AllMovie

The fifth incarnation of the Japanese animé series Mobile Suit Gundam (and the first to be telecast in the United States), Mobile Suit Gundam Wing got under way with "The Shooting Star She Saw," episode one of the "Shooting Stars" story arc. In the year 195 AC (After Colony), the United Earth Sphere Alliance maintains a benevolent dictatorship on Earth, but is ruthless in its treatment of the planet's many space colonies. Five of these colonies have independently organized their own rebel factions, determined to wrest themselves free from the Alliance. Unbeknownst to one another, a quintet of gundams (mobile flying suits) have been launched towards Earth, each piloted by a teenaged insurgent. Heero, trained from infancy to be an assassin, is the pilot of Wing Gundam; Duo, a talkative cut-up, pilots Gundam Deathscythe; Trowa, a self-destructive amnesiac and part-time circus performer, pilots Gundam Heavyarms; Quatre, level-headed scion of an Arabian dynasty, pilots Sandrock Gundam; and Wufei, who is as nasty and scornful as he is charismatic, pilots the Shenlong Guardian. Preparing to launch "Operation Meteor" (the destruction of the Alliance's defenses), four of the five gundams manage to enter Earth's atmosphere unscathed. The fifth, Heero's ship, is intercepted and sent to the bottom of the ocean by Zechs, an officer of Oz, a subversive organization within the Alliance. Assuming the guise of a "normal" teenager, Heero enrolls in the same school attended by the only witness to his landing: Relena, the adopted daughter of a high-ranking official. Though Heero has forsworn to kill Relena, she finds herself irresistibly attracted to him. Topheavy with exposition, "The Shooting Star She Saw" first aired in Japan in 1995, and was seen in America on March 6, 2000.