Gundam Show Thread - MSG thru GQuuuuuuX

[Big s]

41 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The art style is a really REALLY poor fit to Gundam, both in terms of the excessively busy mechanical design ala Evangelion and the cutesy art style used for the characters.

I actually like the art style for the characters. It makes it feel more alive than something like the seed stuff.

Definitely not a fan of the mecha designs, but I didn’t have any problems following what was going on. 
 

Overall, I found it more enjoyable than most recent gundam stuff, but that’s a really low bar these days unfortunately. 
 

The boat horn thing had me laughing though for sure, mostly for its uselessness in space, but it lightened the mood with its ridiculousness.

I think this is a show that’s more lighthearted and silly than previous Gundam projects and maybe that’s what made it more enjoyable to me

[davidwhangchoi]

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Ugh... well... I've put it off long enough.  Time to actually give this hot mess called GQuuuuuuX a whirl.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Barely 30s in and I'm already hitting pause for the first time because the picture is so muddy and indistinct that I can barely tell what's going on.  There are two mobile suits fighting, but they're both dark-colored, heavily shaded, and their designs are so busy that it's hard to tell what's going on.  I'm watching this on a f***ing 4K Neo-QLED TV the size of a Fiat 500... there's no excuse for not being able to tell WTH is going on.

We get to watch two pieces of junkyard vomit slap each other around like sumo wrestlers for a minute before the Sodon rolls up and... honks its horn at them?  It's a f***ing space aircraft carrier, not a big rig.  Moreover, how do you not see something that big coming toward you?

Not even two minutes in, and there's already a Gundam attacking?

Eh... I do not care for this art style at all.  The Mobile Suits are sinfully ugly as expected from Ikuto Yamashita, but the character designs look like they're in the wrong genre entirely.  They look like they wandered in from Pretty Cure.  That's not even intended as a snide remark, they really do look like the main character designs from Futari wa Pretty Cure.  It actually kind of makes me afraid to watch the rest, since I know how Hideaki Anno likes to lewd young teen girls.

So main girl got made a mule for a black market "installer device" to enable a MS's combat computer?  And it's just Tem Ray's circuit?

The "Red gundam" has nothing better to do than graffiti the outside of colonies?  The local police failed to catch it, so Challlia Bull is going to send out the titular Gundam to try and catch it.  Getting our first look at it in animation and oh boy does it look like sh*t.  Someone, likely several someones, at Bandai Namco looked at this turd that Ikuto Yamashita served up and said "Yeah, that's good enough."  Blech.  It's so busy that it just looks like an indistinct jumble of random lines.  It has none of the clarity of line or form that most other Gundam designs have.  There might be a passable design under all that surface detail, but it's like the Michael Bay Transformers... they just stuck SO MUCH surface detail on it that it looks like a moving pile of scrap.

So main girl gets her backpack stolen... and chases the thief all the way to a random Torii gate on top of a building?  They narrate at each other about the latest attempt to include pointless no-stakes mobile suit battles in the setting - a bad idea carried over from The Witch from Mercury - and the whole thing is treated like a shoujo ai encounter at a shrine complete with sparkles.  Turns out the whole reason she's pursued this is because the other girl got her phone broken and wants to be reimbursed.

We see the titular Gundam stalking the Red Gundam through a backdrop of curiously square debris covered in surface detail seeminly for no reason other than to make its own excessive level of surface detail look less over-the-top.  The pilot insightfully wonders if the bright red Gundam he's chasing is the red Gundam.  I see winning the One Year War did nothing to help Zeon's education system.  He then proceeds to get absolutely thrashed in short order by the Red Gundam.

The girls deliver the installer to a group living on top of a rundown-looking building in a bad part of town.  We get to see the clan battle team's Zaku in a lovingly detailed pan shot, which just emphasizes how massively overdesigned it is, to the point that it doesn't even really look like a Zaku.  Then the Red Gundam and GQux bust throuhg the ground?  

The visual design of this fight is meant to evoke high speed and maneuverability, but because the designs themselves are so visually busy it just looks like a mess.  We get a closeup of the Red Gundam, and it just looks like someone hastily slapped a V-fin on an EVA unit.

The MPs start trashing the area trying to find the Red Gundam, and don't seem to care how much death and destruction they cause doing it because the inhabitants are refugees living there illegally.  They apparently can't actually fight back because the key is broken... apparently not, as it works just fine, just in time for them to get kicked into a pit and for the MPs to find the GQux and its pilot and try to arrest him.

So main girl throws herself out of the Zaku and steals the Gundam effortlessly without actually doing anything and activates the "Omega Psycommu" without trying?  Seems like it's a direct thought control system like the Newtype Destroyer.  She ends up tossed out the airlock and into another shoujo manga glitter storm. 

They keep using the word "Mav", contextually to refer to a partner... but considering how heavily shoujo ai this feels like it's trying to lean I'm going to incorrectly assume that it's LGBTQ slang.

The Red Gundam does a flyby of the Sodon as if to mock it, and Challia remarks it's not Char in there.

The art style in the previous for next episode is completely different and looks much more in line with Origin and the original... and looks infinitely better by comparison.

Ever since I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time, I've always felt Hideaki Anno is one of the worst and most overrated creators in anime.  GQuuuuuuX is doing little to change that view.  

This show has two main problems:

1. The story is basically just a route from Gihren's Greed.
2. The art style is a really REALLY poor fit to Gundam, both in terms of the excessively busy mechanical design ala Evangelion and the cutesy art style used for the characters.

I can't wait for Char to manipulate a young girl and use her for the end game. 

I don't want Zeta Char... I want CCA drop a colony Char. 

Edited Monday at 07:03 AM by davidwhangchoi

[Big s]

2 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

I can't wait for Char to manipulate a young girl and use her for the end game. 

I don't want Zeta Char... I want CCA drop a colony Char. 

I don’t think it will get to super petty pedophile Char. He didn’t lose the war, spacenoids gained independence, and wasn’t turned into a cyber newtype with a taste for the underage, and I don’t think he has the ability politically to do a colony drop.

For all we know, his soul could have been swallowed by the gundam and may have become part of all the gundams and will lead to some kind of human instrumentatality

[pengbuzz]

"Colony drop".... as in "thousands of people screaming as they plummet to their deaths aboard a giant metal colony about to impact with a city that also has thousands of people screaming as they're all about to die?"

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ColonyDrop

Or do they just drop an empty colony in the middle of nowhere and turn it into a Walmart or something?

Edited Monday at 12:39 PM by pengbuzz

[Big s]

52 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

"Colony drop".... as in "thousands of people screaming as they plummet to their deaths aboard a giant metal colony about to impact with a city that also has thousands of people screaming as they're all about to die?"

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ColonyDrop

Or do they just drop an empty colony in the middle of nowhere and turn it into a Walmart or something?

I guess it depends on their mood 

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

"Colony drop".... as in "thousands of people screaming as they plummet to their deaths aboard a giant metal colony about to impact with a city that also has thousands of people screaming as they're all about to die?"

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ColonyDrop

Or do they just drop an empty colony in the middle of nowhere and turn it into a Walmart or something?

So, two points here... both of which make it worse.

1. The O'Neill cylinder-type space colonies used in Gundam's Universal Century (and other timelines) typically have a population of several million people, not thousands.
2. Those people aren't usually alive by the time the colony is launched as an improvised ballistic projectile.

One of the many, MANY war crimes perpetrated by the Principality of Zeon during the One Year War was the use of poison gas to indiscriminately massacre the populations of entire colonies in the Federation-aligned Sides.  Island Iffish, the colony from Side 2 that was used in the original colony drop ("Operation British"), had its population gassed to death with GG gas as part of Zeon's preparations to convert the colony into a ballistic weapon.  Just in case the audience needed to be reminded that the Principality of Zeon's forces are Complete Monsters, the previously backstory-only massacre was animated as part of Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin's fifth episode showing how unbothered those Principality forces planning and carrying out the massacre were.  (Ironically Stardust Memory depicts the rest of the Zeon forces as being disgusted by this after the fact, to the extent of deliberately leaving the forces responsible for it behind during the retreat to Axis.)

As for the goal of colony drops... well... it's usually a terror weapon, meant to cause mass death through both the impact and the environmental damage caused by such a huge object impacting Earth's surface.  The Zabis were arguably the most reserved of the lot, aiming only to destroy Earth Federation Forces HQ in a massive nuke-proof underground complex in South America.  Delaz's forces tried to cause mass starvation by dropping a colony on central North America to destroy farmland, the Titans were trying to destroy a factory-city (Von Braun) that was supporting the AEUG, and both Neo Zeon and Char's New Neo Zeon were trying to destroy the Federation capital (wiping out Dublin, Ireland and Lhasa, Tibet in the process.)  Char's endgame was different, though... he wanted serial colony drops to render Earth completely uninhabitable rather than just win some war.

 

10 hours ago, Big s said:

I don’t think it will get to super petty pedophile Char. He didn’t lose the war, spacenoids gained independence, and wasn’t turned into a cyber newtype with a taste for the underage, and I don’t think he has the ability politically to do a colony drop.

Char wasn't a cyber-newtype.

Mind you, this timeline's Char might be more insane than the one in the main UC timeline.  Zeon didn't lose the war, but he sure as hell did.  He wasn't able to carry out his plan to arrange the deaths of the entire Zabi family under the cover of the One Year War the way he did in the prime timeline.  According to promotional materials...

Spoiler

... Char went missing during the Second Battle of Solomon, when he tried to assassinate Kycilia Zabi by sabotaging Zeon's efforts to prevent the Federation from dropping Space Fortress Solomon on the Zeon-aligned lunar city of Granada where Kycilia's forces were headquartered.  He disappeared during a psycommu runaway event similar to the Axis Shock and hasn't been seen since.  If he's still alive, and not reduced to a Ghost in the Machine like the pilot of the Unicorn Phenix in Narrative, he's probably quite mad and hellbent on destroying Zeon and the Zabis.

 

[davidwhangchoi]

8 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

"Colony drop".... as in "thousands of people screaming as they plummet to their deaths aboard a giant metal colony about to impact with a city that also has thousands of people screaming as they're all about to die?"

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ColonyDrop

Or do they just drop an empty colony in the middle of nowhere and turn it into a Walmart or something?

i laughed so hard reading this 

50 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So, two points here... both of which make it worse.

1. The O'Neill cylinder-type space colonies used in Gundam's Universal Century (and other timelines) typically have a population of several million people, not thousands.
2. Those people aren't usually alive by the time the colony is launched as an improvised ballistic projectile.

One of the many, MANY war crimes perpetrated by the Principality of Zeon during the One Year War was the use of poison gas to indiscriminately massacre the populations of entire colonies in the Federation-aligned Sides.  Island Iffish, the colony from Side 2 that was used in the original colony drop ("Operation British"), had its population gassed to death with GG gas as part of Zeon's preparations to convert the colony into a ballistic weapon.  Just in case the audience needed to be reminded that the Principality of Zeon's forces are Complete Monsters, the previously backstory-only massacre was animated as part of Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin's fifth episode showing how unbothered those Principality forces planning and carrying out the massacre were.  (Ironically Stardust Memory depicts the rest of the Zeon forces as being disgusted by this after the fact, to the extent of deliberately leaving the forces responsible for it behind during the retreat to Axis.)

As for the goal of colony drops... well... it's usually a terror weapon, meant to cause mass death through both the impact and the environmental damage caused by such a huge object impacting Earth's surface.  The Zabis were arguably the most reserved of the lot, aiming only to destroy Earth Federation Forces HQ in a massive nuke-proof underground complex in South America.  Delaz's forces tried to cause mass starvation by dropping a colony on central North America to destroy farmland, the Titans were trying to destroy a factory-city (Von Braun) that was supporting the AEUG, and both Neo Zeon and Char's New Neo Zeon were trying to destroy the Federation capital (wiping out Dublin, Ireland and Lhasa, Tibet in the process.)  Char's endgame was different, though... he wanted serial colony drops to render Earth completely uninhabitable rather than just win some war.

 

Char wasn't a cyber-newtype.

Mind you, this timeline's Char might be more insane than the one in the main UC timeline.  Zeon didn't lose the war, but he sure as hell did.  He wasn't able to carry out his plan to arrange the deaths of the entire Zabi family under the cover of the One Year War the way he did in the prime timeline.  According to promotional materials...

  Reveal hidden contents

... Char went missing during the Second Battle of Solomon, when he tried to assassinate Kycilia Zabi by sabotaging Zeon's efforts to prevent the Federation from dropping Space Fortress Solomon on the Zeon-aligned lunar city of Granada where Kycilia's forces were headquartered.  He disappeared during a psycommu runaway event similar to the Axis Shock and hasn't been seen since.  If he's still alive, and not reduced to a Ghost in the Machine like the pilot of the Unicorn Phenix in Narrative, he's probably quite mad and hellbent on destroying Zeon and the Zabis.

 

so...

Spoiler

there's to be a colony drop 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, davidwhangchoi said:

so...

  Hide contents

there's to be a colony drop 

 

In the next episode?  Probably... though it's a flashback so it's technically already happened several years ago by the time of GQuuuuuuX.

Whether there will be a third one, or some other atrocity, will really depend on the direction the story goes.

 

One thing about GQuuuuuuX's story that really worries me is the sneaking feeling that it's going to continue where Requiem for Vengeance left off in terms of trying to make Zeon characters sympathetic by avoiding the whole subject of their war crimes.

Spoiler

The whole Solomon thing just feels like it's designed to facilitate "both sides"-isms even though in this timeline is no different from the main UC prior to Side 7 in September 0079.

 

[Big s]

2 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

i laughed so hard reading this 

so...

  Reveal hidden contents

there's to be a colony drop 

 

Possibly not. The episode may just show things from the point of time where char steals the gundam and might be events after the colony drop. I guess we’ll find out soon though 

[davidwhangchoi]

21 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In the next episode?  Probably... though it's a flashback so it's technically already happened several years ago by the time of GQuuuuuuX.

Whether there will be a third one, or some other atrocity, will really depend on the direction the story goes.

 

One thing about GQuuuuuuX's story that really worries me is the sneaking feeling that it's going to continue where Requiem for Vengeance left off in terms of trying to make Zeon characters sympathetic by avoiding the whole subject of their war crimes.

  Reveal hidden contents

The whole Solomon thing just feels like it's designed to facilitate "both sides"-isms even though in this timeline is no different from the main UC prior to Side 7 in September 0079.

 

i saw

Spoiler

a red comet with a rocking horse

 

[Big s]

2 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

i saw

  Reveal hidden contents

This show totally has a sense of humor that I’m enjoying. 

Spoiler

A boat horn on a rocking horse. 

For an exposition episode, it was highly enjoyable. 

Spoiler

The redo of the og soundtrack was a nice touch and for some reason the bass was awesomely cranked. The bas beats through my speakers almost felt more like a concert. I still hate the theme song at the beginning, but the og style music was bumpin hard.

as for the episode, it was mostly what I expected and started with the attempt to infiltrate the colony. No Amuro and oddly no blowing an irreparable hole causing mass casualties due to Char being more careful. I’d imagine Amuro and the rest probably just stayed safely in the bunker and it’s even possible his father survived unharmed and they just kinda lived life like nothing happened.

So far so good with this show. Two episodes in and I’m still enjoying it. Hopefully things don’t get totally derailed in the next episode where things go back to the main story.

[Seto Kaiba]

Honestly, this episode just leaves me thinking "Why couldn't you just use this art style for the main series and not the excessively twee style we got?"

Spoiler

So... as expected, we're flashing back to 2012 0079 to show how, in a stereotypical "For want of a nail" fashion, the entire war turned out differently because Gene's Zaku II had mechanical trouble and it was Char who took his place alongside Denim and Slender for the attack on Side 7.

I still loathe the mechanical designs in this series.  I have a feeling that is NOT going to pass.  

Char manages to gundam-jack the RX-78-2 because the Federation engineers didn't just leave the cockpit open, they left the keys in the ignition... which is a whole new level of careless esp. considering RfV established that there ARE in fact keys.  Quite a bit is just a shot-for-shot recreation of the original series first episode just with the Gundam on the other side.

We see Paolo Cassius and his crew get casually killed by Char and the Gundam, and then Char's Musai tows the Pegasus out where they're ambushed by Lt. Commander Wakkein and the RX-78-01.  Char casually wipes the floor with Wakkein's forces and takes out the Gundam 01.

There's a timeskip, and then we learn that Zeonic is suspending its development of new MS types to reverse engineer the Gundam, Dozle Zabi died when the Federation's forces captured Solomon, Garma quit the military, Kycilia's holed up in Granada, and Gihren's still kicking around A Baoa Qu.  We get to see the installation of the psycommu in the Gundam, implied to be looted from the Braw Bro while it was still under construction.

We get to see more of Char effortlessly curbstomping the Federation singlehandedly... then Char screwing up the Solomon colony drop with a psycommu runaway.

 

By the end of it... I'm just bored. 

This was supposed to be impactful backstory that shapes the entire setting and worldview of the series we're watching.  Instead, it just feels like an afterthought... or maybe a bad fanfic by a Zeon fanboy.  The whole episode can be summed up as "Zeon is invincible because Char got a Gundam". 

Did Anno forget that Zeon was already at the breaking point in September UC 0079 before the Federation ever got the Gundam?  It's not like one of the major events of the war was General Revil escaping and giving a speech about it.  

[davidwhangchoi]

19 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Honestly, this episode just leaves me thinking "Why couldn't you just use this art style for the main series and not the excessively twee style we got?"

  Hide contents

So... as expected, we're flashing back to 2012 0079 to show how, in a stereotypical "For want of a nail" fashion, the entire war turned out differently because Gene's Zaku II had mechanical trouble and it was Char who took his place alongside Denim and Slender for the attack on Side 7.

I still loathe the mechanical designs in this series.  I have a feeling that is NOT going to pass.  

Char manages to gundam-jack the RX-78-2 because the Federation engineers didn't just leave the cockpit open, they left the keys in the ignition... which is a whole new level of careless esp. considering RfV established that there ARE in fact keys.  Quite a bit is just a shot-for-shot recreation of the original series first episode just with the Gundam on the other side.

We see Paolo Cassius and his crew get casually killed by Char and the Gundam, and then Char's Musai tows the Pegasus out where they're ambushed by Lt. Commander Wakkein and the RX-78-01.  Char casually wipes the floor with Wakkein's forces and takes out the Gundam 01.

There's a timeskip, and then we learn that Zeonic is suspending its development of new MS types to reverse engineer the Gundam, Dozle Zabi died when the Federation's forces captured Solomon, Garma quit the military, Kycilia's holed up in Granada, and Gihren's still kicking around A Baoa Qu.  We get to see the installation of the psycommu in the Gundam, implied to be looted from the Braw Bro while it was still under construction.

We get to see more of Char effortlessly curbstomping the Federation singlehandedly... then Char screwing up the Solomon colony drop with a psycommu runaway.

 

By the end of it... I'm just bored. 

This was supposed to be impactful backstory that shapes the entire setting and worldview of the series we're watching.  Instead, it just feels like an afterthought... or maybe a bad fanfic by a Zeon fanboy.  The whole episode can be summed up as "Zeon is invincible because Char got a Gundam". 

Did Anno forget that Zeon was already at the breaking point in September UC 0079 before the Federation ever got the Gundam?  It's not like one of the major events of the war was General Revil escaping and giving a speech about it.  

 

Spoiler

this was a poorman's 0083. Zeon steals gundam. cripples federation with it.  SEED copied it and this is like a cheap copy of a copy. 

 

[Bolt]

I liked the throwback vibe of episode 2.  I also like where this is going, concerning questions to the ending of Char's Counter Attack.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

 

  Hide contents

this was a poorman's 0083. Zeon steals gundam. cripples federation with it.  SEED copied it and this is like a cheap copy of a copy. 

 

It's mixed with a bit of Gihren's Greed too. This isn't the first time there's been a Char's custom Gundam or a UC story where Zeon ends up winning the war.

Edited Wednesday at 04:10 AM by Seto Kaiba

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Bolt said:

I liked the throwback vibe of episode 2.  I also like where this is going, concerning questions to the ending of Char's Counter Attack.

Yeah I had fun with it as well. The CCA thing may somewhat be touched on for sure here since the mobile suit is still around, but the man is in question.

[F-ZeroOne]

I'm curious to know about

Spoiler

Chars quest for vengeance against the Zabis. Theres a hint there thats hes playing a longer game this time round but it was such a major part of the characters motivation in the original timeline...

 

[mark-1s]

I saw it last month in the theatre and while I enjoyed the first half (the reimagining of the OYW) which I believe was shoehorned in for “reasons” , I absolutely hated the second half - it just turned into another version of The Witch From Mercury. 
i don’t think we’ll see much reference to anything U.C. after this.

That being said, it was awesome seeing Gundam on the big screen. I hope the next part of Hathaway is released in theatres too.

Edited Wednesday at 07:11 PM by mark-1s

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, F-ZeroOne said:

I'm curious to know about

  Hide contents

Chars quest for vengeance against the Zabis. Theres a hint there thats hes playing a longer game this time round but it was such a major part of the characters motivation in the original timeline...

 

I don't think there's anything deep or significant there.

Char doesn't have any choice but to play the long game in GQuuuuuuX.  His revenge plan progressed at the brisk pace it did in the prime Universal Century timeline thanks to the actions of the White Base/Pegasus crew creating opportunities for him.

The ship never landed on Earth under Federation control, so Char was never able to manipulate Garma into the suicide run that killed him in the prime timeline.  Dozle ironically still died at Solomon, but under different circumstances.  Without the White Base crew turning the tide against Zeon on Earth and in space, Zeon's forces were not put on the defensive the way they were in the prime timeline so Degwin never opened the peace talks that prompted Gihren to assassinate him with the Solar Ray, so Kycilia never had to execute him for regicide, and thus Char never got his opportunity to assassinate Kycilia in the ensuing confusion.

GQuuuuuuX's Char is a Char who never got a plausibly deniable opportunity to bump off a member of the Zabi family until the Second Battle of Solomon, where he tried to allow Federation forces to drop the fortress on Kycilia's base at Granada.

[F-ZeroOne]

Okay, I hadn't really thought about it as the White Base and Gundam creating opportunities for him in the standard timeline.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I watched the 2nd episode of GQuuuuuuX. That was great. It was so much better than episode 1. It seemed like proper Gundam again,

[Big s]

3 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

I watched the 2nd episode of GQuuuuuuX. That was great. It was so much better than episode 1. It seemed like proper Gundam again,

Episode 3 will probably disappoint you then. This was basically just an exposition episode to explain how things got to where they are. Personally I enjoyed both episodes 

[Seto Kaiba]

Yeah, Episode 3 is headed back towards the same questionable formula that Bandai Namco used to put mobile suit battles into The Witch from Mercury without doing a war story... mobile suit duels as a sporting event.

It's just going to make a lot less sense in GQuuuuuuX, since instead of The Witch from Mercury's duels between the heirs-apparent of the Earth Sphere's wealthiest to showcase the mobile suits their companies make and for status it's refugees having illegal underground tandem fights while somehow being able to supply, repair, and store mobile suits without drawing attention from the authorities.

[davidwhangchoi]

i hope some cool suits show up like the MSM-07S and have Athrun jump out.

or have a MSN-02 Zeong go against Char.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, Episode 3 is headed back towards the same questionable formula that Bandai Namco used to put mobile suit battles into The Witch from Mercury without doing a war story... mobile suit duels as a sporting event.

It's just going to make a lot less sense in GQuuuuuuX, since instead of The Witch from Mercury's duels between the heirs-apparent of the Earth Sphere's wealthiest to showcase the mobile suits their companies make and for status it's refugees having illegal underground tandem fights while somehow being able to supply, repair, and store mobile suits without drawing attention from the authorities.

It seems mostly just junk suits and worker leftovers. They do seem a bit worried about the authorities though. I don’t know if this will be the formula for the whole show, but I have a feeling it’s just the starting point to get to what’s upcoming. Since there will be the two gundams and one being specifically tracked by Zeon. It also seems that the first episode gives hints that the main character will go to earth. There may be enough going on to start a conflict of sorts between earth and Zeon, but it’s probably gonna be a bit down the line

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, Episode 3 is headed back towards the same questionable formula that Bandai Namco used to put mobile suit battles into The Witch from Mercury without doing a war story... mobile suit duels as a sporting event.

It's just going to make a lot less sense in GQuuuuuuX, since instead of The Witch from Mercury's duels between the heirs-apparent of the Earth Sphere's wealthiest to showcase the mobile suits their companies make and for status it's refugees having illegal underground tandem fights while somehow being able to supply, repair, and store mobile suits without drawing attention from the authorities.

The Armored Core game series did this idea better IMHO...

 

[Seto Kaiba]

20 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

i hope some cool suits show up like the MSM-07S and have Athrun jump out.

or have a MSN-02 Zeong go against Char.

That seems unlikely.

Char's capture of the Gundam completely derailed Mobile Suit and Mobile Armor development on both sides during the One Year War.  It's implied that many of the familiar Zeon "enemy MS of the week" machines of the original Gundam series were either never developed or never completed and put into production because the Principality's government suspended current projects in favor of studying and reverse-engineering the captured Gundam.  The Federation, likewise, had to cope with the loss of the Gundam prototypes to Zeon and proceeded to develop a Gundam-Guncannon hybrid machine called the Light Guncannon that became their main MS in place of the GM.

One design that was confirmed to never be completed in this timeline is the MS-14 Gelgoog.  It's mentioned in the timeline that its development was cancelled because of the Gundam's capture.  Two that have been confirmed to still exist are the Braw Bro (now called Kikeroga) and the Big Zam, with the latter only being completed because of Dozle Zabi's administrative clout and ultimately being what gets him killed in this timeline too.

 

19 hours ago, Big s said:

It seems mostly just junk suits and worker leftovers. They do seem a bit worried about the authorities though. I don’t know if this will be the formula for the whole show, but I have a feeling it’s just the starting point to get to what’s upcoming. Since there will be the two gundams and one being specifically tracked by Zeon. It also seems that the first episode gives hints that the main character will go to earth. There may be enough going on to start a conflict of sorts between earth and Zeon, but it’s probably gonna be a bit down the line

Maybe.  The whole duel thing in The Witch from Mercury was a pretty stupid plot device that was handled really poorly throughout the series and was one of several recurring Get Out of Jail Free cards for the characters.

Clan battles in GQuuuuuuX seem like they'll be a lot worse, since random civvies and refugees living in illegally-built housing are probably not going to have a plausible source of money to afford to refurbish, repair, and resupply any kind of MS never mind an ex-military one.  It's even harder to believe that they might be buying them from Zeon, since a MS doubtless costs the equivalent tens of millions of dollars.  Installer keys sound like they were a postwar invention, meaning it's weird that any war surplus Zaku would need one unless it was specifically retrofitted to.  Ones salvaged from battlefields by the junk guild shouldn't even have that system... or if they did, the key would surely still be inside the downed MS, since a MS with a surviving pilot would likely be recovered.

(Unrelated... the installer keys are kinda big, aren't they?  The starter keys for the Federation's GMs in Requiem for Vengenace were the size of thumb drives.)

 

17 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

The Armored Core game series did this idea better IMHO...

Probably.