gundam: Thunderbolt and also the miniseries called Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team. While those two are not part of a major Gundam series, many fans consider them as a hidden gem of the Gundam franchise.
Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance will be directed by a German artist named Erasmus Brosdau. He is known in the animation industry as the man who wrote and directed the Warhammer 40K short film called “The Lord Inquisitor: Seed of Ambition”, which was universally praised for its sublime visuals and animations. Since Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance will be Gundam’s first foray into the Unreal Engine 5 technology, Erasmus Brosdau is certainly the right person to lead this project.
In a short video message that was shown during the 2023 Anime Expo, and later on published on Gundam’s official YouTube channel, Brosdau mentioned that one of the reasons why they decided to use the Unreal Engine 5 is due to its ability to create hyper-realistic visuals. “You can feel like you’re inside the Zaku’s cockpit,” he said in the video. Furthermore, Brosdau also added that Unreal Engine 5 allowed them to produce the series at a much faster rate.
Bandai hasn’t announced an official release date for this miniseries yet. But we do know that Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance will be released as an Original Net Animation. However, there’s no official announcement on which streaming platform will get the chance to release this series. Stay tuned for more updates on Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance.
Source: Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance Official Website