Gundam - As A Cultural Icon

As A Cultural Icon

Gundam is a popular cultural icon of Japan; it is a 50 billion yen business of Bandai Namco (projected 50 billion yen income of the company and reached a highest number of 54.5 billion yen in 2006). Not only were stamps published, an employee of the Agriculture Ministry was reprimanded for contribution to Japanese Wikipedia Gundam related pages, the Japanese Self Defense Forces code-named its developing advance personal combat system as Gundam and the Fire department used Gundam to promote the future of fire fighting developments. A tram station stood a monument of the original Gundam and used the main theme of the first Gundam anime as its departure melody and other businesses like Mitsubishi not only created a test-type simulator for concept cars with a version of Gundam cockpit, it also held recruitment seminars using "How to make a Gundam" as a demo of what their development process is and based their Lancer Evolution design on Gundam. Isuzu also used a Gundam to model the VX2. A conference as a preparation for the "International Gundam Society" (国際ガンダム学会) was held on the August 24 in Hiroshima, using Gundam as the main topic to discuss about the relationship of the science and technology in science fiction anime and the real world.