well, you have to remember that char is an incredibly petty, arrogant person. his entire opposition to the zabi family in the original show is because they assassinated his father, his entire goal was purely revenge. in CCA he’s lashing out against earth because, uh, people just won’t do what he wants them to. a spoiled brat playing at being a revolutionary philosopher like his father was - i mean that’s why he’s going off about enviromentalism all of a sudden, he never gave a fuck before, but roleplaying as zeon requires him to act like he really really cares about this now. also again to his pettiness - making earthnoids refugees is revenge for them refusing to let spacenoid refugees settle on earth after the war…he’s just as selfish as the earthnoids he claims to be so different from
I want a shirt of Camille in bed that says I WAS THERE FOR THE TITAN WAR AND IT SUCKED
yeah the new gundam is cool. so much shit happens in that first episode, i bet the movie version was cut different.
very dry on character moments, but when something out of pocket happens it feels sharper somehow
Watched the first ep dubbed on prime and had a sensible chuckle imagining Anno convinced everyone to out his part up front for the theater preview just because he knew it would get the old fans hooting an hollering.
Not sure if it’s an affect of the dub or going straight to the 0085 era but it feels like it’s going kinda fast or is in a hurry to get through all it can. I guess sitting through a truncated OYW helped me adjust to such pacing in the theater and felt a little less like I was being forced to keep up.
Dub seems fine. Haven’t looked up names but very serviceable. Maachu sounds a little to nasally or high pitched which leans a little to into her goblin mode instead of the weirdly aloof but oddly focused moments. I’ll probably go back to sub once I get to new territory. Wanna see of the OYW section will have any stunt casting or reflect on the Ocean Dub era of gundam.
Gquuux continues. It was a fun surprise there was yet another Suisei song in ep 3 to swap with the ED song they used in the theater cut. New material starts this week and I’m ready to see the GMquux.
Binged the netflix gundam show that was made in Unreal Engine 5. In many ways it feels like the kind of show a certain sect of scifi watchers say they want Gundam to be. The kind that only talk about 08th MS Team and the Gouf fight. To the shows credit it does look like what Gundam would be if it looked like the military box art models you might see next to gundam in hobby shops. The humans look like a weird videogame in the day lighting so much of the key action is at night or dusk. It’s also a little tone def to make a Zeon propaganda show during the current climate of the world. One character at least addresses that they are fighting for freedom and independence while the Feddies are fighting for their homes but still sees the war as neccessary for that. I does manage to find a little of that Gundam juice near the end when you find out the White Devil is piloted by an asian teenager that was thrust into the war under the pretext of ending it. He and the Main Zeon lady are newtypes and try to connect in battle before a bittersweet end.
A fine enough side story that has a little bit of an odd taste but thankfully is short enough to not drag to long. It reminds me I never got far into that Zeonic Front game on the PS2 where you are a zaku captain chasing down the white base but also run away from the Gundam.
Boy, what a week to quuuuuux. Three-Four new robots on screen showing off cool stuff (sorry hambrabi, you’re the jobber here). Watching the Psycho Gundam explode into a network of bits and funnels is not what I was expecting. The kikeroga/braw bro got to show off and show a gimmick I think the model engineers are hating how to make work in plastic. But the show stealer for me was the New Gyan. I didn’t do anything but man is that design living rent free in my head. My brain will not rest until I can build it and put it somewhere.
For the part that’s not a toy commercial, real big narrative swings changing up the status quo. Characters are in radically different places now and I can’t wait to see the directions will be.
I gotta watch this show…
Can’t believe it took 7 episodes for them to finally stop bum fighting
This G Gundam lover has no qualms with episodic bum fights. Its a new robot fight each week.
Hell yeah boiiiiiizzzzz, we Eva now
i feel so torn by GQuX because like there are clearly a lot of cool stuff going on there but the 12-episode container seems to have put the whole project out of whack. like, as much as i enjoyed the last episode (8), it’s hilariously obvious that all those events were meant to be spread out along at least two episodes.
they just keep cramming all this stuff together, and with the flashback plotline here and there that was released as a movie it feels like theres no space for things to develop more naturally
Wish they got off the space colony sooner so things could happen
not super thrilled about gquuuuuux becoming a parallel, interconnected universe rather than a ‘what if?’-type alternate history/timeline to first gundam. multiverses are my least favorite of the current major ills of storytelling. feel like my interest in what this show is doing just plummeted. all with my girl lalah on screen.
I felt much the same about that revelation though I can’t say I didn’t get some hint of it during char’s zechnova event when he heard voices from another side. I was hoping for a more abstract newtype event horizon deal.
I’m still on board though. This weeks episode was very much the WHOA moment like in Diebuster once they started teleporting planets. Everyone is at each others throats right now in glorious fashion.
I felt a little silly saying the GQux would never make it to earth but it never actually set foot on dry land so I still feel validated that no one wanted to animate that thing walking on soft terrain. Those hooves would sink in every step.
GQuX is such a mess. the whole thing’s just constantly falling apart but it never stops.
it’s very clear that tsurumaki and the other writers have all these ideas about UC gundam, that they dearly love it and have been talking about it amongst their peers for decades. they have things to say about both the strickly gundam-sicko things (sovereingty among the Sides of the colonists, the political intrigue and disfunction of the zeon state, the role of earth and the titans) but also about the broader themes of UC gundam: to which extent the power to inflict violence on others shackles and/or liberates you. what is a newtype.
they clearly care about all of it, but never dwelve into any of it. the show just keeps moving, with all the parts being left behind along the road. in this final stretch it’s been very clear that tsurumaki is operating his high gear bullshit upon the universe – the two alpha psycommus from the different timelines being together and causing the third impact is a major plot point of the final “arc”, we are getting diebuster-ass space magic. the show’s completely firing from the hip. in the cases of rebuild evangelion, FLCL, diebuster it feels sharper. where here it’s disjointed, the result of a failure to lay down a complete idea even once.
i would never recommend it anyone who’s not a terminal UC gundam sicko, but it consistently makes me feel something, which at the very least is more than i can say about G-witch.
G-witch is so funny because the end, from what I can remember,
is that
Summary
all the evil corporations are just like, “ok we’ll be good ethical corporations from now on, we promise, pinky swear” just because of the self sacrifice of the main crew or her dad or something? And then all the problems stop and there’s no more discrimination and everyone is happy and it’s like wow, this will absolutely totally last forever and ever of course lol
But that doesn’t matter because the two main girls got married and also her real sister is now a plushie gundam spirit or something watching over them and also it’s okay that mom did war crimes bc she did it for FAMILY lol
Anyway, I’m enjoying Gquuuuuux even though I barely know anything about UC Gundam. I never got to Lalah in my original viewing so all this Lalah fanservice means nothing to me.
Feels like the show creators are throwing around Machu and Nyaan in service of their fanfiction scenario rather than their own character development, but then again, Machu’s character has just been being a spoiled kid who wants “freedom” without caring about the consequences and Nyaan is to belong to a society or group or feel recognized as a person or something? Which she even kinda gets from being enlisted into Zeon and having a mentorship with Kycilia. But they both throw all that out the window to pursue the aloof guy and whatever his dream was lol
I did find it interesting that they keep showing Nyaan working desperately for money but then when they finally show where she lives a few episodes ago, it’s actually really nice and clean and maybe even better looking than Machu’s house? I guess they don’t show exactly where the apartment is located, but I honestly expected her to live in a blown out garage or something, just barely scraping by.
Anyway, can’t believe the finale is literally the creators mashing their action figures together while shouting, “nuh uh mine is cooler.” It’ll be funny if they announce a season 2 after that anyway, and just go even more bonkers fanfic mode.
But also I don’t really have good media literacy when watching these shows so maybe I’m missing out on cool nuance or something
With one more ep left it has 1 last shot to set the tone but yeah, the show has veered in a slightly disappointing direction. I was hoping this was going to be more of its own thing and only use the OG Gundam as a spring board. I’m less interested in it paying so much reverence to the original. Because now this is going to heavily influence and contextualize any dialogue between the two stories in SRW appearances which is probably what alot of the nerds on staff want.
I was mostly ok with the contained setting on side 6 in this alternate What If line because life on sides in my experience has felt fairly ambiguous as a viewer outside of the child’s eye view in 0080. I was willing to chill with the Clan Battles mostly because they made a good toy commercial and gave you a little sports angle to bring character drama into it like with the Tri Stars and G(M)elgoog lady. For me personally the biggest victory I would’ve gotten was to show the real bullshit of a zabi victory and its effects on the people they claim to fight for and I sort of got that. In the model making space there are a few people a little to into zeon so this show would’ve been a nice stake to put in their face should the need arise.
As far as Lalah is concerned, the dramatic weight placed on her here is not lost on me. I can follow the threads of how pivotal her last moments were and having her in a stasis lock due to a strong wish is a strong dramatic thread to play with but still feels to meta and feels like a waste of this world they’ve built up or could build up for it to have its own identity in the Gundam Pantheon. I’m largely positive on GWitch. There are spots where I wish it was a 52 ep show especially in season 2 where it had to play it a little fast to make it to its conclusion but it managed to hit most of my narrative desires by that point. I wish it had more time to play with the Utena school bits a little longer.
Man this is a whole lot of squandered potential, imo. The refugees on Side 6 angle was interesting. The Pomeranians were interesting. The intra-Zeon intrigue was kinda interesting.
Machu is a classic Gundam protagonist in the real Tomino mold, which is intentional, but she’s really just not given enough.
All those neat things have utterly collapsed in the breakneck race to get to the point where the hardline destiny of First Gundam must assert itself. Boring! Who cares about fate?!
Episode 12 could do something to make this all feel like it was worth it, but I’m doubting it.