Friday, December 25, 2015

Mobile Suit Gundam 00: The Movie-A Wakening of the Trailblazer


2314 AD. Two years have passed since the defeat of Ribbons Almark and his Innovates.  This brief era of peace is shattered by the reappearance of an age old ship sent out on a mission to Jupiter.  And it hasn’t come back alone.  All across the world, potential Innovators cry out in pain, heralding the coming of something powerful.  The time Aeolia Schenberg predicted has come and much sooner than anyone could have predicted.  Once again, Celestial Being and it’s Gundam Meisters reunite to commence “the dialogues that are to come”.  But when talking turns to violence, Earth faces a threat from the stars it may not be able to defeat.  It’s the final battle that will change everything, the future is now.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!! As it turns out I found this movie in a DVD bin at Otakon this past summer and seeing as how I had just reviewed the series in it’s entirety, it thought it only right to pick it up.  I ended up watching it over two nights there and while I still have reservations about the movie, I don’t think it was bad as I originally thought when I saw it at Otakon 2011.

The real deciding factor for most fans is the fact this this is the first Gundam entry to introduce Extraterrestrial life into the equation.  The series had been all building to this moment but managed to keep the main conflict human vs. sort of advanced human.  So it’s a draw for sure but is it worth it or does it make Gundam seem like all those other giant robot anime that feature mecha fighting aliens?  Well I actually think that it does stand out.  There’s always that paranoia of something new being brought into our lives, something life changing.  We’re not sure how to handle this new equation factor and more often than not, it scares the crap out of us and we want to push against it rather than let it in.  The Gundam 00 Movie hits this nail right on the head.  In a way, it’s a lot like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: The enemy isn’t really an enemy.  It’s just a vast collection of scared and alone life forms that doesn’t know how to talk to us.  Learning how to talk to each other has been a staple of many Gundam entries.  So merging this in with shapeless, Borg like aliens isn’t a stretch but is still fascinating.

That being said, the story does have a lot within it that kind of derails things a bit.  Firstly, it’s good to see everyone again but still EVERYONE IS HERE!!!!   A story with this much scope and direness could have benefited from keeping the number of players to a minimum outside of the obviously needed Celestial Being (and even not all of them are needed, ahem Alleluia).  And even then, Setsuna himself is pretty much rendered useless when the Aliens begin to screw with his Innovator abilities. I don’t get handicapping your star until the very end of the movie (if only to give him a bad ass entrance when he does get in the game with his Gundam).  Sidelining Setsuna didn’t work for me and I have to agree with some of his teammates that isolating himself during the film felt like a step backwards.

The movie tries to even the character overload out in my eyes by only having Saji and Louise pop up for one second then pushing them off to the side.  Their brief inclusion helped illustrate the threat.  But having characters like Andre Smirnov and F-ing Graham Acker back just seems unnecessary.  Andre got good closure in the series even if his character was a waste.  As for Graham…well he was just bored and wanted attention.  The funny thing is, I don’t even think Setsuna remembered him at the end of the movie, that made me chuckle a little bit.  Mannequin returns as leader of the military and Patrick is there too as her supportive husband.  They actually had one of my favorite scenes of the movie: where Kati is worried about the threat and Patrick comes THIISSSSS close to calming her fears with his lovable optimism and a kiss.  Seriously, we need a side series exploring the romance between these two.

We also get a couple of new faces introduced.  Mehna Carmine is a Nena Trinity lookalike who is supposed to be a very intelligent scientist.  And while she does get some good moments of intellectual exposition, she’s mostly there to flirt with Billy Kategiri like a horny school girl.  And then there’s Descartes Shaman.  He’s supposed to be “the worlds first Innovator” (since Setsuna’s keeping his new life status on the down lo).  Descartes is arrogant, full of himself and totally not a team player.  When the ELS (the aliens) take over his mobile armor, I fully expected him to become the face of the enemy in this movie.  But sadly such potential is wasted and Descartes just becomes another expendable pilot who thinks he’s more…kind of like the Innovates back in Season 2. 

All focus on the story and characters aside, the movie is a pretty solid scifi action fest like most Gundam features.  Still, for this being the first original Gundam movie in 19 years (this came out in 2010.  The last OG Gundam movie that wasn’t a compilation movie was 1991’s Gundam F91), the animation doesn’t look any better than it did in the TV series.  Was this to keep budget costs down?  At least the Gundam’s themselves look pretty impressive, with the Gundam 00-Quanta stealing the show just by being unveiled.  Even a lot of the music from the series is reused.  That’s not all bad since Kenji Kawai updates a few tracks but also adds a couple of haunting new ones, especially in regards to the ELS. 

For better or worse, this is the final chapter of the Gundam 00 saga.  The conflict is big enough for a finale and the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.  I don’t think it will fully satisfy everyone.  When I first saw it back in 2011, the film didn’t do that for me.  I guess having reviewed the series on my own this past summer was a good primer for looking at “Awakening of the Trailblazer” in a different light.  As a finale, it kind of works.  It gets it’s point across eventually and closes the book, unless someone wants to do a sequel based on the post credits epilogue (yes like Season 2 it has one of those).  It’s got some story beat issues and too many characters trying to get their five minutes in for the grand finale.  But I’m glad I went back and revisited this film.  It’s an adequate farewell for a cast of characters ive grown to love (or hate as you know from my reviews).  Say what you will about it, Mobile Suit Gundam 00 will always have a special place in my heart.

7/10
 

 

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