Gundam Unicorn: Everything old is new again
I was pretty blown away by Gundam Unicorn’s first episode.
I’ve watched a few first episodes of Gundam shows in the past year and I don’t think anything comes close to how I felt while I was watching UC’s first episode. Even though it’s not until pretty recently that I started traversing through what the Universal Century had to offer me, I considered myself a Gundam fan. Even though I was only halfway through Zeta, I could still feel the significance that Unicorn carried in being the first show set in the UC in more than ten years.
I think the production really surprised me. It was way above any other Gundam show I’d seen. 00 may have had HD sparklies, but UC made even GMs in combat look impressive. I was really happy to see the UC style and aesthetic rendered with modern animation techniques and technology. And the music! I want to know why they never got this guy to do music for any other Gundam show before.
Making my way through the Universal Century, something I’ve felt was off was the pacing of the shows. It was only slightly noticeable throughout the original movies and the OVAs, but it became pretty apparent in Zeta. Something about the way events are timed and episodes are constructed really bothers me. I’m assuming it’s just the way shows were written back then, since I felt 0083 flowed more naturally out of everything I’ve seen. Of course, it could be Unicorn’s origins as a novel shining through here. Not only that, but there’s a lot more symbolism in that episode than a lot of Gundam shows that I can remember.
What’s unfortunate is its release schedule. Thinking about it some more, it doesn’t really seem all that far off from a typical OVA schedule, but it still doesn’t make the excruciating wait between episodes and the completion of the series any easier. But, it does look like we’ll have our Kara no Kyoukai equivalent to obsess over every few months for a few days whenever it lands over the next few years.
But yeah, I certainly didn’t expect to start off 2010 with the best first episode of a Gundam show while also being the most impressive thing of the year so far.
Tags: Anime, Gundam, Gundam Unicorn
The pacing with the old Universal Century shows has to do with Yoshiyuki Tomino. I would say the majority of mecha fans know that anime directed by Tomino (even the modern anime, like King Gainer) tends to be characterized by rather strange pacing (e.g. episodes of nothing happening, and then suddenly an important event happens off screen and we’re only made aware of such events through voice over narration), erratic character development (too many examples to describe), and general kitsch and silliness (ZZ in general, but other Gundams apply). “LOLTomino” is the way most people tend to describe his direction.
That said, I would say the majority of Gundam anime that are NOT directed by Tomino tend to have “normal” pacing. Not to say the other Gundam shows had perfect pacing (actually I would say 0083 suffers a bit because of the change in directors halfway through the show), but they’re definitely not LOLTomino.
That makes sense. Also, it is nice to know that it is not just me going crazy.
And I’ll make a little comment on Unicorn itself.
While I’m a Gundam fan, I feel that almost ALL the Gundam series suffer from some rather glaring flaws (such as the aforementioned LOLTomino direction). My favorite Gundam show right now is definitely Gundam 0080, but I still have a problem with 0080.
I have high hopes that Unicorn will supplant 0080 as my favorite Gundam show. In fact, I WANT Unicorn to dethrone 0080. My problem with having 0080 as my favorite Gundam show is that I feel that 0080 is kind of cheating. Without spoiling anything, the “Gundam” setting is not intrinsic to the story being told in 0080. You could take the story of 0080 and change the setting to WWII, and no value would be lost. 0080 just isn’t “Gundam” enough.
Meanwhile, it should be obvious to see that the Gundam setting is definitely intrinsic to Gundam Unicorn. I should be jaded by Gundam tropes and cliches at this point, but Unicorn is definitely winning me over. That said, here’s hoping the rest is as good.