Jul 30, 2021
Zeta Gundam, the highly praised sequel of the classic 0079 series fails to learn from the predecessor and improve from its mistakes; Chiefly the main plot structure and the characters development.
STORY
As I said before the main plot feels contantly weak due to the fact that most of the episodes, until the last arc, are just used to show random gundam battles that change nothing in the long run; this and the fact that there is a lack of a clear goal except a vague"win against the Titans" make the show really slow and nearly impossible to binge, we have a few exception, namely the earth
...
arcs that don't last more than a few episodes and add something really valuable to the characterization of the protagonist.
We have a few problems caused by the fact that there's a lot of forced drama(character that fall in love for no reason mostly) and a lot of convenience to make some things happen(shots that should kill a mobile suit that won't kill other mobile suits, a character that should have died that come back to life for no reason and some really absurd politics)
As the pioneer of the real robot genre I can say that this rule wasn't always respected, near the end it happens a really forced plot point that could disqualify this anime from this genre.
CHARACTERS
While the plot structure was developed similarly to the original 0079 series the character development is the main point of disadvantage compared to its predecessor.
One of the things that I really appreciated and a lot of people loved of the original show was how it treated the zeon faction at least before of the acknoledge of the fact that they were almost a fascist party, it was kinda morally grey and they had a charismatic frontman named char that through the series was explored leading to us to sympathize with him.
Instead here we don't have for a good amount of episodes a real face who represents the Titans and even when a character eventually shows up you won't see any background or any development from him and until a certain point really late in the series he won't even act he will just command others.
About the protagonist it's a bit tricky to talk about him, until the last 10 episode I quite despised him for it's writing, he would never think about what happened nor show any change of real growth unlike Amuro but in light of the last episodes I must say that it was quite coherent his development.
Now the main problem it's not the main protagonist or the antagonist but the rest of the cast except a few ones:
Fa is basically a fraw bow 2.0, she is the most basic girl ever without any personality trait except she's caring towards the protagonist and the kids(yes, even here there are kids for no reason at all)She will be really obnoxious until really later on the series, she's not a really bad character but the amount of time spent watching her doing her things was really annoying.
Reccoa probably is the worst character of all , she's really dumb and has this pseudo-sexist philosophy that can't really make her character one worth of appreciation.
Katz starts well but then the forced drama with another character will really ruin his character I can't think of him of anything but a pawn of the writer to make stupid things happen.
We will see the return of Amuro, he's not the worst character by far but at a certain point the plot leads you to think he will be manipulated by someone, then off camera this sublot will be resolved for no reason apparently.
The best characters were by far Char that acts really consistently all throughout the plot and Haman, I won't spoil anything about her but she looks like she is the only one who acts for accomplishing something, we won't see her past even though I'm sure it'll be explained in some other series, at the contrary of the other antagonist she really gets her hands dirty and doesn't stay quietly waiting for something to happen.
ART & SOUND
This could be considered the biggest improvement compared to the first series, even though it has some recycled animation throughout the run this series it's a lot more consistent, there aren't fights that really stand out for their animation but you can see a that a lot more effort went in this series, to be fair I think it's a double-edged sword using the space as a background,sure it saves a lot of money because you won't have to to pay someone to draw the backgrounds but you'll also lose a lot of dynamism;As for the directing I will complain a bit about the fact that this series doesn't never emphasise its dialogue, this creates a lot of problem with the pacing because you will probably be bored to death when they speak and won't understand the meaning of some battles and some information will just slip out because it'll never be brought up again or you will have a long ass explanation that cames out of nowhere;Using the same camera angles constantly doesn't help, if it's a 12 or 24 episodes anime I'll probably don't mind but when you use the same camera angles for 50 episodes when 2 characters interact it's difficult to not notice.
The sound was pretty good to be honest, the op really fits Z gundam themes and the ending is catchy, the voice acting was on point constantly and unlike its predecessor the audio editing with the soundtrack is almost always well executed (to explain myself better just watch the scene of Gundam soldiers of sorrow at 2:02:49, the music starts,it doesn't even finish or fade out and after a minute or so there's a terrible cut).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
