[FINISH} Gundam 00 - aco's anime review

[acolyte_to_jippity]

Well, i've just (last night actually) finished Gundam 00 (both, 1st and 2nd seasons)

all i can say is wow. This series was fucking amazing. It is easily one of my favorites. At its core, it is a re-imagining of Gundam Wing, with many plot elements similar (several extremely technologically advanced mobile suits descend from space to pass judgement upon the nations of earth and try to end all conflict) but even if you have seen all of Wing (i have, also amazing btw) this series will still surprise you at every turn.

The mecha are nicely designed and most are not outrageous (like almost everything from G Gundam) and are pretty unique. While there are still certain stereotypical elements to them (aka, the main character's gundam holds many secrets, which acivate one by one to make it the most powerful thing ever concieved) in general they are easily distinguished from the other series.

The world is also incredibly believable, featuring a new continuity universe for the series (ifferent from Universal Century, Cosmic Era, After Colony...etc etc) called Arrad Domoni (spelling). This is basically the earth we know, 200 years in the future. Fossil fuels are pretty much gone, so mankind built three massive orbital elevators, supporting a huge array of solar generators, which now power earth.

The animation is excellent. Voice acting, slightly weak in some cases, with certain characters sounding alike, but nowhere close to the worst i've seen. The sound was excellent as well, and the theme songs all tended to be pleasant.

Final:
If you like pretty much straight mecha shows, then this is a great choice. While it lacks the psychological or personal aspect of shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion or Eureka Seven (my 2 'benchmark' shows) it is nonetheless extremely enjoyable to watch.
9/10

(watched subbed)

i might put a pic or 2 up later

[ZERO]

Have you seen the movie?

[Masskid]

You should check out the movie

[acolyte_to_jippity]

it's set fot "have to watch" on animeplanet ^_^

[mastercheff]

Is this the one where the guy goes BURNNING FIIIINGAAAAR?

[acolyte_to_jippity]

Is this the one where the guy goes BURNNING FIIIINGAAAAR?

NO!

that's the retarded-ass Mobile Fighter G Gundam

[mastercheff]

Oh thank god, I'll be sure to definitely check this out then. Mobile Fighter was what kind of turned me off of Gundam. I mean seriously couldn't they had thought of a cool sounding ending move and the main character SPAMS IT ALL THE DAMN TIME WHY DOES HE EVEN TRY.

[ZERO]

Still my fav gundam series was Gundam Wing.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

Still my fav gundam series was Gundam Wing.

wing was amazing, certainly.

strangely, while the voices for the dubbed version of wing didn't fit at first, they seriously grew on me through the show.

protagonist for 00 is basically a heero clone, who becomes human eventually (lets face it, heero never really changed)

[Andrew_Pavlik]

I'll have to check this out, I lOVED wing, I still have eposides(Japanese) Since like 00'. I even did an english project with the movie endless waltz.

[Masskid]

protagonist for 00 is basically a heero clone, who becomes human eventually (lets face it, heero never really changed)

lulz XD he does not become human at the end XD

[acolyte_to_jippity]

lulz XD he does not become human at the end XD

you know what i mean though. heero is a fucking robot the entire time. setsuna becomes human...and then some

[Masskid]

you know what i mean though. heero is a fucking robot the entire time. setsuna becomes human...and then some

well i havent seen Gundam wing yet so i dont know about heero...

[Masskid]

wow, could heero get anymore emotionless?

[acolyte_to_jippity]

wow, could heero get anymore emotionless?

have you started? where are you in the series?

just a slight hint, he does have a few emotions. i think bored, mad, and ... nope. never mind. just those 2.


but duo is the fucking man! especially in the english dub. releena's voice blows ass in english, but everyone else's is spot-on

[Masskid]

lol right now im like 2 episodes from the end :P,

Heero does show some emotion expectingly around releena, it looks like he does have the ability to care >.> .... i still like 00 better because they work more as a team XD

[ZERO]

Oh, so he is not very far yet.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

Oh, so he is not very far yet.

yeah, 2 ep's from end...ALOT of shit goes down in those last 2 eps

[Masskid]

ok done XD need to see endless waltz now or what ever its called

[acolyte_to_jippity]

ok done XD need to see endless waltz now or what ever its called

yes. yes you do. remember XXXG-00W0 Wing Gundam Zero and how epic it looked? multiply that by about 20 an you'll get XXXG-00W0-W Wing Gundam Zero Waltz (or custom, if you insist on being "technical")

[Masskid]

Done.... didnt really like the wings on it :\ i mean you dont need to flap in outer space

[ZERO]

Also not ony does he need to watch the gundam 00 movie but there are now 3 ovas that are a redo of the entire series. So if you watched the series you need to rewatch it again as the ovas are different.

[Masskid]

ooo ova's really :D

[ZERO]

I have now finished all of gundam 00 the seasons the 3 ovas and the movie. I must say that I really enjoyed the series and found the movie very good as well. The only real issue I have with the movie is I feel that they are sort of ripping off Eureka 7 and I think they could have been a bit more creative in that regard.

[Masskid]

only thing i didnt like about the movie was how setsuna didnt fight that much

[kyperioth]

I have both seasons of 00 and the movie.
I must say, the series was good but the movie was an absolute bore.

*edit*
Much like following in the foot steps of their previous series, like Wing.
The series would be pretty good but then a movie that doesn't do as well.

I guess, though, that it really comes down to how much character/plot/story development you can put into a movie compared to an entire season.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

what are you talking about? Endless Waltz was fucking epic!!

[ZERO]

I think it comes from what your expecting in a movie, a short story about what occurred after the series or a separate stand along story. Movies like the gundam 00 and endless waltz fit the first definition.

Movies for other series may be a lot stronger and better developed to the point there they can stand alone such as the disappearance of haruhi suzumiya, which while it is after the series you can watch it by itself and understand what is going on. :smirk:

[acolyte_to_jippity]

I think it comes from what your expecting in a movie, a short story about what occurred after the series or a separate stand along story. Movies like the gundam 00 and endless waltz fit the first definition.

Movies for other series may be a lot stronger and better developed to the point there they can stand alone such as the disappearance of haruhi suzumiya, which while it is after the series you can watch it by itself and understand what is going on. :smirk:

personally, i want movies set after series-end to be more of the series, but in a 2-hour format.

i wouldn't go out and watch endless waltz or waking the trailblzor, without first finishing the series. that's just dumb.

[kyperioth]

True, I'd much prefer the anime movie to be geared toward "completing" a series or giving it an alternate ending (Evangelion, as an example).
But for some reason, I didn't think either of those two Gundam series movies actually gave the original series a completion.
It felt more like, well back to the same old rutine of "bad-guy" enters and "good-guy" overcomes like in most the Gundam plots.

I will say though, that's generalizing the plots bigtime. Considering in the first half a season xyz could be the "bad-guy" but by the end xyz turns out to be a "good-guy".


Do I expect too much of a mecha franchise? I mean Macross pulls it off well with compilation of OVA's, then series and then movies... Why can't Gundam series pull off good material throughout?


***Edit***
Maybe I'm too much of an old-fashioned SDF-Macross fan.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

macross frontier is awesome

[ZERO]

or giving it an alternate ending (Evangelion, as an example).

You should be careful about the implicit assumptions made with particular examples or at the very least where, when and how you reference exactly what is going on in Evangelion. That being a series I watched before I even knew what anime was I have watched it a lot as I was unaware of the existence of anime and thus other things I could watch instead at the time. So what I mean to say is that even someone like me who has seen that series many times over can not declare for sure if there are any alternate endings in Evangelion.

As for what you said about gundam and macross, this is an important statement b/c both of these things follow very set formulas for presentation. All Gundam series will follow a particular formula and that is why they are called Gundam. Likewise all macross series will follow a set formula that is implied by the name macross. This is without exception from the movies, ovas and tv shows.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

if i may zero,
there are no alternate endings to eva. there is the ending, and then there is the powerpoint presentation.

that's it, unless you count the fanfic i'm writing...but seriously, even I don't count that piece of shit.

[ZERO]

But does my fact fiction count?

[acolyte_to_jippity]

But does my fact fiction count?

...yes?

[StarsMine]

aco, have you seen 08th MS team? it is by far my favorite Gundam series, even if the movie sucked.. all it was was a damn recap of the show >.<
Its a gundam show with no over powered Ace pilots, hell there are no gundams in it either o.O just Mobile suits. Great great characters, and amazing gorilla fighting tactics based off of some WWII skirmishes

also I will never count ep 12 as the real ending, it ended with 11.

I have Zeta gundam ling around here to watch, direct squeal to the original, but much more thought out, and with more Char :D, Char = one of the best, dynamic character in anime of all time, to bad so many people get put off of gundam by G and Seed when they showed those pieces of shit, few watch any UC gundam :(

[acolyte_to_jippity]

dislike original gundam.

but i might watch zeta some time. seed was...decent. nowhere near as good as wing though

[StarsMine]

The original was not great by any means, not to say it is bad, cause its not(though it has no ending :(), I just cant really recomend it to anyone other then Gundam fans, but usually they have seen it themselves.


anyways watch 08th ms team :D

[RamenPoodle]

seed destiny up in here motherfuckers

....
....
....
ok, even I can't be that much of a troll

[ZERO]

I like that banner idea perry! When I have some time I am going to go and program that up :wtg:

[RamenPoodle]

The Anime-Planet one doesn't have as many series so this MAL one that I found updates my "Life Spent" as currently as possible.

Also, you get a new chibi and quote every time you fill that bar at the top. It's like leveling up!

(If you could make one that actually did let you level up numerically, that would be like the best thing ever)

[ZERO]

Ah I was just going to reverse engineer the anime planet api to make my own chibi one :smirk:

[RamenPoodle]

that works too.

[StarsMine]

The Anime-Planet one doesn't have as many series so this MAL one that I found updates my "Life Spent" as currently as possible.

Also, you get a new chibi and quote every time you fill that bar at the top. It's like leveling up!

(If you could make one that actually did let you level up numerically, that would be like the best thing ever)

Thats probably due to that Sothis didnt want to put things in his database with no info on it, he didnt start doing that till last year, and now there are things like Miller report (it got added in one of the initail batches after his decision to add them anyways) that have no screenshots or synopis that Sothis was so adament on haveing before adding animes before. If you just requested to have what he is missing in the data base, IM sure he will look into doing it now

[ZERO]

They have a report section where I have been posting about having the gundam 00 ovas added for 3 months... for something to get added it requires a few people to post constantly about it.

I wonder why they do not just rip the data off anidb. Personally I am tempted to make a site that is literally everything on anidb but with the ability to track your status and have a signature. Really it would not be hard to do but it may piss off the anidb people.

[StarsMine]

Because they dont want hentai on their site?

Also anime planet has some shows that even anidb doesnt have so...

[RamenPoodle]

Thats probably due to that Sothis didnt want to put things in his database with no info on it, he didnt start doing that till last year, and now there are things like Miller report (it got added in one of the initail batches after his decision to add them anyways) that have no screenshots or synopis that Sothis was so adament on haveing before adding animes before. If you just requested to have what he is missing in the data base, IM sure he will look into doing it now

Yeah, that sounds like something sothis would do. He's also an extreme SF nut and pretty much hates all anime that isn't science fiction BUT WATCHES IT ANYWAY, giving pretty much everything on the site a bad score when he rates and "reviews" it. He also gets a raging boner whenever someone mentions Naoki Urusawa's "masterpiece" 20th Century Boys (Monster was better and you know it, man). But that's irrelevant. It's a good site, and I still use it. At the very least, I'm using it a lot now that MAL has been on its period for the past 6 months-laggy as hell and user-unfriendly.

And before you get the wrong idea I have no reason to hate sothis, so I don't. But his reviews really irritate me for some reason, especially when he, Chii, and cassiesheepgirl are the only people EVER to review ANYTHING on the site.

/endpointlessrant

[StarsMine]

vivi, valador, and kira come to mind as others who review

[RamenPoodle]

vivi, valador, and kira come to mind as others who review

yeah, kira does a lot of them too. Like, I'm kind of interested as to why a lot of people don't bother reviewing on Anime-Planet. I guess I could review stuff myself, but I'm kind of lazy. XD

[ZERO]

Yeah, that sounds like something sothis would do. He's also an extreme SF nut and pretty much hates all anime that isn't science fiction BUT WATCHES IT ANYWAY, giving pretty much everything on the site a bad score when he rates and "reviews" it. He also gets a raging boner whenever someone mentions Naoki Urusawa's "masterpiece" 20th Century Boys (Monster was better and you know it, man). But that's irrelevant. It's a good site, and I still use it. At the very least, I'm using it a lot now that MAL has been on its period for the past 6 months-laggy as hell and user-unfriendly.

And before you get the wrong idea I have no reason to hate sothis, so I don't. But his reviews really irritate me for some reason, especially when he, Chii, and cassiesheepgirl are the only people EVER to review ANYTHING on the site.

/endpointlessrant

Which reminds me, you still interested in writing your own reviews on the home page possibly next month once I got everything set up? I hope to have the site reformatted and the CMS system ready by the end of this month. :wtg:

[RamenPoodle]

Sure, that sounds fun. Then maybe I can just paste those reviews over to A-P and maybe even MAL if it's not fucked up by then.