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menacingtrees said: Can someone please explain to me who the hell the random ass dead guy, bleeding in the fetal position on a yoga mat is at like 17:42 towards the end of the episode? has seriously no one else wondered this???
I'm wondering this.
Aside from that... oh my gosh, what an extremely cathartic episode. T______T
This was a fantastic finale; I can't say much else. The epilogue was great, the Exia vs 0 Gundam fight was great, everything was great.
I guess I enjoyed both seasons about equally. I liked that the first season felt more relevant in its comparisons to the modern world, but all the politics became really hard to follow, anyway. Both seasons had great drama and great character development (for the Meisters, at least), but I suppose season 1 was better at being "climactic." I'm still bugged by how boring some of the character deaths in S2 were, and I wish some of the secondary characters got more development... but oh well.
8/10 for both seasons
Oh yeah, did anyone notice Anew appeared in the crowd at the Earth Sphere Federation speech? O_o
menacingtrees said: Can someone please explain to me who the hell the random ass dead guy, bleeding in the fetal position on a yoga mat is at like 17:42 towards the end of the episode? has seriously no one else wondered this???
That guy's Homer Katagiri, Billy Katagiri's uncle. He rarely makes any appearance eventhough he's the acting head of A-Laws, hence not many people even remembered his existence. In that scene, he did seppuku due to A-Laws been completely decimated and might probably as well due to him realizing the reality of what A-Laws have done.
Ironically, he's the one that re-inducted Graham back into military service after S1's finale, teaching the broken Graham the path of Bushi to reclaim his honor which in turn converts him into Mr.Bushido.
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Overall, 00 have the makings of a very good gundam series in S1; good plot, refreshing concept of 3rd-party peacemaker, UC-like atmosphere, nice MS designs and a good amount of pivotal/memorable characters. S2, it's like Sunrise suddenly got possessed by Bandai; more emphasis on MS (yes 00 raiser, you.) while leaving the story/character development in a jumbled up mess. Seriously, S2 is only good for the MS battles and the nostalgic feel that the final exia - 0 showdown brings.
Here's my assessment of the series' weakpoints. The things under spoiler is how I'd personally deal with them if I got the right to reproduce 00;
Lockon Stratos/Neil-Lyle: While Neil's death in S1 is very pivotal for Setsuna's and Tieria's character development and executed very well, their decision to shoehorn Lyle into Neil's shoe so nonchalantly make Neil's death feels forced. And not to mention Lyle's completely uninteresting, cliched tragic romance protag development.
Kill off Neil in S1 and introduce Lyle in S2 to actually be a pilot in A-Laws. Lyle's there due to him being influenced by A-Laws, thinking that CB is the real terrorist, while having him hate his brother for suddenly disappearing. Plays off well with his past.Eventually the meisters knew of this, giving Tieria a new raison d' etre; saving Lyle (to repay Neil for his chara growth) and opening Lyle's eye to the fact of what Neil's actually doing and Neil's POV.
With Lyle finally understood Neil (whether due to Tieria's lecture/Neil's spirit lecture/Setsuna's innovator mind link) and realizes who's the real big bad, he joined CB and inherited Lockon's alias (CB only have3 pilots for almost half of S2 for this). With this much, even throwing in Anew is not a half bad decision; further fortifying his hate to A-Laws+R-Innovator.
Azadistan/Marina Ismail: Bad character, as in, badly useless. If not for Azadistan being Setsuna's birthland and being one of CB's intervention target, she might as well have no appearance and topped with her extremely pacifist chara setting, she's better written off altogether. In S1, her role is so-so but the way she's involved with the whole Azadistan mess is too minimal. In S2, she's functions as a filler; giving Setsuna and Shirin a little something to talk about, providing cheesy monologues and serving 'stop the fighting' whine. Every single appearance of hers in S2 provides nothing to the story. Shirin, while being an even more sub-chara than Marina, feels more solid as she have her own development (leaving Azadistan and joining Katharon).
In S1, give Marina more roles in Azadistan conflict and turn off her pacifist side a little; having her directly involved in rescuing Massoud and having her being more competent should do the trick. Also, Setsuna should contact her time-to-time after the Azadistan episodes, hinting at possibility of Azadistan stabilizing while showing more of her bond with Shirin and Setsuna (bordering romance for the oomph). In the climax of S1, have her killed by Ali after she read Setsuna's e-mail. This should angers Setsuna greatly and further enforcing Ali's antagonistic position.
With her and Massoud dead, Azadistan goes back into conflict. Shirin, unable to contain the conflict and deeply angered at Ali joined Katharon in S2 to find solutions for Azadistan conflict as well as tracking Ali. Marina's spirit then appeared to Setsuna after 00's defeat in S2, giving him her answers (as per the S1 e-mail). This scene is then followed with Setsuna seeing Exia R2's container slowly descending.
Ali-Al-Saachez: Very good villain/sub-villain in S1; veteran terrorist whose mindset completely opposes CB, a history with Setsuna, hijacked a Throne and almost offed Setsuna just a moment later and having a great voice actor. In S2, he became confusing; his allegiance became very unclear and he simply looks like he's roped by Ribbons instead. His ideals from S1 still remains but the fact that he works under Ribbons's thumb and switched enemies so often (Setsuna-Tieria-Lyle) gave him a very wobbly character setting. Having him finished by Lyle, is just unsatisfying.
*read my thoughts on marina's first*
His role in S1 stays the same in addition of killing Marina. In S1 operation fallen angel episodes, Setsuna hunts Ali and found him fighting Lockon (after the episode where Lockon saved Tieria and injured his eye). Setsuna, blinded by rage attacked Ali and almost got killed by Zwei's GN fangs if not for Lockon taking the hit for him. And despite getting impaled in the cockpit, Lockon manages to avoid direct hit to Dynames' GN drive and with his last strength, shoot back at Ali; severely damaging Zwei and injuring him. Lockon's sacrifice snaps Setsuna out and before his last breath, gives Setsuna the same speech as the one before he dies in anime.
In S2, Ali's involvement remains the same though he should be shown ignoring Ribbon's orders once or twice. His final duel should've been in a Setsuna-Graham-Ali three-way showdown. While Graham finally can come to term with Setsuna's ideal, Ali continued to resist and got OP-ed by 00R. Scared, for once in his life, he tried to flee but the battle damaged his Arche's GN drive, flooding his cockpit with Tau particles and he dies slowly due to particle poisoning.
Team Trinity/Nena: For me, Team Trinity felt like a makeshift villain; their introduction in S1 is so sudden, and not much of their background is revealed. Despite these issues, their role isn't half bad, showing how CB looks like if they intervened with random brute force, while giving Louise and Ali their key development. In S2, Nena is just Wang Liu Mei's gopher and like Ali, keeps changing allegiance. While she managed to avenge her bros (well, kinda), the way she's offed very fast is pointless. Also, despite being the main reason for Louise's hatred, they hardly brushed against each other.
Her roles throughout S1 is just fine as it is. In S2, she and Louise should've shown having 1-on-1 at least twice with Louise losing both but managed to stay alive, and Saji interfering in 0 Raiser once. This is a good point to transition Louise from her incompetency as well as expanding on their backstory by having her trained under Graham. In their final clash, the battle should've been extended with Nena putting up more struggle as she's obviously more experienced than Louise while the outcome stays the same as the original.
Trans-Graham Aker: One of my favorite character in S1. Solid backstory, skilled normal pilot, interesting development at the end of S1. Initially in S2, seeing him dressed up as char variant excites me, thinking this guy's will be big in the plot. But what turns out later, is a major disappointment; he simply becomes delusional, with a birthday wish of dying while fighting gundam. And not enough with that, the only effort he shows in S2 is to persistently annoy Setsuna to no end; appearing like a wild pokemon and asking Setsuna for a duel which Setsuna don't even give a damn to till the final episode.
From a badass normal, to possible char clone, to a wild pokemon. What a let down.
His role in S1 is unchanged since it's well-written already. However, I'd make him fail his S1 final battle so that his raison d'etre of avenging his companions carries into S2. In S2, I'd make him wear the mask but instead of being a delusional lone wolf, he works alongside A-Laws pretty well, given a platoon to lead.
Due to his skills and history in S1, A-Laws prioritize Graham and his platoon to directly face off CB meisters (better than having him pop up on his own at random) though in every mission, he insisted that he's the one to take 00 down to regain his pride and the rest to not interfere. Due to this, his missions always end up jeopardized with either side retreating. In the climax, his inability to ultimately take 00 down leads him to work together with Ali to finally track 00. As Ali wouldn't comply to let him battle 00 alone, the three of them engaged in a three-way battle (as stated above). The battle ends with Graham finally coming to terms with Setsuna, realizing that what his fallen comrades truly want is not the destruction of CB, but the safety of everyone on earth.
In the finale of S2, instead of having him do nothing, he launches off in Masurao (repaired by Billy) to help fend off against Gaga forces and announcing his new path of Bushido; fighting to ensure a better future for the world. He ultimately survives the battle. In the epilogue, he and Billy is shown drinking, celebrating the victory while raising a glass to remember their fallen comrades.
00 raiser: Yes, the suit. It's too OP, it's broken. As if having twin drive and GN burst is not enough, 00R is also given with that hugeass 'raiser sword' attack which might as well cleave Ribbons' HQ instead, ending the series by episode 20. Frankly, after 0 raiser is attached to 00, other gundam contributes almost nothing to the story and instead, become each character's personal plot device.
The plot dictates that 00, the main protag suit in the series to be OP; i dont mind that fact much but seriously sunrise, tone the OP-ness down abit. Give other gundams more scenes and show what their full capability is; Cherudim only got a few chances to deploy every arsenal it had despite being the most equipped among the four, Arios-Archer should've shown more twin battles together and Seravee completely lost it's place as the most powerful beam artillery unit once Raiser sword comes into the picture.
TBH for the 2nd memento mori destruction, it makes more sense to have 00R and Seravee dock side by side, both generating extreme amount of GN particles which then channeled into the GN bazooka to fire something similar to 'Raiser Attack'.
I liked the final Exia vs RX-78 0 Gundam showdown if not only for the symbolism (Twin Drive theme) and coolness factor.
Also I kind of forgot but I know the plain 00 Gundam only compatible with original 0 Gundam's GN Drive and one other, I think the other is Exia's GN Drive? So Ribbons stole one of the Twin Drive and somehow it's actually 0 Gundam's Drive (talk about luck). Also I'm not surprised he got 0 Gundam working immediately 'cause we saw Exia R2 shortly after, ofc both of them could be BSing through.
Also somehow liked the ending. Yay for Colasour!
Raised one point for this episode alone.7/10
Good shit, but to me it's one-time only drug by 00 Raiser RAINBOW.
Too much Trans-am in the end. An alright anime and gundam show overall.
I guess it gets a 7.2/10 from me. Could be a lot better, could be a lot worse. Season one was super boring for the first 14 episodes for me. And it took me over a year just to get the courage to continue it instead of dropping it. I think it was a worthy experience overall. But I could have gone without watching it.
No comment on the final episode, since it was just meh overall for me. So many things left unfinished because of the movie.
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I finally finished the 2nd season after 6 years....and I remembered exactly why I didn't finish it back then. It is a massive shame it didn't keep up with it's uniqueness created in the first season and just reverted to a standard Gundam series. All of the suspense and excitement built up in the first season was eliminated when just about everyone showed up still alive in the 2nd season...turning into a bit of a pseudo Destiny sequel, though still considerably better. What a shame, after re watching the 1st season I thought this would become my favorite of the AU series.
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment"
This was the second time I watched the series ,the first time being while its second season was still airing and I felt like I didn't remember much about it so I decided to give it another try to see that maybe I undervalued at first.
But after watching it again everything good and bad about it came back to me.The good being that it had a very strong start and a overall good plot,in its first season it had a strong focus on story as well as action ,while the character section was somewhat left behind.
The second season however turns it around and decides that the plot is already set in motion so it decides it will focus on characters and action foremost. And that's where the problems occur :so many action scenes (you couldn't have 5 minutes pass without one happening),so many instances where characters are just left out to escape/the fight ends in a stalemate for no good reason other than to build up more tension for the end,some of the supporting characters from S1 literally had no place in S2 ("Marina you go and take care of those children since you cant do jack shit" ,"Saiji you go stick with them Celestial Being since if you go someplace else we cant find a excuse to give you any screen time" ,"Louise were gonna make you a pilot for some reason,even if you aren't very competent in doing that and drag on your revenge sub plot for as long as possible" ,"Al-Saachez were gonna rely on you some more to be the big bad villain of the series"... ) and its not like the characters themselves are to blame,its just that the series itself didn't know what to do with them.
While S2 did have some good moments: the collapse of the space elevator, the ending... it basically boiled down to recycling the Titans plot from Zeta Gundam,all while throwing in some Gundam Wing elements for good measures and voila.
Not the worst entry,but its nowhere near the best.
Loved this series. Whilst I didn't really like the characters except Setsuna in S1, this season gave them all some life (except poor Lockon lol).
The only thing that was annoying was that by the end of this, it's almost like how the series began, with a project starting. It makes me wonder if time is just repeating itself xD
Also, it doesn't seem like the world really knew what was going on, like in season 1 I felt some governments were corrupt and that there would be an overhaul of them but it kind of just tied everything up. Saji never found out who killed his sister and it would've been interesting to see the worlds reaction to this fight that would basically determine humanity. I guess the world still wants to keep secrets though.
wow I really liked the end of season 2! For me it was amazing! I enjoyed both seasons but I prefer second one
Also the theme is still so actual
My favourties are alive and healthy AllelujaX Marie ^_^ They are the cutest
But still sad about Sergej Smirnof
Ali Al Sachez finally got kicked-ass and Lyle got his revange. But anyway I feel bad for Lyle no happy end for him ...I would prefer Feldt to be with him but anyway want to see him happy
Tierria is with Vader so he is fine.
Marina seems to wait for Setsuna until he is fed up with fighting but guess this will still take a wile. Anyway he seems to be in love with his Gundam hehehe
I hoped for more Billyx Sumaragi moments but there scene was beautiful and makes me hope for more
Marriage of Kati and Patrick was the best. So hillarious. This was the Double PLUS for me
I'm finally at the end of this series!! I liked it and I'm glad I chose to watch this. This is my first anime from the Gundam franchise and it's definitely making me want to check out others.
I laughed at the bit shown of Patrick Colasour though... for a character that I expected to die since the 1st season, he actually made it all the way to the end and even managed to hook up with the woman he's been trying to impress for who knows how long. LOL
. . . . . ✘ . . . . . DO NOT touch my rice. . . . . .
I'm Asian. . . . . .
Alright ending...to an alright season. I liked the first half but the last 5 episodes were a chore to finish. Ribbons was too uninteresting of an antagonist. Also, why was Marina even a character in this season? She really didn't need to show up most the time she was on screen. The music, I get. But every other time, it felt like she was just wasting screen time. By the end of this season, I just didn't care about anyone anymore. The characters ended up falling flat for me, despite finding them interesting earlier. People say 00 is like a modern version of Wing, and yes, to me it is, in a bad way. The characters weren't developed well imo. It's better than Wing in this department, but only a little. I usually write a lot for the last episode, but I'm too disappointed by how this second season turned out...
Too many characters to support as always in a Gundam series. Good conclusion to the story even though it lacked a bit of sense. The OP and ED this season was good enough compared to last season. Especially the second OP and ED bought out the character boldness to quite a finale.
And finally Patrick gets the General. This guy was a total joke but not enough to be an eyesore. XD
When someone asks me why I like anime, I'd say Just Because.
I'm pleasantly surprised by how consistent Gundam 00 was for both seasons. Even if the interesting geopolitical plot kinda lost relevance after the first 10 episodes of S1, it provided a solid background for the plot to revolve around. 00 really felt like an improvement of the failures of Wing and Seed, series that constantly tried to sound smart with their political conflicts while having non-existent world buildings.
Characters were pretty great. Setsuna is one of the rare believable edgy protagonists and he matures a lot throughout the story.
The Meisters grew on me a lot near the of S1 and S2 only reinforced the feeling. Support cast was great, maybe with the exception of some characters who could have died without problems in the big massacre at the of first season. Still, said characters weren't too annoying in S2 and didn't steal much time from the good stuff.
As for Mr. Bushido... I don't know, he's silly, doesn't mesh at all with the themes of the series but he's also pretty entertaining when he's on screen. Ken-sama with a mobile suit. Epic (?).
There were a lot of things about S2 that could have been better thought out or explained... but all in all I enjoyed this series a lot.
The last episode was a surprising happy end, almost too happy for a Gundam. Colasour surviving and marrying Mannequin was very surprising, but it made me happy. They were lucky. At least the show tries to balance it out with Lyle visiting the graves.
However the continued existence of Celestial Being only means they anticipate more conflict. Defeating Ribbons doesn't mean they won and nothing ever will go wrong. I like the message when Saji and Louise talk about the future.
Imo, best part of the battle was Lockon's one second Trans-Am.
Lyle's little maneuver was the sickest use of the TransAm yet and the dude did it in a single second.
The fact that Patrick's luck didn't run out after all makes me happy but the dude's conclusion with Mannequin was by far the most satisfying of everyone's epilogues.
Also, kinda funny how they went with a dramatic shot of Jupiter for their movie teaser.
Kind of funny how legit no one talks about this show 10 years later with sunrise often ignoring stuff after the 1st season. This show hasn't aged well and just is bad
honestly i liked this season a lot, less than the first but a lot.
The ending was very symbolic, i loved the fact that the last Battle was between the Gundam 0 (God) and setsuna in the exia, really an amazing scene.
Seeing patrick alive made me Happy, marrying Katy, and I'm glad that saji and Louise ended up togheter, like the peaceful days but with more understanding of the meaning of peace and war.
Lyle was on fire in this last episodes, absolutely amazing, and allelujah and Marie finally had the happy ending they deserve.
I also found touching the change of Andrei, finally understanding his father and trying to continue his ideal of soldier helping and protecting the people.
Overall, i loved this serie, the plot, the characters, the animations and the music.
9/10 for me.
00 really goes from tiptoeing around New Types and space changing humanity's consciousness to just blasting the message with a firehose at the end. I think it tried to have something to say in season 1 but most of season 2 its just up its own ass with muddled character nonsense and weightless action. It at least tries to bring resolution to a lot of characters but they don't really even feel like arcs or anything. Allelujah and Marie in particular resolved basically their entire story not very far into season 2 and are just around at the end. Andrei fucking killed his own dad for no reason and at the end has the balls to be like "I'll work hard like my dad would want me to" as if he couldn't be chilling with his cool hero dad if he wasn't such a stupid piece of shit. Lyle acts like he's growing as a character but honestly he's the exact same person he always was. Billy becomes a crazed turbo-virgin that builds an entire army of killbots that nearly condemns humanity to slavery under Ribbons and then just gets over it because his crush says "Don't feel bad I don't love you" and hugs him. Just a long list of very clumsily written and resolved plot/character lines wrapped around a story that doesn't have much original to say.
I think mostly the reason 00 disappeared from Gundam-verse conversation is that the designs are all quite boring and mostly ugly but I think how ridiculous the whole plot becomes by the end is also a big problem. The characters mostly aren't bad and have defining characteristics. If they weren't constantly just doing nonsense and fighting C-tier Minecraft robot enemies there's plenty to work with.
Its kind of funny that I put both Gundam 00 season at 6/10 as placeholder numbers since it had been so long since I saw it and it turns out that that's right about where they belong. Season 1 is a little better but Season 2 not paying out its potential at all makes it a 7.0 compared to Season 2's 6.7 or something. Maybe even those are like .5 points too high. I did do a lot of complaining about this show...