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Mobile Suit Gundam: |
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n the beginning of the ever-growing Gundam series, volatile, self-centered teenager Amaro Ray discovered he was a Newtype—a gifted psychic at the cutting edge of human evolution—just in time to save a damaged ship from the war between Earth's Federation and the space-dwelling Zeon rebels. In the process, he encountered his nemesis-to-be, Zeon Commander Char Aznable. Ultimately, Gundam series like Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ found Amaro and Char working together, as it became obvious that there were more than two sides to the war.
In the Gundam movie Char's Counterattack, which takes place 14 years after the original Gundam movies, Zeon has fallen and been reborn as Neo Zeon, with Char as its leader. AEUG, the group Char and Amaro (here called Amuro) served together, has similarly died, and Amuro now works for the Federation space force Londo Bell. As the film begins, Char is in the midst of obliterating the Federation capital with a gigantic asteroid. He intends to repeat the process by dropping a far larger mass onto Earth, rendering the planet uninhabitable. His stated reasons for this vary from scene to scene—sometimes he seems to want to punish all Earthlings for the suffering they've inflicted on the off-planet "spacenoids," sometimes he seems to think that pushing all humanity into space will help them evolve, and sometimes he claims he's doing it to save the poor polluted planet in the long term. No matter which justification Char uses, though, Amuro doesn't seem to buy it.
In typical Gundam fashion, Char's Counterattack contains a huge number of cannon-fodder characters and side plots, along with a great deal of political manipulation, negotiation and betrayal, some noble-but-coldhearted pontificating, and a few aborted romances. The most significant side story concerns Quess Paraya, a deeply obnoxious teenager whose father, a Federation vice minister, is on a secret mission to negotiate with Zeon. A childish Newtype incapable of seeing anything past her own momentary impulses, Quess is momentarily interested in Amuro, but when he fails to throw himself at her, she runs away with Char and casually begins working to help destroy Earth.
Too much, too fast—and then too late
Quess is the biggest weakness of Char's Counterattack: She's so resolutely hateful, shallow and immature that it's a wonder anyone can spend five minutes near her without shoving her out an airlock, and yet young men on both sides of the war fall over themselves to win her. Somewhere under these unlikely fixations is a more subtle point about how Newtypes are drawn to each other, and how they're more emotional and intense than "normal" people. But it's buried under Quess' relentless squalling, as she pulls idiot stunts like rocketing into the middle of a key battle, seeking Char so she can tattle about how mean his mistress is to her.
The only advantage to Quess' story is that it provides a solid, recognizable focus amid a constantly shifting sea of characters and subplots. At times, especially during the first third of the movie, Char's Counterattack falls into an almost mechanical pattern of perfunctory scenes that update plotlines and report on various characters one by one. Except for Quess (and, to some degree, Amuro, who's no less cranky and willful at 30 than he was at 16), few of the characters show much emotion until the film's climax, and the plot might feel plodding if it weren't cramming so much into so short a space.
Char's Counterattack puts some effort into updating the design of the Gundam characters; Char in particular, with his brushed-back hair and consciously statesmanlike look, is showing his age. So is the animation—Counterattack was released in 1988, and while it's a suitable update from the franchise's early days, it still looks flat and busy compared to other projects of the time. Mostly, though, Counterattack is critical for the climax it brings to the Amuro-vs.-Char story. It's a keystone to a decade of Gundam, a crucial point for a beloved space opera. Gundam addicts—the only viewers who are actually likely to follow all the myriad twists, in spite of the excellent Gundam primer Bandai included with the DVD—will find this beautifully packaged, heavily dramatic film an indispensable part of their collections. Non-Gundam fans are unlikely to make it past the first barrage of names, dates, faces and places.
The theme of Char's Counterattack seems to be "people do really stupid things sometimes." The Federation politicians that hand Char the weapons he's going to use on them, the pack of boys panting after the contemptuous Quess, Quess herself. And of course there's Amuro, who runs into Char while out driving, and leaps out of the driver's seat to attack his old enemy, leaving his startled passengers to fend for themselves. No one in this movie is exactly at their intellectual peak. — Tasha
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