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 Yellow 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 led by 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. 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 because explains so much perfectly. 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. Misusing a movement to selfishly further one's own motives. This abuse of feminism from bad actors and extremists leading to the outright rejection of it is something relavent today actually.

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 (tires in the case of the Twinrad) with guns on it that a mobile suit is supposed to ride in. 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, which admittedly is kind of funny. (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 continuous 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 basking in the schadenfreude 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 completely perfect, but some are close) 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 and none of the spin off manga 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 it seems like 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 post UC 0100, 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. ((Update October 2023) 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 Bandai 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 Bandai ruined that plan. Modern Bandai 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 Bandai 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 Bandai 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 is 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 of 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  some future installments like "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 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 movie is just nice. The ending itself is just nice, even with the dozens of loose ends making it awkward.

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 success with Exper Xenon, and his own manga MAPS would later be adapted as an OVA, so he wasn't a total un-known but where Ban-Dai discovered him was his work on a Gundam manga one off for Cyber xomix and later MS Saga. 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 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 a lot of people who read it, but seen as a superior work and it became the single most popular manga in the entire Gundam franchise. 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.

All Time Favorite Gundam Characters #1: Katejina Loos: a story of falling from grace, misplaced trust, hypocrisy, deals with the devil and avoiding karma

I'm away from home for the weekend due to stuff and that means away from my computer where the draft of the next part of my Universal Century Breakdown is, so this week take a shorter article that doesn't require hours of research to tide you over.

I don't typically play mobile games, I dabble here and there, but I don't play them for the same reason a lot of people don't like them. That freenium model of content where you have to buy stuff with a hard to obtain in game currency, the endless grind to get the best stuff and the fact that they actively limit how much you can play with some kind of stamina meter or something of the like. However if you are familiar with me you know I have dedicated unhealthy amounts of time to this franchise ever since I saw Stardust Memory back on Toonami lord knows how long ago, and I am probably obsessed or something. So make a Gundam version of one of these games and I will try it. That one is Gundam Wars and the appeal of it is that you can basically create a dream team of your favorite Mecha from across the series and put whatever pilots and support characters you want in them. I have my all time favorite character in all of fiction: Four Murasame, as a super OP pilot who beafs up the stats of whatever she is piloting by a huge amount of points. However in preparation for the article I wanted to originally post this week I got a suit called The Anchor from Crossbone Gundam, and I put one of my best pilots (in terms of upgrades and stats) I had in the game inside it, Katejina Loos. Katejina is a character I have tons of mixed feelings on and I don't mean that lightly, and this brings me to this week's subject, that subject is Katejina Loos. Warning there are minor spoilers for Mobile Suit Victory Gundam ahead. If you haven't read my Victory Gundam review than you can find it with this link here. it is highly recommended you check that out first, as this article is kind of a companion piece to that one.

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam stands as one of the best works in the entire series and my main piece I use for examples in arguments with Evangellion fans. It's a show that is often ignored by the show's younger fan base and western fanbase for being very dark, not having an official western release outside of a DVD set released a couple years ago, and being one of four main Gundam shows to not have a dub. Despite victory literally being in the title the show is very dark and there is an oppressively depressing atmosphere throughout a lot of the show. They spend time developing so many of the minor characters on the enemy side so that when they die you don't feel happy the protagonists killed whoever was after them, you're instead asking why it was them who died and not someone else. Because war is not satisfying, good people on both sides die and that's just the truth of the matter. Victory is a show I have talked extensively about in part 4 of my Universal Century breakdown, so don't you worry about that, I saved a lot of my thoughts and opinions on that show for that article. Think of this as an appetizer or a side dish to that one. The main reason I brought up this point is because this pertains to Katejina Loos, who is someone I felt like rambling about today. Warning spoilers for Victory Gundam ahead, skip to the final paragraph to avoid spoilers.

Victory has our youngest protagonist in the entire Gundam franchise, rivaled in that position only by Mikazuki from Iron Blooded Orpahns and Asemu from Gundam Age. Uso is a literal prepubescent child, which was something Sunrise wanted Tomino (creator and writer of every Gundam show up to Victory) to put in the series because they thought it would appeal to kids, who at the time were more interested in SD Gundam and the chibi model kits. Throughout the series we see Uso want to save everyone and grow to want to fight, while killing as little people as possible, even if it comes back to bite him in the rear end eventually. He's a good kid, who gets scared when in battle. Like any kid he has a crush, that being his penpal Katejina Loos. Known among fans as one of the most hated Gundam antagonists in the franchise's storied history, and a crazy bitch.

Early on in the show the Zanscare Empire continues their invasion of earth in hopes of wiping out all the factories of the resistance movement: The League Militaire, bombing and obliterating entire cities just to be sure they destroyed them, and then lying to their queen about taking measures to minimize civilian casualties. Uso steals a Zanscare mobile suit and goes to the nearby city in Prague where Katejina lives. He is unable to stop Zanscare's bombing of the city, and only manages to save Katejina and a baby who's mother was killed in the bombing. If it wasn't for Uso, Katejina and the baby they saved would both be dead. This event gives Uso the motivation to join the League Militaire and pilot their Gundam, which Katejina keeps telling him not to do because he's a kid, it's not his war, and he could become desensitized to all the violence or get hurt out there. She is afraid Uso will lose his childlike innocence and hope if he keeps doing it, that he will become someone scary, but despite this Uso keeps doing it because that League Militaire squad's only capable pilot has a serious injury that prevents her from piloting, meaning he needs to consistently take up arms to protect everyone. Katejina warns him not to become a scary person.

Eventually Uso's self declared rival from Zanscare: Chronicle Asher, who has had enough of Uso's BS, kidnaps Katejina and the leader of that League Militaire squad. Initially he spares Katejina from execution unlike his other prisoner who was sent to the guillotine in a public execution, and Chronicle basically uses her as a maid before developing feelings for her. Katejina slowly develops Stockholm syndrome and learns that Zanscare's Queen, who is also Chronicle's brother, is a benevolent ruler who doesn't want all the violence. This ultimately lead to Katejina allowing herself to get corrupted and twisted by Chronicle into his puppet and ultimate servant. 

Painting of Katejina by Gundam Hathaway's Flash, Gundam War in the Pocket character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto

What makes Katejina a hard character to watch the fall of, is that unlike other characters like Four Murasame, Rosamia Badam, Ple Two, etc. Katejina's is her fault. She mistook Chronicle's physical attraction to her and his act of mercy as love, it's her fault for allowing herself to become the way she has. Throughout the first half of the series we see Katejina with Chronicle, with Chronicle going to great lengths to keep her from Uso for the sake of "protecting her", which she totally believes. As we see her go further down into this corruption we see her do things to Justify the Zanscare Empire's cruelty, like saying executing people with the guillotine in a grand public display is necessary to suppress the will to fight in people who want to fight against Zanscare's ideas of peace. This all culminates in the discovery she is a newtype (Newtypes are people who can use 100% of their brain and can understand others on a cosmic level. They also have unnatural precognition and adaptability that makes them great pilots) and Chronicle trains her to become a pilot. When Uso escapes in the Victory Gundam at his execution ceremony (Yes, Zanscare had no problems making a celebration out of beheading a prepubescent child.) Katejina in her frustration shows up to kill Uso herself in their first of many battles. In their battle she even says she would deliver Uso to the guillotine herself, because it's necessary to scare off disruptive and ignorant people like him who disrupt Zanscare.

Now during my Universal Century Rewatch that spurred my late UC era breakdown I created multiple bingo cards to make watching these more fun. Having an intimate knowledge of the series I knew what tropes and stuff to make each card about. I had a "minor character" focused bingo card, I had a card focused on the mobile suit battles and more. However this show never gave me a bingo on the "main protagonist's love interest" bingo card. Katejina follows many tropes a Gundam protagonist's love interest falls into. She joined the enemy side against her own will, she is a newtype, she is someone he has to fight multiple times, the protagonist doesn't kill her because he loves her. However Katejina breaks this mold quite heavily. She manipulates the fact that he loves her during every one of their encounters. She willingly makes him suffer all for the sake of protecting Chronicle's pride. Despite her undying loyalty Chronicle does not reciprocate these feelings the same way because he is just too focused on the war at hand, with his attention on Uso and what to do about him. She actively tells Uso his very existence is a threat to Chronicle because Chronicle fears Uso and how Uso has never been beaten. She tells Uso no child should have the level of power that he does, meaning she has to kill him. Chronicle fears Uso as the only threat to him and his ego and Katejina is determined to make him suffer and break him if she can't defeat him in combat. She continues using this kind of mental warfare against him throughout the rest of the series because time after time she proves unable to best him in combat, leaving her to go to great lengths to protect Chronicle's pride and try to mentally damage and scar Uso. She is a scary antagonist because will do anything to achieve her goals no matter how ridiculous, and she knows the protagonist intimately, using what she knows about him to play all the head games and psychological warfare she can. Remember, Uso is just a kid. Having the surrogate older woman figure in his life that he looked up to use her intimate knowledge of him to try and make him suffer and die is such a horrible thing he can't grasp the reasoning of.

Art of Katejina watching Uso and Chronicle's final duel

I felt bad for Katejina because she was being manipulated and corrupted this whole time, but it was her fault and she was willingly giving into hatred and anger towards Uso that Chronicle harbored for him. She also contributed to Chronicle getting worse by inflating his ego and supporting his blatantly horrible ideas no matter how morally bad or overall stupid. She warned Uso that a soldier's life would strip him of what made him a good kid, but in all irony, him being a kid and thinking like one was what allowed him get as far as he did despite the traumatic experiences he went through in the series. She told Uso not to become someone scary early on the series, but he only scared Chronicle, her actions and lengths she went through to make him suffer only strengthened his resolve and determination to stop Zanscare. This strengthened his resolve further in his battles against Chronicle, making him stronger and much more of a threat, someone Chronicle feared and loathed more and more. Every horrible thing she did to try and make Uso suffer made him stronger and strengthened his resolve. Katejina was actively making Uso a scary person, and she didn't realize a lot of it was her fault. She is so in love with Chronicle that she has adopted his inability to take accountability for his actions as one of her own character traits. Chronicle blames Uso for everything, every annoyance and threat to him is Uso's fault in his mind and he had no fault in anything. Naturally Katejina wants to kill Uso because of how Chronicle sees him as the source of all his problems. She just thinks if Uso dies the war will be over quickly and Chronicle and her can rest easy together. Katejina's mind games and attempts to kill Uso and everyone he cared about was what started stripping him of his innocence. Her actions forced him to watch so many of his most beloved friends and family die and she still insisted everything was his fault, refusing any accountability because if Chronicle can't hold himself responsible for atrocities than neither should she. This all manifests in the final battle between Uso and Chronicle. They duel while Katejina watches and declares that two boys fighting over her is the ultimate experience. She yells that she will love the winner with all her soul and that the battle will determine her fate. All while this happens the Zanscare empire is on it's last legs, with it's leadership all facing their last stand in a disastrously failed invasion of earth. 

Even after Uso emerges victorious and Chronicles has to use his escape system to get out of his mobile suit before it blows up, Katejina refuses to accept the outcome. She only said she would love the winner because she didn't believe Chronicle had any chance of losing. THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE MOMENT WHERE SHE THOUGHT CHRONICLE COULD POSSIBLY EVER LOSE. She blindly thought so highly of him she fully believed there was no possible way Uso could ever win against him, because she has justified everything Chronicle has done and sees Uso as the representation of everything she is fighting against. He was fighting against Zanscare, who justified their atrocities with their intention to cleanse the world of the corrupt government and hateful people among those on Earth who keep starting conflict. She believes in Mariaism and more importantly in Chronicle Asher. He opened her eyes to this cause, he saved her from a possible death sentence (one he knowingly brought her to), he allowed her to serve him and assist in his goal, to join his forces despite her prior affiliation. Her Stockholm syndrome and mental instability have gone so far. She has done dozens of things her old self before the war would have detested, all in the name of Zanscare and for making Chronicle happy, Chronicle is her world, and the person blinding her to reality. She has allowed his ego, his inability to accept consequences for his actions, his holier than thou attitude and delusion of inability to all effect her and how she views the world. She only said that because she thought there was no way Uso could win, and the fact that he did win shattered her entire world view, it shattered everything she had believed in and what she had been doing. Queen Maria is gone, Chronicle lost, there is no reason to keep fighting, Uso has overcome everything. Everything she did to destroy him and ruin his life, all the hell she knowingly made him endure, it only strengthened his resolve and childlike optimism that it has allowed him to end Zanscare. Her entire delusion of Zanscare's righteous infallibility and invincible power was shattered in that single moment. Every justification for her horrible actions gone, everything in her new life gone, everything she was so confident about gone. Uso winning in her mind was proof he was scary and too powerful and had to die. She is so far gone she doesn't care that Zanscare has lost and the war just ended mere minutes before, she promises to hunt down Uso and kill him in Chronicle's place, not even caring for what she said about loving the victor of the duel anymore. Katejina is still blind to the fact that all her torturing Uso only made him stronger, she unknowlingly made him the perfect weapon against Zanscare. In the end she is about to gun him down. She has a clear shot and is dumbfounded by his actions, those that only a kid would make. She has become so lost and desensitized she says that he is acting like a child and is insulted by his behavior, Right when she is making the killing blow to Uso, she is literally blinded by the light of the childlike hope, optimism and compassion that Uso represents. She is unable to keep going in this state as she is swept up in the light. Uso even then after everything she has done refuses to kill her because he doesn't like killing people and doesn't believe she should die for her horrible actions, because in spite of everything he is a kid, and he still thinks and acts like one.

Tomino has said in interviews that Katejina was a character he had a hard time writing for because of how far gone she was by the end of the series. The mature girl who Uso risked his life to save, who was like a big sister to him, she was the person who vitriolically hated him the most by the end of the series. Tomino has said he never wanted Katejina to be redeemed and love Uso because that would be too happy of an ending for her considering what she has put Uso through and the things she has done, but he didn't want to kill her because reuniting her with her Zanscare comrades in death was too nice an ending for her too. Gundam isn't a series where everything works out in the end and people live happily ever after once the horrifying war is over. So he settled on something in between. Katejina survived, but she was blinded by Uso's light and as a result all the hate and all the feelings she experienced up to that point were expelled from her. She made it out of the incident as a broken women with nowhere to go, just a blind vagrant with no memories of the war or anything leading up to it, not even remembering Uso or Chronicle. Tomino said living with the price of her actions weighing her down for the rest of her life without even any memory of said actions was what he thought would be the most fitting sentence for her. Broken by the very thing she swore Uso fighting would take away, and becoming the very person she originally feared Uso would become. Broken by the very thing she tried to snuff out for Chronicle. It's sad, but her actions brought it upon her. No matter what you might think, if she never fought, if she never blindly gave in to Chronicle's manipulation, if she never let her heart get consumed by absorbing Chronicle's hatred for Uso, if she never fell for such a wicked man, she may have gotten a happy ending. Unlike many tragic characters in Gundam Like Four, Rosamia or Quess (I don't want to talk about Quess, her biggest character traits are just mental disorders, and I don't think that's good writing.) Katejina's tragedy is her own fault, and she has to live with the consequences of it. The "what could have been" for Katejina is so lovely because so many things in the series would have turned for the better, but instead making Uso suffer and killing so many people he holds dear only made her punishment fitting. I can't complain about how cruel her whole story was, because it ended justly, no matter how nice she was at the beginning of the show before being manipulated, she had become Chronicle's servant, and someone lacking in empathy, making it completely reasonable why she is one of the most hated antagonists in the entire series, and a character a lot of fans seem to despise. It seems like Tomino had every intention to make you despise her. She is introduced as the love interest for Uso, the surrogate older woman figure in his life and one of his only two friends. By the end she has centered her whole life around Chronicle and his hatred for Uso, to the point that she couldn't resume life as a person after the war. Chronicle is gone, Zanscare's entire military forces and governing officers were hurled into space with no hope of survival, Zanscare's Queen who's ideology convinced Katejina to join Zanscare was gone, there is peace, and she still insisted on killing Uso until the very end, no matter how pointless it was. This fate short of just flat out dying. was the only one where she could ever find peace.

Artist rendition of Katejina blind and alone at the end of the series

In the end though, Katejina made for one of the most compelling main antagonists in the series history, just because we saw her slowly fall and become worse and worse throughout the entire series and though I feel bad about what happened to her, such a hateful soul being forced let go of everything that defined it as a result of its own actions serves as a fitting reminder for what happens when we let others manipulate us and let hate dictate our actions. When you're seduced by the Devil, you yourself can become something far scarier than the devil without even realizing. She was digging her own karmic trench in the last half of the series, and now she has to live in it. I hope you enjoyed this week's article, it's shorter than usual, but I'm glad I got to write something more opinionated and directly from my point of view than something like say reviewing an entire series in the span of a a dozen lengthy paragraphs. Stay tuned for next week's article, where I continue the Universal Century Breakdown. Yes the name sucks, but I'm not changing it, I've made my bed with that name, now I must sleep in it

My breakdown of the end of Gundam's Universal Century part 2: "Gundam Hathaway" movie review or how Mafty shows us that only we can be the ones to bring about revolution, UC 0098-0105

It's nuts to me to think that other mecha shows like have gotten bigger than Gundam in the west despite many being popular almost entirely for things Gundam did first and better. "Oh but we see why you shouldn't make teenagers fight in these machines and it's the perfect glimpse into the creators depression he got while writing." I'm sorry but Victory Gundam checks off both those boxes and predates it by three years. Maybe I just don't understand the appeal. I think a similar way about how weird it is shows delegated to Sunrise's lower teams deemed as lesser priorities than (insert Gundam series being produced around whatever time) )  have gone on to become bigger hits in the west than Gundam, but I suppose not everybody can stomach an actual dark and serious franchise like this one. When they announced the newest Gundam movie was being released in the west as a Netflix exclusive I thought "this is perfect, it's just there on the biggest streaming platform for everyone to watch, they can easily check out this cool standalone story and maybe feel inclined to look into or watch other things in the Gundam franchise." I was one of many people who had a blind excitement for Gundam Hathaway because it seemed like more high quality animated content taking place in the UC, but my thoughts on why it would only help the franchise gain more exposure went up in flames when I remembered the source material in more detail.



Hathaway is newcomer friendly, sure, but it's also not a story with appeal to the typical anime viewer. To understand Gundam Hathaway is to understand its history too. Series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino typically never wrote supplementary canon because whenever he wrote something it was usually with the intent to make it into an anime or to publish as an alternate version of pre-existing work. An example of this is the novel Char's Counterattack Beltorchika's Children, which was based on his original script for Char's Counterattack before Sunrise demanded something a little less dark. Tomino envisioned a sequel to Char's Counterattack, but knew the dark story he had in mind would be turned down by Sunrise for not being a beginner friendly clean slate like they wanted the next Gundam project to be, So Tomino in 1989 wrote his sequel as a series of novels. These novels were 3 books in a series called "Hathaway's Flash". "Hathaway's Flash" was notable for being the only original supplementary material Tomino himself wrote barring High-Streamer and later Gaia Gear. Tomino had gone on record saying that adapting Hathaway's Flash was impossible. The novel was inspired by Beltorchika's Children, its story would be tricky to fit into the continuiy of the actual Char's Counterattack film, and it was instead a sequel to Beltorchika's Children. However when announcing Narrative Sunrise teased more content taking place in the late UC, much to the excitement of fans, both hardcore Gundam fans who love the UC and fans who never explored the UC beyond Unicorn because they're filthy casuals who can't handle peak Tomino. Later at the Gundam 40th anniversary expo we were presented with the news of a full on adaptation, three movies, each focusing primarily on one novel's series of events. My reaction was happiness and surprise. I couldn't believe they were adapting the popular novels Tomino said were impossible to adapt, and on the other hand I thought "Why didn't they adapt Hathaway's Flash sooner? If they want to make all Gundam fans happy adapting one of the last fleshed out UC stories by Tomino to have not been brought to screens would be perfect." Regardless I was happy to have seen the announcement.

Covers to the novels, illustrated by Haruhiko Mikimoto

The plot of Gundam Hathaway (I'll only cover the first movie/novel here and I'll just review the other two films when they come out) takes place in UC 0105, twelve years after Char's Counterattack and seven years after Narrative. The conflict over the independence of people in space and over newtypes is over. by UC 100 The Earth Federation has adopted Zeon as a governing force in space, but grew distrusting of people from space over time. (To be fair every major conflict in the UC barring the Laplace Incident (which wasn't even a thing in any media when the novels were written) was initiated by someone from space, so it's not an unreasonable line of logic.) The Earth Federation government becomes increasingly more corrupt and begins to deport poor people and people they deem undesirable to space so that they can turn the Earth into an elitist paradise. To prevent another war drastic measures are taken, with a new organization called "The Man Hunters" who hunt down and deport anyone on earth who dare speak out against the government and deport whoever they are ordered too. Hathaway Noa (son of famed battleship commander Bright Noa, who captained the protagonist battleship in every major Gundam anime from the original series up until Char's Counterattack) reflects on his actions in the second Neo Zeon war (the conflict from the Char's Counterattack film) and the trauma that haunts him in the aftermath. After reflecting on both sides of the war and their leaders Amuro and Char, he adopts the philosophies of both, using Char's belief that Humanity must be purged from the earth so it can heal, and Amuro's belief that humanity can change for the better. With this philosophy he joins up with a group of terrorists who fight for freedom from the oppression of The Earth Federation. Hathaway under the alias of Mafty Navue Erin unites people to join his cause and fight for his goals, with the hope of causing humanity to leave the earth and for The Earth Federation to crumble. 

Now first I want to cover some differences between the novel and the film like I did with Narrative, because there was naturally some things that needed to be changed in order for the movies to be made to fit the trilogy. The first major change was obviously Hathaway's involvement in the second Neo Zeon War. In the film he had to face the girl he loved on the battlefield, having seen her choose the Neo Zeon's side messing him up inside a bit. In Beltorchika's Children he was forced to kill her and never got over it. In the novel Hathaway stole the Ξ Gundam (pronounced "Xi Gundam") from Anaheim Electronics while they were transporting it to earth, while in the film Anaheim sold it to Mafty so they could make a greater profit from the conflict. All media based on the novel portray the main antagonist Kenneth Sleg as a white guy where as in the film he is black and got a complete redesign. I don't think that's a good or a bad thing, it's just a change so I am mentioning it. They actually did the same thing with Emerelda Zubin, who they also redesigned completely. They also redesigned Gigi Andalucia, who they also redesigned to look hot, but her design isn't really distant from her original design. Actually while we're on the topic of complete character redesigns. I want to bring up some of the change in visual style. No I'm not just talking about race-swapping Kenneth and Emerelda. The novel didn't get much visually aside from a few striking black and white illustrations that make damn good use of shading and look great, albeit simplistic. The character designs in the original novel that would be used in Gundam games for the next several years before the adaptation were supplied by Haruhiko Mikimoto. Mikimoto was considered one of the best character designers of his time and worked as a character designer on many acclaimed works such as Macross, Megazone 23, Gunbuster, Record of Lodoss War and after the first novel's publishing he would go on to be the character designer for the first Gundam OVA "Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket" in 1989. (Excellent OVA by the way, one of the best Gundam things out there) In addition to this he had previously collaborated with Tomino on the Beltorchika's Children novel a year prior to Hathaway's flash, where he did the illustrations there too. His designs followed a style that was visually similar to Yoshikazu Yashuko's work on Zeta and especially similar to Hiroyuki Kitazume's character designs from ZZ and Char's Counterattack, but with a unique flare. Most of his original character designs weren't used, and those that were just served as the basis for redesigns.

Character design this time was done by Pablo Uchida, Naoyuki Onda and Shigeki Kuhara. Now I checked thoroughly to see what else they worked on, and I didn't find much, suggesting that they are newcomers. For Uchida the best I could find was that before working on the Hathaway film trilogy he had been making promotional art based around Gundam Unicorn for Sunrise, and his art looks nice, I can see a clear influence from Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's style in his Gundam art and in his original artwork. Also of note is he hand painted a couple promo posters for the Gundam Hathaway film. Naoyuki Onda had previously done some work on Berserk, (popular manga/anime I know nothing about) but I couldn't find anything else beyond that. Lastly was Shigeki Kuhara, who I couldn't find much on. They did some promo art for One Piece and Space Battleship Yamato, and I read one source saying they worked on an anime called Soultaker, but I couldn't find anything beyond that. I couldn't find much, but aside from Pablo's Gundam Unicorn promo art none of them have had any major work on a Gundam project before. The character design is something I liked and didn't like. Hathaway's Flash is one of the darkest stories in the Universal Century, and with Mikimoto's style, the character designs were kind of cute and followed that very old school Gundam kind of design, so I understand thinking his designs wouldn't fit the dark and gritty story of Hathaway's Flash as adapted on the big screen. Mikimoto's style would really only shine in Gundam on War in the Pocket where the cute character design contrasted with the dark story shown to the viewer in a child's perspective. However Hathaway is a dark story about revolution with much more serious themes than just war. So I understand changing the designs to be more modern, more serious looking and to attract a more mature audience that might not be into all the "Gundam Build Fighters" spin offs and the new Witch From Mercury series airing on TV now as of writing this. I have no quarrel with changing Gigi to look like some kind of sexy mistress, she is the mistress of a politician so it fits, and I am fine with changing Kenneth and Emerelda's designs completely because the novel is obscure and their designs were very much like a lot of standard character designs in UC media around that time. I don't think anyone's going to have a conniption that they are both black and have new hair colors unless they are looking for things to complain about about, because we barely saw them outside of a few sparse monochrome two-tone illustrations. Same goes for redesigning Gawman, it's really such a small thing. The only two characters to look the same are Hathaway Noa and Lane Aime. Hathaway's design was changed to generally look a bit more tough and angular and it looks to fit more into the kind of character design seen in Unicorn and Origin. Lane looks basically the same, they just tweaked minor elements of it to fit more with the type of character design seen in Unicorn because Ban-Dai and Sunrise have made it clear by this point that Unicorn is what the UC looks like now from the moment they announced the UC NexT 100 project.

Mechanical designs were by Yasuhiro Moriki, who in my research has not gone on to do much other mecha stuff or any more work in Gundam, but he did some mechanical and weapon design for other shows like Akame Ga Kill, Hunter X Hunter, Ninja Robots and some Saint Seiya OVAs, and he has also done character design for Case Closed, Lupin III and Cardfight Vanguard. He's been a lot of places in the industry involved in some big name shows. He was actually brought on as an animation director for the film, which is nice because he was involved with the original novels, so it gives this more credibility as an adaptation. However four mechanical designers were brought on to do the design work for the film, including adapting Moriki's designs. The first is Hajime Katoki who has been a prominent mechanical designer for Gundam Victory, Gundam Wing and 0083 Stardust Memory and he did additional designs for Mobile Fighter G Gundam, as well as numerous Gundam manga and video games, so his name here adds a lot of weight to this project, and shows we're in good hands. With him is Nobuhiko Genma, who was a mechanical designer, key animation and a storyboard artist for many projects like the End of Evangellion and many Gundam ones like Unicorn, Thunderbolt and Reconguista in G. Then Kimitoshi Yamane who previously got his start working on Mobile Fighter G Gundam before moving on to 08th MS Team, MS Igloo, basically every Gundam Seed thing ever made, Gundam the Origin and Reconguista in G. Lastly is Seiichi Nakatani who worked as a mechanical designer and/or animation on Turn A Gundam, Gundam 00, Gundam Seed, Seed Destiny, Gundam Thunderbolt, Gundam Unicorn, Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans, Gundam Witch From Mercury, Gundam Wing and 08th MS Team, all this meaning he has worked heavily on the series from the 90s to this very day. Thankfully mechanical design is in good hands.

Moriki's Gundam designs were carried over pretty faithfully for better and for worse. Generally they made the designs look more in-line with the style seen in Unicorn and many other late era UC works, toning them down a bit. They look great with the additional detail and all the added line-work helps call back to F91, where Kunio Okawara was asked to put as many panel lines as he could on mobile suits because they would look better on the big screen with the added detail and movie level budget, and considering we are only 18 years away from F91's events it makes sense. My only problem with both designs is that they are very busy designs, and the added detail and more angular look only amplifies that problem by a lot. They look good, but also busy and kind of messy. The Penelope Gundam suffers more because of this. with a lot of the curvature lost and the design made to be a bit more compact (the original took up a lot of real-estate) now looks messy and a bit impractical, however I understand these changes because the original aside from the head doesn't even look too much like a Gundam, however a big part of that was that the Penelope was actually a model known as the Odysseus Gundam just with many next generation mobile suit parts built onto it, explaining the weird and excessive design in comparison to its rival Gundam which has all that built in. Of other notable designs we have the Messer, which was developed from the Geara Doga, with some aesthetics taken from the Jagd Doga. My issue with it is the same as the Penelope, it looks a bit weird and not like what you'd see in the UC. The movie's redesign is an undeniable upgrade, changing small things subtly to look more like what you would see in the UC. The last notable mechanical design seen is the Galcezon, which was designed as a flight support unit for the Messer, and based on the base jabber. It looks cool and like an upgrade of the base jabber. The movie version gave it a more rectangular design to make it look less like a turtle, and I think it does look better. Overall mechanical design was hit and miss. A lot of the designs were improved in the jump to film, but the originals were strange, and weird. On the other hand changing some introduced their own issues that weren't present with the originals.

Some of the characters saw fundamental changes too. Gigi's personality now fits more into the "rich girl" trope, while still retaining her observant and invasive personality from the novel. Gawman is a lot more of rough and tumble kind of guy in this version, Hathaway is a bit more quiet and collected in the film than in the novel. However the story is mostly a faithful adaptation, with the film ending shortly after Hathaway obtains his Gundam and has his first battle in it. There are some things I really want to praise this film for, the first being the animation, which is jaw-droppingly good. The film looks gorgeous and the added detail to the mecha designs seriously look so good with this high quality animation. The film is beautiful looking and worth watching for the animation alone. In addition to this, the action is great too. The overall direction in the film is really well done. The soundtrack done by Hiroyuki Sawano is excellent. Sawano has been involved in most UC related projects as a composer ever since Unicorn, which is warranted because his soundtrack was unironically one of the best parts of Unicorn and Narrative. Other returning staff from Unicorn are that OVA's editor Daisuke Imai, and writer Yasuyuki Moto who had written all the Build Divers shows since doing Unicorn. Directing it is Shuko Murase, who was a key animator on Stardust Memory and an animation director F91 and Victory, in addition to that he was the character designer for Gundam Wing and directed an episode of Gundam Evolution as well as two of his own shows with Ergo Proxy and Witch Hunter Robin, further showing we are in good hands. All the returning crew from Unicorn are sure to make many Gundam fans who haven't explored the UC beyond Unicorn and maybe Narrative happy, as well as other fans of the Universal Century happy. (no hard feelings, just me making a bit of fun of some of those people who don't want to check out the rest of the UC) In all fairness Unicorn is a really high quality OVA where the theatrical budget and scale really show in the best way, and Hathaway is no different. All the talent surrounding this work shows in the quality of the film itself, and it's a great film. 

Now I'm going to talk about some criticism with the film and the bad stuff about it as well. This first problem isn't exactly a problem with the film as much as it is the Hathaway's Flash story entirely. It works as a series of three novels you read back to back because a slow burn is accepted in that format, however the story isn't big enough for a proper OVA. The entire story takes place over the course of a small period of time. This means in faithfully adapting the first novel that also means the movie is a lot of set-up with the only pay off being the fight at the end and setting up for the next film. It just ends with everyone cutting their losses and planning their next move, which is kind of a weird way to end, but it does set up the next one and make you want to watch it, so a mission accomplished on that front. This issue will probably be remedied when the others are out and people can just watch all three of them back to back. I would actually say it's a bit too faithful to Tomino's original novel, because the things they changed were so minor, and they didn't change anything that would actually make it flow better as a film. On top of this in the Beltorchika's children novel Hathaway was forced to kill his love interest because he came to the realization she would kill important people if she didn't and he was faced with a life or death situation. The aftermath of it really messed him up, but he understood it had to be done. In the movie's version of events he had a freak out after losing his chance to try and reason with her to stop and just went absolutely berserk in a blind rage, leading to some fans finding him a pretty despicable person in the aftermath, and this movie isn't really going to make anyone who felt that way change their minds. A lot of people say the designs of the two Gundams are horrible, ridiculous or absurd. However (and I'm not making this up) there is a lore reason for it. It was the fact that mobile suit designs were getting increasingly complex and bigger that helped lead to the idea of making smaller mobile suits. Anaheim's first commission like this didn't meet expectations and so The Earth Federation's own mobile suit development think tank SNRI began designing their own mobile suits. The Penelope having a difficult time maneuvering with all that cumbersome gear and equipment built onto its basis is supposed to represent the problems with overwhelming force of the Federation's increasingly oppressive rule, as opposed to the Ξ Gundam's design. Though to be fair this does make their confrontation one big cliché metaphor. Another critique I see is that it has no impact. Firstly I must say that the reason is kind of obvious, that being that it's in a time frame we don't see hardly at all in Gundam media. The novel's events and the film does help show why The Earth Federation is weak by the events of F91 and Victory, and in Tomino's own far future Gundam novel Gia Gear its main character is directly pitted against The Earth Federation's Manhunters organization. My last complaint is the CGI. I mentioned before that the animation is beautiful and some of the best I've seen in recent memory, but that strictly applies to the 2D animation. I mentioned in the previous Blogspot post on this subject why I don't like CGI in Gundam, but I'm still okay with it overall to an extent. However the CGI here being the way it is next to beautiful 2D animation makes the awkward or lesser aspects of it stand out much more. 



Overall I loved it and am very pleased and happy with the overall work. the changes made to the film to make it match contninuity with the animted works like Char's Counterattack, removing some of the things in the novel that added to and built up the story a bit, such as changing Hathaway's involvement in the second Neo Zeon war and how it affected him leading into the events into the story twelve years later. However the blemishes and issues with this film do little to take away from the film. It's adapting one of the best novels in Gundam's 40+ year history, and it's one of Tomino's darkest Gundam stories. It seemed to work in getting new Gundam fans and old Gundam fans, grossing more than twice that of the previously highest grossing Gundam film at the box office with more than 2 billion yen, and helped revitalize interest in the franchise to people who had lost interests or not checked it out before, of course this is in Japan. Overall they made it decently newcomer friendly. It's only real connection to the rest of the UC is Char's Counterattack, and even then they show you flashbacks of some of the important scenes that really shaped Hathaway during that film anyways, so it's not a big deal. It's nothing like Narrative where having seen the first three Gundam shows and Unicorn was paramount to fully understanding and enjoying film (I don't care what Fukui says Narrative does not fully work if you haven't seen some prior UC works). As it stands the novels couldn't be taken as canon at all because it's a sequel to Beltorchika's Children, but the first film being very faithful adaptation means you probably won't have to worry about missing out on anything from the other two volumes of the novel in the next two films even with the changes made to slot it into canon. The first film is largely just a character study of the main character and sees him coming to terms with his actions and what he is going to do, making the story pretty self contained for the most part though I won't spoil if that changes later on. As it stands I give the first film an 8.5/10 which will definitely turn into a 9 or a 9.5 if the other two films are as good if not better and pay off well what this film set up.

I intended to talk about more stuff here, but I just had so much to say about F91 (probably gonna split that into two articles, one about F91 and another about its sequel) and I have been busy this week. Hopefully next week I'll get to cover it, if I don't have enough time I have a back up post ready to go. If you gained new insight on the Hathaway movie I'm glad, if you disagree with my thoughts on the film or what I said and wish to start a civil discussion than by all means leave a comment or reach out to me and I'd love to start a civilized discussion or debate over it.