Kidou Senshi Zeta Gundam

It is Universal Century 0087, and the One Year War between the Earth Federation and Principality of Zeon is over. The Earth Federation has created an elite task force, known as the Titans, who are responsible for hunting the remaining Zeon forces. However, the power-hungry Titans have shown themselves to be no better than Zeon, spurring the creation of a rebellious faction called the Anti-Earth Union Group (AEUG).

17-year-old Kamille Bidan lives in the colony Green Noa, home to a Titan base. Kamille gets in trouble after assaulting a Titan officer, an event that coincides with an attack led by former Zeon ace Char Aznable, now known as AEUG pilot Quattro Bajeena. When Kamille steals a Titan's prototype Gundam, he soon finds himself in the middle of the dangerous conflict.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Aznable, Char Main

Ikeda, Shuuichi Japanese

Bidan, Kamille Main

Tobita, Nobuo Japanese

Ray, Amuro Supporting

Furuya, Toru Japanese

Karn, Haman Supporting

Sakakibara, Yoshiko Japanese

Noa, Bright Supporting

Suzuoki, Hirotaka Japanese

Haro Supporting

Shou, Mayumi Japanese

Mass, Sayla Supporting

Noa, Hathaway Supporting

Hanai, Yasuko Japanese

Zabi, Mineva Lao Supporting

Itou, Miki Japanese

Murasame, Four Supporting

Shimazu, Saeko Japanese

Yatate, Hajime Producer, Original Creator

Uchida, Kenji Producer

Tomino, Yoshiyuki Director, Script, Storyboard, Theme Song Lyrics, Original Creator

Fujino, Sadayoshi Sound Director

Reviews

Nov 16, 2024

k-0da

Recommended

Zeta has a lot of high highs and a lot of low lows. The writing peaks and dips dramatically based on if there's a woman in a scene or not. The writing isn't bad per say, it's actually extremely good, it's just that I don't think Tomino knew how women worked when he was writing this. Free my girl Reccoa she didnt do anything wrong.

Great action, animation. Suits look cool.

Kamille is a very good protagonist, and watching his journey is harrowing. Four Vaginas is also like so fucking cool, like unreasonably fucking cool, but he's still an asshole dipshit and I appreciate that. Haman ... was fantastically menacing, even if she didnt show up a lot.

The cast overall is fine. I wish I got to see them interact more as a team, but I'm fairly happy with what we got. They're not beating the charm of WB though. Speaking of charm, the returning white base cast got very good sendoffs, Kai and Amuro especially.

Poor Bel. She deserved better, but I didn't hate her arc.

While I have mixed feelings because of the misogny, I do recommend zeta as a whole, because it's a great show, just didnt hit all the buttons for me in particular.

Oh, and Fa Yuiry best girl.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 7, 2023

MxS7HGS

Mixed Feelings

Zeta Gundam differs significantly in tone from Mobile Suit Gundam, as it has a darker atmosphere. The series has a constant sense of foreboding as if the entire system is on the brink of collapsing into a despotic nightmare. Even the victories earned by the AEUG in the show's early stages feel hollow and Pyrrhic, as they often take one step forward and two steps back.

While the story is interesting, my issue lies with the main cast. Although they have strengths, I must say that they often fall flat. They come across as two-dimensional and overly transparent in their motivations. For example, I had mixed ... feelings when Reccoa Londe's true internal conflict was revealed. On the one hand, I understood her frustration and disgust, but on the other hand, her behavior in the past thirty-something episodes made more sense. However, I found her and many of her co-stars difficult to follow. While immoral or amoral characters can still be interesting, the overemotional hypocrites and irrational malcontents on display in this show simply tried my patience.

Kamille, in particular, is an obnoxious and heavy-handed hero who, even at sixteen years old, cannot come to terms with his girlish name. Even worse, he blames his parents for all of his petty miseries. Although he shows a glimmer of hope in the fourth episode when he forgives Jerid Messa, a crass idiot who caused him unspeakable harm, Kamille quickly relapses into a string of unconvincing melodramas. While comparisons with MS Gundam's Amuro Ray are inevitable, the show often encourages them. Amuro's trials transformed him from a carefree child to a tormented adolescent to a self-aware man, and his confidence grew with his knowledge of the Gundam, creating an endearing symbiotic relationship. On the other hand, Kamille has an unbridled attitude and sees the Zeta as nothing more than a badge to prove it.

One of the things I enjoyed was the return of original characters after the One-Year War. Bright, for instance, is now an experienced officer and a family man, a far cry from the inexperienced officer he was in the original Gundam, tasked with managing a ship full of civilians. On the other hand, Amuro's character is dealing with the war's consequences, including pseudo-house arrest and surveillance by the Federation government due to his Newtype abilities. Nonetheless, the most intriguing character in the returning cast is Char Aznable. It is not a big reveal that Lt. Quattro is the Red Comet himself. Char's character growth is as significant as Kamille's in the series. With the downfall of the Zabi family, Char's focus is no longer on vengeance. Instead, he wants to help humanity by implementing his father's teachings and moving humanity into the vast expanse of outer space.

On a technical level, the show still looks fantastic, even by today's standards. The mobile suit designs are still visually striking, and the animation is improved. Combat is much more fluid, and the battles are generally directed better, though there are still some animation mistakes, such as inconsistencies in rank insignias.

The overall enjoyment of Zeta Gundam is not determined by its outstanding performance, as it doesn't have one. The real question is whether the viewer has the patience to wait for it to get better. I can attest that it does get better during the more focused final act, and die-hard mecha fans will appreciate its sophisticated and complicated narrative.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Dec 3, 2024

09philj

Not Recommended

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is a peculiar and frustrating series. Still, there are some things in it I do like. First of all, I admire the audacity of following up the relatively straightforward war story of Mobile Suit Gundam with a conflict that's much thornier and more complex and ideological. The Earth Federation are placed in the roles of antagonists this time round, the domineering attitude they had towards the colonies in the original MSG evolving into a more imperialistic outlook, which nicely reflects the establishment of America's place in the global order following WW2. I also like that the Federation's new mobile suits incorporate ... a mixture of Federation and Zeon design flourishes, which demonstrates how Zeon's technology has been folded back into Federation R&D without having to say it outright. There are moments where the terrible impact of war is demonstrated in quite a chilling, visceral manner, although I would have liked more of them. The animation is very much improved from MSG, as you would expect with the six year gap between the start of this and the start of the original series, with both a lot more frames of animation and detail within those frames, which does a lot to show off the excellent technical design, which is just as good as it was before, and arguably better having shed some of the more toyetic elements from MSG. Much as I did not particularly like the series that bears it's name, I have to say that the Zeta Gundam itself is a great setting out of the stall for how the central Gundam in a series can radically depart from what came before while still retaining enough recognisable design language such that you can look at it and instantly think "Gundam". The Zeta is bigger, sleeker, and more elaborate than the original, as befits the leap in animation quality.

Here, unfortunately, the positives end. There are a couple of significant points which I think mostly contribute to why Zeta Gundam didn't work as well as the original series. The first, and more severe of the issues, is that Yoshiyuki Tomino can write character drama about as well as a fish can juggle chainsaws. I had problems with the character writing in the original MSG and sometimes found it hard to follow characters motivations or understand their actions. This is much worse, with a lot of characters acting in ways that cross over from irrational into truly unfathomable. Kamille is a more impulsive and emotional protagonist than Amuro, and I like that he is different from his predecessor, but an increased emphasis on the protagonist's feelings and relationships exposes the flaws in the character writing a lot more than Mobile Suit Gundam, and it does unavoidably feel jarring that the writing hasn't increased in quality in line with the look of the thing. The female characters get it particularly badly, there's more than one subplot that made me feel like I had been cornered at a party by an elderly relative who wanted to tell me about "what the deal is with women". I think this was actually made worse by the fact that there were some female characters like Emma and Haman who weren't like this because it reminded me of what I wasn't getting from most of the others. I'm sure the quality of the translation on Crunchyroll's subtitles didn't help but the dialogue has all the zip and spark of unflavoured jelly. Zeta Gundam also places a much larger all around focus on the emergence of newtypes and the psychic experience of being a newtype and the intensity and strangeness of this power is absolutely not conveyed well at all by characters staring directly into the camera and saying that they're having a psychic experience. Char is back, but he's a protagonist now, which instantly makes him less interesting because he has less things to do and you don't get as much of the cunning thought processes that made him a compelling antagonist in the previous series. Also it feels like a character expresses anger in a professional context by beating up a subordinate at least once an episode which goes from shocking to laughable to aggravating to both aggravating and laughable as the series goes on. The second main problem is that the plot in general, while it contains several interesting ideas, feels wildly haphazard. The series feels bloated at 50 episodes and the characters spend a lot of time fucking about, moving from place to place not really achieving anything. If the intention was to get across the crushing futility of a long term low-level conflict, it achieved that and I hate it. If the intention was to show a vertical slice of the different theatres more like MSG, it's more of a failure. The White Base's long, treacherous journey back to friendly territory in MSG helped string a lot of bits of that series together into something approximating a compelling narrative and without the help of that framing device you're lost here from the get go. Speaking of conflict, I feel like there was overall much less of a focus on combat tactics in the action scenes this time, and a lot more of mobile suits just flying at each other in a disorganised brawl, which did make a lot of them feel repetitive compared to MSG. Also much like MSG it just sort of stops unsatisfyingly at the end, although I think the last two episodes are overall some of the best of the series. Still, the road to get there is so arduous that by that time I really just wanted it to stop.

I haven't seen the instalments in the UC after Zeta yet. If they're good, it might justify my sitting through this. If not, I will be forced to conclude I've absolutely wasted fifty episodes of watch time on this one.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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