Iida Umanosuke

Universal Century 0079: The Jungles of Southeast Asia. During the One Year War, the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon are fighting a brutal guerrilla war for control of the area and its resources. Zeon’s best hope for victory in the region rests with an experimental mobile armor, the Apsalus and its pilot, Aina Sahalin. Meanwhile the Earth Federal Army, which has been fighting the Zeon in the region, receive reinforcements in the form of Ensign Shiro Amada, newly named commander of the 08th MS Team. Aina and Shiro have met each other from a mutual rescue in space, but when Shiro discovers that Aina is in fact the pilot of the Zeon mobile armor he is arrested for treason. The Federation offers Shiro one chance at redemption: He must take the 08th MS Team deep into Zeon held territory to find Zeon’s hidden base. With the Zeon backed into a corner, and the Federation dependent on Shiro and his team for victory, the star crossed lovers must decide where their true allegiances lie: with each other, or with their respective sides.

Universal Century 0079, The Magellan-class battleship Toutatis tracking a Musai-class in its progress towards Side 2 for a preemptive attack following the Duchy of Zeon's declaration of war, crash-lands in the Island Iffish colony. What they saw there was a landscape wiped out by poison gas. Eventually, they realize Zeon's aim to drop the colony on the Earth. The Toutatis, equipped with a nuclear warhead (hydrogen bomb), attempts to destroy the colony. On the other hand, a Zaku platoon had entered the colony by chance, ordered to subdue and silence dissent among friendly forces.

The catastrophe, "Hammer of Eden," resulted in the loss of six billion lives and the flooding of 90% of the land. The New United Nations were formed to pursue peace on the ruined lands 14 years later. Keel is a boy living in a town called Yabitsu, an area which prospered due to the energy from the nuclear generator brought by the catastrophe. His next kin, Aoi, is the secretary general of the New United Nations. She views the catastrophe as an opportunity to create a new world in which nations can help one another overcome differences in races and religions. However, her efforts to realize that vision fail because of the unwillingness of the nations to change. Gould, a military officer, feels that the only way to make an order is through the military. Using Ulysses, a nuclear submarine, along with his crew, including Keel's brother Tean, Gould carries out a coup to declare war against the New United Nations in his attack on Yabitsu.