Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation-Heirs to the Stars

UC0087.  In the aftermath of the One Year War, the Earth Federation establishes The Titans to police space and suppress any potential Zeon like uprisings.  The Titans protection has become tyranny and they rule space with an iron fist.  Challenging them is the AEUG, a group comprised of former Federation and Zeon officers.  Among their ranks are the legendary Red Comet, Char Aznable and the first Gundam pilot, Amuro Ray.  But their greatest secret weapon is a young man with incredible Newtype potential, Kamille Bidan.  This is his story…but not quite the way you might remember it.

2005 marked the 20^th Anniversary of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.  In order to commemorate the landmark series, a trilogy of compilation films was commissioned with Yoshiyuki Tomino back at the helm.  Thus, we have the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation Trilogy.  This isn’t like your average Gundam compilation feature.  Much like the compilations for the original Mobile Suit Gundam series, A New Translation seems to be Tomino’s readdressing of the original story, with tweaks to plot and characters and, most notably, new animation.  We’ll be looking at all three of these films over the next couple of days before moving onto Gundam ZZ.  I originally wanted to save this for post ZZ but figured I might as well tackle these movies now while Zeta is still fresh in my head.  So, how is the first part of this New Translation?

One thing the trilogy has going for it right away is that it is a trilogy.  One of the last big compilation projects for Gundam I looked at were the compilation duology for Tomino’s Turn a Gundam.  Those two films were a mess, cramming in too much and too little and doing a great disservice to one of Gundam’s best entries.  Tomino’s taking better care with Zeta already planning it out as three films rather than two and thus giving it more room to breathe.  This is still a compilation though.  And that means the pacing is going to be breakneck most of the time.  For example, we don’t even see Kamille’s TV intro or his first encounter with his nemesis, Jerid, until a flashback during a later sequence in the film, and even then its shortened.  I was concerned with this at first.  But as Heirs to the Stars went on, I got more relaxed with the films speed and came to commend it.  Unlike the Turn A movies, Zeta’s still retain a good balance of strong character work and action.  We still get to know Kamille, Char, Emma and Jerid pretty well in the first chapter of the trilogy when the lasers stop firing.  This is even more impressive given that all of the New Translation films clock in at about an hour and a half each, a whole hour less than the Mobile Suit Gundam compilation films.  Heck, there’s even time for brand new sequences such as one where Hayato and Kai have a brief chat about working with Char.  It’s a brief scene but its one the TV series was missing: not because we already knew Quattro was Char but because we never got to see Kai and Hayato, longtime friends and White Base comrades, interact at all in the show.

Of course, the biggest draw besides Tomino making story changes is the incorporation of new animation while still keeping much of the 80s footage intact.  This is where Heirs to the Stars kind of fumbles.  The new animation looks almost as good as Gundam Unicorn and this film came out five years prior to it.  I get that Zeta Gundam is an important piece of Anime history but revisiting its artstyle in this way is…a strange call.  By comparison, the original Gundam’s Compilation Trilogy came out about a year after the series was cancelled.  Anime had come a little bit between 1979 and the 1981-82 period when the movies were released.  New animated sequences were incorporated throughout those and while they did stand out from the TV footage (especially in the third film which was almost completely new animation), it wasn’t as jarring as looking into the 80’s and then suddenly it’s 2005.  I honestly think that Tomino should have picked a lane here rather than swerving back and forth.  A complete 80s reedit could’ve been a good callback to a pivotal period of Anime.  But again, the new animation is pretty damn good and it works well with the Zeta time period.  The last 20 minutes of the movie is mostly new animation and it helped make the defense of the Adaluma even more exciting than it did in the TV series.  And it helped end the film on one of the best moments you could end it on: the reunion of Amuro and Char.  This was one famous moment where the new animation really soared and could be proof alone that this compilation can work out its animation identity crisis (too harsh?) and pay homage to one of Gundams finest hours.

A New Translation: Heirs to the Stars is a decent beginning for the retelling of Zeta.  Covering the first 14 episodes of the TV series, the fates of some characters have already been changed but many are still intact and with them, their amazing stories from the legendary 80’s Anime.  The new animation looks gorgeous and the through the looking glass experience of revisiting the old TV footage has its merits.  Merging the two eras of art is still tricky and can sometimes distract from the narrative.  However, the main story of Zeta and the struggles of Kamille Bidan and the AEUG against the Titans is still intact and still as engaging as ever.  Much like Zeta Gundam itself, Heirs to the Stars isn’t flawless but its still a flick worth seeing if you love the series.  Here’s hoping the same goes for the rest of the trilogy as well.

7.5/10

The revisiting of Zeta continues tomorrow as we see how it handles one of Gundams most infamous and tragic romances with Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation II-Lovers.  See ya then