As someone who has yet to see Unicorn Gundam, I was worried that my enjoyment of Gundam NT would be hampered. To my surprise, however, the quality of the film is irrelevant to whoever has watched Unicorn Gundam or even has seen a previous Gundam series at all. Gundam Narrative is just bad. Whether the person watching it is a die-hard UC fan or a newcomer to the franchise, the movie is terrible on its own merit.
Story: 2/10
Here is Gundam NT's biggest flaw: its paper thin and boring story. The story, at least, does a decent job of explaining the events that happened previously which
...
are relevant and important to the events of NT, meaning that people who missed out on Unicorn won't be completely lost. The big issue here, however, is just how uninteresting. The film just drags on and on with this philosophical nonsense about how humans should not be tampering with the power of gods or the corruption of the Federation in testing on children. It doesn't do anything profound to portray these themes, and the characters just talk about these issues in rather bland dialogue.
Another issue to note with the story is how detached it feels to the viewer. It attempts to portray violence or traumatic events in such a way that the person watching the movie will feel shock or empathy, but it fails at this task. The movie shows these events, but fails to show to a significant extent how the effects of such horrors. The beginning of the film, for example, shows the destruction caused by Operation British, in which a colony was dropped on Earth, in the original Gundam, but it is presented like something out of a Hollywood film. It lacks any sort of nuance or emotional attachment.
Art:7/10
Considering that this is Sunrise, it is to nobody's surprise that Gundam NT's animation is absolutely spectacular. It's fluid and detailed. The mecha action is well animated and fun to watch. My biggest gripe, however, concerns character design and mecha design. On the topic of character design, Zoltan's design just looks ridiculous. He has such an over the top and blatantly evil look as if he were pulled out of a Saturday morning cartoon. His one red eye is just cheesy and unnecessary. On the topic of mecha design, it was pretty disappointing. Considering the story only takes place one year after the events of Gundam Unicorn, I wasn't expecting a huge departure from that series' designs, but I expected more than what we got. The Gundam Narrative's design, the Narrative is what this film's lead Gundam is called by the way, looks generic and uninspired, as if the designers simply slapped elements from previous Gundam designs together and just called it a day.
Sound: 4/10
The English dub I honestly have no complaints over. It's well acted and gets the job done. My biggest gripe, however, is the music. Having heard tracks from Unicorn Gundam and his work in other shows such as Kill la Kill I expected something decent at least. I will admit that I am not the biggest Sawano fan, but I just couldn't bring myself to like any of the tracks he made. The vocal songs were just generic pop songs and failed to induce any excitement in the scenes they were present. The instrumental songs were insignificant, and I honestly can't think of a single track that I enjoyed.
Character: 2/10
Here is Gundam NT's other greatest flaw: it's characters. I honestly couldn't believe just how annoying and uninteresting the characters were. For starters, Jona Basta is a terrible lead. He fails to show any character development or growth throughout the movie and simply mopes his way through the film's duration. He has no outstanding qualities or anything that makes the viewer care for him. The film does nothing to ensure the viewer actually becomes invested in Jona's character or his struggles because of how lackluster he is.
Another character that requires special mention is the main villain, Zoltan. Zoltan is a terrible villain because, like Jona, he has absolutely zero unique qualities or anything that makes him unique. The writers fail to give Zoltan any depth, for there is literally nothing about him that we learn. We learn nothing about his past, motivations, or struggles. His only purpose in the story is to serve as some sort of arbitrary villain for the main characters to fight in some sort of grand finale. He's just some crazed guy who only seeks to fight for no reason whatsoever. The only character in the entire story which shows some sort of growth or development is Michele Luio, but even that is hardly anything to talk about.
Enjoyment: 1/10
The fight scenes, though fun to watch, were still boring in that I had no emotional investment in them. It was like I was watching some guy clash two toys together. Why should I care about these characters possibly dying if I have no reason to? Why should I be watching this when I could be watching something else? There were times were I was legitimately tempted to walk out of the theater simply because of how bored I was with it.
Overall: 3/10
The creators of this film state that this will be the start of another chapter for the Universal Century, which has me worried for future entries. Just read the summary online if you really want to be caught up with the lore. It's a waste of your time.
Alternative Titles
Synonyms: Kidou Senshi Gundam Narrative
Japanese: 機動戦士ガンダムNT(ナラティブ)
More titlesInformation
Type:
Movie
Episodes:
1
Status:
Finished Airing
Aired:
Nov 30, 2018
Studios:
Sunrise
Source:
Novel
Duration:
1 hr. 30 min.
Rating:
PG-13 - Teens 13 or older
Statistics
Ranked:
#72262
2
based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.
Popularity:
#4845
Members:
24,178
Favorites:
36
Available AtResourcesStreaming Platforms | Reviews
Filtered Results: 10 / 28
Sort
Your Feelings Categories Feb 20, 2019
As someone who has yet to see Unicorn Gundam, I was worried that my enjoyment of Gundam NT would be hampered. To my surprise, however, the quality of the film is irrelevant to whoever has watched Unicorn Gundam or even has seen a previous Gundam series at all. Gundam Narrative is just bad. Whether the person watching it is a die-hard UC fan or a newcomer to the franchise, the movie is terrible on its own merit.
Story: 2/10 Here is Gundam NT's biggest flaw: its paper thin and boring story. The story, at least, does a decent job of explaining the events that happened previously which ... Jan 5, 2024
Perhaps this is one of the worst creations that mankind could ever create this far. It's just a horrible, disgusting and fully talentless incompetent piece of "ART". The name "Narrative" for the movie is highly ironic since it completely lacks a plot - there none of it. Things just happen, characters just doing some stuff and somehow creators come to idea thats that it - it works. Hell if it was.
If "Unicorn" at least tried to build a decorations of the "Just OK" anime, but meanwhile stayed completely derivative to the UC context without telling any of its own story... "Narrative" as its sequel ... Jun 15, 2021
(TLDR at the bottom, thanks for reading.)
This review is going to be split up into two parts, part 1 will be a very opinionated take from a gundam fan and how this entry affects the overall canon and the second part will be a less opinionated, more standard review of the film. Part 1 - Gundam: Harutoshi Fukui seems to of had 3 specific goals when making gundam NT. The first one was "how can I make sense of all the newtype bullshit in gundam?", "How can I make a thematic end to UC?" and, "Why is there no psycho-frame in F91?" Fukui tried to make sense ... Aug 19, 2019
I'll get this out of the way: I hate this movie. I went out of my way to see it and still almost walked out to stand out in the cold outside rather than watch it to it's predictable mind numbing conclusion.
Positives first, the animation, art, and sound are all good, I am going to make this a backhanded compliment by saying that with this budget and time they really don't have an excuse not to be but there you go. If you want don't want your eyes to bleed than this is for you. And while the sound ... Aug 9, 2020
I went in into Narrative expecting a dumpster fire of a movie that tried to piggyback itself into the heart of the viewers by referencing older Gundam works, want to guess what i got? Yeah, it couldn't even do that, it couldn't even made me go "Oh! look, that's something that Kamille did in Zeta!, or look! i know that! that's like the ZZ's High Mega Cannon!"
STORY But, let's start from the beginning, aka, the story, this part of the review contains spoilers for the entire movie, and its gonna be long, very long, but the thing is so bad i just HAVE to talk about ... Jul 27, 2019
After seeing Dragon Ball Super: Broly on the big screens (and the last couple of DB movies) I really wanted Sunrise to put out a good Gundam movie. I paid to see this in the theaters with my brother, who is a bigger Gundam fan than me. Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed. This movie proves that Sunrise has no respect for their franchise and that the Japanese Gundam fanboys will literally just accept anything because of their love for robots punching face. I don't like Gundam Unicorn because it's just a bad rehash of Universal Century with new animation, but with far worse characters. I'm
...
Feb 26, 2019
This movie is simply awful. If you're an older fan like me, your tolerance for poor storytelling becomes lower and lower. Nothing about this felt like a Gundam property - the returning cameos from Unicorn are barely seen and look awful without YAS's guiding hand - Mineva Zabi looks okay, but mostly because she stays seated in a chair and doesn't turn her head or change expressions. The rest of the characters look like turn of the century central casting - the female lead looks like low-budget Faye Valentine, the flashbacks to the kids
...
Apr 26, 2022
To be fair, Newtypes have been strange since the beginning. After Unicorn, NT follows and expands dramatically on the Newtype. On the other hand, there's much too much focus on Newtypes that it drowned all the other parts of the story. This film feels weak, though it starts to develop in an interesting way with the ever evolving Newtypes, and mankind's new mission to become immortal among some of the characters. Hardly any of the new characters are likeable. Jona is the only decent one though an hour and a half movie and the weak story didn't do enough for his character.
He's friends with Rita, ... Sep 16, 2024
I don't like to give spoilers in my reviews, but this movie is so garbage that I have to make an exception. Spoiler warning ahead, I guess, in case you're really determined to go into this sorry excuse for a film blind.
Narrative centers around 3 "miracle children" (never mentioned before), who have been trapped in a cyber-newtype lab for a large portion of their lives, presumably during the Gryps conflict. Only one of them, apparently, was an actual newtype, and the other two only have powers due to some vestiges of proximity to her. Years in the future, the two escaped non-newtype kids are Federation ... May 28, 2019
This was probably the kind of sequel that Unicorn deserves. Personally, I actually enjoyed this more than Unicorn, but that's because enduring Unicorn is like watching paint dry, paint that retcons several important story elements of the universe with an incredbly silly central conflict. NT strives to improve on the formula by not having a central conflict instead.
Much like my review, this film is a mess. By the virture of it being mercifully shorter than Unicorn, I enjoy it a bit more. It still suffers from nearly every problem that it's predecessor does. Lame characters, thin narrative, and too much super robot nonsense. I know ... |


