Let it be known that I'm not the biggest fan of Zeta Gundam to begin with. It's a pretty good show but if I viewed it as the apex of the Gundam franchise there wouldn't have been much left for me to look forward to (thankfully, there was). For all the things it did quite well, it drunkenly stepped through them. You've got your down-to-earth real robot series drama but with some occasionally inconsistent characterization and a regularly frustratingly childish cast. Some great Mobile Suit battles but far too many taking up screentime with some borderline monster-of-the-week Mobile Suits. You've got a genuine space epic... but damn, would it have suffered any from being done faster? Zeta Gundam is very quirkily flawed yet is still a very fulfilling tale. Going into Zeta Gundam's sequel, you'll be pleased to quickly realize that all of these problems not only persist, but have been multiplied with some added new problems on top for flavor. Brace yourself, the legend begins here.
Although many of his works are heralded as stone-cold classics, Yoshiyuki Tomino himself is seen far less favorably. I'm going to cut to the chase and say that most people view him as a little bit crazy. If there's a good thing to say about him, it's that he at very least writes what he feels: the man is known for his mood swings that form the tone of the series he writes. He's gone from straight-up comedies (most innocuously Xabungle) and very serious melodramas (the most serious of which have earned him the loving nickname "Kill 'Em All Tomino"). After ending his latest depressive state with Zeta Gundam, Tomino immediately began work on its more manic follow-up, the misnomered Double Zeta Gundam, and tries to do both.
It's important we realize just what a bad idea the tone of ZZ Gundam was. This isn't a brand new Gundam series released with a significant gap between the others to help foster its own individuality; this is one of the very few direct sequel series. ZZ Gundam starts right where Zeta Gundam ended, and aired a week after Zeta Gundam's final episode. In a sense, this already ships ZZ Gundam as a second half to Zeta Gundam rather than its own series. It's perfectly reasonable why fans were alienated so much by episodes 51+ of "Zeta Gundam". The dumping or misuse of previous popular cast members as if they never existed and replacing them with incompetent children, stopping and then slowly murdering all momentum and intrigue built by the last series, and most importantly changing the tone to something entirely unrecognizable to no reward should be enough to make anyone think that Tomino is not simply creating a new Gundam series, but renouncing the previous series out of spite and contempt for it and its fans. A series many people loved and treated with seemingly more respect than the person who created it.
It's unfortunate to both fans and detractors alike but also entirely fair (and only possible) to judge ZZ Gundam on the footholds of Zeta Gundam, because that's exactly what it prompts us to do. This is Zeta Gundam part two. The main situations the plot revolve around that vie for the viewer's interest are first planted in Zeta Gundam, so to fully enjoy all aspects of ZZ Gundam one has to have seen and have been interested in Zeta Gundam to begin with. But that's a genuine catch 22 as the writing of both series contradict each other and the person who can say they enjoyed the entirety of both equally has to be the rarest sort of Gundam fan. Ignoring Zeta Gundam while watching and judging ZZ Gundam is just not possible, because though the writing is different, the scenario is Zeta Gundam, the music is Zeta Gundam, the animation is Zeta Gundam, and the first Gundam is Zeta Gundam. To care about half of ZZ Gundam, you need to have cared about Zeta Gundam.
To finally say something positive, the set-up of ZZ Gundam is actually pretty good on paper. The Argama is weary after Zeta Gundam's final battle and goes to rest up at the rundown space colony known as Shangri-La. Due to some contrived happenstance a group of ordinary junk dealers wind up as part of the Argama's dwindling crew. Needless to say, AEUG standards are slipping fast. But seriously, I rather like the idea of a ragtag cast composed of regular people in poverty with little education or Mobile Suit training. It's neat to watch these guys basically picked up off the street have to get their crap together and learn to be real soldiers. Or at least it would be if not for two things: One, that doesn't really happen, and two, they're direct replacements for a much more capable crew also comprised of some civilians not much more experienced than the ZZ crew. Again, comparisons are unavoidable. I also have trouble buying their acceptance by the Argama in the first place. Bright is noticeably mellowing out in what can be construed as character development, but he straddles the line between patient and naive, and naive is a negative aspect that you'd normally never attribute to Bright. More on that later.
After Kamille fucks off forever because Tomino doesn't care about him or you, the inept Judau Ashta takes his place as the protagonist. Judau's really not that bad compared to some other ZZ characters. As a matter of fact, he's one of the few new members that gets that character development I mentioned above, and his skill with a Mobile Suit increases at a noticeable and much more believable rate than that of Kamille's. If he wasn't such a routinely stupid jerk you might even root for him. But he is a stupid jerk. He regularly defies orders for no good reason and comes up with his own idiotic plans that should never succeed but do only because he's the main character. The best example I can give is when he and his genius friends come up with the plan to tie bombs to Judau and his Gundam and have him fly onto battleships threatening to blow himself up if the battleships don't do what he asks. This is real. On top of his adamant nature that could make Kamille look like the calmly collected Char, he also goes on even more of the same endless prattling about "adults ruining everything" that crosses the line from pubescent frustration into the cries of a 5 year old told they have to clean their room. Possibly the worst part is that if you've ever read enough interviews with Tomino you'd be inclined to think that he totally believes all this nonsense about "soulless adults" and "kid power!" that if I recall was a big theme in the Spongebob Squarepants movie.
Rounding off the moron squad are Judau's also impoverished friends. Elle Vianno is by far the most valuable. She's a competent Mobile Suit pilot, completely reasonable, affectionate, charmingly friendly, and is one of the few main characters that never makes an ass of themself throughout the entirety of ZZ Gundam. In other words, she's a miraculous fluke and the best of the new characters, and the only reason she turned out so well must be because the writers simply forgot to make her terrible like everyone else. Beecha and Mondo are the troublesome shitheads that can't leave their former life behind and immediately resolve to try and sell out the Argama and get their lifetime friends murdered for nothing other than money (never mind Neo Zeon having no reason to pay them when they have power), and no one in the series gives a single fuck about this and lets them come crawling back later free of charge with very little said in the way of "why the fuck did you just try and get your best friends killed?". Remember all those unlikable characters in Zeta Gundam? Now imagine none of them ever getting their comeuppance and you have the frustration of those moments in Zeta Gundam stretched out indefinitely. Oh yeah, some guy named Iino is here too but I always forget his passive self exists until he's center screen. As said earlier, Bright Noa is the most significant returning character but is all of a sudden not reprimanding his asshole crew at all whenever they screw up (every episode) and just lets them do whatever stupid life-endangering activities they want (even when its his and the lives of others on the line). I guess he's just... getting so very tired... I know some people will want me to talk about Roux, Puru, Mashymere, Haman, etc. but I'm wearing myself out just by covering the initial protagonists. I will, however, acknowledge Chara Soon, a female pilot who has an orgasm whenever she pilots a Mobile Suit and embodies the stupidity of ZZ Gundam more than any other character (a huge accomplishment), and Haman, a villain that gets props for having much more to do with the central conflict than Scirocco but isn't any more interesting.
Of course, the characters all being screw-ups is directly related to ZZ Gundam's legendary tonal shift from Zeta Gundam, focusing more on comedy than drama. I mean, Zeta Gundam could get pretty melodramatic at some points and easing up on that could even do the serious moments some good by comparison, but ZZ Gundam's tonal shift offers absolutely nothing to it. At its best it's simply dry, boring slapstick, and at its worst it's clashing with the serious stuff and makes you want to murder the cast. The Neo-Zeon officer is explaining his plan to murder the heroes to the viewer, oh no! Oh look, as he was walking away he got his hand stuck in the door by accident. Well, all right then. And don't get me started on the hundreds of times in ZZ Gundam where a character is simply walking and for literally no reason just trips and falls on their ass. That's it. We're expected to roll over laughing because a character tripped or walked into a wall by accident or -charmingly- screwed up the Argama's plans thus risking the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians who don't deserve it. It's the laziest slapstick "humor" you could come up with, and it leads us to laughing at the characters and not with them. If the characters demanded the slightest ounce of respect to begin with this would be a much bigger problem, though.
And therein lies the issue with a tone that's trying to pull in two opposite directions. ZZ Gundam's universe was already detailed to us in 0079 and Zeta as being very realistic, and the empathizable life-like characters were a big reason why the franchise became a hit, redefined the sci-fi genre in anime, and are why we care about anything that happens in the story. We see people on both sides of the war getting hurt and this matters to us because we know many didn't deserve it and were made victims of circumstance, as war is. ZZ Gundam sets us in the same realistic universe where death to innocent people is a very real and serious thing, then asks us to not mind and instead love it when our heroes put the lives of thousands, technically millions due to the scope of the war, at risk when they selfishly act on very poorly thought-out ideas because they're just a bunch of lil goofball kids and also adults suck. It doesn't work. The offscreen civilians and the former legacy of previous Gundam casts do not deserve to be jeopardized for the undeserved plot armor victories of the incompetent ZZ Gundam cast. You can't imply nothing's important in one scene then immediately demand something is one second later. ZZ Gundam has little to no control over its audience's emotions and violates basic writing sense for zero benefit. Its more light-hearted tone couldn't have been executed much worse and does nothing other than drag the series down because it's never even funny when it tries to be.
Wait, it gets better? Dang, I guess you're right. In true ZZ Gundam fashion relating to the above, ZZ Gundam undergoes yet another tonal shift completely out of nowhere around the halfway point of the series. All of a sudden the indefensibly stupid actions of our heroes nearly cease and the comedy that remains is being executed out of the way of the more serious stretches, even if it still isn't funny. We're not reaching Zeta Gundam levels of angst or anything (again, not necessarily a bad thing), but what matters is that our characters are suddenly reestablished as mortal human beings with things at stake that we can understand and relate to. Although as if they're rising like a really subtle and lazy phoenix, nothing can repair the fact that we still view the groundwork laid in the first half of the series as the heart of these characters and that any real change to their attitudes is surface level because so much happens so suddenly without much of a transition in character. It doesn't feel like the cast grew up (because they always defended their actions and resisted criticism), it just feels like they're being written in a different way. Beecha and Mondo don't come back to the Argama because they realize they're hurting their friends, they come back because the Neo Zeon soldiers worked them too hard. Well, an improvement is an improvement.
Regardless, the second half of ZZ Gundam still meanders with glacial pacing and endless diversions and sub-plots from the main storyline all the way up until the final three episodes. I'm not kidding when I say "major" characters are written out for nearly twenty episodes and then are brought back with a literal plot device used to make them into competent characters. Even when ZZ Gundam tries to be serious it's so lazily done that caring about anything is just as impossible as it was before. Instead of spending several episodes fighting grunts in a desert or something, they could have had the sub-plots have to do with the main characters or the side characters they have suddenly returned when the series is almost completely over and give everything a more natural transition. Demanding anything from a show where the writing is so incompetent is pointless, and I don't think I would've thought less of ZZ Gundam than I do now if it just stayed stupid the entire way through. In a way, it does. Even the finale of the series goes out with a whimper instead of a bang, and the showdown feels suddenly forced rather than built up to, as if the cast were just screwing around the whole time then just happened to find themselves in the final battle.
I've ragged on ZZ Gundam pretty damn hard here, but that's because I feel like it's important to reveal the conceptual principles that doomed the series from the very beginning and how baffling many of the choices made regarding the series are. If any single person realizes these mistakes and goes on to become a writer and avoids them themselves, then that's a success. At least ZZ Gundam is fairly far from being unwatchable. It's tolerable most of the time, albeit boring, but it's pretty screwed up that one of the nicest things I can say about it is "it could've been worse". Is ZZ Gundam a failure? I don't see how it couldn't be. It fails as both a follow-up to Zeta Gundam and a stand-alone series. It's true that the series gets so much more of a bad rap for being compared to Zeta Gundam, but that's because it should. Even if you isolate it from its base (something you'd have to consciously force) the things that make ZZ Gundam unique just aren't good. The slapstick gags and idiot characters are not fresh or funny. The drama is not very affecting as it revolves around characters we're unintentionally set up to dislike. Even the Mobile Suit designs feel played out after Zeta Gundam's similar Mobile Suits, and many are repeated. The most satisfying aspects of the story are the ones that relate to what was started before ZZ Gundam in better series. It's not the worst thing ever. It's not a hidden gem. It's not unfairly judged. It's Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam.
