My breakdown of the end of Gundam's Universal Century part 4: "Mobile Suit Victory Gundam" series review, or how Victory Gundam tears people apart

Getting into the Gundam franchise there was one series that cemented itself as my favorite piece of media ever, that being Zeta Gundam. The show captured my interest in a way no other movie or series has since or probably ever will, using great characters, great writing and a cool concept. The revolutionary original series that took off due to the immense success of toy sales was wrought with production issues, and once animator, character designer and story consultant Yoshikazu Yasuhiko was overworked and hospitalized it just went downhill from there. Tomino spent the first few years of the eighties compiling the original series into 3 films, changing things to make those the canon way of experiencing the original series, and replacing that series, which despite being revolutionary, suffered from poor pacing, bad animation in some episodes, weird writing in some episodes, and many episodes feeling like filler. That original series for all it's innovation and success was a stain on Tomino's record as far as he was concerned, and whether or not he would continue working on the series or leave it as a one and done, Sunrise had no intentions of letting their new money maker rest. They tried a few times to get a sequel made but it never worked out until Tomino agreed to come back and took his sweet time making a proper series that would show the franchise at it's best: "Mobile Suit Gundam Zeta". However writing it he got a serious depression that he took out on the characters and other aspects of the story while writing. While in the end the protagonists achieve their goal, it's hard to say for sure if they even won. He helped get out of his funk when making Gundam ZZ, a more light hearted show that saved most of the darker story beats for the second half, and then he wrapped it up with the "Char's Counterattack" film. Ban-Dai began owning more share of the franchise around this time, which next lead to Ban-Dai and Sunrise putting so many mandates on the soft reboot "Gundam F91" that it was forced to become a movie with very weird pacing. This was what started leading Tomino to another serious depression and his next Gundam series, which would be one to rival Zeta as the darkest Gundam series.

"Mobile Suit Victory Gundam" was the second and final soft reboot for the franchise before Tomino had enough of the studio meddling and left the franchise all together, leading to Sunrise and Ban-Dai agreeing to hard reboot it right after he left in 1993. It is very much the most Tomino of all the Gundam sequels he directed after the 80s, the influence of Space Runaway Ideon and various other works can definitely be felt here. Victory is not exactly a forgotten Gundam series, as it is held in high regards in Japan and the V2 Gundam is one of Kunio Okawara's most famous mech designs in the entire franchise. However the series never got an official western release until a few years ago when a company specializing in releasing anime DVDs in America had finally released the series on DVD in the west. Victory also stands as one of four mainline Gundam series to have never gotten a dub. I've gone to cesspools like Reddit and some Gundam fan made Discord severs to gauge fan opinion on the series here in the west. The results were overwhelmingly that they had never seen it, and those who did complained at the high body count. Another was that the series "introduces women just so you can watch them die before getting any development so they can force you to feel sad" and many used that as an example of why they thought this show was sexist. Another complaint I saw was that it rehashes the original series with yet another earth versus space conflict, and the last complaint I saw frequently was that the show was too cruel and too sad to the point that it made the series kind of hard to watch. I'll address all these after I get through the story synopsis and while I explain some of the behind the scenes stuff. 

So in UC 149 up in space a set of colonies have declared themselves independent from the Federation, (Where have we heard that one before?) ruling themselves as a matriarchal society under the rulership of their newtype queen Maria Pure Armonia. A political faction established as an extension of Maria's rulership lead by Fonse Kagatie executes the corrupt leaders of the nearby colonies with the guillotine in a show of power and fear, then they declare themselves The Zanscare Empire. They decide to invade the earth, with Maria declaring all the old corrupt male leaders in power there are the reason for all the pollution on the planet and all the conflicts that have plagued the Universal Century. In UC 153 (60 years after "Char's Counterattack" and 30 years after F91") Zanscare's elite military unit the BESPA Yellow Jackets are invading earth with very little resistance, with the very weakened Earth Federation refusing to take action in order to avoid another war and hoping to be met with mercy if they don't respond, as they simply don't have the strength or the resources to take part in one. However a group of people from The Earth Federation who can't sit by and watch Earth get invaded team up with all the resistance fighters around the globe trying to stop Zanscare, and together form The League Militaire, with the goal of stopping them from invading earth and maybe stopping Zanscare for good. Uso Ewin (the youngest Gundam protagonist ever) lives alone with his best friend Shakti on a farm he grew up on waiting for his parents to return. While paragliding he accidentally finds on his farmland a Zanscare prototype mobile suit made for gathering test information and he captures it because he wants Zanscare to get out of his homeland. In doing so he meets a League Militaire group being hunted by Zanscare. They are in search of a secret factory in the area where they are building a new Gundam to serve as a symbol of hope to those on Earth and as their ultimate weapon against the Zanscare Empire. Uso grows attached to them decides to protect them in place of their lone pilot Marbet, who can't fight because she sustained a serious injury in combat. Uso eventually decides to join The League Militaire and their quest to stop Zanscare once and for all, quickly becoming a strong pilot with his newtype abilities.

That's a synopsis that explains backstory and premise without spoiling anything beyond the fourth episode. Now I am going to bring up other bits of in universe backstory and some minor scenes beyond that in my rebukes here, so if you wish to remain completely spoiler free I understand, and you can skip this paragraph if you wish. Anyways on to the criticism that this is rehashing the original series' earth vs space independence movement. Zeon's goal was to gain their independence, and later to destroy The Federation once the Zeon leaders with more fascist and bigoted ideologies took power, which lead to the attempted invasions on earth. It was an entirely militaristic war with one faction against another. Zanscare is different. They want to claim the earth for themselves and rule over it with their matriarchal system. They wish to claim the earth and take it for their own. Zanscare wants to completely uproot the civilization already on earth and take the planet as their own home. On top of this Zanscare is a lot more brutal than Zeon in their tactics and the leadership works much differently. This actually leads in to part of the second criticism I wanted to rebuke and that is that the series is sexist. The basis for this argument (or one of them anyways) is that Zanscare's leadership is made up of radical feminists and they are treated like the bad guys and made to be intentionally despicable. I must say that this sounds like an argument made by people who didn't pay attention to the series, but it is shown many times that Queen Maria Pure Armonia is a benevolent ruler with the unusual newtype power to heal people. In every scene she is shown to be very compassionate and loving. The show doesn't exactly treat her like a villain, and she even goes against the other leaders' advice to do what she feels is right, even when it actively hinders Zanscare's military and government. In the first scene where we see her, we see her second in command and leader of Zanscare's military; Fonse Kagatie, lie to her about the Bespa Yelloy Jackets' atrocities and lying about taking measures to prevent civilian casualties so that he can make it look like Bespa is completely in the right. Fonse is also later implied to be the brainchild behind most of Zanscare's actions and was the one who pushed Maria to form Zanscare. It becomes blatantly obvious he is manipulating her and the public's trust in her to further his own plans to invade earth. Before you act like this is some major spoiler, if you were to take one look at this man and didn't think for a second the manipulative, menacing, bald and tanned elderly guy with the pure white mustache, large robot eye and weird looking cane was the real villain just going off his appearance and first scene alone than you are someone with bad foresight or you are seriously dense. Also in the wrong is the Federation, the one world government lead old cis males who are choosing to do nothing in hopes that the people in power in the government will be spared the wrath of Zanscare, showing that they do not care for the civilian populace. Zanscare isn't bad because of their feminist agenda, they are bad because this man is using it to further his own goals. Fonse is ultimately not touched upon too much beyond his connection to Maria, meaning we don't know much about him. However we can learn more by looking to the Crossbone Gundam manga. (I know I said manga is in the secondary canon tier of happenings, but most fans consider Crossbone to be the real continuation of the UC outside of the anime, so I am going to count it here, especially because it was written with Tomino's own production notes for the scrapped sequel to F91.) Crossbone reveals far from Earth the colonies around Jupiter (a place seldom touched on outside of Crossbone) have long planned to invade earth because they struggle for resources while earth is plentiful in water and oxygen. In the fourth Crossbone manga: "Crossbone Gundam: Ghost" it is revealed that Fonse Kagatie was from the Jupiter Empire and helped restructure them following their collapse, also touching more on him finding Maria and putting her in power. It's unknown if Fonse being from the Jupiter Empire was an idea Tomino himself had or if it was one Yuuichi Hasegawa came up with to tie together the stories of F91 and Victory together, but it makes too much sense to just discard. However it only cements that Fonse was using Maria and Zanscare to further his own goals, which for all we know could have been pro Jupiter. The other evidence people use as proof of this show being sexist is that they introduce a lot of women who "are basically just there to die". A lot of people really like Zeta, but then get mad at Victory for rivaling it in body count and start complaining about killing off some characters before you even get to know them or see them develop. Excuse me but isn't that also how it often is in war? Good people die out on the battlefield all the time before some of their fellow soldiers ever get to bond with them, that's just how it is. Tomino is known for trying to make the audience see and feel the impact of war, this isn't a new thing. While all of the character deaths in Zeta were impactful and happened often at unexpected moments, Victory's are more common, but what particularly makes them impactful is that we see everyone dwell on it for awhile and really see it impact them. Every death weighs heavily on Uso because he is literally a kid. We also see sexist people within Zanscare who mock the League Militaire for having a fighting force full of women and children. They're not just wasted characters because even those who die early serve a purpose narratively, and many act like big sister figures to Uso. This is a silly argument to assume Tomino was writing this show to be sexist when things like the Shrike Term serve to show us women as some of the best and most elite pilots in the war, especially when we got near the end of the series, and the pilot of the Zanneck and Gangaozo is a woman who racks up a massive number of kills. The whole idea that this show is pushing a message of the weakness of women and their power over men is misunderstanding the show, when the climax was clearly trying to tell us that the problem was the abuse of power, the abuse of people's emotions and beliefs.

People like to crap on the mechanical designs, and there are multiple sides to this argument. The canon in-universe explanation for the weird mechanical designs is because The Zanscare Empire is from space and their mobile suit designs had forgone any conventions of the past mechanical designs we know. Crossbone Ghost further explains that Kagatie had inspiration from The Jupiter Empire's Mobile Suit designs, which themselves were reimaginings of Zeon mobile suit designs that were really far removed from their inspirations in order to work with the limited resourced Jupiter had, and this does make perfect sense. The designs of Zanscare's grunt suits look like if you took the Den'an Zon (weird Darth Vader looking grunt suit used by the Crossbone Vanguard in F91) and then you kitbashed it with parts from other kits that just do not go together at all until you do some heavy painting and customization work. Kunio Okawara (the greatest mechanical designer to have worked on the series) designed some of these himself too. They all took after the basic early grunt suit Zanscare used: the Zolo and then built on it from there in new ways for most subsequent Zanscare mobile suits, and the designs are neat. They look weird and alien, which was kind of the point. However the real life explanations for the mechanical designs is another story. It's been a known fact that Tomino was tired of Ban-Dai and Sunrise's mandates they put on his Gundam projects since "Gundam ZZ" ended. They demanded a child protagonist to try and attract kids to the show, and they mandated it be able to sell toys. Tomino got to a point where he wanted the mechanical designs for Zanscare's to be as weird as possible to sabotage toy sales as his way of spiting Ban-Dai, who were hoping the show would revive the real Gundam model kit range, which was falling behind the SD Gundam model kit range. To an extent I am at least glad Okawara's design philosophy of most everything you see on the design serving a functional purpose was still present here, while still maintaining the weird and unmarketable look that Tomino wanted. I like some of the designs, but part of that is just that I am attached to intentionally ugly designs like the Gottrlatan. However I do completely understand the hate for the Einerad and the Twinrad. They're basically a big tire with guns on it a mobile suit is supposed to ride in, and every time a character fighting for The League Militaire takes one and starts using it someone working for the Zanscare Empire is seen soyjacking over it and gets upset, which is stupid because it is a dumb design itself that has limited practical use outside of earth yet was still widely used in space. Marbet and Uso repeatedly say when fighting them "tires shouldn't be used in space" or "tires shouldn't be used on water" as a criticism of their design, meaning that yes everyone making the series was aware it was a stupid idea and the protagonists were aware of it too. It was all part of some grand biker inspired design by a general at Zanscare who was a biker before the war and wanted to implement that into his fighting style. (I'm not joking) It's a fine canon explanation and serves the series well, but it doesn't change the fact that it is a dumb design. I also see some hate directed towards the idea of beam rotors, I also used to hate them, but I understand enough now to come to their defense. In Gundam it is known that no mobile suit can maintain continous flight in the earth's atmosphere or in a space colony unless it has a transformed mode that allows it to do so. While the idea of helicopter laser blades coming out of your MS's arm and holding it above you to fly is stupid on paper, it is surprisingly practical because it is a way to achieve continuous flight, and you could make the argument that some grunt suits made for use on earth by Zanscare do have transformed modes, but they work weirdly and depend on the rotor to fly. F91 introduced us to the concept of  beam shields that come out of your MS's arm, and beam rotors can still serve that same purpose in combat as a beam shield, as well as being used offensively to cut things, so I don't see much issue. I think Zanscare's designs just make sense considering not only have they taken example from how The Jupiter Empire designed mobile suits, but also that nobody among Zanscare's higher ups really knew earth or had been there so they didn't quite know how to make mobile suits specifically for atmospheric combat, leading to ideas like the beam rotor. It's a really neat idea that separates their designs from those rushed out by Zeon during the war. My only personal complaint with the designs is the emphasis on a lot of these designs having transformations where they attach and detach arms and legs for different jet forms, and I think it is kind of stupid. Docking out of your arms and legs to go into a jet form is fine, ZZ and Zeta showed this quite well, but Uso frequently launches in just the core fighter and after a little bit needs to go through the trouble of docking with the arms and legs separate while under enemy fire before properly using the Victory Gundam. Why doesn't he just have it docked as the Victory Gundam at all times unless it's needed as otherwise? They're constantly being hunted, it would be best to always be on a level of light combat readiness, Victory Gundam included. So much trouble could have been avoided like this. It's a small thing, but one that personally annoyed me a couple times in the first dozen episodes, since the only reason really given for it to be undocked is the ease of transportation when not in combat.

I also see people complain about the oppressively depressing atmosphere of the show. For all it's darkness, Zeta was not like this during most of it's run and it even gave us some classic memes. (Who here remembers when the Zeta Punch meme went viral on YouTube in the late 2000s?) Victory on the other-hand doesn't even let you celebrate the death of an enemy captain they spend episodes building up as some unredeemable jerk, every death has this impact that is felt by the other characters regardless of side, and I like that. One of my favorite things about the very much underrated Gundam ZZ was that they would introduce small characters, they would take an episode or two to build them up and then when they wrote them out you felt bad or sympathized with them. Victory does this too with a lot of characters we see, and it gives a very human perspective on one of the most brutal wars in the entire franchise. For this reason I think Victory does the best job at showing us that there are good people on both sides of the war and how war can wear down someone to the point where they are unrecognizable. The latter point is talked about in depth in my article talking about the character Katejina Loos. You can think of that article as kind of a companion piece to this one, but be warned I spoil Katejina's entire arc in that article, but I tried to shed light on her purpose on the story because she is so misunderstood. Last thing is the accusations that Chronicle Asher is a Char clone. Yes he serves a similar narrative purpose, but he is Queen Maria's brother meaning he has direct relation to the bad faction. Chronicle also has an in universe explanation for wearing the mask, that being that he hates the air on the earth's atmosphere and his mask helps make it more bearable for him (a neat thing brought back later by Tomino in Turn A Gundam). Chronicle is also very far removed from any type of rival character we have seen in the past before, with the exception of Glemmy Toto. Chronicle a big try-hard whom for all his talents is looked down on by most of his superiors. Someone big headed for their blood relations getting them to their position of power. He's strong and intimidating, brutal and even selfish, but in reality he is kind of pathetic and stupid when you peel back the layers of his character. I like Chronicle, but a lot of it is because how he is written and in a "love to hate him" sort of way. You spend the entire series wishing death upon this man and I fully believe that was Tomino's intention. Some people just can't be redeemed and are just so dead set in their ways and what they believe, especially when driven by pride or ego. One complaint I don't see people talk about enough is the editing and pacing. The pacing is mostly perfect in the series, but there are some moments where it feels off, specifically in the first few episodes and this brings us to Exhibit A of Ban-Dai and Sunrise's studio meddling hurting this series. As explained in my synopsis, Uso stole an experimental Zanscare test mobile suit called the Shokew, and he uses this early on in the series, which is good because its made to be a beginner friendly mobile suit, because it's a test suit made for gathering information on the new tech used to make it. However Ban-Dai (being a toy a company) had toy sales on the mind and were displeased with this. So they aired Episode 4 first in order to let people see the titular Victory Gundam in the first episode. I know what you at home, a sensible person, is probably thinking. "If I want to watch it I'll just watch episodes 2, 3 and 4 first and then watch the first episode fourth." or "They probably restored the proper episode order on a DVD or Laserdisc release." Let me tell you both those lines of thoughts are wrong, and it's not your fault. For better and for worse they edited footage from another episode over episodes 2, 3, and 4 to make those episodes flashback episodes. This means you cannot properly watch the episodes in the intended order they were meant to be watched, because the first five episodes had to be done in this stupid way. This means rather than getting proper introductions to these characters, (Uso's introduction is handled well like this, I admit) it presents it like we're already supposed to know who Marbet, Shakti, Odelo, Katejina and the old men are, and I haven't even named all the characters watching it like this thrusts onto you. I tried watching it in order of 2, 3, 4, 1, 5 just to see how it was, but this order feels wrong because of how they edited and presented the other episodes. What they did is slap an irremovable band-aid on a problem they created that wouldn't have even of been there in the first place if they didn't mess with things. This makes starting the show kind of difficult in a way, but once you get past it everything else is fine. The overall delivery of information does get weird at times, but it's not much of an inheriently bad thing.

This last complaint is something I actually love the series for, and that is the fact that its unhinged compared to every other Gundam series. Tomino at this point was trying to see what he could get away with while doing the things he was mandated to. This lead to BS like some of the biker inspired mechanical designs, the guillotine, the Neneka corps, newtype superweapon developed as part Zanscare's endgame and a bunch of stuff I can't talk about without giving spoilers. Seeing Tomino take the series as far as he could on what at the time was his last hurrah for the franchise, it was something really interesting that I commend the series for. I see some people complain about the newtype superweapon at the end of the series as a goofy or stupid concept. If you like Unicorn, you have no right to talk, because Fukui introduced so much weird BS surrounding Newtypes and psychommu, that in many ways it is more ridiculous than this super weapon at the end of the series. If you can't suspend your disbelief for this superweapon, but you can for Unicorn completely changing the lore surrounding Newtypes to fit its message and try to retroactively give so many deceased characters a happy ending, than you are one strange person. A lot of people also have this common misconception that Victory was made up of ideas from F91 and the original planned series for that, which is simply not true if you know the behind the scenes for both projects, but some ideas were definitely reused. In F91 they find a baby who's mother was a casualty in the attack, so Cecily saves him and Dorothy ends up helping to take care of it in the background of a lot of the film's scenes focusing on the protagonists. In Victory Gundam Uso saves a baby while trying to stop Zanscare from leveling an entire city in Prague, and Shakti is commonly seen carrying him around and caring for him throughout the entire series, that's just one of a few examples. If you have an example of this I didn't mention please comment it. I do think Victory has its fair share of issues, (No Gundam show is perfect except maybe Zeta Gundam) but overall I really love it and it stands in my top 5 for sure. Its highs are doing backflips on the Everest summit, its lows mostly come down to preference. Showing it to someone who has never watched much Gundam before I introduced them to the franchise, they seemed less interested in some of the scenes developing a lot of the supporting cast, which is understandable since I know most people are going to mostly be interested in Uso and all the characters in relation to him, but the show has a pretty large cast for better and for worse. The original series had a big cast too and that was hit and miss. Do any of you who actually watched the original Gundam series or its compilation film trilogy seriously remember characters like Omur Fang or Job John? Unless you read Origin or keep up with all the manga like I do, I doubt it. I know this may sound weird, but when you get to a point later in the show where a good number of the supporting characters are just gone, it becomes a lot more focused on a main group of seven or eight characters who each get plenty of time to grow and develop, which actually makes the show a lot better. Seriously the show gets quite a bit better in the second half, and I already thought that first half was already great, so that made this rewatch even more enjoyable in the home stretch.

Time for the easy breezy part, which is talking about things I love. The oppressively grim atmosphere prominent in the show does little to keep the energy down, particularly in the fight scenes. The action sequences are awesome and very well done, as should be expected of a Gundam series directed and created by Tomino. By this point in the timeline technology has gone really far. (it's been sixty years timeline wise since "Char's Counterattack" after all) The nuclear reactors powering mobile suits are much more volatile and powerful. Blowing one up causes a mini nuclear explosion, which in space is no big deal, but on earth it's huge, as that is bad for the environment. This combined with Uso being traumatized over seeing an enemy general attempt harakiri with an explosive makes him decide to only kill as a last resort or if the situation really needed him to. Meaning in most fights he intentionally tries not to go for lethal blows or anything that would blow up the enemy machines. (The latter of the two is for obvious reasons) For as dark as this show is and all the comparisons to Zeta, Uso is a new kind of protagonist compared to Kamille. In Zeta, Kamille was kind of a mentally unwell autistic teenager who was pushed over the edge at the start of the series. In Victory Uso being a child means he still has that childlike sense of wonder and optimism. Uso is repeatedly broken down by this show and he consistently gets back up and carries on because he believes he can put an end to things himself and he believes in everyone. Uso doesn't do things the smart way because he is childish and idealistic, but Uso representing a light of hope in one of, if not, the most brutal war in the franchise, it's something interesting and new that hasn't been attempted in the same way by another Gundam series. (No, Kira doesn't count because he did a lot of things Uso did but worse and more preachy. Get out of my head Seed fans you already live here rent free) I know I already mentioned this, but I love the weird and strange looking mobile suit designs, the Gottrlatan in particular. The titular Victory Gundam is a cool futuristic yet retro looking reimagining of the original Gundam, and the V2 Gundam is rightfully regarded as one of the best Gundam designs in the franchise. I also like some of the other designs like the Gun-EZ. I would buy HG or MG model kits of some of these Zanscare mobile suits if Ban-Dai made them. I love a lot of the characters here. They take time to develop them, and I can understand not getting interested in seeing the development of a character like Faula Griffon, especially since she has very little connection to Uso or any of the main cast at all, but the commitment to developing even some of the most minor of characters is great. This show really feels complete, and by the end I was completely satisfied with everyone's arcs and development.

I just love the animation in this show. It's great and looks nice, and while not as great as F91 (we're talking a movie vs a full length show here) it is some of the best of any Gundam series. Nothing against the animation drawn on computers, Unicorn looks gorgeous and some of the modern Gundam shows drawn on computer like Iron Blooded Orphans and 00 look great, but hand-drawn animation and painted cells will always look better. Seriously I dare you to tell me Seed's animation is better. The soundtrack for this show is great, I love all the opening themes and end credits themes for this show so much, but that's expected of any soundtrack with Rin Iogi's involvement. Now this isn't exactly a spoiler, because they only ever mentioned this in behind the scenes stuff but I just think it is cool. So I have said many times to people that you could consider Char the main character of the Universal Century given the tragedy of his family kicked things into gear, and he is a major character in the first two Gundam series and got a movie named after him in which he was the star. More proof of that is Victory Gundam. Behind the scenes they had made Uso's mother Myra Miguel the granddaughter of Nanai Miguel, who was Char's Love interest in "Char's Counterattack". This would make Uso Char's great grandson and help explain how Uso was a newtype despite being born on earth and having no apparent Newtype relatives seen. However this was never mentioned in the series because Tomino intentionally chose to not have it mentioned in the series at all. It is unknown why, but Uso and Char being related wasn't his idea so the prevailing theory is that he didn't have anyone mention it in the series because he doesn't like when smaller people on the production team come up with better ideas than him, especially back then. Knowing Tomino I don't doubt this for a second, but it's also a theory with no evidence, so we don't know for sure why it was cut. This means that Uso being Char's great grandson is something never mentioned or confirmed by anyone in universe. Despite being in the Universal Century and having a lot in common with other shows on the UC, it is really an independent work in an era with no real connection to the past Gundam shows aside from a few very small references here and there. There is no returning cast members from previous Gundam projects at all, which was a first for the franchise (unless you count F91) and kind of a breath of clean fresh air. I've no real will to watch whatever Londo Bell is doing with Astonaige gone, and most of the cast of a show like ZZ would be in their late seventies by this point. I think the problem with Victory and it's era not being particularly beloved is that Ban-Dai and Sunrise have made no conscious effort to expand on it or to try and market and merchandise the series since it's initial airing. Sure they were hands off with Crossbone, but at least they green lit it and it revived interest in F91's era, and even now continue to make manga in that era such as the recent "Gundam F91 Prequel" and the even more recent and popular "F90 Fastest Formula". Hell they even made manga for it right after the film's theatrical run like "Gundam F90" and "Silhouette Formula 91". Sure we've gotten the odd side story manga here and there like Victory Gundam Outside Story" (written and illustrated by the writer and illustrator of Crossbone Gundam Yuichi Hasegawa, who wrote it around the time the show aired), but the only significant and hugely notable thing to expand on this era meaningfully is "Crossbone Gundam Ghost", which is just a sequel to Crossbone that timeline-wise runs concurrently with the "Victory Gundam" anime series. It's a shame, but it kind of makes Victory stand even taller as its own standalone thing. Maybe Victory not being particularly popular overall (Ban-Dai has snubbed it in several SD Gundam Games as well as other games focused on the entire Gundam Franchise) makes it feel all the more special to me. Or maybe because I just love when Gundam takes things really far. However things are looking up for Victory. To celebrate it's 30th anniversary, Gundam Ace began publishing a manga about the character Odelo Henrick, and Super Robot Wars 30 included Victory Gundam as major and unskippable part of its main campaign.

One of the reasons that contributes to Ban-Dai not doing much with Victory is that the show underperformed compared to expectations and a big part of that is that they set unrealistic standards for the series, as they had with the F91 film. This isn't even mentioning some of their studio meddling I mentioned earlier such as reediting the first few episodes to make them work out of context and so they could air the fourth episode first. Seriously that's a gutsy move not even showing a Gundam until the fourth episode, and Ban-Dai ruined that plan. Modern Ban-Dai would certainly not allow that. I guess old Ban-Dai didn't either judging by the edit. Anyways my point is things like that help made the show's underperformance their fault for messing with it, as well as their fault for placing unrealistic expectations on it. They had hoped the series would totally revive the "real" Gundam model kits just in time for them to introduce a totally revamped version of the model kits that could be built without glue. As I mentioned before SD (Super Deformed) Gundam kits were really popular with kids, and had long overtaken "real" Gundam model kits in terms of sales. Victory did just that, more than doubling the sales of "real" Gundam model kits, but falling far short of the massive quota Ban-Dai had set. The show did really well in ratings, but the show attracted mostly people who had grown up with Zeta and ZZ, who themselves were now adults or teenagers by this point. This success and bringing back old fans was nice and gave the show a huge level of success and a large level of acclaim, but it wasn't the hit among children and new thing to attract new audiences that Ban-Dai had hoped for. Tomino complied with their every demand complacently and it still didn't work. Though to be fair it was obvious that Tomino was just done by this point and was just trying to see how far he could take things before Ban-Dai or he himself had enough. Tomino even had a sequel lined up and ready that, again, was a soft reboot with no big connections to past Gundam projects, but Ban-Dai being unwilling to greenlight it after Victory and his mental health being in a horrible place throughout the making of Victory, it just meant he had to leave and take care of himself.

Ultimately yes, Victory is weird. It is very dark and an interesting portrait into Tomino's deteriorated mental state and deep depression he was in, kind of like how Zeta Gundam was previously, only dialed up to eleven. Victory pulls no punches and leaves a powerful and dark story that is not afraid to do whatever it wants no matter what the viewer might think. It's probably the most graphic series in the franchise, with some of the most brutal character deaths in the series, and it spends so much time developing many of the characters slowly and surely, leading to a much slower paced show that can really reward you for paying attention to itself and past Gundam shows, with the references while sparse, being very rewarding to catch. (Remember what I just said it's going to play a part in next week's article.) Victory isn't for everyone, hell, I've seen some people crap on Unicorn for being "boring" or "uninteresting", which is weird because that OVA was kind of made to be a series for everyone newcomer and franchise veteran alike. So what kind of person a Gundam series is for is kind of a weird question. If you loved Zeta and practically worship that series as I do than you'll probably love Victory. It's a great series that really rewards attentive viewers and people willing to sit and take their time with a show focused on fleshing out so many aspects of its world and characters. I was completely sucked in by the series and 100 percent caught up in characters like Katejina, who become almost unrecognizable by the end of the series. On top of this Victory's development of it's villains and many characters on the enemy faction leads to one of its most gripping and interesting villains, (read the Katejina article if you want a spoiler for who I am referring to) and Chronicle Asher being one of the most "love to hate him" kind of characters in the entire series. This show tries a lot of things, but it takes its time to commit to most all of its ideas and give us an extremely satisfying ending for the series, albeit not an especially happy one. I understand not liking it, but it's such a well thought out and well made series that I can't not love it. To me at its worst, it's just slow and taking it's time developing side characters that less attentive viewers may not care about or forcing the protagonists to face some obstacle that exists narratively to halt their progress, but at it's best it is among the best in the series showing smart writing, gripping drama, some of the most intense action scenes in the entire series, and one of the most explosive finales to any Gundam series. This all without mentioning that this is the perfect portrait into the mind of a very depressed Tomino and how he seemed intent on making things as crazy and dark as he could. I think it's a real shame this show is looked at as the Gundam show you watch last because it is a dumb sexist thing you watch for completionist sake, when all that is rooted in misunderstandings. If you really let Victory take its time with you and pull you in, you're in for one of the most rewarding experiences the franchise has to offer. Though understandably the show might be too much for some people, it is more than enough to satisfy me, and earns a solid 10/10. Most of my complaints were small things that did nothing to hinder my enjoyment of the series, leading to it ranking really high among my personal favorite Gundam shows at a solid third place.

My breakdown of the end of Gundam's Universal Century part 3: "Gundam F91" film review and Gundam's biggest gold mine of missed potential, UC 00120-148

This week's been rough on me, and I've not been in the best of spirits, however I finished this week's post, and so I can end the week on a happy note. Gundam is not a franchise one simply watches, as much as I wish that were the case. Maybe a how to watch Gundam list is in order for the far future. No this isn't a Gundam blog, but it's a blog about whatever is on my mind, and my mind as of late is thinking about Gundam. (it's thinking about other things too, but I really don't feel like airing out super personal stuff) I am currently awaiting Gundam Hathaway's movie sequel which Ban-Dai is radio silent about, I suppose you could see it as me coping, writing all this while I await a film adapting a novel I've already read because I am dying to know how the guy behind the Attack on Titan (I haven't seen AoT beyond the first season, but it kind of sucked in my opinion I'm sorry.) soundtrack, composer Hiroyuki "the GOAT" Suwano makes another absolute masterpiece of a score to accompany a dark and gritty story about overthrowing a corrupt government and the ideals of Char and Amuro combined into a huge extreme. I suppose I am getting sidetracked. I don't want to be one of those absolute creeps online who make one thing they like their entire personality, like those creeps who buy a PS5 and proceed to spend countless hours online arguing why their plastic box that looks like a wifi modem is better than the Microsoft rectangle shaped plastic box. However Gundam fundamentally made up a huge part of who I am. In an era where all the anime on TV in the west was women with big breasts and these seriously ridiculous situations (JoJo might as well have been called "tomfoolery the anime") or weird fantasies, (I like Yu-Gi-Oh  but it is such a trip) I was drawn into Gundam, catching it on Toonami and getting hooked. Though as a new viewer, a franchise who's popularity in its home country eclipses basically every other anime franchise (I'm not counting Anpam Man)  can seem daunting, and it can be easy to get overwhelmed with figuring out what to watch first. This is a fact Ban-Dai has remained consistently aware of since they ended the original saga of Gundam with the "Char's Counterattack" movie in 1988. This lead to the direction Ban-Dai began to take the series in during the 90s, with attempted soft reboots before deciding on full reboots in 1994 and not even worrying about a shared continuity. (don't worry I will talk about Turn A Gundam in a later article) The decision to do hard reboots after Tomino left the series could probably be attributed to the underwhelming performance of both soft reboots, the first of which was Gundam F91.

Gundam F91 is probably the biggest example of Sunrise and Ban-Dai actively hurting the franchise with their input. It was originally envisioned as a new series to mark the tenth anniversary of Gundam and a fresh start for the series so new viewers could get into the series. Sunrise feared turning Gundam into a franchise would actively hurt a sequel and any follow-up shows. Their fears were proven wrong with Gundam Zeta being one of the most successful anime series of the eighties and it propelled the series to new heights, and it's sequel show Gundam ZZ carrying the hype train ever forward. Even still Ban-Dai had superstitions about new viewers not having interest in sequels and such to a show from years ago, even after they were proven wrong, which lead to them directing some Gundam staff to a new series called "Metal Armor Dragonar", which was a reimagining of the original Gundam series from 1979 but with no connection to Gundam and being tailor made for the late eighties anime audience. While a success, it didn't match up the immense and unstoppable popularity Gundam and its subsequent projects were experiencing. Char's Counterattack breaking a billion at the box office only cemented Gundam as a colossal franchise that could not be ignored. Ban-Dai and Sunrise would begin making mandates on this new tenth anniversary Gundam series, like severing all connection to past Gundam projects in order to make it stand on it's own and encourage people new to the franchise to watch it. They also mandated a conflict a younger audience could relate to better than that of previous Gundam projects. Tomino complied, but still hoped to make his most ambitious series yet. He brought on Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (story consultant on the original series, and a character designer on the original series, Zeta, Origin and Unicorn) and mechanical designer Kunio Okawara, who at the time had designed mechanical stuff on every animated Gundam project up to that point except Gundam ZZ. This reunited the holy trinity that made up the core creative team behind the original series, which had also worked together on Gundam Zeta.. Yasuhiko had originally declined to work on ZZ because he had retired from animation to work on his own manga series Venus Wars, as well as his general dissatisfaction with the direction of the franchise and the increasing focus on things like newtypes. So a condition to him coming back as character designer was that he help develop the story like on the original series. This didn't up happening, but Yasuhiko ended up getting invested in more than just character design, as he ended up assisting in aspects of the animation too. 

Lots of conflicts arose during early production of the series while the scripts were being written. 13 out of 50 episodes were written, but the story was mapped out. Tomino had high-hopes for F91, but with production getting even more troubled as conflicts arose and studio meddling got in his way, the project was beginning to seem kind of hopeless. Eventually Tomino was forced to go with a new plan to salvage the project. He would adapt what they had into a film, and he would make a sequel film later to tie up all the loose ends. So they hacked the finished 13 episode scripts together into one film, also adding elements from later in the story planned for future episodes beyond the original 13. This would mean condensing 13+ episodes of a show that does not exist into a piece of media that was the length of about 6 episodes. (this is of course removing the time added from the intro, credits, "next time on" section and the "last time on" section in every episode of every Gundam series up to that point) Basically F91 had the opposite problem Gundam Narrative had, rather than adapting a piece of source material that only had enough material for basically a 40 minute episode of an OVA at best and needing basically start over from scratch like Narrative did, we're squishing down 13+ episode scripts for a show that mind you does not exist, into something the length of less than half that many episodes. This and some other aspects of the production hampered an otherwise great film. I think if F91 was a proper series and most of its production issues never happened, it could have been the best Gundam series, and in a perfect world we would have gotten that, but it's as Huey Lewis said "There is no perfect world anyways". 

As with the last entries of the UC breakdown I am going to go through the film without spoiling anything hugely important beyond a basic synopsis of the film's setup and the bear minimum needed for me to make my points. The story of F91 takes place in Universal Century 0123, about 18 years after the events of "Gundam Hathaway"/"Hathaway's Flash" and 30 years after the events of "Char's Counterattack". The Federation has grown complacent with the lack of any major wars, and they've largely left the branch in charge of the production of mobile suits to their own devices. They've eased up so much on their stance on space colonies that they don't police them much at all, caring mostly about what happens on earth and the wellbeing of their leadership. (compliant with the "Hathaway's Flash" novel which was published a couple years prior despite that novel being considered non canon, got to give Tomino props for that) However a new group known as the Crossbone Vanguard emerges. They are ran by the very wealthy Ronah family (I talked about them in part 1 of the UC breakdown), who have funded it using their wealthy monopoly on the salvaging business, and they intend to capture all the surrounding colonies in order to establish an aristocracy and build up enough power to overthrow The Earth Federation. While a group of friends is escaping their colony during an armed invasion by the Crossbone Vanguard, one girl among them: Cecily Fairchild, is singled out as the granddaughter of the Crossbone Vanguard's leader and captured so she can be made the public face of the organization and someone for people to rally behind. Meanwhile her friend Seabook Arno tries to figure out what's going on and gets roped into the experimentation of an advanced Federation test mobile suit made as a successor to the Gundam type mobile suits, and he takes on the task of piloting it so he can stop the Crossbone Vanguard and save Cecily, who is torn between her new duties as the leader of the Crossbone Vanguard and her moral obligations to stop her grandfather. 


Now F91 is agreed upon as a mixed bag, and while I love it, I don't have much of any real common critiques for it that I feel I need to defend against, because I think most of the critiques are pretty well justified. I'll start with these before getting into why I love the film. The film plays out like one of those weird compilation films Sunrise loves so much. Yes those films can be good, the original series' had two great compilation films and one so/so compilation film, so this isn't inherently a bad thing, but the film's pacing is jarring in parts. In Gundam shows during the 80s and early 90s it was common for the protagonist to have a moment where they kill someone on the battlefield for the first time and then get reflective about it or shook. Like when Kamille refused to pilot the Gundam mk-II after he first killed a Titans officer, or when Uso indirectly killed a Zanscare captain and was so shaken up by it he resolved to try and fight the rest of the series with killing as little people on the battlefield as possible. F91 has this moment too. Seabook in his first real battle using the Gundam F91 underestimates it's capabilities, and while testing his weapons he accidently fires a shot so powerful it not only kills the enemy pilot in front of him. but an enemy pilot doing something else that happens to be in the same line of fire. Seabook is horrified to learn he killed two people by complete accident, and then 10 or 20 seconds later it fades to the next scene and it's just him being casually looking for Cecily and blending in with other people. How much time passed? Did he get over it quickly? How did he end up in a separate space colony? When did he get there? These are all questions I had rewatching the film when this happened. There was a subplot about Seabook's dad staying behind after Seabook and his friends escaped, he did this so he could help a young child who was alone and in danger. What of this whole subplot? Seabook is reunited with his dad, we know nothing of the child, and Seabook just awkwardly escorts his injured dad back to the battleship he's been on and then they awkwardly write him off right then and there. The film ends with so many loose ends that it's kind of ridiculous. You are given a piece of text at the end of the film saying "this is only the beginning" while the main theme plays, but alas, that line has been the biggest teases in the entire series and one of the most tragic "what if?" scenarios in the entire franchise, but we'll get to that later. The soundtrack (while great) for some unknown reason it rips off The Empire Strikes Back's OST at some parts, and I'm being serious. One example: The Crossbone Vanguard's theme rips off the imperial march. My final critique is that the troubled production shows at some points with the editing, which was mostly rectified in the home video release, which featured newly animated parts and better editing. This has basically made it the definitive way to watch the film, and the only legal way to watch it since there has been no major release of the theatrical cut after it's original run in theaters. While yes everyone should watch the home video version because it is way better, its still kind of sad that we don't have a legal way to watch the original theatrical version. Some of the strange editing choices are still in this second version film too.

In terms of characters, this film leaves something to be desired while also absolutely delivering. Seabook and all of his family are well fleshed out for the time we spend with them, Cecily's mother and grandfather are pretty good too, but her biological father (and the franchise's first Char clone) Iron Mask is a super lame villain. The man's entire backstory is that after subscribing to his father in law's radicalist ideals his wife couldn't stand to be around him, so she cucked him and let another man steal her away from him, marrying him and taking Cecily with her, leaving him to wear a mask to hide his embarrassment and shame and vowing to never take it off until after the aristocracy of Cosmo Babylonia is the ultimate power in the galaxy. The villain is only doing this because he is a literal cuck who has been coping and seething for some 15+ years about being cucked by a less attractive man. Not only is his concept a rehash of Char, (a masked antagonist the protagonist must defeat in the climax of the story who plays a prominent role in the story as well as having a later revealed connection to our female lead) but his reasoning is ridiculous and stupid. I think him being the primary antagonist is an example of this movie being part 1 of a larger story that never came to fruition, at least not on a large scale. Seabook's friends don't get any time to shine either. We have all these cool characters with neat designs, I especially like Dorothy Moore who looks like a glam rock version of Elle Viano from Gundam ZZ. I actually dig all these character designs, and I think it stands as some of Yasuhiko's best work rivaled only by Gundam Zeta. However most of these characters get no development or anything saying why we should be interested in them except that they are Seabook's friends and we don't want to see civilians die. This is an example of the film being too rushed and clearly feeling like a compilation film rather than a stand-alone piece of media. Our protagonists Seabook and Cecily are wonderful characters who are developed really well and are great fun to watch. Cecily's conflict is particularly interesting since she is aligned with our protagonists and shares their goals, but is forced to serve as the Crossbone Vanguard's leader or else face things falling into turmoil. Seabook's a strong character who learns to pilot the Gundam quickly in a similar vein to how Amuro did in the original series, which works well. His story feels believable, and his relationship with Cecily was established in the beginning of the film, so him getting super passionate about her in the ending doesn't feel forced or like they rushed them into a relationship.

The animation is gorgeous and probably the best Gundam has to offer barring "Turn A Gundam" and "Gundam Hathaway". The presentation and overall direction is great too. At this point in his career Tomino was coming out of his bubble and began taking notice of the works by other studios and talent, it's clear to see some of these like Studio Ghibli were an influence on the film. (this would not be the last time Studio Ghibli directly influenced Gundam) Okawara knew the difficulty of animating the mobile suits if he made his designs too detailed, but Sunrise told him specifically to include as much detailed linework and panel lines as possible to help showcase the theatrical budget being put into it and because this was the first Gundam project (and first project by Sunrise overall) to be in widescreen. This definitely shows. The level of detail on everything here is incredible, and even big screen Gundam projects I have showered in praise over the animation like Gundam Hathaway don't even have this same level of detail. The battles here also look sweet, the action is nice and not feeling much at all like it is copying other Gundam franchise at all. The fight scene in the opening taking place in the space colony is the greatest colony fight scene in the entire series. Tomino said that after ending "Char's Counterattack" on a optimistic note and the fact that neither war presented in Zeta or ZZ were completely militaristic unlike the original series, he wanted something that showed the true brutality of war and just how much the civilian bystanders are put through. The worst part is a lot of the collateral damage is the federation's fault because it's been 30 years since the last real war in the UC, so none of these pilots have much of any real combat experience in comparison to the Crossbone Vanguard's soldiers, who have been training for years for this moment and have been gaining combat experience through their illicit actions. The final fight scene at the end is just cool, the way Seabook wins is just awesome, and his interaction with his mother at the end of the series is just nice. The ending itself is just nice, even with the dozens of loose ends.

Despite F91 being tailor made as a perfect entry point for new fans and to usher in a new era of Gundam that could appeal to newcomers and series veterans alike, the movie underperformed and lead to a decline in popularity for the series after the immense hype train carried through to "Char's Counterattack" didn't carry over to this new film. Parents complained of some of the sheer brutality in some of the scenes, because at the time Gundam was a series marketed to all ages because Ban-Dai knew kids and toy sales were a big factor in the franchise's success.  However spin-offs made with the sentient SD (Super Deformed) Gundams were becoming increasingly popular, and kids gravitated more to the SD Gundam short film that played at the beginning of the film rather than the actual movie itself. Thusly despite Tomino's extensive plans put in place to carry on the story of F91, he was stopped and forced to work on another project instead halting his work all-together. They attempted to rectify some of this with a at the time well received prequel manga called "Gundam F90", but it didn't do much to win over people who weren't sold on F91, leading Ban-Dai to stop pushing for the movie when it ended its run in theaters. Tomino would leave the franchise years later and Ban-Dai would take one of their greatest risks in the franchise's history, and it would pay off greatly. Ban-Dai had access to all of Tomino's production stuff now that he was gone, and when they found his notes on the production for F91's sequel they saw just how far he had thought it through and how he had a greater conflict beyond the Cosmo Babylonian War in mind. So they commissioned a writer and illustrator to adapt it into a manga. This person was a complete nobody by the name of Yuuichi Hasegawa. Hasegawa had his own project with Exper Xenon which was an underground success, but where Ban-Dai discovered him was his work on a Gundam manga one off for a small Gundam magazine. Hasegawa wanted a certain level of creative freedom over the work requested that he be able to make some changes in adapting it. So they gave him free reign to do whatever the hell he wanted, and after adding a time skip and glossing over some plot points we got the proper sequel to F91, which even tied together the conflict from that series to Tomino's then final Gundam series: "Victory Gundam". This sequel manga was called Gundam Crossbone, and despite him having no involvement in the manga, Tomino was given full credit as writer due to Hasegawa's intense respect for the man and him having wrote the entire manga based on his notes, as well as figuring the manga would sell better if it was credited to Tomino. Crossbone was such a runaway success that it ended up not only redeeming F91 in the eyes of most people who read it, but seen as a superior work and it became the single most popular piece of supplementary canon in the entire Gundam franchise, even to the point where most people forget the canon hierarchy and consider Crossbone and it's six sequel mangas to be the real canon continuation of the UC. Crossbone has gotten to the point where it is far more beloved and remembered than the actual movie it was a sequel to, and is represented in more games and crossover media than F91. I guess it just shows that they shouldn't have messed with Tomino's original vision, and that taking a chance on a totally unknown and obscure talent was a smart move. However I'll save Crossbone for another day, where I will go further into the greater story of F91 beyond the film.


F91 will forever serve as the biggest piece of missed potential in the entire franchise. Its fair for Sunrise and Ban-Dai to sweep this under the rug and do the bare minimum for it, because Crossbone may have redeemed it, but it doesn't change the fact that they ruined what could have been the best Gundam series. Crossbone fixes F91 sure, but it's a manga that a lot of casual people and fans aren't going to read, and it only shows that if F91 was a full series it could have been amazing. Yes the film is very flawed, yes it has issues, yes the pacing is bad and the editing could have been better, but I like to do as Ban-Dai does and celebrate Crossbone giving a new life to a very well made film rather than lament what could have been. F91 is very flawed film, but with hindsight we can look back at the most fascinating era of the UC fondly with this film showcasing Gundam at its best when it works, and just being mediocre when it doesn't work. If you haven't seen it yet I'd recommend jumping the gun and checking it out. It's a standalone story, so you don't need any lore. Just keep what I've said in mind when watching it. I have grown to love F91 over the years, and I hope some of you can grow to love it too. I'm giving it an 7.5/10, however that score is with hindsight and me having read Crossbone Gundam.