Char-clone #50: A Gundam thread

I'm on track at my current pace to finish Build Fighters over this three-day weekend and I'm having a good time with it! It's obviously goofy as heck but in a way I can get behind, and it's clearly made with a ton of love and passion for Gundam and its history. I would say it's also a naked attempt to goose Gunpla sales, but what Gundam series isn't?


Trying to decide where to go after I finish BF... I just bought F91 on blu-ray, so maybe I'll revisit that next. My opinion from the last time I watched it (15+ years ago) was that it's pretty middle-of-the-road Gundam and unremarkable aside from the opening battle in the colony, but maybe I'll have a different perspective this time. It also apparently features a commentary track by the dub voice directors; I can't imagine they'll have much insight to offer, but I also can't imagine what they'd possibly have to talk about for two hours, so I may have to check that out.

Vaeran said:

I would say it's also a naked attempt to goose Gunpla sales, but what Gundam series isn't?

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tbf it's a little bit more of a naked attempt than most. Most Gunpla that gets made historically, Bandai designs brand new moulds for all the brand new mecha designs for brand new shows. In Build Fighters though - at least the first one - the whole point of basing everything around a concept centered around characters kitbashing kits, is that when they print new kits for this series, they're actually reusing the moulds for older kits with a few added tweaks thrown in like a few changed parts on the outside, a new weapon or two, and injecting the runners with different colors of plastic. If you buy a Build Fighters kit from the first series and look at the runners in the box, they'll have the old names of the kits and copyright dates on the old runners, with at most a new runner or two thrown in to adjust the gundam so it looks funny like in the show. It's very nakedly a cheap way to sell people old kits with minimal effort/investment. It's honestly the most disappointing part of the first series because the kit variation is so limited and boring. Only a few were cool enough to buy personally. And since some of the kits they're basing the new ones off of were so incredibly old at that point, they were very disappointing builds because the engineering and design of Gunpla has evolved by lightyears over the course of the 2000s, and it's disappointing to basically be sold a kit from 2002 in 2013 at full price and have it look/feel so antiquated.

Later seasons of Build Fighters/Divers actually do a much better job of increasing the variety/making the kitbashes look and feel more unique/and just straight up inventing new kits or designing new kits from the ground up instead of just reusing old runners. The hero suits for Build Fighters Try take visual inspiration from older gundams, but are essentially brand new designs with all brand new runners. Same with Build Divers and especially Build Divers Re:Rise.

Vaeran said:

- Does the Star Build Strike have too many systems and gimmicks? Maybe. The Absorb/Discharge system is a cool idea, but then it also just has a sort of generic super mode that's a lot less interesting. It feels like Sei's operating on a whole other level from the rest of the builders, who just seem to take existing designs and maybe add a weapon or two. I'm hoping Build Fighters Try will have a little more parity there.

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Star Build Strike is probably the least interesting hero suit in the franchise IMO. Other build hero suits find their own ways to be OP, but they aren't as imba as the Build Strike vs the rest of the tournament field. Try does a better job of making the competition feel like a challenge and everyone else gets their own cool gimmicks. For all of Divers' faults, it does a really good job of building the hero-team up as a group of noobs who are just dipping their feet into Gunpla Battles, into a top-tier clan that can hang with the big boys. Divers does a really good job of simulating the MMO experience. And Re:Rise is just... it just has to be experienced.

Vaeran said:

Trying to decide where to go after I finish BF... I just bought F91 on blu-ray, so maybe I'll revisit that next.

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I'm a big fan of F91. On the one hand, it's a very simple narrative. And feels very much like it was compromised in editing or something. But I really like the setting and characters. It feels like a very earnest, non-cynical attempt to do a soft reboot and try to recapture the magic of the original MSG. And this is just me reading between the lines or maybe projecting, but F91 flopping after such an earnest attempt makes the subversiveness of Victory, Turn-A, and Brain Powerd feel intentional and vindictive. F91 also has some baller mobile suit designs and the whole film from top to bottom is probably the most gorgeous looking Gundam film in the franchise. It's just a single movie too, so why not use it to break up the pace?

Finished Build Fighters over the weekend. What a delightful little series! I really didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did, but it's definitely got heart and spirit, as silly as it may be.


I'm quite excited for BF Try now, but I'm going to put that off for a bit so I have something to look forward to.

In the meantime I rewatched F91, which might not have been the best decision in terms of timing, as it feels pretty dry coming off of the hyperactive sugary mania that was Build Fighters. I'm sad to report that it didn't blow me away this time either; it's a fine watch but I don't know how much of it is going to stick with me. I guess it's a shame it got carved down from a planned full TV series into a two hour movie, but I doubt I'll lose any sleep over what could have been. There are parts that definitely feel rushed and disjointed; characters blitz through their arcs, and there's a particularly jarring edit that cuts directly from the middle of Seabook's first sortie in the F91 to him walking around the colony streets, looking for Cecily. I had to make sure I didn't accidentally press a button and skip part of a scene, but nope! That was on purpose.

Re: GBF - I don't remember if I read it here, or elsewhere. But somebody on the internet hypothesized that the world of GBF is like a Gundam purgatory/afterlife, and it's where all the dead Gundam characters go to experience peace. And it's definitely not what the makers of the show could have possibly intended, but it's a fun thought.

Re: Cecily - I always had a more charitable read of the character, and attributed a lot more of her actions to her own agency. Yes, there is a long period where she's just loafing around, but she also doesn't really have a choice as a captive. (They even assign guards to make sure she doesn't kill herself.) And the entire time she's doing soul searching about her family in a way she never really decompressed before because she had been taken away from them at a young age. All those happy memories with her grandfather, the more she thought about them, the more he sounded like fucking Hitler. And the second she gets a chance to, she bails and defects, even if it means to do so very dangerously in the middle of a battle. She is so all-in against Cosmo Babylonia by the end that she's got really viscous bloodlust for her father's head and desperately wants to murder him personally for what he's done. The whole her and Arno thing I think isn't developed all that well, but Tomino sucks at writing romance and I think we can assume they kind of newtype-vibe off of each other.

Vaeran said:

Oh yeah, there used to be an MS decades ago that looked like this! Let's codename it Gundam." You're telling me the Federation isn't going to wring absolutely every last drop of propaganda, history and awe out of the Gundam name?

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My read on the Universal Century has always been that the EF actually does keep the Gundam under wraps. In the OYW, it's a secret weapon that they don't want advertised, and the only reason people really know about it is because the enemy soldiers keep whispering to each other about the White Devil. In Zeta and ZZ, the Gundams are attempted to be used by the Titans, and they get appropriated/liberated by the AEUG who are ostensibly enemies of the EF. Gundams in Early-UC are symbols. Symbols that the EF can't control the meaning of or what they mean to the people. And like all corrupt plutocracies and/or fascists, they're not big on symbols they can't control, and thus actively try to suppress them. Gundams by the time of F91, are a symbol of a period of turmoil I'm sure the EF doesn't want people remembering, since they were either in opposition to the EF, and/or the ones cleaning up after the EF's corruption. And that's even more the case for the non-Tomino add-on entries to the Universal Century.

Vaeran said:

Spoiler: Vaeran's F91 Thoughts

- Carozzo's reasons for welding an iron mask to his face are a weird, incongruous mix of sad incel resentment at his wife leaving him, and vague political ambitions for the founding of Cosmo Babylonia, but he stomps around like his wearing the mask is everyone else's fault. Nobody told you to put it on, weirdo! Big loser energy from this guy. The most satisfying moment in the movie is when his wife calls him out for being the aggressor but acting like a victim. No wonder even his own people don't like him.

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I guess I can see that. I think this is one of those cases where the narrative and characterization really suffer from having been cut down from a series into a single movie. As I understand it, F91 as released is supposed to represent the first 13 episode arc from the planned series, which explains why so much is left unresolved at the end.

PS: It was nice to see Sayla get work again.

Two-Mix basically has one song, but it’s a banger. And the bgm composer is of course Kow Otani, a master of sweeping orchestral work who’s also done a bunch of Godzilla films and Shadow of the Colossus.

Another thing Wing had going for it is the most flamboyant Gundam designs this side of G. The Deathscythe is the ridiculous Hot Topic of mobile suits, but I kind of love it.

Of course, the other side of the Wing phenomenon at the time is that it was much more forward than other Gundam series about paying to its female audience. It’s so ready-made for shipping, all of its main protagonists are handily number-coded.

Wing's mechanical designs are also super weird; apart from the Gundams, they start off positively restrained compared to its predecessors. No giant space battleships here; mostly things that look like fancy shuttles or Apollo-era skeletal framework spacecraft. Oz' control over space is cemented with a fortress plausibly referred to as "Barge"; it's basically a space colony that they've strapped engines and big lasers to. By the end of the series we've got some truly implausibly huge spaceships flying around - Peacemillion mostly exists to give characters rooms to talk in, but Libra is totally and completely out of whack with everything else, to the point where its power supply is a threat to the continued habitability of Earth.

I wasn't particularly taken by the mechanical designs here, actually. I thought the mobile suits were way too similar to one another: they all have essentially the same build and silhouette, with few unique details aside from weaponry; they all have predominantly white colour schemes (even the Tallgeese is white); and they tend to re-use the same secondary and tertiary colours between them, too. You already brought up G, but in my mind it did a lot better at making each Gundam distinct.

The antagonist mecha have way more going on. The Aries is an incredible design, and the Taurus, Virgo, Vayeate, and Mercurius are pretty strong too.

Yeah I think the thing is, because of the way the main cast often splits up, all the main Gundams have the standard “hero Gundam” shape as a base, and put all their variation into the weaponry instead. Like, scythe and dragon arms and whatever the heck “heat shotels” are, aren’t things you usually see on a main hero unit.

Tallgeese is kind of its own hero unit as well; white isn’t very exciting but it’s fun that it leans into Roman design influences instead of the usual Samurai ones. And then there’s Epyon, which does stand out.

But yeah, for actual different silhouettes you have to go to the enemy mook suits. Although the movie custom versions of the main Gundams stretch them all a bit further.

Aw man, I just found out that Yoshifumi Ushima, singer of both G Gundam openings, passed away a few weeks ago.

Singer-Songwriter Yoshifumi Ushima Passes Away

I guess I'm not familiar with any of his other work, but Flying in the Sky and Trust You Forever are both stone cold classics. Let's have a listen:

I guess Gundam Build Fighters Try is regarded by most of the fandom as being inferior to the original Build Fighters, and I'll agree that it's a bit of a step down, but I still found it quite enjoyable and just as addicting! The drama and action are about on par with with the first series, with the added bonus that the mecha designs are much more creative this time around. (Sei seemed to be head and shoulders above everybody else when it came to Gunpla building, and that got especially silly when you had someone like Maoh who trains in a Gunpla dojo but the best he could come up with was a straight-built Gundam X with slightly different colors.) And the three-on-three dynamic helps differentiate it from its predecessor and makes for interesting strategic possibilities, teamwork and conflicts.


The original Build Fighters left me wanting more, and that's exactly what Try is: more. It's the second helping that's maybe not quite as tasty, surprising and satisfying as the first was, but still very enjoyable. I'm looking forward to finishing off the Build Fighters universe with Island Wars, GM's Counterattack and Battlogue. And then on to Build Divers, maybe...?

I endorse just about everything you've said about GBFT. I enjoyed it a lot; maybe more than the original actually? Simply because Try does a better job living up to the spirit of "Gunpla is freedom" a lot better than the original's very boring, vanilla variants.

Vaeran said:

Kind of gross that Meijin Kawaguchi recognizes that Sakai building an MS Girl based on Fumina without her permission is fucked up, but is then totally cool with Sakai using it to battle in front of hundreds of people. At least the final free-for-all was fun aside from that.

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That, and the creep-factor for Try are probably the worst aspects about the show. Personally, Try's most unforgivable sin to me is how the first episode appears to position Fumina as the main character, only for the rug to be pulled out under her in favor of a bland audience insert. But this and that are both, in a weird way, redeemed in the long run by the upcoming Witch of Mercury show. Which I'm pretty sure would have never happened without GBFTry or Fumina as a character for convoluted reasons.

Vaeran said:

I'm looking forward to finishing off the Build Fighters universe with Island Wars, GM's Counterattack and Battlogue. And then on to Build Divers, maybe...?

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Island Wars is GBF at its horniest and most insufferable. GM's Counterattack is a good epilogue to the original show. Battlogue is fun but IIRC is completely inconsequential and just showcases for variant model kits you can buy in stores RIGHT NOW!

I remember most people being very lukewarm on Build Divers, and I think that's mostly fair. It's basically a soft reboot of Build Fighters, but moving things from fighting actual model kits vs each other via magical particles, to a more grounded/believable digital MMO VR setting. The cast is a little more bland and disinteresting, and their model kits are more in the GBF mold of disinteresting variants for the protagonists. But there's a much better sense of teamwork and skill/talent progression that GBFT attempted but never really pulled off. I also just appreciate in general that Build Divers is a much less inappropriately horny show than its predecessors/spends a lot less time creeping on its underage characters and is fundamentally a pretty wholesome show.

Build Divers to me is the weakest of the Build shows, but it's all worth it to get to Build Divers Re:Rise - which is hands down the best Gundam anything in the last decade. You could probably skip Build Divers and go straight to Re:Rise ok enough, but it builds upon the setting and foundations of Build Divers in the same way Zeta Gundam built on the original. I really hope you can make it through to Re:Rise, because it's genuinely and objectively a really good show and more people ought to experience it.

The Prologue episode for The Witch from Mercury went live.


That sure was a Gundam show! I have a lot of thoughts and mixed feelings about this, but there's a lot of initial promise here. I'll be interested in seeing how the show itself will shake out once it begins in earnest in October.

On a side note, so far I've seen nothing but universal praise from Gundam fans for this prologue, and just that fact alone gives me concern haha

I started watching ZZ on Crunchyroll. I forgot so please let me know if this is the shitty one of if it was Zeta. Thanks

ZZ has a reputation in the west as being bad, but I really enjoyed it.

ZZ has a reputation for being bad specifically because back before bluray rips and official subs/distribution, when only a tiny handful of people in the fandom had even seen the thing, they became defacto taste makers, simply by merit of being the only people who actually knew anything about it. And those people hated ZZ because it focused on teenagers and the first dozen or so episodes are more whacky hijinks instead of grimdark war stories. There are also almost zero consequences from the events of the show on the rest of the Universal Century, so people deemed it skippable and bad and it became a meme with a life of its own based on nothing instead of a meaningful appraisal.

Now that the show is more readily available and people are able to go watch it and judge the show themselves, its reputation has been somewhat rehabilitated in recent years. People who like the grimdark stuff discovered the back half of ZZ is very much in line with Zeta and the rest of the Universal Century. Others like myself actually enjoyed the tonal shift. And with newer shows like Unicorn making frequent callbacks to ZZ, it feels more integrated into the saga of the Universal Century as well.

I don't know if I could ever recommend people watch it without reservation, it's got a lot of problems and weird eccentricities to say the least. But I think it's worth trying. And for what it's worth, it's my favorite UC thing.

Starting out relatively innocently and then getting darker as the story continues is a thing both the original series and Zeta did, so it's weird that people didn't like that about ZZ. I get that it's more of a direct continuation of Zeta than Zeta was of the original, but there's still a lot of new characters getting their feet wet in the horrors of war.

WisteriaHysteria said:

Island Wars is GBF at its horniest and most insufferable. GM's Counterattack is a good epilogue to the original show. Battlogue is fun but IIRC is completely inconsequential and just showcases for variant model kits you can buy in stores RIGHT NOW!

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I watched these over the weekend and this is all highly accurate.

Even though it was pretty predictable, I will admit I experienced a flicker of emotion at Reiji's return in GM's Counterattack. That was really well done. Did not enjoy the woman who "fought" Mao by taking her top off and jiggling her breasts at him, however. Come on, guys.

The Battlogue shorts were all entertaining enough, though I remain perplexed at the first one: it's supposed to be a nostalgic rematch between Amuro and Char, and they got Tohru Furuya in... but had to get a soundalike for Shuichi Ikeda? This could have been really cool but ends up feeling like "well... you tried."

Anyway, I'll probably start Build Divers this week. I understand it's regarded as being pretty weak, but worth it to power through in order to get to Re:Rise, so that's the plan.

Vaeran said:

Anyway, I'll probably start Build Divers this week. I understand it's regarded as being pretty weak, but worth it to power through in order to get to Re:Rise, so that's the plan.

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It's main characters are pretty bland, and so is their mechs. The story is pretty predictable. It starts out extremely slow, and takes a while to pick up the pace. And you won't be able to really shake the feeling that this all feels kinda redundant and why this had to be a reset of the Build Fighters setting/formula.

But!

I still think it's a decent time and has enough positives to it so that you won't feel like you're pulling fingernails to get through it. For starters, it's a pretty wholesome show. Most of the male gaze and sexualizing of minors is gone and Build Divers feels downright chaste compared to its predecessor. There's some fun, novel situations and battles that happen. The main characters might be milquetoast, but the supporting cast are all entertaining. Build Divers does a much better job of showing its characters learn and grow into strong fighters/a good team versus anything Build Fighters ever did. And I thought the ending built up into something pretty solid. If you approach it as a Gunpla slice-of-life show, you should be able to have a good time with it.

Plus, even at its worst, it still serves as really good flavor text for establishing the world of Build Divers so that Re:Rise can just hop right to it. It's very much the Zeta Gundam to the original. Except you know, actually better.

Oh, don't forget to watch the Prologue episode I suppose. I like that Gundam shows are doing this now.

apparently the new Gundam series, or at least the first episode, is just straight up the first episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena

In a good way or a bad way?

(Honestly I wish more people would try to rip off/riff on Utena, if they do it well...)

estragon said:

In a good way or a bad way?

(Honestly I wish more people would try to rip off/riff on Utena, if they do it well...)

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Direct Link
(I know this starts with "it has title cards and an establishing shot" but it gets a bit... more direct. I assume it's completely intentional because apparently the director wrote Utena light novels?)

I don't know much about Utena, but based on what little I know it definitely *feels* like it.

Episode 1 begins with the MC rescuing the Anthy-ish character because they're getting themselves killed running away from an arranged marriage to a douchebag chauvinist at their gundam-school. The episode ends with the MC beating the chauvinist in a duel, and thus unwittingly becoming engaged to the Anthy-ish character by merit of her victory.

Both this and the prologue were really good. I'm looking forward to how this one shakes out. It's a bit early to be making recommendations, but it's interesting and good so far, and has a lot of promise.

And yeah, the head writer wrote a few Utena novels. They're also responsible for the stories/series composition for Code Geass, King Gainer, Azumanga Daioh, Planetes, Valvrave, Kabaneri, Princess Principal, Devilman Crybaby, Lupin III pt5, SK8 the Infinity, among other things, so make of that information what you will.

Also finally got around to watching Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island today. The old adage of "you can't polish a turd" may or may not be true, but this movie sure does its damnest to try. It's a bit on the long side, stretching out what was a 24min episode into over an hour and a half. But it's pretty charming in how it expands upon the lives of Cucuruz's orphans. If they remade the original series like this, I would watch it easy.

6 episodes in, G-Witch sure is going places

I also watched Cucuruz Doan's Island tonight to cap off my four-day weekend, and really enjoyed it! I agree that it's a little bloated, both in terms of length and stakes. But the production values are high, with some of the best-looking MS action I've seen in a while, and of course it's lovely to have the surviving MSG cast back together one last(?) time.

A few thoughts: