At long last, my review of Gundam 00. After I first watched I rewatched Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny to have something fresh in my mind to compare it to. Now I'm rewatching Gundam 00 and it's a good time to do the review so here goes:
Comparison to Other Series:
Gundam 00 a feel similar to Gundam Wing in the beginning of the series with events showing the regular military doing their regular things with their mobile suits and then the all powerful Gundams come in and start ruining all their plans while at the time the military can't compeat with the Gundams' power.
That's the similar feel to Gundam Wing it has, but that's where the similarities end. For one thing, the Gundam pilots are older than the Gundam Wing pilots. They are also older than the pilots from Gundam SEED with the excepiton of Setsuna who starts out at about Kira's age in the first season. The rest of the gundam pilots are in their late teens and early 20s.
This older demographic allows for a more (for lack of a better word) "mature" feel to the series. You won't see these pilots go cry in a corner like Kira Yamato in Gundam SEED or Quatre Raberba Winner in Gundam Wing over having to kill people. It's pretty much "we're the Gundam pilots and this is what we agreed to do and so be it if the world doesn't like it".
It's not to say the pilots are without feeling though. After a while, all the battles and events do take their toll on them like anyone else and they each end up having to decide to keep fighting or not like the pilots in all the Gundam series. However, this was not dragged out like it was in the two Gundam SEED series and I was VERY happy for that. This IMO is one of the items that really sets Gundam 00 apart from the other series.
This also brings me to my next item. It not that Gundam 00 is shorter than the other series, it's that it feels more "concise" than some of the other series (it also doesn't doesn't have a sequal outside of the movie). This, I believe, comes from it being broken up into two separate seasons instead of just one constant string of episodes like the other series. Each season is 25 episodes long so the writers had to be more concise in what they were going to put into the series.
Considering that they had to put a complete story together of only 25 episodes instead of 50 like Gundam SEED or 49 in Gundam Wing, this means less room for events to unfold on the sidelines and less room for character development so minor characters are left with unanswered questions about them. This was actually disapointing for me as I'm more used to Gundam series being a bit more "complete" in what they include in their anime series.
The limit of 25 episodes per season may also be why there are only four main Gundam pilots instead of five like they did in Gundam Wing.
Artwork:
The artwork in this series is some of the best I've ever seen in any anime series. IMO It really is THAT good. The style of the artwork actually has a similar feel to the older Gundam series from the 90s and late 80s. The character movements are very fluent and feel very much "alive" and not rigid at all.
They also made an attempt to show the differences between races a little more in this series. When I get to the plot, you'll see why this makes sense. We all know that in anime, generally if they wear a school uniform, or wear traditional Japanese clothes, or have obvious conditions around them, they are generally Japanese characters and not American, European, etc. In Gundam SEED for example, everyone looked like they were from the same region and you'd only know where they were really from if they told you. Gundam 00 does split up what the characters look like by region a bit more, like Americans being diverse, and middle easterns looking tanner skin than Europeans, etc. This is a detail I don't normally see in an anime series.
The mobile suites and other mecha are also done just as well as the characters. They really went all out in putting all the details on into them. For each major region you can tell how they wanted to showcase all the different technology that was developed and you can really see it in the details to the shapes and colors of the mechas right down to the computer controls they used. They even went so far as to make most of the consoles readable if you paused it.
This was also the first Gundam series to be developed in widescreen HD. My only regret is that I don't have it on blu-ray. I don't know if their is a blu-ray boxset in the US or not either.
Soundtrack:
Compared to other series, the soundtrack in this one actually isn't all that memorable too me. It's not to say it's not bad, but it's not the greatest either IMO. Some tracks I liked but since I can't remember where most of them are right now, that says something. There is also an apparent LACK of background music too.
You know how in many anime series when serious talks are going on or how someone is announcing something to the world and there's usually some kind of background music to set the tone of it? This series doesn't do that very much. There is background music aplenty in some situations but if there's something real serious being talked about or announced to the people, there's no background music. They actually use silence in some situations to show how important what's being said is.
I know some other series do this too, but this one does it well enough to really stand out and it's been a while since I've watched a series that does this. They know how to give a feeling of "shut up and listen" when it's important to do so.
In summary even though I thought the use of silence was interesing and actually added to what was going on, all in all, the soundtrack is only "OK" from this series. Maybe it'll grow on me more, but for now it is what it is.
Plot:
It is now the 24th century and the human race has yet to learn how to live as a single unified species. There are still separate countries and wars cropping up here and there over territories, resources, religious beliefs, etc.
At this time the world is divided into three main regions. The Union is mainly made up of the nations from the American continents. The Human Reform League consists mainly of China, India, and Russia in the Asian area. The AEU is made up of mainland Europe.
Each of the three regions have their own piller, a giant tower that's tall enough to go into space. Up in space there's huge arrays of solar pannel collectors that supply power to all the member nations of each region.
These were built thanks to the depletion of fossil fuels on Earth. The middle eastern countries, which still rely on revenue from fossil fuel exports have been left out of this and are mostly fighting amongst themselves for what little is left in the region.
Each of the 3 solar powered regions have their own combined military force and a major world war can break out among them at any given time.
They Gundams fly in to prevent that and launch a campaign to end all war on Earth by "armed interventions". They will go after anybody found to be promoting war in anyway shape or form and destroy them. If there's a far between countries they will attack both sides until they can't fight anymore forcing them to talk things out and reach a peace settlement. If they do not, and the start fighting again they will go back and do it again as many times as it takes.
The Gundams work for a secret organization that wants to change the world and end all fighting so that humanity can live as one.
Naturally, the world's three major powers aren't going to like being interfered with and the series goes on with them trying to stop the Gundams.
That's the general plot of the series without going too much into it with a big giant spoiler tag. There are racial issues brought up in this series which is why the characters will look like they're from various regions.
Rating:
On a scale of 1 being terrible and a 5 being excellent I give this series a 4.5. The soundtrack, while good, just isn't that memorable to me and breaking it up into two seasons did cut out some unecessary fluff, but it also left some holes too. Everything else about this series is top notch and I will definately recomend this to anybody that likes a good mecha or action anime.
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