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fostersffff · 3 years

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The Big Gundam Watch, Part 7: Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative

Going in, I was concerned that Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative was going to somehow retroactively tarnish Unicorn. Thankfully, it did not, because this story was kind of nothing, both as a direct sequel to Unicorn and in the greater context of the Universal Century cannon. Not as nothing as the last thing I watched, which was Twilight Axis - Red Trace, but it has the same spirit of that. At the very least, I have more to say about this- both good and bad- than I did that.

Let’s begin with what I have to say the most about, which is how goddamn awful Michele Luio is:

THE SECOND COMING OF RECCOA LONDE:

It’s entirely possible that this comparison will only make sense to me, but I consider Michele Luio to be the inverse of Reccoa Londe, my favorite hatesink. From the moment she betrayed the AEUG chasing the promise of being called a good girl by Scirocco, I was dreading the moment that she was going to be presented as a tragic, sympathetic character, and that dread grew deeper with each atrocity and betrayal she committed. To my surprise, however, that never happened; some characters struggled with deeming her irredeemable or still feeling bad for her, but I never got the sense that I, as a viewer, was supposed to feel anything but scorn. It’s why I wound up coming away from Zeta feeling bizarrely positive about Reccoa despite her still being one of the most petty, despicable characters to date.

Michele Luio, on the other hand, has the exact arc that I feared Reccoa was going to have, where once she’s revealed to be a total sociopath, she slowly has her edges filed down until I can feel the writer nudging me and saying “aw man, you know, Rita AND Michele, both just so tragic, huh?” Yeah, it’s absolutely tragic that they were all abused at the hands of the Titans, but it’s pretty difficult to feel too bad for someone who does the things Michele does. Even if acting like a soulless monster is just how she copes, it doesn’t forgive the fact that she arranged for herself to have the best possible life while blackmailing the Titans, sat on her hands for a decade, and then intentionally turned a neutral colony into a battleground for her own gain.

Like, it’s really hard to believe that she feels too badly about what happens to Rita considering the options she had at her disposal over the years, considering how smart she's established to be, and how Luio & Company were and still are the premier information brokers of this setting. She could’ve just told Stephanie like five minutes after they left “hey, the Titans scammed you, I’m not a Newtype at all, they have the real one back there and I can tell you who it is” because that’s explicitly what she threatens the Titans with. She surely had multiple opportunities to assign people to track down Jona and Rita considering how quickly she earned Woomin and Stephanie’s trust as their ace-in-the-hole diviner. There’s no universe where you can convince me that a company that basically has free reign with Federation secrets lost track of an incredibly powerful and well-known Cyber-Newtype, even if she was sequestered away to a super-duper-top-secret project immediately after the Titans facility was shut down, because they already had information on that facility that led them to adopt Michele. And maybe that’s the point, that everything she tells Jona about doing everything she could was a lie, but if that’s actually the case, she especially doesn’t get to be sympathetic in the end.

What really kills me, though, is how... unnecessary her whole plan is. As revealed by her assistant shortly before their deaths, the true reason she was so desperate to capture Phenex was so she could prove, empirically, that psychoframes are capable of storing human souls, and that in doing so she could say “See? Rita’s technically not dead!” Except, she already knows Rita’s technically not dead, because she tells Jona that she can also hear Rita as a gotcha to make him feel bad about trying to go out on his own. She’s convinced from the outset that Rita is essentially dead, so there’s no other possible explanation for how she’s still communicating with them. The whole part about wanting to study it so she can keep Woomin alive in perpetuity is also a factor, but clearly not anywhere as important to her as Rita and Jona’s forgiveness.

There’s definitely a good character in here, somewhere. “Person who keeps doubling down on atrocities because they need the end to justify the means for the sake of their own conscience” is a great archetype, but having her facade falter at the halfway point and such a flawed endgame ruins any potential the character had, and she isn’t helped by Jona never actually confronting her, either in forgiveness or condemnation. But we’ll talk more about him later.

THE STUFF I LIKED:

The introduction of the Phenex as THE SECRET THIRD UC PROJECT MOBILE SUIT was very dumb and convoluted, especially since the idea as presented in Unicorn was that the suits were based on The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry. That being said, I’d be lying if I said I thought the Phenex wasn’t cool, especially with the shield wings considering how I gushed about the Full Armor Unicorn’s shields. The blue psychoframe highlights are also much more appealing to me than the Unicorn’s red and Banshee’s orange.

Rita/the Phenex as a character is also great. I love the idea of the mobile suit functioning as an avenging spirit, acting on behalf of all the dead Newtypes, trying to safeguard humanity from rushing themselves to a threshold they can’t actually cross yet.

The extremely modular nature of the Narrative Gundam was super interesting. I’m extremely partial to the A-Packs design, and how it looks like a much cooler version of the Kurwenal from Twilight Axis in terms of being a Neo Zeong-style armor made for a Gundam, but all of its other loadouts are also cool.

Speaking of Neo Zeong-style armor, I would be remiss not to point out I was hype as fuck when the Narrative took over the Neo Zeong.

Commander Iago is a cool guy, and in hindsight it’s surprising that he (or a character like him) didn’t show up in Unicorn. “Soldier who witnessed the Axis Shock up close and personal and had his life changed by it” seems like someone who would’ve had a chat with Mineva or Banagher. Then again, maybe he’s better utilized here since it’s more impactful that Banagher beat Full Frontal by just believing in possibility, rather than falling back on anecdotal evidence.

It was fun to see the Titans again, acting as cartoonishly evil as ever. I appreciate the teensy bit of extra worldbuilding where they establish that no, not every single Titan was assembled in the path of the Colony Laser, but since they were integrated in the Federation they were all arrested pretty quickly following the end of the Gryps Conflict.

All the Unicorn cameos are tasteful and well done; no one is worse for wear for appearing in this. Mineva’s keeping abreast of the scumbag politician’s bullshit, Takuya got taken on as a crew member of the new Garenceries, with Zinnerman still at the helm, and in very short order, Certified Good Boy™ Banagher has matured into a supremely confident and capable ace pilot. Perhaps most importantly, Biggest Bitch In The Earth Sphere Martha Vist Carbine was actually arrested!

THE (other) STUFF I LIKED LESS:

Zoltan fucking sucks. Top to bottom, he is just the lamest villain to appear across everything I’ve watched so far, and honestly, that might even extend out past Gundam. First of all, the design is awful: he’s got an e-boy haircut, a sharingan for some reason, and acts like the fucking Joker. At first, I thought this was supposed to be Punished Angelo who went insane after finding Full Frontal’s corpse, which probably would’ve been better than this. I also can’t figure out why he was allowed to get to the position he’s in as lieutenant: the scumbag politician and the woman he’s in contact with on Zoltan’s ship talk at length about how he’s just a failed clone of Char, meaning he possesses none of the desirable qualities of an already horribly flawed man, and anything he might theoretically bring to the table as a Cyber-Newtype pilot is offset by the fact that his inherent mental instability is made worse by his inferiority complex. Even from a motivation standpoint, his whole thing is just Full Frontal but not as good: Full Frontal was a nihilist because humanity didn’t change after witnessing the miracle of the Axis Shock, and Zoltan was a nihilist because humanity didn’t change after hearing the revelation about Laplace’s Box and also he has angst over being a failed clone of Char. The fact that this loser gets a Sinanju, a Neo Zeong, and a parting shot the likes of which we haven’t seen since Scirocco is so genuinely awful. Even the loser from Twilight Axis was less terrible, if only by a matter of degrees.

I have no strong feelings one way or the other about Jona, which would be fine if not for the fact that he’s the protagonist. There’s something to the idea of the protagonist being Just A Guy- he’s demonstrably average, which could be interesting in a setting where the protagonists always turn out to be bursting with Newtype potential, but being average also extends to his personality. All his interactions with other characters are extremely passive: we never see him exploding at Michele (outside of the scene with the Neo Zeong) for every horrible thing she’s done, or desperately trying to reach out to the good in her because he still considers her his friend, or talking to Iago after their confrontation in the hallway about why reaching the Phenex is important to him, or... anything. He’s just along for the ride and happens to be sitting in the protagonist chair.

This is the first time in this series that something has looked noticeably worse than what came before. I honestly probably wouldn’t have even noticed if not for all the Unicorn character cameos, but once I saw Martha Vist Carbine it became incredibly obvious. I don’t have the technical knowledge to even explain why it looks worse- it’s not like they omitted details or drew her incorrectly, it just looks... cheaper, which is especially bizarre when you consider how this was not only much shorter than the entirety of Unicorn, but also made years later.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS:

Far and away the funniest thing that happens in this movie is when Jona is approached by Michele’s assistant and he opens with “I’m gay�� to make sure that Jona (and the audience) knows that he’s not simping for Michele- he’s just dumb. This is then punctuated with the reveal that his fucking name is Brick.

One of my first notes was how bizarre it was to have Michele act as a diviner on behalf of Luio & Company, and I initially rationalized it as “ok well the people of Moon Moon interpreted Rasara Moon’s Newtype abilities as divine, so Luio interprets it as divination, sure”. The reveal that it's actually multiple layers of bullshit is a great bit of characterization for Michele that they really should have kept leaning into.

The closer Colony Drops get to looking like Judgment Day from T2, the better, and for as cheap as a lot of the animation in this looks, this is the most intricate and graphic portrayal of the One Year War Colony Drop to date.

Remember what I said in my write-up on Unicorn, about how there are just scenes that kick around in your head despite being relatively unimportant? This one where this group of bystanders get fucking vaporized by a shot from Zoltan might actually be worse than the mom and her baby falling off the fire escape from Unicorn, just because it’s so sudden that most of the people don’t even notice they’re about to die.

I might be reading into this exchange too much, but... is the implication at the end of the movie that when Rita had her vision, it wasn’t just the Colony Drop, but everything up to and including the threat of Zoltan’s Neo Zeong? I’m hoping it isn’t, because that escalation in the scope of Newtype powers is a bit beyond my suspension of disbelief.

IN CONCLUSION:

Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative is a wash. I don’t regret watching it, it’s a perfectly adequate movie, but I also wouldn’t recommend it. A recurring theme in this write-up is me appreciating a concept Narrative presents, but not liking the execution, and that’s applicable to the movie as a whole. A standalone adventure story spinning off the end of Unicorn could have been done well, but instead, it was just done. Not well, not poorly, just... done.

Next up: Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway! Funny enough, Unicorn was so just so damn good that my pressing concerns about the fate of Hathaway post-Char’s Counterattack fell by the wayside, but now that I’m here, I’m really excited! Especially since it’s several years after the events of Unicorn and not, like... one.

#Gundam #Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative #Gundam Narrative #Gundam NT #The Big Gundam Watch #anime #blu-ray #long post

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