Shiny happy robots ending war
Aside from being the oldest mecha franchise in existence, the Gundam meta-series is also the quintessential one. While Macross focuses on the music, Evangelion is a dense religious metaphor, and Full Metal Panic! is about panties, Gundam is about robots. Always has been, always will.
That said, I’m not too familiar with the franchise up to this point. I have never seen Gundam Seed, nor the original in its entirety. What I do know is that Gundam 00 shares a lot of common elements: war fought with mechs called Mobile Suits, large casts of characters, and (superficially) thick webs of politics. Oh yeah. And highly effeminate pilots.
Story
It’s the future, and the world has consolidated into a few power blocs: one based around the US, one around western Europe, and another at Russia and China. Each owns an elevator into orbit, which serves the dual purpose of transport into space and the collection of solar energy. The economy of the Middle East has collapsed thanks to the near-total abandonment of oil-based energy.
Out of nowhere comes a bizarre paramilitary organization called Celestial Being. They’re in possession of crazy mobile suits called Gundams that can take out pretty much anything without batting an eye. Celestial Being’s ostensible goal? To eliminate war by fucking up anyone who fights. Violent pacification, as it were.
The world attempts to stop them, of course, with all their different means — the Russians with their engineered super-soldiers, the Americans with advanced suits called Flags.
Characters
The cast is huge. Of course the focus is on the androgynous Gundam pilots with their patchy backstories and ridiculous code names: Setsuna F. Seiei, Allelujah Haptism, Tieria Erde, and Lockon Stratos. Then there’s their leader, Celestial Being’s chief strategist Sumeragi Lee Noriega, the obligatory alcoholic female in charge (with an even dodgier hinted-at backstory), and old-guy Gundam developer Ian Vasty.
That’s just a few of the Celestials: I couldn’t even bother listing their pilots, the Russians (Colonel Smirnov and supersoldier Soma), the Americans (Graham Aker and company), the Europeans (idiotic Patrick Colasour), the queen of a failing middle eastern country who may or may not have fallen for Setsuna (Marina Ismail), the mid-season interlopers with imitation Gundams (Nena, Michael, and Johann Trinity), the various mysterious puppet masters of Celestial Being (Wang Liu Mei, Alejandro Corner, and others), the mercenary Ali Al-Saachez, or the poor hapless Japenese civilian Saji Crossroad and his doomed loved ones.
Who named these people?
Dangers of Watching
- Keeping a billion names straight
- Aside from a complicated list of names and affiliations, a pretty shallow plot
- Not incredibly awesome character design, not incredibly sympathetic characters for that matter
- Personal investment in the story directly proportionate to how many people are offed
Benefits of Watching
- Brightly colored robots
- Decent animation (not too horribly augmented by computers), and the first Gundam to be shown in HD
- Action, action, action
- Pretty good, big-name music (such as L’Arc-en-Ciel)
Bottom Line
Twenty-six episodes can, of course, be a long time to wade through something that doesn’t truly hold your attention. If given the choice, I couldn’t recommend Gundam 00 over any of the more obligatory modern mech series (such as RahXephon, Evangelion, or Macross Plus) if you haven’t seen them. But as an update on an undisputed classic genre pioneer, it’s fully capable and plenty entertaining, especially the last couple absolute blowout episodes.
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No, Gundam has always typically been about political and moral messages packed in between beam sabers and rifles. Gundam tends to be very preachy about these messages as well. Not every Gundam series is, but most of them tend to have these underlying messages. I’m not saying Gundam is bad or wrong, as it was my gateway drug into various “giant robot” anime. I’m just pointing out that Gundam is more than just flashy robots and space battles.
Gundam 00, like Wing, is one of those series that doesn’t give me the heavy feeling of Gundam. The loss of limb and life is there, but the weighty “war is hell” theme of the original or say, War in the Pocket… I just didn’t feel it here. It felt like it really was about beam sabers etc.