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Seeing the movie without subs, I finally realize what it was that was nagging at the back of my mind since I read all the movie spoilers sometime ago.
Some interviews a while back had Mizushima saying that he was inspired by the latest Star Trek (XI) film, and wanted to emulate that style. In my view however, the movie doesn't seem to have much in the way of J.J. Abram's influence. Instead, Awakening of the Trailblazer reminds me more of another Star Trek movie - Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
You have an alien threat on a collision course with Earth threatening to wipe out humanity, and the only way to stop it is to negotiate peacefully. But that's not just where I see some influences though. Throughout the film the ELS maintain a sense of being mysterious, of being truly something that cannot be compared to anything humans have faced before. And that feeling is further magnified when the 00 Qan[T] enters the ELS mothership, and you see all these strange, colorful environments that have no analogue to anything on Earth - much like when the Enterprise goes through V'ger's insides. There's this sense of wonder and mystery to the entire scene that I've never seen in any Gundam before, and that few other sci-fi actually manage to convey, the amazement and bedazzlement at gazing unto a sight that no other humans have seen before. Even the alien's motivations are similar in being misunderstood: V'ger just wants to go home to its creators and "report back" so to speak, while the ELS simply want to understand humanity, and yet both are misconstrued as hostile in their intent.
IMHO however, Awakening of the Trailblazer actually succeeds in its message of achieving peace through diplomacy and understanding better than Star Trek: The Motion Picture, even as the former serves up way more action and explosions than the latter. In Trek, humanity has had prior contact with aliens, and so any other alien life form is just "another day at Starfleet", whereas in 00 the ELS are truly the first aliens that humanity has encountered, which means that they can better convey the curiosity and fear of the unknown that marks meeting such a foreign existence - and they do. This further gives contrast to the next counterpoint: V'ger had a human creation as its core, which gives a reasonable point of familiarity to the entire construct; the ELS are a completely alien race with nothing in common with humans, and yet somehow the theme of understanding works best when you take two completely unrelated races and have them understand each other, which imho makes the entire message more convincing and powerful for the Gundam movie. In essence, Awakening of the Trailblazer seems more in line with Gene Rodenberry's vision than many Star Trek movies and episodes ever created.
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Against all the evil that hell can conjure, all wickedness that mankind can produce... We will send unto them, only you.
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Graphic Designer
