Gundam Show Thread - MSG thru Witch from Mercury

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well that didn't last.

  Hide contents

We're back to bullsh*t-tier writing and the cast in space.

The only key takeaways from this nothingburger of an episode are:

• Sunrise backpedaled hard on the implication that the Aerial is made from Human Resources... it turns out it's just haunted/possessed by the ghost of its previous pilot like the Unicorn Phenix in Narrative.  Prospera claims she transferred Eri's "biometric code" into the Lfrith prototype as a way to save her when she died from the conditions in outer space.  This makes Belmiria's disgusted reaction a lot less explicable.
• Belmiria has a breakdown over the inhumane things she's done... apparently brought on by nothing more than Prospera noting that Carto Nabo did not approve of her hypothesis about artificial nervous systems.  She spends the entire rest of the episode a weepy, depressed mess.
• Earth's going to sh*t because information leaks from Asticassia are clueing the world in to what's really going on and the Benerit Group's using heavyhanded measures to suppress dissent on Earth.
• The Benerit Group can apparently just decide to elect a new president whenever, so this whole business with the Holder title and Miorine was a massive waste of time that meant literally NOTHING.
• Earth House as a whole are suspended for seven days and everyone hates them now because the terrorist attack by students registered to Earth House killed twelve people and injured a bunch more.
• Miorine finally remembers to react to Suletta straight-up murdering a dude in the Part I finale... and is intensely creeped out by Suletta not only admitting she's 100% not bothered by it, but would happily use Gundams as weapons of war and kill MORE people if mommy dearest said to.  Bear in mind, this is like three weeks after the fact.
• Elan #5 attempts to gundamjack the impounded Aerial and the literal ghost in the machine kicks his ass out and gives him the mother of all GUND format headaches.
• Oh and Guel's back on Asticassia somehow... walks right into the Jeturk CEO's office without anyone notifying anyone that the missing heir to the company showed up.
• Prospera has reversed herself again and is now ranting about revenge against Delling, to Miorine of all people, and attempting to blackmail Miorine into becoming the next president of the Benerit Group so she can complete Quiet Zero.

 

I'd like to say the wheels have come off G-Witch, but the previous episode was the only one to suggest wheels might have been present at some point...

At this point: they're coasting by on pure stupidity, much like when Wile E. Coyote goes over the cliff....

(also like this series)

Edited April 30, 2023 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

At this point: they're coasting by on pure stupidity, much like when Wile E. Coyote goes over the cliff....

(also like this series)

As inconsistent as this series has been about the motives of its characters, the consequences of their actions, and the rules of its own setting thus far... it gives off a vibe very similar to a panicking GM whose players completely dodged the story they planned in the very first encounter and are six sessions deep into some desperately spitballed BS they're making up as they go along.  We are literally on Prospera Mercury's fourth stated set of motivations.  She gives TWO MORE sets in this episode alone!  Either she has a multiple personality disorder or she's the most indecisive psychopath ever born.

So many of the characters have exactly ONE character trait that it's hard to say who's Boblin the Goblin in this scenario.  The one thing I CAN say is that the most interesting character in the series is NOT a main character at all.  It's Guel "Call me 'Bob'" Jeturk, the only one who's had any actual character development in *checks* sixteen ****-mothering episodes?!

It's actually kind of shocking how threadbare the protagonist, Suletta Mercury, is as a character.  Even emotionally-dead human messes Heero Yuy, Setsuna F. Seiei, and Mikazuki Augus had more far personality and agency in their own stories than Suletta Mercury does.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Seto Kaiba

[no3Ljm]

I don't mind watching AI rendered Gundam movies.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by no3Ljm

[Raikkonen]

Is the AI just taking random faces off the net for these?

[no3Ljm]

16 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Is the AI just taking random faces off the net for these?

I would assume so? If that's how AI works based on what I read. Though the video poster didn't say much too on the description.

[azrael]

1 hour ago, Raikkonen said:

Is the AI just taking random faces off the net for these?

Yep. It's there in the video title. There's something wrong with the eyes, especially amongst the women, that makes it a dead-giveaway (and some disproportional head-to-body ratio, and some very disproportional foreheads). And some of them use the same cheeks. 

[Seto Kaiba]

G-Witch episode 17 is another pretty unremarkable story.

If anything, it's biggest problem is that you could describe it as Sunrise saying:

Spoiler

"lol jk the last 16 episodes don't count."

This one episode basically invalidates everything that came before it in the series:

• Guel Jeturk returns to woo Suletta again after being shot down previously.
• Suletta is challenged to a duel in Miorine's greenhouse again by Guel (indirectly)
• Miorine intervenes to help her chosen side win.
• Suletta loses her Gundam, and her status as the Holder after being defeated.
• The whole business with the holder being the key to future control of the Benerit Group is rendered completely moot because the group decides to simply vote for the next president of the board.
• The holder system is abolished because Miorine turned 17.
• It's revealed that the president of the group can simply arbitrarily give GUND-ARM Inc. away to whoever they choose, meaning that the team dual fought over control of it was completely meaningless.
• Guel's withdrawal from the school was quietly undone off screen by one of the show's secondary characters without anybody ever mentioning it or alluding to it.
• Jeturk house will assist Earth house in dealing with the people discriminating against them because of the terrorist attack.
• Dawn of Fold seems to have completely forgotten their entire schtick, since all they seem to do is sit around one room somewhere.
• Even the system of dueling itself is at the brink of being abolished, now that it has no real point and almost everybody who participated has left the school.

 

Essentially the only thing that seems to have actually mattered out of the previous 16 episodes is that Sarius Zenneli is still being held prisoner by his adopted son.

 

[kajnrig]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

G-Witch episode 17 is another pretty unremarkable story.

If anything, it's biggest problem is that you could describe it as Sunrise saying:

  Hide contents

• The whole business with the holder being the key to future control of the Benerit Group is rendered completely moot
• the team dual fought over control of it was completely meaningless.
• Even the system of dueling itself is at the brink of being abolished, now that it has no real point and almost everybody who participated has left the school.

 

I could have called this from the very beginning. I'm actually 25% certain I did. Something like "this whole ritualized duel system only works in a metaphorical setting, not as a literal, 'real-world' form of government."

The show seems to be doing well for itself, though, so maybe I'm just missing something (and/or I'm old). Aside from the few critics here, I see it praised week to week practically everywhere.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

The show seems to be doing well for itself, though, so maybe I'm just missing something (and/or I'm old). Aside from the few critics here, I see it praised week to week practically everywhere.

Hard to say, given that Gundam is one of those franchises that is effectively too big to fail. The franchise as a whole is a big enough following that even a truly dreadful installment is never going to be in any real danger of cancellation due to poor ratings or slow sales of its merch... which, IMO, has spawned a certain laziness in the franchise is creative teams.

The show does get a moderate amount of praise that I've seen, though I have also seen it receive a fair amount of criticism as well. I've noticed a fair number of the Gundam groups on sites like Facebook tend to be a bit echo-chambery, but there's a lot more diversity of thought on this show on social media formats that are frequented by younger users. The praise that I've seen for the series has been largely disconnected from its actual story. A good deal of it seems to revolve around the show's premise, focusing either on Suletta as the franchise's first female protagonist or the alleged yuri aspect of Suletta and Miorine's relationship. The criticism is largely the same, a lot of focus on the premise claiming that the series feels spread too thin in an attempt to appeal outside of the usual audience for mecha with the school setting.

I guess you could say that, from what I've seen anyway, quite a lot of the discussion of the series is not really about the content of the series but more about the idea of the series?

Actual reviews of the series seem to be pretty middling, but not any more or less than any other AU Gundam show's typically are. It's no G-Reco (the closest they've come to actual failure) but at the same time it's no Gundam SEED either (the most successful AU in terms of average viewership).

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Hard to say, given that Gundam is one of those franchises that is effectively too big to fail. The franchise as a whole is a big enough following that even a truly dreadful installment is never going to be in any real danger of cancellation due to poor ratings or slow sales of its merch... which, IMO, has spawned a certain laziness in the franchise is creative teams.

The show does get a moderate amount of praise that I've seen, though I have also seen it receive a fair amount of criticism as well. I've noticed a fair number of the Gundam groups on sites like Facebook tend to be a bit echo-chambery, but there's a lot more diversity of thought on this show on social media formats that are frequented by younger users. The praise that I've seen for the series has been largely disconnected from its actual story. A good deal of it seems to revolve around the show's premise, focusing either on Suletta as the franchise's first female protagonist or the alleged yuri aspect of Suletta and Miorine's relationship. The criticism is largely the same, a lot of focus on the premise claiming that the series feels spread too thin in an attempt to appeal outside of the usual audience for mecha with the school setting.

I guess you could say that, from what I've seen anyway, quite a lot of the discussion of the series is not really about the content of the series but more about the idea of the series?

Actual reviews of the series seem to be pretty middling, but not any more or less than any other AU Gundam show's typically are. It's no G-Reco (the closest they've come to actual failure) but at the same time it's no Gundam SEED either (the most successful AU in terms of average viewership).

Yeah, it kind of throws me that they would be praising the premise rather than the actual content, but that's just me. It seems that the idea holds more appeal to them then the actuality.

(Still waiting for Heero Yuy to show up in Wing Zero and clean house)

[Seto Kaiba]

12 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah, it kind of throws me that they would be praising the premise rather than the actual content, but that's just me. It seems that the idea holds more appeal to them then the actuality.

Representation on its own can be a pretty big deal for members of marginalized groups.

A mecha series with a female protagonist isn't anything particularly groundbreaking in and of itself... those go back to at least the mid-1980's, with varying degrees of commercial success.  But this is Gundam, the metaphorical 800lb gorilla of mecha anime, doing it so it's a higher profile undertaking.  

I actually feel pretty bad for the folks who got hyped for Gundam's first female protagonist having a female love interest.  The OPs and EDs make it look like a cute relationship but the show's actual writing (up to this point) made Suletta's relationship with Miorine pretty darn toxic, exploitative, and painfully one-sided.  Most of their interactions made it look a lot more like Miorine thought Suletta was a useful idot or a clingy nuisance than a friend or potential romantic partner.  On its own, that's kind of a dick move on the writer's part... though it doesn't help that the only characters she's showed any attraction to are Guel Jeturk and Elan Ceres.  Kind of undermines the whole premise, y'know?

So, it's pretty clear why people would get excited about the idea of the show... and with a different writer the same concept could be presented in a much more engaging way than it currently is.

(It is weird that the Wiki's sources for media praise for the series are all about trending hashtags though... not positive reviews or anything, but hashtag performance.)

 

12 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

(Still waiting for Heero Yuy to show up in Wing Zero and clean house)

If anything, G-Witch has TOO MANY sociopaths, psychopaths, and tyke bombs on its cast right now.

We've already got Delling Rembran, Prospera Mercury, Shaddiq Zenneli, Elan Ceres, Reinforced Person #5, Golneri, Nevola, Kal, Nugen, basically everyone in Dawn of Fold who isn't Nika (incl. the two Gundam Lfrith pilots), Chuatury Panlunch...

Spoiler

... and Suletta "My Mom said murder is OK sometimes" Mercury herself.

It's enough to make you feel for the Earth House kids who just want to keep their heads down and get on with life... they're surrounded by rich crazies who have enough power to make their issues everyone's problem.

[F-ZeroOne]

Regards the A.I. "Live" Gundam characters - that is, by far, THE hottest Bright Noa has ever been!

Edited May 8, 2023 by F-ZeroOne

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Representation on its own can be a pretty big deal for members of marginalized groups.

A mecha series with a female protagonist isn't anything particularly groundbreaking in and of itself... those go back to at least the mid-1980's, with varying degrees of commercial success.  But this is Gundam, the metaphorical 800lb gorilla of mecha anime, doing it so it's a higher profile undertaking.  

I actually feel pretty bad for the folks who got hyped for Gundam's first female protagonist having a female love interest.  The OPs and EDs make it look like a cute relationship but the show's actual writing (up to this point) made Suletta's relationship with Miorine pretty darn toxic, exploitative, and painfully one-sided.  Most of their interactions made it look a lot more like Miorine thought Suletta was a useful idot or a clingy nuisance than a friend or potential romantic partner.  On its own, that's kind of a dick move on the writer's part... though it doesn't help that the only characters she's showed any attraction to are Guel Jeturk and Elan Ceres.  Kind of undermines the whole premise, y'know?

So, it's pretty clear why people would get excited about the idea of the show... and with a different writer the same concept could be presented in a much more engaging way than it currently is.

(It is weird that the Wiki's sources for media praise for the series are all about trending hashtags though... not positive reviews or anything, but hashtag performance.)

So pretty much: taking their high points where they can get them, right?

 

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If anything, G-Witch has TOO MANY sociopaths, psychopaths, and tyke bombs on its cast right now.

We've already got Delling Rembran, Prospera Mercury, Shaddiq Zenneli, Elan Ceres, Reinforced Person #5, Golneri, Nevola, Kal, Nugen, basically everyone in Dawn of Fold who isn't Nika (incl. the two Gundam Lfrith pilots), Chuatury Panlunch...

  Hide contents

... and Suletta "My Mom said murder is OK sometimes" Mercury herself.

It's enough to make you feel for the Earth House kids who just want to keep their heads down and get on with life... they're surrounded by rich crazies who have enough power to make their issues everyone's problem.

You have a point. Sorry... Gundam Wing  left a big imprint on me.

(Quatre wasn't watching where he was piloting Sandrock and he stepped on me! O.o )

[azrael]

So outside of Seto's incessant, long-winded "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"-fest, the Witch From Mercury seems to be doing fine.

[Big s]

5 hours ago, azrael said:

So outside of Seto's incessant, long-winded "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"-fest, the Witch From Mercury seems to be doing fine.

I’m just glad we all get front row seating rather than lawn tickets 

[Seto Kaiba]

19 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

So pretty much: taking their high points where they can get them, right?

Kinda, yeah.

At the very least, the few publications that've come out for The Witch from Mercury do a much better job of explaining the setting and story than the actual series does.  There's some good stuff in The Report of Mobile Suit Gundam: the Witch from Mercury that've offered at least satisfactory explanations for some of the show's inconsistencies and omissions and a good deal more than is simply never even mentioned.

For instance...

Spoiler

Like that a big part of the reason Chuchu warms up to Miorine is because her plan for GUND-ARM Inc. is the manufacture of GUND-based medical prosthetics.  Her sponsor is a mining firm and she wants to be able to provide replacement limbs to the many people in her hometown who've lost limbs or been crippled in mining accidents.

Or that Guel Jeturk's original ambition and the reason he became a pilot was that he wanted to become the top ace of the Dominicus Corps.  

Or that the reason Elan Ceres (Reinforced Person #4) hates Suletta is because he incorrectly believed she was a Reinforced Person like him.

There's also a fair amount of interesting discussion of the design motifs for the various characters and Mobile Suits.  It'll be interesting to see if Suletta and Miorine actually get together, given that their design motifs are literally "dogs" and "cats" respectively. 

 

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Kinda, yeah.

At the very least, the few publications that've come out for The Witch from Mercury do a much better job of explaining the setting and story than the actual series does.  There's some good stuff in The Report of Mobile Suit Gundam: the Witch from Mercury that've offered at least satisfactory explanations for some of the show's inconsistencies and omissions and a good deal more than is simply never even mentioned.

For instance...

  Hide contents

Like that a big part of the reason Chuchu warms up to Miorine is because her plan for GUND-ARM Inc. is the manufacture of GUND-based medical prosthetics.  Her sponsor is a mining firm and she wants to be able to provide replacement limbs to the many people in her hometown who've lost limbs or been crippled in mining accidents.

Or that Guel Jeturk's original ambition and the reason he became a pilot was that he wanted to become the top ace of the Dominicus Corps.  

Or that the reason Elan Ceres (Reinforced Person #4) hates Suletta is because he incorrectly believed she was a Reinforced Person like him.

There's also a fair amount of interesting discussion of the design motifs for the various characters and Mobile Suits.  It'll be interesting to see if Suletta and Miorine actually get together, given that their design motifs are literally "dogs" and "cats" respectively. 

 

Yeah, that does clarify several things. It would have been beneficial in several ways if they had worked all of that into the series rather than leaving it the frenetic mess we see on-screen so far.

[no3Ljm]

 

 

 

Edited May 10, 2023 by no3Ljm

[no3Ljm]

Just sharing it here. New Fever Pachinko game featuring Gundam Seed. Lots of cool CG animation.  

 

[Black Valkyrie]

Gundam characters by AI interesting.  

 

[Rock]

Gundam SEED Freedom, Movie Jan 2024! 1st Trailer!
 

 

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

New UC show in the works: Requiem for Vengeance.

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, let's hope it turns out better than The Witch from Mercury... that one limped to a finish today.

Not surprised that show only lasted two cour... a very weak offering.  It was, however, a bit surprising that it soured its own unearned happy ending when the epilogue snuck in a jab about how the protagonists didn't actually accomplish anything and how the status quo ante would quickly reassert itself despite Miorine's token gesture.  After the series pulled a whole pantheon's worth of deus ex machinas, I wasn't prepeared for that bit of reality ensuing.

IMO, UC's kinda played out though.  They've got an uphill battle to make a Zeon protagonist sympathetic or interesting though.  MS IGLOO proved it can be done, but... well... they've got Thunderbolt proving it ain't easy either.

[Big s]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

  MS IGLOO proved it can be done, but... well... they've got Thunderbolt proving it ain't easy either.

By the description of the project, it sounds similar to Igloo. 

[no3Ljm]

 

 

[Big s]

After seeing the teaser, it seems even more like Igloo 

[Hikuro]

Mercury was a damn shame to have gone in the direction it did, when we all saw the prologue episode I think we all went "Wow this could be neat!" followed by a bait and switch. It felt like the premises of a school program was a waste, characters that showed up were a waste and had no development, the "climax" was a waste at that, taking no ground or affecting any change. It was lazy writing, lazy character progression, just lazy lazy lazy, was this written by AI or something? I mean damn.

[lechuck]

Gundaminfo will be streaming Cucuruz Doan's Island starting this Friday.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

It seems there's some small brouhaha going on over the Witch from Mercury in the latest Gundam Ace.

Something seems to have prompted the publisher to remove a statement or two about Suletta and Miorine's relationship from the web version. I saw something on Facebook about them now saying they wanted to leave their relationship open to interpretation? I'm not sure how open to interpretation the fact that they're clearly married is, esp. given that the arranged marriage to the Holder was the main thing driving the plot in the entire first half.

 

3 hours ago, lechuck said:

Gundaminfo will be streaming Cucuruz Doan's Island starting this Friday.

 

That should be interesting. A little while ago I was looking over some of the publications for this one because people on MechaTalk were asking about the new Zaku variant. Sadly basically no information about it. It's kind of disappointing how sparse the info in new Gundam publications has become.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Seto Kaiba

[kajnrig]

What's the story behind the Cucuruz Doan's Island animation, again? Wasn't it something like

Quote

there were a few episodes in the original show that took place on the eponymous island, that was outsourced and the animation was notoriously bad. They've decided to re-animate just that small arc, and have turned the bad animation long-snout Zaku into a unique design variant.

?

If so, did they recently redo the rest of the original show in this style of animation (or a similar modernized style), and the omission of this arc prompted this production? It seems like such an out of nowhere thing to decide to retcon.

[Big s]

30 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

What's the story behind the Cucuruz Doan's Island animation, again? Wasn't it something like

?

If so, did they recently redo the rest of the original show in this style of animation (or a similar modernized style), and the omission of this arc prompted this production? It seems like such an out of nowhere thing to decide to retcon.

It is an odd decision for sure. Especially since things don’t match up from the series to what’s going on here. Like Char getting another Zaku or slegar showing up early with a gm or even having decent amounts of gm mobile suits in general. For people like me that have seen the show and movies, but the only introduction to Origin was the animated version, it’s a bit odd. I figured things would be a bit different since origin changed some key things, but to skip everything up to this point is a strange choice. At least there’s some cool models as a consolation 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

What's the story behind the Cucuruz Doan's Island animation, again? Wasn't it something like

?

Just one episode... No.15, "Cucuruz Doan's Island".

It was kind of "The Incident" when it came to the production of Mobile Suit Gundam and kind of became the franchise's Old Shame.  It was a one-shot episode that had such disastrously poor production quality that it's held up as one of the most infamous examples of animation collapse (作画崩壊), the term for when the bottom falls out of a show's art quality.  It was left out of the compilation movie trilogy, and when the series was licensed in the US the entire episode was omitted on Yoshiyuki Tomino's request.  It was also left out of Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin manga updated retelling of the original series.

This movie, Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin MSD: Cucuruz Doan's Island is... well... a "do-over" on the infamously poor quality episode of the original Gundam series in the style and alternate continuity of Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin and its partial OVA adaptation.  The movie's part of a new spinoff title Mobile Suit Discovery (MSD), a play on the Mobile Suit Variation series acronym "MSV" that'd been used for non-canonical side stories in the past.  

 

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

If so, did they recently redo the rest of the original show in this style of animation (or a similar modernized style), and the omission of this arc prompted this production? It seems like such an out of nowhere thing to decide to retcon.

Nope... there was a six episode Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin OVA series that was subsequently re-edited into a one-cour (13 episode) TV anime series Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin: Advent of the Red Comet. 

It's only a partial adaptation of the Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin manga, though.  It's a villain origin story for Casval Rem Deikun (alias "Char Aznable") that shows his incredibly messed up childhood, the traumas that led to his Start of Darkness, how he enlisted in the Zeon armed forces under a stolen identity, the collapse of Zeon's relationship with the Earth Federation and its subsequent declaration of independence, and the early parts of the One Year War including Operation British (the colony drop), the Battle of Loum where Casval/Char earned his sobriquet "the Red Comet", and General Revil's escape from Zeon.  It ends shortly before Amuro would enter the story proper, with the White Base being dispatched to Side 7 to retrieve the Federation's Mobile Suit prototypes.  IMO, it's pretty dark even by UC standards... and puts a WAY darker spin on the direction that Side 3 was heading before the war.

EDIT: For your viewing pleasure and convenience, Crunchyroll currently has the OVA and TV series edit, subbed and dubbed: 

https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G3KHEV0NW/mobile-suit-gundam-the-origin

https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G60X0KVGR/mobile-suit-gundam-the-origin-advent-of-the-red-comet

Their reasons for making the Curcuruz Doan's Island movie seem to be a desire to put right what once went wrong, as a few of the staff have said that the story was sound but the animation didn't do it justice.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

Since the film became available on YouTube today, I'm sitting down to watch Cucuruz Doan's Island.

Literally the first thing you get after you get past the various studio logos is a note indicating that Cucuruz Doan's Island is an adaptation of the 15th episode of the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV anime from 1979.

Spoiler

The very first shot we get of the actual film is of a battle between a platoon of GMs and what appears to be just one Zaku, which is absolutely WRECKING them in a rather undignified manner with just its heat hawk.  It's the titular Cucuruz Doan, and he destroys the GM's carrier... and it then zooms out to the title card.

Was Bright's uniform ever blue in the original series?  Because it's blue here.

There's also some conspicuously good English on the various certificates on display in Bright's cabin, including his two-rank promotion and appointment as the White Base's permanent commander.  IIRC, one of the few times we've actually seen an English statement that the ranks in Gundam are meant to be translated as Navy ranks, since that certificate of appointment lists him as "Lt. Commander Bright Noa".

The animation quality here is so damn good.  The fidelity to the original designs from 1979 is amazing, but the updated animation technology makes it look surprisingly modern nevertheless.  

I have to say, I REALLY like how the movements of the mobile suits are drawn in this one.  It's one of the few occasions that they really FEEL like they weigh dozens of metric tons as they plod heavily and skid through the island's loose soil, wobble on uneven ground, and even leave recognizable footprints.  It does lose a certain something when Doan's 60+ ton Zaku II somehow manages to sneak up on Amuro's Gundam without making ANY noise or triggering any alerts... and regains a bit of it when the two Mobile Suits fighting on the edge of a cliff causes the cliff to collapse under their combined weight.   It's rare for them to go to the trouble of animating Mobile Suits this realistically.

That said, this story is padded like all get-out... which I guess shouldn't really be a surprise given that this was a ~23 minute episode and it's been stretched to 1:49.

There's some interesting business going on in the flyover of Belfast by General Revil... the construction of the second Big Tray-class land battleship, as well as what appear to be several conventional aircraft carriers that are also equipped with deck-mounted cannons.  (Poss. the railguns used as a substitute for beam weapons by early EFF Mobile Suits.)  They talk briefly about their plans to use the White Base and the newly completed Big Tray-class ships to spearhead an attack on Zeon positions at Odessa.  (Hey, we get to see Bright slap the sh*t out of Amuro... that's always good value.)  They do quite a bit of foreshadowing future battles in the TV series storyline like Gibraltar too, with M'Quve even trying to threaten the EFF brass with the destruction of major cities.  

A few more Origin manga easter eggs pop up thereafter... there's a GM armed with the RX-78-1's shoulder-mounted cannon in the battle scene at Casablanca.

The new Zaku designed for the movie - the MS-06G Zaku II High-Mobility Ground type (Origin ver.) - shows up immediately thereafter.  IMO, not a particularly interesting new design... it's basically a Great Value MS-09B Dom and the members of the Brown Southern Cross Team piloting them are all cartoonishly evil even by Zeon standards.  It's a cool fight scene, but with the stakes limited to GM pilots who don't even have voice lines it's hard to see it as anything but an attempt to break up the incredible tedium back on the titular island with its population made up almost entirely of whiny kids squabbling and blaming each other for things and crying at the drop of a hat.

Lots of flashbacks in this one... Amuro's had one, Bright's had one, and now it's Doan's turn.  It serves really only to reinforce the point made in the previous scene that he's a former Zeon soldier and that the orphans under his care were orphaned by him during a massacre his team carried out.  Looking back, it's clear Cucuruz Doan's suffered an adaptational attractiveness upgrade.  His original design was kind of an unremarkable-looking but athletic man with a heavy brow and a scary-looking face.  The Origin movie version made him into a friendly-looking square-jawed hunk with perma-stubble and rogueish grin... seemingly to emphasize that he's not really a bad guy.  He lets Amuro go looking for the Gundam alone twice... and the film's not even half done.

... and speaking of annoying kids, it wouldn't be Gundam without Katz, Letz, and Kikka messing about.  Doan's kids are annoying enough, did we really NEED to see these three lock Frau Bow out of the bathroom?  (And now Frau Bow is crying.)

Sleggar really is running away with the scenes set back on the White Base though... he smirks his way through every appearance after showing up late to the events due to having gone on a pub crawl, getting half a dozen of White Base's irregulars to assist him with sneaking off on an unauthorized outing to rescue Amuro.  He even got Sayla to go upside his head over the "riding on top of you" line.

They are REALLY padding this... just walking around looking for the gundam seemingly requires multiple flashbacks.  

Honestly, if I were taking a drink every time a kid cried in this, I'd be on the edge of "unsafe to drive" at this point... and I've got almost an hour left to go.

There is quite a bit of amusement to be derived from watching the entire White Base crew tweak the self-important staff officer ordering them to take off and abandon the Gundam... the jerk is crying by the end of it as Bright and co. invent one mechanical failure after another.

Sleggar... needs some kind of award for the most undignified landing in all of Gundam.  Catapulted face-first off the back of the Core Booster so hard his GM lost its head against a rock.  Honestly, the White Base team has such levels of cutscene incompetence going on here to build drama that it's actually kind of frustrating.

Amuro, on the other hand, is apparently badass enough to deserve an electric guitar solo the second he gets into the Gundam... and Cucuruz Doan seems to be operating on one-man bullet time as three of the five Southern Cross pilots observe a one-at-a-time limit on dueling one of the deadliest Zaku aces alive.

(Of course we have to take a break from the actual fight so a dozen kids can chase a goat that beats the crap out of Hayato, Kai, and the others.)

There's a few conspicuous translation errors here and there in the final scene... Gopp's rank is translated wrong.  The rank used in the Japanese dialog is Field Marshal, not General.

 

All in all... I agree with the production staff that the plot of Cucuruz Doan's Island isn't bad despite the abysmal execution of the original TV episode, but there's just not enough of it for a two hour movie.  A 40-minute OVA episode perhaps, but way too much padding was needed to make a 109 minute runtime even after expanding the scope of the story.  The place where it falls down the hardest is character development.  Cucuruz Doan is as thinly written as a one-shot character in a TV episode would be, with the movie making little to no effort to explore his motivation or backstory.  The antagonists - SouthernCross team - get it even worse.  They're totally undeveloped flat characters with at most one character trait apiece and there was absolutely enough runtime to do more with them than simply have them call him a traitor and then obligingly get killed off one at a time in totally one-sided fights that last an average of about a minute.

[no3Ljm]

Gundam SEED FREEDOM 2nd Trailer.

 

Edited August 8, 2023 by no3Ljm

[no3Ljm]

Gundam Build Metaverse. Teasers and Promotional Video.