Over the past few years the Gundam series has gone through a lot of riticule by many American's and has totally lost its market here making nearly impossible to even know of the franchise. Bandai's last attempt to make Gundam popular among American viewers was Gundam Seed which epically failed, and was placed in the 4 am death spot on Cartoon Network. Even though Gundam Seed Destiny, sequel to Gundam Seed, won best anime of the year 2004 in Japan the series didn't do so good because it was basically Fan service and "Many" Gundam Fans were disappointed by the fact that there were more Hentai then Side Stories of the series. In other words BANDAI milked the crap out of Seed for all its worth.
Few years later a new Gundam series was made to replace Gundam Seed, this series was, of course, Gundam 00. Yes, this series was intentionally delayed in order to make a new Model Market. But all in all the series wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I've watched many Gundam Series and have seen the progress they've made through the years. Gundam 00 is basically a hybrid of many old concepts mixed with thoughts of many modern day techno realism. Yes, I just made up a new term- Techno Realism. The term means technology that will possibly be invented.
25 episodes is quite surpising for most Gundam series. The shortest Gundam series was Gundam 0080 War in the Pocket which had 6 episodes. Gundam 00 wasn't the shortest series but it was able to sum everything quickly and yet very understandable. Usually something like this would take the average 50 episodes and then a sequel would have to be made to finish the project, but no, they actually did good.
The characters of the story are of course young adults who have their struggles and for the most part look like Bishi boys. They aren't really aren't Emo or uncontrolable as many other Gundam characters and have much more of a sense of responsiblity. Their backgrounds are interesting stories within themselves, making you more connected to them. Unfortunatly there is a downside to this, characters that get to involved with their past tend to stray off from their first impression.
The story is very well thought up and looks like it took much time to think up. How the world looks like in this Gundamverse makes you question if our future would be like that as well. Many politics are involved which many modern Gundam shows were lacking.
Mecha designs were simply superb. They aren't as wymsical as the suits in Gundam Seed or as in Gundam Wing but this sense of common technology is what brings me in. I kinda have a taste for generic looking Mobile suits, the ones with rough detail.
In the end of it all Gundam 00 didn't disappoint me, but it didn't make me overjoyed either. Sure the show is good, but you can't help but feel that eventually things will go wrong and fan service will ruin it all. So far in my opinion Gundam 00 is way better then Gundam Seed/Destiny, and Gundam Wing. But it hasn't reached the greatness of Tomino's original works such as Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta, Char's Counter Attack, and Turn A. All there is to do now is wait until the second season comes out, won't we. Until then I leave the first season with this review.
