Category: Mecha

Zeta Gundam, Punching people in the face = Saying hello.

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When it was announced that Yoshiyuki Tomino was coming to NYAF Narutaki and I jumped for joy, it was without a doubt a dream come true. While it was fantastic news it also meant we had to radically change our viewing schedule to accommodate watching one of Tomino’s most respected works, Zeta Gundam. While Zeta Gundam does not go without criticism it is one of the few parts of the Gundam franchise that gets universal approval by all but a few heretics. So this is one of the few Gundam series I went into with high expectations.

Even if I wanted to go into Zeta Gundam without expectations, it was virtually impossible. After I watched Original Gundam, all I heard was talktalktalk about Zeta and chastising for putting it off as I have. Well, that is all over! I have watched it kids, and though we aren’t doing a full run down of the show, we are sharing some choice thoughts from the series.

Seven years after the One Year War things are very different. While Zeon has been defeated, remnants still remain after all these years and plan to overthrow the Federation. In response the Federation created the Titans a task force given extraordinary powers to root out any Zeon or other anti-federation forces. But with extraordinary powers can come extraordinary abuses and the Titans have abused their power to the extreme. The Titans do what ever it takes to ruthlessly crush anyone who gets in their way including people who speak out against them and any bystanders. Zeta starts when Kamille Bidan helps the Anti-Earth Union Group steal three new Gundam Mark II prototypes. Soon Kamille is caught up with the AEUG’s three way battle against the corrupt Federation forces and the Axis Zeon forces.

Taking the Federation and making them the ones with the crazy plans this time around was a nice change. This also helped press the idea from Original Gundam that both factions have people in positions of power who abuse it. In conjunction with this it was great to see characters switch sides even if some of them happen very abruptly. One problem I found was that the opposing side didn’t really have a rival for Kamille considering Jerid is more of a joke and usually only survives by the skin of his teeth. There was tension there due to many deaths of many characters for each of them but I never wondered who was going to be victorious. So while many of the plots of the Titans put things in dire straights, the personal factor of suspense was sometimes lost. Though such was not the case in the final episodes when characters square off and it’s a coin toss to see how it was all going to lay out after the dust settled.

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Gundam 08th MS Team, Can love bloom on the battlefield?

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When NYAF announced that Tomino was coming we decide to try to watch as much Gundam as we could before he arrived. Since the original plan was to watch all the Universal Century series in chronological order this meant we had three Gundam OAVs to get through before we could move onto the next major TV series directed by Tomino, Zeta Gundam. I knew that different people liked different OAVs for different reasons so I was eager to watch them all as see which ones clicked with me. The two main selling points on 08th MS Team for me were realism and a good love story.

Since I really started to become a Gundam fan I have heard basically mixed opinions on every single iteration of the franchise. No one seems to completely agree on anything so really who knows what expectations to take into any of these shows! I can’t say I was any more or less curious about 08th Team than anything else on our plates. Nevertheless I went into 08th MS Team full of excitement and vigor, luckily the show kept me feeling like that throughout.

While Amuro Ray was still fighting during the One Year war there were countless other stories going on. One of those is the story of Shiro Amada a young Federation officer who came down from the colonies to help Earth fight the land war against the Zeon. During his trip to Earth he saves a fellow Federation officer in a underpowered Ball. Although he survives the encounter he strands himself on a derelict spacecraft and encounters a beautiful Zeon pilot named Aina Saharin. After they are forced to help each other escape, there is an undeniable bond between the two of them. Once on Earth, Shiro is assigned the commander of the 08th MS team and finds that his fate is tied to Aina who is a test pilot for Zeon’s newest mobile armor super weapon. Both Shiro and Aina must decided what is more important. Is their love doomed to tragedy when they are on opposite sides of the war?

Shiro’s new team isn’t exactly well loved and with a constant rotation of commanders people start placing bets on how long Shiro will last. And unsurprisingly this land war disrupts civilian life in the region as well. Because of this the 08th Team often finds them selves allied with a group of guerrilla fighters who live in the jungle region. While these guerrillas have no love for either side, they see as Shiro comes on the scene that they are the lesser of two evils for now. As for the flip side, we don’t see too much of the goings on as far as Zeon goes. We know there is a big, secret weapon. Though of course Aina is shown on some frequency both pining away for Shiro and also becoming increasingly wary of the project she is involved with. Most notable about this series is its focus away from the battles and robots. That is not to say that they are unimportant, but rather much more emphasis is given to the growing friendships and relationships on and off the battlefield.

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Gundam 0079, Whoops! Sorry I beam-sabered your girlfriend!

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Gundam. That is a word that means so much to anime fandom in Japan. There were realistic robot anime before Gundam but almost every real robot show after Gundam either borrows from Gundam or goes out of its way not to be Gundam. I have watched most of the recent Gundam series but I have always wanted to see the origin. Every other part of the franchise has in some part paid homage to its founder. Anime of all genres have made reference to the series. Revered by many fans as the pinnacle of the franchise to which all later iterations are mere hollow shadows. It is required viewings for anyone who wants to fully understand what anime is all about. So here we go. We shall try and tackle one of the giants of anime once again of for the first time.

With the 30th anniversary falling in 2009 it seemed appropriate and also a solid reason for me to finally sit down and watch the series that kicked off a franchise I am coming to enjoy more and more. To be honest, I never really felt comfortable calling myself a Gundam fan, and have refrained from doing so, until I watched the beginning. So now that I have solidly planted myself in Gundam history I plan on watching more of the grandiose back catalog of shows because original Gundam is as good as boasted. I’m not sure if you are reading this because you want to know if you should watch original Gundam or if you have already watched it and just want to know what we thought, but either way it should be interesting!

Gundam 0079 starts in the middle of a most horrific war that will become a mainstay of the franchise. Several space colonies lead by the principality of Zeon have declared bloody independence from Earth. Due to atrocities on both sides, half the population of humanity has been wiped out. Gundam begins during a lull in the fighting. Amuro Ray was just a nerdy kid into electronics on the orbital colony Side 7 until the day that the Zeon forces, lead by the mysterious ace pilot Char Aznable, attacked the colony. During an attempt to steal the Federation’s newest technology, Amuro winds up defending the newly created battleship White Base with the revolutionary robot called Gundam. When most of the command staff of the White Base is killed in the raid civilians, low ranking military personnel is forced to man the ship. So a team of mostly untrained survivors must try to get the most highly sought technology back home to Federation controlled territory. What effect will this untrained crew have on the war? Who will survive?

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