Lalahvision

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX came to a close yesterday in quite possibly the most fart-in-the-wind way possible for a Gundam series to end since probably X, and X had the unfortunate aspect of having its season truncated due to low ratings. This isn’t to say G-QUACKS wasn’t bad, or how it ended was bad, but I feel particularly disappointed by it, and I think a lot of other UC fanboys who are starting to come off that high are feeling the same way, and boy it’s like watching a coomer go through withdrawls.

I’ll begin this review by summarizing the backhalf; If the first six episodes merely established the plot as being “UC, but if Zeon won” and iterating over some frankly worthless plot points inside of Side 6 that culminated in the zekanova whereby Shuji and the Red Gundam disappeared, the last six episodes pushed the overall story into warp 9.95 until you hit transwarp in the finale and everyone became salamanders. Machu inadvertently joins Bull’s side, and Nyaan willingly joins Kycilia’s side. Machu finally goes to Earth and meets Lalah, and that’s where the real double-kira-kira story unfolds. You see, the Lalah Sune she meets is the Lalah Sune of this universe, the GQ variant of the UC universe we’re watching. But her original canon self, lies within the MAN-08 “Elmeth” that is at the bottom of the ocean, and it is the “Rose of Sharon” that is being sought after. GQ Lalah tells Machu that she can see the other Lalah in her dreams, endlessly iterating over every universe trying to save Char. They haul the Elmeth up with Lalah Prime frozen in stasis, noting that this was “from the other side” because this project was cancelled. At some point Kycilia gets ahold of it, shoves it into the Solar Ray, and through the use of Nyaan and the GFreD, obliterates Gihren’s forces at A Baoa Qu with a massive zekanova. A brief fight between the two occurs, but Machu manages to punch though the “time freeze” protecting Lalah Prime, beginning her awakening. This brings everyone out to the final fight, with Char trying to push Lalah Prime to “the other side” to protect this universe, and Shuji’s newtype-ghost appearing in the RX-78-2 to try and kill her here, which would eliminate this universe, as he has done many times before. Well, whatever force, be it Machu or the newtype-ghost of Amuro Ray, manages to convince Shuji otherwise and defeat him, setting Lalah Prime free to Final Zekanova and end the conflict, with the GQ universe resuming as normal.

There are so many issues for me that I’d be here all day typing them out, so I will begin with the easiest to iterate; I really kind of hate how this ended up being a multiverse story. And what I mean by that is I hate how Lalah ended up being Gundam’s Wanda Maximoff, who in the seemingly split-seconds it took her to push Char’s Gelgoog out of the way and die by Amuro’s strike in Mobile Suit Gundam, had a mental breakdown about Char being killed by Amuro, her psycommu went Full ZERO System, and she experienced a Doctor Strange moment though hundreds of thousands of universes trying to find one where Char wasn’t killed. When she did finally find one, it was because he took the RX-78-2 instead of Amuro at the start of the war, and that resulted in them never meeting at all. Very The Butterfly Effect, actually. Machu defeating her psycommu (which is what I assume Shuji was the manifestation of) finally allowed her to return to her correct time and place and subsequently eat shit, freeing her into the overall newtype-induced world, as UC history goes on. Yes, I hate that, and I hate it because I think the one thing people really enjoyed about this show was that it was an alternate universe where Zeon won, and they were curious to see how that would all play out with the various moving pieces. There was so much unanswered and unexplored that had they spent some time in the first six episodes doing, or made this a two-cour show, we could have gotten. Such as:

• Where did Amuro Ray go in the GQ universe if he didn’t get the RX-78-2?
• What happened to Fraw Bow, Bright Noa, and the others intended to take over White Base since Zeon captured it?
• Amuro not getting involved in the war meant Ramba Ral survived (as seen at the end), but what did he end up doing to wind up with Artesia (Sayla Mass)?
• Zeon winning obviously affects the events of Zeta and Double-Zeta, but what happens to Kamille and Judeau? Ple and Ple Two?
• Is Minerva Zabi still born in this universe? Will Unicorn and Narrative take place still?

Now I realize that a lot of these questions don’t have to actually be asked, and many can simply be answered with “alternate universe didn’t happen shut up” (read in the voice of Star Trek’s Tawny Newsome) but the reason I bring them up is that I feel they could have actually bothered to make a two-cour series that really pulls apart MSG, Zeta, Double-Zeta, Unicorn, and Narrative, and uses the multiverse and a shitboat of opportunities within to actually do a series about newtypes. Like a real, honest-to-god, mental-fucking-breakdown of newtypes. Hideaki Anno is the guy to do it. He’ll say he isn’t, but Evangelion is quite literally an entire franchise about a man trying to newtype all of humanity so he can be with his dead wife again. This could have been a show about how Lalah Sune was trying to rewrite the universe to save Char and Amuro from the horrors of war, but nearly eliminates humanity and all of space-time in the process before being set free by someone like Banagher Links, Jona Bashta, or Rita Bernal. Or it could just be a show about a single alternate universe, and nothing more. Still, we never actually got an explanation for who Shuji is. My theory is he’s the Elmeth’s psycommu trying to protect the pilot, but there were people thinking he was Lalah and Amuro’s kid, Char Prime, etc. People thought Lalah GQ’s maids were Amuro and Char, everyone thought Amuro would be piloting the RX-78-2 that emerged in the penultimate episode. The current theory is that the GQuuuuuuX’s “Endymion Unit” actually contains the soul of Amuro Ray Prime, and that was who convinced Shuji to stand down and let Machu defeat him.

These points are not bad, as they pretty much explain the first few episodes of every Gundam ever, but it does not really convince me that clan battles were needed. You might think that because in accordance with Gundam tradition, we pick up innocent children and subject them to the horrors of war, but clan battles were not horror of war, they were just duels to the sometimes-death illegally sanctioned by the government. If they were going to end up in the Zabi family war on one side and the other, you could have done that from the second episode and subjected them to some real horrors, like killing lone feddies, or run-ins with alternate counterparts of UC characters, or even GQ Londo Bell. Titans?

But ultimately, we did not really get a nitty-gritty, space-timey-whimy rigamarole in the Gundam universe, and there are all manner of fan theories as to why, ranging from Anno and Co. ended up changing directions halfway in, to various pulls from the franchise owner. Ultimately at the end of the day, every Gundam series exists to sell gunpla and merchandise, and unfortunately I think that is your best explanation for why the first six episodes of this felt too off-pace compared to the last. They needed something simple to introduce their new mechs and new takes on old mechs for the marketing wing to run with, and then made up the story after. It also just feels like Bandai-Namco still has a chubby for having to make every new Gundam series now some kind of kids battle arena thing because of the success of the Build universe. Witch From Mercury at least worked around that to its advantage, but here it just didn’t. As much as I enjoyed Machu and Nyaan, I think a really far more interesting Alternate Universe UC would be if Char got the Gundam and sided with Kycilia, and Sayla Mass joined Zeon under Gihren, forcing the two into a confrontation after she is the one to find Lalah and not him, and everything spills out when Lalah is forced to chose between those two, setting off the zekanova with the prime universe, forcing them all to come to terms with how the war has impacted them.

The best part about this show has honestly been the memes. Gundam Mobile Suitposting on Facebook has been a fun source of material over the last twelve weeks with this show as everyone’s theories ran wild. But also just the similarities Anno pulled from his other shows, while perhaps a tad lazy, does reflect on his ability to showcase how much the mecha-verse borrows from each other on a regular basis. I do think this show did well, and if you’re not really a huge UC fan or have never seen it, you will be just fine watching and not nitpicking over it like the rest of us Gundam fans and autists.

Final Zeonic Thoughts and Observations

• The final episode had lines from the original Amuro, Char, and Lalah with Furuya Toru, Ikeda Shuuichi, and Han Keiko respectfully. I am not sure if they were new or reused from MSG, as they also used scenes from that final altercation in MSG as well.
• Probably the best and most powerful scene was at the end of episode eleven when “Beyond the Time” starts playing as the RX-78-2 emerges. I’ll be honest, because that theme always comes up in Super Robot Wars games when Amuro gets the Hi-Nu Gundam, I actually expected it to be that.
• I also kind of expected the RX-78-2 to transform into the Nu and Hi-Nu Gundams throughout the fight with the GQuuuuuuX, or even perhaps other versions of the RX-78-2, similar to how they had so many different variations of the suit Char was in when Amuro killed him in Lalahvision.
• Ramba Ral living and being the secondhand to Sayla is all anyone has ever wanted for our gigachad gentleman.

Final Score: Six A Baoa Qus out of ten zekanovas destroying said A Baoa Qus. Rest in Pepperoni.