Gundam UC

[foxpaws]

It's a UC show alright, non-sequiturs and all. Hits all the right notes otherwise, with high production values and classic character and mechanical designs. And for once, the main character doesn't commit Grand Theft Gundam. (He does "borrow" a construction pod early on in the episode, but we'll let that one slide.)

Mark Simmons is credited as the English Translation Supervisor. The spoken English in the Japanese audio track actually has proper grammar. Word has it that Bandai Visual approached Mark directly. Good to know Mark's name still means something to the franchise stakeholders.

-- Keith

[Josh D]

(He does "borrow" a construction pod early on in the episode, but we'll let that one slide.)

At least they established early on that he uses a construction pod on at least a semi-regular basis early on, which is something that was never done for most every UC civilian main character to establish that they've at least got half a clue what they're doing in the cockpit.

I enjoyed it, but then I went in under the notion that it's basically the anime equivalent of "comfort food" for all the old UC fans lining Bandai's plamo coffers so my expectations may have been low to start. I was expecting - and kind of hoping for - more UC tropes (though I'm certain future episodes will deliver those). I'm still wondering how they're going to deal with the reappearance of a certain character who was at least in the novels later on, given real-world events.

[Mirai Rogue]

I've watched this recently as well. Given that it has been quite a while I watched any Gundam series I actually entered into this without any preconceptions. Hell I don't know anything at all about Unicorn other than seeing a few lineart pics a year or so ago. That said I really enjoyed it. The production values are impressive in both the normal and combat scenes. Love the Stark Jegan and ReZEL.

It managed to get my writing mojo flowing again so it must have got something right.

[foxpaws]

I was referring to the tradition of using theft as a plot device to place the Gundam in the hands of the protagonist, not the other tradition of a character demonstrating a supernatural ability to pilot something he's had no prior experience with. Besides Banagher, I believe Camille is the only other UC Gundam protagonist with sufficient prior mobile suit experience, but in Camille's case it involved theft of the intellectual variety.

Sure would be nice to break with tradition and feature a female as the lead Gundam newtype pilot. So far, there's only Christina Mackenzie and Asuna Elmarit; the former is from a show that I don't consider a traditional Gundam tale, and the latter is from a manga story. (Both had Mikimoto's involvement; I wonder if that's just a coincidence.)

-- Keith

[Native Jovian]

For the record, Amuro was supposedly familiar with the Gundam because his dad was involved with designing it, Kamille ditto except it was both his parents, plus he was an accomplish "junior mobile suit" (which are apparently closer to powered exoskeletons than proper MS). Judau didn't have any parents building his Gundam, but he was already using petit MS (the little round-cockpit things that show up in CCA and in fact in Unicorn) on a daily basis while working as a salvage hauler; petit MS are supposed to have nearly-identical control schemes to full-sized MS, even if dealing with something that's 10-15 feet tall has got to be a little different than controlling something that's 60 feet tall.

Anyway, I just got done watching the first episode of Unicorn. It was enjoyable, and I'll certainly watch new episodes when they come out, but I rather wish they didn't hit the UC tropes so hard. I was predicting things 15 and 20 minutes before they actually happened just because they were playing those tropes absolutely straight. There's a time and a place for that, naturally, but I'd love to see something where they mixed things up a little. The first season of Gundam 00 did that very well, though the second season had to reverse it and become a hurricane of every Gundam trope ever...

Specific comments on the show (both actual spoilers and my own predictions, so if you don't want to spoil things for you now would be a good time to stop reading):

My main complaint is "why do the Feddies always have to get the short end of the stick?". That thing that looked like the love child of the Zaku II and the Qubeley (which I will henceforth refer to as the Zakubeley, since its actual name is impossible to pronounce and even harder to spell) hacked apart a dozen or more modern MS -- Jegans and even ReZELs -- piloted by both EFF grunts and the presumably much more capable Londo Bell pilots, while the only kill they made the whole episode was against that Geara Doga lookin' thing, which took four freaking ReZELs to pull off (and it killed one of them, to boot). Honestly, I'm really, really tired of the good guys being either incompetent, hopelessly underequipped, or both. They certainly weren't underequipped this time around, which just highlights the incompetence that much more. Bah, I say, and bah again.

"Audrey" amuses me because she's so transparent while they're trying to be all mysterious about her. As soon as they showed her in proper lighting I was putting like 75% chance on her that she's actually Minerva Zabi (or the body double from ZZ pretending to be her -- how she was handled in ZZ was pretty much an asspull to allow CCA to exist, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense even at the time). It went up to 95% once they showed the "Runaway Princess" poster during the scene where she was on the streets with the main character, and up to 99+% by the end of the episode. The name "Audrey Burne" was pretty amusing, since she looks rather like a red-haired Audrey Hepburn. But I found myself referring to her as "Leia" for the whole episode, since her first scene had more than a passing resemblance to the opening of the original Star Wars movie.

Which works out pretty well, actually, since Banagher (Christ, what a terrible name) looks almost exactly like Mark Hamill. Which will serve to make the inevitable romantic between Luke and Leia a little bit creepy. Luke is an amalgamation of every UC protagonist ever, with the single refreshing difference that he's already using The Force -- er, has unlocked some Newtype potential. Hopefully it means we won't have to go through the tedious "awakening Newtype powers" phase all over again for this series. As an aside, it was amusingly obvious that he was the main character from the moment the voice over (which turned out to be his history teacher) said that the One Year War was 17 years ago -- before all of you were born! I was like, "crap, he's GOT to be talking to the main character". The fact that he had a Haro only made him that much easier to pick out of the crowd.

Similarly, it was obvious that the Vist leader guy was Luke's dad the moment he looked him up on the computer. Guy in charge of building the Gundam taking a distant interest in the main character? Yeah, it's his dad, guaranteed. Which only made it silly when they tried to treat it as a revelation at the end of the episode. Early in the episode I was wondering if they would carry the Star Wars motif far enough to make the pilot of the Zakubeley his mom, but apparently his mom's already dead, so no dice. Oh well.

Full Frontal is a terrible, terrible name and I don't care that they're Japanese and probably don't understand the full implications of the phrase, they should still be shot. That's all I have to say about that.

[foxpaws]

I never got the sense that Amuro was that familiar with mobile suits, since he spends a fair amount of time in the cockpit flipping through the Operation V manual. Camille on the other hand flat-out says that he stole the data from his Dad's computer.

Banagher is the name of a town in Ireland. And Kshatriya is a Hindu reference. It looks like Mark Simmons hunted down all the original references, just as he did for for Cosmic Era universe, to make sure the stakeholders didn't bungle the English spellings. I'm guessing there was nothing Mark could do to save Full Frontal. Agreed that it's a terrible name; Elbow Smash would've been better.

The more the Feds get trashed, the better the Gundam looks when it kicks Zeon butt. Yeah, tradition really sucks sometimes.

Shame we have to wait until September for the next installment. I guess that's the trade-off for honest-to-goodness production values.

-- Keith

[Josh D]

For me there's a difference between saying someone knows how to use an MS and actually showing that someone knows what they're doing in the cockpit - granted Camille has experience with Junior MS but we're told that rather than shown it. In Amuro's case, yeah, he's a tech head but that doesn't equate to having half a clue about how to actually pilot something. I'm with Keith, Amuro seems to only have a passing knowledge of what his Dad's actually doing (though I think in Origin he may have pulled a Camille and hacked Tem's data).

I had forgotten about Judau, but then it's been a while since I inflicted ZZ upon myself - but that at least falls into the same category as Banagher. I like the notion that these guys actually do something involving the use of a mobile unit on a semi-regular basis.

To be fair to the EFF, they don't seem to be totally inept, just outclassed. The nameless mook piloting the Stark Jegan puts up a decent fight before Marida bisects him - better than most nameless mooks in Gundam manage. Plus, he and his buddies probably weren't expecting a beam-spamming Zeek newtype monster. And the ECOAS guy with the bazooka is pretty hard core. At least here they're no where near as outright inept as the schmucks defending Frontier IV in 27-years' time. I just hope that in the next few episodes they start displaying skills more on par with the Londo Bell from CCA, though we're also due for more named Neo-Neo Zeons so that may counter that hope. At least Riddhe, the ReZEL pilot who finds Audrey and Banagher's friends, could potentially be a decent pilot.

Audrey's true identity does have to be the worst-kept secret in UC Gundam, though, I totally agree. I remember seeing Yas's original design for her character for the novel a few years ago and thinking, "wow, that really looks like Mineva Zabi all growed up." As for Full Frontal, I'm really beginning to wonder if Fukui didn't give him that name intentionally with full knowledge of what it means simply to screw with us. Or was watching L-Gaim when he thought of it (after snickering over the Monty Python bit image that popped in my head when I first saw the name, I thought of "Full Flat" from L-Gaim).

[foxpaws]

I doubt Full Frontal's name was picked in part to screw with the Western audience. Even if it were, BEI has a history of renaming names not palatable to its potential customers. Remember God Gundam?

-- Keith

[Dendrobium Stamen]

So, I finally got to see this. And I really liked it!

It does follow a fair few Gundam traditions, but I was expecting them, so just enjoyed them for what they were. The production values are pretty amazing, I absolutely loved watching basically every scene, though obviously the MS fights were where the budget really shone through.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, how good was that Stark Jegan?

Anyways, six months until the next installment... it's going to be a long wait, and a busy month when it comes!

[Josh D]

I doubt Full Frontal's name was picked in part to screw with the Western audience. Even if it were, BEI has a history of renaming names not palatable to its potential customers. Remember God Gundam?

I meant us as in the collective audience, not just the potential Western audience. It could have been a case of screwing with the Japanese audience in that they would have no idea of the connotations even if the author did. But then I'm probably way off the mark - after all, there have been certain romananizations of Quattro's last name that were done without thought as to the English word it turned out to be. I'm probably giving him too much credit but there's still a part of me that thinks Fukui came up with Full Frontal's name as an intended joke.

[Black Knight]

I broke down and ordered the Blu-Ray; I'll have to get my housemate to ship it to me here. So maybe I'll get to watch Unicorn by mid-April, as Amazon won't ship movies, games, electonics, or certain other things directly to overseas military addresses.

I just hope that there's more substance than just pretty pictures; Destiny had pretty high-quality animation, too; the story just wasn't up to the same standard. But the Gundam franchise being what it is, I don't expect it.

[foxpaws]

They won't ship to APO/AFOs? Jerks.

Even for someone who's grown cynical of the Gundam franchise as a whole, I didn't find the story to be terrible. I really do wish they'd stop putting kids in the lead role, though. The lone competent ReZel pilot doesn't utter a word in this episode, but I already like him far more for his stoic demeanor. If only Sunrise were to replace the whiners in Gundam with the cast of Bebop, they'd have a show that's twice as likable.

-- Keith

[Black Knight]

It isn't that Amazon doesn't ship to FPO/APO boxes, I think it's that the DoD asked them not to ship certain categories of merchandise to FPO/APO addresses. Video games might be allowed (I know there are a lot of people looking forward to SC2), but things like computers (and some accessories), phones (and accessories), and other items can't be shipped. I think I'll try to have the Unicorn disc sent straight to me, as a trial.

[foxpaws]

If there are people in your unit who'd like beta keys for SC2, let me know and I'll pull a few strings. It's the least I can do for our armed forces.

-- Keith

[Black Knight]

A couple months behind the power curve, but I finally got Unicorn. Had to order it twice, someone seems to have stolen the first copy from the mail, or else it fell out of the airplane on the way over. Oh, well.

Reactions....it reminded me a lot of Transformers 2 & G.I. Joe. Awesome special effects...and I'll end the sentence there. I've described it to other people as "Michael Bay doing Gundam" which is the first thing that popped into my head as I was watching.

All the major points have been made, I think. Fed grunts overly incompetent, Vist Foundation overly Machiavellian, Zeons overly badass, etc. Characters rather bland. The only thing "Audrey Burne" has going for her, IMO, is cuteness, and Banagher has nothing. In fact, he himself hits more tropes than I think an entire show should, but this is Gundam; its all tropes.

A few fun issues: the depiction of the funnels' beams is consistent with how they were shown in Z, ZZ and CCA, but the effects of their weapons is not; we see funnels causing Minovsky Reactors to go critical, which does not jive with all their prior depictions, as they seemed before to fire lasers (and are still animated the same), with lasers not making MS reactors go BOOM! Those funnels also lasted for freaking ever. Granted, we occasionally saw them return to momma, but generally Marida reloaded about as frequently as Bruce Willis in Last Man Standing. And maintained a greater rate of fire.

Also, "Laplace's Box" certainly has the potential to really screw up things further down the time-stream. As if "A New Translation" wasn't enough. I'd argue that, based on that abomination, Marida shouldn't exist, and therefore neither should all of Unicorn...but that's just me being ornery.

The ReZEL I'm not impressed with, but then, I've always been a fan of the Jegan, and the Stark was just fun. I'm really curious about the bazooka ammo it was firing; I wished it had been able to swat some of those funnels out of the sky, to at least make it seem like Marida had to sweat.

[foxpaws]

Give the kid a little credit. He did manage to shake off the folks pursuing Audrey pretty well.

I like 0080, MS08 and Patlabor because they are character-driven stories, which tend to use hardware as props instead of giving them the spotlight. Much like Initial D and its vehicles, mobile suits are the real stars of most Gundam shows; the attention given to the Unicorn and the Kshatriya leads me to believe that Gundam UC will be no exception. But hey, at least it's good for some decent action.

-- Keith

[Native Jovian]

But hey, at least it's good for some decent action.

Where "decent" means "Feddies getting trashed because Zeon are cooler".

[foxpaws]

Where "decent" means Federation pilots have to possess an inate instinct to overcome Zeon pilots geared towards female pilots geared towards all-range attacks. It's the kind of Japanese marketing BS that sells mobile suit model kits.

-- Keith (what, me, jaded? No, really?)

[Black Knight]

The action certainly looked good, and I am willing to give Banagher some credit for how he outfoxed Marida & friends as they tried to capture "Audrey Burne."

But while the action sequences had high production values, they didn't "feel" very dramatic to me, possibly because it was so obvious that the Zeon-derived machines would more or less mop the floor with the Federation machines. I've long thought that one of the problems with CCA is that Londo Bell's MS struggle so much at Fifth Luna, and then totally pwn Char's Zeeks at Axis. This felt like more of the same. Granted, Marida is a newtype, flying a typically over-powered Newtype-use MS, but even so only a couple of the Federation machines, which are almost certainly helmed by fully-trained, and likely rather-experienced, Londo Bell pilots, gave her any difficulty at all.