Gundam 00: It’s Dancougar in Disguise at Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

Gundam 00: It’s Dancougar in Disguise

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Popularity: 13% [?] Published by tj_han October 7th, 2007 in Anime

I have to say that while Gundam-bashing is by far one of the more popular pastimes of the otaku, most of us deep down still look dearly forward to every new installment of the franchise. I liked Seed actually, and Destiny even up till about episode 30. To appreciate the hold Gundam have over us anime lovers, it is apt to quote one of the best lines of dialogue ever found in an anime series.

Tanabe Ai from Planetes: "The opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy!"

If we truly hated Gundam, then we wouldn’t even care. We wouldn’t care just like how we stopped talking and being interested in Bleach, for instance. But no, everyone still talks about the goods and the bads of the Gundam, be it the ridiculous names (HALLELUJAH!) or the shortage of UE material. I got down to watch Gundam 00, which aired on Saturday at 6 pm, and here are my views.

Following the success of Code Geass’ blending of faggoty girly character designs with hard mecha and lots of action, Gundam 00 takes the exact same path. Except that it takes Dancougar Nova’s premise, which is a terrible thing to do. More on that later. Gundam 00 (henceforth known as Goo) has its character designs by Kouga Yun, who is a woman mangaka famous for erm sissy stuff (Loveless etc). Most of the guys look like girls in Goo, but a couple are quite good-looking I must say. I liked the character designs for some of the women and one of the Gundam MEISTERS (Metrosexual Element Is So Toxic! Encourages Redundant Sex) namely Setsuna, who looks like an angry shounen hero. He’s the only one of the Meisters who looks like a male. Somewhat.

It’s a refreshing change from more than 100 episodes of Hirai Hisashi (Heroic Age, Olynsis, Seed, Scryed, Ryvius) and his freaky identical faces and bright colours. I have nothing against Hirai but for his love of bright outlandish colours notably pink, lime green and gold. At least Goo gets a bit grittier with a colour palette more like a 08th MS Team than a G Gundam.

Setsuna, with Gundam Exia. Exia is designed as a tribute to the AK47 and highly portable.

The OP is by L’arc En Ciel, Daybreak’s Bell. It’s not too bad, you would expect the ultimate golden TV slot to use something mainstream and popular, and Goo doesn’t disappoint with this big name. I’m not a fan of Hyde, and this song is mediocre really. I actually think Seed’s OPs were far better in terms of the "burning aura" effect. Sunrise has always had good taste when it comes to picking OPs for mainstream shows, looking at the likes of Colours (Code Geass), Gin Iro no Sora (Gintama) but this isn’t good enough! I say, CHANGE ASAP. As for the ED, I quite like it. "Wana" (Trap) by the Back Horn is more my type of Jrock.

About the story, it’s like Dancougar Nova, the shitty mecha series aired a while back. Seriously. It’s the year 2307 and fuels have all been burnt by the Americans. Solar power is the new petrol but only 3 super large generators exist in the world, each handled by a separate organisation. So in total, we have 4 factions here, 3 of the previously mentioned legit and traditionally powerful ones and a spanking-new kid on the block, the Celestial Beings.

Ignoring the shitty name for the moment, the CB (lol) aim to stop all war by waging war on those who want war. In other words, they are Spiderman. But at least Spiderman looked like a man, the CB are practically CG (Celestial Gays). Anyway, this sounds exactly like what Bush is doing, so even the characters in Goo are rather sceptical of this CG faction, who conveniently own the most badass weaponry on Earth, GUNDAMS. ALL 4 OF THEM. The other 3 factions are the Union (America), the Human Reform League (Russia, China and India. They horde all the good food on Earth.) and the AEU (Europe). I suppose the Africans have already perished or something, due to the lack of representation.

The first episode consists of all the 4 Gundam Meisters performing a debut battle and winning easily. But not Seed Destiny easily, more like Zeta easily. I find the battle choreography rather acceptable. It’s surely not FMP (minus gay Lamda drivers), MS Igloo or 08th MS Team level but it is tier 2, which is Gigantic Formula at least. The grunt machines do a good job of not dying in the first few seconds and the four Gundam actually do have specialisations which work.

"Smell my BO!"
"Holy shit, it’s so corrosive my hand is burnt off!"

What I like is the total replacement of the non-Gundam mecha with a more sleek and modern organic feel, instead of the awful (in this age) Zakus and Goufs. The new grunt mecha actually look very good.

The animation is FAR better than Seed, but this is only the first episode. Let’s not jinx ourselves.

Now, to the real meat of the episode - each Gundam!

Gundam Exia
Gundam Exia is the main character, Setsuna’s, machine. It can fly like Casper the Friendly Ghost, with no need for any freaking thrusters. How? It has this GN drive, which can produce GN particles (Minovsky substitute). The same GN particles power its GN sword, Exia’s main weapon. This is a mean melee machine with quick responses, huge agility and a fast sword. And a useless beam rifle which didn’t seem to hit anyone. It also looks like Jesus for some reason. Unfortunately, it suffers the same old Blue, Yellow, Red colour scheme which is more fitting on a target board than an expensive high tech mecha.

Left arm has this jackknife and beam rifle combo. It will never run out of ammo!

Gundam Dynames
Everyone loves snipers. Snipers are the coolest thing besides Samurai and Ninja. One of the most popular GM versions is the Sniper GM which took out the big bad mecha in 08th MS Team. Dynames is a sniper. Therefore, Dynames is cool. Dynames will also never miss, for its Meister is Mr Lockon. Seriously. Dynames has one beam sniper rifle which it used to destroy a lot of grunts that were pestering Exia.

"I have big pectoral muscles! Thanks to this wonderful exercise machine. Call 1900-XXX-XXXX to order now!"

Gundam Kyrios
This one is the Ninja gundam. It’s the only transformable one out of the four, and its plane form is reminiscent of Zeta Gundam. It’s a ninja because it can move quick and transform. We all know ninja can transform. The pilot is HALLELUJAH. Admittedly, this Gundam looks quite good with its fins and orange finish.

It looks good in robo mode. Now it just looks like a penis with two testicular fins.

Gundam Virtue
This is the American Gundam. Why? Because it’s the fattest and has the biggest guns. I seriously laughed when the screen panned to reveal its weaponry, a beam cannon as big as itself! A cannon bigger than the grunt mecha it was about to destroy! Can you say, OVERKILL? This one allegedly has the strongest defence, thanks to its huge layers of porklard. The pilot is Thai and fresh out of a sex change operation. Calls herself Tieria.

This is a tribute to a Zaku of course.

This first episode was NOT as exciting as both that of Seed and Destiny’s, but that is only because they were actually good episode 1s. I’ll surely be seeing more of this though, and it might even make me buy some model kits!

Popularity: 13% [?]

19 Responses to “Gundam 00: It’s Dancougar in Disguise”

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1 cdeee 1 comment Oct 7th, 2007 at 4:00 am

I don’t think Geass is the beginning of faggoty girly character really. Seed had pretty girly characters. I don’t think the episode was very exciting or the OP very good by Sunrise/Seed standards, but it was passable and I want to see more. The whole show though is kind of cheesy though. I’m not sure how serious I’m supposed to take it. Though Geass always made me laugh too, so it might just be me.
2 tj_han 1440 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 4:55 am

Erm I never said it began with CG, I said it follows CG.
3 Karry 9 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 5:01 am

Hmm…i hope to see USia burn in nuclear flames by the end of the first season. Is it too much to ask ?
4 Droniac 1 comment Oct 7th, 2007 at 5:12 am

The episode as a whole reminded me of Gundam Wing, which had roughly the same premise (a couple of Gundams fighting off everyone else). Starts off very similar too, with every Gundam appearing on scene to show off their specialties and cutting down a few foes, and the characters look about as manly as Gundam Wing’s. Thank goodness that’s where the similarities end.

It was refreshing to see some Gundams not kicking ass left and right for a change. Sure they were winning battles - and quite easily at it - but not in any unexpectedly absurd ways like in Gundam SEED, Destiny, Wing, etc, etc… Overall the battles had a bit of a Full Metal Panic meets Gundam 08th MS Team feel to them. And were a cut above the latter, and slightly inferior to the former (which would’ve been very difficult to top anyway).

On the whole a pretty good episode, not quite as engaging as those of SEED and Destiny, but showed a bit more promise for a semi-believable show without some near-god-person obliterating hundreds of mobile suits per second towards the latter half of the show (Kira, I look at you)

As for the OP and ED:
I didn’t much like the ED (which seemed more like punk than rock to me) and the opening (rock) started off rather poorly too, but the latter half of it was great. Either way, it’d be nice to see some replacements indeed.

Did Lockon remind anyone else of a certain character in Full Metal Panic? He could be his clone! Heck, it’s the same friggin’ VA too! (Kurtz Weber, doh) That definitely added A LOT to the ‘Full Metal Gundam’ vibe of the whole episode.
5 Ming 3 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 7:06 am

“Did Lockon remind anyone else of a certain character in Full Metal Panic? He could be his clone! Heck, it’s the same friggin’ VA too! (Kurtz Weber, doh) That definitely added A LOT to the ‘Full Metal Gundam’ vibe of the whole episode.”

No way. This is pretty girly but I think Lockon is waay better looking.
6 Ascaloth 202 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 10:29 am

I’m actually interested. Just not interested enough to take the ODEX risk, unlike for CLANNAD or ef.

(Will probably bum it off TJ when I have the time. )
7 zenical 3 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

i like GS and GSD, and this new gundam series will be good!! i just knew it
8 Silencers 60 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

“thanks to its huge layers of porklard.”

I was thinking the exact same words.
9 samejima 19 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 5:40 pm

Try building their First grade model kits. It’s fun. I have an FG Exia and now, I want to buy Dynames, Kyrios and Virtue. Painting the parts was a pain, though.
10 Amgine 2 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 5:46 pm

I hereby dub the Celestial Being aka CB, the “Cock Blockers”. For obvious reason this is a much more appropriate name.
11 tj_han 1440 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 7:14 pm

Funny that you mention it, Amgine, but CB is local Singaporean slang for “vagina”.
12 Faye 52 comments Oct 7th, 2007 at 11:01 pm

Lol @ Virtue. That’s what I thought too. It must be on steroids or something.
13 manga 24 comments Oct 8th, 2007 at 1:24 am

I´m kinda amazed at how small changes they´ve applied to already existing gundams.

Other than that, kinda nice episode and since I´m a mecha freak I must watch this, atleast untill they are betrayed or ordered to commit suicide, then it´s to much Gundam Wing for me.

Ending all wars by destroying those who wage war? Where have I heard that one before? Oh yes, Gundam Seed Destiny…

Mixed feelings FTW!! Nice with a new Gundam series, but when they reuse so much then interest dropping like a rock in water.
But as said, must see atleast a couple of episodes.
14 Zer0 135 comments Oct 8th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

I haven’t watched G Wing or Gundam X, so I wouldn’t be able to draw comparisons between the two. I just watched the pilot on Nico Nico video. I was skeptical to begin with - but now I’m kinda drawn in because of the political thriller angle. It’s rather realistic at first sight.

CBs reminded me of the American comic The Authority, superheroes who made themselves the guardian of mankind and challenged the status quo of international politics. Somehow, I have this feeling that CB is more than meets the eye, and it’s something more sinister. I’m sure everyone will be wondering who’s sponsoring this seemingly altruistic peacekeeper. Who watches the watchmen?
15 tj_han 1440 comments Oct 8th, 2007 at 5:40 pm

Zer0! I have the entire set of THE AUTHORITY!!
16 Somatic 33 comments Oct 9th, 2007 at 12:16 am

Atlease its not Stealing Mecha, Seeing Young Teen Angsting and an under Attack Coloney…. wait… i take the last one out
17 Wreckidigidy 12 comments Oct 9th, 2007 at 8:34 am

“Daybreak’s Bell” is an overuse of an asthma sort of condition in his voice for Hyde after I have sampled it on Music Station… I prefer “Shine” for “Seirei no Moribito” better, at least it was a typical Laruku ballad…
I think it’s a dream comes true for L’Arc~en~ciel to do an OP for a Gundam series as Tetsu (the bassist and leader) is a big Gundam fan…
18 myu 3 comments Oct 11th, 2007 at 9:32 am

“Kouga Yun, who is a woman mangaka famous for erm sissy stuff (Loveless etc). Most of the guys look like girls in Goo, but a couple are quite good-looking I must say. I liked the character designs for some of the women and one of the Gundam MEISTERS (Metrosexual Element Is So Toxic! Encourages Redundant Sex) namely Setsuna, who looks like an angry shounen hero. He’s the only one of the Meisters who looks like a male. Somewhat.”

XD Best G00 review for now.
Only reason I watch this show is because of the Kouga Yun desingns. ^^ I thought that Seed were boring and I wouldn´t have watched this until I found out that Kouga was character desinger. Now I must watch this, even if it makes my head hurt. lol It´s strange how much you can sacrifice for the artist you love…
19 Sylphie 1 comment Oct 13th, 2007 at 10:42 am

Well, you got the CG part down right. I thought three of the Meisters were girls at first… =.= Setsuna was the only one I immediately recognized as a guy… and those two weird faggoty looking guys kept showing up all over the place, first at the demo, then driving around in a car…

The first episode wasn’t anything super exciting, true, but I think it’s engaging enough to warrant watching the rest of the series. :]

Do not use any < and > for your own sake. It will end the comment there and then. Also, there is an automatic IQ filter which weeds out comments made by those who accidentally got transported from the stone age.

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