Head Grenade Productions

This is just  a short little post I’m going to do now on Gundam 00; I’ve gotten about halfway through the first season since I last wrote on it, but I don’t want to spend a lot on it at this point until I’ve finished it. To be honest, my opinion has only gotten worse.

However, there’s one thing I noticed from the recap episode that I wanted to bring up. There’s one time in the series where a bus, for reasons of spoiling the story I won’t mention now, explodes, killing a number of people. When I was watching it happen the second time, I noticed the bus stops in front of a line of people, and for a good two or three seconds it sits there, with none of the people moving, and then the explosion, which cuts away before you can see too much damage, before switching back to show the finished carnage.

What bothers me is those people standing there. Maybe it was okay the first time, but when it comes back, everyone knows the bus is going to blow. Yet the people don’t move, or do anything, even though that’s where every single person watching the scene will look. Imagine if they had made the people move; it would make the scene pop and be amazing and suspenseful, because you know what is going to happen but now you’re watching people walk around normally just waiting to die.

Anyone who really gets into writing knows these little details and mistakes and graphic/plot goofs come back to bite you; Gundam 00 has thousands of them. I could probably make a whole series going through each episode pointing out each individual moment where things change or don’t change for no explainable reason. And don’t tell me that people don’t do deep background details; go pick up any copy of the Vagabond manga in your local book store and count how many leaves you can see on a bush, or how many individual blades of grass you can see. You’ll be shocked. And don’t say that would cost too much; I only noticed it that time because it was the second time around and all my focus was on the bus. They knew it would come back, they ought to have put the money there. And they’re Mobile Suit Gundam, the huge behemoth series that basically created an entire genre, or at least stands in the spotlight in it.

Things like that bother me, like a lot of people, because it breaks any sense of realism from the medium you’re watching. It happens in written word and visual media just as much. Plot holes are bad. Don’t worry about filling them. Worry about keeping them from ever existing.