Gundam Twilight Axis - News & Anticipation

[GN0010 Nosferatu]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

Here you go, guys. Episode 01:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/zax3LcPvfsA

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Is that an episode or a trailer? The narrative is so jumbled. It jumps from one point to another back and forth without much flow. Y'all might want to wait for the compilation movie or just read the damn novel in this case .

Yikes, I'm am not into this format.

[SonicSP]

I remember back in the day in school where I was asked to write a short essay format with a very low maximum word count.

This sounds like someone at Sunrise asked their employees to do the same but in anime. This whole thing even including the final "longer" episode will barely be more than 1/2 hours long total. Even if the source novel was not that long, this is pushing it.

Sunrise sure like these mind exercises lately. How to stretch Unicorn to its maximum length limit and now how to strip a story to its most minimum efficient detail.

[Faux Mecha]

heck even the merchandising for this is underwhelming, the Tristan being a retool of an old & primitive kit, etc.

[Chibiloli]

Originally Posted by Global Sword 2

heck even the merchandising for this is underwhelming, the Tristan being a retool of an old & primitive kit, etc.

Yeah, the "gatling guns" on the forearms don't even have gatling guns, I can't believe we get a half-assed kit while the good one is a P-Bandai exclusive, I don't care if it ties up to f91, f91 onwards is basically non-existant for me, I always did hate the concept of micronized mobile suits.

[LoweGear]

I think the worst thing about the "episode" as is, is that the mecha animation isn't even that great: it's really just amateur-level animation where two separate parts are laid on top of the other and then moved, it's that lazy.

[SonicSP]

Originally Posted by Chibiloli

Yeah, the "gatling guns" on the forearms don't even have gatling guns, I can't believe we get a half-assed kit while the good one is a P-Bandai exclusive, I don't care if it ties up to f91, f91 onwards is basically non-existant for me, I always did hate the concept of micronized mobile suits.

P-Bandai is mostly how Bandai does like to do things these days. Outside of major new show releases, the number of P-Bandai kits outnumber regular releases unfortunately.

[Faux Mecha]

Originally Posted by Chibiloli

, I don't care if it ties up to f91, f91 onwards is basically non-existant for me, I always did hate the concept of micronized mobile suits.

well the concept of Mobile Suits being reduced in size makes sense in universe as the engineers manages to find a way to shrink the size of the cumbersome Minovsky reactors without any side effects thus as a result MS's became more cheaper to produce thus much greater in numbers compared to its towering predecessors, also a bigger Suit does not always mean its powerful in terms of technological advancements as for example in Unicorn that SNRI's tiny Loto units manages to straight up shot down Zeon Suits who were like twice its size & more heavily armored to boot.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Episode 02 is up. We finally got a proper narrative flow but since they already botched the beginning of the story, newcomers will know very little about the context of why the characters being there and doing what they're doing.

Plus (and this is a big thing), the end of episode 02 clearly showed that they are changing/rushing the story in the anime medium (or they already did). A certain mecha shouldn't have appeared there since the battle should've only highlight the Tristan & Zaku III Custom. So, not only did we get very very vague and jumbled beginning/introduction, Sunrise seem to be rushing things as well. At this point, I just hope that things won't end too badly.

And I'm still scratching my head as to why Sunrise/Bandai decided to adapt this new not-yet-finished novel for very short episodes that barely comprehensible? They even put less effort with the model kit. Did the writer of the novel pissed off a higher-up dude at Bandai? Is this anime project just the dude deciding to sabotage the novel adaptation? Even the Astray short episodes are better than this.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Episode 03 is up. It's an enjoyable fight between Zaku III Custom & Byarlant Custom. Not bad at all. And we get the glimpse of the antagonist pilot.

Mind you that this fight is anime-original. This never happened in the novel coz Danton ditched the Zaku III after fighting the Tristan (the Gundam fled the battlefield) as Mehmed's accompanying EF squad is heading somewhere else (details are spoilers).

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Episode 4 is yet another decent episode. They took it slowly with the narrative. Now we know that Arlette is a modified human with slow aging since she's been around as Zeon's engineer since before Lalah piloted Elmeth. She was also one of the top engineers in Axis when it was still lead by Maharaja Karn and then by his daughter Haman Karn and then got recruited again by Char before & during the CCA event. She's also partly responsible for the Sazabi that Char last used. That's why she's a bit obsessed in finding the remains of it on this half-part of Axis that's on the way to float into open space.

And speaking of Sazabi, I noticed that they used the MG Sazabi Katoki version for a glimpse of flashback in this episode. Does that mean we'll get to see MG Nu Katoki too in the future? One can dream.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Episode 5 is great for setting up the next fight and it's MA vs. MA duel, a callback to the fight between Gundam Stamen + Orchis vs. Neue Ziel in 0083. But in this case, the Gundam is the bad guy. That damn cliffhanger!

[GN0010 Nosferatu]

The red mobile armor looks like a Sazabi and Nieu Ziel love child.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by GN0010 Nosferatu

The red mobile armor looks like a Sazabi and Nieu Ziel love child.

You know what? Arlette helped making the Sazabi, and it won’t be a stretch if she also helped making the Neue Ziel in 0083. How? Well, Neue Ziel was constructed in Axis and Arlette worked there as mobile weapons engineer since the days of Maharaja Khan/Karn all the way to Char’s final Neo Zeon leadership period. Heck, she's been around making MSs for Zeon since the One Year War! So it’s entirely possible that the red MA is literally the love child of Sazabi & Neue Ziel in-story . Maybe, at one point, Axis or Char needed a new MA prototype -> they asked Arlette to make a blueprint for it -> Arlette combined the designs of Saz & Neue -> proposed the idea to them -> they greenlit and made it .

[justavisitor]

Can't believe I can catch up this series using less than half of an hour . So Arlette is responsible for the lack of head vulcan in Zeon's MS!! XD (An extra bullet is still extremely valuable in my opinion)

And this time the gundam pilot looks like a bad guy.

Well I want to wait until origin is done so I can watch them all at one time, so meanwhile I can watch this short series. It's way too short, but on the bright side, it's not time consuming at all and we get a new story

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Episode 6 already out a while ago and I think it's the best episode of them all. We got longer runtime, character moments, decent battles with new mechs and a conclusion of some sort (for now).

But all in all, I still consider Twilight Axis as a Music Video iteration of its source material but with more dialogues and less music (even more so than Thunderbolt). Unlike in Thunderbolt though, almost nothing is explained in Twilight when it comes to the main plot like: Why Mehmed & his Fed-team recruited Arlette & Danton? Why they have to go to the second-half of Axis? What are their mission & goals? What are the intention of the antagonists? Who are these people exactly? (which applied to both protagonist & antagonist teams). All of them are answered in the (still on-going) novel but this "show" chose to have none of that, no doubt due to the very tight runtime.

Overall, Twilight Axis is fun and decent for what it is (a short side-material to amuse UC fans), but as a novel-adaptation, it definitely failed because it hardly adapts anything from the source other than the battles and bits of character moments. I'll give it a 6/10 which is close to a neutral or "eh" for me. Not horrible as something you watch on the side.

*sigh* I still want Twilight Axis (and Thunderbolt, to a considerable extend) to be adapted properly as series (TV or OVA). Not as criminally-short ONA episodes.

[GN0010 Nosferatu]

So...linearts of the two mobile armors when?

[justavisitor]

watched ep 6 and I don't even know what the ending means. I guess it's a happy ending but it's way too weird and we got no explanation what is going on

[GN0010 Nosferatu]

Originally Posted by GN0010 Nosferatu

So...linearts of the two mobile armors when?

I should realized there was a main website for Twilight Axis, before asking that.

[Chibiloli]

Why Shot Lancers? Style aside, Shot Lancers exist for two reasons: firstly, they're only effective because MS sizes by F91 were scaled down, along with armor; and secondly, they're useful for combat within a colony. The former scale-down hasn't occurred yet and in fact, the Char's Counter Attack era mecha are overall the biggest and most-heavily armored of the UC, so using them over a Jegan's beam rifle seems like crippling your Jegan's offensive capability for little reason.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Oh good, they're gonna make a manga adaptation of the Twilight Axis novel for people who don'y like to read word-only books . Let's hope this one can successfully translate the story to another medium better than the anime.