Ultimately I land on “i like it” but with reservations. I certainly like it more than IBO or 8th MS Team since at least Victory is interesting (to my taste)
I will say this for Victory–it fully commits. Full stop.
Uso’s mom’s death is genuinely one of the most shocking scenes, it’s absolutely buck wild
Start with the one that has coolest looking robots to you. Gundam wing is pretty much the first Gundam for a whole generation of western kids so it’s perfectly fine to start with, less baggage and you don’t even need to finish it since it not on the main uc timeline.
man now I’m thinkin’ about GUNDAM a lot. I think my current tiers of favs are
S tier:
Turn A, 0079, 08th MS Team
A Tier:
ZZ, 0080, F91, Unicorn, Gundam Build Fighters, G Gundam, Reconguista movies
B tier:
Wing, Witch from Mercury
C tier:
Zeta, Endless Waltz
D tier:
Char’s Counterattack
F tier:
00 S1/S2+movie, SEED, Build Fighters Try
Currently watching:
Gundam X(shaping up to be C tier at the moment), GQuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuux
Haven’t watched yet but want to:
0083, Narrative, Victory, IBO, Hathaway
Haven’t watched yet and not interested in ever watching:
SEED Destiny, SEED Freedom, all of the various Build Fighters sequels, AGE
Would rather read the original manga:
Thunderbolt, The Origin(this owns so hard btw)
I definitely feel like I need to rewatch Zeta to reevaluate it. I haven’t seen it in a very long time and I don’t even really remember what it was about it that rubbed me the wrong way. Similarly Char’s Counterattack is getting a bit of a reevaluation from me currently since I’m reading the Beltorchika’s Children manga which is an adaptation of the novel that was Tomino’s original idea for the story before what was eventually made into CCA the movie. I like it a lot more than the movie so far.
Gundam GQuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuX ep 1 was excellent. Already saw it in the movie version but was great to see it again, interesting that the broadcast order and the movie edit have flipped some of the eps. The next ep was the first part of the movie.
Great ed too, this wasn’t in the movie so nice to see something new!
GQuuuuuuuuuuuuuuX episode 2 is a REAL TREAT for all the Gundam sickos out there!!!
There were a lot of extremely specific and minor details that were callbacks-- even the sound effects seemed pretty perfectly matched!
@sabertoothalex were you the person recommending Reconguista in G a while back? Weirdly almost every other series but it and Gundam X are available through mainstream (AKA legal) means in Canada, and I have to decide how badly I want to watch it to bother jumping through a bunch of hoops to find it.
That Shin Gundam episode is pretty fun but it’s kind of hard for me to follow the mechs. Visually incoherent. Too many damn lines! I’m looking at the head and having trouble keeping it in my brain. I don’t got no zoomer brain for this lol
(At 5:00 for direct comparison)
i would say there’s nothing proper spoilery about gquuuuuux in the following but am blurring it anyway for those who don’t wanna know nuthin
it’s weird how they’re structuring the episodes. i thought the film version made a lot of sense as the intro to a series. but then i suppose they don’t want to lose 3-4 episodes of the series to having episode one be a big ol feature. i dunno. i can’t be the only one who thought the “continued in episode 1” tag at the end of episode 2 was more confusing than anything.
Yeahhhhhh GReco is good! I haven’t seen the entire series but I did see all the movies and really liked them. AFAIK they’re only available physically though so I found them all one a popular anime sharing site that sounds like the anime cat noise.
And yeahhhhhhhh GQuuuuuuuuuuuuuuX is still so good. The FLCL energy is off the charts. And next week I finally get new non-movie episodes so I’m really stoked for that one!!!
Also to shotgun blast more Gundam thoughts:
I watched Gundam Narrative, the film follow up to Unicorn. It was a bad Unicorn sequel and an only okay movie overall. Felt pretty pointless and wasn’t even particularly good looking which is something you can at least usually count on for Gundam movies.
Also have come to the realization that I only really like watching Gundam X after eating a weed gummy. All of a sudden I vibe with it more when that gummy hits. Otherwise it’s kinda boring.
I’ll have to go to anime cat noise site then! I’m kind of the poster child of willingness to pay to watch a thing that I know I’ll enjoy so it still always hits me funny when I can’t find a legal way of any kind to watch something like GReco, a fairly recent entry in a globally popular brand with current relevance! It’s bizarre how streaming rights are handled.
A few of my Gundam thoughts in response:
I didn’t really enjoy Unicorn, so I haven’t bothered with Narrative. I love UC Gundam stuff, so I initially liked Unicorn, but it let me down constantly by being boring. There were several whole episodes devoted to conversations between characters, something that can work but that I don’t think a show like this could pull off. It felt toward the end like they were rushing through the material at breakneck pace-- and I think that’s literally what was happening. It could’ve been two better-paced seasons.
I suspect there are some die-hard UC fans who are up in arms about GQuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuX, but I think it’s pretty clear that everyone involved in making it loves the source material. You don’t get episode 2 if they don’t.
i’ll be the first to admit i’m a total gundam noob but, after spending the morning sample-plattering mech anime gquuuuuux is far more stylish and interesting than a lot of stuff i’ve seen!
Inaugurating the official gundam thread to say WOW, that last GquuuuuuX episode was good.
I think episode 4 of GQuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuux might be my favourite so far: the visual representation of the kira-kira, how Shiiko’s civilian uniform looks enough like a federation uniform that you know who she is before her history is revealed, the tiny callbacks to War in the Pocket, the gMS-01 Gelgoog and even the goofy possible red herrings like ‘the La La sound’.
Caught up on the last two eps of GQuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuX and am still loving it. The Doms are so sick and I liked that we got an ep focused totally on the political and personal intrigue with 6. 7 looks like it’s gonna be nuts.
I am so excited to see how the Psycho Gundam looks in the GQuuuuuuuuux timeline!!
I also like shortening to gqu~x. Gives the illusion of more u’s.
This week’s episode (7) was extremely good! Although it does also make me sweat that it’s over half done and I sure do hope we end up getting a second season! We finally get the Psycho Gundam and it’s absolutely everything I wanted it to be with its transformation, its armour bits, and its finger lasers, buuuuut it’s done after one episode, although I’m still not convinced that Deux herself is done. Deux, by the way, is excellent from a character design perspective! But then we also get another Zeknova, a cool new Gyan design, and Challia Bull in a transforming (!!!) Kikeroga mobile armour, and finally a reset of the status quo but the end. OH and also Kycillia in some way too well done suiting for such a short appearance. OH OH and one of my favourite Gundam jokes, when a bystander workers asks why the air conditioning unit is flying (the joke being: the Psycho Gundam was smuggled in labeled as an air conditioning unit, and it’s flying past in its mobile fortress form).
yeah that ep was excellent! It was a huge step forward for the narrative and wow what an incredible episode for mobile suit/armor designs. I need a gunpla of Challia’s mobile armor asap!!! The Machu and Nyaan rivalry makes me a bit sad, I want them to all get along!! And the mini-Zeknova was intriguing. I think whoever is “in” the Red Gundam(assuming it’s Char) is able to control these to some extent, so the Red Gundam got sent somewhere else(maybe Earth?). It just feels like Challia and Char have some grand plan they’re working toward together.
And yes I deeply hope this show isn’t just 12 and done. I do think these are creators that have been able to accomplish a lot with very little time(Gunbuster, Diebuster, FLCL) so it’s not impossible that it wraps up well in these remaining eps but I would absolutely love more of this show.
Yeah, I have confidence in the creators, but… I want more! Also look what happened when they added more seasons to FLCL!
I’m still not convinced it’s Char in the Red Gundam (but I could completely be wrong), but it sure seems like somebody is in the Red Gundam! Also yes I agree about Machu and Nyaan, they deserve to be able to live out the ED life and not be angry at each other!