Review of Mobile Suit Gundam 00

Note: This review is for the first 25 episodes ONLY (season 1). Gundam 00 one of the many non-Universal Century story series in the Gundam franchise and one that stands out primarily for its initial plot, that being an almost exact copy of the 90s series Gundam Wing: a team of young men are sent to earth in super overpowered mech suits called Gundams with the sole task of bringing peace to the world by whatever means needed. What separates 00 from the campy, cheesy melodrama of Wing though is 00 takes this premise both realistically and seriously and even tries to spin the concept onits head, calling into question the morality of the actions of the main characters and their hypocritically violent approach to stopping violence.

The key word, however, is "tries". It does not entirely succeed in the end, for a number of reasons.

First and foremost are the main characters themselves: the "Gundam Meisters", as they are called. While certainly more in depth than Wing's pretty boy heroes, the Meisters are still unfortunately very static characters with predictable, stock personalities for most of the season, and fairly unlikable ones at that. You can tell that the story has SOMETHING in plan for them to deveolop them, humanize them, and make them realize the mistakes of their ways... but it takes entirely too long to get there, and when you do it feels less like natural development and more like a personality shift.

Conflating this issue is honestly ALL the other characters from the various Earth factions are just FAR more interesting, be it the American pilot aces looking to avenge their fallen allies, the Russian military commander who constantly devises new plans to stop the Gundams and basically always succeeding until a plot convenience undoes it, the comic relief fake ace European Union who somehow always manages to survive death by sheer luck, or the Middle Eastern mercenaries who just need an excuse of a war to keep fighting. These characters suffer, struggle, and overall are generally just LIKABLE and thus more interesting to follow, but are doomed to play second fiddle to the pretty boys in super robots.

Besides all this, in the final third of the season, the show introduces three more Gundam pilots with even MORE powerful machines and genuinely unhinged, intolerable personalities. They exist only to commit atrocities that shock even the most jaded of the Meisters, but the issue here is they only serve to be a scapegoat for them: rather than have the Meisters realize their OWN actions are causing more harm than good, they simply have to only observe their darker others do it for them. Its lazy and uninspired, and the fact these three extra Gundam pilots are intolerable hateful characters that are just not fun or interesting to watch they ultimately get killed off without much fanfare and are trivial in the overall scheme of things. This all ultimately leads up to a big unified attack against the Gundams by all the Earth nations at once using their own diet-Gundam machines and a lot of minor characters die, but only the ones on the Meister's side are given much emotional weight despite them being the least interesting of the sides. It just ends on a wet fart.

As for the plot itself, its... ok. Gundam 00 is heavily dedicated to its setting and world building, an Earth 200 years into the future where solar energy delivered from orbital elevators resolves the energy crisis... but also causes civil wars in formerly wealthy oil rich countries. The exposition scenes are HEAVY here and there are a LOT of names of places and characters to keep up with, and some of the political machinations can come off as overblown and up its own ass, but I enjoyed it for the most part. What is truly good about Gundam 00's narrative is how it plays with its tropes, particularly the struggle of helpless earth weapons against the Gundams. The more the Meisters attack the nations to stop their warring, the more the nations develop better technology for defeating the gundams, including reverse engineering their beam weapons and eventually making Gundam-esque mechs of their own. Seeing actions having these big world consequences is a strong point in Gundam 00's favor, and is a rare sight in most any mecha series.

Lastly, to end on a positive note, Gundam 00 has some gorgeous art for a full blown series, and the music is top notch as well, which really draws you into the drama... if you cared for it to begin with. Overall though Gundam 00 is a lackluster experience that plays with some interesting ideas old and new, but is held back by cliche protagonist writing, dense and non-intuitive infodumping, and just some bad storyline choices in the third act.