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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