Let's address the colony drop in the room.
Requiem for Vengeance (RFV) faces the same issue every One Year War (the conflict depicted in Mobile Suit Gundam 1979) spinoff has faced: how to make major POV Zeon characters sympathetic in the face of the colony drop—an event that killed billions. This show, like many before it, parrots the "just soldiers following orders" mantra. The cast of RFV is composed of normal soldiers, content with the perceived honor of their occupation. They are soldiers without philosophy or worldview—detached from any motivation outside of killing the enemy and going home. The main cast is shallow, lacking any
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form of complexity or depth (besides the pittance offered to Iria). They fight willingly, bravely, and justly, mouring the loss of their comrades, hating the enemy, and appaled by the slaughter of civlians. They are also fighting for the side whose first action in the war was to massacre millions of civilians (neutral to the war) and to turn their home into missile to drop on earth, killing billions more. See the problem?
They can't not have an opinion on that. Right? Iria, Alfee, and that one officer with a mustache act appaled at the very idea of civilian casualties, yet no mention of the drop. A simple way this show could add depth (or any depth for that matter) would be to simply have this cast offer differing perspectives on the necessity or lack thereof of Operation British. But the avoidance of the topic serves to undermine the show's legitmacy. The closest the show gets in referencing the event is at the end of the show's short intro that plays every episode, the closing shot being the colony drop. It's literally right there in the show!
Taking an approach similar to Dune: Messiah could have potentially been interesting in the right hands, with the creators seeking to make the bad guys (in the case of RFV: Zeon fascists; in the case of Dune: the monster of a dictator Pual is) sypathetic. But in today's world, that may not be possible with the polarization of political views and the dominance of absolute moralism due to a combination of World War II and the advent of cancel culture. One can imagine how this show might have looked in different—more capable and perhaps bolder—hands.
The characters being absent of philosophic musings isn't the biggest problem. You can make these characters sympathetic in spite of that. Even separated from the factors, ideas, and motivations that drive soldiers to fight in a war (like how someone might feel about ethnic genocide or the dehuminzation of certain people groups for example), these characters could be interesting. Everybody loved Ramba Ral in First Gundam for his honor and Char for his charisma and how those characters made Zeon feel more complex, multi-dimensional, and real as a faction in the world of Gundam. The issue here is this cast's complete lack of animation, personality, and distinction. Each and every one of the them is a charicature. Their personalities can be summarized in one or two words. There is nothing else to them. So I don't find myself rooting for the Zeons here. I just don't care about any of them like I did for Ramba Ral, Hamon, Char, or any of the many unnamed Zeon soldiers who made brief apperances in First Gundam.
On the matter of the animation: it's terrible. Not all the time, mind you, but it looks and moves like a ps3/Xbox 360 cutscene. My brother came into the room at one point and asked when I booted up an old game at one point while I was watching the show. Credit where credit is due, there are some beautiful shots in here. Most are environmental wide shots, the strong lighting and still models mixing wonderfully in some rare moments. For the bulk of the show, however, the animation isn't it. The characters are stiff and lifeless with emotionless faces and the lipsyncing rarely matching up. The voice acting doesn't inspire either with all besides maybe Priscilla Concepcion as Iria offering stilted and poor performances. The mechs are weightless in all the wrong ways. And textures are frequently muddy.
The show's action scenes fare little better. The. Camera. Won't. Stop. Moving. I remember people mentioning this as a problem in Berserk 2016, and I had this same issue with the Final Fantasy XV Kingsglaive movie. But something about the freedom 3d animation gives the camera just causes directors to lose all sense of how to use it. It's much less aggregious here than the two examples I gave, but it still bothered me. The bigger issue lies in how the pacing of scenes is all over the place. Mid-fight, the Gundam will just lose interest in a target after being shot at and just leave or slow down to allow for plot progression. Another time, it somehow lost sight of a Zaku II in a junkyard with nothing blocking its line of sight while Iria slowly lumbers behind a pile of rusted cars, and, the next thing you know, the Gundam is wandering around looking for her, inexplicably not knowing exactly where she went. It's baffling, and greatly deflates the tension.
As it stands, RFV has nothing of value to say. The cast is shallow and one note. Their paper-thin characterization as soldiers who loyally do what their told barely holds up through the show. The action is bland and weightless in all the wrong ways. The theme (?) of seeking unecessary vengeance at the cost of lives in wartime is kinda there but contradicted by the ending. The ending is its own brief conversation.
Without giving spoilers (but please avoid if you wish to avoid any idea of the ending), RFV's conclusion when viewed within the greater metanarrative and context of the Universal Century (the name for the main timeline of Gundam shows and films) is completely morally contradictory. It makes no sense for this show to frame Iria's decision as a positive thing. She perpetuates the status quo of conflict she claims to want to end—a fact made crystal clear by Zeta Gundam onward—but RFV lacks the self awareness to recognize this fact.
I didn't hate this show. But I found it's lack of commitment to a message or theme anathema within the context of its franchise and lineage. I might have strongly (*cough* very strongly *cough*) disliked other gundam shows like Gundam 00 or Unicorn, but I awcknowledge those shows were at least toying around with some interesting political and moral ideas, even if they dropped the ball on how they handled them.
But the moral of the story is that everything this show and its defenders say its doing, Mobile Suit Gundam 1979 did it better. And did it 45 years ago.
Do you want a show that disects the trauma of war? Done. You want heavy themes? Done. You want a narrative focusing on small people getting swempt up in a larger conflict they don't fully understand? Mobile Suit Gundam did that too. There is an understated quality to the original series and its retellings. It captures the drastically varied emotions of the human heart in the terror of wartime so vividly. Go watch or read First Gundam instead of this (or one of the great side stories like War in the Pocket). It's a far better use of your time.
Oct 24, 2024
Let's address the colony drop in the room.
Requiem for Vengeance (RFV) faces the same issue every One Year War (the conflict depicted in Mobile Suit Gundam 1979) spinoff has faced: how to make major POV Zeon characters sympathetic in the face of the colony drop—an event that killed billions. This show, like many before it, parrots the "just soldiers following orders" mantra. The cast of RFV is composed of normal soldiers, content with the perceived honor of their occupation. They are soldiers without philosophy or worldview—detached from any motivation outside of killing the enemy and going home. The main cast is shallow, lacking any ... |
