Operation Meteor continues as the five Gundams continue
to strike against OZ bases worldwide.
With the Earth Sphere Alliance desperate for a peaceful solution, OZ
Commander and Chief, Treize Kushrenada, seeks to turn this to his advantage. When Heero and his fellow pilots meet for the
first time during their biggest mission yet, they fall right into Treize’s trap
and place the world under OZ’s control.
With the element of surprise now lost, how will the Gundam pilots be
able to carry out their missions now?
A Heero falls. OZ
takes over the world (More or less).
Relena takes her stalker obsession to the next level. With so much happening in this set, is it
kind of hard to believe that the moment when Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre and
Wufei finally meet isn’t the main highlight?
That’s probably because that long awaited encounter
didn’t last very long and only served to cap off the biggest play made by OZ
yet. If last review was giving time for
the good guys to feel invincible, this week it was the villains turn and Treize
and Zechs were both shinning brightly.
Treize isn’t one to brag about his accomplishments, even something as
big as taking down the Earth Sphere Alliance after years of planning. He’s just chilling on his yacht, reading a
book and taking in the change of times one simple breath at a time. Has there ever been a more calm, collective
and still fun to root for villain (no Light Yagami doesn’t count cause he
freaks out more often than not). And
just to prove how appropriately bad ass he is, Treize even took on Wufei in a
sword duel…and won. I wont give Treize
grief for not killing him cause he wants to fight him again…I will give him
grief for killing him and leaving Wufei to wallow in not being top of the food
chain (kind of like Domon from G Gundam, I bet this ass kicking will set Wufei
back a few episodes). I should also bring
up Treize’s right hand woman, Lady Une, who was at the center of some of my
favorite moments this set. Treize
doesn’t mind a lot of bloodshed but I am curious why he keeps such a trigger
happy assassin at his side. Funny
enough, those favorite moments I mentioned, all involved Treize saying “you
don’t know how I operate” when Lady Une thinks she’s done a solid deed. Btw I want to know what his reaction was when
Lady Une told him she dropped a man out of a plane and shot him in the head
afterwards…did he react like Bane in Dark Knight Rises, “I’m wondering why you
would shoot a man after throwing him out of a plane…wouldn’t the fall surely
kill him?”
Meanwhile, Zechs got some more Char like plot to go with
his character. Turns out, much like
Char, he’s the exiled prince of a country who’s pacifist family was wipped out
(similar to the Romanoff Family in Modern History…see the solid Animated flick
Anastasia for more details) and seeks revenge, which he got. Oh and Relena’s his sister. Not a big shock there since non too subtle
hints had been dropped here and there up til the reveal itself. After sitting out much of the action after
the first episode and being relegated to the background, Zechs managed to get back
into the fray with a completed Tallgeese.
Man is this thing a beast.
Everytime you see it, you can feel it towering over you like a
Titan. Watching it push Zechs to his limit
was something for sure. Though it’s kind
of weird that after one botched outing in the mech, Zechs is fine piloting it
afterwards, he doesn’t even seem to have a lot of trouble fighting Heero later
on.
This brings us to the Gundam pilots and the big
cliffhanger. No matter how many times
you see the Wing Gundams self detonation in promos, everytime I see it, I get chills. Any Gundam show runs the risk of having the
Gundams too overpowered for too long.
Thankfully, Wing waited til Episode 7 to have things begin to go wrong
for the pilots. I don’t think there was
a better way to show that the days of Gundams being invincible is over. Seeing the Wing Gundam reduced to a charred,
broken wreck is kind of nightmare fuel for both Quatre as well as the viewers
themselves. The worlds already gotten
darker because of OZ’s skillful takedown of the Alliance, which was only worsened
by Treize manipulating Heero into killing the Alliance Pacifists. But this, this makes things about as unsure
as you can get. Is Heero dead? (probably
not) and what becomes of the Wing Gundam and what about the other pilots?
If there’s one thing that hampers the mood a bit, it’s
that Gundam Wing has already hit the trope of most 90’s Anime: reused
footage. We got some truly bad ass
action, especially from Gundam Deathsythe and Trowa mowing down an already worn
down Leo without any mercy. But I’m
starting to see the same Leo and Areis destruction shots that I saw in Episode
1. Youd figure a show with a Gundam name
on it would have the budget to avoid pratfalls like this. Whether or not this becomes a bigger problem
remains to be seen but I cant imagine this is just going to go away.
Lastly, Relena.
Sigh. She did have some more
strength to her character following her chat with Heero’s mentor at the end of
the last set. And I can see the death of
her father striking a fire within her.
But still…LEAVE HEERO ALONE!!!
It’s clear he cant bring himself to kill her (because she met Doctor J
and he let her live?) But Relena is
still willing to test those waters and elevate herself to true stalker
status. Even Duo notes she’s pretty
amazing for wanting to hang out with the guy who wants to kill her. I actually would have liked to have seen a
little more of Heero and Duo interacting with Relena, I mean did they just run
and hide and she was unable to find them again after she shows up at their new
school? Thankfully, Relena reveals that
she’s “off to her own battleground”.
Whatever that means, it looks like she’s willing to let her stalker
priorities go for a little bit…will that last long though?
We end Part 2 with Heero in a pool of his own blood and
the Gundams forced to disappear. The bad
guys have won (even if some of them are rightfully berated for harsh actions
COUGH COUGH LADY UNE COUGH). Ten
episodes in and I feel like we’ve watched a whole seasons worth of
content. Actually a friend of mine was
telling me how he felt Wing had like 4 seasons worth of US Television show
stories crammed into 49 episodes. He
might not be wrong. There’s still a
whole lot of Wing to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment