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Gundam Movie Trilogy |
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n the year Universal Century 0079, a coalition of renegade space colonies calling itself the Duchy of Zeon declares independence from the Earth-based Federation. The Federation attempts to reassert control over the rebels, and the following eight-month war of attrition wipes out half the population on both sides. On the Side 7 space station, Federation engineers design a new type of mecha, called Gundam, to turn the tide of battle. But a surprise attack by a pair of ambitious Zeon spies destroys the Federation base. Side 7's civilian residents are forced to take refuge on the Federation cruiser White Base. Amaro Ray, the 16-year-old son of one of the Gundam designers, takes control of the only completed Gundam unit, while the inexperienced civilians fill in for theWhite Base's dead or wounded crew.
The White Base struggles away from Side 7, harassed by Zeon commanders determined to capture or destroy the Gundam. The civilian crew proves surprisingly effective--so effective that when they arrive at a new Federation site, they're denied military relief and told to press on to Earth. They're intercepted en route by Commander Char Aznable, Zeon's legendary "Red Comet," who deflects the White Base during re-entry and forces it to land deep within Zeon-occupied territory. It slowly makes its way back to the Federation, one battle at a time, in the process killing a member of the Duchy's royal family and becoming a focus of both vengeful hatred and superstitious awe.
Meanwhile, Amaro proves himself to be an astonishingly gifted pilot, despite his complete lack of training. He's also a moody and sullen boy, prone to emotional breakdowns and sulky tantrums whenever he's most needed to defend his friends. Like some of his ship's other young crew members, he seems to be a "Newtype," a person with special mental abilities who may be part of a new stage in human evolution. Newtype powers might explain how a group of untested civilians can outfight Zeon's best, but they also cause a great deal of strain among the White Base's crew, as Amaro proves incapable of dealing with the military discipline that has no use for his frivolous emotions.
The heart of an empire
Like Star Trek, the initial 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam TV series suffered low ratings and was canceled, but developed a cult following in reruns and eventually became the seed of a vast universe of spin-offs. Among them are the sequel miniseries Gundam 0080 and Gundam 0083, recently made available on videotape in the United States, and the alternate-world story Gundam Wing, which the Cartoon Network will begin airing in March 2000. The Gundam Movie Trilogy Box Set is pieced together from the original TV show, with some sequences reanimated, particularly in the third film. All three together combine into a seven-hour-plus story arc that runs from the beginning of the Federation/Zeon war to its end.
The movies' art is primitive, the colors drab, and the dubbed voices mostly flat and generic. Still, they're a blast of instant nostalgia for the anime space-operas that created the first generation of American otaku, the fans who were captivated by their first encounter with animated stories more textually sophisticated than The Superfriends. The complex storyline, which doesn't hesitate to let major characters die for dramatic effect (writer/director Yoshiyuki Tomino's industry nickname in the 1970s was "Kill-'Em-All Tomino"), has its weak spots, but there's plenty of drama and action and a solid moral core. As with the other Gundam stories, these explore in realistic detail how war makes children into capable, mature adults, but simultaneously turns gentle people into single-minded killers. Fighting for a cause can be exciting and gratifying--it would be hypocritical for Gundam to deny that, given its focus on desperate battles and last-minute rescues--but in Tomino's world, soldiers are motivated more often by bloodlust, ambition or a need for revenge than by patriotism or political idealism.
The Gundam movies are a critical piece of history for Gundam, and this is the core series that informs all the others. Later installments were better animated and better written (these movies veer towards the bathetic, particularly when Amaro's in one of his moods) but this is still the best place to get a thorough grounding in where Gundam--and mecha epics in general--came from.
This series' message might be best summed up as "Killing people, even in war, is wrong, but failing to do your duty is worse." Tough lessons for both its kid cast and its presumed kid audience. -- Tasha
Big gooey lumps of well-aged cheese
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In Spaceketeers, from Captain Harlock creator Leiji Matsumoto, the Princess Aurora is selected as the only being in the galaxy "possessing the strong force of goodness" necessary to stop the "strange galactic emanation" that's mutating peaceful races into hostile monsters. An arrogant, volatile cyborg named Jesse Dart is freed from a lunar prison to protect her, but his penchant for killing his enemies terrifies her and she rejects his help. Unfortunately, her goodness isn't much protection against giant pirates and yellow space ooze, and she and Dart are forced to come to terms.
Gaiking features a horde of aliens attempting to take over Earth because their own planet is being sucked into a black hole. A promising rookie pitcher is asked to pilot Gaiking, a powerful fighting robot capable of defeating the invaders, but he refuses repeatedly on the grounds that he just wants to play baseball. Unfortunately, the aliens have already broken his wrist and he's incapable of throwing a ball--though not incapable of piloting a super-mecha and getting his revenge.
Starvengers also features a baseball player--this one with the unlikely nickname "Foul Tip"--who's recruited to pilot a super transforming robot against an evil alien invasion. Foul Tip is stronger and more resilient than his fellow recruits, despite his dense manner and his constant need for food. Unfortunately, he's also slow-witted, bumbling, and not particularly interested in fighting.
Grandizer is a Go Nagai-inspired story about a surly farm boy who's actually a displaced warrior from a planet devastated by the evil Vegans. Johnny, a.k.a. Orion Quest, stole a Vegan super-weapon and fled to Earth so he'd never have to fight again. Unfortunately, the Vegans now want to take over Earth, and the local hero-wannabes just aren't up to the job of battling the Vegans' monstrous space turtles.
B-movie bonanza
The title of this set is ample warning that the contents are going to be cheese, pure and simple. And make no mistake, they're bad--Toei Animation's product of the time blends the visual crudity of Space Ghost with all the dramatic subtlety of The Herculoids. Gaiking in particular suffers from abysmally slow pacing with huge dead spots, while Starvengers is laughable where it should be dramatic, and irritating where it should be funny.
Still, all four of these shows have their moments. Jesse Dart, armed with his "astro-bat" and a planet-sized attitude, gives Spaceketeers some kitschy life, while Foul Tip's doltish but affable defeat of the local judo and kendo teams is worth a chuckle. Grandizer in particular is a hoot, both for its romance-novel hero, who demonstrates his inner trauma by staring broodingly into conveniently timed thunderstorms and playing bad guitar solos at night under a tree, and for the bizarre villain General Bellicose, whose face inexplicably splits open to reveal a screaming miniature witch. Grandizer's seemingly endless supply of pilot-announced attacks and its funky robot-partially-wedged-into-a-spaceship design give the whole show a cheerfully campy monster-movie vibe that all these shows share to greater or lesser degrees.
And that's not all they share. It's amazing how much these four shows have in common. Most notably, each has at least one heavily eyelashed, spike-haired hero who looks exactly like Speed Racer in a bad wig, and each has at least one hero who doesn't want to fight but is the world's only hope against an evil spaceborne menace. Three of the four heroes have giant robot ships of unprecedented power, three of the four have identical cute kid sidekicks, and all four were recruited by brilliant scientists. At times--particularly when the cute kid starts bubbling with excitement over the idea of fighting the evil menace--it's hard to keep track of which tape's in the VCR.
There are Force Five addicts out there, but they mostly seem to be riding a nostalgia buzz from their childhoods. It's hard to imagine anyone above the age of eight becoming a fan of these shows. Still, there are probably also B-movie buffs and giant-robot loyalists who would like these as well. Everyone else: you've been warned.
It's hard to tell whether the original scripts or the English translations are at fault for some of the more awkward writing in these series, but intentional or not, there are a few surprise laughs. My favorite was a narrator's assertion that a hero had mobilized "in order to save Earth from a surprise attack by the forces of some alien saucer fleet." -- Tasha
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