The cardinal laws of Gundam story-telling: When things go wrong, it just means that it’s time to throw new Gundams at them, and when animators fall behind schedule, it’s time to do a recap episode and disguise it as real content.
Summary
Three new Gundams save the day.
Gundam Throne Eins piloted by Johann Trinity has some kind of long range cannon thing. It is also very black, like a bottomless abyss sucking away the hopes and aspirations of humankind.
Gundam Throne Zwei piloted by Michal Trinity launches little flying thingies that look and move just like funnels except that they don’t shoot lasers but rather ram the targets. EDIT: Eh. I guess they do shoot lasers after all. That’s what I get for watching the episode at midnight and writing the review 15 hours later…
Gundam Throne Drei piloted by Neina Trinity can expand its GN particle field to a really large area in an intentional wing-like spread that looks almost biblical. She calls it the “stealth field” because it disrupts enemy sensors over a large area, but I find it a little ironic to call such a firework display stealthy.
Together, the three of Gundam Thrones rescue Setsuna and friends and wrap things up before the commercial break. The battle itself is somewhat anticlimactic. There’s pretty much no fighting at all; it’s basically a bunch of mobile suits getting blown up by the Thrones. Just when the Gundams finally seemed to be evenly matched, the balance of power suddenly reverts back to the unilateral pwnage that we’ve been seeing since episode 1.
And the rest of the episode is spent on ten minutes of old recap clips with new voice-overs by Alejandro and his Guardian buddies. That’s not too say that it’s totally useless because we get to learn more about the organization behind Celestial Being, but it just feels kind of lazy of Sunrise to have a clip show at this point of the story.
This scene, where Alejandro and the other Guardians are discussing about the new Gundam Thrones, is reminiscent of Evangelion’s SEELE, with each Guardian being represented by a piece of artwork instead of a black numbered monolith. (Speaking of that, Throne Drei’s red “wings” look like the Evangelion ones too!)
“I paid a trillion dollars for this painting to drill a hole through it.”
“I like to pretend that I am invisible.”
“This statue emphasises my superior intellect.”
“I have no idea what this is supposed to be, and I am too rich to care.”
Celestial Being and the Guardians are two separate organizations that are part of a larger system that we still don’t know much about. It is also not explained as to whether Aeolia Schenberg founded Celestial Being as a member of this greater power or as the founder of the overall parent organization, but I think it’s probably the former.
The role of Celestial Being is to conduct armed interventions and force change upon the world, while the role of the Guardians is to watch over Celestial Being so as to keep it in check. The Guardians are mostly powerless to act except in the case where there is a unanimous consensus among all the Guardians, in which case they are as a whole empowered to veto any decisions made by Celestial Being.
As far as the Guardians know, there should only be five functional solar furnaces in existence. Therefore, the appearance of three new Gundams is a surprise to them. Sumeragi and the rest are equally clueless, so we can conclude that Celestial Being, or at least the branch of Celestial Being that we currently know, has nothing to do with the Thrones, the implication being that this mysterious supernational organization has other operating divisions beyond the Guardians and Celestial Being.
And well, we finally have a female Gundam pilot, Neina Trinity. She’s okay I guess, but her brothers give off villain vibes at over nine thousand times the background radiation level.
The Trinity
“I’m pretending to be Buddhist.”
…They are totally not siblings.
Also, Neina has a purple (evil) Haro.
Apparently the next episode will be action-packed, or so the episode preview says. But I don’t trust G00’s episode previews any more.
First, neina is HOT! what is the official spelling of her name thou? nena? neeana? neina?!
Nuts so were back at square one again. I never did trust art much, good to see that my eternal suspicion of art is well founded.
So did the Mighty 8th (Overflags) get massacred or did they live to fight another day? Please tell me that the Soma, Sergei, Katie, Patrick, Graham, Mason, Dutch, and Ali are still alive.
Still Sunrise is not much for subtlety glowing red eyes, evil haro, and red particles. These people are obviously communists with their Sputnik like ship! Too bad there is no VDV or Septsnatz commandos to mix it up a bit would have made up for the CB politburo and central committees.
The purple haro looks evil.
..and btw those fangs do more than just ram, it can shoot its enemoes as well. Pls correct it DM~
Crusader:
yes they are all alive. xD
Doujin bait!
Evangelion! That’s what I thought when I saw the Gundam Throne Drei. About the only 5 solar furnitures… I don’t know If you have seen the Gundam 00 manga, but apparently there is another Gundam which is piloted by a crazy guy… and others Mobile Suits that doesn’t look like gundams.
The point is that these others mobile suits were made for supporting Celestial Being operations. By looking different they spec to not be relationed with celestial being.
On the other hand I HOPE this don’t turn to be another SEED/Evangelion situation where Celestial Being stays in the middle between the Guardians and the other factions, but by looking at the intro it gives me NO hope. :(
I’ll just anticipate the appearance of the next female to appear in an anime show and blindly claim her stupid intellect and retarded personality to be hot and then brand her as my e-penis belonging. When she becomes popular I can claim that I liked her first or just kick her away when she turns out to be in the discount bin.
G00’s getting totally crap now… Emo Meisters + overkill Gundams makes crap.
“Also, Neina has a purple Haro.”
Evil Haro..Evil Haro..XD
Looks like we’ve got to wait for more things to be revealed about these 3. As of now we can only make assumptions about the Trinity.
Gundam Throne Zwei’s funnels shoot lasers. That’s during his second try at Sergei and Soma. And talking about overkill now. How’s anyone gonna win against that?
I love their interface though. A half sphere monitor. Dunno how to phrase it any better.
Hot Damn. At least they are not three fat dudes like the original trinity. 5 furnaces? 4 original Gundams, therefore there is still an unaccounted furnace somewhere? Maybe PG&E is using it.
It can be assumed that Celestial Beings have one more Gundam being made, or that furnace could be stolen. The last furnace could even be on Ptolemaios too.
Yep, this episode was not that great. The next has the Flags going at it with the Thrones, should be better
Maybe the Guardians use it for keeping their huge cylindrical room warm in winter.
wow that has to be the most diabolical looking Haro I have ever seen.
purple haro will destroy the world.
Don’t you mean when ‘things get routine’?
I expect plenty of angst at being replaced by the next generation (or next wave?) of Gundams before Veda (whoever that is) predicted it. And rivalry.
Or perhaps they’ll convert their solar furnaces over and kick ass in tandem, but that is quite unlikely.
By “when things go wrong”, I don’t mean that the story goes bad, since it’s indeed been bad for some time. What I mean is that the first batch of Gundams get their ass kicked, so it’s time to throw in some new ones.
i thought the official romanization of the Trinity’s names were Johan, Michael, and Nena
It could be that the other solar furnace is on Gundam 0, the ONE GUNDAM that Setsuna has a crush on
A random guess:
There could be some hint as to why Johann looks such an allelujah-alike.
‘Johann Sabastian Bach – the composer of the piece ‘Allelujah”
an interesting coincidence, or a hint of something?
Maybe the Guardians will also have telekenetic powers like the Second Foundation.
I smell a gundam seed type of development. Trinity vs. Celestial Being? like Kira and buddies vs. the world’s gundams? I dunno, but its just a hinge… an itch behind my gundam analyzing brain.
Does anyone know when Initial D fifth stage is coming out.. gundamm 00 is becoming too predictable… or so it seems…
Sunrise loves to put in clip shows (recaps). This one is done without wasting an entire episode, but it’s still disappointing to see one in a way.
Since we’ve got more mysteries instead of having things geting cleared up, I’ll just wait ’til Sunrise leaks out more info via magazines or in the next episode.
Good god, these new Gundams are overpowered. And I thought things were too one-sided with just the first group. I mean seriously… if Celestial Being and Team Deus Ex Machina are teaming up, how are we even going to PRETEND to have intense, outcome-in-doubt conflicts anymore? I think it’s high-time for Graham to go on a killing spree and just slice about half the Gundams into ribbons.
But yes, Nena is hot. This makes up for a lot.
I dunno. This episode was handled rather well. Only the last part of it is dedicated to clips from earlier in the series(the first half showing the Thrones performing their extraction/rescue of the Meisters), and even then, the clip show is framed in such a way as to explain at least one ongoing question which has been bubbling about. Namely, who the hell is Alejandro and why should we care? Now we know.
It still doesn’t explain the threesome-doujin-waiting-to-happen that is Louise, her mom, and Saji, but it’s better than any other clip show episode I’ve seen in a Gundam series.
Yay! Dragoons are back, with multiple purposes as well, now all that is left is to show them shielding friends from a big cannon…
Nice touch with the sword though. That was one of the things I wanted to see in earlier Gundams, a sword wielding Gundam that had funnels as extra arnament.
For next ep, I´m more intrested in how the 4 meisters will react and all the fighting that´s going to happen between them in comming eps.
As for recap part, recap is instant fail. Thus even though ep showed some promise in the preview thing it kinda sucked.
Better luck next time.
langley: It’s only temporary. The Thrones are clearly evil.
OpMegs: There’s really no reason why the thing had to be done in the form of a recap. It could’ve been a short 2-minute scene and still convey the same information.
I agree with DarkMirage 100% I mean seriously recaps WTF!!
gundam wing didn’t have any recaps either nor thid seed destiny (I’m not sure about seed) But Gundam 00 is becoming WWWWAAAAYYYY too predictable I knew this was coming all along:
1. gundams get pwned
2. new gundams save the day
3. something stupid
LANGLEY: I lol on your NENA HOT comment
ZWEI is okay doe although mr MIchael should go to the doctor
JOHANN is pure evil
Johanns sword is awesome I want to see it in use: GN paticles surrounding the entire thing cutting through EXIA
Setsuna gets new gundam and pwns Johann back permanetly
Gundam O most likely doesn’t exist anymore, and its solar furnace was either destroyed or recycled. After all, the GN drive was extremely unstable, as it was a prototype. It’s possible that the GN drives were recycled throughout the generations of Gundams, and Celestial Being or the organization they belong to have the furnace as a spare, or they might even have another mobile suit in waiting. Another possibility is that Nadleeh and Virtue have separate solar furnaces, but I doubt that, as the Virtue armor is directly connected to the Nadleeh core anyway.
Peter:
Are you kidding? Destiny had like 2 or 3 recaps (one of them going way back to SEED). SEED had TM Revolution himself narrate one of the recap episodes.
We are entitled to our own opinions on things though. So I third (I think) the Neena comment XD.
Evil gundams. Called it. Just for the record.
Okay, first thing: is it just me or does every female in this series, barring that journalist girl, that plays even a small part have a huge rack? I mean WTF? Anyway yea you guys are probly right, chances are the Thrones will go up against the original Gundams in the end, but I like to hope not. It would just be to predictable. Maybe one of the other nations some how gets their hands on that AWOL furnace, we all know where that would lead. I like to hope something like that but I’m not holding my breath. BTW some1 said that Gundam Wing had no recaps: not true episodes 27 and 28 were recaps. 27 had Relena doing it 28 had Treize doing it for the most part.
BTW I have to agree with the Nena is hot comment as well.
Actually I thought this was an astoundingly informative episode for a recap. In it we learned some things about the organization of Celestial Beings that we never knew and the shadowy figures we now know were around all along lurking behind the events we’ve seen so far in the series, and how they have influenced them without us even knowing. I think we should be praising the script writers for turning what could easily have been a really dull and wasteful clip ala Seed Destiny’s fare into an episode that is a critical watch if we want to know more about the plot. Sunrise’s staff did it’s job to get us to watch and did it damn well. Unless you are deliberately looking for reasons to nitpick then I cannot see how one cannot see how well this episode was executed in principle.
That I found the Observer’s discussion during the clip to be more interesting and full of revelations then the preceeding battle with the Thrones in it really says a lot to me about how this episode was handled. Not that I found the Throne’s introduction dull either. Really looking forward to the next episode, even if nobody else here seems to be.
holy shit…a US spy satellite is falling to Earth. The Zeons must be responsible…
Everybody keeps saying the Throne Gundams are ridiculously powerful. I won’t disagree that they are a bit overpowered, but i think everyone is overreacting a bit. There is one factor to that battle that everyone kees forgetting to figure in: the element of surprise. Don’t forget that it was the same way with the original four Gundams as well. It took a great deal of time, strategic planning, and resources for the three world powers to come up with the plan they did. It was working too. However they had no idea that the Thrones existed much less would show up in that battle, it took them completely off gaurd. Noto mention the surprise attack was so well executed, Each division of the world powers lost most of the suits they had on each Gundam before they could even react. Had the world powers know of the Throne Gundams and been able to figure them into their plans then I think the outcome would still have been up in the air (well not really, we all know how these things always end.) Still, I wont disagree that the Thrones are a bit overpowered, I just dont think it’s as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
i think this episode will remind me of gundam seeds crappy ass recaps every 7 episodes.
Just in case you people didn’t notice, Eins is just X Gundam without the X-panels behind it and is coloured black (yeah I am using Brit spelling).
The names used for all the gundams are from the hierachy of angels, with the Throne gundams being of the second highest ranks. I am guessing the uber-gundams in the final episodes will be named Cherubi, Ophani and Seraphim or something like that.
So much for Celestial Beings.
Let’s get ready for more big breasted, emo/headache, friends vs friends , and dissapointment in the next episode of gundam 00!
@Shadow: No it isn’t, they have a high power output, but there’s nothing really overwhelming about them. And just loving the negative attitude on some people her.
@Incognitus: If you go into an episode expecting it to suck then you’ll probably have a self fulling prophecy. Though that would be your fault and not the episodes. If people aren’t at least open to the possibility of enjoying something then they never ever will, no matter how it all pans out. So much closed-mindedness in the community it makes me feel sick.
One thing is strange.. if only five solar furnaces exist (officially), who has the fifth one?
We have only four Gundams…
Is it on Ptolemaios? If it was, why do the Gundams need to charge it all the time?
I did not feel that the clip show was wrong. It was not too excessive and they had to shove in all that “look how evil we are” stuff in there.. Still here is me hoping for the girl to team up with CB
For some reason I can’t find my previous reply, but never mind.
Yeah, I thought Ptolemaios is the one with the 5th furnace due to the GN Field and all. But come to think of it, that shield cannot be deployed WITHOUT any docked Gundams.
The most probable reason is that a new Gundam is either under development or already built and hidden somewhere. The pilot would most likely be one of the Meisters (who will have their Gundams destroyed first) or a new unknown pilot.
Talk about the funnels, is it a difference in the animation between 00 and SEED or does the funnels really move faster than DRAGOONs?
If that doesnt work, it might be a good ideato add quote functionality.
The battle had been going on for at least 15 hours. Combined world power or not, they were exhausting their resources too. The thrones just waited for both sides to weaken eachother before joining.
That’s a good possibility. But unless you know something we dont Please don’t say it with such certainty. We simply don’t know enough about the Thrones yet. But like I said that is a good possibility, a completely viable one.
Now there is somehing else I want to bring up. The theory that the Thrones and CB going against each other in the end. Here is a twist on it. Remeber how CB keeps saying things like “Our true objectives”? In my experience with anime and action type movies this is never a good thing. It could turn out to be CB is evil and the Thrones are the good guys. Hardly unheard of in either movies or anime. However this being an anime, and seeing how the writers fo this particular one like to be predictable, even I don’t hold oout much hope for this. An even if they go with this you know Setsuna would double cross CB and help the thrones kick their asses, since they can never have an evil main character.
Anyway the point of this whole thing is: One: stop being so negative and railing on the show. If you dont like it stop watching it; and Two: keep an open mind, yes the writers have been horribly prdictable up to know but things can change and there are still several paths open to take.
The reason im being so honest is exactly because i like the show. Up to and including ep 14.
Also, why are people calling the evil gundams overpowered?
One of them is another Dynames, then we have another Exia with some sidearms we dont know the full strengths and weaknesses of, and the last one has some special particle field instead of a wannabe planet-busting cannon. I suppose they saw no point in making another jet (although i personally like Kyrios very much).
They have a different glow and paint job, is all.