\For MSG, 08th MS Team and Stardust Memory, I'll just summarize what I wrote since for all of these I was actually making a post every five episodes or so elsewhere before giving an overall review. But since I can't do that now, I think just a mini-review will do.
Mobile Suit Gundam
really didn't like it. I'm told that what it suffered from most - pointless, repetitive fights every damned episodes - was "the norm" for mecha of that time and one way in which super robots effected it. But that doesn't change the fact there was so much action and a vast majority ofit was meaningless. Meanwhile I found none of the crew of the White Base interesting except Kai when he met Miharu. Bright also had his moments. But Amuro was unbearably whiny to me. He literally steals the Gundam because he overheard them talking mean about him. OOOOH! I think the real stars of the show were the Zeon characters - be they the Zabi family, Char or Ramba Ral. Dozle Zabi has to have my favorite death in any Gundam I've seen so far and Garma's was also great in how much it made me detest Char. The problem with all of these great characters is they aren't on-screen enough. The Zabi's are the real villains but they are in, what, ten episodes collectively? Maybe eleven or twelve Whenever they were around they stole the show but they just weren't around enough for my liking.
Verdict: The high points are really good. But they are so few and far between that I see little reason to ever watch it again.
The 08th MS Team
Fresh off the bland and unlikable White Base contingent, I was blown away by how much I loved almost everyone here. Shiro, Sanders, Karen, the little kid who kept writing his girlfrind - they were all so fun. I'm not the biggest fan of Shiro's and Aian's love story but it didn't detract from me enjoying the show. My favorite aspect of course was Kiki and her resistance friends. Episode 8, where everyone wants to avoid a battle but it just goes to hell because of an unlucky stream of events, shows the reality of war in a way MSG never managed. My only complaint about this is the final episode and I hear that is because the director died. That is a bummer.
Verdict: Very enjoyable, will watch again.
0083: Stardust Memory
Ooh boy... I did not like Kou, I kinda liked Gato, and I hated Nina. No one else stood out to me at all. I know a lot of people liked Cinna but I'm afraid reading her backstory on Gundam Wiki just didn't evoke much of an emotional response for me. She just came off as an evil woman to me while at least Gato had ideals. I will say this - "The Winner" is by far my favorite Gundam OP so far.
Verdict: Nina betraying everyone because she wants another taste of Gato's mobile suit/10.
And with those brief thoughts out of the way, I would like to repost my final thoughts on Zeta and SEED:
Zeta
Now I've finished Zeta and had some time to think, I'd like to just address my impressions of it. To start though, I hope you'll forgive me a moment of self-indulgence.
I've been looking for an enduring anime franchise I could get into for a while now. I wanted to find a series with a large fanbase and a lot of installments across TV and comics and video games. I love fiction because it's a way for me to connect with other people. I love posting on boards and discussing our various opinions and perhaps even arguing about them too. To this end and in search of a franchise I could fall in love with, I bought Neon Genesis Evangelion a few months back. I jumped right into the deep end of the pool too, buying the special volume sets with the insert booklets off ebay for $140. I was all ready to love the shit out of it and start buying the Rebuild movies and the various manga and the soundtracks. Then I actually watched NGE and it....was not very good. I don't know if I'd say I hated it but I was most definitely not blown away. I have no desire to ever watch it again save for one or two episodes.
So after that flop I kinda drifted until at last I remembered my saying I was starting Gundam. I've been saying this for years by this point so I figured it was high-time I actually did it. "Gundam could be that epic franchise I was searching for" were my thoughts. And so I watched tge MSG anime, 08th MS Team and Stardust Memory. I would say I enjoyed them for the most part (except 0083) but I was again disappointed. I'd say they were okay-to-good but most definitely not great. It looked like I had put my faith in the wrong franchise again.
And theN i watched Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. Hallelujah! My faith was rewarded!
I was warned it wasn't as great as a lot of people say. Would I say it was the best anime I've ever seen and it changed my life? Probably no to both but if it wasn't the best anime I've ever seen, it's still in the Top 10, maybe even Top 5. Whereas I was almost passed the point of caring by the end of every other Gundam series, and I just wanted them to finally be over with, I was sad to see Zeta finish. And not just because it's finish is sad.
Kamille had a rough start as a protagonist with his fits of anger and bitchiness but those really do subside fairly quickly. What's more, any bout of depression or angst he goes through doesn't out-stay its welcome. I think what I'd say about Kamille is that everything is in the right proportion; he isn't a jackass too much, he isn't moping too much, and often times when he is in one of his moods, he has every friggin' right to be. See: Emma slapping him and calling him over-emotional, to which he snarkily replies "this from someone who keeps slapping me."
The supporting cast of Zeta is so much better than any other Gundm series I have yet to see that it's kinda sad. Backing up Kamille are fantastic characters like Emma. She's probably the best female I've seen in a Gundam series. Like Kamille, everything is in the proper portion with her attitudes and moods. She has to be one of the most reasonable and level-headed and believable characters in the show. And while on the topic of Emma, Zeta had a lot of more minor supporting characters like Captain Henken who were really likable. His death was probably the most painful for me in the finale.
And of course I can't forget Char and Amuro. I've never seen characters rebound so fast. I disliked their MSG characterization quite a bit and yet they were both so much stronger in Zeta. I loved having both of them as mentors to Kamille but they were very good on their own as well. Amuro's PTSD was very believable and when he finally does get "back into the saddle" it's a raal hell yeah moment. Char meanwhile is so far removed from his evil shithead MSG personality that I can barely tell they are the same character. I'll get to that later on though.
And on the opposite side of things, someone mentioned that one of Zeta's strengths was its large cast of villains. This is absolute truth. They run the gambit from evil masterminds to just plain psychos to traumatized victims. I think every show like this should have a broad selection of antagonists to choose from. That way you can have the villain you love to hate, the villain you can feel sorry for, etc.. The villain I loved to hate was Paptimus Scirocco. Yazan was great for how batshit nuts he was but I loved the fact Scirocco oozed evil even when he did nothing for most of the show. I also liked the only time we see him break his perpetually cool demeanor was when Sarah died. Adds a nice bit of "maybe there's more to him" but I'll get to that later as well. On the sympathetic villain side of things, I loved Four. She and the other Cyber Newtypes took what they were trying to do with Lalah (from a storytelling perspective I mean) and actually executed it well this time around. Giving them a backstory of a sorts was probably the key to this, as well as letting them interact with the heroes more.
The English dub was...hm, I'd say good but maybe just stopping short of great. Kamille's VA's performance seems to be a very subjective thing and it kinda reminds me of Spike Spencer as Shinji Ikari. A lot of people really hated him and attribute the Western audiences general dislike for Shinji to his acting making Shinji sound too whiny. Personally I think Jonathan Lachlan-Stewart as Kamille was the star of the dub and a big reason I likd the character. Kamille had a large range of emotions and moods so he had to be on the ball and I think he was. The recast for Amuro was a helluva lot better than the original but I'm not sure if that's Brad Swaile's fault. I know a lot of the voice-cast of the MSG anime and they are good but almost no one seemed capable of turning in a good performance there. Other standouts include Jonathan Love as Scirocco and Lisa Christie as Emma. And while I don't consider it an amazing dub, it's still the best Gundam one I've heard. I thought maybe MS Team was better but you can't compare the two. This is one reason why I don't agree when people say Cowboy Bebop was the greatest dub EVAH. It was relatively short and had so few characters that you can't compare its dub to a long-running series with much larger casts. Same is true for Zeta to MS Team.
My thoughts on the final episode itself... Well Newtype stuff had becoming increasingly more blatant comic book superpowers instead of the little precog or increased empathy of before. Do I have a problem with Kamille gathering the consciousnesses of those who have died around him as a source of power to defeat Scirocco? Uh...not really, even though it took the power creep to a whole new level. Emma dying like that did irk me however. I do not think it was necessary. The abrupt ending with Kamille having his mind destroyed by Scirocco was very disconcerting too. I knew it was coming but leaving everything so open? Annoying.
Now...to criticism. Being a true fan of something means you acknowledge its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
I mentioned addressing Char and Scirocco later and now is the time. I've seen many people complain that his character - and more importantly how everyone else reacts to his character - is very bad writing. Now...I'm not sure how I feel about this. Does everyone on the AEUG looking at him as some sort of idol, especially those who fought against him back in the One Year War, make sense? I'm really not sure. I'm gonna guess the extent of his douchebaggery isn't well-known. As the viewers we know it all too well but my impression was that the characters only knew the romanticized account of a poor kid who had his father murdered and then spent his life trying to fight against the evil monsters who had done it. Together with this semi-fantastical account of his life, his very real charisma and intellect make him someone I can believe people would gather behind.
Now. Scirocco. He stayed in the background TOO long for my taste. Even if he didn't make his move for power any earlier, he should have been featured more prominently. And speaking of making his move...it's really not clear what he was after. He mentions in one of his first appearances that he believes a woman will rule the inevitable empire they create. He also later extols the greatness of having a female leader. All this while he draws in feeble, broken women to serve as his puppets. I'm really not sure what he was after.
Also you might have noticed I left off Jerid when assessing the bad guys. Jerid was an asshole but I'm not sure how much we were supposed to like or dislike him. He had very likable female companions like Lila and that Newtype girl and when they die he is shown to be distraught. So he's human. But then he goes around gassing colonies and attacking cities full of innocent people without blinking an eye. I just don't get him.
My final criticism is actually very minor to me but I can see why it would perhaps prevent others from liking Zeta or taking it seriously. That problem is that the philosophy or themes or whatever you want to call it underlying the conflict don't mke a lot of sense. Under all the very legitimate and physical reasons for battling there is a message of how being in space and being on Earth have resulted in two irreconcilable groups of humanity. I'm reminded of one part of 0083 that stood out to me because of how absurd it was. Kou has these books to learn about picking up Nina and one of them had a title like "Learning About Spacenoid Women." My immediate thought then was "....how the hell is she any different from other women?" And so the same applies to the two warring groups in Zeta. I just don't really buy into being in space has somehow changed people that much that they feel they are a whole different group from those who live on a planet.
And so those are my thoughts as best as I can sum them up at the moment. Knowing me, a lot of other stuff will come back after I post this and I'll be like "I should have said this, this and this!" But for now, I will conclude with saying I loved Zeta Gundam and if any future Gundam series I watch even comes close to it, I will be more than satisfied.
SEED
And Destiny...I'm just gonna pretend I didn't watch that."But the real world isn't as kind as the one in pop songs."
That....that has to be one of the best lines ever in a Gundam series.
And so my trek through Gundam SEED comes to an end. Before I talk about the anime as a whole, I wanna focus just on the last ten episodes.
Things started off pretty rough, I will admit. The first two or three episodes were filled with entirely too much Lacus. Her relentless bullshit made me think of two things:
1. The "1000 Words" Concert in Final Fantasy X-2. Only this is the entirely wrong setting for that and Lacus isn't essentially The Messiah like Yuna was. I could believe people gave Yuna's words weight because she saved them from a thousand years of misery. Lacus by contrast made me suffer through a thousand years of misery in a few days.
2. Frasier is one of my favorite sitcoms ever and there was a quote from the good doctor himself in the Honey Snow episode I believe. After being exposed to such saccharine levels of idealism he said something like "suddenly I yearned for the worldly cynicism of Barney the Dinosaur." I think that sums up my feelings on Lacus and everything she said.
But I needn't have feared. Everything got so much better after that. Rau hamming it up was perfection, even if that whole clone thing is really stupid and unnecessary. Do they continue that plotline in Destiny? i just see no purpose at all for it beyond explaining why he's unstable. It really added nothing at all to the actual plot of the show. And yet Rau's character almost makes me forget about all those little details.
I will say without fear of having mud slung at me that I think Episode 49 of SEED is one of my favorite episodes in all of Gundam so far. Hell, it reminds me a lot of Zeta's episode 49 which was also amazing. The actual climax and all of episode 50 really suffered because of how much I loved 49.
Now...to the show as a whole.
1. Kira Yamato. The UC fans/SEED haters I used to mostly talk to about Gundam dragged his name down to the lowest levels and I just don't see it. They made him sound like the second coming of Shinji Ikari in terms of angst and I think one of those crosover games even supposedly had Shinji telling Kira to man up? The dude really wasn't that bad at all in...any way as far as I'm concerned. I feel no strong love or hatred for him. he went through the "I hate killing people" stuff like Amuro and Kamille and then he got a backbone in last 15 or so episodes. (although I did notice how he kinda proved Rau right when he shouted "DIEE!!!" at him when the latter killed Fllay....)
2.Speaking of Fllay....her character certainly did not end up anywhere near my expectations. I had this final post of mine sort of planned out way back at the beginning where I'd say people are wrong for calling her "believable" because I don't think it's believable that a grief-stricken teenage girl can become some ultra-committed manipulative genius with extermination on her mind. But she became wishy-washy on that sort of fast and I think that is believable. Her subsequent time with Rau though was pretty flimsy bullshit as far as I'm concerned. She thought he was her dad? I don't think anything new had happened to her to cause this massive detachment with reality.
3. Now the best female character was Natarle. Her story arc was very easy for me to swallow and she rose to prominence that I never once expected. Her death, coming on the heels of La Flaga's, and happening simultaneously with Azrael's, was perfect. i got a little choked up just because the bastard kept shooting her so many times that when she finally said "fire!" you could tell how much agony she was in.
4. Sadly every other woman sucked or was unremarkable. Lacus all on her own nearly sinks the entire show, let alone the women roster. Our captain never did anything particularly memorable, Kira's friend's most noteworthy action was trying to kill a prisoner, and Cagalli...man, Cagalli. Why is she popular at all? How can Destiny ruin her? She didn't do anything. She tried to do stuff I guess, and she had some gumption, but in the end she was utterly unremarkable. In the end only Natarle can be compared to Emma in greatness.
5.SEED focused a lot more on heavy, personal drama than MSG did, but I'm not sure how effective it was in actually making me like any of the Archangel's crew. I mean who is gonna say their favorit epart of SEED was Kuzzey or Sai? The ones who stole the show were La Flaga and later Natarle, and Kira on occasion, and by and large they were not great because of relationship melodrama.
6.In the end I can see why people say this is more "shounen" than previous Gundams. I felt like I was watching Naruto with Kira and Rau debating Idealism vs. Cynicism. The problem is that, yes, previous Gundam series had their heroes lamenting how "we can't understand each other." But there is a time and a place for that kind of thing and having Lacus and everyone else shout about LOVE AND PEACE in the middle of a battle is just ridiculous. Even Vash the Stampede knew when it was time to clam up and get down to business.
7. But man...SEED's English dub. Best dub I've heard in a Gundam so far and it's not even close. Can't say the same for the show itself though as I still prefer Zeta by a good margin. I'll take SEED over the original anime because I kinda hated it. But do I have any desire to re-watch SEED any time soon? Not really. I am ready to move onto Destiny and hopefully it won't be as terrible as everyone says.
Now I have a question for you all - who is your favorite "Char Clone?" Rau was very good and I'm eager to see if any future CC's come close. The most popular ones seem to be Rau and Zechs.
So over the course of February i watched about 200+ episodes of Gundam and my ranking goes:
The Best-
Zeta
The Great-
High points of MSG
SEED
The Good-
08th MS Team
The Okay-
Most of MSG
The Bad-
Stardust Memory
Destiny
Of these I only really want to re-watch Zeta or own the DVDs. Sadly that's a pain but it's worth it once I have te cash.
So there ya go. I hope you can forgive me for this self-indulgent post and I am very eager to hear all your thoughts on...well, my thoughts. I also look forward to posting my thoughts on 00 and Wing as I go through them.