From Losers to Glory-A Gundam Wing Special-Part 1

If you are somehow new to my nearly 6 year old blog, let me fill you in on something important: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is one of my favorite Anime of all time.  Sure there are better Gundam shows out there but I can say that while also still enjoying Wing for what it is: an awesome mecha show that introduced me to a more mature style of Anime storytelling AND introduced me to Mobile Suit Gundam,  my all time favorite Anime franchise of all time.  Released in 1995, Gundam Wing follows five young rebels who are sent from space to battle a shadowy organization on Earth that threatens peace between the planet and the orbiting Space Colonies.  The show was big in Japan but was arguably bigger in the US thanks to a wildly unexpected successful run on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block.  It’s success garnered Wing a sequel in 1997-Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, which likewise was a mega hit on Toonami.  While Wing has seen a number of spin off manga stories, the one were here to talk about it the most recent one.  Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz-Glory of the Losers retells the story from Gundam Wing with some tweeks and additions from other Manga stories, most notably Gundam Wing: Episode Zero and Endless Waltz itself.  As I went along reading it, I began taking note of all of the differences and what episodes of the TV Anime each Volume covered.  Figured I could do something special and share it with the rest of my readers.  So for the next couple of months, I’ll be covering one Volume a week (maybe two, depends) of the Glory of the Losers Manga.  I’ll add a quick synopsis of the episodes they cover before a bullet listing of the Manga changes and then add in my personal thoughts at the end.  Should be fun right?  Wow, this intro went on longer than expected.  I’ll try to keep them shorter in the future.  Anyway, SUIT UP, let’s get to Volume 1 of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz-Glory of the Losers.

Vol.1 (Episodes 1-3)

In the Anime:

The year is After Colony 195.  20 years have passed since the assassination of Heero Yuy, the Pacifistic figurehead of the Space Colonies.  After years of planning, five young pilots are sent to Earth to wage war against the culprits of the assassination: The OZ Organization.  Each of the five young men are outfitted with their own custom Gundam Mobile Suit and are tasked with striking various OZ and Earth Alliance bases across the planet in gurellia style warfare.  The pilot of the Wing Gundam, a young man codenamed Heero Yuy, is discovered on a beach by a girl named Relena Darlin and he promises to kill her to conceal his identity.  The movements of the Gundams are carefully tracked by OZ and their ace pilot, Zechs Merquise, is sent to retrieve an unfinished prototype Mobile Suit, the Tallgeese, which might be the only Mobile Suit capable of standing up to the otherwise invincible Gundams.

In the Manga:

• Story begins just prior to Operation Meteor, with Duo and Professor G being chased by OZ and forced to join the Barton Foundations original plan for the Operation.  The flashback from Endless Waltz where Duo tries to destroy Deathsythe and is sent to Earth by G instead occurs as well.
• When Relena meets Heero and offers her hand, she flashes back to her story from Gundam Wing: Episode Zero, where she met Zechs in a similar fashion
• While watching Heero and Duo fix their Gundams, Howard has several flashback moments.  Not only do we see him stow away Peacemillion on the Moon with Doctor J, we learn he was one of the head designers on Tallgeese.  He also meets a younger Treize Kushrenada, who wants to pilot the Tallgeese one day.
•  Treize reveals very early on that he plans to construct Gundam Epyon.  He also has design plans for Tallgeese II (or the original it’s not quite clear) and Tallgeese III.
•  It should also be noted that the five main Gundams (Wing, Deathsythe, Heavyarms, Sandrock and Shenlog) are all seen in their first draft designs from mecha designer Hajime Katoki, who also did the Gundam redesigns for Endless Waltz.

So a lot is changed right from the get go.  One could argue the new starting point doesn’t get the ball rolling quite as quickly as starting with Heero already en route to Earth before fighting Zechs and unveiling the Wing Gundam for the first time.   But hear me out.  Not only is Duo’s backstory a good starting point, it highlights just how much better Wing becomes with all of these flashbacks included in the new Manga.  As much as I love Duo, he was one of the few characters without a backstory in the Anime.  So placing his Endless Waltz history at the beginning works and lets us know he might play a much larger role in this retelling than he did before.  Actually, the flashbacks in general are stronger material than the stuff retold from the TV Series.  Howard meeting younger Treize, Relena remembering Zechs from Episode Zero?  This is golden stuff for any fan of Gundam Wing.  As noted at the end of my list of changes in Vol. 1, Glory for the Losers sends Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre and Wufei into battle with Gundams that were originally how they were meant to be rolled out.  As iconic as the original Wing, Deathsythe, Heavyarms, Sandrock and Shenlong are to many, I’ll never know why we didn’t go with these initial designs. 

Believe it or not though, this is one of the volumes with the fewest changes between Anime and Manga.  Volume 2…now that is gonna be a doozy.  We’re just getting started baby.  See ya next week for a new segment of From Losers to Glory: A Gundam Wing Special.