Thursday, April 2, 2020

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin Part 2 Episodes 3-4


Universal Century 0072.  Casval enters Zeon’s military academy under the alias Char Aznable and begins his meteoric rise through the ranks.  As he and another promising recruit, Garma, the youngest of the Zabi clan, enact a bold operation that will cement their names in history, other developments are progressing across the stars.  Zeon Mobile Suit development edges closer to completion and a lone Federation scientist, Tem Ray, begins a secret project to counter these advancements.  And elsewhere, Char meets Lalah Sune, a beautiful and ethereal girl with powers beyond his understanding.  The curtain soon rises on Universal Century 0078 and the final moments before the conflict that will change history forever.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin continued fairly strong with it’s second act.  We got tons of backstory tidbits, some impressive Mobile Suit action and the birth of the Char we all know and love.  Originally, this was only supposed to be a 4 Episode OVA but after watching Episode 4, I’m glad things didn’t end here.  Sure I’d love to see more but I also think that where these couple of episodes end might not have been a good stopping point.

The first half of this set, Episode 3, has a couple of big jobs: Cementing the final touches on Char’s beginnings in the Zeon military and establishing his friendship with Garma Zabi.  Oh man, a lot of this early episode gave me chills.  The smile on Char’s face when he set up the young man whose name and identity he took to die was classic Char Aznable and it wouldn’t be the last time that wicked smirk popped up in the same episode.  More chilling was that in all of their interactions, I could see at least 2 or 3 instances where Char could’ve just killed Garma outright.  You can see the wheels turning in his head and he probably could’ve gotten away with it too cause…well it’s Char, he just could.  But no, we got Garma and Char eventually bonding and becoming the fuse that spark Zeon to begin the last push towards independence and the One Year War.  The Dawn Rebellion that was all their baby (Char’s plan, Garma’s command), was a very exciting sequence.  For a Gundam show, theres an understandable lack of Mobile Suit combat so far.  So it’s great that the action can still thrill in a well paced and well executed battle.  Heck, Char even got the first version of his famous mask and his appreciation for the color red thanks to this event.

Episode 4 is where things got a little clunky and crowded.  We slowly moved away from Char’s story and onto other aspects of the lead up to the One Year War.  In fact there were three concurrent storylines: Char and his meeting with Lalah Sune; the first Mobile Suit Battle on the Moon featuring Ramba Ral and the Black Tri Stars; and Amuro Ray’s lonely life on Side 7.  Each one gets an equal amount of screentime but, ill be honest, while the Moon Battle is awesome, the rest of the story does tend to drag and doesn’t pack the same punch as the focus on the Zeon siblings.  I get that there were a ton of moving parts in the build up to war but somethings seemed out of focus.  I also have to note that there are a couple of retcons presented in Episode 4.  I thought that the Federation didn’t have Mobile Suits by the time the original series came about.  They were testing some sure but I thought the Gundam, Guncannon, Guntank and GMs were the first of their kind.  On top of that, Amuro discovers the Gundams blueprints in his fathers office, yet he doesn’t recognize the Mobile Suit when he first gets into it in the first episode of the original series.  It’s one of the first times I feel like The Origin is reaching a bit when it’s already grasped goodness plenty.  Oh and if you hated Amuro in the first half of the original series, you’re really gonna hate him in The Origin cause he’s arguably a worse human being here: a lazy, bratty shut in…God this is the kid who’s going to save the world one day? Go figure.  I’d argue his father, Tem Ray, is even worse…but I’ve never liked him anyway so moving on.

Right, I haven’t talked about the animation yet.  Wow, the CG and Anime fusion works brilliantly in this OVA and the battle outside of Granada is proof of that.  Mobile Suits are moving much more like I figured they would in a real world situation and even a bit faster thanks to the fact that we’re seeing this in 2016 (when Episode 4 came out) as opposed to 1979.  It’s also a treat to see Char, Ramba Ral and the Black Tri Stars all in the same fight together and showing why all of them are considered legends in the history of Zeon Mobile Suit pilots.  Even their Mobile Suits, while feeling slightly incomplete, feel menacing and bad ass.  Now that I think about it, the suits even sported the colors of their respective pilots (Red for Char, Blue for Ramba, and Black for the Black Tri Stars), nice touch.  Much like Gundam Unicorn, this continues to feel like this is how Mobile Suit Gundam was always supposed to look.  That’s not a knock against the original series or its animation at all, things just look hella perfected in this OVA. 

Episode 4 closed things out at the very beginning of Universal Century 0079 which means we’ve made it to the One Year War at last.  And yet, as I said above, with how jam packed the episode itself was, it didn’t feel like a proper ending, though ending it at the beginning of the war sounds like a good place to do so.  Fret not, turns out Sunrise wasn’t done with this little project just yet.  Tomorrow we finish off Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin with the battle that changed everything and takes us past the beginnings of the One Year War…and to the very start of Mobile Suit Gundam itself.  See ya tomorrow everyone.

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