Head Grenade Productions

I’ve begun watching a new anime that’s been recommended to me by my girlfriend, and the most current Gundam series. For those who don’t know, Mobile Suit Gundam is one of the biggest anime series in Japan based around giant battle mechs. It’s been popular for a long time, has spawned numerous series, and sort of defined the entire mecha genre in Japan and abroad. And I think it’s a bunch of crap, but due to my girlfriend prodding me pretty much since I met her to watch something about Gundam, I’ve started to sit down and watch it today.

My original problems with Gundam, as a whole concept and not just a series, is the fact that the Gundams, these extremely rare but supreme mechs, are just way too over the top powerful. I’m a big fan of science fiction and Japanese stories and manga, and I, like many people interested in these sorts of stories, would just love to see two giant machines of death battle it out surrounded by explosions. But these Gundams are just too powerful; agile in ways people can’t come close to despite being giant machines that weigh thousands of tons, loaded down with weaponry that defies logic in terms of damage inflicted, near infinite ammunition, impregnable armor that seems to be invincible except against other equivalently overpowered mechs, and an all-together lack of weakness to be exploited leaves these completely insane. I find many other series, which I won’t go into, such as Armored Core, Mechwarrior, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Code Geass, and even a fantasy series like Escaflowne, do a much better job at making these mechs seem realistic. For one example, in Neon Genesis Evangelion, they have an extremely limited amount of power (approximately five minutes after a full charge, and only a minute if using all their systems), they have to fight things supremely more powerful than them, a lot of the weapons are conventional and remnants from our technology, and their armor protects them only from the weakest of attacks. Maybe the whole idea of giant mechanical bipedal tanks are quite a bit unrealistic, but like all of science fiction, you can hold things to some degree of realism.

Compounding the original problems I have with Gundam, their stories are, for the most part, pretty dumb. The characters are uninspired, the amount of pointless carnage as these huge mechs blast through thousands of weaker ones, and the over-dramatic tone throughout most of the series undercuts any real suspense and excitement about what’s going on. Now, there are times where one of the series is engrossing, compared with most, but there’s a point that they don’t ever reach, some invisible line that separates good dime-store novels from the real well written stories.

Now, it’s also not all crap, these series; they do a fairly decent job all around making a convincing prime time television show with some thought provoking ideas. They bring up a lot about war, killing, humanity and it’s future, energy, morality, and while there’s a general black and white view pervading, there is almost always some gray areas. One of the older ones, Gundam Wing, was quite entertaining for a long time (I only got through a quarter of it; I didn’t have time for more and  couldn’t get a hold of the second half anyway).And besides, everyone, from time to time, enjoys a good campy action flick or a cheesy romantic comedy or something. Sometimes we just need something that only just barely challenges us, if at all, to relax and just enjoy things without having to think much afterwards. It’s a good group of series for that, at least.

Then again, having watched the first two episodes of this series, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, I’m really depressed. It started on a high note for me, with a fantastic opening segment with child soldiers and gritty war. It seems to have a good overall theme, where a group of paramilitary soldiers swear to end all war by destroying all military and all offensives, as well as the defending military at the same time, and turn all hatred and warmongering towards themselves for an as of yet unknown reason. I’d like to see how that plays out, and how they figure that would work, because it is certainly an interesting topic.

However, the characters are almost impossible to tell apart by what they do, their voices and tones (I’m listening to the Japanese version with subtitles) are almost exactly the same “cool cucumber” type, and I feel like there are a lot of lines that were thrown in and used because they “sound” cool, even if they destroy the entire reality of the situation to make it a happy-go-lucky mess. Maybe I don’t know something yet, because it seems there’s more yet to be seen, but I’m not holding my breath to be surprised.

I want something more realistic. Is that really so much to ask?  I’m glad at least one of them expressed remorse at being a mass murderer by bombing a military base for a moment, then turned to his ideals to keep himself focused, but I don’t know if a lot will come of it. I doubt they’ll let one of their four pilots go down nearly permanently because he’s shell-shocked. I would gladly watch the rest of the show if they do, though. War is one of the worst things ever to happen on our planet, and to human beings. They really ought to show it that way, if you ask me, at least sometimes.