Shin Kidou Senki Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz Tokubetsu-hen

It is A.C. 196—one year after the conflict between Earth and its nearby space colonies ended with the formation of the Earth Sphere Unified Nation. As mankind enters a new era of unity and prosperity, four of the five Gundam pilots decide to follow in society's footsteps and disarm by launching their mobile suits into the sun. However, their plan is unexpectedly suspended when a rebellion erupts with the emergence of Mariemaia Khushrenada—who claims to be the child of fallen dictator Treize and desires to conquer the world in his stead.

Deciding that they are the last line of defense for the Earth Sphere, Heero Yuy, Trowa Barton, Duo Maxwell, and Quatre Raberba Winner scramble to retrieve their Gundams and fight to protect the peace the people of the colonies have pursued for so long. Despite their unwavering resolve to complete one final mission, the battle will be challenging: the pilots' former ally Wufei Chang has pledged his allegiance to Mariemaia's cause instead.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Yuy, Heero Main

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

Maxwell, Duo Main

Seki, Toshihiko Japanese

Barton, Trowa Main

Nakahara, Shigeru Japanese

Peacecraft, Relena Main

Uechi, Aki Japanese

Winner, Quatre Raberba Main

Orikasa, Ai Japanese

Chang, Wufei Main

Ishino, Ryuuzou Japanese

Marquise, Zechs Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Noin, Lucrezia Supporting

Yokoyama, Chisa Japanese

Catalonia, Dorothy Supporting

Matsui, Naoko Japanese

Une, Lady Supporting

Sayuri Japanese

Yatate, Hajime Producer

Yukawa, Jun Producer

Aoki, Yasunao Director, Storyboard

Urakami, Yasuo Sound Director

Reviews

Aug 11, 2009

Goldeneyeuro

Recommended

Now, Gundam Wing was a series I thoroughly enjoyed. Great characters who fit their roles perfectly, bang-on chemistry, and a brilliantly paced and thought-out story. However, I did take a bit of an issue with its art and animation, since the battle scenes lacked the fluidity and choreography I was used to. Reused frames and cheap explosions also dulled the experience. The foreground art was rather well done, but the lackluster backgrounds often left much to be desired. Ditto with the matte, blandish colors. I didn’t hang on this too much, because GW is rather old, and went with ... the “it was good for its time” conclusion, and I often got the feeling that the excellent storyline mostly made up for the art and animation.

Thankfully, Endless Waltz addressed my issue with the art and animation. Much more precise actions, more fluid movements in the Mobile Suits, and much more time was spent on creating battles that looked and felt grittier and more realistic. The explosions didn't feel as cheap, the choreography was improved, and the beam blasts gave scenes a much better sense of dimension. The suits themselves benefit from flashier designs and with the slightly glossier color palate compared with Wing, they seem to pop out and become more vibrant. Ditto goes with the characters and backgrounds. Wing’s backgrounds to me felt a bit like a faded museum piece of art, but Endless Waltz’s art and animation feels much more contemporary.

A year has passed since the end of Wing, and while you can feel the characters have matured a bit in this timeframe, they’re still their old selves, keeping their old philosophies, battle techniques, strengths, weaknesses, skills, and personalities. This I see most apparent in Heero, Duo, and Relena. Keeping the characters relatively similar is perfect, since characterization was a huge strength of the original series. I’m glad that some time was spent on explaining the pasts of some of the pilots, but the movie only goes back a little while into the more recent events, and it feels like they only scratched the surface into the characters’ pasts. They also went into the true purpose and intent of Operation Meteor, but again, they only scratched the surface. Problem is that after they scratch the surface, the questions start flooding in and you’re left wanting more explanations. The new characters they introduce, Mariemaia and Dekim, are well developed for the time they are in the movie and despite minimal explanation, their intent is clearly shown and radiated towards the viewer very well.

The plot starts out in a rather hopeful note, with the results of Wing’s ending ushering in a new era of peace. But things get going rather quickly, and like Wing, each group of characters has their own agenda as to build up to the climax. Thankfully, unlike Wing, there isn’t a big dead spot in the middle of the movie where some characters get shoved aside and the viewer is left wondering what happened to them. The plot doesn’t slow down in the middle of the movie and the viewers are left wanting everything to come together. Even though each group of characters has an agenda, Endless Waltz doesn’t try to fragment and separate these groups as much as possible, and instead keeps their actions closely tied to the main plotline so there's a constant feeling of progression.

The shifts amongst these character groups apparent in Wing are also apparent in Endless Waltz, necessary and well done, but since the buildup to Endless Waltz’s climax is neverending, no shift in focus feels clunky and forced, which sometimes occurred in Wing. I would have liked a bit more focus on Wu Fei’s agenda and a little more on what happened to him and Trowa during the 2nd quarter of the movie, however. A slightly grittier battle between Heero and Wu Fei and more focus on Wing Zero would have also been welcome since Heero is the most central of the 5 pilots to the plot, but what Endless Waltz did deliver was still pretty close compared to Wing.

If you liked Gundam Wing, do not skip Endless Waltz. A good, though rather sad, end to the After Colony timeline, Endless Waltz concludes the Wing series very well. It’s like having an excellent dessert after your meal.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jul 22, 2024

FAKEANIMEGIRL

Mixed Feelings

https://noahsb1c7c15d6d.wordpress.com/

I already have a review for the Gundam Wing series, and I'd suggest reading that first as my feelings towards it also reflect that of this movie for the most part. Endless Waltz is the sequel to the Gundam Wing TV series, and the greatest thing about it is that it could've easily felt forced as the original series ended on its own but instead it feels like a natural continuation and extended conclusion of the series.

This is surely for the better as it allows Gundam Wing to go out with a much greater bang. The initial scenario is nearly identical to that of the ... final episodes of Wing, but the progression is much different. After peace is obtained a new force shows up to take advantage of the Earth's powerless state with a big plan that puts the entire planet at risk.

We aren't here for the plot though (because it's Gundam Wing), but rather the thrills, and Endless Waltz delivers more of those than ever before through some incredible animation quality that blows the original series animation to smithereens, showcasing both much crisper art and fluid animation. To give an example of just how good the art is, there were many times before where I had seen still pictures of Endless Waltz and thought I was looking at high quality promotional art. It's really something.

To further justify this sequel's existence, it gives us some short backstories on all the Gundam pilots that the original series was sorely lacking. It isn't much, but Heero, Trowa, and Wufei all needed it most. We actually barely get anything about Duo unfortunately, but he was cool enough already, and Quatre's backstory was actually in the series.

Speaking of Gundams, the most controversial aspect of Endless Waltz has always been Hajime Katoki's Mobile Suit redesigns. These redesigns clash greatly with Kunio Okawara's popular originals and have met with much scorn from many Gundam Wing fans due to a perceived lack of respect for Okawara's designs by Katoki. These new designs are not upgrades, but rather complete retcons that don't acknowledge the originals other than the base concept. Deathscythe Hell no longer has any weapons besides the Beam Scythe, Sandrock loses its claw and instead fights only with its shotels making it redundant in the face of the fellow melee Gundam Deathscythe, Heavyarms is the same but now blue for some reason, Altron is... pretty much the same, but who cares about Altron? And of course, Wing Zero gets its now legendary angel wings, which you either think are cool as hell or incredibly stupid. Since Deathscythe was hit pretty hard here, you can definitely put me down as someone who dislikes the Endless Waltz redesigns, though I like Heavyarms's new color scheme more, and Tallgeese III is my second favorite Mobile Suit in the series. While I hated Wing Zero's angel wings before seeing this, when in motion they have a more mechanical look to them so I'm giving it a pass even though it doesn't beat the original (it even loses its Mobile Armor bird mode, please help me). These changes were all so, so unnecessary and minimize the original designs. I don't get it. Worse still, these are almost always the final versions used in the Super Robot Wars games.

Venting over. Endless Waltz contains the best qualities of Gundam Wing's fast-paced action and these positive qualities overshadow much of the usual lame melodrama. The movie's biggest misstep is having a set-up and ending that ignores its conflict with the series's central themes and resets things back to the status quo which Endless Waltz showed didn't work. Just Gundam Wing being stupid again. If you liked the series, you will like Endless Waltz. If you didn't like the series, you will at least like Endless Waltz more. It's that simple.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 19, 2023

uWuDesuWooWoo

Not Recommended

Spoiler

SPOILERS AHEAD

TL;DR Very pretty to look at, decent action, your usual old style Gundam dialogue and absolutely moronic decisionmaking every new character and Wiu Fei

I was told to watch this by a friend that knows I like Gundam Seed+Destiny+00 and at the time of writing this review, episode 12 of Witch from Mercury finished airing. He pointed out that Wing is _not_ like those shows, but many people confuse references with copying, and he didn't remember Seed and Destiny that well (I've seen both twice), and well at least Seed doesn't throw in random new powerful factions whenever the writers need a new enemy. Wing ... does this at least 3 times in total, excluding the introduction of OZ in the beginning.

Wing has a completely insane morality system that I am absolutely convinced was either decided by dice rolls or people that needed different medication. There's one big battle at the end of episode 49, everyone except Treize walks away, and then there's this movie, and hoo boy good luck figuring out why the non main cast people do what they do.

You've got a random coup on Earth that happens without a hitch, the Gundams show up to get their shit kicked, then Heero does the hero thing, some random civies start yelling at the coup people, the Zero Wing shoots the cool overpowered as hell gun (that destroyed an entire space colony in one shot earlier in Wing) multiple times into an earth magical bunker which kills no one(?), then the random 9 year old gets shot, the dictator gets randomly executed by some grunt, and everyone else walks away. Those civies from earlier? They somehow encouraged the Nazis to throw down their weapons.

I suppose that I am fortunate that these writers didn't make any references to the wrong assumption that "6 gigatons of mass hitting earth from space = forever winter" like episode 49 of Wing beats you over the head with (apparently basic knowledge about the Bolide impact wasn't a thing in 1997, but w/e). My review of Iron Blooded Orphans had to include 12+ basic scientific + economic inaccuracies, and fortunately this movie dodges those particular pitfalls.

The show makes very little common sense, and the movie is worse. At least the Peacecraft daughter is no longer talking to herself like she did for the first 12+ episodes in Wing. I now mostly understand why I hate Iron Blooded Orphans, because the main scriptwriter watched Gundam Wing and G Gundam, both of which were, as other reviews here have pointed out, much closer to wrestling plots than actual warfare or anything in military history from competent generals or even commanders. The scene with the civies saying they were going to the Presidential palace (white house?), which buried itself Neon Genesis Evangelion Neo-Tokyo style to yell about pacifism (including former soldiers) would be laughable if it wasn't so sincere in its idiotic statement.

The movie is very pretty to look at, but as someone that actually reads every damn line of dialogue and pays attention to what is happening and expects humans to act like humans, I was infuriated.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Poll: Shin Kidou Senki Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz Tokubetsu-hen Episode 1 Discussion hznu - Dec 7, 2008

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by Ranxomare »» May 26, 2023 9:53 AM