From Losers to Glory-A Gundam Wing Special-Part 14

Previously

Trowa got his memory back without the help of a super computer and Relena nearly shot Dorothy cause her buttons got pushed.  There’s a little more and if you haven’t had a chance to look, Part 13 is up right here (http://gundamanimeblog.blogspot.com/2020/06/from-losers-to-glory-gundam-wing_26.html). Once you’re caught up, you can jump back to this page for the final volume of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz-Glory of the Losers.

Vol.14 (Episodes 46-49)

In the Anime:

The Eve Wars.  Treize leads the full military might of Earth against the White Fang.  The Gundam pilots entry the fray as well, their mission to cripple Libra in anyway possible.  Howard rams Peacemillion into Libra which destroys its main cannon.  Zechs still wishes to press forward with his plan to destroy Earth by crashing Libra and Peacemillion directly into the planet and causing an eternal winter.  One by one, the Gundam pilots enter Libra.  Trowa disables the Mobile Doll control system while Quatre duels Dorothy.  Duo locates the five Doctors and escorts them to a vital Libra system.  Wufei battles Treize, who allows Wufei to win the duel, leaving Wufei dejected.  And Heero battles Zechs throughout the crumbling battleship, defeating him in the end.  The five Doctors sacrifice themselves to destroy Libra and Zechs vanishes in the explosion.  Heero manages to destroy the last fragment of Libra descending to Earth.  With the war over, the Earth Sphere Unified Nation is born and the Gundam pilots retire for now.  On her way to a conference, Vice Foreign Minister Relena Darlin receives a birthday card and teddy bear from Heero.

In the Manga:

• Hilde and Relena both escape from Libra as The Eve Wars commence
• Zechs announces his plan to drop Libra and the collided Peacemillion onto Earth as the new “Operation Meteor”.  In the Anime, it was just a more or less Plan B.
• Duo locates Doctor J, Professor G, Doctor S, Instructor H and Master O but does not escort them to their intended destination as they’ve already arrived and begun work on stopping the Libra drop.
•  Relena, Hilde, Howard and Sally all arrive at M-O II together.  Lady Une does not offer Relena a chance to take revenge for the death of her father as it was Heero who killed him in this version, not Lady Une.
• The Maguanac Corps arrives as Libra’s final block begins to descend on the Earth.  In the Anime they are present through much more of the final battle.
•   For the final shot on Libra, Heero uses the Custom Buster Rifle he used with Wing Gundam while at the Sanc Kingdom. 

Huh, so…in the end, after everything we’ve read and seen, all the changes and tweaks and rearrangements…the Eve Wars played out pretty much unchanged…that’s kind of a letdown…right?  I mean yeah, there were plenty of changes to dance partners in fights in Volumes 12 and 13.  But I know several of the important battles in the Anime couldntve been altered here: Wufei still had to fight Treize, Quatre still had to square off with Dorothy, Amuro and Char…sorry Heero and Zechs still had to battle their way through Libra’s remains while it descended to Earth…just like Amuro and Char in Char’s Counterattack.  And while I’m happy Heero still got to have his touching moment with Relena thanks to Hilde getting her off of Libra, I wish we’d seen others getting more to do.  Duo and Trowa especially get greatly reduced roles in the finale.  Which is worse for Duo because I feel like he got a much beefier role in Glory of the Losers altogether, heck the Manga opened from his side of the story.  No this is one of the least altered sections of the Gundam Wing story with this Manga, right down to Relena tearing up Heero’s birthday note and telling him next time he’ll give it to her in person.  It’s a shame cause I was really enjoying all of the changes in the last couple of volumes a lot. 

So…final thoughts I suppose?  Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Glory of the Losers wasn’t the perfect or totally radical retelling of Gundam Wing that I’d hoped and the changes petered out at the end.  As predicted, despite having “Endless Waltz” in the title, we never covered the actual Endless Waltz OVA in the Manga.  Still, I liked the new ideas it presented from new character interactions to the shifting of important events to the use of the originally intended Mobile Suit designs for the original five Gundams.  Many problems from the Anime carried over in terms of the appearance of certain factions (the Barton Foundation just vanished after a couple of mentions early on) and some characters still lacking a proper and definitive arc.  But the action was still incredible and at times more intense than the Anime, the characters are still unforgettable and it’s an interesting way to revisit one of my all time personal favorite Anime titles of all time.  I’m not going to grade this Manga since that’s not what I set out to do with this special feature.  I just wanted to compare and contrast the two versions of the story and elaborate a bit and I did just that and it was fun.  Can’t say I’ll do this again down the line and if this is a one time deal…I’m happy I was able to do this with Gundam Wing and its just wild beat communication…bad joke?  Sorry, thanks for reading From Losers to Glory: A Gundam Wing Special.  Keep an eye out for more Gundam content coming later this year to the Gundam Anime Corner.