"It says a lot about this show's gender politics that a stoic male friendship gets the love song montage but Kou x Nina never does." - Hayley, taking what she can from this mediocrity.
It's everything War in the Pocket chose not to be.
Interquels are so damn lame. You've run out of ideas with any sort of meaning so you're going to slot in a story where there wasn't one before and risk messing with the ideas of the preceding works just to make more money off of brand familiarity. If there had actually been a colony dropped on Kansas in 0083 do you really think the Titans wouldn't have plastered every wall in the Grypps Cluster with gigantic NEVER FORGET posters?
It's a shame because one of the closing moments of this 13 episode OVA is seeing almost the entire cast, both the likeable ones and the assholes all gleefully don the uniforms of the Space SS. Knowing that Bernard Monsha was probably one of those faceless Hizack, Marasai or Barzam pilots who took a beam rifle to the cockpit at some point in Zeta is the only satisfaction I can gain from this addition to the Gundam Canon.
If you want to see cool robot action conducted by professional adults with great pacing, you've bought the right tapes. There's no pesky autistic teens having psychic epiphanies here. No screaming children confronting loss for the first time in their lives. Nope, this is a show full of adults, aimed at adults with disposable income.
Being for adults is not the same as being mature.
Really this is as juvenile as any prior Gundam. Arguably more so. Our show opens on a Zeon soldier receiving an inspirational speech by his CO to keep the flag flying. Time and time again we see Zeon troops treated as Real Men with Principles and Ideologies, not like those filthy Feddies. Our lead character Kou Uraki is not a Real Man you see. He complains about carrots. He's too nerdy about his equipment. He's indecisive. He cannot be a Man of Destiny like the second opening celebrates. That's why he doesn't even get to kill his rival in the final episode. A Real Man like Anavel Gato must instead die a glorious death protecting his troops before a fleet tears them apart. Just go run and hide, Kou. You'll never go to Valhalla like Kelley did in episode 8.
Gundam has a history of being weird about women but of the works so far this is one of the more insidious examples. It plays around early on with a tough, competent woman taking no shit from the jerks around her but forgets this rather quickly. No, the true nature of women is lying, indecisive emotional, backstabbing wrecks. It doesn't matter if a man kills countless people with a nuclear bomb then instigates an even larger WMD. If a woman kissed him 3 and a half years prior while he was on shore leave then she'll never be able to let him go!
This is the animated work in Gundam which really feels like a franchise entry. We are here to move product first and say something with our art second. It's exhausting.
No comments:
Post a Comment