in the grand scheme of things (gundam 00 in retrospect)

Wow, it's been a year already. 

I've been following this series since its inception and was filled with high hopes. Gundam is a cool idea and I appreciate the work that goes into the development of such atrociously complex models. However, that's not the part that I'm worried about - I'm worried about everything that goes along with it. Gundam series often play around the themes of world peace, racism, and war, all in different timelines of the human history. Gundam 00, in particular, talks about the ignorance of this coming wave of children (via Saji and Louise) to the events of the world, and how the acts of war, no matter how distant, may inadvertently affect us all, even though we may not know it. What happened to Louise was an extreme case, but that was the message that was trying to be said. Although I find this theme of world peace to be a bit cliche by now, Gundam 00 does a pretty good job about playing it out realistically. The first season was highly believable - units that had extremely powerful fighting capabilities, but were nowhere near as godlike as the Freedoms from SEED. Celestial Being painting themselves as the world's scapegoat savior was an interesting idea, and I applaud Sunrise for coming up with a plausible schematic towards world peace. However, when shit started to hit the fan, all these Trans-Am and 0 Raiser shenanigans really started to throw the series off balance again. I suppose this can't be helped, given the nature of the "shounen" rules and the sake of creating newer Gundam model kits, so I won't blame them for that one.

Animation-wise, Gundam 00 was crisp, clean, and consistent. The quality is quite stunning in HD and some of the visual effects are jaw-dropping. Fight scenes are hardly every stock-repeated and the detail put into the four Celestial Being gundams are amazing. Even the characters received great treatment as well as aging throughout the series.

Character-wise, I feel that Gundam 00 is sorely lacking. Setsuna, the cold, war-born child, had a very linear growth. Each of the other characters suffered the same fate, save both Lockons, of which I believe created the most interesting relationship interactions in the series. Bad guys like Ali Al Sarshes and Ribbons Almark were pretty much just bad guys with no point of sympathy for the audience, unlike the bad guys in SEED. Romance was killed over and over again. I don't know what the hell Sunrise has against successful romance, but damn it was a rocky road for SajixLouise, AllelujahxMarie, LockonxFeldt, LylexAnew, SetsunaxMarina (and SetsunaxFeldt, but let's not talk about that). I was expecting a lot more out of Saji in the second season, like a major redemption, but I can understand now that Sunrise's message was to the young people, and Saji/Louise was supposed to represent us. Overall, I think that there were too many characters introduced in the beginning, and wrapping each one up was an underestimated challenge on Sunrise's part.

Story-wise, Gundam 00 is a bit stale. The premise is great, but the execution is cluttered by an excess of "main" characters. It's also a bit hard to imagine that Aeolia Schienberg managed to plan so far ahead into the future - how was he able to predict the events of innovation? What is innovation anyways? What the hell are GN particles made of? A few plotholes - hopefully they'll be answered in the upcoming movie.

Highlights. The thing that is still running through my head right now is the last fight between Exia and the 0 Gundam. I just thought that was fucking awesome, reverting back to the original gundams of the series, and showing how Setsuna, piloting Exia, finally defeated Ribbon's 0 Gundam, the first gundam that you see in the series (and, symbolically, the one that saved Setsuna), showing the humans finally surpass innovades. Other than that particular scene, I have to comment on the music. Gundam always has the best stuff, and I swear songs like "DAYBREAK'S BELL" by L'Arc~en~Ciel, "Ash Like Snow" by The Brilliant Green, "Wana" by The Back Horn, "Hakanaku mo Towa no Kanashi" by UVERworld, and "Trust You" by Yuna Ito, will be on my playlist of greats forever. Seriously.

All in all, it was a great ride. There's something about watching a 50+ episode series that creates some sort of attachment that you just don't get out of shorter series. It's really pleasing to see the characters you love and hate grow on you over time. Lastly, there's a movie planned for Gundam 00 in 2010 - "The Child of Humankind Ends" and a flash of Jupiter is all we know. Quite a cliffhanger - fucking Sunrise.

PEW PEW ---- TANGENT GUN ----------------->

A few things I've been planning to do during Spring Break!

- Finally update this blog with some slideshows and galleries.

- Put together some polished book pieces. I need to get that job!

- Thinking about assembling a Kara no Kyoukai AMV!

AND FINALLY (saving the best for last) - check this hotness out.

I'm on spring break now. I spent the past few days hanging out with Ken and we played a bunch of GG and Blazblue and stuff. Hopefully I'll get a chance to hang out with everyone that I want to before break is over; it's just too bad that everyone breaks at different times. DON'T FORGET FMA STARTS NEXT WEEK OMG HYPE!!!1!11!!11!