Hannah

In my foolish endeavor to see the entirety of the original Universal Century storyline, or at least the parts of it that people like, I started watching Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. I got through the first episode, and realized this wasn't going to work for me. "Oh no," I said, "the hero is a complete moron. This is Amuro all over again." Unwilling to subject myself to more than the necessary amount of idiot teen boy shenanigans, I decided that the compilation movies were the way to go.

This one is gonna be shorter than my other gundam posts, for this and other reasons.

Interestingly, these movies were recompiled much later than the MSG movies, in the mid 2000s. They also include a lot of newly animated footage, which supposedly make adjustments to the story. The new animation really sticks out in the first film, and I assume there were complaints about that, because it blends in much better in the other two.

I'm not gonna talk too much about the story, because frankly, I don't feel qualified to do so. You remember the pacing and editing problems the MSG movies had? Well, the Zeta movies are a half-hour shorter each, and have to cram in all those new scenes. Add to that my short attention span, and the end result was a lot of confusion. At any given point, I had no idea why anyone was doing anything, where they were going, who they were fighting, etc. Maybe it's a me problem. I did look up some extra information on various wikis, so I at least have an outline of what happened.

Ten years after the One Year War, the Earth Federation has spawned an extremist military faction called the Titans. They oppress spacenoids at every opportunity, and have committed various war crimes. Opposing them is the A.E.U.G., a paramilitary organization who is committed to ending the Titans' atrocities.

Char, under the alias Quattro Bajeena (yeah, really), plays a large role in the A.E.U.G. So he's on the hero's side this time, and is still the coolest motherfucker in space. Amuro also makes an appearance, and is blessedly older and less stupid.

Visually, Zeta is an immediate step up from Gundam '79. It looks good, and it's got some cool new mobile suit designs. The action, at least, was unambiguously pretty great.

And that's all I got, really. Maybe I'll sit through the original series some day, and alleviate my confusion. For now, it was a somewhat interesting diversion while I prepped for shows I was more interested in.

Haman Karn is a total girlboss though.