Ranked #198

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Second Season

Now, I thoroughly enjoyed Gundam 00 Season 1. Great characters, great action, and best of all, a wonderful complex plot. Throw in a good dosage of how it relates the present day world and great voice acting, and you’ve got a recipe for one of the most popular series now.

Now, Season 2 started out with a lot of potential. The main characters were reintroduced very well, preserving the characteristics they were known for and refining them, along with offering a slightly different side of their personality. Some characters did change for the worse, but this is necessary to create the strife needed for the story to build. And it did build. A new faction came into play here, and some of the old characters on the antagonistic side in Season 1 are not happy with the new world order. New characters are introduced very well and immediately create a third side to the previous two-sided strife in Season 1. There are many characters that are struggling to find themselves in the new world order, so the series has a bit of a depressive feeling to it. Not even Lockon’s lighthearted comments helped much here.

However, as well as the introductions to the new characters were, the development of many of these characters had something to be desired. It falls into the same trap that swallowed Code Geass R2, which is to let new characters languish in development. However, while R2 introduces too many characters and has to shift back and forth awkwardly between the factions, Gundam 00 introduces fewer new characters and makes the shifts amongst them much more fluidly, going for "Let’s integrate all the factions into the episode" rather than Geass R2’s "focus here for one episode, focus there for another." 00 also focuses on the protagonists much better. The antagonists (that fat blonde guy), along with Bushido, along with the Innovators, could have used more development, but at least I got a better idea of their true personalities better than the Knights from Geass R2. If there was one glaring complaint about 00 S2’s characterization, it would come in the form of antagonistic development in the form of the true mastermind, Ribbons Almark. An antagonist is supposed to create a feeling of hatred in your heart, or you fall for the antagonist’s plot and cheer on the protagonists’ failure. But the main feeling I get from Ribbons is ambivalence. "Your comrade just got killed." *no emotion* "You just got betrayed." *no emotion* "Your test subject just wrecked your newest Mobile Suit." *no emotion* "Your plan to take over the world has caught a HUGE snare." *Whatever* All he does is sit on a MAGENTA couch and twiddle on his thumbs, no matter if his plans succeed or fail. For someone who’s the mastermind, he doesn’t like to get involved much, like he’s a puppetmaster with really long strings on his puppets. Problem is, he feels disconnected from the plot and action, and well, let’s just say that 00 S2’s biggest fault after this is plot management.

Now, the first… 2/3 of the series was developed very well. We get to see the main characters discover a different side to themselves and we are able to supplement the change with what we know about the characters in season 1. But after that, the series starts to stumble. The audience is waiting for a return of aspects that distinguished the characters from season 1. In creating a different dimension for the characters, they gave up the platform built up for the characters in season 1. Like Hallelujah, whose reintroduction was too sudden. Welcome, but not well done. Thus, after about the 2/3 mark, the series starts to wander and lose its footing. The focus is on little plot elements that need time to develop, but the producers only had so many episodes of plot to work with. Thus, the big plot elements were placed on the back burner and left to overcook. The series has to rush to resolve these big issues, but didn’t get to do so until the last 3 episodes or so, so it was a miracle that episodes 23 and 24 didn’t feel too rushed. What would have been nice is if they started focusing on these big plot elements around… episode 20 or so? But it’s no big surprise that episode 25 felt like you were landing an airplane but hadn’t slowed down enough. You do stop, but all your passengers are thrown 2 rows forward in your attempt. The series was haphazardly wrapped up as a result.

But don’t get me wrong: Gundam 00 S2 is still worth your time to watch if you enjoyed S1. There’s still a lot to like, such as the more complex story, matured characters, and many characters just finding their true selves during their personal struggles. I’m not sure if I just expected too much, though. It’s still a likable series, but it just tossed away its potential for becoming a masterpiece about 2/3 of the way in. read more

This review will focus on both seasons of Gundam 00.
Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is the latest installment in the incredibly massive Gundam franchise produced by Sunrise. This is also the first Gundam series I watched so I will not go into differences to other Gundam series that I see so many of the older fans do.

Story: Most of the story on Gundam 00 is based heavily on war, the countries who suffer from oppresion, the people who want the war to stop, and the corrupt goverments who control the people. To be quite honest I wasnt crazy with the story but I also didn't dislike it, i thought it showed a pretty realistic view on how a corrupted goverment and military organizations can cause the murder of millions for their own benefits and yet still keep their citizens unaware and/or on their side while they do so. I wouldnt lie if I said I saw a little bit of parallels with what is happening in the world today, but thats for another time.

Animation: The animation stayed constantly solid the entire series and it had some really cool and flashy effects during battles which made the show a real graphical beauty. Also watching this on HD 720p really makes you appreciate the effort put on the animation. I have nothing bad to say this. Although I will admit some gundam designs on the second season were getting a bit weird....

Sound: One of the great aspects of the series was its very varied and good soundtrack. It made a lot of the battle scenes very exciting to watch. The voice acting was also very well done, and i really enjoyed it. A lot of "pew pew" also made me XD

Characters: Gundam 00 has an incredibly huge cast of characters which some I never even managed to remember their names, there is a large variety of characters that you learn to love or hate in this show. I personally was able to enjoy the characters and being able to see them mature while adapting to the changes in the world was very enjoyable. Even though the show gave the short end of the stick to some of what I thought were very interesting side character with a lot of potential, and gave us some character that I just absolutely detest and hate, Gundam 00 did a good job on giving us interesting characters.

Enjoyment: I loved this series mainly because of the battles, the battles are definitely the best part of the anime and there is plenty of them so I always went into every episode looking for some great action and Gundam was able to deliver that every time.

Overall: There really isnt a reason to not like this show, it is a solid mecha action anime with some solid plot and characters and features some great animation to boot. If you have never watched a Gundam anime before i think this one is a good one to start watching, I had never watched a Gundam anime before but I for one am now a fan of the series and will definitely be watching the upcoming gundams from now on.
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