And that's rather unfortunate. Because although I've only seen a handful of Gundam series, "Gundam Wing" ranks among the worst ones in my book.
"Gundam Wing", with its cast of characters starring mostly angsty world-beating teenagers, is obviously a series aimed at teenagers. But the problem is that it feels like it's also written BY teenagers. The show kind of reminds me of "Code Geass": they're both ridiculous, over the top, and both seem more concerned with shocking the audience with twist after twist than anything else. Both resemble train wrecks, but here the similarity ends. "Code Geass" feels like a train wreck involving a train driven by James Bond: the carriages may be on fire and the some of the wheels may have come off, but thanks to some brilliant driving, the momentum ultimately takes it to its intended destination. With "Gundam Wing" the train seems driven by a teenager who THINKS he's James Bond. The result is a survivorless, smouldering wreckage on the side of the tracks still some distance away from its destination.
For a near-50-episode show, "Gundam Wing" certainly doesn't suffer from slow pacing. If anything, it has the opposite problem: it throws out plot twists faster than you can digest them, rarely following through on the implications of the new developments. Not many of the twists feel organic or thought through, and frequently the latest twists would cancel out the effects of the ones before it (even if they only happened within the last episode or two). It's as though the show had an army of (teenage) writers, and they took turns to slap their latest cool (at least to them) ideas onto the story with fervent zeal while impatiently doing away with whatever the previous writers wrote.
The characters, often wearing obscene amounts of plot armour, serve as slaves to the plot, regularly undergoing drastic personality changes according to its needs. Luckily the show can't be accused of wasting potential as the characters come across mostly as a bunch of one-dimensional posers whom teenagers would find cool, but almost everyone else would just find insufferable. Their fate is further sealed by the trashy melodramatic dialogues forced upon them. "Gundam Wing" takes itself very seriously, but alas, I could hardly take it less seriously.
Although "Gundam Wing" is a pretty dumb show, but it's also a PRETTY dumb show. The series has a lot going for it in the production departments. It leads with a catchy, iconic opening theme, features good action scenes, and the attractive character designs of its teenage Gundam pilots ensured the show gathered enough fangirls to make Elvis jealous. However, it's the Gundam designs that stole the show for me. The five Gundams piloted by the five main pilots are all very distinctive: they look different, their fight differently, and they all have different strengths and weaknesses. On top of that, the designs ooze style, with Deathscythe being particularly cool - no wonder it's one of the top-selling Gundam models of all time (maybe even THE top selling one).
I may not rate "Gundam Wing" very highly overall, but it scores decently on (unintended) entertainment value, at least for me. Your own mileage may vary: the absurdity of the plot, the ridiculousness of the characters and the terribad melodrama can often be thigh-slappingly funny to some, but frustrating and cringeworthy to others. I suspect it's the kind of anime that would be gloriously entertaining to watch in a group though. Oh, and you might also like it if you're a teenager.
Personal rating: -0.5 (mediocre)
