We watched the next disc and things are finally start to pick up. The truth behind Zechs has been revealed and all I keep waiting to hear is him saying, "I'm totally not Char." The show is ten episodes in and outside of knowing that Quattre's groupies have been hired by his dad to keep him safe, none of the pilots have had any sort of development. Relena continues to just be there while Lady Une is constantly being told convoluted nonsense by Treize. On the other hand, the Tallgeese is pretty awesome and the tenth episode was great. Heero, damn, dead already. :-p Duo is still the best pilot of the bunch, but again, no development. The stuff between Treize and Wufei was pretty cool, but he does know he would have ended the whole war right then and there if he had just blown him up, right? And then he pouts like an emo brat because he couldn't be an adult. As for Trowa, well he's Trowa.

BTW, can I just say that every time Septum speaks in the English dub I am just waiting to hear him starting saying something like, "PENGUINS!! I love Penguins!! They are so nice and soft and cuddly and ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, penguins."

Only way he could get any more ridiculous if he had DBZ abridged Nappa's voice.

Oh darn. I would really love to own and re-watch G Gundam without paying bad after market prices for it.

The original Mobile suit Gundam turns 37 today and Gundam wing turns 21.

Also, preorders are up for Gndam X volume 2, and ZZ volume 2.

Watched 11-25 of Wing today. The show has gotten better, but I still know absolutely jack squat about Heero, Wufei, Duo, and Trowa. First off, how the hell did Heero live? He was clearly dead at the end of the last episode. That was stupid because there is no explanation for it at all. A month has gone by. Even some stupid little quip like, "There is a reasonable explanation for that," with something interrupting them would have been better than nothing. Instead, he's just alive. Also, when Trowa and Heero leave the circus Catherine and the manager act as if they have been working with Trowa for years when it has been what, 2 months? Maybe if they actually developed their relationship together this would have been a good scene, but all they showed us was one performance and that was it. As such, the whole thing is pointless. Duo is still hands down the best character on the show and that is thanks to his personality. He has the best lines of any of the characters and his persona is completely different from everyone else. Hey, we actually learned something about Quattre, he doesn't know who his family members are. At least we know he has a dad and sisters. Wufei continues to just be all pouty whenever something doesn't go his way. -_-

Zechs and Lady Une make no sense and the whole plots around them are extremely convoluted. Well, what little plot there is. On the other hand, the Mobile Doll stuff is kind of interesting, but it kind of diminishes the point of the battles when the enemies are nothing but drones. There isn't any tension, but then, since these mobile suits are pretty much tissue paper when a Gundam pilot isn't operating it, it probably doesn't matter anyway.

The Wing Zero has been introduced and now Trowa has been "killed." I would care if the show gave me a reason to. However, not only is there not, but also he probably had his character shields set to god mode before the Vayeate exploded, so there is no point in even worrying about it.

Oh, the dub voices for the main characters are getting better, but things are getting worse for some everyone else. Sally suddenly has a new voice and now she sounds like a 40 year old. Also, you could start playing a drinking game every time you hear Rhinox's voice coming out of a character.

All in all, I'm halfway through the show and it is no where near the quality of Zeta, ZZ, or 00. Hell, 08th MS Team might also be a better show.

That might be due to it being ocean production dub cause zech is voiced by Brian Drummond ocean dub of DBZ Vegeta

What might be due to it being Ocean Group? Are you talking about Rhinox's voice (Richard Newman)? Trying to figure out what you mean by Brian Drummond.

Ocean group had big hand in dub guns back in the day I mean brain voiced Zech the not char character and he can hear in his voice slightly his vegeta.

Megahouse is making a replica of the Israbi, I kinda want this:

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gKnIOMs6c...00/mh002-1.jpg

Oh, well yeah, that I know. Brian Drummond doesn't really have a lot of range, unfortunately.

Occasionally, I think about wanting a 1/144 scale White Base or Ptolemaios, but then I remember the things would be useless, expensive bricks the size of my desk.

Episode 2 of Unicorn Re:0096 doesn't seem too different from the middle of OVA episode 1. I think there is a new scene of Marida admitting to Zimmerman she didn't know Audrey was on the ship intercut with them trying to find her. And I think the pacing of getting to the mansion has been tightened up a bit, but again, don't have the OVAs on me to compare.

I hope we get a good amount of new footage next episode. Because Cardeas Vist being Banaghers' dad always kind of felt like a random thing that wasn't really developed as much. I remember Banagher having this weird stuff around his head, so maybe it was implied he was a Cyber Newtype, or his father was trying to come up with a definitive way to define/test newtypes?

That scene existed in the OVA.

Also yeah, Banagher was being tested, he's not a Cyber Newtype. (that's the entire point of his arc, being a true Newtype)

True enough.

This one is in the Cosmo Fleet line though, and to my knowledge they're small enough where you can plop them on your desk or something.

Watched the next 10 episodes of Wing today. Well, more like 8 since two of them were a freaking clip show. Good god, who the hell thought it was a good idea to put two clip shows in a row? They could have used that running time to actually develop the characters instead. Anyway, one of the episodes just starts off with Romefeller at war with the Treize Faction, which isn't even explained until like 5 minutes later, which was really dumb. How about showing the Treize Faction's creation BEFORE you jump into a battle dealing with them? Dorothy is probably the best female character on the show thus far as she is far more realistic than the joke that Relena has become. Seriously, this girl is pushing all of her beliefs onto other ways in the most unrealistic manner. The entire plot is just laughable since the whole world but Romefeller is with her. -_- BTW, when the hell did she even reestablish the Sanc Kingdom and start up the school? It's like something happened off-screen between episodes 26 and 29 that weren't shown in the clip shows.

Now the Duo episode where he battles Wing Zero was pretty awesome and of course the Epyon rocks. No idea how Treize got a hold of the Zero system though to make it. Also, Zechs and Howard now suddenly have a giant space ship. Oh, and look, Trowa isn't dead, how surprising. Meanwhile, Wufei's master just decides to kill the citizens of an entire colony just to motivate Wufei. Seriously, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED DURING THE CLIP SHOWS?! It's like an entirely different show started afterwards.

Those clip shows were originally going to be flashback episodes, explaining the origin of the Wing pilots and other characters, much more in depth than what we got in Endless Waltz. Production eventually fucked up on the episodes, and that's how we got those clip shows episodes.

There's a manga written by the writer of Gundam Wing called Episode Zero, and it is essentially all of the characters' backstories. Many people consider it to be 100% canon to the actual series since it was never explained and it was written by the show's writer.

Oh I know of the manga, I used to own it. However, I don't play the supplement material game. The way I look at is that they have 50 episodes to tell a story and develop their characters. What isn't said in the anime is just fanfiction to me.

But what if the manga was animated, just as some 30 minute special or whatever?

I take Expanded Universe material on a case by case basis. As long as it doesn't contradict/interfere with anything and it's not incredibly dumb, I'm okay with it. I hate the expanded 00 stuff because it sort of undermines the importance of Celestial Being's core team in the show.

Depends on how it is done and if it is done by the original people of the show. I agree it can be a case by case basis, but they had 49 episodes to develop their pilots and they chose not to do jack about it. Therefore, I'm not willing to take their supplemental material in account when I critique their final product. You either do it right the first time or don't do it at all. Wing was not their first Gundam series, it was their sixth. And it wasn't their first non-UC series. They had no excuse to not do it right, especially when they start throwing in random elements that were done off-screen (like Relena's rebuilt Sanc kingdom and the Treize Faction).

I would say in their defense though, Sunrise had been producing Gundam shows for 2 years nonstop before Wing came out, so bungled production would have been way more probable. But still though, they messed up. Hopefully this show maybe gets a remake. I heard there's an Origin style manga of Wing called Glory of the Losers, so hopefully it gets adapted and fixes some of the problems the show had.

The only other series I could think of that used expanded material to explain something important in the main series was SEED Astray explaining how Kira survived his mobile suit getting blown up and being fine (Freedom?).

Last night we watched 36-45 of Wing and things are getting way overly convoluted. Zechs has gone Char's Counter Attack because... well just because. I am no fan of Char in CCA, but at least he went through all of these personality changes over the course of 14 years. Zechs is going through multiple personality disorder over the course of like 14 weeks. It doesn't make sense. Also, what the hell was the point of Queen Relena? She was queen for like 3 days. That was a total waste of time. The whole White Fang bit doesn't make sense as they just show up out of nowhere and we are supposed to sympathize with them? In fact, the one thing the Gundam series try to do is show us that not everyone on both sides of the war are truly evil, they are just fighting for what they believe in. This show always makes it impossible to see the view point of one of the sides as they are flat out wrong on all accounts and none of their soldiers even question their orders.

Thankfully, some of the episodes themselves are pretty damn awesome like the one where Zechs destroys Space Fortress Barge and the battles are enjoyable. Only four episodes to go and I still know next to nothing about the majority of the Gundam pilots though. Also, it seems like they have nerfed the Zero System because now any one can use it without going crazy even though that is the exact opposite of what was shown before.

EDIT: Yay, thanks to Image Anime, I finally found the last three Unicorn volumes for the prices they were originally on Rightstuf for.

http://i1366.photobucket.com/albums/...pszueedwmh.jpg

EDIT 2:

And that's a wrap, at least for the TV series itself. Just watched the final volume and my god the last four episodes are nothing but one plot convenience after another. Lady Une just happens to wake up, then steals the Wing Gundam that just happened to be repaired and equipped for space travel, and manages to get to Treize just in the nick of time to save him from the Libra cannon. The scientists just happen to still be alive and on the Libra, who just happen to be found by Duo, and they just happen to know how to stop Libra's decent. I can continue on and on, but you get the point.

Oh, and then we get this interesting comment from Quinze when he confronts the scientists, but nothing is ever explained for it. Now he was in on Operation Meteor too? WTF? YOU CAN'T JUST REVEAL AN IMPORTANT REVELATION LIKE THAT AND NOT GO INTO DETAIL ON IT!!!! It doesn't help matters that Quinze just appeared out of nowhere and was never developed in the slightest.

The final fight between Zechs and Heero was pretty cool though, as was Treize's battle with Wufei. However, Treize is acting like he was all buddy buddy with him, which makes no sense either. In fact, the 48th episode is titled "Takeoff into Confusion" and it lives up to its name.

The epilogue is pretty lackluster too because they didn't even bother to show anyone Heero of the actual main characters, but had no problem spending time on Noin and Dorothy. Speaking of Noin, what the hell was she wearing in the last few episodes? When did she go all hick? How did she go all hick? The clothing was a Victorian style and yet, they have hick clothing lying around? HUH? o_O

I am so sad now because I have been defending this show left and right to the haters and now it turns out the hate was just. How the hell did this happen? It went from being my favorite Gundam series to being closer to 10 on my list.

Once I watch Endless Waltz I am never watching the English dub to this show again. It barely got any better from the beginning and the secondary characters like Rashid and Dr J as their voice actors kept changing their voices for them every time they returned after a long hiatus. It was very distracting. Also, Brian Drummond was an awful Zechs. He rarely ever put any emotion into his performance and he came off as very wooden when he was in charge of the White Fang.

Positives:

Duo & Treize
Gundam designs
Music
Mobile Dolls concept

Negatives:

Lack of character development for pretty much anyone
Plotlines that emerge off screen
Animation looks flat at times
Way too convoluted
Zechs & Relena
Females characters are only there to support their lover
Plot conveniences up the wazoo
Every main character is invincible while everything else is made of tissue paper

I want to also include the amount of stock footage, but this is no stranger to the Gundam franchise, so I'm not.

I found some really cool Unicorn related animation. I think it was just a one off short or something, but damn it looks cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_VFxN-L52M

It's something they play at Gundam Front if I'm not mistaken.

G Gundam, dubbed or subbed? I know we've had this debate a long time ago, but I can't find the posts on it.

I prefer G dubbed. The over the topness of the dub fits so perfectly with the at times over the topness of the dub. It is simply glorious.

Endless Waltz - This was still pretty good. It isn't perfect, but it tried to answer some of the questions the full series never did despite being less than 90 minutes long. It actually gave a personality to the Gundam pilots, albeit not much. Still better than nothing though. The music remains great and the animation is quite beautiful. I'm not sure why they felt the need to change the Gundam designs out of the blue, especially the colors to Sandrock and Heavy Arms, but they work when they aren't shown in the flashback scenes. The angel wings on Wing Zero are kind of dumb, but the suit isn't on screen enough to really care that much. Wufei and Zechs make even less sense here than they did in the TV show. Hell, Zechs comes back and everyone just totally ignores the fact that he was going to drop a space station onto Earth. WTF? Not-Mineva was an okay villain, although I highly doubt Treize would have just abandoned a child he had. Overall, this was a lot better than Wing despite its short comings. Operation Meteor is still a convoluted as **** idea, but they tried to at least explain it and left a much better finale to the Wing universe than Wing did.

That's Hajime Katoki for ya.

So we watched the first 12 episodes to G Gundam and it is kind of a nice break from the normal political Gundam stuff. I really love the designs for the Dragon and Mummy Gundams and the announcer dude is awesome. This show is weird for me because I've watched the first half on DVD subbed before and I caught the second half dubbed when it was on Toonami. As such, I've never actually watched the show in order from start to finish, so this will be an interesting experience to finally do so. Oh, we are watching it dubbed and so far I am enjoying it. The voices are great but the name changes still bug me. However, if that is the last of my worries, then it might not be so bad.

I found a really badass image of the GP02 holding the Anti-Ship rifle from the Origin.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cfz-1emUEAAZIeo.jpg:large

We watched episodes 13-20 of G today. There were some really cool stuff in here and I think Shaisashi is my favorite character, which works since the Dragon Gundam is my favorite of the lot. Although, Schwartz is pretty awesome. On the other hand, there are a few things that keep me from really being blown away by this show. It just feels like the plot is stalling and I don't get the purpose of the Shuffle Alliance. Like, what makes them so special? What is the big deal about their ranks? I'm getting this vibe that the 50-ish episode requirement is hindering this series, but we'll see. There are still 29 episodes to go, I might feel differently by then.

BTW, does this show have any clip show episodes?

Not that I know of.

Watched episodes 21-32 today. The mixed feelings continue for it. I really like the idea of a tournament with the finals, but I don't like how they aren't even showing fights dealing with the other main characters. Like George is shown losing the battle, but we never actually saw him fight anyone in the tournament. The same goes for Argos. I want to see more than just Domon and his Generic Gundam fight. Thankfully, there was a Dragon Gundam episode, but I'm confused on another thing. The Neo-Denmark pilots were required to go back home because they lost the tournament, but everyone else gets to stay. Also, how many times do the Bull and Zebra Gundams have to lose before they are out of the tournament?

Oh yeah, there was a really bad ADR flub for the dub, as Domon yelled out "Shining Gundam" during the scene when Sai Caishi and the sister were being surrounded by the goons in the mech suits.

I haven't seen G Gundam since the early 2000's. I remember liking it a lot because the story and fight scenes. It was like DBZ but with mecha. Not to mention, Master Asia is so awesome. Easily one of my top 10 favorite anime characters.

I honestly don't see what is so great about Master Asia. He's just a generic "I'm now working for the villains wahahahahahaha" Saturday morning cartoon villain. That's not to say he doesn't fit with the show in that style, but I was expecting something grandiose from him since people make him out to be the greatest Gundam character ever. Until he drops a colony or two on the Earth and nearly takes it over, he will never be to the quality of Haman Karn.

Not sure that I ever shared this.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...pshxqrwwyp.jpg

As much as I like her Haman's much more of Saturday morning cartoon villain then Master Asia.

Her character really took a nosedive in ZZ.

I disagree. Haman showed how she was a great strategist in ZZ. Not to mention no one else dropped a colony on Dublin.

We watched the next 8 episodes to G and this show is really frustrating me. I just don't understand this tournament at all. What is the point of having these Gundams fight over and over and over again if they are all just going to end up being in a giant battle royale anyway? Hell, the Zeus Gundam has had its head destroyed three times now. Where is the threat of defeat if none of these matches actually matter?

My other issue is that this has gotten quite repetitive. I was honestly getting bored except for the episodes where Sai Caishi and George fought Domon. Also, the identity of Schwartz Brooder was so obvious from the moment he appeared on screen. Despite the negatives, the show is... and I can't believe I am saying this, but it is better than Gundam Wing. Domon and Rain have had far more development than any of the characters did in Wing, and I've still got 9 episodes left.

Yes, she played both the Titans and AEUG and she got power hungry, so she got cocky. She still has done far more than any other Gundam villain ever. She is the Kefka of Gundam. As for the colony drop, it is special though because you never actually saw one dropped on a city before. You only heard about one being dropped, but they never showed the true terror of it happening until ZZ.

No idea what you mean by mama's boy though. I don't remember anyone being a mama's boy. I also never got the impression she was in love with Judau, just mesmerized by how strong his New Type abilities were in the same manner that Palpatine was obsessed with Anakin. Even if it were the case, at least she was only 20. Japan has done A LOT worse and between 30 year old men and 12 year old girls.

G Gundam may not have the best story, but it makes up for it in intense action and epic fights. I can see why it's the second most memorable Gundam series in the US next to Gundam Wing.