"We're flashing back to a single scene so many times I swear the Kira/Athrun Double K.O. is going to show up any second now." - Hayley
I've been thinking about Reconguista in G again. ∀ Gundam was about boiling Gundam as a franchise down to certain ideas (defining and reclaiming our humanity, how this requires empathy, being at least a little gay) while ditching the usual signifiers. G-reco was the opposite: a show comprised entirely of Gundamist signifiers with no meaning attached. If you fixate on the form of Gundam but not the meaning then what you shall wind up with is shallow nonsense. The founding father of the franchise leaving one last warning to all who continue to follow him.
Naturally, the lesson Bandai Namco learned from that was to make Gundam Unicorn 2.
The ending of Gundam Unicorn left plenty of room for a sequel, so it makes sense. You can take the time to really explore the political ramifications of Minerva Zabi's big speech and look at how information is spread, obstructued, interpreted and misinterpreted. Since we know from Gundam F91 that the Earth Federation maintains its status quo, we can really explore just how much work those in power have to do if they wish to maintain their grip, even as their neglect allows for a slow crumbling of their order. Why, it even makes sense to name your story Narrative when exploring such ideas!
Nope, sorry, it's about chasing a robot holding the ghost of his childhood friend while the world's lamest crazy cyber newtype pilot tries to cause a big explosion.
Keeping the scope small and personal is a perfectly fine decision for a movie. Inception is a jaw dropping visual delight of an action blockbuster with a somber emotional core of a guy coming to terms with the death of his wife. Gundam Narrative can't even achieve such small goals though. It's far too fixated on exploring the technology and spirituality of Universal Century Gundam in the most boring ways possible. We don't even need to kill a woman for a man's character development partway through if we make that something we can flash back to over and over. We can use fancy flashy psychoframe sparkles to bedazzle the audience instead of actually being creative with our storyboarding.
Even though it's a sequel to Gundam Unicorn, the entire presentation feels like a gigantic step down. Unicorn has this almost pornographic attention to details like how pilots operate their machines, what they keep in their cockpits, the exact consequences any action has on the suits' exteriors and what small personal quirks everyone has. This has been ignored in favour of some incredibly sterile action setpieces, about on par with the best action in AGE. The soundtrack is a joke as well. I praised Hiroyuki Sawano's work on Unicorn but in the 8 years since it's clear that it was his career peak. Everything he writes for any media sounds the same now. A few horns in the serious moments, the same lazy dance beats, Roland TR-909 drums and autotuned male vocals for the big heroic powerups. At least when you watch the other shows with those sounds you get to see a fireman and a fire fighter use the power of gay love or some cool puppets swinging cursed swords around. Here it's just backing the same old Minovsky Reactor powered suits you saw a decade earlier, moving in far more boring ways.
We skipped MS Igloo because I didn't think really open Zeon wankery and horrible CG would lift Hayley's mood during all that Cosmic Era but I'm pretty happy to say that Narrative is almost tied for it as the worst of the Universal Century. Seven years since it debuted in cinemas I think it's clear that we've been saved from exploring this pocket of the world's history any further. We're probably going to skip Gundam Hathaway for now until its two sequels are finally released so we'll see if the last animated exploration of the Universal Century on our list can lift the mood from here.
This movie is every bit an embarrassment as Don Boyage was.
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