Friday, April 26, 2019

Mobile Suit Gundam Part 8 Episodes 38-42


It’s all come down to this.  While two leaders desperately seek peace, others wish for a bloodbath.  A battle unlike any before erupts outside of A Bao A Qu, the last decisive fight of the One Year War.  Here the White Base and her crew face their final and greatest challenge.  Meanwhile Amuro and Char, with more on the line than ever, duel each other one last time.  Between hope and despair, love and hate, ideology and cynicism, one way or another, the One Year War ends here.  The only question is: who will survive?

As we near the end of April, so to do we near the end of our look at the series that birthed the franchise that has kept me in Anime since forever ago (there’s still something yet to come but we’ll talk about that at the end of the review).  It may not have been a perfectly neat finale but the final battle of Mobile Suit Gundam delivered and cemented why this show has gone down in infamy for the last forty years. 

Most of the problems I had with the finale were all frontloaded into the first half of this final set (thank Goodness I suppose).  It seemed like we were just hanging out needlessly until it was time for the Federation to storm Zeon’s final fortress of A Bao A Qu.  And even before that there was still one major conflict that was bound to get resolved either before or during that battle.  Yet we spent one episode pretty much doing nothing and another focusing on a quick look at a Newtype who wasn’t Amuro or Lalah.  I suppose Challia Bull’s role was fulfilled in the end: a Zeon soldier who hadn’t seen battle and who was one of the more naieve characters in this entire series who was used by Zeon for their own nefarious ends.  I still feel like cutting out his episode and the one that followed wouldntve hurt anything in the long run since we got plenty of Newtype analysis and trippy visuals with Amuro, Lalah and Char’s battle.

Yeah from the moment Amuro crossed paths with Char and Lalah, you knew something bad was going to happen.  Amuro and Lalah had an instant connection but Char, ever the charmer, had gotten to Lalah first and was happy to exploit her abilities rather than use Lalah’s Newtype powers for peace.  I’ll never understand why Lalah was always so attached to Char given his penchant for violence and revenge.  Maybe she saw something in him few ever would, even Char himself.  In the end, she met her tragic fate and set the stage for every other equally tragic romantic character to follow in the Gundam franchise.  I almost hate to say it, but the effect Lalah’s death had on Char was one of the better parts of that incident.  Finally seeing the level headed Char shout and demand the White Base and Gundam be destroyed was a clear sign that, whatever his intentions for Lalah in the war, he did care a great deal about her.  Oh Lalah, we hardly knew yee but you’ll be missed and never forgotten (in more ways than one if you know your One Year War history).

I really wish we’d spent more time following the Zabi Family in this series.  The dynamic and drama around Zeon’s ruling body would have been a fun plot to follow and probably have lead in better to watching each one off each other in equally brutal ways.  It would’ve been interesting to follow Degwin’s depression following Garma’s death that would lead him to seek peace in the end.  And then there’s Ghirren.  I liked the scene where Degwin compared him to Adolf Hitler and Ghirren didn’t seem to take offense to it.  You know what they say, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  At that point you knew he had to go and after he killed his father and half his fleet to take power for himself and his master race of Zeons, you couldn’t wait to see what death was coming for him. Kycillia shooting him through the head, when Ghirren thought she was joking, was adequate…but then Char blew off Kycillia’s head with a rocket launcher and cemented that no one does revenge better than Char Aznable.

Which brings us to the final epic clash of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Battle of A Bao A Qu.  While I don’t think it reaches the heights of the Battle of Solomon, you could feel the intensity of the battle.  Everyone was taking damage, everyones Mobile Suit or fighter was left immobile by the final episode.  Even the Gundam itself went down in its infamous final shot pose.  It’s here I should bring up that one of Mobile Suit Gundams more infamous facts is that it was meant to be a 50 some odd episode series.  However, due to low ratings, the show was cancelled but director Yoshiyuki Tomino was given enough advance notice to craft an ending.  I bring this up now because given Tomino’s nickname, “Kill em All Tomino”, I have to wonder if anyone was meant to survive the end of the series finale (things didn’t turn out so well for the cast of Tomino’s next Anime project-Space Runaway Ideon).  Point is, everyones card was up in this battle and it’s a practical miracle everyone made it out in one piece.  Even Amuro and Char’s last duel, from Mobile Suits to fencing sabers, left me wondering if they would end up killing each other over Lalah’s death.  It’s funny I write that.  I think it speaks to the power of Tomino’s writing that, even knowing a lot about what comes after the One Year War, he managed to ratchet up the intensity so much, you had to see this finale to believe the hero and villain didn’t die at the end.  But they didn’t.  While we didn’t see what happened to Char after he offed Kycillia, we know he made it.  And Amuro made it back to his crew, his family…so happy endings all around.

Part of me wonders if my enjoyment of the Gundam fandom would be different if id seen this series first instead of Gundam Wing.  Wing had a cool factor in it’s mecha designs, cast of characters and intriguing plot.  But when you watch both of these shows and really look at them, Mobile Suit Gundam still holds up a lot better, especially given its age.  There are some bumps in the road, particularly right after the very beginning of the series.  By the end of the first act, Gundam makes some major course corrections.  By the end of the second, it was running at full speed and hardly ever stopped til the end.  The animation is classic (even if it isn’t as pretty as later 80s or even current age mecha Anime).  The characters (particularly Amuro, Char and Bright) and the titular Mobile Suit are timeless and endearing.  It’s truly wonderful to see Amuro grow from spoiled brat to a true hero and learn not to hate him.  And the story is still a very strong one, dealing with the horrors of war and the possibilities of the human heart as humanity expands into space.  Mobile Suit Gundam was a mecha Anime that dared to take a chance telling a very real war story that put humanity to its greatest test.  Aliens weren’t the enemy, we were fighting each other.  The gamble paid off and with its success, a new mecha genre was born.  Faults and all, Mobile Suit Gundam is an amazing series that fans of the franchise owe it to themselves to watch.  Simply put, Gundam did something very right to last this long.  Be sure to give this show a watch to find out way…and enjoy the ride while you’re at it.

9/10

But like I said, this ride isn’t over just yet.  We’ll conclude our time in the year UC 0079 next Monday with a special review of the Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Movie, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Movie II-Soldiers of Sorrow, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Movie III-Encounters in Space.  Can three compilation films somehow make a great series better?  Considering they’re the reason the franchise managed to eventually find new life and give us Zeta Gundam…I think something mustve worked.  We’ll find out exactly what did (and maybe what didn’t) next week.  See ya then.

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