Gundam (In All Its Incarnations) Mk. II

[The Killer of Heroes]

I've watched all five G-Reco movies finally.

I think the movies are better than the show overall. The feature film format allows things to flow more smoothly, and I think I had much less trouble following the factional politics for the most part watching the movies over the last several days than I did following the TV series as it aired from late 2014 to early 2015 (Though I still think things get kinda overdone once the G-IT Lab guys come into the picture). However I have to say a lot of the other problems I remember having with the show still exist here- namely the series just not having a strong sense of drama in general (A lot of events that should be major just get kinda elided over, from Raraiya recovering from her amnesia to some major deaths in the ending battle and epilogue), and individual character motivations still not making much sense to me. Like I still don't get where the fuck exactly that Mask's absurd turbo hatred of "gradeskipper" Bellri is coming from (I mean thinking he's a privileged little shit is one thing, but "THE BLOOD OF DICTATORS RUNS IN YOUR VEINS!!!!" or whatever it is he says toward the end is fairly extreme), and that's one of our main antagonists. Manny is cute and all, but how she keeps going back and forth on whether she wants Mask and Bellri to be friends or for Mask to just kill the fuck out of him is also kinda whatever to me. And there's a lot of things like that throughout the story for multiple characters.

I wish I liked these more because the visuals were a strong point of the show to begin with and they're still good here. There clearly wasn't a lack of effort in putting these movies together compared to say the Turn A movies. I'm just still left fairly cold by the whole thing.

[Blockio]

Yeah, that was my fear for the movies as well; scene to scene, they looked a lot better then the show, but no amount offixing individual scenes can address structural flaws, which G Reco kinda has a lot of.

But I will say, the reshoot of the Photon Torpedo scene is terrifying on a visceral leve, that was SO GOOD

[The Killer of Heroes]

Yeah. The only real structural change I think they make is that they try to make Bellri come off as like less unintentionally psychopathic than he sometimes was in the TV series (Like in the show when he finds out that Aida is his sister, he goes on weird rampage in that one episode whereas in the movies he cries about it a bit and has a few conversations with others about it), but that arguably makes that Mask stuff I talked about make even less sense in the movies.

Idk. Maybe in 30 years somebody will do G-Reco: The Origin manga and third time will be the charm.

[Blockio]

Yeaa. You can really tell that G Reco exists primarily to show off the cool world that Tomino made rather than having a story it wants to tell; it almost feels like a sidestory to a main work that doesn't exist.
The world is definitely really cool, but the roadtrip of a plot does not actually match the story that is nominally going on

[The Killer of Heroes]

I think there is something of a story about dangers of remilitarization of Japan that Tomino is trying to get at (Which I guess makes the horrors of the Universal Century an allegory for World War II), but the road trip undercuts it a fair amount I think at least by time they go to Venus and we're not only so far removed from the main conflict around the Earth, but we get weird DieBuster-esque plot points about potentially moving the entire Earth to a different solar system and such that goes nowhere too.

There's just too much in the show. Like its hard not to compare this to another modern Gundam like Witch From Mercury and how much more focused that show is with a lot of the same ideas. People playing at war, economic inequality and privilege, horrible assholes from outer space etc.

[Blockio]

we're not only so far removed from the main conflict around the Earth, but we get weird DieBuster-esque plot points about potentially moving the entire Earth to a different solar system and such that goes nowhere too.

What the fuck, that was a plot point? I have precisely zero recollection of that ever being brought up in the TV cut (also the hell is this supposed to achieve in the first place???)

[The Killer of Heroes]

The Venus Globe people wanted to amass photon batteries and build one of their weird ring structures around the Earth so they could move it to a solar system with a younger star, as the Sun won't last forever.

More is made of it in the movies but its in the show too as one of those one-off dialogues, so I don't blame you for forgetting lol. It's another G-Reco thing that's talked about without actually being used in significant fashion. The Sun will explode eventually but its not like G-Reco makes much use of it being a galactic ticking time bomb.

[Blockio]

Oh right, that. On some level I get it, but at the same time, for a show allegedly about (among other things) why space elevators are a bad idea, it feels staggeringly out of touch to propose that as a sane option

[Blockio]

Finally sat down and watched CCA; did not expect to like it nearly as much as I did. Solid 7/10, plays to Tomino's strengths a lot more than most of his other work. Still wobbles whenever there's Deep Character Thoughts going on, but the low density of those make the whole rest a lot better.

[The Killer of Heroes]

I have mixed feelings on CCA because the animation is fantastic and I think Char's characterization here actually kinda works, but pretty much none of the other mains really work that well for me. Like I see what Tomino is going for with Quess and Hathaway and such but it doesn't really land for me. Even Amuro is in his least interesting incarnation here I think, compared to the proto-Shinji of 0079 and even Zeta to an extent.

Still a 7/10 is about what I'd give it too.

[Blockio]

Char being completely off his rocker tracks, yeah. Quess and Hathaway... well, they're stupid kids with too much self-importance, so while I hate both of them as people, they're pretty good characters. I do actually like Amuro, I think he's a pretty good depiction of someone in his position; competent, respected and a functional person, but very much not over it all and thinking that he has to make it all his responsibility.
But in a sense, my opinion on CCA is that it's a lot better a war movie than a character piece; the characters are fine, but that's not the aspect in which I think CCA really shines

[Dr. Nick]

My remarkably lukewarm Witch from Mercury take: there are just too many disparate show ideas in it, so it doesn't cohere into a satisfying whole. Which is a shame because there's some tremendously good character stuff amidst it all, and I loved how there were two completely separate antagonists both enacting their chessmaster plans at the same time, pulling the Asticassia kids in different directions. But consider what the show tries to juggle all at the same time:

- There's the cyberpunk story with corpo intrigue, class warfare and transhumanism
- And the show is doing a pastiche of sorts of Shakespeare's Tempest
- On top of which there's also a generic witch / fairytale layer, which one might think is just window dressing, until the ending happens, wherein the show also seems to tie into Universal Century style metaphysics
- On top of which there's the entire school life angle with its own social dynamics, and the school is in space, so it's also physically removed from all of the nasty business down on Earth
- Plus it's a yuri romance (albeit not a very bold one)

It's not incomprehensible like G-Reco, but all that is just too much everything for 25 episodes, especially with a named cast this big. If the show was longer, around 50 episodes or so like the older TV Gundams, maybe all of this could've worked within a more rigid arc structure (that's how Metal Armor Dragonar got away with its batshit Fist of the North Star / Shaolin temple antics), but I have my doubts. As it stands, G-Witch reminds me of Gundam Wing of all things. I've seen some very articulate anime essayists make the case that out of the whole franchise, Wing actually has one of the most unique and best thought-out overarching ideological conflicts. It just doesn't register when you're watching the damn things because the other elements of the show are in such a cacophonous disharmony, undermining what the story is trying to say. Whereas Wing is a slapdash mess, G-Witch is mostly just overstuffed, but both are less than the sum of their parts.

A thing that puzzled me about G-Witch's ending:

SPOILER: Show

I can understand Nika doing time because she likely wants to do some atoning, even if Miorine could easily just pay the right people off to bail her out (although 3 years seems like a lot for a self-imposed thing). But why would the powers to be ever let Prospera of all people out of prison? Big time terrorists don't usually get compassionate releases.

[Alaska Slim]

It's not incomprehensible like G-Reco, but all that is just too much everything for 25 episodes, especially with a named cast this big. If the show was longer, around 50 episodes or so like the older TV Gundams, maybe all of this could've worked within a more rigid arc structure (that's how Metal Armor Dragonar got away with its batshit Fist of the North Star / Shaolin temple antics), but I have my doubts. As it stands, G-Witch reminds me of Gundam Wing of all things. I've seen some very articulate anime essayists make the case that out of the whole franchise, Wing actually has one of the most unique and best thought-out overarching ideological conflicts.
[/spoiler]

My conflict is that Relena needed to die but didn't. She was insufferable as a stuck up rich girl. She was insufferable as a peace(craft)nik.

You had one job Heero. Fired in her direction 3 times, and missed. Worst assassin ever.

But also, didn't quite buy a popular movement arising trying to bring Monarchy back after most places in question already being democratized. In limited cases, that happens, sure (Serbia), but worldwide?