Kokul’s World

So Sunrise has released another installment of their popular franchise, the Mobile Suit Gundam series. This time I was pleasantly surprised, and also equally as disappointed with this Gundam series.

First of all, gone are the days of confusion in battles about who is who, and who is on who’s side. This time, enemy mobile suits actually look the same as all the other mobile suits on their side. This was what I call a big failure in Gundam SEED.

Story

Also, I think the story has improved greatly over SEED. While SEED was interesting, it didn’t quite glue me to the TV screen as this one does. I always wonder what will happen next, and can’t wait for the next one. Probably the most appealing aspect is that they are finally using force to create peace. It was always an idea I thought about. Instead of diplomacy, would armed intervention stop wars better?

Animation

The animation has also improved quite a bit. The Gundams look far better than previous series, and the environments are done nicely as well. The character designs look nice as well, however in traditional SEED and SEED Destiny style, it is very sad, and quite lame to see the animators have to put some fan service in the female characters again (by this I mean the bust size, etc). I hated this aspect of SEED and especially SEED Destiny. It gets in the way of the story. However my nitpick about the character design is that they seem a bit recycled at times, and this one guy, well I can’t tell whether he is a guy or a girl yet. The characters so far lack depth and don’t have much of a personality at all. Hopefully that’ll change soon. As usual, in classic SEED style, they always have a few crazy ones as antagonists.

Sound

The opening songs and closing songs are a bit disappointing to me. Seriously guys, I don’t want to be put to sleep by it. SEED has much better songs in my opinion. Sound effects seem fitting to the battles. Can’t say much about the background music this early into the show.

Criticisms

Ah this is my favourite part of writing my posts. I can be quite a critic at times, however I am not at the otaku level that others display.

My main criticism is the time this show takes place. It is the 24th century, so I expect more advancements after 300 years that just solar power, mobile suits, and orbital elevators. Why solar power? It seems to make more sense to just use fusion power, since humanity should have discovered it by then, unless they were sitting idle for about 150-200 years. Fusion technology seems to make more sense as a source of the world’s conflicts that solar power when humans probably have invented highly-efficient solar panels, and small countries don’t need access to the orbital elevators.

Also, the lack of spaceflight is astonshing. Many Gundam series have had battles in space as well. It is 300 years, I would expect humanity to have atleast gotten interplanetary travel within the solar system. Even better would have been faster than light travel. You can’t expect me to believe that after 300 years, humans haven’t even colonized other planets or built outposts even just within our solar system. Yes, there is the Ptolemy spacecraft, but that looks like an over sized, non maneuverable ship with barely any weapons power or engine power for that matter.

Conclusion

Is this a bad series? Probably not. Is it the best sci-fi/mecha series I have seen? Nope.

However I will be keeping a close eye on this series, and I will continue to watch it. It seems like an interesting story. As long as it doesn’t get really lame like SEED Destiny did, then I won’t be dropping this one like I did SEED and SEED Destiny. I dropped SEED after episode 30 (I couldn’t stand it anymore), and SEED Destiny after episode 4 (it was unbearable to watch for me).

So for all you Gundam fans, I’m sure you’ll be ready to tear me apart, but for the rest of you, enjoy this preview, and try watching it. Maybe you’ll like it more than me.

Screenshots

Probably what most of you have been waiting for, screenshots! Just click on the image below, and it will expand the gallery to show every image! (This is just to save bandwidth and screen space for me and for users).

Gundam 00 Screenshots

Gundam 00 Screenshots