CHARACTERS and STORY

The story begins at the Battle of A Baoa Qu, in the last days of the One Year War. As the Federation and Zeon forces clash in the final climactic battle, two men struggle to survive. Eric Blanke, a Zeon mobile suit pilot, watches helplessly as his friends and comrades perish, one after another. Courand Hughes, a squad captain, is helpless to protect his friends and subordinates as they die, one by one. Both men are left terribly scarred by the battle.

Two years later: Universal Century 0081. Eric Blanke continues to fight the Federation, alone, and against all odds. He seeks to punish the Earth Federation for its many evils. Against him stands Courand Hughes, captain of a special-operations mobile suit unit created specifically to combat renegade Zeon forces like Eric. Courand devotes himself wholly to battle, seeking his own death so he might rejoin his many friends who fell at A Baoa Qu.

THE PHANTOM SWEEPERS

The Phantom Sweepers are an elite mobile suit task force within the Earth Federation Space Forces, tasked with hunting down Zeon forces refusing to obey the ceasefire agreement. Mass devastation on the Earth, the communication and sensor-blocking effects of Minovsky particles, and the depletion of EFSF military forces following the battle of A Baoa Qu mean that these renegade Zeon forces pose a very real threat to the stability of the Earth Sphere. For those familiar with the Universal Century timeline, the Phantom Sweepers are (ostensibly) one of many such task-forces, which would latter be organized into a single special-forces organization, the Titans, and used to police the Earth Sphere.

Courand Hughes

(Tatsuki Hiroshi)

Captain of the Phantom Sweepers team, his mission is to seek out and destroy Zeon forces that have refused to surrender since the end of the One Year War. During the One Year War, Hughes saw his entire team annihilated, a memory that haunts him to this day. He is thirty-five years old

Hugh Carter

(Hiroshi Yanaka)

Demoted for defying orders from a superior officer, Carter has a severe dislike for authority figures. He is 28 years old.

Allison Cherie

(Chie Nakamura)

Formerly a test-pilot at the Federation's Augusta military base, Alice was transferred to the Phantom Sweepers against her will due to a shortage of personnel. She is 24 years old.

Bob Rock

(Ogata Kenichi)

A man with a very direct personality, Bob Rock stays with the troops in battle even under the most violent of circumstances. During the One Year War he personally witnessed a colony drop. He is 45 years old.

Darrel Godwin

(Otomo Ryuuzo)

A very formal man, sometimes called a tight-ass. He is a very flexible and competent soldier. He, personally, was the driving force behind the establishment of the Phantom Sweepers. He is 50 years old.

Liang Mao

(Ando Mayumi)

A woman with an astonishing military career, but a harsh personality. She provides battlefield support, but if she does not like you she will not speak to you atall. She is 27 years old.

Robert Hartley

(Nomura Kenji)

An unambitious lieutenant who dislikes hurting people and prefers to lazily waste his days. He is the last person you would expect to find in a top-secret military unit like the Phantom Sweepers. He is 40 years old.

Kamal Kumar

(Kawada Shinji)

A new recruit assigned to the Phantom Sweepers. He is 23 years old.

Jaime Carmona

(Nakai Kazuya)

He transferred to the Phantom Sweepers in order to fulfill and old debt, placing himself in great danger. He is very confident in his abilities and prefers to fight by himself. He is 25 years old.

THE INVISIBLE KNIGHTS

After the Battle of A Baoa Qu, the Principality of Zeon fell apart. With both Gihren and Kycillia Zabi dead, the people of Zeon had no clear government. This chaos allowed the Earth Federation to dismantle to old Principality and restore Zeon to a republic—essentially, creating a Zeon that was little more than a puppet of the federation. Many Zeon forces refused to acknowledge the surrender, and continued to fight against the Federation. Lacking organization and resources, these Zeon remnants were either isolated, and forced to operate as pirates and terrorists, or forced to go into hiding. The Invisible Knights is a special commando group, working with many disparit remnant groups to stage counter-attacks on key Federation facilities on the Earth's surface. Though the dream of Zeon is dead, these warriors fight on, with eyes that can only see vengeance, and wills that can only seek blood.

Eric Blanke

(Uchida)

A hero of the One Year War, Eric is the captain of the Invisible Knights. A fiercely determined man, he seeks to avenge the Federation's bloody Tears of Varuna-operation. He is 20 years old.

Blade Ailos

(Hamada Kenji)

A quick-witted man with a kind heart, Baade is a childhood friend of Eric and often offers his captain advice and counsel. He is 20 years old.

Fritz Bauer

(Toriumi Kosuke)

A childhood friend of both Eric and Baade, Fritz can be overly emotional at times, but he is very courageous. He is 20 years old.

Christo Doerr

(Koyama Takeshi)

An engineer who provides maintenance for the Invisible Knights' mobile suits, he was once a soldier but became a mechanic due to a leg injury. He is 25 years old.

Istel Philine

(Fujimura Ayumi)

A young woman who joined up with the Invisible Knights after the end of the war, she is quite skilled and became a full-fledged operator at a very young age. She is 18 years old.

Otto Ikemann

(Ishii Yasutsugu)

A pure soldier who believes it is every man's duty to fight up until his very last breath. He is 42 years old.

Hilde Nietzsche

(Ito Shizuka)

A proud woman who is determined to live in the present, she is also a very sore loser. She is 20 years old.

Ebel Gusuta

(Matsubara Daisuke)

A subordinate of Eric from the One Year War, Ebel is generally unremarkable. He is 19 years old.

Aresu Rolf

(Maeno Tomoaki)

A man with a cowardly nature, his time with Eric causes him to try and change himself. He is 19 years old.

STORY SUMMARY (SPOILERS)

What follows is a brief summary of the single player campaign in Gundam Senki, for both the Phantom Sweepers and Invisible Knights campagins. Both stories are more or less the same, only diverging at the very end.

Operation Varuna's Tears is a plan by the Zeon Remnant to hijack the Earth Federations lunar mass driver and use it to attack the Earth. They basically want to hold the Earth hostage and force the Republic of Zeon's government (which is mostly a puppet-state of the Earth Federation) to disband, and officially recognize Zeon as the victors of the One Year War.

As you can probably guess, it's not exactly the smartest or most imaginative plan in the world.

Anyway, Zeon's Invisible Knights are responsible for carrying out this plan. Eric sees it as revenge for all of his comrades who died in the One Year War. Opposing the Invisible Knights at various turns are the Federations elite task force, the Phantom Sweepers, led by Hughes.

The Invisible Knights have pretty shoddy equipment, so to carry out their plan they end up constantly trying to steal supplies from the Earth Federation. Many of their mobile suits and weapons, including the Efreet Nacht, are Zeon mobile suits that the Federation captured, re-captured by the Invisible Knights.

In order to set Varuna's Tears in motion, the Zeon remnant launches several diversionary missions throughout the Earth in order to keep the Federation from realizing their true goals.

Allison Cherie is assigned to the Phantom Sweepers from Odessa, where she served as a test pilot for the RX-81 line of mobile suits. She is a former member of Eric's squadron, and her brother currently serves in the Invisible Knights. She infiltrated the Augusta Lab near the end of the One Year War, and stayed with the Federation even after the war ended. During the firefight at Augusta, Cherie recognizes Eric and blurts out part of the Invisible Knight's plan, indicating that she is, in fact, a Zeon spy.

As a result, Hughes is ordered to disable Cherie so she can be captured and interrogated. He shoots her mobile suit and she is turned over to Federation security.

Later, when the Phantom Sweepers steal an HLV to transport themselves to the Moon, Cherie appears in a GM just in time to save Hughes' life. During her time with the Federation, Cherie developed feeling for Hughes and her other comrades and did not want to see them die. She sacrifices her life, killing her brother in the process, as Aden Spaceport erupts in flame.

When the HLVs leave Earth, the organizational structure of the Zeon remnant is in shambles, their headquarters in Indochina overrun by the Federation. They gather what little strength they have (based mostly around a single Musai) and assault two different Mass Drivers simultaneously. At this point, the Federation Pegasus-class warship, Thoroughbred, arrives at the Moon and unveils a new Gundam mobile suit, the RX-78-7, piloted by Courand Hughes.

Hughes defeats the Musai cruiser, but Eric's team has still succeeded in capturing a mass driver. The Phantom Sweepers assault the mass driver, and at this point the story branches toward two different endings.

In the Phantom Sweepers ending, Hughes kills Eric and prepares to sacrifice his life in a suicide-run on the mass driver. Before he can do so, however, the Thoroughbred appears and destroys the mass driver with its weaponry. Hughes hears the voices of his teammates, and remembers his old team in the One Year War. He apologizes to the ghosts of the dead, and says he cannot join them (die) today.

On the Invisible Knights side, Eric dominates Hughes' Gundam, but does not kill him. Unfortunately, the mass driver was damaged in the battle and the target cannot be altered, so Eric fires the mass driver at Augusta. As the mass driver hurdles its payload toward the Earth, a massive federation force arrives at the facility, surrounding Eric's Gelgoog Custom. The game ends at this point. Presumably Eric would be either captured or killed.