Cosmic Era 71. A war is under way between genetically enhanced Coordinators and unmodified Naturals. The Natural-dominated Earth Alliance, struggling to catch up with the Coordinators' superior technology, has secretly developed its own Gundam mobile suits at a neutral space colony. Through a twist of fate, a young Coordinator named Kira Yamato becomes the pilot of the Alliance's prototype Strike Gundam, and finds himself forced to fight his own people in order to protect his friends.

There are a few points that lower the quality of this series. First, certain scenes seem fake and artificial, and the way certain characters just 'happen' to be at the right place and at the right time for the right thing to happen becomes quite irritating at one point. Also, I've never been able to understand how did soldiers belonging to different factions manage to communicate through radio. I mean, it would seem logical for them to use separate channels, right? That didn't make sense. Some characters were characterized in detail, while others were not characterized at all, like the three pilots of the Earth Alliance's new units. I truly think there was more to them than those "Annihilate! Obliterate! Kill!" sort of lines. Same goes for Orb's pilots (the three girls).