Review of Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX

8.25/10 ~ A weird love letter to Gundam GQUX is by far the largest split of the fan base Gundam has ever had. I am a relative newcomer to Gundam as I started watching during the time of Witch, but I have since have watched nearly everything that Gundam has to offer which weirdly puts me in a bit of a minority as most Gundam fans have watched barely 1/2 of what is all of Gundam. Looking back No one liked Zerta, then ZZ then F91, then No one liked Turn A, then Wing, then Seed, then Unicorn, then IBO and Finally no one liked witch.And here we are, history repeating itself, Anything changes from the mech designs to the formula, no one is happy. As said newcomer I do not have the distorted eyes of nostalgia, I see what Gundam and all of its complicated mess for what it is and I have to say GQUX is probably one of the best Gundam has to offer if not for a few clear glaring problems.

If you go and start with the Beginning Movie, you will immediately notice that the show is so much faster paced because they cut as much content that is humanly possible to fit the show into this seemingly arbitrary 12 episode 23 min runtime and it realty suffers for it. This show could have easily been 18, 23 or even 40+ episodes with the exact same story if it really wanted, I personally think just having the standard 18-25 episode runtime or even taken the formula of old and put into a larger OVA format would have done wounders for the pacing of the show.

GQUX also disguises itself as a standalone show where it seemed to be advertised and talked about as it was first coming out, especially in theaters here in the west, as something that was good for newcomers. For people who have seen nothing and people who have seen everything alike. Similar to my thoughts on Unicorn, I could not disagree more. GQUX is a love letter to 0079 and with my personal opinion that is a mandatory watch before watching this, there is far too much that the show assumes you understands and does not really explain well enough. I would like to also add that tho this is more or less a direct sequel to 0079, it is a soft sequel to 'Char's Counter Attack' as it makes plenty of reverences to Zeta, ZZ and CCA, all of which are pretty small and almost just cameos. But nearly everything, especially everything from about ep 9-12 you should really watch 0079 to understand, or atleast interpret as its all kinda jarring and up for interpretation. This show also makes clear nod to Unicorn and Turn A which was Fun to see. (And yes Evangelion, which takes complete homage to Gundam as a whole, love seeing that go full circle)

My smaller gripe is how unnecessary the fanservice is, especially when they so clearly cut so much of the fat from each episode, but decided to keep this in. I understand that literally every Gundam show and movie has atleast a little fanserivce... this shows was a bit excessive and jarring at some moments... weirdly not out of place, just hard to recommend to anyone lol

So as a deep enfranchised Gundam person at this point in my life, I think GQUX was a fantastic show, a love letter to Gundam as a whole, especially for the UC timeline and everything that is the newtype-bullshit that we all love so much. To me I put this just bellow Origins as #1, and right above a 3 way tie for now 3rd place of: Iron Blooded orphans, Unicorn and the Witch from mercury Prolog.

This show is pretty hard to recommend as I said above that I believe you NEED to watch the original show: Mobile Suite Gundam 0079, as a prerequisite just to understand what is going on past cute girls are fighting in kool robits lol, AND you need to watch 2 separate 40+ episode shows and a Featured movie (Zeta, ZZ and CCA) to fully appreciate everything GQUX has to offer. With all that in mind, I give this a 8.25/10 which is very high rating for me, so if you can sit through all of that, then you hopefully will enjoy your time here. I wish you luck on your Gundam journey if you are just starting.
Cheers.