"SEED Freedom wanted me to clap so bad yet it could never hope to make me bounce around with glee the way a tiny Tiera Erde in the QAN[T]'s cockpit is right now." - Hayley, having a great time.
Movie sequels to television shows are tricky business.
Part of the fun of television if you have enough breathing room to explore a lot of characters in depth. Movies can only really let you explore one or two. When a movie is a sequel to a show, there's this need to let everyone show up and play the hits. It's been a while! We wanna see how everybody's doing! What's worse, your television show has probably wrapped up all its major plot points and so you've gotta make a problem which can be solved in 80 two 120 minutes. It won't have the weight of time to feel as important. It's kind of incredible how many of these pitfalls Char's Counterattack avoided by just focusing on a very unwell man, his extremely angry boyfriend and the latest teen to fall victim to the toxic ideas which have been floating around for her entire conscious life. Compare that to Endless Waltz or SEED Freedom where there's suddenly secret children redoing the climax of their previous shows with a prettier art style.
Awakening of the Trailblazer makes none of those big picture mistakes. We fixed Earth's internal problems enough that we don't need another rogue political faction causing problems. That's not to say there aren't any, but these add to a tension throughout the film that everyone wants to do better and better now they've been shown the way, but are still very much working out how to actually do that.
Especially since first contact with aliens has begun 200 years earlier than predicted.
This movie rules because while there's plenty of big flashy movie sequel setpieces, at its heart it's a 1950s B-grade sci-fi flick. People stand around laboratories trying to work out what the hell is going on while some goofy horror scenes play out in between. This movie cuts together a sequence where Allelujah and Marie are chased by driverless trucks and helicopters trying to ram them at the same time Setsun tries to stop a zombified body of Ribbons from giving Louise a lethal hug. It's completely ridiculous but the big picture ideas behind the camp are so tantalising that I was completely along for the ride this time.
The television show was about how we need to make a kinder world where people actually listen and care for each other. The sci-fi came from its tech utopian belief we can all build psychic connections to each other and maybe the internet while there. These ideas are taken to the next level where the question is now how do you even talk to a liquid metal hivemind which kills you if it touches you?
I mentioned Foundation by Isaac Asimov last time, and the utopian thought of late stage Gundam 00 and this movie is reminiscent of the later books, where the mathematical perfection of Hari Seldon is discarded in favour of a greater connection with nature. At the same time, this movie kind of feels like a counter to the 2006 Peter Watts novel Blindsight. In that book, the horror stems from the idea that a species like homo sapiens being at all capable of saying "hello" is so inherently weird and violating to every other form of life in the galaxy that they were instinctively seek to kill you. Here we have aliens who actually do want to say "hello" back, but they want to do it while also conveying the entire sum of their knowledge and history at the exact same time.
Yes, in a franchise known for its numerous autistic characters, the first aliens encountered have a lethal AuDHD trauma dump as their greeting.
The big picture diegetic story isn't that interesting to talk about here. The movie's plot is about the technological solutions required to make mutual communication possible. Let's talk about some characters instead.
First, since I keep banging on about Allelujah/Hallelujah and Marie/Soma, let's see how they're doing. Pretty swell, actually! While the TV show ended with some give and take, the two years they've been hiking together have led to much more comfort with their senses of selves. I can't really think of that many portrayals of people with plural pronouns in anime so it's quite sweet to see the way these two are effortlessly switching names and voices with each other as the situation calls for one aspect of themselves to take precedent, something they're used to recognising in each other.
Next, Billy Katagiri. After all his women troubles he finally completes his arc in this movie when he asks yet another horny firebrand hanging out with him to play gentle. Good for him! Boundaries are an important part of communication and understanding!
Andrei Smirnov dies a hero's death. Good for him. He's doing his best to try and be a military man who focuses on aid and reconstruction, but he's a relic of the old world which has finally died. If you're going to kill anyone for drama, this is the man for the job.
What rules is Andrei's death is immediately overshadowed by Graham's. He's had a rough time of it. Haunted by the ghosts of the friend he's failed, he had a Cool Japan phase in season 2 which nearly convinced him to kill himself. While I would have preferred Setsuna's demand that he live carry all the way through, it's a miracle this guy has any blood vessels not ruptured at this point. He's been on borrowed time for years and at least he got to go out supporting something far more positive than revenge for a dead professor or a bullshit belief in the way of the samurai.
Most importantly, this movie is about Setsuna in a way that the rest of Gundam 00 hasn't been. Sure he was the main character, but this movie's a culmination in his character in a way nobody else has needed. Does this mean it's about him reconciling what it means to be an Innovator and thus the first human to take the new tech-elf form our species is headed toward? Perhaps it means learning responsibilities of leadership?
No. This movie is all about Setsuna realising, understanding and accepting that he's Aroace.
Throughout the TV show there's these weird pressures on Setsuna. Every scene he has with Marina Ismail (I'm so sorry queen, I was rushing the last post out and didn't get to talk about how your helplessness is a product of broader social forces and highlights how both Wahabbism and Geopolitics disempower women) is blocked to have the sort of romantic tension mirroring Heero Yuy x Relena Darlian Peacecraft Darlian. There's even a scene in season 2 where a new member of the Ptolemaios' crew asks if they're an item which is the first half of a joke involving her. At the same time, another crewmember named Felt very much develops a romantic interest in him It's partly a rebound after Neil Dylandy's death but she's still got feelings for Setsuna seven years after Neil's death so there's something there. Thing is, none of this has ever interested Setsuna. It's just not something he wants! Setsuna keeps distant from people throughout Trailblazer as he's figuring out the whole aliens situation but he's clearly got some stress from the way people keep approaching him on social topics too. For Felt, she ultimately concludes that he "loves so many of us" in an aromantic way. For Setsuna, it's really the way he can finally just give Marina a friendly hug after 50 years as an ambassador to weird aliens without any tensions or stresses that they have to do anything more than that. For them, the mutual understanding involves men and women being friends and nothing else.
Or if you're Hayley, the argument is that actually Setsuna just isn't attracted to humans, pre or post-Innovator. In that final post-credits scene he's just covered in ELS cum after yet another orgy with his metal alien buddies. You didn't think I'm marrying someone boring and normal, did you?
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