Category: Finished Series: Action

Short Synopsis: No fighting this time, instead: plot development. And a cross-dressing Tieria…
Highlights: Nice developments!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, finally it’s time for this series to reveal what the final stage of Aeolia Shenberg’s plan was. He wasn’t just an overambitious Mother Teresa who simply hoped to achieve a world without war, but also one where humanity could make great leaps of advancements into space. Now Wan Lui Ming’s role in the whole series also becomes clear: she wants to see humanity enter space, and doesn’t care how it happens. Now that the Innovators are closer to achieving that goal, it obviously doesn’t come as much of a surprise to see her on their side now.

Meanwhile, I’m glad that this episode also introduced some of the small scale politics back into the series, with the plans to reorganize the Middle East. I wonder what kind of effect that will have with Marina Ismael. I can really see her being the Relena of this series, where at one point she’s going to take back the control over the region in an attempt to set right the mistakes she made.

And I must say, that more and more references to past Gundam series keep popping up, especially in the second season: Enhanced Soldiers vs. Newtypes, Setsuna F. Seiei starts to resemble Heero Yui more and more, there’s Mr Bushido of course, the deserted island, and Marina vs. Relena. Still, despite the references, I’m glad that this series manages to retain its own goals and identity. The things I’ve read about Gundam Seed seem to indicate that nearly everything inside it was ripped off past Gundam-series.

Tieria in a dress was an interesting piece of fanservice by the way. But I guess that if he didn’t dress up as a woman, people would start to recognize him, but that still makes me wonder why he used a purple wig, instead of a more neutral colour. That’s one thing that’s kept bugging me about this series: the ridiculous hair colours. I know it’s anime and all, but they remain annoying. It works much better if people just walk around in colours that actually exist. Especially since the only people who seem to be affected by these colours are the ones important to the plot…

In this episode we also learn that Louise’s father is a great financer of the A-Laws. That explains her high position, and likeliness of being involved at important places. It makes sense, although she ended up living next to Setsuna in the first episode of the first season a bit too conveniently. Still, I’m glad to see that she’s maturing really fast. The only thing I ask of her is not to go emo like Saji’s doing. There’s a fine line between genuine drama and downright emo, and Saji’s been continuing to hop over that line through the process of the series (thankfully though, he’s the only one so far, and I’d like to keep it that way).

Short Synopsis: Allelujah and Soma crash down on a remote island.
Highlights: Surprisingly quiet and focused for a Gundam 00-episode.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ooh, surprise. At first I wasn’t too much excited about a full episode dedicated to Allelujah and Soma, but the creators did a surprisingly good job on it, and it was an episode well spent. There was no melodrama, and yet their story reached a satisfying conclusion. I was wondering how Allelujah would finally convince Souma to stop attacking him, but it turns out that she too had a split personality. The twist has been built up for well enough, so it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

I also liked the reaction of the rest of the team at the discovery that Allelujah brought a girl with him, at the end of the episode. Overall, this episode was really un-typical for this series, but it worked surprisingly well.

In other news: Marina learns that Azadistan is gone now, and the next episode should probably shed some more much-needed light into Tieria’s mysterious clone. I only have one complaint for this episode: Mr. Bushido.

It’s annoying, but I can live with the strange name. I can even deal with the fact that the Japanese are treating the “Mr.”-part as his last name. I can deal with the mask. But please: why the heck do you abandon your target after it’s had a technical breakdown? Seriously, finish the guy off already. This is war, for God’s sake, not a friendly baseball competition.

Short Synopsis: A-Laws prepares for the next wave of attack.
Highlights: Ooh, more background.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
You know, in a way I’m glad that the creators decided to wrap up Saji’s story in this part of the story instead of waiting for this until the end, but really: it has to stop somewhere. He was the most annoying character in the second half of the first season, and as much as I hate to admit it, he’s also the most annoying character of the second season. I don’t mind how you can have a character like him on the show, but the creators are really giving him way too much airtime.

Every episode I keep thinking that the guy has learned his lesson, and for every single episode so far he’s proved me wrong. Okay, so he sees that he screwed up big time in the previous episode; He wants to help; that’s good. Unfortunately, the episode ended at the point where he was about to shoot down Louise, something which will make him even more emo than he already was for goodness’ sake!

Okay, so those were the bad parts. The rest of the episode was pretty enjoyable, to say the least. “Mr. Bushido” seems to be finally coming into action, and I’m interested in what he can add to this archetype. The overall episode was a good aftermath that did let the deaths of the previous episodes sink in. I’m also glad that Setsuna has grown up really much, and didn’t just try to get to Ali as soon as possible (like he would have done in the first season). The guy knows his priorities, and overall he’s turned into a capable main character for this series.

Meanwhile, I was pleasantly surprised when this episode showed some of Sumeragi’s past. She had this whole life as a soldier behind her, explaining why she knows so much about tactics, and why she fell into a slump after the end of the first season: she already had lost some of her loved ones at one time, and she tried to use the Gundams to forget about these times, but that pretty much failed after that final episode. Then Billy took care of her for the next four years, which also wasn’t the smartest thing to do because he kept reminding her of her past.

I’m also warming up to that silver-haired official, thankfully. His big disadvantage is that he doesn’t have the season worth of build-up like the other characters have, but he works very nicely against the other, more moralistic characters. I still think that the military people act a little bit too sentimental, considering how they’re supposed to be rigorously trained and should be used to the fact that anyone of them might die, but this is just me being nitpicky.

Short Synopsis: Celestial Beings visit Kataron in an attempt to team up.
Highlights: Well, let’s hope Saji has learned his lesson now…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Overall, I liked this episode quite a bit as it continued to push the plot forward, although I do have a large complaint about the way it ended. It just reminded me too much of Code Geass, in which the creators just too often tried to evoke sympathy by creating an as large bloodbath as possible. The big problem is that the lead characters that were so morally unambiguous in the first season turned into the clichéd “heroes of justice”.

In the first season, there were some evil parties, but no party was pure good. Everyone was in it for his or her own ideals and agendas, and especially the split world into three equally powerful parties made up for a lot of interesting politics, where the viewer got the chance to side for a lot of differently possible parties. Unfortunately, they’ve now merged together into one big glob of a country where only the characters from the first season seem to feel any sympathy.

It’s not a complete disaster, but this series really NEEDS to do something to prevent A-LAWS from turning into your stereotyped evil empire that needs to be defeated. The top-decision makers are the biggest problem, I think. They just aren’t fleshed out as well as the people fro the first season. It’s a shame, we’ve got a series with some wonderful characters across the scale of good and evil, and now they have to take orders from pure evil people.

Gundam Wing had the same in its middle part, and it managed to pull through when said organization fell apart. That’s what I hope that this series is going to do as well: just let the evil empire do its stuff for a while, and then around the episode 13-mark make it fall apart with a big bang. I mentioned this before, but the most important thing that this series needs to do is to give each of its characters an identity: a unique role that’s going to create a lot of different parties one could side with.

Strangely enough, I was more annoyed with Louise than with Saji in this episode. Saji’s behaviour felt natural: we already know that he’s struggling between every different party, and he’s not exactly someone who can keep a secret. However, it seems that Louise didn’t enter the army to grow, but rather to take revenge on the Gundams for her hand.

Speaking of stereotypes… what was up with Ali al Sarshes? Has he spent four years getting more and more insane or something? I would have preferred a less direct scene.