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TM Network Earns 1st-Ever Digital #1 Ranking With Gundam Song 37 Years Later
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Japanese band TM Network earned its first ever #1 digital singles ranking from Oricon when the band's "BEYOND THE TIME" song topped the June 16-22 week — 37 years after its original release.
The song was originally used in the 1988 film Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack in a climactic scene between the leads Amuro Ray and Char Aznable, but was recently used at the end of the 11th episode of the Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX (pronounced as “g-kwux”) television anime as an insert song. This led to the single getting a "2025 version" release that debuted on June 19 and received 8,000 downloads in four days.
In addition, Kenshi Yonezu released a special video for his "Plazma" opening song for Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX on Wednesday. The video uses footage from the anime's final episode and thus contains spoilers:
The insert song "Far Beyond the Stars" by Indonesian singer Shania Yan, which played in the anime's 12th and final episode, will also debut on streaming services on Thursday at midnight (Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. EDT) .
The story begins with Amate Yuzuriha, a high-school student living peacefully in a space colony floating in outer space. When she meets a war refugee named Nyaan, Amate is drawn into the illegal mobile suit dueling sport known as Clan Battle. Under the entry name "Machu," she throws herself into fierce battle day after day, piloting the GQuuuuuuX. Then an unidentified Gundam mobile suit pursued by both the space force and the police appears before her, along with its pilot, a boy named Shūji.
Kazuya Tsurumaki (FLCL, Gunbuster 2: Diebuster) directed the anime, and Yōji Enokido (Bungo Stray Dogs, Sailor Moon Super S, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Ouran High School Host Club) supervised the series scripts and wrote the scripts with Hideaki Anno (Evangelion, Shin Godzilla). Illustrator Take (Katanagatari, Zaregoto, Pokémon Sun & Moon) designed the characters, and Ikuto Yamashita (Evangelion, Shin Kamen Rider, Yukikaze) was the mechanical designer.
"Plazma," Kenshi Yonezu's theme song for the Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning- film, served as the television anime's opening theme song. VTuber Suisei Hoshimachi's insert song for the same film, "Mо̄ Dо̄ Natte mo Ii ya" (I Don't Really Care What Happens Anymore), doubled as the television anime's ending theme song.
The Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning- anime film, a re-edited version of the television anime's first four episodes, opened in Japan on January 17, and debuted at #1 at the Japanese box office in its opening weekend. It sold 352,500 tickets and earned 598,832,300 yen (about US$3.83 million) in its first three days. The film has sold a total of 1.80 million tickets for a cumulative total of 2,965,965,500 yen (about US$19.92 million), before returning to theaters this Saturday.
The film earned US$1,079,898 in its run in U.S. theaters from February 28 to March 6.
Sources: Press release, Mantan Web, Gundam.info (link 2)
