Makes me wonder what happened to Lightning Zeta Gundam

Oh yeah, we also watched the second and third episodes to IBO today. That is a strange Gundam design. Shouldn't it be called Gundam Anorexia? :D Nothing too much to say about them other than they were good. The pilot kid is freaking cold blooded too. He just outright killed the guy before he could finish talking.

Give me this as an RD and I'll be happy.

More then likely it was just a display piece never meant for serious competition in the first place.

The sleek designs are the best part of IBO. And there's an actual in universe reason for them being so skinny, because really the frames are so strong and powerful the armour is almost unecessary aside from covering some of the smaller joints, but mostly it's used to house weapons or boosters, or just aesthetics. So some of them, mostly Barbatos, end up lightly armoured just out of necessity. (Also Barbatos is currently incomplete since its been gathering dust for 300 years)

Barbatos is still incomplete even after the "Unlimited budget" that engineer from Teiwaz had when they got the Barbatos?

No, but it is still incomplete as of episode three, which is what Dr. Kain said he was up to. So to him Barbatos still has no shoulders and the lopsided arms.

X's sixth disc was Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh sorry, I feel asleep there. Yes, the sixth disc was nothing more than a snooze fest. Oh my god these episodes dragged on forever! FOR-EV-ER!! The first episode wasn't too bad, but then the stuff in that Asian nation just kept on going. Plus, the Shuffle Alliance dudes that the Frost Brothers kept sending out had absolutely no development and they really were there just to die. It's like the writers have run out of ideas to have mobile suit battles, so now they are just throwing in random characters that are there solely to die just to keep the battles going. The animation also seems to have taken a dip in quality (not that there was any to begin with) during these episodes too. I do like how the Airmaster went from a Starscream to a Thundercracker though and I'm curious to see the upgrade the Leopard is going to be getting, but this show is starting to lose me. I think I'm also tired of watching them travel across the Earth because there is nothing interesting going on as far as cities and landmarks are concerned. It's all rocks and dirt. Even Turn A, which had a much more interesting environment, got tiresome after 30 episodes. As for the characters themselves, Tiffa and Sara are still the most one dimensional people in the main group. Even the damn President had more development in his four episodes than either of them.

Have you heard this English cover of one of the Gundam SEED opening/ending? It's fantastic, very well sung.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6lsNTRQptM

We spent the night running through the last two discs and they were... well honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about them. They were rushed, enjoyable, and yet, full of utter bullshit. Clearly they were told the show was getting canned during these episodes because the stuff that dealt with the Satellite people was utterly pointless. In fact, this whole little bit on outer space was done in like 3 episodes, making it all pointless to have even happened. Also, the big war between the two factions just kind of started without any real build up and then the whole thing with DOME just comes out of the blue. Hell, it made no sense to have one minute Tiffa and Garrod making out and then 3 seconds later she is in a coma. That was paced extremely poorly. Also the whole conversation with DOME in the final episode was full of nonsensible bullshit. He gave absolutely no answers that held any meaning and it sounds like the writers just tried to make up random crap to make it sound like it was sophisticated. Instead it came out half assed and dumb.

In the end, it is a middle of the road Gundam show. It's better than Wing, Reconguista of G, probably better than G, and sure as hell superior to that basement bargain bin booltlegged bull called AGE, but it still has its fair share of problems. It was a very disjointed series because there were several episodes that were great followed up by mediocre at best ones. Then another batch of well done episodes, tained but another set of terrible ones. The entire war at the end felt forced and the Frost Brothers were average villains. They got better as the show progressed, but they had very little in the way of development. I don't mind having villains who are evil for the sake of it, but it would have been nice to have had a backstory about how they joined up with the UNE in the first place. Were they part of the war from 15 years prior? Not to mention it seems pretty childish that their motivation all relied on them being passed up by a computer program. I did like Roabea and Witz, but it seemed like most of their character growth ended early on and they were pretty much just there because the writers had nothing better to do with them. Tiffa and Sara were the worst characters of the show and served no purpose other than to be there for the men they loved. Garrod did grow on me though while the best character in the show is easily Jamil. He had a lot of great moments and lived up to being a father-esque figure like Quattro and Bright. There are a lot of similarties that Turn A seemed to have from this, but that show did the post-apocalyptic world in a far more interesting manner with more fleshed out villains and scenarios.

As I said before, the animation was pretty subpar and it never really got better. In fact, it seemed like a lot of the fight scenes in the second half became more stillshots and a reuse of footage, especially those revolving about the Double X. The gundams were cool, but the Leopard's upgraded form barely did anything different from the original form. Oh, and the G Falcon seemed rather meaningless after three episodes. The music was hit or miss. The opening themes though rocked while the ending themes were way too sappy and whiney. I'm glad to have finally seen X after all of these years, but it is one of those series I may never rewatch unless I suddenly get in this mood where I need to see every Gundam show like I have right now.

Well, until Rightstuf releases Victory, this is the last "new" Gundam show for me. I still have SEED and Destiny to (re)watch, so I'm going to try to look at them with fresh eyes as I did with Wing earlier this year, but we'll see what happens. Before then, I need to drink some Blood and Wine. :-)