gundam 00 24
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Tagged: gundam 00
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Who switched my morning cup of Gundam 00 blend with the Basilisk blend?
Bloodbath. Utter bloodbath. Half the Potemayo crew is killed, as well as Patrick (finally). Most of the GN-X suits as well as the remaining Gundams are taken out. Chips all cashed in. If you ever gambled at a casino, you know that after playing for a while, you have to cash out. Picking when to cash out is critical. Same goes for narratives. Gundam 00 spent most of the season building up a steady supply of chips, but did they use them wisely? Did they cash out, or did they push them all in the middle for a foolish all-in bet? My guess? All-in.
Consider that the story started three superpowers up against Celestial Being with a main driving force of energy. All of those chips? Wasted. Solar energy and power? Tossed aside. The AEU/Union/HRL dynamic? They’re chums now, without really any political intrigue left anymore. They’re more similar than not.
Then let’s consider the other factions. Ms. Wang and her outfits? Nothing. Corner? Poor thought out “villain” who now is in the same role as a druggie piloting a Destroy Gundam. Marina? LOL. Nothing really came out of that storyline. Gauron? An epic confrontation with Setsuna would have been a great use for that chip, instead it doubled down against Lockon. Saji and Louise? Um, why are they in this anime in the first place? The Throne Gundams? Used and discarded like a cheap whore or any Zero no Tsukaima character.
Now let’s consider Celestial Being. For over twenty episodes, nothing significant happened. Despite all the conflicts and all the battles (including against GN-X mobile suits and the Thrones), none of the Gundams were badly damaged and no pilot was killed. Now? All except Setsuna have been cashed in. Lockon is “dead.” Dynames, Kyrios, and Virtue are out of action. For what? They weren’t even cashed in during epic struggles. Instead of Allelujah tearing up or being torn up by Soma, which is the logical direction in terms of story, he gets blasted by Corner. Uh, thanks. Wasted chip. Tieria? Same. It’s like Gundam 00 built a nice stack of chips in the past 20 episodes, and now it’s hemorrhaging chips like a drunk guy who stayed at the poker table an hour too long. And that’s exactly the stage Gundam 00 is in right now. Hell, even the Potemayo chip has been cashed in.
Luckily, there’s not a lot of chips left. Corner? Setsuna and Exia? Graham chillin’ in Illinois with Obama? Sumeragi’s breasts? That’s about it. That’s all we’re left with after 24 episodes of narrative. Gundam 00 just didn’t use its chips wisely and ended up wasting a lot of characters and a lot of potentially good plotlines.
Consider Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. In its 24th episode, it cashed in a handful of its minor chips to setup a greater chip in the 25th episode. Kittan saw his comrades fall one by one (each one a predictable noble sacrifice, in the vein and spirit of Gurren Lagann), and he became a minor chip that yielded a huge payoff when he took King Kittan and went giga drill. That then in turn was cashed in and became an ever bigger chip in allowing Simon to evolve Gurren Lagann once more. And it even enhanced Yoko’s chip firmly cementing her as the doombitch. Now that’s how to cash out. Watching Allelujah get taken out by Corner’s LOL BEAM SPAM, well, not such a great way to cash out.
Points of Interest
Does it say something about Sunrise when the death scenes are significantly better animated than the explosions? Christina had some mighty magnificent crying. Her blinking and watery eyes were top notch. Take that JC Staff! You have a well-written, emotional anime, but Sunrise does tears much better! Well, I am shocked to see that Lithy was a cyborg (!?!)… this one came from left field… but was until…
… the sucker punch that Christina was a goner too. NOOOOOOOOO! This one hit the hardest, just because my dreams for an Christina and Felt Go Shopping OVA are now temporarily dashed. (That is until Christina returns as a cyborg like Major Motoko.) But cashing in a bridge bunny… sad times… sad times indeed.
But it did lead to a Felt facial distortion, so maybe it’s not a completely wasted chip. Still, I’m against killing off melonpan. I just can’t stand to see good melonpan wasted.
*sniff* Stupid allergies.
How did we get to the point that the only two surviving Gundams are Nena’s throne and Exia. Talk about not having much left to work with. The Minami-ke equivalent has to be Haruka goes off to Canada, Kana gets sent to juvie for pimping out Fujioka, Mako-cakes dies during a botched sex change operation, Hayami drowns, and Hosaka and Touma elope and are never seen again, leaving Chiaki, Fuyuki, Uchida, and Hoshino to carry out the final two episodes.
Bad, bad memories of Stellar piloting Destroy. Where the fuck did his super suit come from?! When did he start piloting mobile suits, or does he just use easy mode? (i.e. Fox and Wolf.)
Still a potential Rukia All-Star. I haven’t given up on her yet. When out of all the surviving characters, there’s three potential Rukia All-Stars (Ms. Wang, Marina, and Saji), that’s saying something about character development and pacing and narrative.
(I’m tempted to toss Graham in this group as well. Where’s he at?! All the greatest mobile suit pilots are colliding, and he’s playing cards and basketball with Obama?)
Not sure which part was more uncomfortable… Tieria and Setsuna squabbling over who loves Lockon more, the romantic insert song with lyrics like “the answer is in your heart” (iz dat sum Bouken Desho Desho?) during the death and destruction binge, or how maybe it’s a good thing they haven’t found Lockon’s corpse, because the fight for it would have been… OH GEASS NO!
Reverse shigofumi?
And, finally, from last time…
Omnomnom: Who’s the most boring and dullest looking female in Gundam 00? Marina? If KyoAni were to work on Gundam, we’ll be seeing Setsuna hook up with….. wait a second.
Fuko?
Might be an upgrade over Marina.
Griffin: No Bollywood love song? Have you seen ED #2? (No, not quite the same, as the characters aren’t directly singing … more the Japanese equivalent.) OTL
I regret writing that Bollywood line because I’m sure someone at Sunrise read it and thought, “Eureka! This is what this season needs!” And hence why we have a romantic insert song during a massive mobile suit battle that produced heavy causalities for all sides.
Syaoran Li: Seriously, why did he save Lockon back in episode 21, just to “kill him†two episodes later?
Sunrise not using their chips well. I get the feeling that Gundam 00 wasn’t thought through prior to animation, and they’re just making it up as they go along. Most American TV shows are done this way, with some newer ones like Lost actually thought out a bit prior. But stuff like Prison Break? “Holy shit! People actually watch us!? Quick, we need a way to break out of yet another prison for season five…”
Yukimura: Wow Tieria… why don’t you tell us how you really feel about him.
I just stabbed myself with a pen. Watching Gundam 00 can’t be good for my blood pressure.
Myssa Rei: However, this does smack of something you’d expect from the original Space Battleship Yamato. I can’t really recall, but there was this character who was killed in the first season, but since he was so well-liked by the fans, his twin brother takes his place during the second season. It’s less farfetched than being ‘Sunrised’, since we KNOW that Lockon has a twin.
*cough* Nadesico *cough*
I think it might be far-fetched to say any of the Gundam Meisters are that well liked. When I ran the poll about which faction did one want to pilot a mobile suit for, both Flag Fighter and Rukia All-Star crushed the Meisters. Maybe after March Madness is over, I’ll run a “Favorite 00 Character” poll. I think Felt has an excellent chance of winning.
Krozel: Im afraid that Lockon’s death will become like Nicol’s death in seed. Whenever a battle will be executed, a philosophical thing or whatever, they will bring back the images of Lockon dying.
*whincing*
OpMegs: Y’know, I still say Tieria and Lockon’s entire interaction the last few episodes makes more sense if Tieria were a flatchested woman. I mean, you’d be crying too if you had Tieria’s figure and had to compete for attention in Celestial Being where a 14 year old has two cup sizes on you.
*nodding*
Crusader: I blame you Jason. It turns out that the military budget cuts during the Jason Miao Presidency to build the presidential harem cost the Union Space Forces 97 of the proposed 100 Virginia Class assault carriers. I hope Kyou’s thighs were worth it…
Finest. Presidency. Ever.
boo: Oh well, Nena cutting Setsuna’s hair on a beach might actually make Marina useful by playing the jealous bitch. Then if Maria and Nena start making out, Tieria and Setsuna can go OH GEASS NO! while Allelujah is having selfsect with Hallelujah in the background.
Yep… these are my readers.
36 Responses to “gundam 00 24”
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My guess is that they’re killing off all these people because they did think ahead to season 2. The writers realized, “crap, we have nothing to write for these people.” or “damn, we have too many characters, need to cut back.” I would go for the latter since , maybe, just maybe, the second season was suppose to focus on the other people, like Marina and Saji.
So, following in Sunrise’s tradition, I’d guess that Saji will end up with Nena somehow in the next season and we’ll get our masked guy being either Lockon or Ali. And on the far out guesses, I’d say Setsuna self destructs taking Corner and his big gold thingy with him (in the next episode), while ending up in Marina’s Palace in season 2, deja vu. And the possibility of Felt piloting a gundam built from the remains of Dynames with Haro? Wouldn’t rule that one out.
Actually Jason, there is evidence to suggest that Patrick survived. A particularly helpful poster on Omni’s site pointed out that the cockpit on the GN-Xs sat particularly low, on the level of Turn-A’s core fighter (which is to say, the crotch of the mobile suit). And guess what? Patrick’s GN-X, except from the obvious lack of torso, still had most of its hips and legs PLUS the cockpit housing.
Whether he’ll be *intact* is another matter entirely though.
Dammit Sunrise, you make me cry despite having shitty doesn’t-make-any-sense episodes beforehand. And with the next episode aptly titled “Setsuna”, perhaps we’ll be getting a more Destiny-styled episode next week to end off the season.
And that gold thing has FABULOUS written all over it. The Akatsuki was just too shiny-ugly, and now they bring in this thing that houses SEVEN GN-drives. At least the resulting explosion must SURELY kill him off.
I still think the biggest loss of these recent episodes was that of the Thrones’ theme music. With Throne Zwei vaporized and Nena doomed, it won’t be very long before those awesome electric guitar riffs will be a thing of the past.
Yes it was the best presidency ever, for you. The average tax payer never got to enjoy it and Vice President Tomoyo beat up Congress and the Supreme Court so there would be no opposition. For all your social liberalism it was most unkind of you to refuse to share…
I did not cry or weep for these terrorists and I took great joy from watching that cowardly Chris die from shrapnel. i adhere to the old adage that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist, and the only thing better than that is a dying terrorist who tells you where to find his mates. I am sure that there will be another busty bridge bunny to take her place hopefully one who doesn’t wet themselves in the heat of battle. You may have cried but I reveled in her demise I hope she and her new boyfriend burn in hell along with all her former lovers, and I do believe that it is a long list…
Tearsy Lichty was freaking Cyborg Commando/T-800 and they just had the prick pilot a cap ship? My goodness they really need to sort out their personnel. Not sure if I would rather have had Tearsy role play Orange-kun in an assault container or have him go hasta la vista baby to his dead girl friend. Since Ian was screaming for old Tearsy I suspect that there was some pederasty at play within CB. It would not surprise me if Corner was Aeolia’s jilted teenage lover in some pederastic relationship it would explain a lot actually.
Patrick is this series’ Waspinator he may get scrapped but he always gets back to his Katie some how. Since there is no corpse or extended death scene I still have Ali and Patrick listed as MIA. In fact if in the next season we get a dude in a mask it might turn out to be Patrick. Why blogosphere hate Patrick?
So does Sumeragi’s slapping of Tieria count as a chick fight?
Crusader: Ah, I think this was the pic I was looking for:
http://img138.imageshack.us/im.....59bga9.jpg
As you can see, the highlighted portion is the GN-X’s actual cockpit (how apt). So, yeah, there’s more than some chance that Patrick gets out of this one, and will return in season 2. Whether or not it’ll be wearing a mask is up to debate however.
Can’t really say I’m too surprised by how things turned out — watched too much Gundam in my time to expect otherwise, though I was deliciously surprised with Turn A and X — however there are some questions. Like, uh, where the hell did the gold mobile armor come from (and with the seven GN Drives to boot)? And where’s Graham Acre as all of this is happening?
Cyborgs that spit red blood but bleed purple everywhere else? Selective dramatic scene conducive beam that slags an entire cockpit but leaves a fleshy person behind? No gruesome death by decompression? Usually I’d get an “aha, spotted a logical inconsistency” boost to my ego for stuff like this, but Sunrise has made it so blatant I feel more stupid for continuing to watch.
This episode is probably a set up for next season’s mask party where we get to guess who makes a comeback, but hopefully not.
Boo’s comment really had me laughing for quite a while.
And the possibility of Felt piloting a gundam built from the remains of Dynames with Haro? Wouldn’t rule that one out.
Haro could be like an Organoid. *Puts up GN Field*
Graham is being saved for Season 2. I know I know, I’m pissed too.
Jason I know killing off melonpan is wrong, but hopefully Tieria gets really fucked up and go in for a “chassis upgrade”…
I really thing after the last ep. everything is going to go back to how it was. All three nations hate each other, and CB is really off the radar giving them time to get Saji to replace Setsuna or Tieria and Nena replacing someone on the crew for melonpan.
Those were my thoughts upon catching 24 – “melonpan, nooooooooooooo! The second was to laugh at the rest of them. It has become a train wreck as feared. I regret only Christina – the rest can go join Saji and Louise’s family for all I care.
The odds on a Setsuna and Saji pairing have also unfortunately gone way up.
I’m just glad I didn’t waste bandwidth with this series.
haro has a USB port. kinky.
cheers for last minute side character developement.
i love how CB personell refer to each other by their first and last name.
damn! when the GN-X was pointin’ the potemayo’s bridge for some stupid reason i was waitin’ for some like-freedom-with-gn-drive-piloted-by-lockon gundam appears shotin’ the beam rifle … but that never happened T_T … XD
For some reason I decided to download the remastered Wing that’s been coming out, and the animation is just so much more horrible. So at least 00 looks pretty!
And by the way Jason, Patrick isn’t dead at all, expect him to Orange-Kun season 2 all the way as masked man Lockon’s new sidekick.
That or I’m hoping for a timeslip 10 years in the future with a fully grown Felt.
Well, the only thing I hope for is not a Code Geass-like cliffhanger at the end of episode 25. If something big has to happen, please let us know and without a doubt about it. If Alejandro dies, right; if Setsuna drifts to space on his Exia, right; but not a fucking explotion like the one we saw on the preview…
Fox and Wolf? Don’t you mean Pit?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5bmGNQAMcQ
Hiyayaya! Hiyayaya! Hiyayaya!
Epi, a timeslip Felt sounds very appealing. It doesn’t even need to be 10 years. A 18/20-year-old Felt would be more than enough. At 14, she already matches up well with Christine (Sumeragi’s melonpan, however, are just insane). What Felt needs to do now is take Chris’ last words to heart and dress better (maybe even use some of Chris’ old clothes?).
Can we make a comparison on how Sunrise will handle the 6-month break for Gundam 00 by how well they handle Code Geass’ second season?
You know… I didn’t really feel ANYTHING when those characters died. 00 built up cast size common for a Gundam series but have only half the amount of episodes. Each character only get wee bit of screentime without thier backstory really fleshed out.
So when they killed off all those folks this episode it kinda felt like they’re just going “blarrgh, me dead.”
i’m feeling as distant with this one as i was with the end of Seed. in fact, i may not even care when more of the 00 saga comes out, just like i didn’t care when Seed Destiny came out. i’m going to finish this season off, let it die, finish snatching up the newest DVD-rips of original MSG from Nyoro~n, and ponder why they couldn’t make the same goodness that 08th MS Team, 0080: War in the Pocket, 0083: Stardust Memory, X and Turn A were.
If the writers are going to bring in the convicts/mechanics bunch of CB rejects in (“Fresca” or whatever they’re called) for season 2, they had to clear house sometime about now. The whole series has been marking time since about episode 10 or so, just so the writers could do that.
Trainwrecks all the way huh? Well hey, at least Sunrise is continuing its new tradition of producing your craptastic, less than spectacular Gundam series. My guess for that is that half of the pilots that died will be reborned as Gundam Meisters ver 2.0 with extra newtype powers that can see the future 5minutes ahead…which will then be used to peek on the new underage and melonpanrific bridge bunnies when they all bath in an onsen in a fanservice episode next season…^^
Well hey, all they want is to sell more toys…greedy bastards they are aight? ^^
I see Corner surviving his encounter with Exia, going back to Earth to pull his political strings, only to get careless and overstep his bounds. At this point, the named players within the three military factions are going to come to an agreement that this is not a positive turn of events. Graham, Soma, and the Colonel (maybe even Patrick, if he behaves) then proceed to stomp a mud-hole in Corner’s plans under the careful C&C of Katie.
@ weirdofu
I’ll remember your words.
With all this talk, I don’t remember a SUNRISE series in the last few years (IdolMaster, Code Geass, ZegaPain, Mai Otome, Gundam Seed destiny, Mai Hime) with a satisfactory ending…. maybe Geass… neh… even that one.
Oh well, four days and six hours more to know the truth.
It’s depressing as all heck. I actually was enjoying this series, and episode 21…well, that’s where sunrise drove the show off the cliff. They really could have done SOMETHING with it. You’re exactly right Jason. Sunrise had a hella lotta chips and pissed them all away. The moon was brilliant, and they mucked it up.
And they killed the wrong trinities. Kill NENA, please for the LOVE OF GOD. Johan wore shorts and Michael was entertaining. I actually liked them, probably because they were more interesting than most of the main characters. They killed the wrong CB pilots too.
I don’t how they’re going to salvage it. Maybe this bloodbath was part of the plan. I sure hope so.
I don’t think its entirely fair to say Sunrise has tossed all those chips. Certainly we won’t be seeing anything this season but I think somewhere on a napkin in Sunrise there is a plan with some kind of direction. Patrick isn’t dead, and Ali isn’t either, since we haven’t had a proper Ali-Setsuna battle and nothing would get Setsuna riled more than to know Lockon’s death was futile. H/Allelujah will get his duel as well, I’m sure, and it would be a waste to cash in on that fight now. If Sunrise has actually ever watched MSG they might even consider a repeat of Lalah’s death with Soma-Sergei-H/Allelujah. After all, that fight is really the only thing his character has that keeps him a somewhat relevant character.
I think it’s safe to say that Corner won’t die next episode, not without his little friend dying first. He is clearly the villain who must be ultimately overcome in the next season. Setsuna will probably either lose his mobile suit or take so much damage that he is forced into hiding/recovery, and the middle east seems like the ideal place to start him next season, bringing Marina into a more central position in the plot, Saji seems like Sunrise’s answer to the complaints about Shinn in Destiny- namely that he appears from nowhere and his character development consisted solely of the same explosion and rolling-down-a-cliff scene repeated twice per episode. We sit here now wondering what the deuce he’s doing in this series, but its only so that there won’t be another Shinn-class mistake. I have my money on Corner picking him in the new allegiances draft.
Graham’s disappearance isn’t unusual either- Char did the same thing in MSG, and his absence, though helped out with enjoyable villains like Ramba Ral and the Black Tri-Stars, only served to help him in the long run. Char was so enjoyable because he was always fighting better than the Gundam in an inferior suit thanks to his superior skill, but by the time he disappeared the Gundam was already catching up. If the Gundam had caught up with Char in the first quarter of the original Gundam, Char would have ended up more like Patrick, or Jerid from Zeta Gundam- the obviously inferior pilot who compensates for skill with tenacity, madness and/or a new mobile suit every week. Giving the ‘No Zaku!’ role to Ramba Ral, the Tri Stars and other characters was a clever way to preserve the integrity of Char for later use and yet still show that the Gundam was getting increasingly effective at kicking ass. I think we are seeing the same thing happen with Graham. Patrick has done his job- he’s proved that the GN-X isn’t going to be enough for final victory, but Graham hasn’t lost face in the process- we still remember him for kicking ass in a Flag while ‘these idiots can’t even win in pseudo-Gundams’. Rather than tossing his chip, I’d say this is one chip Sunrise genuinely understands the value of.
The Gundams all needed to be destroyed or damaged beyond repair, so that they can be replaced with newer, more powerful suits in the season to come. We see the same thing in every Gundam, most noticeably Gundam Wing. I think the days of intervention and political intrigue, at least in the form we saw at the start of 00, culminating in the Union-Celestial being stand-off in South America, are at an end. I don’t think it’s because Sunrise is tossing the concept so much as they are trying to move the plot to another level. Whether or not they succeed, we can’t really say until the series ends.
I think this series still has a decent amount of potential, and it all hangs on how Sunrise moves the plot from this recent slaughter. Maybe the series will suffer from a half-year gap between these deaths and the next episodes, but it need not necessarily be so. I remember reading your post about truly meaningful anime deaths, and the difference between a death at the end of a series and those which take place mid-series. 00 might suffer from the fact that even if these deaths are mid series they are at the end of the season, and there will be a long gap between the impact on the viewer and the next episode, even if the deaths have lasting effects on the characters. Would Kamina’s death have been as significant if there were a 6 month gap between it and the next episode, assuming everything else was the same?
Damn that post was longer than I expected…
It was sad that Christina was killed. She actually one of my favorite characters in the series after I seen her in a swimsuit. What was really sad was the fact of much value of her status went up just because she look good in a tank top with a thong.
Not sure what you guys were expecting, how else was this going to end? 3 reasons this had to happen.
1. Need to make more models to se… ERRRR – creatively design and they had already gone the super sayian power-up route with the current Gundams.
2. Everyone doesn’t care or hates all the current pilots. Blowing them up means new cast and rampant speculation that the antagonist side pilots (I.e. the ones everyone loves) may become Meisters in S2.
3. Even Sunrise has decided in almost every single one of their series lately it’s a good idea to kill off auxiliary characters toward the end of the season. Seriously contrast the last 4-6 Code Geass episodes to how Gundam 00 is ending S1 and count the similarities. And considering how popular CG is in the blogosphere and 2ch… prbs not the worst idea.
>>Consider Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann….Kittan saw his comrades fall one by one….and he became a minor chip that yielded a huge payoff when he took King Kittan and went giga drill. That then in turn was cashed in and became an ever bigger chip in allowing Simon to evolve Gurren Lagann once more.
and the insert song comes to mind..
raw! raw! fight the power!!!
Damn it!
Al Ali Sarches and Patrick are MIA, damn it, Lockon’s death for now is meangless.
Somewhere, someone watched this episode and the first thought that came to mind when Christina died was “well, at least she got penetrated by something.”
Just a few hours for last episode’s airing…
It’s over… and Setsuna’s MIA
*Looks at what happened to Graham*
Oh go fuck yourselves, Sunrise.
I didn’t really care about the characters dying either, but I think that’s to be expected. I’m just pissed I can’t hear Miki Shinichirou’s voice coming from the mouth of a Youji Kudou/Kurz Weber hybrid. Sigh.
Doesn’t blowing up most of the Gundams means that they need an entirely new toy line for next season..?