Starts with Battle of Loum next fall & ends with birth of the Red Comet

The trailer at the end of the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin IV anime volume confirmed on Saturday that the anime's Loum Arc will start next fall with volume 5, "Gekitotsu Loum Kaisen" (Clash - The Battle of Loum). The arc will then end in 2018 with volume 6, "Tanjō Akai Suisei" (Birth of the Red Comet). The Gundam.info website posted a visual for the next arc and confirmed that the arc is two volumes long, total. Neither the trailer nor the website states how long each of the two volumes will run.

The new arc will cover the Battle of Loum, the pivotal conflict in the One Year War's early days before most of the events depicted in the first Mobile Suit Gundam anime. Char Aznable, the nemesis of the first Gundam anime's protagonist Amuro Ray, became famous as the legendary ace "Red Comet" during this war.

The Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin IV volume opened in 15 Japanese theaters on Saturday, November 19. The current Char/Sayla arc of the anime is ending with this fourth volume. The volume features Char's "fateful encounter" with the girl Lalah Sune, Amuro Ray, and "the legendary Dr. Minovsky" (whose physics breakthroughs eventually led to mobile suit warfare). The volume also covers the development of the MS-04 and the RX-78 Gundam mobile suits, as well as the first ever mobile suit battle in history.

The Loum Arc has one teaser trailer (first screened in May) and two different full trailers. The first full trailer, which played out like a historical film newsreel with simulated scratches and flaws, debuted in the first week of theatrical screenings for Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin IV. The screenings will change trailers for the second and final week of screenings. Below are screenshots from the first full trailer:

The anime project adapts Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's manga of the same name, which in turn is inspired by the first Mobile Suit Gundam anime's story. Yasuhiko designed the characters in the first Gundam anime, and he serves as the chief director and storyboarder for the Gundam The Origin anime. The manga has 10 million copies in print.

Anime Consortium Japan is releasing the Gundam The Origin series digitally worldwide through a premium rental streaming program, and Right Stuf — in collaboration with Sunrise — is releasing the series on home video.