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Reviews
Turn-A Gundam (1999)
Gundam + Slice of Life
This is a really weird series. A lot of people love it so there's clearly something there but it's never click with me. I was only able to stomach half of it as a teenager and I returned a decade later to rewatch the whole thing and it still never clicked with me until the very end. This is arguably not a series aimed at longtime Gundam fans and instead offers something radically different.
Instead of being an action war show, Turn-A blends mecha with slice-of-life and a heavy dose of politics and royalty in a more steam-punk, historical fiction setting. The closest comparison I could make would be the more recent Violet Evergarden (which I actually liked). One episode has them participating in a royal ball while another has them swimming with dolphins. Exciting stuff! It eventually starts to take itself seriously but it takes a very very long time and is even more out of place in this franchise than ZZ and G-Gundam. The characters are really tropey and 1-dimensional as well and I found them all impossible to relate to or care about. I especially hate Loran and Sochie, as they never evolve over the series, with the jarring ending concretely saying that they never changed.
Some other notes. From a continuity perspective, you may know that Turn-A attempts to connect the Gundam metaverse into one timeline but it doesn't do much with this idea and I wouldn't recommend watching for this aspect. Also, the one thing I'll unflinchingly praise is it is that Yoko Kanno's soundtrack is predictably incredible.
Kidou Senshi Gundam: Tekketsu no Orphans (2015)
Good But Uneven Gundam Series
I've seen almost every main Gundam series and this is one of the better series but it only had me hooked and bingeing at a couple moments.
It follows a bunch of borderline-slave teenagers that take control of the mercenary group they work at and make it their own, calling it "Tekkadan." It's a gritty boots-on-the-ground war show and a great Gundam premise that worked for me. However, this is only half the show. The other half focuses on the aristocrats, politicians, and powerful gangsters that are pulling the strings of all the military factions, and heavily reminded me of Gundam Wing, Zechs and Treize in particular. This aspect of the show is mostly in the background until the end of S1 but then weirdly becomes the main focus in S2, to the point that I felt Tekkadan became the B-plot. It was a weird transition but I was mostly on board.
The show is overall pretty entertaining and consistent but I do have some issues. Season 1 is definitely better, with a more focused space-journey story that mirrors all the white-base style Gundam series. Season 2, while still good, is comprised of ~4 episode arcs that vary in quality, with the first 2 arcs feeling like detours. Worse, I really dislike this show's ending. Some people like it but it's clearly unsatisfying on purpose and trying to do something above its pay-grade. I think this ending could work in a smarter, more nuanced show but IBO just didn't stick the landing for me. I don't want to spoil it but it really baffled me and came out of nowhere. I think they should have gone with the more predictable, satisfying ending and I knocked off an entire point because of it.
Other than that, the tone never really clicked with me. It's a very grim premise of having child soldiers but I rarely felt it in the show's tone, compared to something like Zeta or 0080. You'll see many describe this as a more serious, mature, Gundam and I just don't agree with that. It's generally a bright and happy show, which didn't mesh with the premise. Occasionally, the protagonist will kill someone in cold blood or someone on their team will die but these instances are very spread out and the deaths are overly telegraphed. To put it another way, it felt more like a Yakuza story than a somber war story about orphans. The generic, heroic, orchestral music does nothing to add emotional weight as well, and is probably a big part of my issue with the tone.
Lastly, the fan service felt overkill to me, as it does with many modern anime. Almost every female character is over-sexualized, the main 2 females are both in love with the Gundam pilot, and the "16 year old" moe character looks like she's 10. The second ship they team up with is a full-blown harem, with a captain that has 10 wives who never put more than a bikini on. It's serious overkill, that again chips away at any serious, mature tone this show could have had.
I liked IBO but I didn't love it, even in S1. It was all starting to come together for me in S2 but Sunrise threw it all in the garbage in the last few episodes. I'm trying to not write the whole show off based on the ending, but in truth, I never felt like it excelled at being anything but a good action show anyway.
Gundam G No Reconguista (2014)
Convoluted Unengaging Mess
This show is a mess
With everyone crying that the plot makes no sense and even its creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino, giving it "15 points out of 100," I approached with caution. While some things bugged me at first, I pressed on, telling myself, 'It's not that bad, Turn-A was worse.' Eventually, however, I caved in about 2/3 of the way through. This is the worst Tomino Gundam by a mile. While the animation, music, mechs, etc are all great, this series fails so hard on story and characters that it simply isn't worth watching.
As many have pointed out, this series is simply too complicated. There are so many countries, factions, ships, mechs, and characters that it quickly becomes incoherent. And it's not that the story is impossible to understand, it's actually pretty simple when you boil it down. Rather, it's that nothing has any flow or purpose to it. Reconguista is so obsessed with its own military/sci-fi minutiae that there's generally only a minute or two per episode left over for story and characters. Anyway, the show basically amounts to a dogpile war where 4 separate countries are all at war with each other for control of earth. They're constantly allying and betraying one another, while trying to obtain the most powerful weapons. If the original Gundam was a World War 2 metaphor, then Reconguista would definitely parallel World War 1, with all-out war escalating in the face of rapidly evolving military technology. That's actually a decent premise for a Gundam show, but it's handled so poorly that I never felt invested in anything.
In the middle of this conflict is a typical White-Base-type space ship that houses most of the protagonists. While the different countries have clear motivations, pretty much everyone on this main ship has no motivation for anything they do. They're on a happy-go- lucky space adventure - they go wherever they please and join whatever fights they please. It also steadily pulls characters from all sides of the war onto this ship, with little justification. Our main protagonist, for example, joins this group of pirates and starts FIGHTING HIS OWN PEOPLE because
. He has a crush on one of their pilots? I think? Bell's female friend Noredo also joins the pirates because
? And the pirates let an enemy civilian on their ship because
? What I'm getting at here is that nothing is justified in this show. Things just happen with little purpose or consequence, all the way to the end. The biggest facepalm to me was a trip they take to a space station toward the end of the show. This 3 or 4 episode arc served no purpose other than to introduce one more faction to the already over-complicated dogpile war. One of the protagonists just wanted to go there so they went, and once they got there, they immediately came right back! WHY? There's not even any resolution at the end. There's one final battle and then the main character bails on everyone and climbs Mt. Fuji for no reason at all. I'd say spoiler warning but it was so random and unsatisfying that I don't even care.
Sadly, the characters in this show are about as awful as the story. Tomino seems to have airlifted in the main 3 characters from Turn-A Gundam, his last Gundam series which I also hated
(why do I keep watching these?). Bell, the main protagonist, is relentlessly positive. He keeps smiling and follows the story wherever it takes him, just like Loran in Turn A. It's impossible to get invested in a character like this because he, himself, is not even invested in anything that's going on. Even worse, his female friend Noredo spends the entire series whining and nagging, like Sochie in Turn A. That's her entire character! She just whines and nags, contributing nothing. Because y'know
that's what women do, they whine and nag *EYEROLL* (that was sarcasm if that wasn't clear – this show's portrayal of women is so terrible in many other ways
). The final character, Aida, is stuck up and unappreciative of Bell, but he never stops following her around like a puppy dog
bleh. Aside from those 3 characters, the other 50-or-so characters get hardly any characterization at all thanks to this being an over-stuffed mess.
I could compliment the animation, mech fights, or soundtrack but it would be a waste of both of our time. This show sucks, even if you're a die-hard Tomino fan. Sure, it's technically part of UC Gundam but nothing of importance happens in this show and it generally feels like it was written by a 5 year old. There are many many better Gundam series than this. Do yourself a favor and watch any of them instead of Reconguista in G.