"I had so much fun at the time, but now I think about it events moved so fast that I'm trying to remember what even happened. At least they killed The Gundam at the end." - Hayley, during pillow talk last night.
"fucking right?! like xavier is such a pathetic meowmeow you're seeing kicked around but challia's yearning is so deep and profound... it's soooo much" - Artist and vtuber Henemimi in a conversation with me about how Challia Bull's the #1 babygirl
"Yes my sweet, yes my sweetest. I wanna get back where you are. Hold me in your arms once again. Yes my sweet, yes my sweetest. I wanna get back where you are. None of us can live alone." - Daisuke Inoue - Encounters
Imagine you are Kazuya Tsurumaki.
After years learning from some truly inspired artists, your debut show as a director is scripted by the guy who wrote Revolutionary Girl Utena. Together, you craft a miniseries that celebrates weird nerds with the same breaths it condemns them. A complex, sprawling space opera is laid to the background of a humble coming of age story. It's so damn good that you're next tasked with making a sequel to one of the best works your mentor created. You knock it out of the park so well that your mentor asks you to be his nuts and bolts guy on a remake/metatextual sequel to his most famous work. This task takes you around 18 years to complete. Right as you near its completion and will be free to take whatever creative pursuits you want, one of the country's largest media companies approaches you. They want you to helm their most lucrative franchise and they want you to build on the last, most forbidden premise exploring that franchise's start can offer. So you set to work with your mentor and your writing buddy and you probably put together a fully realised world and the outline for the 50 episodes such a story would require. After all, it's what this franchise usually does for television shows and it's the only thing that makes sense with a premise like you've been offered.
Management comes back to you to clarify that the job's for a 12 episode show.
Wouldn't that just grind your gears? Wouldn't it feel so insulting? You're respected enough to be handed the project, but somehow it's not considered worth doing properly? What would you do? Would you rethink the plan to make something smaller and humbler, despite your reputation to the contrary? Would you build the world's biggest tease and encourage a swell of fandom demanding the expanded conclusion it deserves? Or would you remember those who have gone before, their warnings to never trust Bandai Namco, the country's dumbest media company and make them bleed for screwing you over?
I don't fucking know. Kazuya Tsurumaki is notorious for going off-script and changing plans episode by episode based on his mood. I'm sure what we actually saw was loosely similar to the documents Hideaki Anno first submitted but Tsurumaki is way too inconsistent a storyteller to really pin down. I've had to throw out what I've written about this show several times because some new detail of the production or the director's opinions comes out and it turns out I assumed he's much more thoughtful than he actually is. By sheer coincidence Hayley and I have watched the guy's entire filmography this year in between all the Gundam and I think it's clear that of all the Studio Gainax alumni, this is the guy who's grown up the least. I don't think this guy would ever try to make something as explicitly queer friendly as the text of Promare like Hiroyuki Imaishi did. Fucking Yoh Yoshinari's done more with that VHS garbled swords & sorcery episode of New Panty & Stocking than Rebuild of Evangelion or Gquuuuuux could.
Alright here's the premise: In an alternate universe's run (Mr. President a fourth One Year War has struck the canon) of the One Year War, Char Aznable is the one who dies in the Char/Amuro/Lalah/Sayla four-way fight which killed Lalah in the original show. Lalah Sune is such a powerful Newtype that when this happens, her soul flees the universe to pursue the next one over and tries to manipulate events so Char doesn't die. Put Char in the Zeong sooner. Put him in a Rick Dom. Put him in a Gyan. Put him in a Biggro. Put him in a Big Zam. Doesn't matter what, Amuro kills Char every time. The ur-Lalah finally achieves success by going earlier, sabotaging Gene's (the Zeon pilot who panicked in the first episode of the original show) Zaku so Char has to infiltrate Side 7 instead. He promptly steals the Gundam, captures White Base and brings about a shift in Zeon research doctrine which focuses on optimising cheaper mobile suit designs rather than over investing in super weapons. This, among other things, gives them time to mass produce the Big Zam and yes this means the Federation is finished in no time. Char befriends former one episode wonder Challia Bull and together they plot to kill all the Zabis, as young Casval rem Deikun is prone to do. Unfortunately, some wild Newtype shit happens in the middle of his attempt to manipulate an asteroid drop and he goes missing in a big ball of psychic energy. Zeon still wins the war.
Jump forward 5 years. Neutral space colony Side 6 has taken a much more aggressive, anti-immigration stance towards maintaining its position. It's full of cops looking to profile and beat up as many poor people they can while ignoring the mobile suit bloodsport ring emerging from all the surplus military gear floating about. Challia Bull, on a quest to find his missing boyfriend Char follows a lead in the region with his refurbished White Base and a motley crew who would probably be quite interesting if they were allowed any screen time. Circumstances lead to a small angry high school girl named Amate "Machu" Yuzuriha meeting an illegal immigrant girl named Nyaa and a twink high on paint fumes named Shuji who all wind up participating in some of that illegal mobile suit bloodsport while Challia and his useless subordinate Xavier try to track em down. This all falls apart seven episodes in and we pivot to Zabi infighting, Kycilia trying to set off a giant space laser, Char trying to mess with said space laser because it's actually a multiverse connecting hub and the spirit of the ur-Gundam trying to kill everyone because this is all bullshit and should go in the bin unless we kill the ur-Lalah who is in a para-universal stasis on board her Elmeth. There is a haro with a beanie and a funny lil crab robot.
If this show had used its short runtime to focus entirely on the journey of Machu, Nyaa and Shuji then it would be a true delight. If the show had used its short runtime to focus entirely on the absurd metafiction about fans and suits refusing to let go of nostalgia, it'd be a much more insular work but a true delight. By trying to do both shows in such a short run of episodes, it leaves so many elements half-baked and is built to piss off pretty much everyone who hasn't dedicated a chunk of their lives to watching every Gundam series ever produced.
Oh wait, that's what Hayley and I have done in our year of planning our wedding. Naturally we had a great time on this ride. When this show's original characters are the focus, the show's so great. Gundam has such a great history of small angry people and Machu's a damn fine addition to the legacy. Equal parts the most hormonal teen in the franchise, yet with enough cartoony hijinks to highlight just how silly the concerns of youth can be. Nyaa's journey from timid tall trans-coded woman to cold, furious violence is a great contrast to bounce off. Shuji's the most breedable twink since Ringo in G-reco. Challia Bull's transformation from "that old guy who introduced Newtypes then died" to "an aging twink who caught the Char Aznable brainworms we all share" is sure to make most viewers go feral. That's before his weird Dad moments like the assassinations, the friendly gift to Machu of a gun or how he starts stickerbombing his phone. Xavier manages to beat out Iok Kujan, Captain Mask and Chronicle Ashter for the biggest loser in Gundam. He's the true King of the Jerids.
Likewise, the extremely insular Universal Century deep cuts and world building are also a joy. The engineer who put the magnetic coating on The Gundam in the original show appears but his appearance is altered for a ludicrous joke about his original voice actor's other famous roles (Amuro's Dad and Fuyutski from Evangelion). The black tri-stars broke up because one of them got laid and quit the military. Fucking Bask Om shows up to establish that just because the Titans can't be a state-sanctioned paramilitary doesn't mean they can't simply become the official Earth Federation black ops unit. The first major war crime of the show is accompanied by the Zeta Gundam war crimes music. Even new characters established as One Year War veterans feel like they build perfectly from the sort of wankery all those nostalgic OVAs aimed for. They made a top Federation Ace who is also a MILF and also gets off to violence and also helps do this show's version of the Amuro/Sayla/Char/Lalah four-way fight. Char and Challia wrote the official SOPs for mobile suit combat and it's just the basic rules of the Gundam vs Gundam arcade game series. They mass produced the Big Zam!
This show feels like a fanfic. Not just all the pre-existing knowledge required, but the way our new characters bumble into meeting all the real movers and shakers in the world from the real story going on. That's before the wanky metafiction. Lalah Sune is such a powerful fujoshi that she warps reality so hard that the spirit of Canon itself comes for her. It still results in this show ending with a message of killing the Gundam in your heads though, so that's a spiritually correct move for entries in the franchise. It's all so cynical though. Beyond the Time is what plays, not Encounters like I quoted at the start. It's the more recognisable song for a start, but Encounters is also far too sincere and painful a song for a show like this. What was a small, personal moment of loss for a teenager slowly realising the world and people are complicated but deserving of empathy has been elevated to a mystical moment so grand and important that it breaks universes.
I think I'm sick of Yoji Enokido scripts. He's only ever as good as the director he works with, and Kazuya Tsurumaki is sure as fuck no Kunihiko Ikuhara (Revolutionary Girl Utena). He'll make vague gestures towards queerness only to ditch em in the long run. Society has forgotten Star Driver but I sure haven't. There was a time when we could feed for years off a tease like the ending credits of Gquuuuuux but we're following up the cultural moment that was Witch From Mercury, let alone working class queer disaster heroes like Atra Mixta. We know that textual, fully realised noncomfority to cishet normativity can be ours. Char Aznable left Challia Bull on read for five years and we're supposed to just accept Challia shrugging and donning the mask himself at the end. Maybe he'll peg Xavier down the road. It's more than that dumbass deserves but hey nothing matters it's all fanfiction anyway.
Gquuuuuux is interested in cages and freedoms. Space colonies are cages. Immigration cops are cages. Societal expectations for school students are cages. Machu signs up for bloodsport because she's reminded her evening curfew is a cage. Likewise, the Newtype awakenings are framed as newly discovered freedoms. For Machu, an expanded awareness and navigation of a world so much larger then she could previously comprehend. For Nyaa, the freedom to assert herself and move others in ways she thought impossible. For such people, the increased awareness of others doesn't result in the usual trauma an Amuro or Tifa Adil or even Setsuna experienced. No, it all culminates in a speech about how Newtypes are individuals who can self-actualise on their own. It all seems rather contradictory to what Gundam has been about as a franchise, and the original show in particular. Except it's not. There have been people who've exhibited such ideas before. People like Shagia and Olba Frost, Paptimus Scirocco and Haman Karn.
Hey wait a minute...
I'm not saying that Gquuuuuux is ultimately a villain origin story, even if it spends so much time following Zeon soldiers. Rather that it's very much an unfinished one. Machu at the end of the show is the same girl who relished tormenting a pomeranian. There's plenty of potential for a sequel (Mobile Suit Gundam Gplugh), so long as it fully commits to one side of the other. A metatext heavy sequel that's basically Sliders with Gundam would be a great run. 12 episodes of Machu and Nyaa punching their way through a Gundam Fight or trash talking Zechs Marquise while Challia Bull and co. try to steal a GN Drive. Likewise, a completely sincere exploration of how to de-nazify Artesia's Zeon where our girls have to do some real introspection about what it means to live with other people could easily give us a proper 50 episode show. As much as the "What if Zeon won the war?" sales pitch was derailed, there's no reason it can't be set back on track.
Perhaps the biggest question Gquuuuuux raises is "what the fuck are we doing here? Why are we still watching Gundam?" I'll tell you why. Gundam gives us what Star Wars and Star Trek never can. The former is all about pulp action and camp storytelling with the occasional attempt at doing something serious. Star Trek is about the ongoing contradictions of trying to write utopian fiction in a world where extracting surplus value is the only reason the arts are ever funded. Both can capture the imagination, but neither can do what Gundam so consistently does:
Gundam hurts. It has hurt since that original opening narration's message of hope was cut off by a mega particle cannon tearing a hole through a space colony. Amuro lost both of his parents in the One Year War, yet both are still alive. His father's brain was trashed by oxygen deprivation and his mother's objections to the war created insurmountable walls between them. It took three movies for Luke Skywalker to reunite with then lose his father. Kirk lost Spock after 79 episodes and two movies. Gundam has textually been about pain and loss every step of the way. Metatextually, it's often caught itself in thematic loops and creative dead ends. The wars are terrible. The robots are incredibly cool. The few times a show has truly stuck the landing lure us into yet another round of artists struggling against their idiotic executives. Domon gets the girl but his victory may perpetuate yet more decades of inequality and violence. Ceasefires are signed but the Frost Brothers get to live. Loran and Dianna live a peaceful retirement while Sochie can think of nothing to do but ride fast and scream. Sometimes the fascists win and sometimes war criminals are praised as liberal reformers. Beyond the mono-eyed robots and the 90s whirring joints and the psychedelic brainwaves, people will continue to make Gundam because people will continue to feel pain in new ways. Hayley and I will be lining up day one every time it happens. As dumb as these cartoons sometimes get, they're the greatest visual arts science fiction franchise out there. Go on, put on Mobile Suit Gundam's first episode again. Let that Zaku leer at you one more time. The first hit's free.
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