Welcome Dear Readers to a brand new special feature
event. There’s no reason to once again
go over just how important the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise is to me. Short version: it changed the way I looked at
Anime forever and is still doing so 24 years after I first saw Gundam Wing on
Toonami back in 2000. With the franchise
turning 45 in April and my blog hitting it’s landmark 10th
Anniversary on March 31, I’ve decided to look back at ALL of the Gundam titles
I’ve reviewed since 2014 and rank them from Worst to Best based on the scores I
gave them. And while this is meant to be
a celebration, we’re not celebrating much about this opening salvo of titles
today. We’re starting at the bottom of
the barrel, the lowest of the low, right at 0/10 believe it or not.
Gundam: Reconguista in G (0/10) Ignoring for a moment this isnt just an anniversary title
or that it’s from Gundam’s Godfather himself, Yoshiyuki Tomino: this is just a
really, really, really bad series purely by mecha standards.
The world feels more like an Alternate
Universe than a successor to the Universal Century.
Character development resets at the beginning
of every episode and don’t get me started on how people talk in conversations
(it’s like three or four random ones at a time).
Not to mention, the Mecha designs are the
worst in the entire franchise, especially the insect head G-Self.
G Reco is a disaster from start to finish
with no redeeming factors, so much so that it’s the only Gundam Series I’ve
reviewed to get a straight up 0/10.
Watch only if you’re a die hard Gundam fan and if so…be prepared for 25
episodes of time you’re not getting back.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Twilight Axis (0/10)
The moment I heard the premise of Twilight Axis, I was
excited.
I’d always wanted to know what
happened to the legendary Zeon fortress after Char’s Counterattack and what
secrets still remained within. Well turns out Twilight Axis isnt interested in
any of that.
This ONA is a collection of
randomly strung together plots that don’t connect in anyway.
What made the two leads interesting to Char
Aznable of all people?
What’s the deal
with that sweet looking Gundam stalking the Zeon Expedition Team?
Was this meant to be a something bigger and
this ONA was just a teaser?
As you can
tell, this story that could have been something special leaves more questions
than answers and ends up feeling like a short yet giant waste of time.
G-Saviour (1/10)
What does G-Saviour have to do with Gundam at all?
The answer is nothing, nothing at all.
This isnt a Gundam movie, it’s a SyFy movie
of the week with crappy dialogue, no story, special effects on par with those
done by The Asylum.
There’s even some
reused costumes from Starship Troopers I’m sure.
The only thing of note is the casting of
Enuka Okuna, the English Dub voice for Lady Une in Gundam Wing, and the really
solid performance she gives, more than this movie deserves.
I cant believe Sunrise was actually ok with
this being released in the first place and you can tell they’ve worked their
hardest to bury it as best as possible and hope no one remembers it.
Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: The Afterglow of Zeon (1/10)
Afterglow of Zeon epitomizes the very reasons I hardly
ever do Compilation Films.
Save for a
very short new intro, the rest of the movie is a cliffnotes rehash of a
gorgeous but flawed Gundam title.
Who
cares if the animation looks nice, it’s the OVA’s greatest strength.
There’s nothing new added to enhance the
viewing experience and any chance to fix the story and character issues clearly
isnt a priority.
It’s not that Gundam
cant do good Compilation Films, trust me, we’ll get to them.
But of the many I’ve seen, the Afterglow of
Zeon is easily the worst.
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny (2/10)
Even though it’s status as “Rock Bottom” for the
franchise has been passed on to Reconguista In G, I still really, really HATE
Gundam Seed Destiny.
All the good will
built up with Seed is flushed down the toilet in favor of a story that is being
made up as the show goes on and character assassinating the original Seed cast
in order to try and make the new cast look better, which also fails.
And, of course, there’s Shinn Asuka, my
favorite whipping boy of Gundam.
His
presence alone tanks the series for me as he never grows, always yells, is
easily misled and somehow also lands himself in the cockpits of two damn
impressive Gundam’s he doesn’t deserve.
I really hope Seed Freedom fixes a lot of Seed Destiny’s damage, cause
this is still a pretty dark page in Gundam history.
Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise (2/10)
Build Divers took the concept of Gunpla fighting Gunpla
and took it to the next level on a limitless MMOJRPG stage.
So how do you follow that up?
You send four hapless idiots into space to
save a race of Furries from destruction at the hands of an evil AI and they
don’t even realize they aren’t playing a game anymore until the halfway mark of
the series.
Seriously, Re:Rise still
feels like this was meant to be an entirely new IP but there wasn’t anything
original for Gundam’s 40
th Anniversary so they just reworked it into
the crappy Build Divers sequel that it is.
The Build Series are supposed to be about having fun with Gunpla, not
about life and death situations.
Gundam Build Fighters Try (2/10)
Build Fighters Try does for Build Fighters what Build
Divers Re;Rise did for Build Divers: take a cool premise full of imagination
and possibility and turn it into the most depressing experience.
One character has his soul crushed by an
intense Gunpla duel and he NEVER recovers from it, like at all.
The core cast never clicks and it feels like
there’s more at stake than winning tournaments. All of the magic of being a
Gundam and Gunpla fan perfectly encapsulated in the original Build Fighters is
gone, replaced with a school for hard knocks experience that would turn anyone
away from Gunpla building.
Gundam Build Fighters Try-Island Wars (2/10)
All of my thoughts about the main series are still the
same with this sequel OVA.
In fact the
damage had been done so badly that there was no way I was going to enjoy Island
Wars no matter how hard it tried (no pun intended).
And it didn’t even do that.
This is just an extended bonus episode that
advances nothing for the story or characters.
It exists, good for it, moving on.
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE (3/10)
Gundam AGE’s biggest flaw is its ambition: a multi decade
war spread across multiple generations of pilots from the same family.
However, this leaves little time to take it
all in due to the break neck pace of having to cram so much into a set of
episodes before jumping ahead in time to the next arc.
The more childish characters designs also
clash with the increasingly dark tone of the overall series.
The farther along I got into AGE, the angrier
I became.
This had a chance to be the
next Universal Century or Cosmic Era level corner of the franchise.
Instead, AGE is a failed experiment filled
with a lot of rage inducing moments from bad writing to characters who you
actually wish could not make it to the Series Finale.
Turn A Gundam: The Movie-Earth Light (3/10)
Turn A Gundam is already a near flawless
masterpiece.
It doesn’t need a
Compilation Movie, let alone two.
But
when you consider how improved the original Gundam Movie Trilogy is compared to
the TV Series, it could still work.
Sadly it doesn’t.
Earth Light is
a bullet point presentation of the first half of Turn A’s story and I mean that
in more ways than one. The film jumps all over the place mostly focusing on
major action set pieces rather than important character moments or world
building.
The fact that the end credits
rush us through an entire section of the series just to throw us into Part Two
further adds to the question of why this wasn’t commissioned as a Trilogy
rather than a Duology.
Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (4.5/10)
I do have a soft spot for this movie as it has some good
ideas and stunning animation.
However,
its long development history cant be ignored and its results are all on display
during the entire films runtime.
Characters change allegiances, disappear or die for no reason.
Entire subplots feel scrapped to keep the
movie going.
And the action, while some
of the most brutal in the franchise, still feels hollow because there’s little
to get attached to in the story. F91 feels like a Compilation Film for a TV
Series that doesn’t exist but almost did (It was originally intended to be a 52
episode series before being reconfigured into a movie with only 12-14 scripts
completed).
Well that does it for the worst of the worst, though
things did get progressively better the further up we went.
Next week, we move into the territory of “Eh,
that was ok” and “Not bad but just shy of being pretty good” in Part 2 of
Ranking Gundam, Next Thursday right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.
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