With Earth under it’s firm control, OZ begins to move to
the stars. With renewed vigor, the
Gundam Pilots make their own plans to return home…only for the colonies they
once fought for to openly disown them and accept OZ as their new friend. With no place to return and a new breed of
mobile weapon now capable of defeating even the Gundams themselves, Heero, Duo
and the others find themselves in their darkest hours. As OZ begins to close in on them, Zechs, now
an outlaw from the very organization that helped him reclaim his homeland,
makes his own move to space.
It was just one thing after another this time
around. We had epic battles, betrayals,
huge deaths (of sorts) and the plot basically trying everything possible to
screw the Gundam Pilots over. There’s a
lot to nitpick but overall these new developments were really strong as Gundam
Wing gets ready to wrap up its first half.
The battle in Antarctica, the rematch between Heero and Zechs,
went about as well as expected. Heero
switched things up to go after Zechs in Trowa’s Heavyarms to help him focus and
even with an injury he did good. Too bad
the fight had to be interrupted by…sigh, Relena, who literally had her “Alfred”
fly into the middle of a battle to try and talk to Heero. At this point, Heero summed up my thoughts on
Relena as a whole when it comes to Heero, “You’re in the way, get lost.” We didn’t see much of Relena after this
episode and I can only imagine she’s going to find a way to follow him to
space. But there’s so much going on up
there, adding her in would be more of a hinderance than having her in the story
outside of the Peacecraft angle.
The colonies turning their backs on the Gundam Pilots was
only the first big blow the guys felt this week. OZ stepped up it’s game, turning to a
strategy of conquest disguised as peace.
Lady Une was selected to be the spokeswoman of this new approach but her
regular look wouldn’t do. Nope, she let
her hair down, threw on a short skirt and actually tried being…nice. Guess she really took Treize’s advice too
much to heart because towards the end of this set, Une was beginning to freak
out over who she thought she actually was: a bloodthirsty killer or a woman who
genuinely wants to see peace between Earth and the Colonies. It kind of came out of nowhere but it’s a
welcome development for Treize’s right hand woman.
With the colonies on the side of OZ, the Gundams
themselves took a beating. Watching
Deathsythe get defeated in battle before getting blown up (and I don’t care if
he was undercover F*** YOU TROWA BARTON), was not easy. My favorite Gundam blown to bits in space,
seeing it crumble before my eyes…I wonder if my scream matched Duo’s at
all. Factor in Wufei’s stupid plan to
attack…without a plan? (seriously what was he thinking charging in when his
suit isn’t fit for space battle) and Quatre blowing his up to prevent the
pilots from being followed into space, oh and Heero and Trowa ditching their
suits on Earth…this show is running out of its namesake. The pilots were defeated all across the board
this time, and like I said, it wasn’t an easy watch.
Thankfully, Treize and Zechs continued to prove that,
even though their the villains (sort of still?) they could still pull off
impressive wins for the series. Zechs,
now sought to be killed for helping the Gundams, got to take on an army single
handidly and survive. And he lost his
mask, ending his ties to Treize. I
wonder where that will take him now that he’s going into space as well…and do I
have to call him MIlleardo now? Cause
I’m not, I’m gonna keep calling him Zechs.
Treize, on the other hand, made the ultimate argument for why Romafeller
shouldn’t switch to their Skynet Mobile Doll policy. His faith in human life is so absolute,
Treize is able to stage a fake coup while blowing up Mobile Doll Leo’s with the
most heavily armored Leo he could find (I’ll get to that shortly). I doubt Treize’s argument will sway his
masters and I can see this adding more fuel to an inevitable fire. Plus, it wasn’t all total losses for the
Gundam Pilots as I might’ve sort of said above.
Heero breaking Duo out of prison was fun and even Heero was able to prove
why the Mobile Doll system is flawed…by programming in OZ human targets so he
and Duo could escape…now how long til Skynet becomes self aware?
There were a couple of nagging flaws in this set of
episodes, most of them technical. Stock
footage continues to be the achillies heel of Gundam Wing as the same old Leo’s
and Aries keep getting blown up by the same Gundam moves time and time
again. Then there’s Quatre’s Sandrock
Gundam seemingly becoming self aware and raising it’s shield to protect Quatre
as he escapes from the self destruct mode…was that just programmed in and Quatre
was hallucinating from his head wound?
I’ll take that as a possibility.
And then there’s Treize and his Leo.
Yes, it’s bad ass to see him take down the Leo Mobile Dolls. But his Leo takes WAY too many bullets for
him to survive. We’ve not only seen
Gundams cut through hundreds of these things like tissue paper, we’ve also seen
every other Mobile Suit do the same to equal degrees. Does Treize have a special unlimited health
cheat? If he had dodged the bullets,
fine. But just standing there and taking
the pounding? By proper logic, Treize
should have died. Again, bad ass
moment…flawed execution.
Before I wrap up I should mention we got to meet the
motley crew of scientists responsible for the Gundams being built. We met Doctor J a while back but here we also
met Professor G, Doctor S, Instructor H and Master O. Of the five, J and G seems to have a good
repitoire, similar to Heero and Duo, who they mentor respectively. It’s pretty clear that, despite their
capture, these five have plans of their own for OZ and are going to make their
lives a living hell for locking them up.
As Arnold Schwarzenegger would say about his T-800 model in a bad
Terminator movie, “Old, not obsolete.”
So let’s run down the stats list so far:
Heero-Captured
Duo-Rescued
and recovering
Trowa-Spy?
(probably)
Quatre-Bleeding
out in space
Wufei-Lost in
space with a damaged Gundam (and with no plan whatsoever…even if he thinks
that’s a plan)
Zechs-Lost his
mask and is heading into space
Treize-Posing
victoriously on a Leo after proving a point
Lady Une-Cant
decide whether to be a good hot pacifist chick in a short skirt or an evil hot
military genius chick in glasses and it’s driving her nuts
Relena-Probably
prepping a shuttle to follow Heero into space.
And that’s the end of Part 4. Next time we’re going to hit the halfway mark
and I’m kind of surprised I’m still hanging in there. Seriously, I wondered if I covered everything
laid out in these five episodes alone. I
guess I forgot to mention Sally Po’s return, along with Quatre’s three Maguanac
Generals, as they tried to steal what’s left of Sandrock. It was good to see the Fez sporting Quatre
Groupies again, with a bit of comic relief.
But I’m still not sure what Sally’s role in this show is supposed to
be…Heero Groupie? I don’t know we’ll
figure that out somewhere down the line, I’m sure. See ya Monday for more Gundam Wing.
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