Well it's finally over. The last episode was kinda rushed, but did a good job of tying up the plot threads. It was pretty amusing that even though in the last part of the series they made it look like we were gonna go for the usual UNDERSTANDING ending at first because of Bellri's dialogue and him and Newtypes being involved, Mashner's death was pretty much a rejection of the concept of Newtypes solving everything, and in the end it turned out that Bellri and Aida's plan was actually to eliminate the warmongers among each of the factions leadership and only leave the sensible remainder who now that the war has been halted have a chance to look at each others cultures to improve relations since the isolation caused by SU-Cordism's taboos caused all the factions to see each other as savage aliens (Note how all the spacenoids throw insults at the Earthnoids all the time but then Kun Soon calmed down after witnessing Bell and his mother embracing each other). And then have Aida use her political skills and status as the heir of the Rayhuntons and as the daughter of Inspector Guissan to act as the intermediary/become world leader. The reveal that Flaminia was a little person also seemed to clarify that the mutations the G-IT gang was running from were probably because of either inbreeding in the Venus Globe population or maybe something about space radiation, and probably wasn't a side effect of however the Venus president managed to live for so long... unless it made them like elves in which case that's out the window.
G Reco had some of the best art and design of the entire franchise. The Mobile Weapons were incredibly unique, served as both a nice intermediary between UC and Turn A style designs, and did a good job of communicating just how freakishly advanced the Universal Century had become once it collapsed, to the point of being sufficiently advanced technology functionally. And the G-Self was a perfect example of having an overpowered main character mech done right. As strong and varied its functions were, the fact that the show wasn't about winning the conflict, and that Bellri would only bring out its various abilities as he needed to use them didn't make it feel like it was harming any of the tension. The backgrounds were beautiful (I actually use the shot in the epilogue of Manny and Mask as my desktop background now) and even the small stuff like furniture was unique and detailed. Also the particle effects, dear god the particle effects. They really made the fight scenes stand out soooo much, with how almost all other shows are content to use a simple glow effect for those kinds of details. Not to mention how they purposely went out of their way to attempt to emulate old 80s animation while using modern techniques. The character designs were great too, bringing back that nice body variance that a lot of modern shows don't seem to use as much. It was really cool how old school it was, to the point that Tomino said he spent the first couple weeks of working with the voice actors drilling the habits the modern anime industry had instilled in them out of them.
As much as some people don't like it, I absolutely loved this show. It had a rocky start, but grew into one of the things I looked forward to the most every week. Even though it had some pacing issues, something about it just felt so much more human than other anime I've seen, from the massive amount of detail in the backgrounds, usage of technology, and props, to the minor details of how the characters behaved. They're a lot more subtle than most modern characters (an unfortunately relevant example was how Noredo reacted to Bellri accidentally touching her butt in one of the early episodes by giving him a look and brushing his hand out of the way as opposed to the stereotypical anime reaction of freaking out and blushing), and I liked how everyone had hobbies and their actions had little quirks like how Kerbes had to stop mid conversation in one scene because his drinking straw was spinning around. Like something about them just felt incredibly human, like I guess in part because they were prone to acting strange since real people tend to be. Like just how they misinterpret eachother and make there decisions just felt that way. I genuinely think it's gonna get a better reception as time goes on and information starts to spread and people rewatch the show. After all the original Gundam and Turn A were both received horribly when they originally aired. Admittedly the show really could have benefited from just having at the least another 5 or so episodes, but this was the most they could do out of concerns about Tomino's health.
Over the series Bellri slowly grew out of living his life under the influence of those around him, and learned to take responsibilities for his actions instead of treating everything like a fun adventure. Aida was pretty troublesome at the start, but as the series went on it became clear that her true talents were in being a leader and not in fighting. Still a pity about the G-Arcane not living up to its full potential. Another pretty interesting thing was how Noredo completely subverted the traditional useless childhood friend Gundam character midway through by stealing the G-Lucifer and becoming it's gunner. It was pretty hilarious how Klim started out as a pretty cool guy, then went to looking like an idiotic arrogant grand stander, only to afterwards turn out to have been right all along. Interestingly his personality and actions actually seemed a lot more stereotypical Char like than Mask was, with his manipulation of Raraiya early on, and how out of all the surviving cast he was probably the most blood thirsty. I'm still not sure how to feel about how he casually attempted to have his father killed in the middle of the epilogue as punishment for war-mongering and trying to send him to his death to use as a martyr. Speaking of Chars Mask was an interesting case. I've seen a lot of people compare him to the stereotypical insane tumblr user, but I think he was suppose to be a more general symbol of a case of someone so consumed by past grudges that it distorts their worldview. It's left kind of vague whether he ever really considered Bellri his friend or if he was planning to just use him as a stepping stone as he was accused of in episode 2, but his anger at Bellri having everything given to him in life and his despair at what was basically Bellri's plot armor was really interesting. His patheticness and inability to catch up made him a neat subversion of the Char archetype, and ironically made him closer to the original Char in some ways more so than all the other Char clones. At the same time he was also one of the most successful having kept his girlfriend and managed to defeat the Gundam combat at the end.
Personally I really didn't have a problem with keeping up with the show's plot. It got weird at times, but I never felt lost. Like most of the answers are there, you just have to pay close attention to the background and make inferences, and also be more patient. Most of the factions motivations aren't really complicated, it's just that a lot of important information gets presented in what initially looks like throwaway lines. There was a lot of stuff which didn't make sense early on that didn't get explained until later in the show, as demonstrated by that incident where my explanations to Frumple got completely flipped on their heads by later events. Another case of things being explained later on would be how Cumpa/Piante's dialogue about Earthnoids early on made him out to be a spacenoid plant, but then later on when his social darwinist beliefs were mentioned, it served to clarify the form his beliefs took as that combined with his lines later in the show when the Amerian's tried to negotiate made it clear that he wasn't just trying to weed out those who couldn't fight to get the best tech, but actually had a hatred of inaction and believed those who refused to fight deserved to die. Admittedly it helped a lot if you had access to Tomino's interviews, but I really do think there wasn't that much missing. Watching this show made me think about exposition and pacing a lot, and while watching some shows I find myself thinking about how unnecessary some of the lines are. Particularly how a lot of anime tend to have people just repeat whats going on in reaction to what's clearly just been said or is happening on screen as they say it. Also the subs for this show sucked. They got the gist of things, but early on in the show they mistranslated some lines (i.e. one guy using kuntala as a slur to insult the cheerleaders got translated as calling them girls from kuntala, and when Bellri told Noredo she could sleep over it somehow became him telling her she should go home), and throughout it they tended to word things overly literally that caused them to make less sense or lose some of their meaning. Like when Mask got mad at Rockpie for calling Earthnoid history weak, apparently in the actual Japanese what happened was that he used a metaphor about them being unripe bean sprouts, with the implication that the Towasangans are the ones cultivating them. Hence Mask's outburst was actually partly about being compared to food because of his Kuntala pride. I suggest going back to the beginning and marathonning through the entire show if you were confused. From what I've heard it helps a ton.
It think part of what made it hard for people to keep up with the series was that it had an overall different message than the other Gundam shows. While it kept the whole anti-war aspect, it spun it in a different way due to being tied more to contemporary Japanese politics, as oppose to being yet another WWII in space. Tomino knows he's getting old, and so went really hard about his goal of creating something to teach the next generation. Hence why before the show started he made many statements that it was meant for the current generation of kids and was not for Gundam fans (He actually specifically said not to watch it and have your kids see it instead), and why the humor and stuff had a notable kid show influence. As such a lot of the shows themes were actually about him voicing his criticisms towards how the Japanese government handled the Fukushima disaster and cleanup, and also more directly criticizing recent debates in Japan about upgrading the JSDF into a proper military due to wanting to participate more on the world stage and help out allies in the War on Terror and such. As such one of the major themes in the show was about how after living in peace for so long all the factions trying to build up their militaries for glory and conquest didn't really understand the consequences of their actions. Like Raraiya said in the last episode they were adults playing with giant sized toys. Like I mentioned about Mashner earlier it also sort of rejected some of the franchise cliches and themes with how Newtypes pretty clearly exist in the RG Century, but don't really have any greater purpose, and space magic alone isn't enough to change human nature, as Mashner twisted the warnings Rockpie sent when he died for her to run into wanting to push forward which lead to her death. There was also how trying to solve things by moving into space just caused resentment due to the segregated populations, and after living in the colonies for many millenia mutations like in Venus Globe started to become a problem, and the Towasanga Colonies were having maintenance problems and massive amount of work had to be done to keep the infrastructure alive.
Tomino's reoccurring theme that the younger generation is exploited and ruined by the reigning adults and are the only ones capable of fixing the world really shined through in the ending, with the warmonging adults having all been killed while Aida and Klim become the new rulers of Ameria, and while Mask and some of the others who committed sins during the war are still alive, they're still young and are using this as a chance for a fresh start. And that subplot far in the back about Noredo studying politic science instead of going with her more tradition plan of becoming a nurse, something she's clearly sticking to with how she could be seen studying during the epilogue. The final moments also had a pretty blatant message to care for this planet and go see the world, with Bellri's trip to the still pristine Japan and seeing Mt. Fuji while the Crescent ship had went on a world tour between scenes. The fact that Tomino actually cameoed in that scene as the cart driver both in appearance and voice really hammered in how much he wants to teach the current generation of children. At the same time the show didn't feel preachy like some previous Gundams did, and the message permeates the story without actually being in your face.
On a more amusing note even though Tomino has understandably said he doesn't want to be known as Kill'em All Tomino any more, he still managed to have one of, if not the largest named character kill counts out all of the mecha shows I've seen in the past couple years. And it didn't feel gratuitously plot devicey or Grim Dark either.
It'd be great if Tomino turns out to still have enough in him to make a sequel to this show to clear things up a bit. Even though it the ending tied up the plot pretty cleanly, I still feel like there's so much of this setting that we have yet to see. He said he intends to keep producing as long as he's able to, and the show's reception has apparently actually been doing pretty decently in Japan as it went on. However he is pretty old, and seemed to have been going into this with the mindset that this is probably gonna be his swan song. Hopefully we'll get some extra footage in the inevitable compilation movies at the least.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3136841 times)