Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Review

BACK STORY:
Mobile Suit Gundam is a gigantic and fantastic (and throw in some more adjectives here) Japanese anime franchise, which has been around since the late 1970s and has persisted strongly all the way to the year of our lord, 2009... The brainchild of Yoshiyuki Tomino, this opus has been retold many times in many alternate settings and with many alternate characters, but in the end, the idea remains the same.

It is a bit of a mystery as to why they didn't just hold off the release of this series until this year, as to mark the 30th anniversary of the franchise, but with the coming of MSG Unicorn, that may be the anniversary mark in the making. Well, I could give more of a lecture on the history of the Gundam Universe, but I should probably get to the review of the anime at hand. Though I should preface by saying that I am a big fan of the Universal Century of Gundam so a lot of my biases and critiques come from that.

Gundam 00 was split up into two seasons and as much as I'd like to talk about the series as a whole, it's quite impossible, because the show really became a story of two seasons. Some would compare the first season to the likes of older Gundam sensation, Gundam Wing. While others would compare the second season to the likes of the classic Zeta Gundam, to this day my favorite Gundam series. While I don't think that 00 copies any of these shows directly, it is quite interesting to see the parallels that are created.

SUMMARY:
So what is the show, or rather the two seasons about? In the first season you are introduced to an organization seemingly created to bring peace to the world by taking the burden of conflict upon themselves. Celestial Being, as it is called, is created to intervene in all conflicts across the world, thereby instilling hatred towards themselves, to unite humanity against them. Very "Savior" like. It is comprised of four pilots, who pilot the namesakes of this show, the Gundam units. Each pilot has their own particular reason to hate wars and conflict and of course each one of these pilots also has some hidden back story that gets slowly revealed throughout the series. If you're thinking to yourself, "Wow, this sounds a lot like Gundam Wing!" you're right, it does, never mind that there were five pilots in Wing.

The second season seems to be a harsh contrast to the first as it seems to hearken back to the darker type of show that Gundam Zeta used to be. While I won't describe any major plot points, I will say, that Celestial Being is still in existence and that their goal of season one, seems achieved, though it may have turned out worse than they had even anticipated. This show parallels the plight of Celestial Being to that of the Arghama from the AEUG in Zeta Gundam and seems to invite the idea of "newtypes" back into the 00 continuity. They're not called newtypes in 00, but rather Innovators. The duly created A Laws were a blatant ripoff of, or maybe homage to, the Titans in the aforementioned Zeta Gundam. The second season in general seems to pay a lot of homages to the UC storyline and as such, created a very different atmosphere for the series.

CRITIQUE:
To a lot of people, Gundam Wing is a source of nostalgia and therefor they remember it as being a good series. While it's not a bad series per se, it is not the Gundam idea of a good series at all. For 00's season one to use so many of the same plot ideas as Wing, was a mistake in my opinion. The one thing that always bothered me about the series was the fact that these pilots had fantastic mobile suits and when faced with peons, in what looked like LEGO versions of mobile suits, they did phenomenally (and why shouldn't they), but as soon as a worthwhile opponent were to appear, they would become completely useless, whiny nincompoops. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that these pilots didn't rely on personal skill whatsoever, this whole show relied on the idea that the Gundam was to be the unstoppable unit and that's what mattered most. If you compare it to some of the older series of Gundam, even some of the newer ones, like SEED, the point of those series was that the pilots themselves gained an insight and knowledge on how to best use their mobile suits. Sure the Gundams in those series were overpowered, but at the same time, some moron off the street couldn't jump into the Hyaku Shiki and just become GOD. It required a knowledge of the controls, of tactics, and of the unit's capabilities in general.

Some may retort with the argument that 00's pilots were more realistic, because that may be how normal humans would react in such a situation. My reply to that argument is that Gundam was not meant to be realistic. There's a reason people watch shonen shows and I guarantee that it's not for the realism. I may be a bit harsh on the show, but it's only because I expect a certain caliber of performance from my Gundam.

The second season of Gundam 00 seemed to improve drastically over the first, at least in my opinion, while most fans would disagree. I must again mention that I feel Zeta Gundam is the strongest of the old Gundam series and for this show to try and emulate Zeta was a big plus for me. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty for me to dislike in the second season, but at around episode twelve or thirteen, where the group of Celestial Being is on a mission to take down the SUPER LASER Memento Mori, I felt like a child in a candy store; so full of glee. THIS is what shonen is all about! If I want realism, I can watch CNN, but when I want some escapism I need huge lasers that can destroy chunks of the Earth in a single blast. I enjoy an occasional realistic anime, but as I've stated previously, that's not what I want from my Gundam.

Lastly, about the characters in the show, I only want to mention that until mid season two, I didn't like ANY of the characters in the show, at all. In fact, there were SO many characters introduced that my head was left spinning at points. That for me was yet another value that added to the detriment of the show.

AESTHETICS:
I think I just felt like giving a fancy name to the section about video, audio, and other miscellaneous queries.

What can I say? The show is drawn beautifully and this is probably one of its strongest points. There were no moments during the telecast where I felt that I was getting ripped off by burgeoning costs resulting in sub par animation. The Gundams looked very nice, even if they did get a bit bland towards the end. And character animation was well done. So no complaints from me on that.

The audio, or more accurately the music and sound associated with the series was also well done. There were some exceptional insert songs and very little can be said in complaint of the Opening and Ending themes, though I did feel that the second season's music selection was actually stronger than the first's. In particular, the Tommy Heavenly6 track, Unlimited Sky, was fantastic.

Not much more to say about it other than what I have.

CONCLUSION:
Overall, while I'd love to say, "Go ahead and skip season one! Go straight to season two..." sadly, I cannot. The show would make absolutely no sense to someone who would just jump in during the second season. If you're a devoted Gundam fan, there's a reasonable pay off at the tail end of the series as a whole. If you're not a Gundam fan and this is your first mecha series, you may enjoy it, but keep in mind that it isn't what Gundam is truly about.

GRADE: C
Even though I don't like giving "grades" to series I watch, I felt it was important to show that it's a show that's teetering on the Average line. Take it as you may.


That's all for now, look forward to more reviews in the future!