Who doesn't love giant robots? Giant robots are awesome and today, we are looking at an anime spawning from the quintessential mold of the ultimate giant robot. It certainly isn't Optimus Prime. I'm talking about the Gundam. There have been a number of Gundam series over the years. Many of us have at least heard of
on occasion, but we're exploring a newer sub-universe from the Gundam canon. Kira Yamato is enjoying a lovely day on the space station Heliopolis until an Earth Forces secret weapon sends his world into chaos. His status as a coordinator forces him into the cockpit of this new Mobile Suit in order to defend the people he cares about, at the cost of having to fight one of his best friends. ZAFT is coming in hot, so get on your flight suit and strap yourself in tight. Today we're taking a look at
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Lieuenant Ramius before her promotion,
watching as Kira and his friends are reunited on the Archangel. |
The overarching plot in the story is based on an escalation of hostilities between the Earth Forces (led by normal everyday humans) and ZAFT (of the PLANTs which is a series of space stations inhabited by genetically altered humans called coordinators) following the destruction of a space station called Junius Seven. Some time after this, on the space station Heliopolis which is controlled by Orb, an officially neutral nation, Kira, a coordinator, and his normal human friends are living their lives in relative peace. However, it turns out that Orb's military contractors have been using the space station to construct a set of Mobile Suits for the Earth Forces on the sly. As a result, ZAFT sends a detachment to Heliopolis to covertly steal them and the ship intended to transport them. Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong. As the Earth, Orb, and ZAFT forces battle it out, Kira is separated from his friends in the effort to find a shelter, and along with a strange girl, he finds his way to the warehouse where the Mobile Suits are being kept. After finding the girl a safe place, Kira ends up having to get into one of the suits with Murrue Ramius, one of the officers due to it no longer being safe for civilians on the ground. During the struggle, he discovers that his childhood friend, a coordinator named Athrun, is among the detachment that's been sent after the suits. He is eventually forced into a situation where he must pilot the Gundam back to the ship that is supposed to carry it, while protecting his other friends, and preventing ZAFT from retrieving the suit. Unfortunately, Heliopolis is destroyed in the ensuing battle, and the the transport ship, the Archangel, now commanded by Ramius, is forced to make a desperate flight to escape ZAFT and regroup with the Earth Forces without any further assistance except what can be offered by Kira, his friends and the surviving crew.
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Speaking of politics, would you believe
everyone in this picture is supposed to be on the same side? |
The writers for this series seem to have a pretty detailed idea of how the politics in this universe works, as well as how various alliances and rivalries are formed. For that, I have to say thus far I am very impressed. Though we as the viewers don't actually have the maps in front of us, I really appreciated the level of detail with which Ramius and the other officers and characters with authority describe the plans they make which left me feeling like I really did know what was going on and why at mattered. While in general we do see the Earth Forces as a solidified group, many of the different sub-groups within that alliance have their own agendas and may not necessarily be as solidly united as one might think (not unlike politics in the real world in many ways). Like for instance, there's the Atlantic Federation which is the group that commissioned the Archangel, and then there is the Eurasian Federation which actually tries to steal its secrets at one point and there's apparently also East Asian and Oceanian groups as well, though we have not encountered them yet. Add to those subgroups the various people with differing views on coordinators ranging from not caring if someone is one or not to actively trying to annihilate them (which is the goal of the extremist group Blue Cosmos), and you have a very diverse world already. On the PLANTs side of things, the coordinators also have their own complex set of politics to deal with and of course, there's also Orb. All things considered, this universe is pretty complex. The only peeve I can really think of in this regard would have to be considering the amount of power a Gundam requires, but even that I think I can hand wave (after all, that's almost up there with the laws of physics when it comes to anime taboos). We'll just say it works.
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You wouldn't know it from this picture,
but Kira he has so much angst in this story it hurts. |
Now that we've looked at the macro level, what about the micro level? As far as the main cast is concerned, so far, it's taken me a while to actually be all that impressed with them. There's Kira, the protagonist of course, who is so full of internal conflict about his position in the whole thing it's brought him to the brink of mental breakdown. It's no wonder, I guess, if we consider his position. He's a teenager who's been forced to pilot this giant weapon because he's the only one who can do it, and if he doesn't, it's highly likely that everyone on the ship he's on is going to die, but if he does, he's forced to shoot at other coordinators and at his friend Athrun, who is often the one leading the charge on the other side. This would be bad enough, except on top of that he also has girl trouble (which we'll go into later), and in this season a huge amount of guilt because through no fault of his own, a shuttle carrying civilians got destroyed on his watch, along with the father of one of his nakama, because he couldn't be everywhere at once. (Hmm, maybe there was a reason Cartoon Network didn't run the whole series during daylight hours. Compared to some of it's other fare, this is already pretty dark.) It gets to a point where in order to cope with the demands that are on him he starts going into a berserker mode when he fights. He seems to be reevaluating this policy at the moment, so I'm not sure what's going to happen with this later. On the other side of the conflict, we have Athrun as a secondary protagonist. While he does get a bit less screen time than Kira does, he's still got his own share of conflict. He certainly doesn't enjoy fighting especially when the pilot of the opposing Gundam happens to have been a good friend at one point, but he's also got to deal with the fact that his fellow pilots for the stolen Gundams are mostly after revenge against the pilot of the Archangel's Gundam, namely Kira.
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Don't let her appearance fool you, this girl's a heart-breaker,
in that if she decides to use you,
she will do her damnedest to break you. |
When it comes to the supporting cast, there is a lot of them, but on the bright side, not nearly as many of them as in
Code Geass. While I was a little confused about who was who for a while, I found I had a lot less trouble keeping track of the sub plots. There are two primary nakamas to pay attention to. These are Kira's group, and Athrun's group. While some of the less central characters in Kira's group have yet to provide a lot in terms of plot, some are incredibly pivotal, and those that aren't still seem to serve a purpose. For instance, Miriallia and Kuzzey (gotta love these names ^^) are often seen helping out on the bridge of the Archangel after being recruited to do so during the battle at Heliopolis. There's also Sai and Tolle, who were also recruited to do the same thing, although Sai gets a major subplot following the reintroduction of his fiancée Fllay. Poor guy. Fllay joins the crew a few episodes in, first as one of the refugees from a life boat that Kira picks up out of the debris of Heliopolis. She later officially joins the crew (though I have yet to figure out what her job is on the ship) claiming it's to help fight the war. However, she has ulterior motives. At first Fllay is terrified of coordinators and clearly has a very racist attitude towards, them, but after the death of her father (a major source of guilt for Kira) she suddenly starts treating Kira a lot more nicely... wait for it... because she wants to psychologically isolate him from his other friends and drive him to kill as many coordinators as he can before eventually dying in battle. Because of this, she officially breaks off her relationship with Sai (causing him a lot of internal conflict and suffering, though he's probably better off without her if she does stuff like this all the time) and clings to Kira for much of the rest of this part of the series, while digging her claws deeper into his psyche. (So far, I am convinced that this chick's alignment has become lawful evil.) When I said Kira had girl trouble, I wasn't kidding. Sometime later, we also get the reintroduction of Cagalli, the girl who Kira stuffed into a shelter before getting embroiled in the mess with the Gundams when we find her working with a resistance movement in Africa after the Archangel crashes. She also seems to be somewhat interested in Kira which makes Fllay jealous. I can only wonder where this is going to go.
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Athrun Zala meeting with our masked man of mystery,
Rau Le Crueze. |
I have thus far failed to find a true villain in all of this, unless you count Blue Cosmos, or maybe some of the the more racist coordinators. Even so, Athrun's nakama is probably the group that best qualifies for the antagonist group position as they provide much of the interference throughout this part of the series. Yzak and Dearka are probably the scarier of the two since they seem to have much more to prove, (Kira's victories have been sore spots on their records to be sure), though Nicol, the quieter one, also has some skin in the game because they all lost one of their nakama's members in the first episode. Over them, we also have Rau Le Crueze, the mysterious masked military leader who seems to plan a lot of ZAFT's movements and strategy. He also seems to be have a lot of political connections. I have my suspicions about what this all means, but I'll keep them to myself since I haven't seen the whole thing yet. On the side of the coordinators we also get a couple of non-combatants, the most important of which happens to be Athrun's fiancee, and the daughter of an important politician, Lacus Clyne. She is first introduced when the Archangel ends up near the ruins of Junius Seven and Kira finds her life pod after the ship she was on was destroyed. As a person, I think she's pretty interesting. I get the feeling she's smarter than she pretends to be, and though she is eventually returned to the PLANTs, she actually gets somewhat close to Kira before she leaves. Then there's also Andrew Watfeld, the desert tiger, later in this season. He's the primary antagonist for the time the Archangel spends in Africa, and after Kira and Cagalli meet him it gives Kira even more angst that he has to kill him, because he's actually a pretty descent guy. His coffee isn't half bad either apparently.
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| Gundam Kick! |
When it comes to the minor characters though, I'd have to say, I think they made some good decisions for this piece. They keep the focus on the main characters for the most part. Though characters like Murrue Ramius and Mue La Flagga do get their time in the sun, it's mainly to help illustrate the inner workings of the ship and how it all works together, which serves to make the environs more believable. The further out you get, the less you know about the characters involved, which is perfectly okay because you still know what's important. The strongest point the external minor characters have is that they help us to get an idea of what's going on on the macro level, and how this affects what's happening on the micro level where the main characters are doing their thing. It's an important balance, but so far, I think the series has handled it well. Of course the main point of a Gundam series is giant robots duking it out with each other and making lots of explosions, right? Of course it is! So what about the robots? Don't worry, we get plenty of giant robot samurai action. I can guarantee that you will see the Strike Gundam (that's the one Kira pilots) at least once in any given episode, and if it's an episode in space or requiring combat, you will see a lot more of it and the various other Gundams that populate the series. We also have all the other more traditional futuristic war toys that we love, like space ships, and then when we get to Earth, there's fighter planes and submarines and even what I guess would be a salute to the robots from
Voltron, in the form of quadropedal desert combat vehicles called BuCUEs.
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| A barrel roll? With a ship this size? Hell yes! |
Naturally, the plot is mostly centered on the fights that take place with the giant robots as the Archangel goes on its desperate flight to try to get to Alaska. ZAFT dogs the ship's every move as they first depart from Heliopolis to retreat to Artimis, which is run by the Eurasian Alliance (who tries to steal the ship's secrets) then they are forced to escape towards Earth and then travel down to the planet itself, still continually chased by ZAFT and its allies. As to where I've left off, they are currently hiding in the country of Orb, thanks to the fact that Cagalli is the daughter of one of Orb's leaders, and are waiting for repairs to be made before the journey continues. So far, it's been a harrowing journey. As I've said before, the nice thing about anime originals is that you don't generally get much in the way of filler and for the most part the show does a good job of keeping things moving. While a lot of the combat is formulaic, there are some moments that are surprising (such as when Ramius orders the Archangel to do a barrel roll while in combat on Earth (and this ship is pretty damn big by the way), and the danger does preserve suspense, especially later when its a lot more clear just what's at stake. The dramatic tension is very well maintained to be sure and there will be plenty of points where you'll be cheering for the characters when they win or do something awesome. However, there was a thing or two that annoyed me (aside from Fllay's behavior toward Kira and Sai, but that was unavoidable because of the plot ><.). For one thing, I'm not entirely sure I like that they wasted a couple of episodes giving an extended recap. We want to see things happen! If it matters to us, we'll remember it. I'll give'em a pass where there's new material coming to light, but when it's just old stuff we already know, it makes an episode rather boring and pointless unless a character sees something new in it. Sure you can make the argument about the people who only started tuning in, but isn't that what the internet and friends are for? The other thing that kind of annoyed me was the song that Lacus sings in a couple of the episodes. It wasn't that it was a bad song, it just felt like it was kind of forced in a couple of places.
In terms of presentation, I haven't had reason to be disappointed so far. The colors scheme is bright and the animation isn't that bad, although it is interesting to note that as the story has progressed I've noticed heavier and heavier usage of 3-D graphics for ship movement. The series has thus far had two opening theme songs and one ending theme song. I liked T.M. Revolution's "Invoke" which was the first opening, though "Moment" by Vivian Hsu and Kasuma Endo, was okay. The ending theme "Anna ni Issho Datta no ni" is also pretty good, though I have heard better than all three before. The voice acting is also pretty tight except in a couple of places which incorporated a little bit of
narm, (mostly in the English version but the Japanese version is not totally immune), but otherwise, so far, I have few complaints. The cast is led by Soichiro Hoshi (Makoto from
Ghost Hound) as Kira, and Akira Ishida (Kaworu from
Neon Genesis Evangelion, Satoshi from
D.N. Angel) as Athrun in the Japanese version. The English cast are led by Matt Hill (Kira) and Samuel Vincent (Athrun) though Richard Ian Cox is also among the English cast as Tolle. So far, I'm having fun, and I hope the second half will be just as enjoyable even with the downsides. So see you next month when we wrap this up.
Images taken from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED.
