Mar 27, 2012
I have mixed feelings about Gundam AGE. I want to see it succeed, but I feel its currently failing to live up to not only many fans expectations for a Gundam show. And also apparently failing to meet the stated goal of bringing in younger viewers as an entry-level Gundam series. As an example: Kamen Rider (another well-known childrens franchise) has 4x the ratings in a similar timeslot.
Animation:
Being a Gundam series, Sunrise has spared no expense on the budget. Reports put it at double the budget of the average show. Taking place in zero-gravity quite often, the characters smoothly float around in a realistic manner.
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The mobile suits and ships in the combat scenes look very nice, although the shader they use on the Diva makes it look rather cartoony. The scenery inside the colonies can also be quite good at times. Unfortunately due to the rather simple character and art designs, all that money only really shines during the fighting scenes, and not in the character interaction scenes.
Story:
Since the show is targeting a younger audience, but they still want to entice the older fans to watch it, the writing can be a bit haphazard at times. There are times where the characters pull off genuinely ingenuitive tactics to outsmart the enemy. Many times though, they seem to do frustratingly stupid things that cause a scene to be drawn out unrealistically. The small scale of many of the conflicts also leave one wondering how this is considered a world-enveloping battle with the UE. IMHO they could have done a better job of providing a story that was easy for younger viewers to follow, while still providing battles that involved smart combat decisions.
My biggest gripe related to story and writing I would have to say is the AGE System. Some of the equipment it comes up with really shouldn't be effective at all and is rather silly. And the Deus Ex Machina factor of it always coming up with exactly what the MC needs to bail him out of danger becomes trite very quickly. This can really dampen the emotional draw of the battles at times.
Characters:
Keeping in mind the young age of Flit to start the series, I thought he acted appropriately most of the time. My only major quibble was, as I said above, some of the writing for his battles was really stupid and could make one "facepalm."
I liked most of the supporting adults in the cast as well. Grodek is a really awesome captain, and Millais is a competent junior officer. Granpda is rather ridiculous looking, like he's straight out of a 70s anime, but I give it a pass because of the target audience.
I thought Asemu was a great character when first introduced, but the more I see of him, the less I like him. While Flit uses skill and practice, Asemu is more like a mix of early-Kamille from Zeta Gundam, and the whiny outbursts of Shinn -- complete with the lack of skill and crutching on superior equipment that Shinn did. The dynamic between him and Zeheart also seems much more "DEEP" than being actually nuanced.
Both of the female lead characters introduced so far, as is typical of non-UC Gundam stories it seems, are rather useless tag-along type characters that are IMHO overshadowed by far better written female secondary characters. They don't bring anything worthwhile to moving the story along, they don't have any real skills, and they generally lack any sort of character development. They're basically just the de-facto baby-maker to "pop out" the next generation of pilot in the story.
In conclusion:
Sunrise tapped popular childrens' entertainment company Level5 to write the scenario and create character designs for Gundam Age. Unfortunately their expertise doesn't appear to be translating very well into the Gundam universe. If you are an older Gundam fan, don't expect a lot of intelligent combat. There IS some, but it's few and far between. But if you aren't too picky, the current offering isn't nearly as terrible as say, Seed Destiny. A lot of the supporting cast are really great to watch.
As for kids -- it's an okay show, but the slow pacing and uneven storytelling doesn't hold the viewers attention as well as it could.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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