"The Moonrace appointed Homer Simpson to design these." - Hayley on the MRC-U11D WaD.
"Sochie thinks she's Bright Noa but she's Beecha." - Hayley on adjustments to Gallop command structure.
"Look sorry, I'm trying to make more quips but every time I think of one it turns out the show was already planning to make that very same joke." - Hayley on good writing.
Four Gundam continuities, two runs of University and an entire gender ago I was a film theory student. In my first year there was a lecture on the death of genre which outlined the three most common reasons a genre fades from popularity:
- Sheer saturation means over-investment in a genre so the first expensive entry to under perform causes a collapse from panicked investors. (Hello Dolly and Dr. Dolittle did this to Hollywood roadshow musicals)
- A work executes the genre so perfectly that audiences are satisfied and no longer care about seeing something similar. (Avengers: Endgame, every attempt by Dragon Ball to pass the torch from Goku to Gohan, Wrestlemania X7.)
- A parody of the genre hits the notes so perfectly it is impossible to take the normal entries seriously. (Airplane! for disaster movies until Roland Emmerich and Twister hit the scene, Austin Powers forcing a complete rework of spy action movies)
It is 1999, two years since Gundam X brought Gundam to its saturation peak. It's the 20th anniversary of the original show. Out of ideas for how to milk this franchise, original director Yoshiyuki Tomino is brought in to make lightning strike the same place twice. Instead, he sets out to kill the Gundam in our minds. Given the tone of this show it would be easy to assume that's via method 3 but the beauty of ∀ Gundam is that it is also method 2. This is not only the best Gundam show ever made, but one of the best anime to boot. This show is so damn great that my struggle is going to be how I can convey this without just repeating "wow good show" for 2000 words. Let's try breaking things down.
