Monday, July 13, 2015

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 S2 Part 4 Episodes 11-13


The A-Laws and Celestial Being unveil their greatest weapons: The Memento Mori and the Gundam 00 Raiser.  As the Innovators lend their support to the A-Laws, a new battle rages as Celestial Being races to destroy the A-Laws super space laser before it causes anymore damage.  Loyalties are pushed further when Saji and Louise cross paths on the battlefield, threatening to destroy what little love they have left.  And when the Memento Mori fires again, will Sergei be able to stand on the sidelines any longer as the senseless slaughter continues?

We got a pretty straightforward set of episodes this time to round out the first half of Season Two, complete with a nail biting desperate mission. 

So the Double O Gundam is now complete and man is it awesome…but maybe a little too awesome.  On the one hand, the Trans-Am makes this thing practically unstoppable and unmatched in battle and it’s super speed is very reminiscent of the F91 Gundams After Image move, moving so fast it leaves second long copies in it’s place to throw off an enemy.  But a Gundam that can perform a Dragon Ball Z teleportation move?  Now that might be stretching it even for me.  It did surprise Ribbons though, who called it Quantizing.  This also resulted in Wang Liu Mei getting slapped by a furious and confused Ribbons…wont lie I smiled at that.  Wang Liu Mei’s back and forth has made such an act from anyone a long time coming.  But this should hopefully get it through her “the world needs to change no matter what” skull and convince her she’s backing the wrong horse…for reasons beyond my comprehension.

It was also cool to see a nod to the Newtype effect that was the core subject of the Universal Century saga of Mobile Suit Gundam.  Connecting minds across space and allowing them to understand each other was a common goal of the Newtype movement.  But of course the first time we see this effect in action, Saji and Louise have to be involved.  While I commend Gundam 00 on giving these two a much needed kick in the pants when it came to their stories…they’ve somehow gotten worse.  Saji hasn’t learned a thing since being stuck with Celestial Being and Louise has kind of just been sidelined waiting for something to do besides shiver and scream at Gundams from her cockpit.  Well this is the first time they meet up and rather than try to get in a brief explanation of their situations…they just sit there for several seconds and ask what the other is doing there.  Ok, it’s weird hearing thoughts but how about a quick explanation from Saji to Louise telling her he’s kind of just stuck with Celestial Being instead of part of the organization?  Ha, that would mean Saji would be doing something useful.  Now Louise has shut Saji out of her life for good, committing herself fully to A-Laws while Saji just goes to cry in the corner some more and curse Setsuna.  These two were supposed to be an ironic part of the story for showing the hell of war for innocent bystanders and I suppose it’s working…doesn’t mean I think Saji and Louise have gotten any more tolerable and probably wont before series end. Setsuna is a true friend through all of this.  Anyone else would have tossed Saji out the airlock by this point but Setsuna is determined to help him win Louise back somehow…helluva heart that kid has.

Right, so the A-Laws have a Death Star…or a Colony Laser…or just a giant Space Laser, whatever, it can blow up nations with the push of a button and it was up to Celestial Being to shut it down.  It was a pretty straight forward race to the end to deal with this new threat.  It was gutsy pulling off such a quick strike but speed and coordination were of the essence and Sumergai came through putting all four Gundams to excellent use, Lock On even scoring a Death Star exhaust port style finishing shot on the station to take it out.  This also resulted in the loss of Mannequin’s shadow, Rint, but I doubt anyone will miss him.  So it ended up being a pretty big win for Celestial Being.

Again though, ive gotta point out Anew Returner.  It’s way too obvious that if she’s not an Innovator then she’s a mole waiting to be activated.  Whenever someone asks, “How did the A-Laws know where we were so quickly?” I just shake my head.  Seriously, no one notices she spaces out occasionally, that sets off no bells of things not being a coincidence?  I think I this close to adding her to the list of infuriating characters of Gundam 00 along with Saji, Louise and Graham.

Halfway done with the Second Season and 3/4 of the way through all of Gundam 00.  And seeing how this is Gundam, you know things are bound to get bigger and heavier in the second half so stick around.

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