Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A+
Jeez, I'm just throwing the A's around here aren't I.
The original MSG was good, Zeta takes a good thing and makes a good sequel out of it. By introducing us to new characters who echo the conflicts of the original story and expand on the characters, now eight years older, Zeta Gundam is a masterpiece of pathos, loss, emotion, romance and the truth of war.
The series is not for the faint of heart, it is truly one of the colder and more brutal war stories out there, one of the ones that earned Yoshiyuki Tomino his reputation for killing beloved characters (Think George R. R. Martin, if you're familiar with the Song of Ice and Fire). I find it to be a truly brilliant continuation of Amuro and Char's rivalry and destinies, as well as the excellent new story of Kamille Bidan, a troubled but brilliant young man, whose story is supported by those of the main characters of MSG, rather than overshadowed by them.
If you liked the original Gundam, especially the harshness of the war portrayed there, Zeta Gundam will appeal to you. If tragedy isn't your cup of tea, you should probably stay away. I also wouldn't recommend seeing it without at least watching the Gundam movie version.
For the record, I won't be reviewing Gundam ZZ, I got about halfway through it, but given how much I loved Gundam and Zeta for the realism and harshness of war, the levity and silliness of ZZ just rings hollow for me, and it feels very disconnected from the overall events of the world which the first two series focus on, making it pretty uninspiring.
Showing posts with label Gundam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gundam. Show all posts
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Mobile Suit Gundam (Movie Trilogy)
Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy: A
A piece of anime history, right here.
While I'm often fond of calling Neon Genesis Evangelion the most influential series of all time, I must acknowledge that MSG is certainly in the running for that title, and for good reason, it is not only classic, it is an excellent war story: full of horror, loss, pathos and passion.
A great secret of the Gundam franchise that I was unaware of until I watched the original movie series, is that the Gundam Series are, in point of fact, not at all about the robots: the Gundam itself is a machine, a symbol, not a character: Amuro Ray, its pilot, his nemesis/rival, Char Aznable, and the One Year War, in which they are both soldiers, are the true foci of the story.
The only criticism I can honestly give of it is that the animation and music are now over thirty years old, and show their age.
If you were ever curious where the idea of giant robot soldiers began, or simply wanted to watch a good war story that happens to involve weapons shaped like walking humans, the original Mobile Suit Gundam's movie version (condensed to about 6 hours from the original series' 14 hours) is totally worth your time.
A piece of anime history, right here.
While I'm often fond of calling Neon Genesis Evangelion the most influential series of all time, I must acknowledge that MSG is certainly in the running for that title, and for good reason, it is not only classic, it is an excellent war story: full of horror, loss, pathos and passion.
A great secret of the Gundam franchise that I was unaware of until I watched the original movie series, is that the Gundam Series are, in point of fact, not at all about the robots: the Gundam itself is a machine, a symbol, not a character: Amuro Ray, its pilot, his nemesis/rival, Char Aznable, and the One Year War, in which they are both soldiers, are the true foci of the story.
The only criticism I can honestly give of it is that the animation and music are now over thirty years old, and show their age.
If you were ever curious where the idea of giant robot soldiers began, or simply wanted to watch a good war story that happens to involve weapons shaped like walking humans, the original Mobile Suit Gundam's movie version (condensed to about 6 hours from the original series' 14 hours) is totally worth your time.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Gundam SEED Destiny
Gundam SEED Destiny: C
So it took me a while to finish this series, as I started it a while ago and split the watching between the first 35 episodes and the last 15, but here it is, better late than never.
There's a lot of debate (or so I hear) between the original SEED and SEED Destiny as to which is the superior series. I've wound up giving SEED Destiny a lower grade than I gave SEED for weird reasons, especially in that, for the most part, I found Destiny to be more engaging a story than SEED, so perhaps it's because I split my viewing in half.
To provide a little background, the series begins a year and a half after SEED lets off, and introduces us to a new protagonist, Shinn Asuka who immediately sets himself apart from his predecessor Kira Yamato by being gung-ho and unhesitating at jumping into combat to fight for his ideals and his people. And I really liked Shinn, he was a refreshing alternate outlook on 'The Hero,' he's got a temper, falls in love easily and is generally a bit prickly but a good guy and someone I could relate to without Kira's constant hesitation and insistence that he doesn't want to fight.
SEED Destiny's plot is also more complicated, the characters do an intricate dance of friendship, love, duty and loss that remains interesting and quite fresh...
Up until, just like SEED, the last seven or eight episodes, when it seems as though the series goes "okay, that's enough of that, now one side has to win, so the other side goes ahead and does something heinously evil and then loses." Just like SEED. And that's ultimately why I had to grade it lower, because it was both a bigger disappointment than SEED was and because I would have thought they'd have known better than to do the exact same thing a second time.
I also need to bitch about Kira Yamato a little bit more. I didn't mind him so much in SEED, he was a little self-righteous, but he made mistakes, suffered, got angry and emotional, lost occasionally, learned and grew as a person and I could appreciate all that. In SEED Destiny, he is never wrong, learns nothing, the only evidence we have that he ever doubts anything is when he tells us after the fact that he wasn't sure what he was doing was the right thing, (it was) and is only so much as frightened once in the entire series, which he promptly recovers from.
Would I recommend SEED Destiny? I... have to say yes, because the early series is really good, and I really do like the perspective that Shinn gives, because I really like watching sympathetic characters, even protagonists, fight each other, but the almost cop-out ending was disappointing and weakened SEED by association.
I begin to see why people say the Universal Century Gundam series are better... I mean, Zeta may have had the most singularly downer ending of any series I've ever seen (including Neon Genesis Evangelion but maybe not Bokurano), but at least the ending was satisfying, and didn't feel like the villains were being uncharacteristically incautious or vile.
So it took me a while to finish this series, as I started it a while ago and split the watching between the first 35 episodes and the last 15, but here it is, better late than never.
There's a lot of debate (or so I hear) between the original SEED and SEED Destiny as to which is the superior series. I've wound up giving SEED Destiny a lower grade than I gave SEED for weird reasons, especially in that, for the most part, I found Destiny to be more engaging a story than SEED, so perhaps it's because I split my viewing in half.
To provide a little background, the series begins a year and a half after SEED lets off, and introduces us to a new protagonist, Shinn Asuka who immediately sets himself apart from his predecessor Kira Yamato by being gung-ho and unhesitating at jumping into combat to fight for his ideals and his people. And I really liked Shinn, he was a refreshing alternate outlook on 'The Hero,' he's got a temper, falls in love easily and is generally a bit prickly but a good guy and someone I could relate to without Kira's constant hesitation and insistence that he doesn't want to fight.
SEED Destiny's plot is also more complicated, the characters do an intricate dance of friendship, love, duty and loss that remains interesting and quite fresh...
Up until, just like SEED, the last seven or eight episodes, when it seems as though the series goes "okay, that's enough of that, now one side has to win, so the other side goes ahead and does something heinously evil and then loses." Just like SEED. And that's ultimately why I had to grade it lower, because it was both a bigger disappointment than SEED was and because I would have thought they'd have known better than to do the exact same thing a second time.
I also need to bitch about Kira Yamato a little bit more. I didn't mind him so much in SEED, he was a little self-righteous, but he made mistakes, suffered, got angry and emotional, lost occasionally, learned and grew as a person and I could appreciate all that. In SEED Destiny, he is never wrong, learns nothing, the only evidence we have that he ever doubts anything is when he tells us after the fact that he wasn't sure what he was doing was the right thing, (it was) and is only so much as frightened once in the entire series, which he promptly recovers from.
Would I recommend SEED Destiny? I... have to say yes, because the early series is really good, and I really do like the perspective that Shinn gives, because I really like watching sympathetic characters, even protagonists, fight each other, but the almost cop-out ending was disappointing and weakened SEED by association.
I begin to see why people say the Universal Century Gundam series are better... I mean, Zeta may have had the most singularly downer ending of any series I've ever seen (including Neon Genesis Evangelion but maybe not Bokurano), but at least the ending was satisfying, and didn't feel like the villains were being uncharacteristically incautious or vile.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Gundam SEED
Gundam SEED: B
I was really hoping I could give it a B+, but the ending wound up falling a bit flat. Overall, it was a very well-orchestrated military drama/romance, and about as anti-war as you can get when your protagonists are flying around in totally awesome giant robots.
I didn't really understand why the Earth Forces and ZAFT were fighting towards the end, I thought maybe they could learn to get along due to their mutual love of horrific war crimes.
Ultimately, the series loses quite a bit for a weak ending and some poor explanation in the middle, it really felt like they just didn't have enough time in the last episode to wrap everything up and explain it all, though there is a second series in the same universe, which I am intending to watch, so maybe that will bother to explain what the deal with the seeds is.
One thing that I was very pleased with for most of the series was how grey the morality was. The good guys were good, but the bad guys weren't really that bad, it let us focus on the effect the war had on them as people, and the dehumanizing effects of loss and death. This weakens as the series gets closer to the finale, both as a natural progression of characters getting over their issues and more blatantly evil characters filling the void as the former sympathetic villains start changing allegiances. (Spoiler alert, Gundam pilots in a Gundam Series switch sides a lot...)
Overall: If you need an introduction to the anime juggernaut that is Gundam, Gundam SEED is certainly not a bad way to go, and the first forty episodes are a well-crafted, emotionally-charged drama. However, you may find the conclusion a little bit of a disappointment.
I was really hoping I could give it a B+, but the ending wound up falling a bit flat. Overall, it was a very well-orchestrated military drama/romance, and about as anti-war as you can get when your protagonists are flying around in totally awesome giant robots.
I didn't really understand why the Earth Forces and ZAFT were fighting towards the end, I thought maybe they could learn to get along due to their mutual love of horrific war crimes.
Ultimately, the series loses quite a bit for a weak ending and some poor explanation in the middle, it really felt like they just didn't have enough time in the last episode to wrap everything up and explain it all, though there is a second series in the same universe, which I am intending to watch, so maybe that will bother to explain what the deal with the seeds is.
One thing that I was very pleased with for most of the series was how grey the morality was. The good guys were good, but the bad guys weren't really that bad, it let us focus on the effect the war had on them as people, and the dehumanizing effects of loss and death. This weakens as the series gets closer to the finale, both as a natural progression of characters getting over their issues and more blatantly evil characters filling the void as the former sympathetic villains start changing allegiances. (Spoiler alert, Gundam pilots in a Gundam Series switch sides a lot...)
Overall: If you need an introduction to the anime juggernaut that is Gundam, Gundam SEED is certainly not a bad way to go, and the first forty episodes are a well-crafted, emotionally-charged drama. However, you may find the conclusion a little bit of a disappointment.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Gundam SEED 1-10
So one of my ongoing projects is designing a tabletop game system for playing magical girls and giant robots. Yes, the same system, because the most interesting style of Magical Girl to me is Nanoha, and the magical girls in Nanoha are giant robots who happen to be wearing pretty dresses. And Infinite Stratos, while the mecha part is awesome, it isn't really the focus of it, so I figured I'd get back to the real heart of the Real Robot genre, and that means Gundam or Macross.
My last contact with the Gundam franchises was Gundam Wing back in the late 90s, and I was generally unimpressed. I'm told that's not an uncommon reaction to it: it's generally reviled as being lighter and softer in a weird way, and having an unreasonable amount of Ho Yay and Estrogen Brigade Bait. But the mecha were cool and stuff blew up, so I watched it.
After a little research, I decided that trying to watch the original Mobile Suit Gundam, as I'd feel honor-bound to do if I were going to try to watch anything in the Universal Century timeline (the main Gundam franchise timeline, for the uninitiated). The sheer volume of anime that would be committing to is presently beyond anything I can sanely say I want to start, so I tried to find another alternate universe like Wing to get my Gundam on in, and I stumbled across SEED. Now quite an aged series (2002), it was described as being a very strongly mainstream Gundam series. Jackpot.
I watched the first ten of fifty episodes tonight, and I'm enjoying it. It's a military drama that uses robots ace pilots as its main protagonists and antagonists, and is already dealing with fantastic racism in the form of genetically engineered humans, and isn't hesitating to lather the gray on the gray reality of how war sucks for everyone involved.
Being a long series, it's got some uphill to go before I give it a truly good rating, simply because it needs to convince me that it needed 50 episodes to tell this story, but so far I'm willing to believe that it'll manage a B. 50 episodes does let the series allow for a lot of growth, however, and means that there will be enough time to recognize the entire (already fairly substantial) cast.
First Impressions: Series military drama is serious. Stay away if you want laughs or light-hearted, hot-blooded robot battles.
My last contact with the Gundam franchises was Gundam Wing back in the late 90s, and I was generally unimpressed. I'm told that's not an uncommon reaction to it: it's generally reviled as being lighter and softer in a weird way, and having an unreasonable amount of Ho Yay and Estrogen Brigade Bait. But the mecha were cool and stuff blew up, so I watched it.
After a little research, I decided that trying to watch the original Mobile Suit Gundam, as I'd feel honor-bound to do if I were going to try to watch anything in the Universal Century timeline (the main Gundam franchise timeline, for the uninitiated). The sheer volume of anime that would be committing to is presently beyond anything I can sanely say I want to start, so I tried to find another alternate universe like Wing to get my Gundam on in, and I stumbled across SEED. Now quite an aged series (2002), it was described as being a very strongly mainstream Gundam series. Jackpot.
I watched the first ten of fifty episodes tonight, and I'm enjoying it. It's a military drama that uses robots ace pilots as its main protagonists and antagonists, and is already dealing with fantastic racism in the form of genetically engineered humans, and isn't hesitating to lather the gray on the gray reality of how war sucks for everyone involved.
Being a long series, it's got some uphill to go before I give it a truly good rating, simply because it needs to convince me that it needed 50 episodes to tell this story, but so far I'm willing to believe that it'll manage a B. 50 episodes does let the series allow for a lot of growth, however, and means that there will be enough time to recognize the entire (already fairly substantial) cast.
First Impressions: Series military drama is serious. Stay away if you want laughs or light-hearted, hot-blooded robot battles.
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