Episode 18, "Graduation Ceremony Battle"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: Time passes and Asemu is to graduate. On the day of graduation, he reveals his plan to join the military after the break. Military police interrupt the ceremony and arrest Zeheart. Zeheart’s contact decoys the soldiers. He attacks the soldiers until Zeheart can get to his mobile suit. In his cockpit he reflects on the times he’s had with Asemu and his friends. Back at the school, Asemu gets a call from Vargas, who has sent the trailer with the Gundam. The Gundam comes in and fights Zeheart’s MS. Asemu is again pinned down by Zeheart, who reveals that he’d been fighting him. Romary sees this. Zeheart retreats. Comments: Watching this episode, it feels like I missed five or six episodes. Asemu and Zeheart are dear friends with photos of moments of their friendship, Romary seems closer to them, and everyone is graduating. There are two trains of thought on this, to me. One is, wait a minute, they just skipped ahead of character development? Shouldn’t we see some of those moments? They shorcut the way there with those photos, so that’s actually somewhat clever, but it doesn’t feel like Zeheart’s betrayal of Asemu’s trust is any big deal, because they’ve been friends for two episodes. The other thought is, well, who wants to wait around? Obviously we’re trying to move forward to Asemu joining the military and fighting the Veigans more directly. If we’re just sitting around watching Asemu and Zeheart hanging out, it’s liable to get very boring. So in this way, the time skip is no big offender. There’s a lot of story to get to, after all, we can’t be sitting on our hands waiting for them to become good friends. However, what about a compromise, Sunrise? You could have given it at least another episode for the relationship between Asemu and Zeheart to cement. Instead, this sudden skip ahead has decided character development in a very tricky way that removes any gravity a betrayal will have. We don’t really feel for Asemu because we already knew Zeheart was going to betray him and it didn’t have time to really build up. It was a decent episode, I guess, but I don’t know, I don’t really like some of the choices they made. Overall Score: 3.5 out of 5gundam
Gundam AGE Episode 17 Review
Episode 17, "Friendship, Love, and Mobile Suits"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: Asemu keeps secret that he piloted the Gundam. Zeheart is told that the Gundam is likely hidden somewhere at the Asuno residence and joins the mobile suit club with Asemu and his friends. The four prepare for a MS tournament. Asemu invites the team to his house to get information on mobile suits. Zeheart uses this opportunity to look around for the Gundam, finally finding it in the stable. Later at the MS tournament, Asemu in his club MS battles other competitors, winning several bouts. However, Zeheart disappears. A Veigan MS is activated at the Asuno residence and Vargas alerts Asemu. Asemu speeds back home and gets in the Gundam. Zeheart moves in to support his superior, but Vargas activates a smog field which Asemu uses as cover to destroy one of the MS. However, Zeheart pins the Gundam down. The arrival of Romary allows Asemu to get free and Federation MS arrive. Zeheart retreats. The Gundam is moved to a Federation facility. Comments: I like the mobile suit competition in this episode and wish there was more of it (maybe making this a two-parter would have worked). Especially the part about Asemu wanting to impress his father by winning. I imagine that Flit could be a bit difficult to impress, since he already built the Gundam and was fighting the Veigans/UE well before he was Asemu’s age. Asemu is only barely able to build a small MS with his friends. He might not have even done as well as he did in the competition had it not been for Zeheart. I remember that in Zeta Gundam, Kamille Bidan was well-known for being a builder of petit MS. The episode is somewhat a repeat of the previous, only this time Zeheart was in battle, too, and was able to pin down the Gundam. Actually, even before then Asemu was having slightly more difficulty with Zeheart’s contact. Luckily for him the Federation’s mobile suits arrived. But who knows? Maybe he would have been able to recover on his own. Based on what I saw in the previous episode, Asemu can really hold his own. Is it just me or does Vargas seem a lot more helpful in this part of the show than in the previous one? That smog field was a good idea. Overall Score: 3.5 out of 5Gundam AGE Episode 16 Review
Episode 16, "The Gundam in the Stable"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: Many years have passed, and Flit Asuno is an adult and a Federation commander, still vowing to fight and destroy the Veigans. His son, 17 year old Asemu Asuno, is in a mobile suit club at school with his friends Shawee and Macil. On his birthday, his family, including Emily (mother) and Unoa (sister), gather to celebrate. Flit passes the key to the Gundam AGE to his son. A new transfer student, Zeheart Galette, joins Asemu’s school. One day while working on a mobile suit, Asemu and his friends hear the evacuation alarm and see that the Veigan are attacking the colony. He discovers that his father had been hiding the Gundam for such an occasion, and decides to pilot it. Asemu is able to destroy the enemy mobile suits. Comments: This first episode of the new section of Gundam AGE gets off on the right foot. Flit has become a bit of a hardened man, swearing unending vengeance against the Veigans, still not even considering them human beings. His adjunct makes a note of this when we first see him, now rocking a mustache and beard. He doesn’t seem particularly close to Emily, who is now his wife. I wonder if their marriage was just one of convenience. Their children appear to be well-loved, at least, but Flit has instilled in them his own outlook and wants Asemu to be a soldier so he can carry out his mission in life. Asemu, for the most part, seems pretty on the ball. He has an interest in mobile suits, but he also has somewhat a social life, even if it’s mostly with his MS-loving friends. He seems perfectly capable of jumping into action when necessary, showing little or no hesitation. He even pulls off some cool moves in the Gundam in his first time piloting it. I’m guessing his love interest is Romary (guessing? It’s blatant!). Zeheart shares the last name "Galette" with Desil and it’s not shocking when we see he’s working with the Veigans. My question is, will he be an enemy or ally of Asemu? I can envision them becoming friends, but not quite knowing what each other are up to. I can also see Asemu sympathizing with the plight of the Veigans through Zeheart while Flit is angered that his son is "siding with the enemy". These are just guesses I’m making based on years of anime watching, though. Anyway, so far, so good! This show has been on a roll lately! Overall Score:4 out of 5
ANIME TOP TEN (LIST #1) – #4: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985)
Director(s): Yoshiyuki Tomino
Script: Akinori Endo, Hiroshi Ohnogi, Miho Maruo, Minoru Onoya, Tomoko Kawasaki, Yasushi Hirano, Yumiko Suzuki
Music: Shigeaki Saegusa
Zeta Gundam my favorite Gundam– no, favorite mecha anime- of all time. Why, you ask? Well, first of all, it outclasses the original series in quality of storytelling and concepts. You get the feeling you’re watching a real, fleshed out tragedy. No Gundam title does as good a job as Zeta does in showing how truly desperate people are in a war situation. All of the characters lash out to fulfill a sense of helplessness or to control the world around them through others’ helplessness. This means the characters are all predators or prey. In a swirl of desperate madness, the characters play outo a tragedy that claims lives and chews dreams, and spits the characters out broken, flawed, but intensely interesting. The characters are tempered in raw desperation, raw despair, which makes some of them heroes and some of them monsters. Now, I know there are flaws. Some awkward, unnatural dialogue, characters who act irrationally with little reason to, plot elements that seem to crop up at inopportune times. But I think the pluses far outweigh the minuses. In the end, you understand the tremendous price to be paid for a better future.
ANIME TOP TEN (LIST #1) – #5: Mobile Suit Gundam (1979)
Director(s): Yoshiyuki Tomino Script: Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, Kenichi Matsuzaki, Yoshihisa Araki, Yu Yamamoto Music: Takeo Watanabe, Yuji Matsuyama Like Space Battleship Yamato, Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam didn’t fare so well in the ratings at first. It was during the second run that it garnered the great popularity that the franchise enjoys today. In some ways, it’s not particularly surprising that it didn’t do all that well at first. It’s animation is horrible and art is inconsistant. However, despite their simplicity, the characters are all charismatic and have a presence of spirit that separate this series from many of its younger bretheren. An Amuro Ray (Tohru Furuya) or a Char Aznable (Shuichi Ikeda) comes onto the screen with vigor and creates a lasting impression without having to go overboard. There are little moments of humanity that mark this drama about a war, like soldiers helping a civillian try to find her hometown, or a young spy hugging her siblings before going off for a mission. There’s a lot of character to the show, which shows its age easily, but just as well its heart. The movie trilogy probably handled the Newtype element better, however.
Gundam AGE Episode 15 Review
Episode 15, "Those Tears Fall In Space"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: Grodek’s team infiltrates Ambat. Yark Dole pilots a giant mobile armor called the Mucell. Flit, in the Gundam, encounters it on the way to the base’s core. With Woolf’s help, Flit is able to destroy the mobile armor, but Dole escapes. Flit gives chase, catching up with him in the control room where Grodek and the others are. Grodek reveals that Yark Dole led the UE into the colony his (Grodek’s) family were in, despite it being a peaceful colony without a Federation base. Grodek wants to kill Dole for revenge. Dole reveals that he and his comrades were part of the Federation’s Mars colony project, a failure that claimed the lives of many of its participants, due to a Mars-born disease. The remaining colonists were abandoned by the Federation. They formed their own nation, calling themselves Veigans. Flit threatens to shoot Yark Dole, but Grodek does it before he can. However, before he dies, Dole activates the base’s self-destruct mode. The Diva crew escape the explosion. Later, Grodek is arrested and imprisoned by the Federation. Comments: Though it was short, I thought the fight with the Mucell was one of the better combat scenes in the series thus far. I especially liked the part at the base’s core. It’s too bad Yark Dole did almost nothing aside from that in the whole episode. Even self-destructing the base was just doing what the Diva crew were trying to do to begin with. Flit was pretty badass in this episode. He easily destroys all the UE MS in the core, destroys the Mucell, and nearly guns down Yark. His chase after him felt a lot like the end of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, when Amuro and Char were fighting it out without mobile suits. He probably really would have shot Dole, too, if Grodek hadn’t done so first. When Flit is angry he’s a pretty interesting character. I think we’ll see in the next "generation" of the show, though, that he’s still damaged from what happened to Yurin. Amuro Ray never fully got over what happened to Lalah, after all. It makes me feel bad for Emily. Obviously the next generation main character is her and Flit’s son, so she ends up with him, but it seems like he overhwhelmingly loves Yurin and is completely devestated by her death, even after the UE’s defeat. So Emily’s doomed to forever being Flit’s silver medal. I feel bad for her. Finally, it’s revealed who the UE are. I actually quite like where they went with it. The UE, the Veigans (vegans? Do they have vegan psychic powers like in Scott Pilgrim?) are the survivors of the Mars colonies disaster. It’s no wonder that the Federation was trying to cover it all up, pretending there were no survivors. However, don’t you think they took denying it a little too far by not even going after the UE, whose mobile suits were killing innocent civillians? The Federation must be awfully corrupt to ignore the UE problem just because they would look bad if it got out who they were. It looks even worse to let them go on killing people. What was with Grodek telling the Blue Desil that his life will be tragic? Thanks for rubbing in the fact you killed his father, asshole. Anyway, the first part of the series is over, and I have to admit the past few episodes have finally made this show worth watching. However, I get this sinking feeling that it will take just as long for the second part to get going. Let’s hope I’m wrong. Overall Score:4.5 out of 5
Gundam AGE Episode 14 Review
Episode 14, "A Flash of Sorrow"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: The battle at Ambat continues. The Diva begins to take on damage. Flit is attacked by Desil in his black MS. Suddenly a pink MS interrupts them. Yurin has been physically forced to pilot it, with her unable to break free. Desil struggles to fight two mobile suits. As Desil closes in for the kill, Yurin’s MS gets between them and her MS is impaled. Her MS explodes. Enraged, Flit attacks Desil’s mobile suit with ferocity, disabling it. Flit changes the Gundam parts from Spallow to Titus and charges the enemy base, opening a hanger door. The Diva parks in the hanger and the crew arm themselves for close combat. Comments: Yurin dies? Huge shock! Never saw that coming. Actually, aside from the predictability, Yurin’s death was handled pretty well. It was interesting that the MS she was in was basically just using her and she was little more than a battery for it as it worked via X-Rounder resonance. This way not only is she forced to work for the enemy, but she’s physically forced to. Though if this was the case, why couldn’t her MS simply be remote controlled via Desil’s own MS? Or does it work better with an additional X-Rounder? Anyway, the vision of Flit and Yurin interacting in the woods just before her MS explodes was a little touching, to be honest. So I guess at the last moment she was able to take control of her MS? It’s not quite clear. I’m trying to decide which 0079 battle this is more like, Solomon or A Bao Qu. On the one hand, by the end of the episode, a new secret weapon that looks like the Big Zam is being activated. On the other, this feels more final than Solomon and the Diva crew is about to engage in close combat with guns, much like A Bao Qu. It’s probably a little of both, because I’m guessing fighting the new MS/MA (?) will be a significant portion of the next episode. Is the pilot the guy in the mask, unmasked? Who’s the blue-haired kid that looks a bit like Desil? The action was pretty good in this episode, especially when Flit became enraged at Yurin’s death and totally dominated Desil’s black MS. If the next episode can continue that level of awesomeness, this show might just turn around after all. Overall Score:4.5 out of 5
Gundam AGE Episode 13 Review
Episode 13, "Space Fortress Ambat"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: With the Diva armed with a AGE System-created beam weapon, the crew prepares for battle. Grodek commands the fleet from the bridge. The mobile suit forces launch. The fleet approaches Ambat at fires, but at first there’s no response. Suddenly, a massive ship emerges from behind a forcefield. The Diva transforms into more of a battleship. Combat ensues, but the UE outnumber the rebels. Flit draws the enemy towards himself and takes out many of them. The Diva nears the base and fires it’s beam weapon at the ship, which is heavily damaged. Ract tries to sacrifice himself to stop the remaining part, but before he can, other friendly forces arrive to assist them. Comments: Wow, this was an excellent episode! First of all, let me get this out of the way: what the hell is up with everyone’s normal suit? The Diva crew dress like they’re in their pajamas. The Zalam normal suits look like Zakus. The Euba MS normal suits are probably the best looking. It’s hard to take the Diva crew seriously with such ridiculous suits. Get some normal normal suits, guys! This isn’t a sleepover. Speaking of the Diva (and we’re getting to the good parts now), it’s transformation is pretty cool. It’s transformed state looks like the Albion from Gundam 0083. Before, it looked a bit like the Ptolemaios from Gundam 00. Considering how predictable this show has been, I was really pleasantly surprised by a the cliche-avoiding scene in this episode where Ract tries a suicide run but is stopped by Flit. Ract is unable to make himself a human missile like Don Boyage. The little talking-to he gets from Flit is a great moment. It feels like the kind of thing you’d see in FMA (though in FMA, it would be a big speech about not throwing your life away). Emily’s really got her shit together now. She’s in full support of Flit’s decision to continue fighting in the Gundam. For a while, I thought she was going to go crazy or something. There was some good action in this episode. I especially enjoyed when Flit drew a bunch of UE suits to himself, and then took them all out himself. That was pretty badass, especially the way he did it. It’s probably the best action scene in the show thus far. This episode was a lot more compelling than the show has been overall. I only hope the episodes that follow can live up to it. Overall Score:4.5 out of 5
Gundam AGE Episode 12 Review
Episode 12, "The Rebels Set Sail"
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: The Diva prepares to depart from Minsry. Federation forces intercept them as they leave. Reasoning with them fails and Grodek refuses to surrender. Zalam and Euba ships come to the Diva’s defense. The stalemate is broken when UE appear and attack everyone. Flit, Woolf, and Largan attack the UE in their mobile suits. The Diva is allowed to pass by the Federation ships to fire at the UE. The Federation ship then fires its own weapons at the UE, causing them to retreat. The Diva is allowed to continue on its way. Later, Grodek surmises that Flit could be a "X-Rounder", a person with extrasensory skills. Back at Minsry, Desil and the cloaked men threaten Yurin.
Gundam AGE Episode 11 Review
Episode 11, " Reunion at Minsry"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: The Diva ports at the colony of Minsry to prepare for the last battle with the UE. Flit, Grodek, Woolf, and the Euba leader head for the Birmings mansion. On the way there, Flit hears something and runs after. He discovers that it’s Yurin, the girl he met at Nora. Alzack Birmings, a wealthy friend of Don Boyage, tells him he will support Grodek’s plan. Alzack turns out to be Yurin’s adoptive father. As the team prepares for the mission, Flit spends time with Yurin. Flit promises to return after the fighting is over. On the way back to the Diva, a boat carrying Federation soldiers and several Federation mobile suits block their path and arrest Grodek. Flit uses the Gundam to disable the Federation MS. Grodek is rescued. Comments: A whole lot of nothing happens in this episode. It felt more like half an episode. You could easily cut half of what happened in this episode and not have lost anything important. Far from being relaxing, it was merely boring. If it weren’t for all the beautiful scenery, I’d say it was a total waste of my (oh so precious) time. First, what’s with all these guys with ridiculous hairstyles? Birmings looks like he stepped out of Rose of Versailles. The Euba guy looks like he could be Chara Soon’s brother. I know anime hairstyles are weird on principal, but there are plenty of characters with more ordinary hair and then there are the anomolies. I hate to sound like my mother, but dem Chinese cartoon characters have stupid, stupid hair. Second, wow, could Yurin be sending up any more death flags? Sudden relationship with a shy girl with a tragic past. Spending time enjoying each other’s company to a musical montage. Flit making a promise to her to return after the fighting. Just have a piece of the colony fall on her already. I know me some Gundam, and my Gundam instinct is telling me this girl’s as good as dead. It’s almost stupid if she doesn’t die. It is interesting, though, that the AGE system is being used to upgrade the Diva. I’d like to see what sort of mechanical monster that creates out of it. Another interesting tidbit is Grodek saying that the Federation is covering up who the UE really are. The Federation knows but isn’t saying? What kind of retarded Federation is this? This is Gundam 0083-level Feddie retardation. Do you realize I actually wrote a freaking paragraph on hair? On hair. That’s how little this episode had going for it. I had to write a paragraph on the hair. Overall Score:3.5 out of 5