This series is set in an alternate gundam universe and begins in Neotopia, a futuristic utopia where robots and humans live in peace and harmony as friends. There are several noteable departures from the standard gundam series the main one being this series was serialized in Cartoon Network and aimed at the younger set (5-8 years old in my opinion), so tons of stuff is dumbed down and the series as a whole comes across as "kiddy-ish"
Character/Art
This was the beginning / test phase vehicle for the CGI techniques employed in later gundam series. In this series the gundams are not just mecha, they are sentient! This is both good and bad. I like the idea of sentient gundams but all the characters pretty much come across as one dimensional stereotypes - gundams are no exception.
The 4 main characters are:-
* Captain Gundam is the leader type.
* Zero is the heroic knight, which means he's dumb but noble.
* Bakunetsumaru the hotheaded samurai, honor trumps all
* Shute the good natured overly unrealistic optimist
There is a large supporting cast of other characters.
* Genkimaru the brat gundam with a great special ability
* Princess Rele the pretty but shallow leader of Arc
* Token female "love interest" who makes delicious cake
* Gunbike, Gundivers, Guneagle, Chief Haro, all the bad guys and Zakos.
Everything is very cutesy but surprisingly I wasn't as annoyed as I thought I would be. I guess Kawaii is my Kryptonite. I liked the cute sentient gundams but I wanted to kill Shute and the other little gundam because their characters WERE annoying. That being said when Zero and Bakunetsumaru got their special "upgrades" I still found myself cheering for them.
The soundtrack was ok, nothing special. The ED of the final 26 was a very catchy japanese rap type tune with dancing Zakos. It was so cute it ended up playing in my head for days after ....
Story, Enjoyment
While derivative and extremely predictable, I was surprised to find some dark underground humor and parody in this series, that was the only thing that put the story above a 5 for me. For example, the samurai Gundam Bakunetsumaru, when he's about to do his special attack (2 swords) he circles his katanas together forming Twin Circles of light. I was rather shocked because those look like the twin circles of light from the twin drive effect in Gundam 00 Season 2.
Notable parodies (some adult humor) include ripoffs from:-
* Apocalypse Now - "I love the smell of concrete in the morning"
* Star Trek - "I'm a robot doctor, not a miracle worker!" (Bones McCoy)
* And my favorite, I could hardly contain myself from snickering - "Can I touch it?" ... "Ooh, it feels warm" - ok ok, so I have a dirty mind.
Kind of funny, the last really good thing I saw in the series was a parody of Winston Churchill's WW2 "We Shall Fight On the Beaches" speech by Chief Haro, the one that goes "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall NEVER Surrender!" Now that was impressive how they worked that in.
Overall
So, in summation, it was ok, nothing spectacular, very dumbed down with cute but one dimensional characters. I found myself looking forward to seeing what other pop culture/historical parody references they would put in more than anything else, but it did get really exciting in the last 8 episodes. However, by then it's too late to save this series from getting any more than a 5 from me.
