gundam 00 9
Categories: anime, episodic review, gundam
Tagged: gundam 00
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There’s no Ms. Wang, and I enjoyed this episode. What the hell is wrong with me?
It’s a trap! There’s very few times when I feel like queueing up Return of the Jedi to hear our favorite Mon Calamari say his favorite line, but this one of those times. One of the problems with any Gundam series (except for the first few) is that the Gundams are too powerful. Much like the current incarnation of Superman or Spiderman, how the hell do you make a fight with them more interesting if they’re super, uber, dooper powerful? For Gundam, it has always been a contrived set of circumstances to take down a Gundam. Shinn schemed like a madman to take down Freedom, and he needed a whole lot of support behind him. Only Epyon was a watch for Wing, and, even then, it was because Heero was piloting Epyon at the time. Sunrise had to rework the final episode of Gundam Seed Destiny to make it look less than a complete and utter blowout.
For facing our newest Gundam overlords, the HRL has set a trap. They have all the pieces fall right into place, since even if they had a good strategy, they couldn’t win without some help. The first help was that the Gundams were just so happened to be in a maintenance, and the Potemayo Ptolemaios was defenseless. The second was that Christine got hungry. The third was that both Christine and Sumeragi had their major and minor meltdown. The fourth was that the HRL suits suddenly are 10x better at dodging in this episode than they ever were. I don’t think I remember seeing even one HRL suit dodge anything the prior eight episodes… have they been working on their Jedi mind powers such that they can predict the path of incoming laser beams? The fifth is that they finally stopped picking on Setsuna. But I think we all know that the Gundams will end up kicking their shiny metal asses irregardless. Oh well, we finally get some tension that doesn’t involve Lockon x Setsuna or Sumeragi x bathing suit.
Points of Interest
Christine panicking… wow now that’s a breakdown. Not even Mikuru eying Haruhi approaching with a bunny girl outfit would crash and burn like that. I would never have guessed that a bridge bunny would have the first major panic attack. The best part was Felt snapping her out of it…
… especially since Felt got her confidence from being cheered on by Lockon. I hope to Kyrios that this spawns hundreds of Lockon x Felt doujinshi and puts a stake into any Lockon x Setsuna ones. There were a few juicy bits from Lockon’s and Felt’s conversation: there were prior Gundam Meisters (Felt’s parents), Celestial Being is more like the Stonecutters than a fly-by-night operation, and the Meisters all have made up names. I gotta admit, I was a bit relieved that “Lockon” and “Allelujah” weren’t their real names… they’re great pr0n names though.
Though I’m not sure if we can stop the flow of Setsuna x Tieria doujinshi. Neither of them are friendly, they’re both aloof, and neither pays any attention to Christine’s feminine wiles. Notice how Christine was panicking, she was calling for Allelujah, not Tieria.
You know things are not going well if Sumeragi isn’t drinking and isn’t flaunting her cleavage.
Sergei’s plan is solid, and training his soldiers to dodge the laser beams was a stroke of genius on his part. He must be reading Derailed! His dragnet plan does remind me a lot of Star Trek TNG where the Federation is trying to stop arms from the Romulans to enter the Klingon civil war.
Then there was Louise panicking when her mom wanted to take her back to the AEU. Gotta love how Louise drags poor Saji into the fray. For a moment, I thought I was watching some harem comedy. But only for a moment!
One of these days, there’s going to be a Haro Gundam. I can feel it. And it will go berserk and start killing everything.
Still can’t take a pink mobile suit seriously. By the way, in Gundam 00P, out of the four original Gundam Meisters, three were underaged girls (well at least two are confirmed). How do we go from that to the four brooding bishounen that we have today?
Lockon’s twin? Are they more like Kyou and Ryou or are they more like Kagami and Tsukasa or are they more like Shion and Mion? Which one is the more dominant one? I’m sure more many doujinshi will be dedicated to finding out this answer… but wait a second… let me stab myself in the kneecap first.
(Notice how Marina’s assistant got the jealousy eyes going when Alejandro was eyeing Marina?)
And, finally, from last time…
Shadowfox: Awww, no “Yup these are my readers†quote? Im starting to wondering if this is really ‘Derailed by Darry’ anymore, lol j/k
No one left a worthy enough comment. I’m very disappointed, but everyone has off days, even the readers.
IKnight: Regarding the adaption of ‘the Beowulf poem’ (it’s titleless, if you’re hardcore-you-know-the-score), it’s interesting that the film had to be worried. We can’t slay monsters in an uncomplicated, unselfconscious way anymore.
Well, they at least go the order of Beowulf’s battles down, but the whole sex subplot… man… I’m dreading both The Golden Compass and I Am Legend now. I just know that all the anti-Christianity references in Golden Compass will be stripped out… Golden Compass was the anti-Narnia of children’s British fantasy in that respect.
Jounin: Jason, you wondered in your ep 6 Gundam 00 post if Felt was the DFC of the series. From ep 8, she’s not looking so DFC to me. Maybe compared to the rest of the cast she may be last (I’m thinking tied w/ Marina), but that’s like calling a 3/4 cup full nothing at all.
You are absolutely right. I think this episode effectively removes Felt from the DFC subclass. And Marina is looking like the DFC… I even have a webcomic to confirm.
Epi: Ever since Eva (and probably before that) you can’t have a good anime without a decent ‘robot’ girl. In Gundam 00 there are two robot girls, Felt and that blue hair girl who drives the pink gundam. As long as a twirling Felt doesn’t fall off a cliff only to be saved by one of the Meisters, I’ll be okay.
Spoke too soon as Felt shows some emotion this episode. Though I’m not sure about having a robot girl… I think it’s somewhat more popular now (even Ninomiya-kun has one and every girl on Kimikiss seems robotic), I’m not willing to accept it as a core moe category yet, like the little sister, the oneesama, or the childhood friend. I think we need to see a male protagonist end up with one as the end girl first.
(But I think Felt is the honorary Darry for Gundam 00, even if she isn’t DFC. It’s a distinguished honor.)
Pakxenon: This is it. I’m finally creating a “gundam†folder and the subfolder “00″ and going to lurk on /m/, /e/, and /u/ hoping for double-o threads. I can’t wait to… watch Sumeragi and Ms. Wang and co doing ANYTHING in all future episodes.
We have gone from Gundam pushing robot toys to pushing push up bras. I think this is an improvement. The Gundam 00 girls desperately need a spread in the February issue of Megami. I was disappointed that Sunrise didn’t have them do a pinup for the January issue (or at least I wasn’t aware because I was suffering from blood loss over Demon Belldandy).
Northernshadows: Since it seems I mostly criticize this show – because nuking instead of praising is much more fun – I’ll reaffirm that I still enjoy the show, though more on some lower-brain level rather than as intellectual attraction.
Criticism is like a drug, feels really good at first to rip into something, but after a while, all you’re left with is being alone with an empty feeling. Praising, at least honest praise, is more rewarding. After all, would you rather get a “Haruka-neesama is amazing” post or yet another post bitching about how the characters in Kimikiss do not blink? People will eventually get sick of bitching. People won’t get sick of Haruka fanservice, though they might develop repetitive strain injury from right click -> save image as.
wp: Does Felt have something for Haro? Maybe the little robot has a vibration function…
Yep… these are my readers.
28 Responses to “gundam 00 9”
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Dodging laserz in space is a lot easier in space since their weight in earth is a lot higher than in space. (weight = Mass x Acceleration due to gravity). To move upward, the suit must exert force that more than its weight. (Thrust – Weight = remaining force that will make the mobile suit move).
Since there is little gravity in space, there the suits has little weight, therefore has more positive force that enable then to have acceleration
+ their movement is 3d since there is no ground/soil to stand on
And since your expecting the laser shots to be accurate, maybe moving a little to your left or right will save your live from those deadly laserz…
And, I have been wondering, what is DFC?
What’s a gudnam?
DFC = delicious flat chest.
Delicious flat chest = an enjoyment of absence, which is odd?
This defnitely felt like a more cohesive episode than 8, even if it was mostly setting up a cliffhanger situation which will (I fear) be resolved all too quickly. The anti-laser beam training was really the logical solution.
The HRL seem to be the first faction to really take a serious stab at Celestial Being. Sumeragi’s comment along the lines of ‘The lavish use of resources suggests this is the HRL’ when she discovered the communications-net trap put me in mind of the portrayal of Russia and China in the Command & Conquer series (just churn out more cannon fodder).
Philip Pullman has explicitly stated that the His Dark Materials trilogy is the antithesis of the Narnia series, yes. But attempting to control his works like this smacks of the Author-God behaviour which he’s supposedly in rebellion against.
Am I the only one that find Christine’s line “you’re not my type” extremely offensive, the later scenes suggest “only gundam meisters are real men”.
gundam pilots are all jerks.
gudnam ^^
>>Since there is little gravity in space, there the suits has little weight, therefore has more positive force that enable then to have acceleration
Ah, but we still have our trusty friends inertia and momentum to contend with, and those uni-eyed zaku wannabes are massive. So juking like Maverick is still out of the question.
Also, I think the laser dodging training is a lie. All mobile suits in the future will have an automatic laser dodging algorithm built in. Problem is, instead of
a) having it on all the time
or
b) putting a nice big button on the control panel
it was hidden in an obscure mecha configuration file deep in the OS. You know, in such a way that they needed a text editor to change the 0 to a 1. All that training boiled down to rtfm, and how to twink your mech 101.
Also, needs more Felt. No question.
Laser dodging requires a registry hack… LOL
seems all the blogs i’ve been visiting enjoyed this episode, but complained how useless sumeragi’s strategy was. Meanwhile, our Russian Bear has developed LuLu complex and starts pwning everyone with superior tactics.
Guess Lelouch has been influencing the feeble minds of more than 1 anime series.
And now that i think about it, shouldn’t Anemone be piloting a giant black surfing robot instead of some pink monstrosity?
Hmmm. Isn’t Felt like 14? Does that make Lockon the next Mr. Wong?
14 is the new 17
>>I hope to Kyrios that this spawns hundreds of Lockon x Felt doujinshi and puts a stake into any Lockon x Setsuna ones.
I’d say there’ll be more Felt x Haro first. I can’t say I’d mind, I mean wha….
I don’t get why Soma is compared to Anemone. For one thing, I watched all of Eureka 7 and Anemone was childish, selfish, unstable, and needed drugs to function properly. Soma is none of these things. She’s intelligent, well trained, and her break down was a one time occurrence that was out of the norm. Better yet, she’s supposedly protected from it happening again as Allelujah was already feeling the effects when Soma was just fine.
OH! And if anyone is a DFC, then it’s Soma. And unlike Felt (14, which has a decent size), Soma is 18. Weird how that works, huh?
Aren’t you worried that a Haro Gundam would raise the power levels too high? The only way you could follow up on that would be to have new gold plated Haro Gundams and Haro Gundams that have to assemble in stock footage before they can be used.
The final episode would be everyone trying to destroy a Death Star sized Haro. Oops, spoilers…
Nice dodge there, Sunrise. Now if we can just get J.C. Staff to admit that “Wirhelmina” is also a made up name, then we’ll be making some progress.
Yeah, people will most definitely be developing wrist injuries from too much “right-clicking”.
UN + Azadistan = Oil for Food
I do believe that we have found the cause for the UN’s financial problems. Seems comrade Corner might not have been using his own money to support Ms. Wang… That or he has been brown bagging a lot of lunches over 20 plus years.
Felt is going to join Haro’s harem. Out of all the characters his sexuality is clearly of the hetero persuasion.
I really did want Sumeragi to be a better captain. She should have slapped the shit of of coward Christina and kicked the sissy off her bridge. Good thing the hull is impervious to spacial debris, if it had been a space shuttle there would have been many a hole and dent.
Actually, gotta give Sunrise some props here. Back during some earlier episodes when they for the Nth time explained that Gundams’ generated field jams all signals, I thought “…and nobody will ever get the idea to find them using that radar blackout”. Roll on this episode and our Lulu-lite explains, “we’ll turn their strength into their weakness.” Color me impressed. Sergei’s double-ruse of buying time with empty transporters and making it look like DB’s carrier was their main target was pretty good too. I’ve a feeling this one’s not scripted by the people responsible for Gundam Seeds.
Regardless, the plan still wouldn’t have worked out without a Series of Unfortunate Events as Jason’s dissection points out above. The most inexplicable part is the sudden ability to dodge layzer beemus. Perhaps they all bought the Uncanny Dodge feat, which also suggests they’re no level 1 redshirt grunts. Certain studies however suggest that the single largest contributor to character death is the lack of names. Perhaps Sergei gave them all names to increase their survival rate by a whopping 300%. Even the radar monkey had a name. Anyway, they’ll be beaten back, else we wouldn’t have much of show.
Felt scores some points in this episode by stepping out of the ZOMG IT’S REI stereotype.
Nice one, and yes even with no Ms. Wang, this is still an enjoyable episode (and this time we get a comment worthy of “Yup these are my readers” yay!)
Anyways two interesting things I’d like to bring up
1.) The Saji/Louise “Harem” moment – When Louise first introduces Saji to her Mom, she goes “This is my Boyfriend” and its here where I expected Saji to go “When did I become your boyfriend?” but no, he goes on saying “I’m Saji”. So I was wondering, wait! Did they become official already? Its not until Louise goes “Your lover is about to be taken” when Saji finally starts spazzing out saying “Since when did we..” (and laughably throw in a “Its a misunderstanding mother!”). So did Saji not get the memo the first time and really that slow? Or is he really that bad at english? (Since “Boyfriend” was said in english)
2.) Hint for another possible pairing? Im talking about Allelujah x Christine, its a small one, but I still think its a hint. When Christine starts having her meltdown, she says at one point “Hurry Back Allelujah”, and I can’t help but wonder why only wishing for Allelujah? Wouldn’t you want both gundams back for MAXIMUM DEFENSE? But still, its just in the back of my head as a possible hint (and I guess it would work nicely if Sunrise is going with the Lockon x Felt path, which I very much like, Thank You, despite the age differnce.)
I’m surprised that you didn’t mention the vegetable block when the food was panned briefly. It seems like it an even further cop-out for drawing food than the cabbage that is a perfect sphere.
I’m also wondering why CB has not developed a method of communications that bypasses the Gundams’ GN field. Even if they couldn’t figure something out, you’d think they would train the Meisters so that they wouldn’t be strategic incompetents. (like revealing oneself in the middle of battle?) Then again, it is Sunrise…
Forgive me for being new, but what is this Gundam 00P?
This is Gundam, people dodge lasers or “beam” weapons all the time. IIRC, Char said in one of the UC series that you are not so much dodging the beam, but instead figuring out where they are going to shoot and dodging before they shoot. Sure you’d think that makes a good pilot just last about twice as long than a normal one, but that’s how it is.
Hah! This episode is starting to cement my love for Christina;
Shion’sher playful rejection ofAllenBridge bunny guy #1 was made of awesome (I don’t know abouty you guys, but I think it gives her a much more dynamic personality), along with her breakdown as well. It’s curious though, why she mentioned Allelujah at that moment; granted Tiera’s an ass (although we’ve never seen him act that way towards her) you’d think you’d want them both back in such a circumstance. Just a thought.I know Tiera is an ass, but he’s probably the only person on CB who’s mentally sound enough to realize that shooting Setsuna will be better for everyone.
@Shadowhawk
The oddity is not that they dodge lasers, but that the grunts that never seemed to do so before suddenly did it in this episode. Taking Char’s explanation into account, even the lack of gravity in space explains this since the quality of the pilot is what matters.
People dodge lasers the same way they dodge bullets. Don’t fall in its line of fire in the first place.
Anyways, yay Feltservice, they should have swapped the ages of Felt and Christina though.
Chii won, so there is evidence to support “robot” as a core moe mode.
I like how you said that CB is like the Stonecutters and not the Freemasons.
Specifically, Dynames was having some balance problems due to its repairs unfinished. Seriously, they only needed Dynames for defense (Virtue’s too slow, Kyrios seems to have a limited payload, and Setsuna can’t hit anything that’s beyond melee range).
And of course the HRL can dodge lasers, their faction is the one whose mobile suit forces specialized in space combat.
…Once again, everyone ignored that cute moment in Episode 8 where Christine was getting chummy with Allelujah.
Seconding the Felt = Darry comparison, BTW. Bring on the Felt-in-a-Lockon^2-Sandwich doujins! (What, do you think there’s another reason why there’s two Lockons?)
And Saji once again disappoints us for being spineless as usual.
Photonovel prequel.
“Celestial Being is more like the Stonecutters than a fly-by-night operation”
Bastards, so they were responsible for Police Academy 6! (hope you get that reference:P)
Looks like they watched a bit of Seikai before they made this episode, but really we know none of it matters in the end anyway. At the very least I’m hoping the bridge gets hit so that the bunnies get bounced around a bit before the HRL gets clobbered by angst.
DbD saves the day: I was watching the Sci-Fi dub broadcast of this today, and was confused when Christine returned to the bridge after her lunch break and said she couldn’t take the tension in there. Apparently they cut the cafeteria scene for broadcast. The single image above from that scene is enough to convey what happened.