The Netflix show, Iron Blooded Orphans, also known as Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans, is a story set around 300 years after something called the Calamity War. The Calamity War refers to a great conflict between the Earth and Outer Spheres that lead to the establishment of the Post Disaster Timeline. 

The war put Mobile Suits in high demand, and the mass fighting caused a lot of destruction. Mobile Suits are humanoid combat vehicles, typically employing two arms to deploy weapons, two legs for propulsion, and a head that acts as a main camera. Generally, a mobile suit is approximately 60 feet in height, with the cockpit located in the Mobile Suit’s torso.

Mobile Suit Gundam also known as First Gundam, Gundam 0079, or simply Gundam ’79, is a televised anime series, produced and animated by Nippon Sunrise. Created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it premiered in Japan, on Nagoya Broadcasting Network, on different TV stations, on April 7, 1979, and lasted until January 26, 1980, spanning a total of 43 episodes. Iron Blooded Orphans is one of the many spin-offs based off of the Gundam franchise. 

In the story humanity has terraformed Mars. The Mars colony is still under an Earth-based rule and is effectively an economic slave state that now wants its independence. This creates child soldiers that make up the ranks of a civilian security company called Chryse Guard Security. This force is tasked with escorting a Martian noblewoman called Kudelia Aina Bernstein to Earth to go against Mars being under earth’s rule. The Earth military force of Gjallarhorn has plans to stop this escort to earth so that Mars can stay under Earth’s rule. 

All the complex machines they use something called the Alaya-Vijnana System, which is a cybernetic interface across the spine that directly connects the machine to the pilot. The children use the cybernetic interface, or the Alaya-Vijnana System, to create an army of child soldiers that are remarkably adept at handling complex machinery but are a cheap and expendable workforce from a business standpoint. The Alaya-Vijnana System process is a dangerous one to make and almost any adult would not survive the process if they tried to have it done. The group of child soldiers is called Tekkadan.

The main protagonist, Mikazuki Augus, is the mobile suit pilot of the Gundam Barbatos, which is a relic from the Calamity War. From the war, they created Gundam’s like Barbatos. Gundams are advanced, high performance mobile suits, often constructed to be much more powerful than the standard production mobile suits. They are generally equipped with the latest experimental technology available at the time of their construction. 

So, the Gundam series Iron-Blooded Orphans is without a doubt among the best the Gundam franchise has to offer, especially when it comes to the alternate series in the franchise. This is aimed at older audiences since it has a brutal, and very gritty story. I would recommend this to people who like a good story, like seeing big battles with mobile suits and Gundams, and like great character development.