Jun 26, 2021
Writing this for personal note-taking purposes, since I have a lot of personal thoughts on the show upon completion:
<Good things to say>
- Enjoyed the first third-or-so strech of the series (from beginning up until and including the Karaba arc, ending with Kamille leaving Earth for the first time). Has some low points within this stretch, but tons of high points to sustain interest.
- Handful of extremely memorable mobile suits and mechs
- Art is good enough throughout, but becomes impressive when you realize there are not many reused shots or footage. Paired with the sheer variety of ships, suits and action scenes, it's pretty good for
...
it's time.
- Individual characters have strong initial characterization, but...
<Negatives>
- Characters are utterly underutilzied accross the board. Supoposedly relevant characters dissapear for long stretches of time, either stunting their development or worst: just resetting their development upon reappearance. Most episodes are just characters repeating mistakes and relearning the same lessons over and over again. Even great characters are hurt the further the show goes either due to loss of audience investment, or just having their roles deterioted due to their absence. By extension, pretty much all the villians are poorly utilized.
- The dialogue is really terrible at times, and seems to be at its worst when the show is trying to tackle its more nuanced or abstract ideas (the parts where it really needed to stick its landing). It actively sabotages the conveyance of the show's ideas and themes, and many supposedly important scenes are hurt by this. Some scenes you can tell what they were going for, but the script can be so undercooked that character interactions become disjointed or devolve to gibberish.
- Pacing problems, especially a general sense of aimlessness in the middle parts (a period where the protaganists just go through space encounter-by-encounter, skirmish-by-skirmish). Could have been greatly improved if there were more well defined arcs or sagas throughout. Instead, what we have consists of tons of stakelss skirmishes that seem to only fulfill the one-battle-per-episode rule the show abides by. Overall this complete squander the spurts of enjoyment in the beginning and final parts of the show.
Overall:
Came away very dissapointed with the foundational flaws which persist throughout the show. It really hurt my personal experience with the show, drowning out the handful of things that I do recall enjoying. Unfortunately, I don't feel that MSGZ lives up to its reputation within the gundam community as on the best in the franchise. It may be the second show in the franchise, it may be influential, and as a Gundam fan I may respect it for how it contributed to the franchise's foundation: It just isn't very good when judged as a show based on its own merits.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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