Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Part 6 Episodes 26-30

Heero and Quatre find their way back to Earth, only to find it worse than when they left it.  With Treize openly standing against OZ’s financial backer, the Romafeller Foundation, the remnants of OZ find themselves the targets of Operation Nova: the plan to eradicate Treize and his men with the use of a deadlier breed of Mobile Doll.  Past the chaos, Relena has resurrected her old homeland, the Sanc Kingdom, and seeks for Heero to join her there.  Will the war weary Gundam pilot find what he’s looking for in a land of peace?

It’s hard not to try and take a bit of a break after marathoning 25 episodes straight of a series.  I think that’s why a lot of Anime productions tend to keep their runs to this length now so that they can recharge their batteries and give the viewers time to breathe (unless you’re a Shonen Anime production whose episode count is in the 700’s…then your just screwed there).  Well I took a tiny break after wrapping up the first half of Gundam Wing to do the same and jumping back into it, the show feels different but for various reasons, most of them good but some…not so much.

At around this point in a 50 episode long series, it makes sense that the staff would need time to work on more fresh content, so you know what that means…CLIP SHOW!!!  Well we didn’t get one, but rather we got 2 back to back clip shows from four different perspectives (2 each).  Heero and Relena recounted the Gundam Pilots side of things and Treize and Lady Une nararrated the OZ accounts of events thus far.  In all honesty, these episodes could really be skipped but buried under 40 mins of stock footage there are two big developments revealed.  First off, while Heero has been in space, Relena has, somehow, off screen, resurrected the Sanc Kingdom…how is never explained (at least in this set).  She seems determined to make the world a better place with peaceful dialogue…and hopes that Heero will notice her for it (priorities).  Secondly, Treize may be under house arrest but he’s not spending his time knitting…he’s building a Gundam.  As awesome as that is, unless you really like to hear Treize talk, there’s no need to sit around and listen to the same speeches he gave a couple episodes ago, again, in their entirety.

Fun fact about this part of the production.  The clips shows were originally meant to be replaced with a series of short episodes centering on the backstories of the main cast: Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, Wufei, Zechs and Relena, and include a direct prequel to the events of the first episode.  For what I’m assuming could only be because of budgetary reasons, these episodes were never completed.  Bits and pieces of those planned tales found their way into the Gundam Wing sequel OVA: Endless Waltz.  However, if you’re looking for those stories in their entirety, then I highly recommend the Gundam Wing: Episode Zero Graphic Novel.  All of the proposed tales are there and they offer plenty of great insights into why the pilots are the way they are.  Frankly, I wait for the day that will never come when Episode Zero will see its Anime form at last…instead we have clip shows…awesome.

However, once all the rehashing of info we already knew (unless you were coming in late and needed to get caught up on things), we were right back into the action.  Here’s where the show feels different in a good way.  Most of the action was Gundam-less.  The only time we ever see a Gundam in action is during Heero’s berserk sortie in the Wing Zero against the new Mobile Dolls, and it was glorious.  Besides that (and the clip shows) the Gundams are almost entirely absent from the action.  This leaves Heero and Quatre (who all episodes are more or less centered on; no word on the whereabouts of Duo, Trowa or Wufei), to play Army of Two with regular guns and OZ Mobile Suits…and they do a good job too.  They manage to capture a Romafeller ship (not quite Captain Jack Sparrow style but close) and wreck some Virgos with a Leo and an Aries, granted they get help from some upgraded firepower for that latter bit.  We also got to see Noin return and team up with Sally Po to save Heero’s Wing Gundam from Romafeller.  For all of trying to figure out where Sally fits into the whole story, I did like her and Noin together.  They seemed like an instantly good pairing and have total faith in the Gundams and their pilots.  I’ll admit, this makes more sense for Noin because she’s worked with them longer than Sally, who was sold on Heero after only seeing him in action once and declaring herself Heero’s second biggest fan (Relena will not be topped in that regard).  But as developments go, it was good to see these two in action together.

Finally, there’s Relena’s safe zone that is the Sanc Kingdom.  Their views on pacifism are swaying nations to their side.  Of course this means Romafeller is going to repeat history and torch the kingdom at any moment.  It’s hard to tell whether or not Relena is being really brave or really naieve thinking that she can succeed in defeating Romafeller without armed conflict.  Challenging her beliefs on this is the Anti Relena, the cute Dorothy Catalonia.  With her bizzare as all get out eyebrows, she mocks, more or less, Relena’s views through false praise while she’s bursting for a war to break out behind the scenes.  Relena wants peace, Dorothy cant wait for the war to begin and she’s eager to meet Heero and Quatre, who will probably bring that war along with them since they’re priority targets of the Foundation.

Honestly, I wish we had been given time to see how Relena decided to go with this new life goal and how she put it all together.  It just feels like a substantial chapter is missing from the whole story and we’re just supposed to accept it.  Whatever the circumstance, Relena got her way in one regard…Heero finally being brought to her doorstep with nowhere to run.  I felt bad for poor Heero.  He says he needs to keep fighting to live and he even gets himself involved in a mini civil war between OZ troops to maintain that mindset.  But when Heero is staring down the approaching apocalyptic army of Virgo’s, you can see just how tired he is of it all.  He doesn’t want to quit fighting, he just doesn’t know how to take a break from it, or leave it behind at all.  I don’t know if the Sanc Kingdom will offer him any answers.  But that insanely creepy “I’ve got you” look of victory on Relena’s face says that he wont stick around for very long.  Does he still want to kill her by the way?

Next Monday we get to know the Sanc Kingdom and maybe we’ll even get to check in with some other fan favorites as the second half of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing gets underway.