Kidou Senshi Gundam Unicorn

In the year Universal Century 0096, three years after Char Aznable's failed attempt to force human migration into space, life continues in the colonies orbiting Earth. One such colony, at Side 4, is home to Banagher Links, a 16-year-old who lives a quiet life among his classmates.

Audrey Burne, the last descendant of a great tyrannical family, takes it upon herself to steal the key to a mysterious device known as "Laplace's Box." It is said that the Box has the power to shape the course of the universe, and Audrey travels to Side 4 in an attempt to take it from its current holder and keep it from the Sleeves, the surviving remnant of Char Aznable's Neo-Zeon. In her search, she stumbles across Banagher and changes his life forever.

When Side 4 comes under the attack of the Sleeves and its prolific fighters Marida Cruz and Full Frontal, Banagher takes control of the newly built Gundam Unicorn to defend his friends and protect the fate of humankind.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Links, Banagher Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Zabi, Mineva Lao Main

Fujimura, Ayumi Japanese

Frontal, Full Main

Ikeda, Shuuichi Japanese

Noa, Bright Supporting

Narita, Ken Japanese

Cruz, Marida Supporting

Kaida, Yuuko Japanese

Haro Supporting

Hirohashi, Ryou Japanese

Shiden, Kai Supporting

Furukawa, Toshio Japanese

Zinnerman, Suberoa Supporting

Tezuka, Hideaki Japanese

Mackle, Daguza Supporting

Touchi, Hiroki Japanese

Sauper, Angelo Supporting

Kakihara, Tetsuya Japanese

Yatate, Hajime Producer

Ogata, Naohiro Producer

Furuhashi, Kazuhiro Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Kimura, Eriko Sound Director

Reviews

Sep 21, 2024

WedgedPenguin

Recommended

It's peak, and introduced me to Gundam.
I stumbled upon this on Netflix a few years back, and I chose to give it a try over Iron-Blooded Orphans, an alternate universe gundam series on Netflix. I didn't know what I was getting into, and it's a well-known thing that Unicorn is one of the more difficult Gundam series due to it's plethora of references and callbacks. I still believe wholeheartedly that this is a fantastic series that is both a love-letter to the UC fans who've seen every series in the timeline, and a intro point for new fans that showcases just how good the ... series is. While a lot of those references and callbacks won't make sense to a first-time watcher, the intrigue it builds helped me get into the Gundam Universe.

11/10 in my books, and certainly my favourite Gundam series i've seen.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Dec 25, 2023

whiteflame55

Mixed Feelings

This series simultaneously does a lot right while also hitting the usual pitfalls of Gundam Universal Century entries. To start on the right side, I think the characters are more interesting here. The MC isn't very interesting and hits the usual tropes (idealistic teenager forced to fight as a child soldier who turns out to be a secret Newtype), but many of the people around him are. In particular, it's nice to see a series handle cyber Newtypes in a much more interesting way through Zinnerman and Marida. The series doesn't lean too heavily on familiar faces, crafting a variety of morally gray characters with ... interesting backstories and motivations. It still has a problem with angsty characters (Angelo, Riddhe), but it doesn't have the cartoonishly villainous leadership, including some actually investing commanders. Not so much with Full Frontal, who I felt was a disappointing substitute for Char, though he does have a hilarious name so there’s that.

For once, the story also doesn't focus on who has the biggest and most deadly weapon. The focus instead is on the mysterious Laplace's Box. I won't spoil what it is, but I will say it was a much more interesting choice than I expected, albeit one that makes less sense the longer I think about it in context. It's a smart turn for the series, or would be if it felt like a reveal that only a select few characters were aware of in the first place. Seems like this should have leaked a long time ago, despite all the efforts to keep it under wraps. It also doesn't make a whole lot of sense in context of the time in which it was created. Still, it's something different and interesting.

I'd say what this series does best is worldbuilding. There's a lot to love about how well this series incorporates past events of the Universal Century into its narrative and how its characters behave, and it's probably the best reason I've seen so far for why this period has so much content.

But then there's the rub: this series is built on a lot of material. Like, a lot a lot. Several times, I had to look up what a character had mentioned in terms of locations, various groups, alliances or events. There's too much going on here, so much in fact that it can be hard to even determine who is on what side in a given conflict, especially since many of the mobile suit types are now available on multiple sides and several characters regularly shift allegiances. When the series is focused on the fallout from various big events in the past, it sings. When it's trying to put things in context of the broader fight, not so much.

And yes, its mech battles are awesome. This series is absolutely brutal in its fights, and while not every death has gravity (we don't get to see who is in most of those cockpits), at the very least, it's nice to see that not only named characters can actually put up a fight. These battles are consistently great, especially when new weapon upgrades get brought out. And the music throughout, but particularly in these fights, is absolutely great.

But what drags this series down, as it does so many of those that came before, is the Newtype of it all. The capabilties of these people are just too much, and every time bring out a new ability or announce that yet another character was a Newtype all along just makes it worse. Fights are not nearly as interesting when there's magic involved, and that unfortunately happens a lot. There's are more interesting aspects of fights with them, particularly in how this series uses Psycho-Frames, which builds well upon Zeta, but it takes away from some of the best aspects of these fights. It doesn't help that, when given the opportunity to have a real match-up between the lead and the best pilot in this show, the series opts to give the latter a giant mech that's just massively overpowered to the point that a straight up fight isn't possible. Generally, the ending was underwhelming.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that the series is an improvement, but still bogged down by so much of Gundam being Gundam. I was especially annoyed at the beginning where characters just act based on Newtype impulse, which seems to be a series staple at this point and still makes no sense. It gets better, and there are glimmers of something great here, but it's not quite there. I'd still say it's worth the watch for Gundam fans, and the action, many of the characters, and the worldbuilding of this one does make it a stand-out in some ways, even if its placement in the Universal Century is both its greatest strength and weakness.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 20, 2022

Emperor_Wolfgang

Not Recommended

Having marathoned several Gundam shows, starting with the Gundam 0079 movie trilogy and making my way to Wing, as well as having watched 08th MS Team, other Gundam nerd friends of mine convinced me to watch Unicorn. Going into it, I had an understanding that it was a highly regarded entry in the series, that was well animated and tied deeply into the narratives of the UC shows. You can see from many of the other reviews here that a perfect 10 is a quite common rating.

For myself, though, Unicorn turned out to be an exercise in disappointment and exasperation.

Step one, we'll get the ... extraneous elements out of the way. Unicorn is indeed well animated, in fact that's the primary redeeming factor of the OVA for me, between the MS fights, loving character animation, colorful palettes, and so on. Sound is fine.

Narratively, Unicorn blows. As the earliest episodes dragged on, it rapidly became clear that the main characters were going to be boring vapid regurgitations of the age-old Gundam philosophical arguments, with no augmentation other than filtering it through the perspective of 2010s anime tropes. To be fair, it doesn't exactly reek of trite, shitty anime tropes in the way that Code Geass does, but it still mostly spins its wheels with surface-level pseudophilosohpy in much the same way as any given pretentious high school anime would.

Banagher endlessly grated on my nerves with his inexplicable obsession over a girl he met once, and particularly his insistence on calling her by a fake name that she came up with to deceive him. Ditto towards her, Mineva doesn't really provide a compelling Zeon-perspective, and I ended up being driven up a wall by her continued Mary Sue-ish self-importance black hole swirling around her.

Side characters vary significantly in quality, my favorite characters were in the side cast, but it also contains verifiably some of the worst characters in the franchise. Blondie Ace-man, whose name I know but don't care to repeat, was impressively hilarious in his arc, culminating as it did with him huffing copium after getting cucked into unconsciousness. Neo-Char, ironically, is a literal regurgitation, and ultimately seems to exist so that people could point and say "Hey, it's that Char guy, I wonder what he's doing here.". Also, having a major character whose existence is rooted in ZZ is a major faux pas by any measure.

The plot too is weak and only gets weaker. Starting off, it was completely ill-advised to base the driving plot around a mystical world-changing MacGuffin. Going on, there's a prominent Zeon bias throughout the series, both in the MS fights and in the narrative perspective, which seems to ring of real life Japanese revisionism about Imperial Japan: that is to say, sure, good guys both sides, but there's far too much praise being lavished on Zeon and their history for my taste, compared to the show's opinion on the Federation. Stupid love-triangle nonsense and touchy-feely newtypery that exceeds the most excessive moments of Zeta serve to fully remove any investment I could've had in the show. Finally, the most spoilery elements of the plot are by far the worst, with the final episode essentially feeling like a multi-hour slog of utter wasteful nonsense.

Basically, I'm pretty disappointed. While, by virtue of its earlier episodes, Unicorn never sinks to the level of ZZ, Wing, or 0083, I can not say that I enjoyed my overall watching experience, and I'll certainly remember Unicorn for all of its worst elements.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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