Review of Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX

Gquuuuuux is the best thing to happen to the Gundam franchise in a very long time and is a love letter to OG fans of the franchise. Sadly, it’s almost impossible to say why without massive spoilers for the story, so I’ll be talking in generalities here. Critics be damned, this was the best weekly viewing experience I’ve had since 86 was airing. There’s some issues with pacing and I wish we got more episodes to flesh out the characters and world, but honestly all of my criticisms of Gquuuuuux went out the window during the last few episodes. They were that damn good.In fact, Gquuuuuux contains the single hypest episode of anime I’ve ever seen in my life. I know, I know, that’s high praise and that’s genuinely how I feel. If you remember the feeling you had going into Avengers Endgame or Spider-man No Way Home without being spoiled, that was me and thousands of other Gundam fans watching this show. It’s the fulfilment of a decades long journey for a lot of us and being a collab with Khara meant it brought a unique artistic flair to the Gundam franchise we’ve never had before mixed with some Evangelion. This was peak, simple as and feels like the start of a new, bold and exciting era of Gundam.

Really quick disclaimer, you absolutely need to have watched the original Gundam Quadrilogy of 0079, Zeta, ZZ and CCA to fully appreciate this show. Coming into it and really up until a few weeks ago, people were saying you’re fine with just 0079. I always thought that was poor advice because it was pretty apparent from the start here we’d be referencing some concepts from Zeta and ZZ, so make sure you watch those before starting this. It’ll make this show hit so much harder and the alternate takes on things will be a lot more interesting. That bit of housekeeping out the way, Gquuuuuux is such a bold departure from what we’ve seen up to this point in the universal century Gundam franchise. From the character designs, to the mech designs to the plot itself, it feels so different, yet it brings back a lot of old tropes from the 1980s era of the franchise. I mean we even got old school Gundam misogyny and the Tomino mandated grooming in this one. It’s like a cool mix of modern and past, which really is fitting considering how this is an AU with space-time shenanigans going on.

Now normally I’d use this paragraph to talk about how much I love the cast, the badass female protagonists, the yuri vibes, etc., but Gquuuuuux has a critical flaw that prevents me from doing that. It’s too damn short! Machu and Nyaan are cute and I still love them, but God they needed more time to be fleshed out in this. If anything, they feel like plot devices to get us from point A to point B rather than actual leading characters. I mean hell, I feel like Twitter fan artists gave us more Nyaanchu development than the anime did. Why sunrise only did 12 episodes for this can only be speculated. Supposedly, budget concerns and animator shortages, which sadly aren’t uncommon these days with animators being criminally underpaid.. but it really hurt this show. One more cour where we would’ve got to see the two pilots and their groomer’s relationship develop and their relationships with their crews developing would’ve been amazing. As it is now, I really feel like the first 6 episodes of this show should’ve been condensed, removing the clan battle focus and instead fleshing out Nyaan and Machu as people, developing their relationship so that the events of the second half hit way harder. To me it felt like Nyaan and Machu’s transition to their respective factions in the final third of the show progressed too quickly after the big twist around the halfway point of the show, and that’s clearly because it needed more episodes. The love triangle that develops also felt like it went way too fast. Don’t get me wrong, I still love this show because of the nostalgia bait, idc, I’m a media consumer, I love fanservice and having my childhood brought back to me, BUT this series left a lot of potential unrealized because it’s too damn short. Hell even the actual Gquuuuuux mobile suit itself feels like it was more of an uber transporting Machu around than an actual main character in its own series. This was the first one cour only UC series and it showed. For the love of God, stop trying to appeal to casual audiences and bring back 50 episode Gundam series again!

Gquuuuuux, just like its name, is really weird because while it seems like that paragraph above should disqualify it from getting a high score.. it somehow doesn’t? The best moments of the series are just that damn good to offset the pacing issues. The callbacks to the earlier Gundam series and just how wacky this series gets with the timeline just made it an incredible watch despite its flaws. Also, Machu and Nyaan still make you fall in love with them even though you wish you had more of them in the series.

This series also has some of the coolest fights and direction in the franchise thanks to Studio Khara’s Tsurumaki Kazuya helming it. While we do obviously get a ton of evangelion references and concepts, there’s also a lot of FLCL in this. It apes concepts from a variety of different series and they just all come together so well. I’m a huge fan of the eva rebuilds, so I loved the 3DCGI animation style they went with for the fights too. I know a lot of people only like 2D for their mech fights, but if it’s done with love and care, there’s just so much more you can do with a good 3DCGI sequence than a hand drawn 2D mech fight and we got a nice taste of that same magic they brought to the Eva rebuilds here. The character designs are the other big thing for me in this. It’s by the Pokemon Sun and moon artist and it looks incredibly beautiful. The two tone hair and eye colours add such a different look to the Gundam franchise. It’s a beautiful looking show with amazing art and animation.

Gquuuuuux combined a lot of my favourite things into one package so it’s no shock I love it. I knew I would as soon as we saw the art and heard the staff involved, but this became not just one of my favourite Gundam entries ever, but one of my favourite anime ever, even with all its flaws. Just like I think Endgame is a masterpiece because of all the fanservice, so too is Gquuuuuux for me.

Gquuuuuux gets 10 psycommu out of 10.