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| THIS IS AN ANIME ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS THE MANGA BEYOND THIS EPISODE. ---------------------------------------- A little slower than the first movie, but good nonetheless. Greater character development in this one, and it does have well developed and realistic characters this series. |
VeethornJul 5, 2021 6:40 PM
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| I remember Amuro's crush on Matilda being the only time that I almost liked Amuro. Same this time round. Still don't like Amuro though |
| 頭脳は子供、見た目は大人！ ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ |
| This part shure was better than the first one and despite not being too interesting,i think it wasn't at all a waste of time."Old,but gold." like people say. Pheefa said: Still don't like Amuro though Tell me about it...such a nerve-wrecking wimp he is. |
 "Only the dead have seen the end of war". ~Plato~ |
| I enjoyed this so much more than the first movie because it put the characters, particularly Amuro, Kai, and Sayla, at the forefront. I think the idea of Amuro leaving White Base in the beginning was kind of ridiculous. But, thankfully, that didn't last long. From then on, it was very good, if slightly rushed. I dislike, however, how little Char was in this film. Hell, he didn't appear until over an hour into it and was still only in the movie for what? 15 minutes? I kind of wonder why he is considered as an anime icon, as he hasn't really done much these two movies. Anyway, I'll give this an 8/10. |
Ston3_FreeN7Mar 28, 2011 2:35 PM
| "Yes, I have been deprived of emotion. But not completely. Whoever did it, botched the job." - Geralt of Rivia |
| Kai is so silly, hiding a girl on board even though he knows she's a spy. At least he's more motivated now. I too found this movie to be more entertaining than the first. The only thing I didn't like are those little kids who are just plain annoying. I was looking forward to getting rid of them at that base, but no :| |
MonochromeMay 31, 2011 4:31 PM
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Yeah this scene was nicely done |
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| Shinji is like amuro on crack |
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| Lovely. These movies manage to cut off all the needless fluff from the story, while focusing on the best moments. The ending scene was hype as fuck. |
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| I've lost count on how many times Amuro got slapped. |
| While the story told in the movie should be really engaging, it suffers from various little things: A bit confusing at times (Ryu's sortie before his death...). Matilda's death lacks emotion (well, to be sincere, The Origin also did leave me almost emotionless about it). Tachi does not "exist", we see merely his head when he dies. The way the movie tries too hard to hammer you the "Newtype" idea in the head. (I don't know about the TV show but The Origin succeed to convey the idea without the need to repeat the term so often. The battle of Odessa should not have been skipped like that but rather remade. I am glad Kai got some spotlight time, I was not expecting it because of the format. It also serves the bigger view of Gundam (to talk about the war). The fact the Federation looks down on the White Base is a bit soften but at least is more visible than in the first movie where it was entirely erased. Of course, almost every event that occured in this part was interesting, making "Soldiers of Sorrow" looking superior to the previous introductory chapter. Enjoyment: 5/5 Score: 8/10 ====== @St0rmblade I'm not sure about your expérience in this domain so here are two Tomino antics (among many, many others I'll leave you the pleasure to discover by yourself): - when you tell an "enclosed" story (typically, a wandering ship's crew, maybe a wandering battalion ), always ALWAYS have a child (minimum). The younger, the better: a young child who can't talk yet, a baby... an embryo ! - during a war, people die. It's "normal". It might be a "big event" for some (characters) while others don't care the slightest. So... why make a character's death romantic/important looking, why even have it always on screen? No reason. So prepare: characters will die, while the series will continue to go on "like nothing happened". (the worst case being in ZZ, where a certain death felt like the director itself forgot about it: a "main character" dying in the middle of the main group, no character having a semblance of reaction) (I wanted to phrase this 2nd habit better but didn't find the words) About Char: he mainly went out of favour after his failures and had/have to approach another high rank (he's mainly around the Zabbi if I remember). To have a fluid and ( geographically) coherent tale, the best way to approach the 0079 story is to read its retelling by the charadesigner in his manga The Origin. About Ral: great, right. ^^ (too bad there was miscommunication issues around his design if I remember well) PS: those little war orphans might be annoying (getting all the scenes made for very young peoples) but it's nice to see some. Also, one of them will have one of the two best pay-offs of Zeta (TV), among the best ones of the whole 1000+ years saga. |
Rei_IIIMar 30, 2020 6:22 AM
| Indeed, soldiers of sorrow. The Ramba Ral part of the anime is my favorite. |
 Novels I have read/am reading pending approval: since November 10 2022 |
| GundamInfo have it up until September 21st |
Novels I have read/am reading pending approval: since November 10 2022 |
| It's hard to believe that in the next movie gonna end the story, it feels on half way. |
| I'm really confused why we spent so much time with Kai :p especially when we could have seen more Ryu so it would be more significant when we lost him. I didn't remember Matilda being so prominent in the series, but I guess it just seems abnormal because of all the other stuff that was stripped away. Obvi better than movie 1, but I get the feeling 3 will blow this out of the water. |
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| This was certainly better than the first movie, that's for sure. It wasn't drastically better, but I found myself enjoying this film significantly more than its predecessor. I'm not sure if it is because the characters had more development or the worldbuilding began coming together, but I do believe this to be better. Of course, words mean nothing unless you can back them up, so how about we get into the why. Why was this film better than the first? What did it do right? Wrong? I'll try my best to express my thought process behind what it improved upon, what it didn't, and why my final score is still, relatively speaking, low. When I typed my discussion comment yesterday, I began by explaining what parts of the first film I enjoyed, mainly because I enjoyed fewer aspects of the film than I disliked. This time, thankfully, the opposite holds true, so I will begin with what I didn't enjoy about Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow (which is a super dope name, by the way). Firstly, some aspects of this film just outright didn't improve over its predecessors, such as the overall animation quality and production values. I won't take this into serious consideration though, because as @Rei366 directed me towards yesterday (or today?), this was technically produced on the budget of a TV show, so I should correspondingly review it as one (which is a totally fair point to make and an oversight on my part). So in much simpler terms, the film still looks like a TV show from the 70s. What else did I not like? Well, I personally didn't enjoy the lack of information that was given to me, the viewer. One could correctly make the assertion that this is simply because of time constraints. Personally, I wonder if a fourth film would have been a viable option. By having another 2.5 hours to work with, more information could have been presented to the viewer, such as my biggest question right now: "Where did all of the refugees go?" I think I remember a fleeting exchange saying they would take some of the refugees, but I don't remember one about all leaving the White Base. Why and where did they all go? Seriously, this is legitimately bothering me. Was that in the original TV show? Most of the characters are still quite cookie cutter as well; there haven't been many improvements in that department. However, I still believe the "character" department to have improved from the first to the second movie, and I'll get more into that later. The movie was a tad bit slow at times, in my opinion. I found myself yawning and getting bored here and there, but it wasn't painfully boring or anything of the sort. Now let's get positive! Let's dive into what I enjoyed about this movie. Firstly, everything good about its predecessor carried over. Fights, character designs (the various different Gundam designs here were awesome as well), the stuff of that sort was fine-great (broad range, I know). The Gundam's design is still the coolest part of the show, but it will be difficult to top that. The lore took more of a backseat here in favor of some new form of human called a Newtype, which apparently didn't even exist in this part of the movie during the TV show. From my understanding, Newtypes play a large role in the later Gundam universe (or something like that) but they were only brought up in the last eight episodes of the TV show, give or take. So they brought them here super early for it to make more sense, which seems to have been a good move. I particularly enjoyed the psychological effect being dubbed a Newtype brought, such as Kai sarcastically calling Amuro a Newtype. The soundtrack noticeably improved, with some old fashioned Japanese songs actually making me bump to the rhythm. Nothing even close to memorable, but there were no bad tracks. Voice acting seems to have slightly improved, with Bright and Char giving the best performances (they sound the like the most experienced voice actors, to be fair). The children were annoying as fuck, though. Isn't that a skimpy outfit for a child like that? I digress. Let me delve into what this movie did drastically better than the first: Character development. Two characters, in particular, got a shit-ton of development in this movie: Amuro and Kai. Let's start with Kai. Kai was completely a black horse for me. I hated him as soon as he originally showed up in the first movie, and I hated him for most of this one too, until he got his little arc with Miharu. Suddenly, after that arc, his character became more likable, relatable, and grounded. That kind of development was unexpected and awesome to see. Amuro got some good stuff here as well. It feels like some of his development was cut out following his return to the White Base (as in they accepted his return too fast for someone that effectively deserted) but his development on and off the White Base made him quite a good protagonist. Unfortunately, Char wasn't mentioned much here, except for an apparent grudge he holds against the Zabis, but he's listed as a main character for the third movie so I'm sure we will see more of him there. To conclude this essay, this movie made a noticeable, but not significant, improvement over its predecessor. Things are finally starting to come together, and I'm interested to see how this movie trilogy will conclude. If it is able to maintain this upward slope, I think I can expect great things not only from the third movie but from the Gundam franchise in its entirety. I give Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow a 6/10. |
| I enjoyed the 1st movie better. I felt like watching some recap in the 1st half. The character development was too fast and I cant feel any emotion. I remember back then while watching the tv version, Amuro was Shinji before Shinji. This movie failed to show us why Noa didn't not seem to trust Amuro at first. But I also hated Noa the way he treated Amuro. Amuro maybe whiny but the kid showed a lot of promise. He should be grateful but instead he was thinking of getting him off the Gundam. The 2nd half was too slow, the drama with Kai and Miharu felt like forced. Well this movie compiliations suffered from originally being a tv anime. |
| This movie surely had more action packed up into it than the previous one. It's both an advantage and a disadvantage, imo. It was engaging, but the pacing suffered quite a bit, with some scenes feeling rushed or abrupt. This is especially noticeable when there's some distinct piece of music playing in the scene, and it just suddenly cuts. Also the kids are pretty annoying. They scream too loud into my headphones, don't contribute anything to the story (don't even begin with this ridiculous bomb stuff) and make it harder to take Gundam seriously. Like, I don't want to see screaming kids next to war tragedies and all that. It worsens the experience. On the bright side, I noticed that M'Quve and some other minor characters were voiced by Kaneto Shiozawa, THE seiyuu of Paul von Oberstein from LOGH! I find it very enjoyable to recognize seiyuus I love in such an old classic. As for character development, I expected it to go in a different direction. Apart from Amuro leaving the ship in the freaking desert (also Bright was literally sleeping after he ditched his main pilot, now that's a reliable captain that cares about internal security), I wanted Kai to go in a different direction. The scene with him mourning Miharu actuallu made me cry, and I hoped for him to realize how stupid the war is, make up some intense emotional scene about it and leave the ship back to Miharu's brother and sister. It would be so much better than him just staying basically the same guy, this arc felt wasted. We got literally 1 cut with him saying something about determination. Ugh. Also I'd very much like to know more about Char. What was he doing after the death of Garma? In the previous movie we were shown a brief scene with him drinking in a bar, and now he's commanding somewhere again. Sayla shows some potential though. I hope she'll grow into an interesting and conflicted character not defined just by her brother and her Zion origin. I also really liked Ramba Ral, he was a cool side character. Finally, character deaths are ofter too...unnoticeable? I want to feel more about them. But anyway, my complaints are not too severe, they're just things that were boggling my mind during the watch. Overall the movie was pretty enjoyable, 7-8/10. ------------------------ @Rei_III Thanks for the details on Tomino, gives more context to his decisions about the movie. I'm not sure whether I'm buying his argument about children (maybe it's only expected given the intended audience), but I'm not against them *per se* anyway. It's just the way they're handled that can make them annoying. For example, I think Marie in Anno's Nadia was a great child character - not annoying, fun to watch + adorable interactions with some other characters. Though she was one of the main characters, and these Gundam kids are just kinda...there? Running somewhere in the background, appearing in random moments and all that. Though I'll be looking forward to that scene you're referring to. As for the war, I kinda understand Tomino, but not *all* characters need to die this way in order to construct a good story. Some just demand more attention to have some impact (on main characters for instance, even if those dead are secondary). Also, I actually got interested in Gundam after stumbling upon The Origin manga and being blown away by the artwork, so I kinda promised myself to finally start watching Gundam because I had quite enough reasons already, so that I eventually lay my hands on The Origin (there's also an OVA but afaik it's not a full adaptation) |
St0rmbladeMar 30, 2020 12:42 PM
She held this frame for a solid 12 seconds.  |
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| I just watched episodes 15-30 of the TV series so I could watch the second movie since its based around that amount of episodes. The film retells episodes 16-30 with parts of episode 31 (its quite long): Another scene that I would have liked if they had kept it is the scenes of Fraw arguing with the White Base about what to do with Amuro once he returns, they were right to cut the rest of the episode but that scene was important for characterization. I like that they didn't make a tremendous drama with Ryu's death like in the original. The film was much better than the first, especially the battle in Jaburo, except for two deleted scenes that are not worth much, and is superior to the original version in some aspects. Generally, the pacing is better and the animation is still decent for a movie of that time. They lowered the excessive drama of several characters after Ryu's death, which in the original was exaggerated for a secondary character. Also, the drama of Amuro leaving the White Base was not paid much attention either and they cut an important scene where Fraw defends Amuro from the White Base, this scene and the episode that was deleted were important to show character development, they could have keep the scenes but eliminated the conflict. I also did not like when Sayla is talking to Cozun about Char, they made it more obvious than in the original series since they are not even speaking quietly while the rest listen to the whole conversation. And finally, the order of Matilda's appearances were out of place, she appeared and disappeared in the middle of important events and it didn't make much sense. Should I recommend this movie or episodes15-30/half of episode 31 from the TV series? -If you want character development and interactions, watch the TV series. -If you want better animation and a more plot-based Gundam, watch the movie. Personally, unlike the first movie where the pacing was worse and they eliminated important episodes, here they did not eliminate anything serious, in fact it even better than the original version in several aspects. I say watch the movies instead of episodes 15-30 / half of episode 31 although you can watch both and compare. 7/10 for the movie. |
| All weebs creatures of the galaxy, hear this message. Those of you who listen will not be struck by western animation. You will no longer know hunger, nor pain. Your Anime have come to lead you now. Our strength shall serve as a luminous sun toward which all intelligence may blossom. And the impervious shelter beneath which you will prosper. However, for those who refuse our offer and cling to their western animation ways… For you, there will be great wrath. |
| pacing again. This felt like non stop action. and again the character developement happens in insanely short intervals. Amuro went from not wanting to fight to wanting to prove he is a good pilot last time, standard so far. Here suddenly they bitch about him getting cocky while he has done nothing wrong, to him leaving, coming back, getting grounded, getting told to take over the gundam in what felt like 10 minutes. They went from "we are short handed and he is already used to the gundam" to "we dont need you" for no reason at all. Even funnier they said Sayla could pilot the gundam while 5 minutes earlier she stole it and could not use it at all lmao. And of course he is supposed to take over once things got heated.. The world building happens mainly through narrator explanation which is fine for me. the setting is still weird though. Its like the Federation barely shows interest in their first Mobile Suit. And about the frontlines.. White Base went from somewhere to Side 7 to pick up Gundams to come to South America on earth, which also has Gundams. While Zeon is right on their doorstep? I know the setting from other Gundams but I expected the foundation to be a bit more solid. If I did not already know half the basics I would be coonfused by the setting. I know Char is awesome, but in the movies so far his only accomplishment was killing his friend. Think about it, he did nothing but lose to the gundam. |
| "This emotion is mine alone. It is for Madoka alone." - Homura or how I would descripe Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica. |
| Great, just great! The fights are awesome, while the animation looks old, the choreography is very good and the fights feel intense. Often I thought children are annoying in Gundam, but those 3 are cool and help the adults :D Best part was the song "Soldiers of Sorrow" in the Jaburo battle, the upbeat piano style made me laugh really hard at first, but it actually was fitting when Zeon got kicked in the butt. 9/10 |
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| Watching this to refresh my memory about the storyline. Gotta say, I sympathize with Amuro a lot more than I did wathching tv series. The kid can't get a break - go fight in the Gundam, don't go in the Gundam, we can do without you just fine, then, ah, we can't do without you after all, so go in the Gundam again! Just make up your mind! I don't remember, maybe there was more explanation into this in the series, but Bright was too harsh in that matter and inconsistent. Consider that Amuro is still a teenager, with not a very stable mind at this point, and in the middle of a war he was never trained for. The boy needs therapy, asap! There was a lot of silly plots in this one, most of which revolved aroud romance of some kind. That's just isn't a thing that is going to work in gundam... of course, they'll all die. The most sad was Hamon and Ramba Ral, I really liked these characters. Kids are still annoying as ever. |
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| More gripping then the first movie, at least from the perspective of someone who's never seen the series and going into these movies as a first impression of the first gundam generation. |
| I have a third testicle that gives me psychic powers |