Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

Finally, the new Gundam is out! Time for another season of trashy plot twists, angsty pilots, and melodramatic death scenes. Gundam 00 opens in a war-torn Middle-eastern city, where the child Setsuna is waging a fruitless resistance against Mechwarrior-style walking tanks. When all hope is lost, a Gundam with sparkly exhaust wings snipes all the enemy mechs, and Setsuna falls in love with it at first sight. Fast forward many years later, and he’s joined a team of elite Gundam pilots in the mysterious organization “Celestial Being” to end all wars. Their first mission is to make a show of force to the AEU and Human Reform League by stopping both a terrorist attack and military tech demonstration, and then follow up with a public announcement of their identity and mission statement.

The four Gundam meisters are:

• Setsuna Seiei, who pilots the melee-focused Exia. Exia has the classic protagonist Gundam color scheme of a white base with a blue core and red/white accents. It features forearm shields and retracting blades as its primary armament.
• Lockon Stratos, who pilots the long-range Dynames. Dynames has a green-on-white color scheme, and uses a sniper rifle for precise elimination of targets.
• Allelujah Haptism, who has the most ridiculous name ever. He pilots the Kyrios, which is a Valkyrie-style transformable fighter with a tiger color scheme. This is probably my favorite mech design out of the four.
• Tieria Erde, who pilots the heavy-weapons Gundam Virtue. This mech looks like it needs to go on a diet, with balloon-style arms/legs/shoulders/head. On the other hand, it does have a massive cannon reminiscent of the Lohengrin in GSD.

Thus far, the plot has tread exceedingly familiar ground. I’m sure that leader of Celestial Being is secretly a megalomanic of some sort, and the pilots will have to turn on him or fight each other later on. Some lengthy and nonsensical exposition on the meaning of existence and the politics of peace, war, and human nature will undoubtedly be tossed in, followed by the death of several cameo characters. These minor characters will go on to trump the main characters in all Newtype polls and thus warrant further spotlight time in side stories or audio dramas.

Plot predictions aside, the first episode did show plenty of promise in other areas. I am glad that a new character designer was brought on board, as Hisashi Hirai’s style was seriously getting old. The producers also brought out the big guns for the animation in the first ep, as it featured some truly fantastic battles. Whether the quality will actually be maintained over the entire series is unknown. The first episode is always the best, since there’s no recycled footage. Needless to say, I wouldn’t be surprised if these same action shots were featured in later episodes, along with some lengthy flashbacks. Overall though, I’m feeling positive about this new Gundam series, since it seems to have a more serious tone than the over-the-top Gundam Seed/Gundam Seed Destiny.

Can’t wait till they make a new VS game out of it.