Review of Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX

Allow myself to join in the pile. This is not a good series to watch for newcomers to the series, nor fan of any of the creator's previous works (Gainax/Khara crew), nor fan of Gundam; even if there's certain nuggets of enjoyment possible. What is this then? Basically, in my head, Anno had a heavy night of binge drinking with his boys and they threw out a fanfic alternate universe of the original Gundam (Gundam 0079, UC universe). Someone took their job too seriously, wrote a meeting minute and sends to Sunrise who went: "Oh, the Anno on the poster of a series? This will makeus $$$!" Thus this ungodly creation was born.

As in my opening statement, this series is simply not good. I am going to go on a rant for all 3 of the "supposed" target audience, so if you are here to see if you should invest your time, save it. If you are here looking for shared sentiment, right this way good sir, let's begin with complete newbies.

With a fresh perspective, I am going to say this might as well be playing ancient Mesopotamia music to a modern audience (referencing that beautiful recreation of the opening verse of Epic of Gilgamesh). Maybe, perhaps, there's a small subset of people who are intrigued enough after watching the series to invest their time into rewatching the entire original series and to see what's the fuzz these random characters are about. I serious doubt it as I feel there's very little to work with, and what's there are not exactly compelling.
Let's begin with the story and characters, the main "draw" actually. The series use a lot of the cast from Gundam 0079, some who were supposed to perish in that universe. Many make a return along with some new characters. These characters are where the story complete fall flat on its face. I will refrain from spoiling anything but frankly, if you watched the series you would know, there's nothing much to miss. The new characters are confusing, vague, almost one dimensional. Whenever someone in the main cast not from the original does something, I find myself asking: why are they doing this? Repeatedly. Then, I asked: what's the point of this fight. By episode 12, I laughed realising what the comment on the music video of the ending song, sung by a relatively successful VTuber called Hoshimachi Suisei, was saying: "Who cares?" (referencing the ending song name). The motivation of the main cast is almost laughably terrible. I could not care less, and none of the supposed "tragic past" has enough time nor bite to be of any note, at all. In stark contrast, the 0079 cast has pretty solid motivation and personality from their long history being developed elsewhere, which is also its own issues actually, but we will get to that in another section. The issue though is that even then, it's not terrible clear nor understandable to new comers to have no idea why, how, what nor why things are happening. The series fail to convey the gravity (little punny) of the general situation, and the cast doesn't seem like they take it very seriously either. I was shocked at how whimsical it all felt, but when the supernatural elements started to pop up and become the central of narrative, it makes more sense as a "make belief" sort of thing. Fine, I will discuss this perspective elsewhere but as a newcomer this just makes everything feel disappointing, like they cut off the good part rather than satisfying and compelling. I questioned myself, was this really written by the same people who wrote Evangelion and FLCL. While Anno involvement seems dubious, the series main director, Kazuya Tsurumaki had worked on FLCL and there's certainly elements of that in the series. I will discuss this below but unlike that series, the same elements used here completely fall flat. There's nothing remotely close to what that mini-series was able to do that this was. However, from the perspective of newcomers, it's not hard to see why, the characters motivation is way too vague and simplistic. There's just not enough materials and time to be invested in them to be intrigued by their fate and struggle. It's antithesis to entertainment almost. Would you sit down and listen to the life story of a random rich guy who's so bored he grasp at straws to do something else? Speaking of which, allow me to dissect why the 3 main characters do not work.

The main girl motivation is the least interesting of all of them for me. I don't get her at all. She doesn't strike me as terribly interesting in anyway, not tragic, not charismatic, not particularly obnoxious, just a regular person. That being said, with good writing a regular person can definitely be interesting. Putting a regular person in an extra-ordinary situation is one of those classic story formula after all (yes, 0079 basically did that). In this case, a similar thing can be said about the lead character, but her decisions are almost made on a whim with the way the story is told to us. I don't find myself caring for her journey nor her struggle. Her parents don't listen to her and school is boring. Yay. How does that makes her interesting? What does she embody, represent and ultimately, try to tell us? I can spoil you a little and say, almost nothing. Her entire existence is: life is boring so go out and do something. It might have been by design by whatever design that is, it actually reduces the audience interest. I'll get to this grand design a little, later. My personal theory is that this is the director's self insert as a vague fan of the series.

Next is her best friend. Her situation is essentially that she's a victim of her environment and society and she's trying her best to climb. It has a tinge of social commentary with her being essentially a marginalised refugee with foreign appearance. I almost find the series to be too much on the nose with various depiction of the ghetto, remarks about marginalisation and her being a gig worker (courier). I don't want to suggest the real intention behind the noddle, my daughter gift scene supposed to be, but I think suspect most viewers can see where the director was going. In any case I am not suggesting it's bad, I just find her entire existence completely meaningless. There's a lot of push back from the audience about "diverse writing", and while I do agree with the ruling elites that the general audience is not the sharpest and shouldn't be heeded; I think this is one of those cases that it completely applies. I don't see anything that makes a tinge of "drama" worthwhile having this character's story told. If you remove her act in the story nothing really changed. Her role in the story might be somewhat "pivotal", but nothing about her was of her own choice, but not in a tragic way in which the whim of fate pushed her into difficult situation. She was just doing shits and things just happen to her. I'm not sure if Tsurumaki Kazuya is aware a big part of Shinji from Evangelion struggle is this exact issue. Agency. I am baffled because in FLCL some of these themes also came up and yet he allowed such a piss poor written character to take central stage. Completely incomprehensible.

Lastly is what I would like to call Haruko from FLCL. He plays the same role but very, very badly. Haruko worked because she was obnoxiously charming and completely unhinged. It was interesting to see her antics and whacky, alien personality. This new character whole idea seems to be merely that he's "hot"? I find it very difficult to be intrigued by the character past the half mark. See, initially I had these funny theories about him such that only the main character can hear/see him, and that he's her alter ego, Tyler Durden sort of thing. My head went to all sorts of directions, such as she's actually harbouring some delusion of grandeur, she wants to be special so she created this character to guide her to where she wants herself to be etc... But no. He's more fantastical yet incredibly a lot more boring.

It's astounding how bad they got with the 3 main leads. From a fresh perspective, I cannot be invested in their journey and fate, if I am not charmed by their personality. I would like to remind these guys that in the world of mass entertainment of today, the market is pretty saturated with good shits. Not being able to do something as simple as creating and narrate the story of a small set of character is such a massive disappointment.

Let's proceed to the Gundam fan perspective, which is probably the meat of it all, and why people bother toughing it out. I can't describe myself as a fan of series. While I do like Gundam and watched multiple entries, I watched them as pretty much adults. It allowed me to have a level of appreciation for the series but without the fascination of seeing them as they were on release, it's hard to feel truly "invested". Unlike with Evangelion which I will explore a bit later, which I watched pretty much as they were fresh; with Gundam I appreciated them like a glass of natural wine. I know they are not perfect, but I can appreciate the unpleasantness and the sweetness. Thus I always prefer the older series Gundam. That's to say, I am relatively familiar with the set of characters they are working with. This is where the series shine the most really. Seeing the returning cast from Gundam, some of which were given more ground to be explored. I thought they were the best part of the series. Giving Char a lot of screen space was awesome, but felt rather fan-servicy. Many other elements were the same too which will be discussed in the art section. I can see where the series energy was channelled from how they use 0079 characters. After all, the premise of this story is connected to UC universe.

This is where I take issue with the entire thing. Normally for a series to be bad, it would be an issue in concept or execution that makes it "bad". This series concept is not just flawed, but the execution of said concept isn't great either. Let's begin with the concept. I can see from the recreated scenes where their energy went. Much of this was channelled into remaking old 0079 scenes with a new coat of paint. This is fine per se; however I would argue a remaster/remake is a much better place to place such a concept. In fact, they probably was so engrossed in putting Char in a red Gundam that they tried to work it out from there. My problem with the concept is, I don't see where's the charm in it. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, sure. But this is drawing a very beautiful recreation of the earring from the Girl with a Pearl Earring and then haphazardly fill in the rest. You just make the audience goes: why bother? It doesn't explore anything, doesn't say anything, mean anything, re-examine anything.
They should have put more spot light on a the divided, chaotic and uncaring society created by the ideologues who achieved their independence from the Confederation, turned on each other immediately through layers of intrigues and scheming. The weak sauce MP was unremarkable and lasted for 4 episodes without saying much. These aspects should have taken the front seat to deliver the central message of the series, with the familiar theme of anti-war, anti-militarism. I even thought they could have gone more in-depth as some comments suggested, such as depicting the reality of war as Char despite ceasing a great asset from the enemy and basically become a god amongst man, could not do enough to turn the strategic tide back to Zeon's favour as the Federation resources and infrastructure were far beyond what Zeon was capable of. I thought something like Rebuild 3.0 situation in which the viewer was dropped onto a scenery of absolute devastation, destruction and grief, as aftermath of a decaying, desperate situation caused by Char being deployed and successfully stopped the Federation attempt to finish off the Zeon only helps to push more extreme measures to the front. This is nothing new since the original series itself had dabbled into such territory.
I suspect their concept is just to have fun as a fan of the series, nothing more than one of those fancy MAD (music anime douga) done by professionals. This is essentially someone's childhood fantasy, not enjoyable for non-Gundam fans, eliminating a chunk of the audience. I suspect this is the case hence the non-investment and interesting main cast as mentioned above. They serve as vehicle to connect to the old cast and put them on the spot light, allowing them the opportunity to be in the mobile suit and fight each other.

(TBC)