chicken

Man, what a weird show.

I don't mean that in a strictly negative sense--I genuinely was surprised by it on several levels.

1. Broadly there's two kinds of sequels, right? There's the kind that's reverent and makes a big fuss about the iconography of the original, and there's the kind that purely treats it as a narrative to continue however it wants. I was expecting purely the second one, but it's more like both at once? On a strictly mechanical sense Zeta is a bizarrely-faithful retrace of a lot of the exact steps of Gundam '79, especially early on, and even after that they spend a lot of time going "omg, you're so special, because you're from Gundam '79, omg, you're Bright Noa from the White Base, omg, the Argama is kind of like the White Base". But then the actual character arcs and substance is completely its own thing--which does extend to what the returning characters are doing, like Amuro's early mid-life crisis is interesting, but it feels completely disconnected from when people tell Kamille "y'know, you're exactly like Amuro Ray". No he isn't. How can you say this to him. He's literally neurodivergent and a minor.

2. I'm not the only one who had a hard time following literally what was even happening in the first, like, third, am I? They introduce so many new names and factions and locations and ships and nouns and at first don't really tell you why we're fighting even in the bare-bones way the previous show did, and like, thematically the fact that people on both sides are wearing the same uniforms and using the same mechs is good, it conveys the idea that you were right not to blindly cheer the Federation and the rot is also coming from inside the house, but combined with all the above, I had kind of a hard time following the plot. Took me a good while to figure out whose ship the Alexandria was, where Granada is, etc. And then like a whole arc or two in Char offhandedly mentions that their ideology is to relocate everyone from Earth to space like that's something you already agree with by default. Huh?

This did calm down after a while and I was following just fine, but weirdly it returned in the last five or so episodes. It felt like they were really rushing to the end--which is weird since they got a full year's worth of episodes this time--and allegiances would just completely shift between episodes, stuff like that. The very end is pretty effective on the character front (certainly Kamille's breakdown at least), but it is a bit jarring that it doesn't even give you a quick line of narration like '79 to tell you what the state of the world is now. At least in that show we knew this was Zeon's final fortress, here they just kind of go uhhhh shit it's time for the final battle now, because it just is. Maybe this time they already knew they were getting to make another Gundam after this and figured they'd have plenty of time to explore the aftermath there?

3. I was expecting a show sorta one notch further down the line between 70s and modern vibes in terms of volume of different mechs and proportion of the cast that is mech pilots. But no, we are all the way down that line immediately! Wild.

4. I mean, "Gundam doesn't quite know what it's doing with gender" isn't exactly relevatory at this point, but some of it is very odd. Tomino getting all introspectively hesitant about how many women are on the battlefield is like, my brother in Haro, you wrote the women onto the battlefield. I find myself pretty fond of Fa, she and Kamille are doing believable teen stuff, but man what was up with any of that? Why did Char bring two children onto a battleship? Narratively it seems to have been entirely to make Fa have to be mother, and because we need a Fraw Bow for our retread, but like, Char, why did you do that? Like, it's annoying that everyone spends like 10 episodes shaking their heads and muttering about how it's not right for Fa to be piloting a mobile suit and she would be much better suited being mother, but then her mobile suit gets blown up and they build another, identical one entirely from scratch that only she can pilot, and stop muttering about this, so what was even the point of any of that?

But the general tone with Gundam and gender is discomfort, and not really knowing what the answer is, so it's not surprising how trans Char, and Kamille, and Four, and Amuro a bit, all come off to me (as previously chronicled in these posts). So I guess it's also no surprise that after getting hit with the tradwife mind ray Reccoa had to go run off to join the bad guys where she could deliver her insane TERF rants in peace.

As you may now be getting the impression, I did in fact enjoy this weird show quite a lot. It looks gorgeous, and its sense of timing is unparalleled. (Katz is Okay.) Having Char around all the time is so awesome. I love how they keep sending him to do important diplomatic stuff and every time he fucks up and the Federation/Axis/whatever ends up siding against them because he was out getting McDaniels while their leader was getting assassinated or something. And then everyone is still like Char...you HAVE to be president...! I love how the second time they go to Earth it's because he fell down and landed there. Guy of all time.

This does mean we lose his "showing up at random on a stupid blimp to ruin everything and cause many problems" aspect from '79, but thankfully Haman Karn slots right into that role. Instant top-tier problems clown. I enjoy her immensely and suddenly look forward to ZZ.

This post still feels lopsided to be about a show I liked, but I guess it's not mainly about my overall thoughts on it, and more focused on the things about it I was taken aback by, or felt like I've never seen anyone mention (though maybe I just don't talk to enough fans).

Listen, Zeta, I'll always love you. But I become a different poster when I pilot the Psycho Gundam.