Hayley: "WHOA when did Mashmyre get so jacked?"
Hamarn: "Keep an eye on Mashmyre. We may have Enhanced him too much."
"I can't believe the point this show turned around was when Judau ate an ice cream really fast." - Hayley on her newfound love for Elpeo Ple
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire. - The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852
The Titans have been thwarted. Earth's government is in shambles. Our heroes the paramilitary Anti-Earth Union Group sort of have Federation backing but are completely depleted of functioning weaponry and crew. Kamille's brain is fucking friend and Amuro's still trying to keep shit together on Earth. Casval 'Char "Quattro Bajeena" Aznable' rem Deikun is missing.Zeon's remnants have returned from exile in the Asteroid Belt and incurred minimal losses by playing the Earth Sphere's factions against each other.
It's time for a slapstick comedy!
Enough people at Studio Sunrise read their Marx at Uni that I genuinely think his essay on the Second French Revolution was part of this show's inspiration. At the same, continuing Zeta's idea of Reaction, the staff were probably also just annoyed that they had to make more Gundam for a second year in a row instead of getting weird with it. These people used to take time off to draw funny fairies throwing hand grenades in between Gundams dangit!
Even so, I kind of like how ZZ begins. We're stuck hiding in a backwater colony, completely depleted of pilots and so the second a no-good teenager sneaks into a Gundam and starts piloting it sure fuck it why not recruit him? It's worked for the last 93 episodes so we might as well try again. Hell, the local Neo Zeon dipshits work as incompetent villains for this low-stakes beginning. Zeon lost all its cool grizzled aging men nearly 8 years ago at this point. It makes sense that all we have left are little freaks having flashbacks to their Hitler Youth lessons from the asteroid they grew up inside. These guys don't know shit about living in a real society!
The problem is that the joke is simply stretched out too thin. We know Yoshiyuki Tomino and friends can make a good comedy with interesting themes. Xabungle was three years prior to this! Yet, things feel a little too contrived here. There's only so many ways to slip on a banana peel in a setting where we've seen very real, very competent militaries in action. They simply shouldn't be screwing up as much as they do.
Once we're past the first 15 or so episodes of questionably funny comedy, ZZ really starts finding its way. New songs are added to the ongoing Zeta Gundam soundtrack to provide neat points of contrast. We are firmly in a sequel to that show and dealing with its consequences. Various plot points feel like further iteration on Zeta's setpieces as well. We had to deal with various victims of psychic manipulation and experimentation but they all felt a bit too dehumanising to really feel sympathy for. Elpeo Ple on the other hand is such a perfect execution of the idea that much like Zeta's art impacts the franchise going forward, so too does her writing. An adult woman like Rosamia acting like she's 12 years old is asinine and annoying. An actual 12 year old who's clearly been abused and needs some positive role models in her life is heart-wrenching to see fall afoul of war.
There was a significant shift in production staff when the next Gundam entry, the movie Char's Counterattack was greenlit. A consequence of that was Char never appearing in this show with some of what was likely to be his role being handed to Glemy Toto. I think it works in the show's favour. Neo Zeon is full of such young dipshit fascists that they don't even get to have two cool leaders having a standoff. We have a woman with a massive chip on her shoulder, too stubborn to do the right thing versus a nepo baby mad because he thinks it's his turn on the Supreme Commander Xbox. It's fortunate for the Earth Federation that the new kids in town love killing each other because it means high command can continue their newfound hobby of "doing nothing and hoping the problem people civil war themselves out of trouble".
I'll probably talk about it with a later entry but the Universal Century is a dystopian setting. The Earth Federation is corrupt, lazy and filled with rich assholes who want to let mass deaths occur to cut down on how much paperwork they have to do. Conversely the limitations to technology caused by power sources emitting particles which jam long-range communications mean very few ideas are able to spread. All anyone remembers is fascist dictatorships, so that's all anybody tries to counter the Federation.
Our boy Judau sees this and understands it better than almost everyone else in the setting. He knows he's just one guy. He sees the scope of the problem, the complexity of the problem and how gaining psychic connections can't really fix it. So he leaves. I think it's a poignant answer to the questions of Gundam for only the third entry to take: bail on this all. Get out. No more Gundam may bring you some happiness.
We are only at 1986.
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