So for me this was really hard to watch as I am a HUGE Gundam fan, most specifically of the UC timeline, which for some reason this takes place in. Why was it hard to watch? Well It completely mutilates the message of UC as a whole and tries to make Zeon, the bad guys since the first series who have done some REALLY bad stuff, seem like good guys and that every atrocity they committed was justified and okay. Aside from UC this just in general sends really mixed signals in terms of motivations and what is even happening. I'll include a spoiler section
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at the end after my overall to go more in depth to what I meant at some points as it's hard to describe why I disliked this some things without spoilers. If something I say seems vague it's probably because I'm trying to refrain from spoilers, so assume I explain it there.
Story: 1
Easily my least favorite thing about Unicorn was the story. Concerning the story I really have not much to say because aside from it being what I disliked the most, it's also one of the weakest things about this show in my opinion. The show honestly has fan fiction tier writing at some points. First off, I have no idea why they decided to shove this right in between CCA and F91 and put it so close to CCA while leaving it really far from F91. Secondly, the attempted justifications of Zeon and trying to make them look like good guys makes absolutely no sense in UC due to every series before it (the original, Zeta, ZZ, and CCA) all portraying Zeon as terrible people. Also another thing that really dragged this down a ton for me was a lot of plot conveniences, ESPECIALLY in the last episode. Another thing is that it never portrays the overlying "war is bad" theme in every series before it, instead it just gives off more of a "I need to stop war because I don't like it" feel. Aside from a story that tried way to hard to be complex which ultimately made it confusing, the ending was god awful and atrocious.
Art: 6
I will give Unicorn props here for the art being pretty good, especially the animation. I would rate it a bit higher if it didn't start to rely on CG more and more as the series went on, with some fights even being mostly CG. I do give major props to Unicorn for the fight scenes in episode 4, they were extremely well done and had little CG from what I remember. As for mech designs, as I guess that can be included in this, I for the most part did not like them with a few exceptions, those being the Neo Zeong, Unicorn (when in attack mode, normal mode looks horrible), Banshee/Banshee Norn (ditto of Unicorn side note), Zeta Plus (got like 10 seconds of screen time in episode 7 but I still liked it), and the ReZel. Honestly the mech designs were pretty ugly or just look upgraded versions of older suits. I'll only cover the mains as mook suits are pointless to get into. The Sinanju, didn't quite like this one much as it looked weird and was just basically a buffed Sazabi, the Sazabi being infinitely cooler than it. The Kshatriya, just looked like a mega buffed Zaku; it was alright. Rozen Zulu, I just didn't like this one, dunno why.
Sound: 5
Don't have much to say here. The soundtrack was alright and did it's job. No one song really stuck out to me and it just in general seemed kind of average. Sound design was alright, nothing to really comment on.
Character: 3
The characters almost tied with story for my least favorite thing, except I actually liked a very few amount of characters whereas with story I completely hated it. I'll go in order of most hated to most liked when I'm talking about them.
Angelo - Seriously? Someone thought he was a good character? I hated Angelo. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about him. Aside from being the most annoying character in the show, the amount of things he actually does is very low so he really has no reason to exist.
Banagher - Worst MC in UC. Aside from completely irrational decisions that are just really annoying in general, and I'm pretty sure his brain is 100% empty because of how incompetent he is until the plot needed him not to be, and then he became jesus in a giant mech. How incompetent he was at times was extremely enraging. Being able to never shut up about "Audrey" was annoying as hell too. It seemed like he was playing a game of "How many times can I switch allegiances in one show?". I really hate him all in all.
Riddhe - GOD. I hate him with all my heart. He was alright in the beginning and seemed like a cool dude but I slowly started hate him more and more as he became more and more off an ass as the series went on and how he was in the end was fucking awful.
Full Frontal - Yada yada Char rehash yada yada. At least come up with an original villain. It literally just took Char, made his 50x less badass and charismatic, gave him long hair, and made his logic 50x dumber than Char. I really felt nothing from him and Banagher's "rivalry" if it was even supposed to be one. The reason Char and Amuro worked is because they were both interesting and fleshed out characters, key word being INTERESTING. Neither Banagher nor Full Frontal were interesting to me and felt like Unicorn was just trying to do something that actually worked before.
Now onto some I liked or thought were tolerable, gonna switch and go most liked to least liked here. Don't have very much to say here though.
Zinnerman - He was a bro and a total badass. Easily my favorite character in this show. His relationship with Marida was handled alright so props to the writers for that.
Marida - I liked Marida. She was written decently. Don't much else to say to be honest.
Audrey, or should I say Mineva (which any person that had watched Zeta or ZZ could tell from a mile away so that build up made no sense) - She was alright and I found the one scene where she completely disassembled Cha- I mean Full Frontal's logic and idea hilarious.
Enjoyment: 2
This show was a chore for me to watch. Not only did the 1 hour episodes make it hard to sit around for, it overall just bored me. My memory of this is somewhat hazy of this despite having watched this in a little over a week, because I honestly just stop focusing at times due to how boring it was. I often had to rewind to read a line I missed because I wasn't focusing due to how bored I was. The only reason this gets a 2 instead of a 1 is some of the fights scenes were really entertaining and the soundtrack was nice despite sounding somewhat average. Not only did this show bore me to tears though, but also insulted my intelligence as a UC Gundam fan by the aforementioned attempt to justify Zeon and just overall a very poor and forced feeling entry that adds nothing to UC and fails to be an homage if that's what it was going for.
Overall: 3
God this show was a chore and one of the worst Gundam series I've seen yet. This show was absolutely atrocious and I never want to watch it again. Aside from terrible characters and story the way the show is presented to the viewer is done very poorly as it is filled with exposition dumps from what I recall, which just confused the hell out of me; there's a fine line between complex and confusing and I don't think Unicorn understands that as it seems to confuse the two. This show's writing honestly feels fan fiction tier, which it practically is already. It shouldn't even be canon since it adds nothing at all to UC as a whole. Honestly if you are looking to get into UC Gundam skip this show when you get to it, the only reason you should watch it is cool fights and decent music. This show honestly could have worked if they changed a few things, changed the name of the series and tweaked the story a bit, but since it has the title of Mobile Suit Gundam on I can't cut it slack. If you're done here, thanks for reading my review and let me know what you thought of it, I'm just starting to do reviews so I would really appreciate constructive criticism. Below here are spoilers so unless you want to know them or have seen the show, beware.
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Now for the spoilers I couldn't get into above. I'm not gonna categorize this so it might not have much flow, so apologies in advance. First off let me get to the worst part of this show as a whole, the ending. How did they perfectly pull off the barrier to block Gryps 2 without anyone doing it before and no one knowing anything about how it worked or what it did? Now some other questions. How exactly does one invoke the Unicorn Awakened? Why does Riddhe change back to the side of the Nahel Argama in a split second? He went from being totally edgy to new bestie in under a second? Dude what happened to hating newtypes, now you're helping one? That's another thing; Riddhe. him suddenly becoming edgy because muh waifu was really dumb and he just turned into an even worse character. That sudden snap back to being perfectly normal and nice because the plot needed him to was also just absolutely terrible. All these tie into the plot conveniences I was talking about earlier with a few things I'm probably forgetting because my brain is trying to erase this trash from my mind. Now, Laplace's Box. Did it really need to exist? It adds nothing to UC at all or even the show itself because you don't even see how the people react to it. Also what really sucks is the amount of character death in this show, which is astonishingly low, which is also unusual for a UC series. Also, can we all just take a moment to let how completely stupid and absurd ACTUALLY LITERAL UNIRONIC TIME TRAVEL is? How? Why? I thought this was UC, how the fuck does time travel even happen? How did that even work? Unironic time travel is where this show's fan fiction tier writing really shows itself. And my last point, Loni Garvey. Another place where the fan fiction tier writing shows. First her backstory about her parents just serves to demonize the EFF in a really bad attempt to make Zeon look good. Also Banagher not wanting to shoot a girl he met like a day or two beforehand who was literally mass murdering innocent civilians and was now trying to kill him was extremely infuriating. By the way, saying "We just wanted autonomy and for all spacenoids to be free!" doesn't justify starting a war that killed half the human race and multiple dropping of things on earth. Well, now that's out of the way, I have nothing left to say. I assume you read the second to last sentence in the paragraph above, so there's no need to repeat it. Thanks for reading!
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Feb 4, 2016
Kidou Senshi Gundam Unicorn
(Anime)
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So for me this was really hard to watch as I am a HUGE Gundam fan, most specifically of the UC timeline, which for some reason this takes place in. Why was it hard to watch? Well It completely mutilates the message of UC as a whole and tries to make Zeon, the bad guys since the first series who have done some REALLY bad stuff, seem like good guys and that every atrocity they committed was justified and okay. Aside from UC this just in general sends really mixed signals in terms of motivations and what is even happening. I'll include a spoiler section
...
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