Thanks to the mystic Dragon, Caudorn, Hiroto and the
others are able to return to Eldora with the Gunpla Force at full
strength. But even with their
reassembled force, the Build Divers find themselves constantly outmatched by
the AI Alus and his improving Gunpla minions.
When a duel with Alus pushes him past his limits, Hiroto finally tells
the tale of why he became a solo player: a tale of love and possibility that
ended in tragedy. Can Hiroto move on
from the past to fight for a better future for Eldora with the rest of the
Build Divers?
Back when I was reviewing Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ a couple
of years back, I knew about the Black Sheep reputation it had within the
fandom.
And they were right, the first
half of ZZ is some of the worst stuff in the entire franchise.
However, the back half took the proper steps
to course correct by eliminating the slapstick, increasing the drama and
bettering the characters to the point where it finally became a proper and
worthy sequel to Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.
My issues thus far with Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise are pretty clear
thus far: I don’t like the main characters and the setup gets more and more
ridiculous the more new twists and reveals get tacked on.
I was hoping that the back half of the series
would improve on things but honestly, the idea of Gunpla heading to another
planet to fight a desperate battle against overwhelming odds…it’s both not what
I want to see from this sub franchise and not something properly tailored for
Gundam.
That said, some strides are made
in this penultimate set to clear the air over some of these issues.
But it wouldn’t be Re:Rise without equal, if
not more, of the same to make my blood boil.
The main plot of this set finally takes us into Hiroto’s
backstory.
I haven’t cared much for
Hiroto as I find his monotone and emotionless character to be a bit one note
and honestly it’s hard to tell sometimes who’s the artificial lifeform, him or
May.
Well, Hiroto has a reason for being
the depressed, lone mercenary that he is and you know what…it isn’t his
fault.
For my dislike of the guy, even I
wanted to give him a hug after listening to his tragic tale of wonder, love and
an El Diver giving into the worst case scenario and making him do an
unspeakable act.
Yep we finally got to
meet Eve, the El Diver in Hiroto’s flashbacks, properly.
As I figured, she’s a lot like Sarah: an
ethereal being very much like a Newtype, only she’s older.
Much like Sarah though, Eve began exhibiting
the same game breaking bugs El Divers were bringing to GBN, only on a larger
scale it looked like.
It looked like she
took in some of Sarah’s data but it caused her to become a natural disaster
that had to be stopped.
And that’s where
she asks Hiroto to do the unthinkable…and I have a massive problem with that.
Build Divers Re:Rise has felt like it’s trying to be the
edgy older brother of Build Divers and often times that’s meant taking away
everything that made the OG series such a joy to check out, most of that being
the abundance of optimism in the face of Armageddon.
Eve telling Hiroto to eliminate her for the
sake of GBN feels like a total gut punch that would ruin anyones life, hell I’m
surprised Hiroto even logged back into GBN after that.
It’s a terrible scenario to put him through
and I wondered for a moment if he would pull a Shinn Asuka during the Battle of
the Second Coalition and attack Riku because he got to save his El Diver love
and he couldn’t.
Thankfully Hiroto
resisted the urge to become like the Not Anakin Skywalker of Gundam, and cudos
to him for that.
No, most of my hate
goes to Eve for keeping her secret from Hitoro for so long and forcing that
kind of soul crushing responsibility on him, even if they didn’t know that a
fix for the problem was only a few days away.
I’m actually even more upset the Game Master and the Administration
weren’t hounding Eve and had all of their attention focused on poor Sarah when
her Bug was far less chaotic than what Eve was showcasing.
By the time Hiroto was done with his story, like I said,
he needed a hug.
I’m surprised May was
the one to give it to him but hey I’d take a cute girl giving me a hug were I
in that position.
I’ll give Re:Rise
this, everyone seemed to act a lot more mature after hearing this.
Even Kazami managed to tone down being an
annoyance for a few minutes to properly work on improving his Gunpla and
strategizing with his teammates in the real world.
For a moment, it felt like the team was at
last coming together.
I guess that’s a
case of better late than never but still, it’s taken way too long for this show
to go from terrible to slightly bearable if not still boring.
The Build Fighters and Build Divers spin offs
are supposed to be a nice break from all the hard hitting War is Hell
storytelling of the main franchise.
And
yet Build Fighters Try and Build Divers Re:Rise seem to go out of their way to
act more like their older franchise siblings and suck all the fun of their
predecessors out along with them.
I’d
almost argue Re:Rise is the worse offender of the two for the incredibly out
there directions it took with the Build Divers saga.
Point is, not sure how much good trying to
right things makes at this point but little victories are victories
nonetheless.
Honestly, the Hiroto origins was the one part of this
Re:Rise set that had most of my attention, so much so covering anything else
feels miniscule.
I guess it speaks to
how decent, if not plenty infuriating, Hiroto’s plight was compared to anything
else going on in the show (and cudos for bringing back some of Force Avalon to
show that Hiroto had a solid support group he could have reached out to.
Heck could they have been the main characters
of Re:Rise instead?).
Alus is taking a
more active role in controlling his own fake Gunpla but I cant get past his
generic delusional speeches and the fact that his motivation is wiping out the
Talking Animals of Eldora because they aren’t like the people he was programmed
to protect…yeah the naked Purple AI is still kind of racist for no reason.
And while I’m not big on them either, like I
said, even the Eldorans don’t deserve the punishment Alus is giving them.
That said, I’ve kind of tuned them out at
this point, save for Freddie every now and then.
Even Caudron the Mystic Dragon isn’t doing
much for me.
One last thing of note that I did find interesting was
during Hiroto’s backstory, we got to see the transition period between GP Duel
and the launch of GBN (furthering my belief Build Fighters and Build Divers
share the same universe).
It’s very reminiscent
of real world Video Game launches when one popular game is about to get a new
entry and everyones rushing to play the previous version before the
update.
Of all things, it reminded me of
the period when Overwatch was about to become Overwatch 2 and everyone was
logging in like crazy to spend time with the original version before it was
erased in favor of OW2…and the less said about that terrible decision the
better.
Still, getting to see Hiroto
prove his metal and earn the respect of a guy who was bullying other players in
the last days of GP Duel was equally reminiscent of the magic of OG Build
Divers and even Build Fighters, when Gunpla Duel and GBN were fun ventures and
not about life and death.
I guess if there’s one silver lining here it’s that
tomorrow I can finally put this series to rest, head to Otakon and come back in
August for bigger and hopefully better titles to review that aren’t Gundam
Build Divers Re:Rise.
But first, I have
to see what kind of a miracle Hiroto and his team pull out to stop Skynet from
launching Judgement Day on Eldora.
Can
the finale save the entire show?
Eh, the
OG Build Divers team pulled off a miracle, maybe they can too (expectations are
set very low though).
The Series Finale
of Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise and the conclusion of our two part Extended
Summer Series Review for 2023 arrives tomorrow right here at the Gundam Anime
Corner.
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