2011-08-22, 12:15
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#161
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Me, An Intellectual
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: UK
Age: 33
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My Review
Spoiler for deaths:
This is the ninth Gundam series I’ve watched but although I was eagerly anticipating what I heard was a very dark series, my impressions were rather mixed. The start was just ridiculously slow and tedious. The first couple of episodes were really becoming repetitive (as well as confusing) and it was starting to become a bit of chore. The plot started moving when the Shrike Team were introduced but then that lead to another problem – they started dying quite quickly. Not that that’s a problem but it kinda felt odd when Uso and the other characters kept crying like there’s no tomorrow, for characters that I barely knew and only had a couple of lines at most. I can’t even remember their names (well I resolved to remember Kate’s, since she got the award for the “Most Dickish Way To Die”). As it stands the only Shrike team death that I really felt sad for was Junko’s. She was the only properly established Shrike Team member that had more than just a few lines.
It gets a lot better when they go to space, though. Shrike team deaths are more spread out for one thing, but the main thing is that the plot starts moving more and maintains a good pace all the way until the end. As far as deaths go, I have to admit I’m a bit mixed there too. Not consistently mixed with each death, but rather I feel like each death has induced a different reaction from me. Some of them made me sad. Some of them made me angry. Some of them made me roll my eyes. Some of them made me laugh. And some of them just left me befuddled. Take Oliver for example. Granted his funeral was very touching but I wonder why he went for a kamikaze and couldn’t just eject from his Core Fighter before crashing into the Motorad Fleet. Pippiniden has, hands down what has to be the most hilarious death I’ve ever seen. I mean the look on his face as he saw his impending doom coming towards him in the form of a crazy bitch with a Mobile Suit that’s about to explode on him, had me laughing my head off for a good 10 minutes. Most of the Shrike team deaths had me rolling my eyes, simply because there would always be someone (usually Uso) screaming and wailing all the time. Frankly it pissed me off and made me realise that it’s actually a common cliché for characters to perform anguished screams when someone dies. Duker Iq and Renda’s deaths had me facepalming at the high concentration of cheese and Tassilo had me facepalming at his decision to kill Maria whilst Uso was pointing a massive gun at him. Some deaths really hit home though. I’ve already mentioned Junko but perhaps the one that hit home for me the most was Uso’s mum’s death. That was truly tragic. It’s strange that each death brings a different reaction. I thought I would either like all the deaths or hate them all. The result turned out to be rather more complicated.
As for the characters themselves, I consider them to be the biggest problem in this series. I didn’t find a single character that I could really become attached to. Uso and Shakti don’t have much more to their personality than hating war. Uso annoyed me for screaming at everyone’s deaths whilst Shakti annoyed me by constantly running to the BESPA’s, thinking she could control them. At first I thought I’d like Shakti because she was seeing what war was doing to Uso but it just ended up being the same God damn commentary every single time. Chronicle didn’t turn out to be the rival I expected of them (and had the most irritating voice to boot). Katejina just completely baffled me. How the hell did she accept the Zanscare philosophy so easily? Her Face Heel turn just made no sense to me. It’s like Reccoa from Zeta all over again. And then she just get crazier and crazier (Semi-naked women? Seriously? That was your bright idea?). It’s really annoying that the one death that would’ve I loved to see the most doesn’t happen. Speaking of crazy women, Victory Gundam was certainly not in short supply of them. Let’s tick them off:
Junko – Suicidal
Fuala – Living in space for two days turns you into a psycho killer with bells on your face?
Katejina – An extreme case of Stockholm syndrome
Maria – God complex
Lupe – At first I thought she was just a paedophile, but it seems she had deeper issues than that...
Tomino was supposedly suffering from depression when he wrote this show and now i feel like making a haphazard guess as to why
So yeah, overall I’m a bit mixed with this one. It’s certainly good but it’s not as good as I hoped it’d be. Great soundtrack though. I wish I could listen to it on youtube. There were some tracks I could listen to all day:
Overall: 7/10
Also, for some reason I can't find the thread for Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (Hate it that much do you?) so I'll just post my review of it here:
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