Ladies and Gentlemen…I didn’t think we could hit a new level of low for Gundam AGE after the Arc 3 premiere. I was wrong, I was so, so wrong. I now find it a bit ironic I’m reviewing this series a few months after I reviewed my eternal nemesis: Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny. Because now Gundam AGE has started teetering into that low. I’m sure I’ve talked a little bit about all the tropes and character beats AGE has been borrowing from all across the Gundam pantheon. But why OH WHY…did it have to borrow from Seed Destiny amongst everything else?
Like I said last time, there’s gonna be a bit of ground to cover in this review cause we’re kind of cramming a bit to get to the end of this show as quickly as possible now. There were three major plot developments across these six episodes: The return of Asemu; Kio getting to visit the enemy homeland of Second Moon; and finally, at long last, the truth behind Project Eden. We’ll start with Asemu. While we don’t get the full reasons why, he’s decided to ditch his family and start a pirate gig in space. As much as it is genuinely good to see him, I still wanna punch him on Kio’s behalf because Asemu had better have a damn good reason for not being there for his kid for 13 years. Asemu does get points for being able to go after Kio the minute he heard he was captured and it was awesome to see him in battle again. His new Mobile Suit of choice looks like the AGE-2 but I know it’s not. I do like the pirate paint job though and Asemu hasn’t lost his touch as a Super Pilot, being able to take on the worst of the Vagan X-Rounders without X-Rounder powers of his own. Yep, even with that Absentee Parent aspect to his character right now, Asemu is still my favorite of the three Asunos. We didn’t get a proper reunion scene between Asemu and Kio so I’ll just assume that’ll be saved for next time.
I’ll say this about Flit and Asemu, they never got captured by the Vagans at any point during their tenure as lead character. That sounds a bit harsh to Kio but I guess we had to finally get behind enemy lines somehow. This could have been done through some much needed flashback episodes, or even a small slot a la Gundam: The Origin exploring the decade leading to the One Year War. Instead, Kio is brought to Second Moon, the Vagan’s home colony above Mars, and is allowed to spend time with the people he's been fighting against as a guest of Lord Ezelcant. The aesthetic of Second Moons main city was interesting, going for a more Middle Eastern feel akin to Azadistan and Kruges from Gundam 00. Kio also met Deen and Lu, a brother and sister duo, the latter of whom unfortnatley passed away from the disease that’s been plaguing the colonists from Earth since not long after they got to Mars. This is the second time an Asuno has had to watch a potential love interest tragically die and while Lu’s passing is sad, it cant ignore that we’re recycling already recycled Gundam tropes just to give some added depth to the enemy that should have been added a long time ago. If there’s one major flaw with Gundam AGE (amongst many), it’s that it hasn’t taken time to set up “heroes on both sides” like every conflict in Gundam. We’re only now just seeing the civilians that the Vagan military are supposedly fighting for and have seen nothing but brainwashed religious zealots who have rained death, destruction and mayhem on the Earth. Even seeing the plight of the kids and understanding the need for revenge, the Vagan aren’t Zeon. Theirs isn’t the side worth rooting for in this fight, but then again the idiocy of the Federation right now doesn’t make them likeable either.
And then came the big one, the doozy of all doozies. After several episodes and decades of build up, Ezelcant finally revealed the truth behind Project Eden…a natural selection based process that would weed out negative emotions like the need for violence and war, a purified human race that will live on a new Earth he will call their Eden. I think this is the point where Gundam AGE has lost me and isn’t getting me back. Because this show has borrowed from pretty much every Gundam show until now but to go for the BS evil villain plot from Gundam Seed Destiny, cause this is basically what Gilbert Durandal had in mind, it’s just…wow, someone liked that idea so much and decided to try and do it better. Except Ezelcant is clearly equally, if not more, insane than Durandal. You could chalk that up to losing his kid to the Mars virus (Kio is a dead ringer for the kid, hence why Ezelcant is being so nice). But then you get stupid reveals (I know, more right?) that Ezelcant hasn’t flat out conquered the Earth for decades because he’s been testing the Earth populations will to survive. “Do they value their lives?” Oh my God that sounds like the logic of criminal mastermind Jigsaw from the Saw franchise. Are you telling me this has been one hugely and unnecessarily complicate Saw trap with giant robots? Oh Gundam AGE…no matter how you try there’s…there’s just no way to spin this.
At the heart of all of this was Kio, who still somehow manages to be the least compelling of the three Asuno leads despite the hardships he endures this set. I was gonna give him credit for standing up to Flit when his grandfather told him to forget about Asemu because Asemu is dead to him. But then Kio pulls the stupidest thing he possibly could and allows the Vagan to analyze his Gundam activation key because of a sob story from Ezelcant. And now the Vagan have their own Gundam that looks like a slimmed down version of Knight Gundam from the Dynasty Warriors Gundam franchise. I’ll admit, it looks cool…looking less cool is Ezelcant in the pilots seat, in fact its just silly. Gundam AGE is just going through the motions with Kio right now and he just doesn’t have strong enough material right now. All of that has gone to Flit and Asemu and I was more interested in their handling Kio’s capture than Kio’s time at Second Moon. Flit for once let his titanic emotional wall crack a little after Kio was captured. He did try to play off getting him back as reaquiring an important war asset. But Unoa was there to slap some sense into her father. Flit is his freaking grandson, that’s gotta hurt on some level. You know it says a lot when Asemu is still my favorite Asuno despite playing dead for a decade. The second he heard Kio was captured, he jumped right into planning his rescue. The scene where he asks his father for permission to go after him when the Diva couldn’t was well done. In the end, Kio I don’t think needed to be in Gundam AGE at all as the conflict between the revenge driven Flit and the more kind hearted Asemu would have been plenty good drama for this series. But theyre both adults and Kios a kid and we need a kid to draw in the younger fans. Fail…just fail all around.
This actually closed out the third Arc of Gundam AGE, and man oh man…Arc 3 was by far the weakest by a mile. The promise of an all out Vagan invasion of Earth was overshadowed by a terrible new cast, the big reveal of the return of one of the most stupid, stupid plans in all of Gundam, and an Asuno who is just around to be subjected to classic Gundam tropes that aren’t even being honored at this point. The attempt to lend sympathy to the Vagan allowed some legit sad moments with the death of Lu but the military is still full of ruthless killers dead set on the largest scale mass cleansing of all time…it’s like they want to be the Covenant from Halo but much less of a threat believe it or not. Even the return of Zeheart didn’t feel like much because Zeheart no longer has that connection to Asemu to play off of. Now he’s just another repetitive tool for Ezelcant and it made me wish he’d actually died at the end of Arc 2 to save Asemu like I predicted. The overall score of Gundam AGE is gonna be affected by this entire arc and, I’ll be honest, the score has never been that high for a long time, even with the relative better successes of Arc 2.
Tomorrow, the beginning of the end (thank God). For the first time, three generations of Asuno gather. Will Kio get to hug his dad? And what will Asemu think when he finally meets the crew of the Diva and realize…maybe he should’ve stollen the AGE System anyway and left them to drift? Honestly, at this point, I’m not expecting anything anymore. Gundam AGE invoked Gundam Seed Destiny and that’s a borderline sin to me. Uuuuugh…I’m glad I decided to review this series before Gundam X because Gundam X cannot be worse than this schlock. See ya tomorrow for the beginning of the 4th and final Arc of Mobile Suit Gundam AGE.
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