The years is AG (Advanced Generation) 115. Fourteen years have passed since a mysterious
force, dubbed the Unknown Enemy (UE) ravaged the space colonies, leaving
hundreds dead. Among the victims of that
attack was the mother of a young prodigee named Flit Asuno. Since then, Flit has dedicated his life to
developing a weapon capable of battling the UE and protecting the colonies, a
mobile suit he calls “Gundam”. When the
UE suddenly return to attack his home colony, Flit flies into action. But his battle will only be the first of many
and Flit will not be the only Asuno to see battle against the UE in a
Gundam. A war spanning nearly a century,
with the name Asuno echoing throughout, begins.
Welcome back to GundamCember 2. This was supposed to be the episode that
kicked everything off but with the surprise preview of Mobile Suit Gundam
Narrative, it was too big a surprise to pass up taking a look at that
first. So I felt bad and opted to do a
first for FIF, two in the same day. If
you haven’t taken a look at my first thoughts on Gundam Narrative, feel free to
take a look here: http://gundamanimeblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/fif68-mobile-suit-gundam-narrative.html Meanwhile, let’s
move onto the beginning of one of Gundam’s more ambitious projects, Mobile Suit
Gundam AGE.
I say AGE is ambitious because the whole projects goal is
to tell a story across three generations of pilots, all from the same
family. That’s an intriguing notion but
also a risky one. If you think about it,
Gundam started off with a tale spanning three generations in the Universal
Century with Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam
ZZ before wrapping up in Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack. That’s around 150 episodes and 1 film worth
of story. Can AGE really accomplish the
same in a third of that time (49 episodes)?
Im talking about the series as a whole, how does it
start? It starts well enough. I seriously doubt the mysterious UE’s are
actually aliens. Given the mixed
reception bringing extraterrestrials into Gundam received in Gundam 00: The
Movie, I think Sunrise might be better off sticking to the human vs human
conflict that made Gundam such a game changer in the Giant Robot Genre. Still, the rest of the episode plays with all
the usual Gundam introductory tropes from an ambitious youth to a colony attack
to the titular Gundam taking out an enemy swiftly in its first sortie. We’ve seen that done almost to death at this
point, from Mobile Suit Gundam to Gundam Seed (and repeated immediately again
in Seed Destiny). Does anything help AGE
stand out? Well I like that Flit was the
one behind the creation of this universes Gundam, basing its design on a family
legend. The painting of a Gundam in his
house reminded me of the Turn A, sans the mustache. The kid definitely has Amuro Rey beat in the
Gundam development department since Amuro didn’t really build his own until 14
years after his first battle in the Mobile Suit. One thing that Im not as sold on is the
character design and artwork. Everyone
looks like they came from a video game rather than your typical Gundamverse. And for the life of me, I couldn’t think of
any video game title other than Mega Man while muling this over. Upon further research I discovered that Level
5 Studios (the creators of the Professor Layton series) had a hand in this
one. Does a design approach like this
really work with Gundam though? Maybe it
gets better or might grow on me, who know.
For a series set to tell a hundred years story in a
standard Gundam series amount of time (average length of a Gundam show is about
50 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam Age definitely has its work cut out for
it. That said, I don’t know if it had
time to follow the usual Gundam premiere blueprint to get things going. I wonder how much time we’re going to spend
with Flit before moving to whatever Asuno comes next (I assume his son)? I haven’t heard a lot of positive fan
reaction to AGE all around but considering what its trying to do, it might be
worth a full watch, or at the very least I should check out the first arc to
see if I get a full story in 13-16 episodes, give or take. Seeing as how it might be my lifes goal to
watch all of Gundam, ill probably end up watching it anyway. It couldn’t be worse than Seed Destiny or
Build Fighters Try…could it?
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