Well, I've finally managed to finish G-Reco, and what I can say... Starting with a few good words, I guess. It was colorful and engaging due to being rather fast paced, fluidly animated and boasting a variety of characters. The underside of it though is the inconsistent and in big part incomprehensible plot. No, seriously, I mean, what the hell's even with the plot? Forget spoonfed explanations, it doesn't even manage to stay remotedly coherent most of the time, jumping around like a mountain goat in heat. It's just... let's just say that every complaint about how messy, hectic, confusing, etc the story-telling in G-Reco was is true, in my honest opinion.
Unlike many others who found the second half even messier than the first, I liked the second cour better. Not because the show got much more coherent or understandable (there was no saving it at that point already anyway), but the plot picked up, started going new places, offered a couple of moderately shocking reveals, and finally got down to business with the titular reconquista. Hurray.
The mess that was the story-telling aside, there were a few other things that annoyed me. One, the fact that Nodero's sole purpose and raison d'etre seems to be being utterly useless. She's literally nothing more than an energetic yapping decoration kept around.
Two, Bellri's reluctance to kill. Sure, he's not as bad as certain other Gundam protag, but that stale chant of 'I don't wanna kill no one!' was getting on my nerves, especially in the light of IBO's Mika and his open ruthlessness of a soldier fighting for survival.
Three, Manny going from 'let's be friends with Bellri' to 'let's kill him' in the span of what, one episode? The one character I wished to see goddamn dead already but no luck.
And last, some glaring stupidity of epic scale, like with that Kia guy who kept firing all of his weapons at G-Self right next to one of those Venus globes and then had the nerve to go "OMG, no, how could it be! I shot through the sea floor and now the sea is flowing out!" or that Rockpie-obsessed lady commander who went crazy and basically killed all of her men with her crazy orders.
The aspects I'm not sure whether are bad or good:
a. very small death toll among the named cast, and no deaths or even any lasting damage among the main cast. From that alone the whole war they supposedly fought feels toy, and you can really tell that the show is for kids mostly (and that it wasn't written by Okada Mari
)
b. no romance between any of the leads, no triangles, no nothing! Only an unimportant childhood friend with an unrequited crush left hanging
. Hmm, I think I'll list this as a good thing after all, it was refreshing and soothing somehow after those countless variations on the worn trope of the main pilot being in some sort of an obligatory love triangle involving a princess and childhood friends.
In conclusion, one more thing. Gundam shows always have at least a few really weird names, it's like a tradition, but surprisingly, it was G-Reco that took the cake for me with Colonel Cumpa Rsita, a guy named after a goddamn tango. The fact that it's an alias makes it even worse, it means the guy chose, of his own volition, to be named after a tango. For the whole series I was eagerly waiting for the moment when he'd take Bellri's mom and go show us some world class tango moves. Severely disappointed that he just died without ever getting to show off his tango-dancing skills!
Ah, come to think of it, he also takes the award for the stupidest death in this particular series (I actually laughed which is not something I ever expected to do at death scenes).
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