[Dr Kain]

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. :-)