[LChoy]

Gundam is a metaseries of Japanese anime, featuring giant robots, or "mecha", created by Sunrise studios. The series started in April 1979 as a TV series called Mobile Suit Gundam, and later became a franchise name with more sequels, prequels, side stories and alternative timelines, published and aired in various media including TV anime, OVA, manga, novels, and video games. Gundam became a collective term for 7 different time lines, all featuring their own story-lines, with a few common denominators and war machines called Gundam.

Mobile Suit Gundam is said to have pioneered the real robot era of mecha anime.

Unlike its super robot cousins, Gundam attempted a realism in the robot design and weaponry, by running out of energy and ammunition or breaking and malfunctioning like all machines do. The technology (at least in the Universal Century) is practical and is either derived from true science (such as Lagrange points in space and the O'Neill cylinder as a living environment) or at least well-explained, feasible technology, requiring only a few fictional elements to function (such as Minovsky Physics as a means of energy production from helium-3).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundam

My brother was a big fan so I knew a bit about it. Really good anime series for beginners. Big super robots fighting each other, what isn't there to like