Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuX Part 4 Episodes 10-12

Chaos envelopes the Earth Sphere as Kycillia enacts her Coup d’etat to seize total control of Zeon from her family and finish the Earth once and for all.  Unaware of the destruction she’s causing, Nyaan continues to obey Kycillia, desperate to find Shuji. Standing in her way is Machu, who is determined to save the Lalah from another world any way she can.  As the former friends cross swords, their mutual wishes are on the verge of being granted…though doing so may bring about the end of their world.

By the time we get to the final moments of Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuX my biggest question is: Why?  Why is this show so short?  Why is it so poorly written?  Why were any of the creative choices given a greenlight and, amongst so many others, Why is this the result of a team up between Studio Sunrise and Studio Khara?  Most of last weeks penultimate episodes felt like a soft reboot of the shows status quo with a lot of potential for Nyaan and even Machu…ok maybe not Machu but maybe for the new UC at large.  However that might’ve meant something and could have resulted in a Gundam ZZ type of creative comeback…if this wasn’t twelve episodes long.  The only thing that would make this mess of a finale more poetic is if we had that clip of the main cast running in the intro and just have them trip and collapse over one another, it’s the most fitting image of GQuuuuuX in general.
 
Episodes 10-12 feel like a mad race to the finish line, like the writers suddenly realized how much time they wasted with Machu’s immature antics and Clan Battle and didn’t really know how to wrap everything up.  Even the start of Episode 10 feels like we’ve jumped ahead an indeterminate amount of time, to the point where Machu’s getting trained by Chalia Bull and Nyaan’s being mentored by Kycilia and trained by Xavier.  The conversations between all parties feel more natural and less aggressive for the most part but it’s all off screen developments that have led to this point so, oh well for actual character development (we’ll come back to that later). 
 
Once all the final pieces are in place, it’s basically like pulling that piece of the Jenga tower that causes the whole thing to collapse.  The long awaited civil war between Zabi siblings…over in like two minutes, maybe even less.  Ghiren literally just shows up and dies in that amount of time thanks to a gas attack from Kycilia, though I’ll admit I did love it when Ghiren’s secretary suddenly started choking with Kycilia looking at her.  It was like one of Darth Vader’s many force chokes from Star Wars (“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”).  Anyway, hi Ghiren, bye Ghiren. Then it was just mindless and destinationless Mobile Suit combat that was loud and everywhere.  Blow up the Earth?  Oh there’s Char?  Shuji’s back…and wants to destroy the world?  Going back to the Jenga analogy, this was like pointing at all of the pieces hitting the ground in order and writing down what story ideas they contained and just running with it.  I’ve written College Essays with less than 24 hours til the due date and still had plenty of coherency.
 
Sigh, guess we should break down some of the bigger points.  The first half of the “plot” revolved around Kycilia cleaning house with the newly built Yomagn’tho Cannon.  It certainly looked apocalyptic enough seeing A Boa A Qu getting sucked into a vortex of destruction (complete with water gurgling sound when all was said and done).  And after all that grief about Ghiren ordering the Colony drop on Austrailia, she wants to use the cannon to wipe out the Earth in its entirety, cause why not.  Powering this cannon was Nyaan, who was so blinded by her desire to find her precious “Shu-Chan” she didn’t even bother questioning anything until after she fired the big gun that claimed thousands of lives in an instant.  But hey if it gets you closer to the guy who’s never been into you, you be you Nyaan. 
 
You’d think things would get somewhat better with the return of Char.  And while he is one of the more tolerable characters in the finale, his appearance is when things really start flying off the rails.  Not only does he get a Magical Girl transformation into his Zeon uniform (mask and all), Shuji comes back and reveals the truth: this Alternate UC is the result of Lalah going nuts when Char got killed by Amuro in another reality.  It’s reminiscent of the Marvel Comics even “House of M” when the Scarlet Witch went insane and recreated reality to where her lost children were still around and Mutants were the dominant species on Earth.  But apparently Lalah has done this multiple times judging from the red colored display of Mobile Suits because Char doesn’t usually last very long and she just wants him to live.  Now I’ve seen a lot of Newtype miracles and shenanigans in Gundam but creating not just one alternate universe but an entire freaking Multiverse of Madness?  You want an example of this kind of plot done right, go watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
 
Oh but we weren’t even close to being done.  Char wants to send Lalah back to where she came from to protect her.  But Shuji wants to kill her to destroy this universe and stop Lalah from causing further chaos.  To add insult to injury, he even brings his own variant of the original RX-78-2 Gundam which can grow to an Angel Rei Kaiju sized mecha because WHY THE F NOT AT THIS POINT!!!???  It’s like the writers and animators didn’t have a proper finale in mind and just went for pure nonsensical spectacle and thinking if it looks good, it’ll mask the imperfections…they failed.  Machu and Nyaan make up as quickly as they started fighting and Shuji just screws off to somewhere else after Machu declares her love for him and I don’t buy any of it.  The “romance” between Machu and Shuji has been as dull and uninteresting as the characters themselves.  It also feels like hundreds are dying out there just so these two and Nyaan can settle their feelings for each other.  Not quite the usual finale for a Gundam series but then again The Witch from Mercury was about Suletta trying to make her Mother see the error of her ways and let go of her vengeance.  The difference: I gave much more of a damn about Suletta and even Prospera compared to three teenagers with zero personality and likeablity.
 
And last, but certainly not least: there’s Chalia Bull, who finally gets his reunion with his long lost buddy Char.  Bear with me: There’s a scene in the movie Madagascar where best friends Alex the Lion and Marty the Zebra are reunited on a beach after falling off a boat.  They run towards each other, the Chariots of Fire music is playing and they look so happy to see each other.  Midway through, Alex’s face changes from happy to pissed off while Marty looks confused.  Then Alex growls and Marty turns to run saying “OH SUGAR HONEY ICE TEA!!!”  That’s Chalia and Char, particularly when Chalia suddenly reveals hes been looking for Char just to kill him so Sayla can take over Zeon.  WHAT THE F!!!!!!!????  All this time, it’s been as if Chalia Bull’s been pining for Char like a long lost lover and while he has made it clear the Zabis aren’t fit to run Zeon, when the hell was Sayla ever brought up as a candidate to replace them?  The only time we’ve seen her before her quick cameo in the finale is during her flashback encounter with Char on Solomon.  Jeez, Chalia Bull might be one of the worst Char clone characters in any Gundam series and YES I can call him that because it’s very hard to see but he is wearing a literal Char mask while watching over Sayla (hi Ramba Ral) with Xavier and Comoli. 
 
Man, it has been a long time since I’ve been this heated and riled up writing a review.  Was there anything, ANYTHING good about these last three episodes?  Ehhhhh…bits and pieces but nothing amounting to much.  Seeing Xavier fight Chalia Bull was a long time coming.  Kycilia’s killing of Ghiren and his entourage while quick was a fun moment for her.  I do like that Char and Lalah seem to get a happy ending, better them than anyone else in this series.  Oh and I do like the crew of the Sodon and want them in a better series.  I liked their repartee and camaraderie on the bridge and I’d rather be hanging around them in the middle of a warzone than the guy who thinks he knows everything.  Poor Comoli though, she was totally wasted in this entire series and just around for visual eye candy than an actual character.  She deserves way more than to just be a constantly questioning shadow behind Chalia Bull all the time.
 
Alright, now that I’ve rambled and ranted through that mess of an ending, time for Final Thoughts.  I know there are many people who like Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuX, who love how freaking insane and crazy places it goes but I am not one of them.  Every promising step forward has taken 100 gigantic steps backwards.  Every potential storyline, fumbled.  Every promising character, ruined in many ways (or just never got interesting to begin with).  The best parts I had zero problem with were the flashbacks and explorations of the new One Year War, complete with classic music, and those felt like they were the show everyone wanted to be working on and not anything in the present.  Machu, Nyaan and Shuji pissed me off the more they were around and are some of the weakest leads in a Gundam series: no character arc, no direction, and a love triangle that Macross can outclass in its sleep.  The animation is fine though the Mobile Suits vary in the quality of their designs.  The action is fine as well but it’s mostly used as a failed distraction attempt to keep watchers from realizing there’s no reason to care about what’s happening to anyone involved in said action.  This show had so much promise with the creative powers involved.  At the end of the day, the Alternate One Year War and Char return setup was just a ploy to get butts in seats and smokescreen for a show that wants to be a darker FLCL with bigger Mecha (FLCL Season 2-3?), without any sense of direction, character or even purpose than to just be a run of the mil Mecha series with the Gundam name attached to it.  Been a looonnng time since a Gundam series has pissed me off this much. 
 
Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuX receives a 3/10, which a score a show with this much talent and power behind it should not be getting. 
 
And with that out of the way, onto happier things, hopefully.  Time to wash off the stink of GQuuuuuX with a return trip to the Best Hotel in Hell as we close out 2025 with Hazbin Hotel (Season 2), tomorrow right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.