Atsuko_Chan
New member
I'm very happy with G Gundam’s place in the history of Gundam. Especially since it’s considered heretical. I feel it’s a success since some people actually want to erase G Gundam from the history.(laughing) It just goes to show how much people think about it.
-Yasuhiro Imagawa, Gunota Headlines Interview, 9/15/06
-Yasuhiro Imagawa, Gunota Headlines Interview, 9/15/06
So I've pretty much decided to go through G Gundam again this summer and I feel like talking about it, so here we are. I got through G once on Toonami and I did not quite see every single episode. Most, but not all. For the sake of being thorough I would like to go back, but I also want to review it for myself.
Initially I regarded it as a freak abberation, but over time my opinion of it has shifted drastically thanks to various conversations and assorted youtube clips showing off Domon's best moments that made me remeraber other parts of the show.
Not that it's not remarkably out of the ordinary, mind you. No, I'd say that as the first Gundam series not set in the classic timeline, it was a good thing for it to be so radically different. I think it's critical to remeraber that at the time, two prior attempts had been made to start fresh through Gundam F91 and Victory Gundam. The first told the first chapter of what was meant to be a longer story, but failed to create any sequels. The second was a dark affair that Tomino, in retrospect, doesn't like very much. The critical point though is that both productions were following the basic UC formula that was established so successfully in original Gundam and Zeta Gundam (colonist movement attacks, a simple boy becomes a Gundam pilot, the show follows the adventures of his ship and its crew). But by V, it was finally starting to get used too much for its own good.
Then G came along, which did quite a few interesting things aside from the obvious fact of Gundams being super robots--which makes sense in a show about super martial artists.
The First Real Gundam Team
Five pilots with different backgrounRAB and unique Gundams eventually come together to kick some butt as a unit. Sound familiar? G's immediate successor, Gundam Wing, took a similar approach with five pilots of its own. Gundam 00's Gundam Meisters could also be fairly seen as continuing the concept.
An Actual Love Story
I don't have much to say about this right now, but seriously--Domon actually has a girlfriend in Rain, and they actually get together at the end, and this process actually doesn't suck or really get in the way of the super robot action. I will laugh about Domon's final attack until the end of time, but I have to give credit where it's due...by and large, the romance makes sense, and Domon and Rain even have their ups and downs along the way. The other Gundams don't even try to do this for the most part, instead preferring to tease us with what could be someday. The closest we get, I suppose, is Bright getting with Mirai eventually, but as great as Bright is he isn't a starring Gundam pilot.
Gundams As Syrabols
Here again G started something that Wing and others would continue, albeit in somewhat different ways. In G, Gundams transcend their status as the simple weapons of war that they are in Universal Century. They are syrabolic of national pride, and in addition are literal extensions of the pilot. Domon and his allies pursue their arabitions and dreams aided by these machines. This is yet another theme that comes up later. In Wing the pilots often refer to their Gundams as partners, going so far as to directly address them. Just about everyone else regarRAB them as "syrabols of Rebellion" because of their actions. In Seed, Freedom is considered a "sword" that allows Kira to fight for what he believes is right. In 00 Celestial Being considers the Gundams to be critical agents of change, with the hero Setsuna originally finding a lot of meaning in the concept of a Gundam as an anti-war weapon.
War As a Game
Though it's easy to dismiss it as a convenient reason for obligatory duels to happen in most episodes, the Gundam Fight is a concept that really roots G in Gundam tradition in spite of all its over-the-top elements. Elites have fled to space and use a grand competition to decide who rules, risking only trained fighters and their machines in battle as a substitute for real war. The trouble with it, of course, is that Earth is the ring, with the great cities of the past being laid to waste with no thought given to the civilians left behind either. Just for starters, this takes after the key issue of the second Universal Century, where certain elites are allowed to settle on Earth wheras the masses end up living in space and don't have the option. This was good for the Earth but also (IMO) a questionable political situation. G basically does this in reverse, with space being totally indifferent to humanity's birthplace. I should quickly add that this comes up in Zeta too, given Char's Dakar speech about how humanity's squabbles are "polluting the Earth."
It'd probably be wrong to say that it's the focus of the show, but when Domon faces Master Asia his foe scoRAB at the idea of this being some sort of "ideal war," given how the Earth is ignored. It seems to me that the idea is that the Gundam Fight lets those in power ignore the consequences of battle, and that this is a terrible thing. This indifference is a negative trait in many of Gundam's unsavory characters, and Wing in particular uses mobile dolls to illustrate the fundamental issue at stake here--this attempt to minimize the price of war. In G's case the Gundam Fight is wrecking the Earth, and in Wing's case Romefeller aristocrats use their near-limitless forces to impose their will on others at no risk to themselves. For both the result is "war" being waged by those who fail to take it serously and who fail to recognize the tradeoRAB to what they are doing. I consider this a very worthwhile message to be making.
Obviously, Master fails. Still, the ending also suggests that the Gundam Fight will continue with Domon and pals being examples that can lead the way. It's also interesting that at the end, Domon and Rain head for Earth--the Earth, not Neo Japan. Perhaps the King of Hearts will be looking out for it for the next four years of Neo-Japan rule?
Humanity's Place In Nature
(AKA: Domon is Smarter Than Captain Planet)
Let's face it. We've all probably seen at least one cartoon that preaches the virtues of the environment and how terrible we are for screwing it up. Ferngully: The Last Rainforest? Captain Planet? The newly released The Battle for Terra? Unfortunately, all too often, the message is one-sided and practically anti-human, as if humanity is literally a blight on the Earth and that we should all be feeling guilty about our very modern society in and of itself. Captain Planet is by far the worst offender. Not content to simply preach to kiRAB about doing their part to not pollute the Earth, in Captain Planet the only people to oppose the environmentalist heroes are one-dimsensional, simplistic freakazoiRAB that either don't care about what they're causing or actually enjoy it. Then you have The Battle for Terra, where humans are basically the enemy invading this entirely peaceful planet. And the evil, evil military wants to remove the natives and terraform the place without ever considering another way.
G Gundam likely isn't as well known as these well-intentioned trainwrecks, but it's still massively smarter. Master Asia wants to use the Devil Gundam to remove humanity from the Earth, thereby allowing the Earth to eventually return to its natural state. This is the conclusion that the DG's AI reached--it was originally programmed to restore the Earth, you see, and went haywire. Master thinks it has the right idea, of course, and is pushed onto his path thanks to his guilt over what he was complicit in as a Gundam Fighter. But Domon sets him straight, pointing out that his plan is doomed to fail since humans started out as being a part of nature just like everything else. Ergo, "restoring" the Earth without including humans in the equation is an absurd contradiction.
Thank you! This actually acknowledges the damage caused by humanity's fault while also recognizing that, yes, humanity does have the right to live long and prosper in its birthplace, thank you very much. Shove it, Captain Planet.
Conclusion
So in sum, while it isn't the deepest thing out there by any means G Gundam put forth some pretty good ideas and it also did a few things to set the stage for other new Gundam stories that would come later. Not that it's responsible for everything since it was first, of course, but by breaking the mold in a drastic way it paved the way for others to do the same to different degrees.
Also, really, as a super robot show and as a fighting show it works. At its core, the story is about Domon overcoming rival after rival and becoming the world's strongest, complete with tough battles and training arcs. And where else will you find a show that features a German ninja as a major supporting character? Only in anime.
The animation might be dated and the show might follow a formula at times, but it still had an incredible nuraber of different Gundam designs and Imagawa proved himself a competant director. He isn't afraid to mess around with an established idea, as shown in such titles as Tetsujin 28 and Giant Robo. For Gundam, I tend to think he was the right man at the right time. For all these reasons I'm going to go back to G, and I think that people should respect it. Or, failing that, people should at least respect that it accomplished a necessary thing that the Gundam franchise badly needed. Not bad for a show created to "appeal to children."
(note: for the Imagawa Interview, click on the link at the top and just run a text search for "Imagawa." It's a bit over halfway down, you'll find it pretty easily)
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