Gundam 00 — Episode 17
Wow cool, I actually found this episode to be pretty enjoyable, not because the writing suddenly took a turn for the better or anything (it didn’t), but because it’s just hilariously entertaining.
Now I may sound like I’m being sarcastic as usual, but I seriously enjoyed the sheer campiness of this episode. It’s kind of hard to describe, but at the risk of over-simplication: the episode’s so bad that it’s good. LOL.
Summary
The Trinity siblings come aboard Ptolemaios and some awkward pleasantries follow. The facade quickly disappears though, as it soon becomes clear to the crew of Ptolemaios that the three of them are a bunch of secretive jerk wads with some serious mental health issues.
I mean, they claim to be siblings related by blood. Seriously?
“We really are siblings. I’m just really tanned, that’s all.”
Nena apparently has a thing for Setsuna. This is subtlety conveyed to the audience by having her perform a mouth-to-mouth on him within five seconds of meeting him for the first time. Girls are sure liberal in the future.
“I love rebellious guys.”
Chuuuu~
Classy. This serves as a timely reminder for the audience that, yes, Setsuna is still the main character by virtue of the fact that he gets the chicks. (Even the crazy ones.)
We discover the shocking truth that evil Haro is actually Haro’s brother! This is unexpected because a father-son relationship is the industry standard for such a situation, but more so because toy spherical robots shouldn’t have siblings! Also, we learn from a scene at the start of this episode that purple Haro is actually over eighty years old! Good lord! This means that Haro’s little harem is probably more like a grandma bridge club!
Niiiisan!
That aside, evil Haro appears to have had its memories wiped when it was reprogrammed for evil because it doesn’t recognize our poor Haro, its long-lost mechanical sibling, at all. It should also be noted that big brother Haro swears like a 7th grade Halo 3 player and has eyes that blink with a glow of +3 evil. Jeez, Sunrise is sure going all out to ensure that the audience is not confused by any traces of ambiguity in the plot, huh?
Back to the main story: The trio refuses to answer any question about themselves and, every five seconds or so, Michal threatens to massacre everyone and his/her pet dog. Their real intention soon becomes clear when Nena slips off to secretly access Veda’s terminal unit, which in the eyes of Tieria is probably tantamount to having his wife raped by a stranger. The Trinitys leave after accomplishing their goal of defiling Tieria’s precioussssss, to carry out their next mission.
The rest of the episode is basically the trio spectacularly blowing up a MSWAD base and killing two recurring characters who will no doubt soon be replaced by identical personality stereotypes.
Wow, is that a Sputnik model behind him?
It is revealed that Gundam’s power generation mechanism depends on a certain mathematical theory, topological defect, and somehow this means that the devices have to be manufactured on Mars Jupiter! The logic overwhelms. So Jupiter is in some way related to 1) evil Haro, 2) GN drives and 3) Aeolia Schenberg’s real objective. Just don’t ask me how exactly.
By the way, those Haros need to talk less. A whole lot less.
Screencaps
Trinitys’ ship has four solar furnaces on board
Eviiiiiiilll
Travel in style
Posing
Many thanks to Sunrise for the helpful gender stereotyping
Sumeragi is not fooled!
Why aren’t all Gundams black considering they can only be tracked visually in space?
*wink*
Setsuna is not amused. *tsuntsun*
“Don’t piss me off! It’s that time of the month.”
Nena inside Veda
You know Howard’s going to die because he gets more dialogue lines than usual
Eins and Drei can combine, with Eins firing GN particles produced by Drei
So who said G00 wasn’t a super robot anime again?
Howard heroically charges at Throne Zwei…
…and receives multiple penetrations
Louise sets herself up for death in the near future
From episode preview: Okay not really, but close enough
This episode calls for a Futurama quotation from good old Bender: “Bender knows when to use finesse.” And so does Sunrise. (Wonder if anyone will get the reference.) Real-life would be a whole lot more straightforward if everyone behaved like a G00 character.
P.S. Mendoi-Conclave releases are getting delayed because we are having a hard time finding our preferred HD raw. I suspect it may have something to do with this…
February 5th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Well, though I am a Gundam SEED fanboy, i can’t help but enjoy G00. Though i’m sure everyone loves the pure invincibility of gundams such as Freedom and Justice, I like this strategy type of combat as well. I only hope that the producers hurry it up with the damn GN-arms so we can go ahead wipe the floor with the Trinity Gundams just because they annoy me. We all know that the only advantage they have against the original four is that they have 15 episodes worth of info on them. Though I really hope Nena doesn’t get hurt, she’s cute ^.^, even if she is tad bit crazy!
February 5th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Hexlord:
You are being really condescending and if that is not your intention you should try to reconsider the way you treat others when you pretend to adhere to common etiquettes. This is also a real-life observation.
Kaioshin Sama:
I’d say that the kind of single-minded driving force behind every character in G00 is of a different nature from the forces that drive us in our interactions with the world.
Tama:
The problem is that it is awfully thin on strategy, especially in recent episodes. Not much different from SEED now, anyway.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:54 am
DM:
You probably think too much, but I will consider what you have said.
And hopefully we can have more of this real-life observation? :)
February 5th, 2008 at 9:47 am
There are unhappiness in our daily life against the people, the policy of the company or goverment.
Because of this, we should enjoy the story of CB against the world.
Because in the real world, you cannot go against the world unless you have power.
All i want after a day work is to enjoy the anime without thinking too much unless you are watching detective conan. lolz…
Enjoy the story…
I wonder when will that ali guy die a horrible death?
Before the end of this season gundam 00?
Graham should be able to survive until to the next season…
February 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Good point about Ali. Why did Deus Ex let him go?
February 5th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I don’t understand what was so bad about SEED? The storyline was clear yet innovative, and most of the characters were thoroughly developed. True, there were some stupid mistakes with small parts of the plot, and if you notice a lot of scenes(mostly combat scenes) were overused and repeated. But there was just something about the theme of the story that caught my eye. I want to make it clear that I am only talking about Gundam Seed and not Destiny because I believe that the whole second season ended as remake of the first with only a couple of more characters. So in the end Destiny pretty much ruined what Seed had accomplished. And what I believe to be one of the best Gundam series ever made.
February 5th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Oh, btw did anyone notice how long Setsuna’s pause was when the girl asked him if he wanted to come with her? XD hilarious.
February 5th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
@ Zoso
Ha. I do not think anyone is really dissing SEED. It is just a matter of the three works that have been mentioned previously (PLANETES, Gundam SEED and Gundam 00) appealing to people of different preferences.
There is a big difference between a reasonable work and a realistic work. Gundam SEED was more inclined towards being reasonable as a story rather than being a realistic one. That is why some may not have high regards for it.
February 5th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
darkmirage I fucking LOVE your blogentries about Gundam00. I would have kicked the show in the garbage can but your entries make it worth watching. I’m laughing my ass off. great just great!
thanks a lot!
February 5th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Reply 54:
I doubt Ali will die for a while. He’s one of the characters i bet will survive to the next season. Otherwise, there will be pretty much little left to talk about Setsuna F. Seiei. That’s what writers do nowadays: never kill off an important character until near the end, whether protagonist or antagonist.
I expect a few others to survive at the end of Season 1 too, although to a lesser extent [b]at least 1 of the Throne members[/b]
Not to mention, only 3 of the 4 Meisters (excluding the Thrones) have their past revealed. But what about Tiera? What is the developer hiding about him for 17+ episodes? The only thing we know about him is his relation with the Artificial Intelligence Veda.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
On one note, it appears I can’t put a phrase above in bold. :(
February 6th, 2008 at 12:46 am
I doubt Elfman is really dead. People do not really die in Gundam, they are imbued with the uncanny ability to slip pass danger no matter how great the odds are.
Elfman is gonna return and create a pink gundam for Setsuna that is capable of shooting taiyakis.
February 6th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Hi all, and especially dark mirage, your commnents on 00 are very sharp and really hit the mark which makes them very amusing and interesting.
I guess you can think of the pilots in Celes B (A Team) not as individuals (at the moment) but as a faction (since everyone thinks in a linear fashion) until there is room for further character development.
I kinda thought the introduction of the thrones was a good thing. Instead of giving both forces (Celes B and Earth forces)gundams (like in SEED), you now have gundam pilots who claim to serve the agenda of intervention to end conflicts.
This is interesting as it juxtaposes (compares and contrasts) opposing approaches to the same idea (stopping conflicts). The power to strike (as an intervention) is now given to a bunch of self-serving megalomanics. How cool is that? Very arbitrary, very irresponsible. With great power comes great responsibility thrown to the winds…
So in a way, it is now a 3 way power struggle/interaction. Wait, that was in SEED wasn’t it? 3 way and all that? So who is the one who will be doing “the right thing”. As of now, it is all very unclear in 00. Team A seem to be the ones, but they have issues and AS’s agenda is unconfirmed as of yet.
Let’s just hope it clears up before the end.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:49 am
Sojourner, did you honestly just say people don’t die in Gundam? How many Gundam series have you actually seen? Don’t say such ridiculous things if you don’t know what you are talking about.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:36 am
He is apparently killed in that unfortunate event.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Sojourner-san, Howard doesn’t have the main character buff. Which means that he has a fair chance of being cannon fodder.
February 6th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
@Sojourner: Aifman is dead. Did you not wacth the episode or did you some how miss the part where he got vaporized by the GN Mega Launcher. I mean he took a direct hit from that thing. Noone survives through that.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I wanted this gundam series to be more tactical like it was and the gundams much more overpowering cause Exia for example got hit with that black’s suit cannon and got blown away, sad :(
also if those gundams were working as a team might as well have a super cannon in the beginning and have two seperate but very powerful mobile suits who don’t need assistance from each other to pwn
February 6th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
It’s sort of a blessing in disguise for the Celestial Being. Aifman had just managed to grasp certain information about them when he got killed. Yet another factor that led to the story’s continuation.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Believe me, we know. Him knowing that information is probably thew reason the Thrones attacked that base in the first place.
February 7th, 2008 at 3:52 am
@darkdestiny & shadow: We should really be calling the base attack/”intervention” an assassination attempt on the Prof. Which succeeded quite well.
February 7th, 2008 at 5:46 am
Heh, you’re right RmX. But man that is the flashiest assassination I’ve seen. Guess when you have godly powerful machines like that you don’t even need to know the meaining of sublety.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Weeeh, passing by…hilarious blog, i was looking for this blog for quite a while now, Setsuna’s one blessed kid lolx @_@ the power of the main character…
February 8th, 2008 at 11:49 am
For the love of mankind, I hope that my comments were not taken seriously for I cannot imagine a Gundam that shoots taiyakis. =)
@ Anon
Hmm… Pardon my impudence but was it not that my comment was about Professor Elfman and not Howard of the Thousand Penetrations? I was not talking about Warrant Officer Howard right? Gee now I am confused with the names. *all thanks to ya =p*
P.S By no means was I trying to have a go with bashing Gundam 00 or any other similar intentions that could have possibly been infered from my words.
OMG. The internet is serious business.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
“Howard of the Thousand Penetrations” ROFLMAO! Thats great, accurate but awesome.
February 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
RmX: It can either be an intention of killing the one who almost reached the peak of finding CB’s secrets, or it could really be that the Thrones really want to show how powerful they are by swinging their destructive swords and literally stepping on the organizations’ heads. Either way, their true intentions are unknown.
February 9th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
darkdestiny: They had the absolute intention of killing Aifman. Don’t forget the scene where they sent him that message on his computer that he had realized to much. I mean for God’s sake they knew he was on that computer at in that office at that given time. Further more Johann took that canna and dragged the beam through Aifman’s office, hitting an unprotected human with a beam cannon that shouldn’t be mounted on anything less than a warship. I think they wanted to make very sure he was dead.
February 10th, 2008 at 9:13 am
OK. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t see the show yet. Menclave appears to be left behind due to the RAW problem. (But I’m still sticking to the group for the shows :) )
February 10th, 2008 at 11:51 am
looking forward to the big gundam confrontation between the thrones and the originals? episode 19 looks good. im posting this here cuz the blog for episode 18 isnt up yet. hurry up please darkmirage
February 10th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
to darkmirage: i find that a lot of the technology in gundam 00 could be possible in the next century or so, but it will require a lot of advancements. i wouldnt go calling it magical and all that just yet
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
“Nena inside Veda” lol
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:53 pm
i bet setsuna fan must be angry with nena kiss setsuns but i think i don t like trinity siblings after all my favorite character setsuna i love it so much i many watched anime but the one i very like that gundam oo