Review of Mobile Suit Gundam I

Story: It's about a young boy joining the military, and the harsh reality of that process. However, with such a large ensemble cast, the story doesn't focus so much on Amuro like it should. The beginning jumps around a lot and around the halfway mark is it clear that the main arc we're following is Amuro's transformation from geeky teenager to self-sufficient soldier. It was annoying, because once I realized this I was wishing for more time to be spent with it. I really enjoy the gray area nature of the narrative. Both the Federation and the Zeon have a cast of characters that are only fightingbecause they're aligned to different factions, not because they are inherently evil. That said, we do see on both sides the evidence of hatred and evils within the factions. It's a nice addition to something that could have easily been a white and black conflict. It means there will not only be combat within the story to come, but politics that come into play where we as viewers may sympathize with the opposition during an event.

All that said, nothing particularly special takes place outside of Amuro's evolution. War is war, but character development makes war a story. If we'd seen something similar with other characters (which we get a tease of with Garma) then my rating for Story would have been above a 7.

Art:
I can't say whether there had been better animated works during the year this released, but I can say that certain scenes in this film are better animated than others. I find this to be incredibly lazy, and it's only made worse when some scenes are re-used. Not only that, it uses some classic animated gimmicks that thankfully have not been used in ages (outside of references or satire). There's a reason we don't see triangular profiles of speaking characters anymore.

Sound:
Really enjoyed the sound effects. I thought they sounded really cool and always enjoyed hearing the ships take off or Gundam in combat. This may be my favorite part about the film, in all honesty. The sounds are solid.

Soundtrack was okay. It's nothing special. It feels like it was made real cheap and with no inspiration what-so-ever. A real shame, as some songs sounded good, but as they went on I felt like I was lied to.

Character:
Designs are neat. I always liked realistic character designs. Outside of Char's goofy outfit, nothing to really note here.

Personality wise, I felt as though Amuro's character was strange and kinda bipolar. Perhaps it's because of the run-time (although it's a WHOPPING 2 hours and 20 minutes) but after each fight, he enters a new stage of emotional reaction that seems too swift to appear and too swift to resolve. Honestly, it's kind of stupid. This, again, is the fault of the ensemble cast that must also be attended too, despite the story trying to put an emphasis on Amuro.

Enjoyment:
Yeah, I had a good time. The run-time was the biggest problem. It's long, and the film doesn't particularly have much to offer during its length, and I refuse to pause a movie and come back to it (despite the fact I left 15 minutes into the film to go shopping before it was too late)

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