By [ad_1]
There are plenty of ways to get your Gundam fix nowadays, but one generation’s introduction was none other than Toonami. Gundam Wing brought to teen viewers a world of intrigue, high-intensity battles, and of course, an attractive cast.
This series is streaming on Funimation
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
I know it looks bad, but let’s not be hasty! There are lots of very large robots out there, and this could be any one of them. Allow me to quick Zoom call this mysterious masked man, because he’s obviously an expert.
Well gun-dammit.
Me, I’m waiting for those cowards to finally add Turn A so we can talk about important stuff, like mustaches and crossdressing. But yeah, for now, I suppose this is as good a time as any to revisit the series that more or less introduced Gundam to my generation.
Now, full disclosure: I do think that a lot of the reputation for some of those old Toonami shows has more to do with being the first serialized action show that many kids who grew up on Looney Tunes saw that had guns and digitally-painted-over boobs as opposed to being, y’know, good (looking at you, Tenchi Muyo!). But Wing became a landmark title for a lot of reasons, foibles be damned, and the reputation it has among some purists as being the “normie” Gundam gives me a knee-jerk reaction—that, and you just know it’s because they resent Wing for being really beloved by women over the hunky male cast. To that, I say: quit whining, because even Tomino thinks that fujoshi were instrumental to Gundam‘s enduring fame, and Gundam has never not had a veritable cavalcade of hunky, hunky dudes. Just because you didn’t watch Zeta Gundam until years after the fact doesn’t mean that the likes of Amuro or Char weren’t always meant to be heartthrobs. Especially that man among men, Kamille Bidan. All this to say: if this show has problems, cute boys ain’t one of them.
God, that Kamille “photoshoot” never gets old. And I actually missed this first Gundam wave myself! I might have caught the odd episode here or there, but for whatever reason it never stuck with me, and it would be years before I’d watch a series from the franchise to completion. Point being, watching Wing now was a delightfully fresh experience. I know the series has a lot of the aforementioned baggage, but like all good iterations of Gundam, nothing beats being able to languish in how fundamentally unhinged it is.
And if you watch this scene in motion, it even kinda feels like an absurdly melodramatic shojo anime. It’s so good.
“In the distant future, mankind has reached the stars but the galaxy is troubled. (“What do you think you’re doing?” [explosion]) The Earth Sphere Alliance has ruled the colonies with an iron fist. (pew pew pew) Those who oppose them? Die. Battles are waged with mobile suits, the key to military dominance. The only hope for the colonies: five elite soldiers and their legendary mobile suits called ‘Gundams’. Now, these pilots will shake the foundations of the Alliance and change the course of history—if they can stay alive! Weekdays at 5:30. Suit up.”
He also has his work cut out for him, since Wing has not one Gundam, but
Perfect.
This is the apotheosis of ship dynamics.
I wonder if growing up Latinx basically makes me immune to bizarre-o melodrama? Telenovelas, and all that.
The other four Gundam pilots are varying degrees of eccentric, and this opening acts follows their individual missions to varying degrees of success. They’re not all slam dunks yet, but there are glimmers of Gundam brilliance. Trowa, for instance, chooses the most cliché cover story in the book and joins a traveling circus.
And, once again, TWIA is perennially haunted by clowns.
He also keeps crossing paths with Quatre, pilot of the Sandrock, and they kinda-sorta hit it off in an actually tangible way, not like in a “You need goggles to see the subtext” way with Duo and Heero.
This brings up an important point too: given the show’s introduction, you might assume, as I did, that the five Gundam pilots would be working together to help the colonies. Not so! They all apparently get assigned missions from the same place, but they each work independently, which can lead to them working together, as with Trowa and Quatre, or exchanging bullets, as with Heero and Duo.
Also, Wu Fei is there in his Shenlong Gundam. He was stuck on his lonesome for a while.
God, I love Gundam.
Also, just saying, if I were a group of rebels trying to take down the Earth’s military a peg in order to give the colonies some breathing room, I’d probably try to find a way to get my five ace pilots on the same page (i.e. not sniping each other), but what do I know.
The absurdity of the situation aside, this is another authentic reflection of the adolescent experience: doing shit without at all understanding why.
A bunch of teenagers inherit a messed-up world that a bunch of adults are willing to make worse just for that last fucking percentage, and somehow have to make lemons out of lemonade and salvage a ruined world when they don’t even know where they stand in the wider world. What a concept.
But this early in the series, I guess it’s understandable we don’t get much to go on for Heero besides second-hand accounts.
And, yep, that seems accurate.
Like I said earlier, Relena can be read as either a very dramatic, firm, emotional and high-minded individual, or as a galaxy-brained loon. The line rides thin. But purely on its face? Yeah, like I also said, she’s leagues above the likes of Lacus Clyne.
Also, Lady isn’t her title—she’s a Colonel. Her first name is “Lady”.
Gundam‘s gonna Gundam.
I don’t know how the rest of the show can top that, if it even does.
This conversely is part of why SEED fails: Lacus has nothing but empty platitudes to go off of, and she was also the one hanging onto the souped-up Strike Freedom Gundam. Your pacifist figureheads don’t work if they keep a war mech in their garage!
Bless this mess. And I do mean mess.
It’s kind of amazing how good those Gundams animate. Sure, the show makes up for it with a lot of talking bits, but even those scenes are packed with atmosphere. Even if the story is a bit off, it’s easy to see how the art for Gundam Wing drew in an entire generation of fans back in ’97.
Yeah, we might be about 25 years removed now, but I’m definitely riveted by the show so far. Probably in a much different way than I would have been in the late ’90s/early ’00s, mind you, but riveted nonetheless. And I genuinely want to make time to continue the series and find out where these boys and their pseudo-sociopathic qualities take them next. Will they save the colonies from OZ? Will we ever see Zech’s face? Will Relena ever fulfill her dream and die at the hands of Heero? I want to know!
[ad_2]
