There's much to say about Gundam AGE--from the time it was first unveiled, the fanbase went crazy in anger thinking it was going to be some childish take on the franchise, things like how the Gundam wasn't even going to be piloted but controlled from afar by the AGE device, that they were going to remove any grimdark from the show, and so on. In any case, AGE is a significant departure in look from the grittyness of the previous Gundam, Gundam 00--00 had darker, mature-ish character and mecha designs, and AGE has a look more associated with children's anime (no surprise then that this show's writer and character designer also worked on projects like Inazuma Eleven). Despite all this, the show isn't really "childish" in any sense, and ends up being a typical Gundam show--or a sad attempt at being one.
Yes, Gundam AGE is no doubt the worst Gundam out there. Okay, I haven't seen fan disfavourite SEED Destiny outside of the first few episodes, but it'll have to be pretty bad to beat what writer Akihiro Hino and director Susumu Yamaguchi have presented us with here. They've presented us with a show that could have been a very solid show but instead refuses every attempt at being good.
Basically, Gundam AGE is a "multigenerational Gundam", which focuses on protagonist Flit Asuno, his son, and his grandson, all of which pilot three generations of the titular Gundam AGE. From that summary alone, I'd expect a very interesting plot involving intense familial themes, some romance, and perhaps some grand villainous threat that threatens the Asuno clan and their friends and their society over the decades. Instead this is merely a setup for infinite amounts of squandered opportunities at interesting plot threads. Take the expected romantic themes--relationships are reduced to little more than a casual mention at best, with pathetic attempts at creating love triangles that the concept art for the later characters made painfully obvious which girl "won", seeing how each son resembles their mother. "Won" belongs in quotes because little to no characterisation is given to any of the girls and love interests besides perhaps Yurin, who is a carbon copy of Lalah Sune from the original 0079 Gundam. Speaking of Yurin, we also get a scene so bizarre early on that it seems like a parody of the battle involving Lalah, Amuro, and Char from the original Gundam, involving a psychotic little kid as Char. Oh, that scene is also completely serious and sets up one of the major story threads, something so bad it puts all the borrowing of the original MSG plot Gundam SEED did to shame.
That's only a taste of the plot you'll find in this show. Gundam AGE effectively has three story arcs separated by timeskips, centering around Flit in the first, his son Asem in the second, and his grandson Kio in the third. It wouldn't be a stretch to say the first is "based on" Mobile Suit Gundam, the second on Zeta Gundam, and the third on ZZ Gundam. The first arc is pretty much junk--a shadowy faction with strange mobile suits are blowing up colonies, but it mostly ends up being a mixture of filler and dumb ripoffs of the original Gundam. The rest is better though, if only because it gets to answer the question of what Gundam protagonists and their comrades are doing decades after the events of their show, and Gundam AGE delivers for the second arc, which ends up being the only salvageable part of the show in the end. Here we see Flit's friend Woolf as a grizzled badass, Flit himself playing a role equivalent to the villainous Titans of Zeta Gundam, and that's sadly about it, because while the second arc presents an interesting story, it squanders its true potential by wasting about a third of its space with rather pointless high school filler arc that does little but set up the character of Gundam AGE's Char clone Zeheart. The arc also unceremoniously wastes an interesting plot point by killing off one of the most interesting characters of the first generation for no reason only a few minutes after he's reintroduced for the second arc. But at least we have a solid plot--angry humans on Mars want to take back the Earth, and start a total war with the Earth Sphere humans, which amounts to typical Gundam stuff. Oh, and look for a ripoff of one of the ending scenes of Gundam Wing (or Char's Counterattack, which Gundam Wing borrowed from) because Gundam AGE can't resist stealing famous Gundam scenes for its own use (although I admit this scene is pretty cool).
The third arc and the finale are what ends up utterly killing the show. Everything comes together to produce a flat nothing, with a corny plot development leading to protagonist Kio Asuno turning into perhaps the whiniest Gundam protagonist ever. This plot development involving him going to the home colony of the Mars humans ends up being horribly, horribly done, even though the writers no doubt intended it to be one of the tearjerking moments of the show. This also shows Gundam AGE's love for killing off characters in dramatic death scenes when they barely have been given any character development. Not that that stops them from giving a full episode devoted to a minor character introduced only the previous episode which goes into detail about her life, only for her to be killed off at the end of it. Nice misplaced priorities there, eh?
The ending is as bad as you'd expect by this point. The main villain reveals his plans, which are so utterly, utterly stupid they don't make logical sense even by Gundam villain standards. The Char clone of the show--who like most Char clones, comes across as fairly sympathetic for most of the show--chooses to go along with such idiocy and redoubles his efforts. And for the finale, expect a complete anticlimax--some people die in pointless ways, and the final episode is solely about a fight against a character who makes his first appearance in that same episode and has almost no personality. Wonderful.
Discounting the horribly wasted plot, Gundam AGE isn't all bad. While the artstyle and fight scenes are nowhere near the visceral glory of Gundam 00, for what it's worth everything is smoothly animated and sufficient. The character designs aren't that bad once you get used to them--it could be Hisashi "sameface" Hirai of Gundam SEED after all! The mecha designs are also pretty great, although the majority of the enemy mobile suits look like they'd better fit in a non-Gundam mecha anime, what with the draconic design of many of them. And compared to other Gundam shows (looking at you, SEED), AGE limits the number of Gundams floating around--there's a grand total of four Gundams (plus "backpacks") in the show. Three are the protagonist Gundams, each with nice allusions to the original RX-78 Gundam, the Zeta Gundam, and the ZZ Gundam respectively. The fourth is the Gundam of one of the villains, featuring a wonderfully alien design.
The soundtrack for Gundam AGE is incredible, with some nice modern elements pervading it. It certainly continues the trend of the newer Gundams (Turn A and onward) having awesome soundtracks that REALLY stand out unlike the still-good but less unique soundtracks of the older Gundams. The opening and closing songs are mixed bunch, the first two openers being cheesy, harmless J-pop, the third being a nice upbeat J-rock song, the final being a stellar J-pop song. Endings are less unique, with only the first--an electronic J-pop ballad--being memorable. As for the voice-acting, there's nothing negative I can say--Kazuhiko Inoue does a great job as the coldhearted older Flit, Hiroshi Kamiya does the villainous Zeheart well, and Daisuke Ono as Woolf makes the most out of the character. Prolific seiyuu Takehito Koyasu (who's done several other noteworthy Gundam roles in his time) shows up here as well.
But that's merely the makings of a potentially great show. In the end, the writers chose to squander every bit of potential for this show, instead creating this trainwreck in its place. Gundam AGE had the chance to be one of the franchise's most memorable shows, but instead it's something to be looked down on, and will be remembered as one of the worst moments for Gundam. Avoid this, and avoid this well.
