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Jul 3, 2023
If invested in the growth of Miorine and Suletta and their romance, maybe you can excuse everything else about the season. If you liked the cast dynamics and the thrilling aspect of the show, I can get your enjoyment out of it. But Gwitch is a show of half-hearted delivery, where so much intrigue was built up just for all the mystery to be barfed up in fairy tale resolutions.
I can't recommend watching this because I was never attached to the characters. Suletta and Miorine's relationship felt borderline toxic at certain moments with their blatant disregard, distrust, and miscommunication from season 1 to season
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2. The fact that Suletta had to be written as a reactive character who got strung along by everyone without any proactive choices until the last two episodes frustrated me to no end. I get it, but I prefer my characters to proactively fight within the framework and deal with the consequences like other Gundam protagonists. Meanwhile, Suletta busts out new Permet score techniques like how everyone thinks Goku busts out forms.
I couldn't care about the cast of characters who had middling impact on the background. The background that was foreshadowed is incredibly important and central to the conflict. But that foreshadowing just resulted in sloppy resolutions and a last-minute villain. Perhaps if you read Shakespeare you can go 1-1 with this show but the pacing here is seriously poor. They spent time introducing characters that didn't really matter and then fridged some of them just to shock the audience in the last minutes of each episode. It's a show of cheap thrills and I don't appreciate it. It just seemed all in service of building up to that moment, and never to the long term ending of the show.
It's not about giving the show more time. They needed to make the main cast integrate into the main narrative but we only had one character that actually went that route. Most others were just playing pawns in this proxy war that unearthed new machines like it was a super robot wars game.
I recommend you watch Birdie Wing instead. It had a narrative that had an incredible execution and delivery and relationships that are incredibly healthy.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jan 8, 2023
More than a Gundam show, the writer shines through the branding to announce to the world that it is one of his works. Thrilling, mysterious, and "political", it's a setup cour with a lot of shock factor speckled in between episodes until one big climax. If you liked his previous works like Code Geass, Valvrave and Guilty Crown you're sure to love this mix of thriller sci-fi and romance. But if you were expecting a coming-of-age, war drama like most Gundam shows, you'll miss what you were aiming for.
I would love to enjoy each and every Gundam show that comes out but I don't.
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These sorts of thrillers that rely on the user's enjoyment of mystery boxes and shock moments disgust me. I haven't grown to like these characters at all because it's always about the mystery lore. The main protagonist has made about one decision in the entire show, and the rest has been her getting into conflicts that get resolved in the next episode. Each one was meant to reveal a little tidbit about the world and it certainly felt like they didn't give precedence to writing the characters over that. All of the motivations and plot have been shoved into the end of the season so that cour 2 can be the meat: What a waste of time.
No disrespect to the people who enjoy these sorts of shows. But it's a hallmark of bad writing when you introduce a character and make his backstory so depressing, and then get rid of him after two episodes of "development". A tonally dissonant show ends with loves notes to the angst-ridden 2008-2012 era of anime. But it's the type of young adult fiction that while successful, doesn't have a lot of quality behind it. I would recommend not watching this and picking up Gundam X if you want something that sticks closer to OG Gundam Yoshiyuki Tomino shows. But if I had to pick from the year of 2022, I'd recommend watching the Build Fighters-Esque Birdie Wing: Golf Girls Story.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Nov 24, 2021
For once the Build series returned to it's roots. Instead of convoluted and tacky antagonists with PTSD protagonists, or asking the audience to question AI sentience, it's just fun action schlock. Though it is a sequel to the videogames Gundam Breaker 3 and Gundam Breaker Mobile, outside of the mobile tie-in events there is not much needed to understand in the plot. Considering at most it is the length of two full episodes, it does a decent enough job in terms of progressing from one moment to another. There's nothing deep or meaningful about this show, and it's good that they didn't make the attempt.
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If you like mecha fights with high-quality animation this can fit the bill. Anything else won't be here. Personally, I'm completely done with Build shows trying to be high stakes and deep, so if this means a return to the original Build Fighters formula I am all for it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 13, 2021
In spite of my preconceptions about the film, I'm looking optimistically towards the following films. With good characterizations and a solid setup on differing viewpoints of the world, the directing of the movie seems solid. Minor things in the script were a bit weird if you look at it from a series standpoint, however it's a relief seeing seemingly good execution and presentation after the release of Gundam NT and Re:Rise.
Hathaway definitely feels like a feature film. From the visual budget to the names attached. But it's limited in that capacity to be able to fully adapt the novel. I personally have only read
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a couple chapters; so there I cannot make any comments. Individually however, it seems to lay the base down for the following films to expand upon. Viewpoints from each side about the main faction appear and to that point, it's greatly exposited. Characterization is also developed well, with each showing who they are through what they say and their viewpoints. It's unfortunate that most of the side characters didn't have as well of a treatment as the main characters though, when their background might be important.
It balances on a tightrope of it being a drama and a thriller. Through some scenes you can understand the reality of the situation of mobile suit battles. At the same time, there are moments that glorify it through beautiful effects that look too similar to fireworks. It seems to present a good contrast of opinions related to Mafty, but at the same time fails to showcase the perspective or the humanity of some of the darker sides of the Federation to the same great lengths. Depending on how the series continues the manhunters may be set to become solidly black against the moral grey of Mafty. What I'd like at that point would some depth to it.
Visually it's even better than Narrative in terms of character scenes. Mobile suit battles and it's CG in general can negatively contrast the art that it's placed in. Comparatively to Unicorn, the CG looks amateurish.
With the music, it goes for a modern "atmospheric" vibe half of the time where you're supposed to let it immerse you into the setting without remarking on it's individual merit. In some moments I felt that it accomplished that job, however in mobile suit scenes specifically it felt far too epic and didn't fit the mood. I don't like Hiroyuki Sawano's works, so there might be some bias. But this opinion isn't carried over in some of his other works like Promare. Very good sound design however.
I enjoyed how there were characters in the movie that felt like they had personality. They didn't seem to just be puppets controlled by the narrative, although sometimes it leaned too far into precognition to the point of convenience. How they handled newtypes is way better than previous films like NT and Unicorn; It felt like a return to form in that sense. Scene progression felt moderately natural, and a character’s insight felt as if it was coming from them instead of a narration to the audience. It did dip too much into being a thriller. And, I think Hathaway's personality and ideals should be investigated further; Gigi as-well, as a character she seems too much of a Quess clone. Hopefully the director can output the next two movies with a similar level of quality.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 10, 2021
The first Gundam in the 21st century was a huge success in Japan. Melodrama is what SEED runs on, and the music accompanying it is stellar. If the thrill of romance triangles and soap drama is what you’re after it’s going to be an enjoyable ride. Substantially outside of music, however it’s awful. It is one of the first Gundam shows that I have only found one thing that I’ve liked about it. The story and characters are put on the backseat for forced melodrama, the animation is reusing stock footage to an unbelievable level and the execution of it’s premise is utter garbage.
As
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said earlier, the main draw of Mobile Suit Gundam: SEED is the melodrama. It is a main factor for everything that happens and it makes the story and characters suffer for it. There’s a difference between characters being irrational sometimes and the show having essentially no one with more than two brain cells to rub together. Their idea of intelligent characters like Mu and Rau are just people that end up having future foresight. They’ve read the script; it’s not that they are just making good decisions, they know what actions the opposition is going to make. Characters will rush in and get themselves killed because they do it. Stupid decisions are made constantly so that X character can do either kill someone, or see their friend die.
The plain execution of the ideas is garbage. The series has three factions and two of them are ok with putting mass genocide on their charter for the other side. They don’t just want to subjugate their opponents or resist the other side's ideals, they want the other side gone. 2D villains cause the premise of war to be such a joke. Any depth of “exploring racism between people made to be superior” is gone the moment you see that the moderates of each side still support extinction. It makes Orb this heavenly faction with the rationale argument comparatively. One entire faction filled with “good guys”. Wholly, it lacks the depth that the original series and many sequels after it did have, despite attempting to copy multiple different moments from the first series.
Animation-wise, it tends to use too much stock footage. I ended up watching a bit of both of the original broadcast and the remaster version, but both tend to overuse stock to the point where it becomes an issue watching. Additionally, the constant use of flashbacks to episodes that just happened just seems to be a way of padding time and saving budget even more. There were about 4 whole episodes dedicated to recapping previous episodes and yet still there was time to have minutes of flashbacks in almost every episode. Outside of that it’s very early 2000s, which is more the fault of the time. Music-wise it’s one of the best Gundam soundtracks. It’s a shame that it was wasted on this dumpster fire.
This isn’t exactly an uncommon viewpoint. I don’t recommend this show, just watch the original, or if you want something AU, After War Gundam X handles the us vs. newtypes theme better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Oct 14, 2020
Though lacking in theme depth, the basic character driven narrative of freedom vs. order made watching the show worth it. A very lighthearted show that tends to not take a route that would develop the ideas it wants to show, but is still able to express the core conflict of doing the best you can in tough situations.
There's a lot of ideas that fail to get elaborated on or poorly presented. In some ways it seems like it just took premises from other series and combined it into the setting. A highly authoritarian corporation that essentially drugs their citizens and gives them distractions to
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consume their life. If you question their hold over the world you get re-educated. Due to a climate catastrophe the world is now purchased. Only some of these ideas are presented well and a part of that reason is because it's more focused on keeping the tone light and keeping focus on the character narrative. Points during Deca-dence, if they took a darker route it would've had more service to development of the character's personality. There's not a lot of time either to fully show everything they exposition about either due to the 12 episode structure. If they simplified some of their ideas and got rid of some of the exposition, maybe there'd be more time to develop the core developments.
As the show is wholly invested in the protagonist and deuteragonist, most if not all of the other characters are left as they are with undeveloped cliches/archetypes. And the same can be said about the antagonists of the show. With how obfuscated the motivations for the system, and the planned climax, it leaves the two lacking, and makes it difficult to contrast against the main character's ideals. Their investment into the two main character's narrative did succeed in expressing itself. While their personalities are a bit underdeveloped; the dynamic between them, contrasting each of their similar struggles and bouncing off from one another in a father-daughter/mentor-student sort of relationship, is what emphasizes each other's story. The setting and tone help contrast each other as-well, although to some, the light tone might fully disconnect you from what's going on.
I had no problems with the animation and the music was a nice listen, reminded me a bit of Go Shiina.
To me, this was a very enjoyable watch for the character narrative. I liked the contrast between the light-tone and the dystopian setting. Though it reached too far in the setting's ideas, it didn't make them the focal point of the show. If it was a show only about corporations Vs. consumers, I'd probably wouldn't give it the time of day with that weak explanation. But as a order Vs. freedom narrative it did a good job at showing the struggle against it. While a bit too light, it did a good job at utilizing it's time to tell the story of it's two characters. One of the few shows I've enjoyed watching that aired in the past 4 years.
If you're looking for something darker, I'd recommend Battle Angel Alita(Gunnm). Some parts reminded me of the manga, to the point where I wonder if he took inspiration from it.
If you're looking for something similar, After War Gundam X is another light-hearted show set in a dystopia, that deals with people trying to survive and live. Gurren Lagann does a supurb job at expressing the order Vs. freedom narrative. Other dystopia shows I'd recommend would include Blue Gender, Trigun and Shinsekai Yori.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Aug 27, 2020
Positive comments to say about Re:Rise usually start by saying it’s not the predecessor. Better animation, less annoying shounen tropes with bare minimum execution. More interesting characters and a better story. After Diver’s obvious bomb, it’s not hard for people to adjust to thinking that anything that lightly tries to be better, to be better. There is not much to expect from the sequel of a blatant low-effort advert. Though go back eight years and there is the progenitor of the “Build Gundam” series line, where claiming Re:Rise a superior show would be a hard sell.
Episodes 13 and half of 14 are recaps, 19 &
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20 are flashback episodes and 24 is mainly fanservice cameos, which leaves seven episodes to work on the present. Half of those seven episodes are spent in exposition mode; characters talking about the current situation, their alleged strategy, how they got to where they are, and what exactly is the world/the people in it. While intriguing to the people interested, there ends up being a distinct lack of character development outside of the four main characters. Retcons to the previous show are made to shove in this one with seemingly no other reason than to tie them more closer together. Everything has to be revealed in these twelve episodes after the twist, but the room for the actual build up is missing. If there was more clarity and proper characterization in season one, perhaps they’d be able to go without explaining everything. Unfortunately, you can see poor execution plainly in how the final episode has no gravity, no real consequences or stakes. While the climax an episode before is a fun fight to watch, there was such bare-bones build up that you’d expect that they would’ve pushed this back to a third season. Then they could’ve bumped the incident before with more than minimal build-up, though most lack of build-up/characterization could be attributed to brainwashing. For the grandiose ideas it has, Re:Rise tends to only talk about them and only give a glance into its depth. Leading to shallow heel-face turns that are forecasted only an episode or two before, and much of the tension coming off superficial
Characters have their life’s history constantly info-dumped upon because their personality wasn’t built on enough. One of the main characters barely develops outside of season one’s plot twist. And despite the two episodes of flashbacks, there is still sparse characterization of the protagonist's fridge to warrant much care about his grief; a bit too late more than three quarters into the show too. Which leaves a standard cliche and the comic relief to provide most of the personality. One’s fine, the other’s almost as grating as Riku in how low effort the personality is. With how they bottle-necked themselves, there’s three separate settings in which only the main four can freely interact in all, and it lies on those four to carry most of the screen-time. There’s a saturation in unnecessary side characters that can’t contribute to the main story, yet still take up screen-time anyway, to the point where that leaves more important side characters few minutes to actually develop them through show, rather than tell. This failure leads to a disconnect to the conflict. The major incident in the first season is a big example of that.
What both Re:Rise and Build Divers seem to understand from the original is the crazy backdrop of Reiji and his home-world, the zany gunpla mafia backdrop. Ignoring the fact that it wasn’t the main story. They both introduce “serious” ideas/analogies like AI sentience, drugs, moving on, aliens,-leaning more towards an isekai plot than Build Fighters, much less Gundam. It personally bothers me more that Re:Rise decided to double down on having “deep” themes to distance itself from the dumb shounen core of Divers. And there’s no side characters that do much to liven up the scenery either, the Eldoran’s more irritating it by mimicking the kids in 0079 and Zeta. I’d prefer another proxy battle shounen about learning to love paying Bandai money and fan-service, but these seem to focus on pandering to the mainstream audiences, Isekai being/was in vogue.
The music is pretty alright: the composer seems to be new, but talented. With Masami Obari supposedly helping with the animation it’s a vast improvement over Build Divers. The gunpla has a neat gimmick and there’s usually a fight every episode. Perhaps excusable as brain-dead entertainment, it would then seem that brain-dead entertainment has downgraded in quality. Though gunpla sales are probably going to make this series a success in the eyes of Bandai. Watch the original Build Fighters, or some other toys to life anime(I’ve heard Medabots is good). Buy the kits if you like their looks and skip the series. If this is the type of script the scriptwriter for Hathaway’s Flash makes, it kills my excitement for it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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May 2, 2020
A fun show in the same vein as "Kare Kano", However unlike "Kare Kano" it doesn't advance the relationship until the end, mostly filling the time with skits. It's more or less a one trick pony, different jokes in the same vein. Personally got stale after a while, and since I already saw a similar show that did more it didn't help. The characters do their jobs, but they're mostly cliches.
Romantic comedies in similar qualities are pretty common, and by itself there's not much that stands out. There's no fantasy elements like in "The Devil is a Part Timer", there's no gimmick to the
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characters like "Science Fell in Love.." or "Gran Blue" and the variation of the jokes are pretty non-existent. For a time-waster there are better ones out there, however it's not like time-wasters are watched for their originality or quality.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 31, 2020
As long as the next four movies keep up in this quality, Reconguista in G will be fixed.
Some Background: When I went to see it at AnimeNYC I was fully prepared to regret shelling out $90+ for the trip up to New York to see 3 panels and leave. I was fully prepared to regret getting my hopes up for another movie. I mean I was hyped for Hathaway's Flash until they showed that the dude adapting it wrote Bible Black and Bible Black Gaiden. My hopes for good Gundam works were pretty low at the time, from Narrative, to HF, to F90FF. It
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seemed pretty ridiculous that condensing a story already condensed would only serve to exacerbate the problem.
Pacing was the biggest problem I had with G-Reco. It took minutes to comprehend what was happening in 3 seconds because they decided to waste half the screentime on Rariaya being a vegetable. Though when I came out of the theater, and then re-watched it after buying the perfect edition, I found that Tomino waved his wand and fixed the pacing.
So far a majority of that has been rectified. While it moves quickly from scene to scene, they properly explain what's going on through dialogue and along with added scenes, it clearly presents exactly what the characters are doing. When Aida "kidnaps" Bellri and crew, it's shown, and fleshed out later on why the church leader lets her escape. It's finally comprehensible. And the final product looks good.
Lauding it with all of this praise, it’s story is still the same as the Greco series. Though it’s presented remarkably better, it still has some of the same flaws that were inherent to the original. The example that sticks out to me is Aida’s character in the film. While it's not terrible, it's not hard to call Aida a baby for the amount of times she cries in the film.
The film has similar, if not improved animation quality compared to the TV show. There are four fight scenes throughout the movie and since it moves at a relatively quick pace, I’d be surprised if someone complains about being bored. Most of the soundtrack is re-used from the TV series but there are new tracks added when needed. It’s by the same composer who did the music for JoJo parts 3 onward, Psychopass and Birdy the Mighty Decode.
I am very excited for the next 4 movies and I hope they keep up the good work. I would very much suggest skipping watching the TV series and choosing to follow the movies. It's one of the good compilation films so far.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 31, 2020
Kare Kano is one of the few rom-com shows/manga that actually advance past admitting they love each other. They go out on dates and deal with one another's quirks and flaws.
Despite being listed as a romantic-comedy, it later on tends to drop the comedy to focus on resolving the character's conflicts in life. The entire main cast is broken is some sort of way and each one gets an arc dedicated to their problem. About three entire volumes are dedicated to ignoring the leads to focus on the side characters. And while it's good to build up the side characters and flesh out their
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own problems, it should've been done in a way that was cohesive to the main lead's own development. At certain points it seemed like the rest of the manga's world faded to black as X side character got more development, making it feel a bit hollow.
Because it has this laser focused spotlight, the male lead is not as well developed as the female lead. A problem that becomes more apparent as the manga continues onward is how they handle Soichiro's character arc. Due to the nature of how victimizing his past is, the development of him as a character is more about resolving the past rather than his relationship with Yukino. She gets a lot of development as her problem is, for the most part, straight forward. It's baked into her personality and gets improved as their relationship continues. While it's not something that kills the enjoyment of the story, it does hamper my enjoyment of it.
I really enjoyed the comedic aspects of the manga when they were around. And the two main characters actually being in a relationship was fantastic. The main cast all had a personality that made watching the interactions between each other interesting. I'd mainly suggest reading it because of them. Most of the conflicts are well fleshed out and it doesn't fall into a melodramatic pit in the end that romance books can tend to do. While I do have the problems listed above, they're more grips rather than reasons not to read it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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