Gundam 00
It’s the new Gundam series that’s not SEED! Gundam 00 looks like it’s missing a 7 and I still can’t figure out what it’s supposed to mean. It does look kind of weird and funny if you abbreviate the title to “G00“, so I shall refer to it as such for the rest of this entry.
The title aside, I actually enjoyed the first episode. Unlike every other Gundam series ever, no mobile suits were stolen in this episode, although for a moment it looked like one was about to be but it was just a false alarm. That’s good news.
Background
G00 is set in AD 2307, unlike the other Gundam series that use UC, CE and other arbitrary era names. This means that in 300 yeas’ time, by 2307, if we still don’t have Gundams flying around in space, we can look back and laugh at Sunrise for their silly predictions.
After running out of fossil fuels, the world presumably descended into chaos and eventually consolidated into three giant blocs, the Union, the AEU and the Human Reform League.
Union
President of the Union
The Union’s full name is “Union of Solar Energy and Free Nations” (太陽エネルギーと自由国家連合軍), which is frankly a very stupid name and that’s why they like to be called the Union instead. Anyway, it’s formed around United States, which makes the “solar energy” part extremely ironic if you consider the current president’s energy policies and the country’s infatuation with SUVs. But I digress.
AEU
Councillors of AEU
AEU stands for “Advanced European Union”, which is just like EU, except better! Also it sounds like “Anti-Earth Union Group” from Universal Century.
Jinkakuren
Chairman of Jinkakuren
Human Reform League jinrui kakushin renmei (人類革新連盟) is a bloc formed by China, Russia and India, which explains the nonsensical name. The name is shorten to jinkakuren (人革連), which can also mean “People’s Revolution Alliance”, so you can say that it’s a futuristic spin of Communist naming sense. Of course, as per mandated by the Law of Anime Stereotypes, Jinkakuren people are required to wear traditional Chinese costumes such as qipao so that no one would question their Asian heritage…
As usual, Sunrise’s story setting seems to be pretty influenced by current events, although I doubt that in 300 years’ time the geopolitical situation of Earth will be so predictable, considering how fast and drastically things change with every generation. I mean, just half a century years ago Japan took two American atomic bombs, just a century ago the Communist Party didn’t exist, just two centuries ago the Brits burnt down White House and three centuries ago USA didn’t even exist. But I digress again.
The three superpowers control the sources of Earth’s energy production, namely giant space elevators with solar panels in orbit.
Prologue
The start of the series takes place in AD 2301, in a yet-to-exist country in the Middle East. A group of mechas advances slowly through a town, killing everyone while declaring themselves as warriors of god fighting a holy war to cleanse the land of infidels. Save for the mecha, it sounds like something I just read on BBC.
Setsuna F. Seiei, the main character of the series, is still a young guerilla fighter struggling to escape from the fanatic jihadists, but all he has is a rifle that looks like 300-year-old technology. Just when all hope seems lost, an angelic mobile suit makes a deus ex machina entrance and save him, marking the beginning of his new life.
Hallelujah!
Fast forward 6 years, Setsuna is now all grown-up and cool bishounen-ish. He’s now an elite pilot working for the Celestial Being, a mysterious armed organization that is quietly and secretly executing a plan that will change the world.
I’m cool now
Celestial Being
Celestial Being’s goal is to eradicate war through armed conflict (平和の為の武力行使). There are four Gundam pilots, called Gundam Meisters, who pilot the four Gundams manufactured by Celestial Being.
GN-001 Gundam Exia
Setsuna pilots GN-001 Gundam Exia, a high speed melee combat unit.
GN-002 Gundam Dynames
GN-002 Gundam Dynames, a sniper unit, is piloted by Lockon Stratos.
GN-003 Gundam Kyrios
GN-003 Gundam Kyrios, which has a flight mode transformation, is piloted by Allelujah Haptism
GN-005 Gundam Virtue
GN-005 Gundam Virtue, a heavy weapons unit, is piloted by Tieria Erde.
Hmmm, but where’s GN-004? I wonder…
Summary of First Episode
As part of the Celestial Being’s plan, Setsuna attacks an AEU training base in order to destroy their new experimental mobile suit and to expose AEU’s secret arms build-up which exceeds the agreement set by international treaties between the three superpowers.
AEU’s experimental prototype
AEU’s experimental prototype getting pwned
Actually I’m reminded of Gundam Wing now… Oh shit. Well at least Setsuna didn’t steal the experimental prototype as that would have induced much worse déjà vu.
The rest of the episode involves an attempted terrorist attack on Jinkakuren’s space elevator which is foiled by Celestial Being’s Gundam Kyrios and Gundam Virtue. Like this:
Jinkakuren’s space elevator
Terrorists
Jinkakuren’s useless response team
Celestial Being to the rescue!
Mysterious cute girl interlude
Jinkakuren’s still useless response team
Terrorists
Gundam Virtue: I’m a camping whore
No more terrorists
Thoughts
Actually the first episode is pretty good. It has very nice animation, it introduces most of the important characters and factions and it has explosions. Not bad. I also realized that having Yun Kouga, the artist behind LOVELESS, do the character design isn’t as bad as I had imagined. I don’t like the opening theme song, though. I hate L’arc~en~Ciel.
On another note, Haro is in G00 too!
Haro in Gundam Dynames’ cockpit
And, going by the OP animation, this girl, Marina Ismail, appears to be the main love interest. Knowing Sunrise, the OP is usually quite a good guide for predicting plot directions. :P
Marina Ismail
It’s weird that she’s the queen of a newly-founded Middle Eastern country but she looks East Asian…
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that G00′s setting is partially based on recent events of our time, just as the original Universal Century was influenced by the second world war. I shall continue to follow this series because I’m really curious as to how Gundam’s usual anti-war message will be influenced by today’s headlines.
October 7th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Haha it’s funny but both our posts on Goo started with us calling it Goo.
October 7th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Must be some rich terrorist to use Mobile Suits for a bombing attack and missiles instead of C1007996984 Explosives.
October 7th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
AMG they flying on the people on the image with the girl :D and walking on the top :D crazy.
and yes text under images are back :D
October 7th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Gundam Balls, LOL !
Haro, duh, its almost as stupid as cramming those fugly Chokobos into every FF out there. When will the idiocy stop ?
October 7th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I thought you don’t watch Gundam shows…
October 7th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Daybreak’s Bell is not one of L’Arc’s best songs. Now, if only they used “My Heart Draws a Dream”…
Am I seeing a trend of people deciding to put certain singers and celebs in their hate-list for the mere sake of la-di-da?
October 7th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
YAY HAROs!!
October 7th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Guess I will try out the first Gundam Series I ever watch.
And you say it is quite good right ^.^
October 7th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
i’m so excited to watch the new gundam… i’m looking everywhere for signs of the 1st episode. veoh, youtube, crunchyroll, etc etc… argghhh!!!
this marks my 4th gundam series after GWing, GSeed and GS Destiny… i was still hoping for Koyasu Takehito to voice someone in this series knowing he’s such a gundam veteran…
October 7th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
UC for life
October 8th, 2007 at 12:38 am
I can’t get over the fact that the dude’s (gal’s) name is Hallelujah.
October 8th, 2007 at 10:21 am
UC sucks.
October 8th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Lol..Camping whore.
like a awper in CS.
October 8th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I like how Gundam 00 skips Africa.
It would make a lot more sense to make Setsuna black, IMO. But lol main chara in a mainstream Japanese anime factor.
October 8th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
I was actually pretty dissappointed after watching the first episode of Gundam00, but sitll i’m willing to give it a few more episodes before deciding.
As noted, this time no gundam units were stolen (yay~ ?) But i still see the orbital ladders as potential rock debris for a all time favourite gundam crash scene into earth
October 8th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Well it seems like the Middle East doesn’t belong to any of the three superpowers, so it makes sense that Africa is also an independent political entity, perhaps a satellite of AEU which depends on them for its energy needs.
Anyway, most people in the Middle East are fair skinned, or at least not black. So it makes no sense for Setsuna to be black… Though in the first place, his given name is Japanese. >_>
October 9th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
will odex catch this?
October 9th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Does Setsuna looks like sousuke from FMP???
October 9th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
00 is cool and quite different from the previous gundam series in design. i mean the gundams do not have thrusters and side-skirt! definitely will be following the series but still need to get used to the character design though
October 9th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
>>I don’t like the opening theme song, though. I hate L’arc~en~Ciel.
Seconded. Doesn’t sound too shitty anyways.
And yes, Middle Easterners aren’t black. They’re rather fair. I see a whole lot of them in campus. Some people need to learn more geography. And Setsuna really gives off FMP’s Sousuke vibe… only way more emo.
Overall, G00 really looks interesting, will be fun to watch to see how it ends up.
October 10th, 2007 at 9:13 am
i feel so retarded.
it took me forever to figure out wth G00 was.
and i’ve read both tj’s and your post.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks Larcenciel singing G00 OP1 makes it all crappy.
I actually miss Nami Tamaki and See-Saw doing a lot of the OP/ED songs.
Oh and Virtue looks like some big fat mecha baby.
I lso LOL’ed at your screenshot of Ryumin, seeing that in the background people can stand vertically upside down so casually lol. Talk about maximising room capacity…
October 11th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Turn A Gundam had a black hero and it failed. Japanese hate foreigners. Why else is Sagara Sousuke a Afghan-born Japanese?
October 12th, 2007 at 10:47 am
I would just like to comment that the names are apparently their “code names”. They are not their real names.
At least i saw an image with info which said “code name: Setsuna F seisei.”
So we can assume is the same for the others.
And also why are people so afraid of a few similarities with gundam wing?, FIRST they are very coincidentall and overall with the gruesome intro of a real world war, and the setting i think that they are trying to give a very different vibe with this anime.
They are trying to emulate our current conflicts and somehow introduce the gundam concept to that. Which i think is cool.
There are many difference with wing but the most important, is that is VERY different from seed. Let me just say that the only good thing about seed were the last 20 episodes or so of the first, and seed destiny was total shit..
I actually liked gundam wing, because it didnt focus half the time in characters that completly fail so i dont care.
October 13th, 2007 at 9:02 am
The opening song and ending theme are both retarded. They sounded so dark like Claymore’s OP and ED.
I thought a better opening theme would be WE ARE from TERRA.
Actually the Gundam series already have a black main character, and that is from \-/ Gundam.
I think GN-004 is the all purpose mobile suit (like Duel) as seen in the start which rescued Setsuna, or is that Exia without it’s switch-sword?
Setsuna is quite alot like Heero from Gundam Wing and Kamille Bidan from Zeta. He is a little too cool headed though.
Beam saber in 300 years time? Sounds abit funny though, i don’t think any scientists have been able to contain hi-intensity particles in any form of magnetic field yet, let alone produce enough from a compact enough energy source.
I like that Haro! It is so cute!
October 13th, 2007 at 9:19 am
oh no… i’m gonna miss freedom,justice,legend,destiny,impulse,strike and the such…T_T huhuhuhuhu…
October 14th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Haha just to tell you that the raws for the 2nd episode are already out.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I really loved the ED though.
“Can’t be them!?” “It is them!”
Yamada’s vocals as impressive as always!
October 29th, 2007 at 3:16 am
So…No one has read nineteen eighty-four? By Orwell? I am sure someone from Sunrise has….
November 16th, 2007 at 11:50 am
I thought the same thing too! The world is divided into three superpowers? I like this series because I always expect gundam series to be more of sci-fi-mecha-action, not full of romance and heart-touching like SEED. SEED had too many girls involved…and I didn’t like the drawing either. I first thought that the opening was little odd too, but now after 5 episodes or so it doesn’t sound that bad. I even think it’s a beautiful opening. And if you read the rylics carefully, it’s actually written in anti-war view.
November 18th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Gundam going Full metal panic! Not only the characters look like from FMP, their attitude and the Gundams looks kinda like from FMP. I didn’t really like this new setting at all. Its very chaotic and has not caught my interest after 6 eps, Full metal panic did a much better job. The main characters had no personality, yet. The whole thing is just bad touch.
Might be early to say that, but if its a good show, I usually get interested after 6 eps. Not this one.
For Gundam Seed, out of 10 points, i’d give it 10 for opening, 10 for middle part, and 6.5 for the ending.
This one I give it a 2 for opening…..
November 19th, 2007 at 10:12 am
kurdish republic refers to kurdistan u idiots
learn some fcking geography
November 19th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Except that Kurdistan is クルディスタン in Japanese while Kurdish Republic is クルジス共和国
Learn some fcking Japanese? :P
November 21st, 2007 at 5:40 pm
I despise the OP&ED as well. They’re total crap.
I liked First Gundam & Wing, each for obviously different reasons.
Anyway, I think “00″ is two zeroes…
The mecha designs are weird, but from seeing two episodes, I love how the Exia moves! The yellow fins on it’s chest are stupid looking, but after seeing it in action, except for the chest fins, it ain’t too bad.
As for the characters, many look like they’red space out on drugs!…
I found a source for streaming episodes of 00, but won’t post the link unless I have permission from this sites Web Master.
November 25th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
I have a good question:
why does the Arab-heriataged
Setsuna have a japanese name,
although others don’t?
November 25th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Setsuna is just his code name. His real name is a Kurdish one.
It’s probably because he was assigned to Japan. (Which begs the question of why he is in Japan instead of the deserted island like the others.)
December 10th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
um, w/ marina ismail, alot of people from the “stans” look like alot of things.
And especially if they’re referencing setsuna being kurdish, the turks & persians give the kurds the most headaches.
and w/ the people from the “stans” in central asia, they turn out to be alot of things, because they have mixed heritage of persian, turkish, mongol and greek blood (esp for countries like iran, afghanistan, uzbekistan, tajikistan, and the northern parts of pakistan (the NWFP).
Anyway, look at this post in the middle:
http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=176499&st=100
where this poster has posted some pretty good pics of Afghans. Seems like Sunrise wasn’t far off w/ Mariana Ismail, were they ;) ?
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[...] von ner Frauentruppe. Ist nach deinen Dislikes noch ein groes Fragezeichen aber eher was als Gundam 00 was sich doch eher an ein Mnnliches Publikum richtet. __________________ Eine Erinnerung ihres [...]
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
If that guy is middle eastern why is his name like japanese? sounds retarded to me.
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The ODEX Saga « firestingerx anime blogJanuary 28th, 2008 at 12:22 am
[...] [ some of the pictures are taken from Dark Mirage ] [...]
February 21st, 2008 at 10:28 pm
his real name is Soran Ibrahim, his codename or gundam pilot name is Setsuna F. Seiei.
It’s like Lockon Stratos, his real name is Neil Dylandy.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Awesome post. What did you use to screen shot?
April 7th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Thank you very much for writing the reviews continuously until the end. Please write another review for the upcoming season 2.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
DDD= don’t hate l’arc en ciel haha
although it’s a totally un-gundam opening song
September 4th, 2009 at 10:49 am
no more my-hime and my-otome and mobile suit gundam angel light beat my-hime and my-otome bad guys is dead and thanks you mobile suit gundam 00