I have watched an unhealthy amount of Gundam in the last two years, my perspective on GQuuuuuuX is therefore that of a fan, I can’t take it purely in isolation and I don’t especially try to, so if you want someone with fresh eyes to give you their take then this is not that. Also, if you’re a fan of the franchise and just looking for a tl;dr on whether this is worth catching up to, I would say yes, as long as you’re not a Unicorn hater, or someone who hates the concept of having Zeon characters be the focus of anything where they’re not all shown to be pure incarnations of evil with every moment of screen-time. With that said, the review (spoilers included) is: below.
Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is a milestone series for me, the first time I got to watch a new (main) Gundam series week-to-week, the first time I got to do so connected to the wider fandom, and the first time Haro has been seen in a beanie to the best of my knowledge. On the strength of those facts and all the feelings and desires associated with them, this anime was already carrying a fair bit of baggage before it had even actually started, and that’s before even considering how much it (sometimes to its own detriment) leans on the decades of anime that precede it within the franchise, and the expectations and issues that that course of action brings with it. So suffice it to say that GQuuuuuuX is a lot of things, and had to be and do a lot of things for a lot of people within the 12 (!) episodes it was allotted. This review is an account of my personal perspective on how well (or at times poorly) it manages the task of juggling the different demands imposed upon it by fans and frankly by the writers themselves. But before that: some context.
This is a story set in the Universal Century, which is the “main” Gundam timeline, except it’s also kinda not a story set in the Universal Century because a time traveler farted on a Butterfly somewhere and the world of this story diverged in a major way, to say the least. Though we do still have both the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon forming the familiar backdrop of it all, at least initially, with the somewhat atypical choice to centre the anime’s perspective quite firmly within Zeon. To cement its position adjacent to the main timeline, we get a revolving door of glup shito cameos and one-off characters involved for one reason or the other in Clan Battles, which is basically this story’s version of the duels from G-Witch, giving it a relatively low-stakes justification for having people shoot at each other while piloting giant robots.
Because of my love for G-Witch and the superficial similarity in having its protagonist (Machu) involved in these sorts of duels, I subconsciously expected her to be Suletta part 2, which she almost couldn’t be further from. We don’t see an awful lot of her home life but we see plenty enough to learn that while she wasn’t exactly wealthy she grew up in a privileged social position in a neutral space colony, with the expectations placed on her by her mother and the environment she was raised in making her feel a very teenage desire to find somewhere or something away from her mundane life to truly come into her own. Nyaan, the other lead character, is in a diametrically opposed, much more precarious situation as a refugee from a colony destroyed in the war. She has no family, no framework for how to live her life, and yet a similar longing for freedom. But what exactly: is freedom? If the show is about anything, at a thematic level, then it is about answering that question, and our leads striving for the answer is what eventually unwittingly places them at the centre of a conflict for the future of the Earth and its surrounding space colonies.
Thanks to how immersed I was in fandom spaces and conversations throughout this anime’s run I came across a number of people who expressed dissatisfaction with the character development (or lack thereof), the lack of narrative focus, and the nostalgia bait of it all. Those criticisms all fundamentally stem from the fact the story’s focus is split between the overarching 0079-tinged political plays that precipitate the conflict that takes over the anime’s final stretch, and the duels that Machu and Nyaan become entangled in prior to that stage of the story which establish the main inter-personal relationship/conflict,,, and while I understand that dissatisfaction, and the finale ended up converting me much more to that perspective, for a good while it felt like the characters were the most compelling and most important part of the puzzle for what defined my enjoyment of this show on its own merits. You don’t get a whole lot of their direct perspective in terms of your typical anime inner monologue, Machu does not provide narration to the act of her eating potato chips, but it’s written in a way that doesn’t really necessitate that. There’s a difference between something like Solo Leveling that’ll entirely rely on you to fill the blanks with your own experiences to get any kind of emotional payoff from the various points where the author didn’t bother to write any real emotional arc or relationship into the text of the story,,,, and something where those aspects are shown to you but maybe not emphasised to the extent you’re accustomed to. For a lot of its run, I would say that GQuuuuuuX landed in the latter camp, whether that was in something as simple as Nyaan’s line about only making food for people she loves with the context of her having made that effort a few episodes prior, the aforementioned beanie-Haro literally reading minds more than once without the other character involved even realising it, etc. etc. There were things to appreciate.
There’s also some things to be apprehensive over though, and it is true that from a narrative perspective this story may have benefited from not relying so much on one-off characters and cameos, I do not personally categorically hate the inclusion of something like the Psycho-Gundam or a character like Bask, but I agree that it is a somewhat gimmicky shortcut to getting a reaction or a level of care that probably wouldn’t exist if an identical scenario were presented Without those names/legacy characters attached. And the proof of that is in how inconsequential some (but not all) of the other side characters tend to feel when used in a similar capacity, I could not tell you the names of the Unicum, or of whoever it was with Deux (actually just remembered,,,,, a glup shito by the name of “Gates Cappa” or something), or the guys who hang around Annqi, and on and on. But I personally am of the view that those shortcomings can be excused by considering not necessarily what the story Could be, since any story could theoretically do and be anything (I mean, why isn’t this a slice of life with an ensemble cast and the giant robots being waiters at a maid cafe serving patrons with little grips in their giant feet?). Rather, the more meaningful question is what the story is trying to do and what it is using its characters as a vehicle to convey, and whether it’s any good at That. And that brings me back to talking about: freedom,,,,, as well as potentially some more meta stuff.
We get a few different perspectives on what it means to be free over this show’s run, from Kycilia’s view of freedom as strength, Lalah’s fixation on freedom in escapism, Nyaan’s freedom through acceptance/validation, Chalia’s freedom being an expression of nihilism. There’s a lot to unpack with each of these, and how all of them are ultimately shackled so comprehensively by their vision of freedom they’re unable to follow any other path, in some cases at the expense of their own lives or humanity. With all these different perspectives Machu and Nyaan are pulled in different directions and you can see the gears turning whenever they’re confronted by someone or a scenario that reshapes them in real-time, from episode to episode. And, while I certainly felt a level of discomfort at having this story draw on characters like Char, Lalah, and to an extent even Amuro,,,, my dear sweet Amuro,,,,, I think it underscores what the anime wants to get across, that it portrays these (and other legacy characters) as doomed to conflict, hardship and tragedy, not through the hand of fate, but by their own unwillingness or inability to see beyond themselves essentially ensuring that they can’t see a different future, a hopeful future,,,, even in a world where it being a parallel timeline kinda Should mean that, they’re still: stuck.
All that is why the scene where Machu has to leave Lalah behind in a hurry felt like a watershed moment for me, the whole episode did really, because for so long prior to that point all she can think about is finally going to Earth and being free, and all she sees once she gets to earth is: more of the same. An environment that’s different, but still stifling, still literally and metaphorically bound by the same gravity, with people unable to break themselves free of it. The symbolism of that brothel (?) burning with Lalah nominally free of it but stuck in the same worldview is a great vehicle for that. I understand being unhappy with them using these particular characters for that purpose, the feeling that this portrayal isn’t necessarily true to who they are,,,, I get that, and I did feel at points that the show would’ve been better off using entirely new characters as much as possible, especially in those more central roles, but I am ultimately not too unhappy with Mobile Suit Gundam having characters from Mobile Suit Gundam in it, that’s just my personal tolerance, and for new viewers it provides incentive to learn more about them by going and watching the original, which is explicitly what Tsurumaki has said he hopes to achieve. But now that I’ve spent a while slathering praise onto GQuuuuuuX, it is time to talk about some of my own actual misgivings here, which stem largely from the fact I am a Gundam fan at this point, and I have mixed feelings about how it uses (and seems to misunderstand?) certain foundational aspects of the franchise that mean a lot more to me especially.
So, when I got round to starting off 0079 in the immediate aftermath of Suletta Mercury rewiring my brain forever, and for a while into my UC watchthrough, newtypes were actually one of my least favourite things about Gundam. I won’t go into spoiler territory for anything here, but suffice it to say that it very often felt like an asspull or some kinda stupidity whenever in a climactic confrontation a lead character would almost go Super Saiyan and tap into weird borderline supernatural abilities that weren’t really established or fleshed out in any way prior or afterwards. It felt contrived, like something the writers would use to bail themselves out and move the plot where it needs to be without figuring out how to do so believably for what the story’s already shown to be possible. I had this problem a Lot, and I had it somewhat often. But somewhere along the way it kinda all just snapped into place, with Huge help from watching Gundam Wing, Gundam X, and Gundam Unicorn almost consecutively. With the perspective I gained from those I came to realise something critically important: newtypes are not real. Not in the sense that they come from a work of fiction because obviously, but in the sense that the reason their abilities seem so fluid and the term seems so ill-defined is that they don’t exist in the form that either the Federation or Zeon would like to propagandise or exploit. There is no coming evolution of special psychic superhumans to chart a path to the future. Instead of what you can do, being a newtype is much more about who you are at heart and how you choose to interact with the world. Some people have more of an affinity than others, but anyone who can sincerely reach out to and try to understand even their “enemies”, for the sake of a hopeful future, can be a newtype. In other words: anyone can shape the future, not just The Chosen or even necessarily the strong-willed.
The “miracles” that occur at various points in Gundam aren’t from the hand of an individual, but the result of a collective human desire for a better world, at times funneled in an opportune moment through a single outlet. That’s why I appreciate that a character like Kycilia, though she may otherwise have some affinity (at least this version of her, who at least twice notices traces of the “Kira-Kira”), is nonetheless seemingly unable to experience the full light of it in the way that our leads and a couple of other characters do, Gundam as a whole is littered with characters I would similarly class as failed newtypes, regardless of what precognition or whatever else they’re shown to be capable of. An issue with the treatment of newtypes here, for me, is in the fact it veers too much into the realm of just having a character be able to do whatever the plot needs them to do. Whether that’s Chalia spotting Kycilia in 4K across the battlefield, or a character single-handedly producing a dimensional rift. I do not like “newtype” being used interchangeably with someone individually having special abilities, nor do I like those abilities feeling kinda bullshit. There is a case to be made that this and all the “zeknova” stuff is all pretty much the natural progression from the seed planted by prior entries, notably ones like Unicorn and Narrative, and honestly 0079 itself, and before the absolute shitstorm that was this show’s finale, I would feel inclined to agree with that, in fact I’ve probably posted that exact opinion before on bsky. But the finale,,,,, oh lord, the finale.
I won’t bore you with every minor detail of every moment that occurs, nor will I even try to play devil’s advocate and rationalise some of the more ridiculous aspects of it, but what I wanna do is talk about two things it does Especially poorly, first from the perspective of a slighted Gundam fan (interspersed with why: you, the casual viewer should even care), and then with regard to how it handles its characters. There is a point in this last episode where Machu says something to the effect of there being no such thing as a newtype who needs to be protected by others, this being almost immediately after Chalia expresses his view that true newtypes are those who give everything in fighting for their own freedom. So,,,,,, fan perspective first: that’s some bullshit, it is a betrayal of basically everything that exists across the entire franchise. [character name withheld] did not tank an extinction-level asteroid for his own freedom, nor did any of the people in the vicinity stop shooting each other to help deflect an Asteroid for the sake of his freedom. I struggle to think of a Gundam protagonist who ever got into their mobile suit with their only thoughts being of themself, even the literal: villains who occasionally become POV characters. But more pressing than that, it undermines so much of what I talked about earlier from within GQuuuuuuX itself. It adopts the social darwinism of Zeon uncritically as though it were both factual and desirable, after having Just shown how Kycilia’s resolve and her entangling of freedom and strength in a similar way had made her so unflinchingly evil that she would kill her own brother without a second thought or a hint of remorse (not that Gihren wasn’t awful too, don’t misconstrue me) and manipulate and use a literal child (i.e. Nyaan) if it’d add to her own personal strength. This is the most baffling, cynical, nonsensical development you’d think this finale had to offer, but: no! There’s more! And I’m not even going to acknowledge the randomly giant RX-78-2 in the latter portion, or the cameo from a voice actor whose personal life should be enough to rule him out of a role like this. No, I am going to restrict myself to talking a bit about Shuji.
When I started drafting this review, and in fact until this very moment (after having watched the finale), I thought it’d be funny if I just didn’t mention Shuji at all until the very last line, because he really is just bland and uninteresting to me, so the less said about him: the better. But I feel compelled to address why he doesn’t work as a character, and why that consequently makes Nyaan and Machu weaker as characters. I’m not certain I’ve mentioned this in a review before but my personal framework for whether a character is good/engaging or not (and you don’t have to agree with me), has to do with putting them to the test by trying to answer three basic questions, and seeing whether those answers are satisfactory to me. The questions are: What do they want? Why do they want it? How do they plan to get it? The second question also speaks a bit to who they are, fundamentally. With this framework in mind,,,,,, Shuji is nothing. We learn in the end that what he wants is to free Lalah, the why of it is that he loves her, and the how of his plan involves killing her or something. Could you build an interesting character around these traits? Quite possibly, but the thing about it is this goes against what I previously cited as a strength of this anime. None of this is necessarily shown to us, Shuji has absolutely nothing going on, acting as more or less a blank slate until this reveal where we get his reasoning but none of the actual time was spent to lay it out or make it even vaguely convincing or compelling.
I’m not certain they’re ever even in the same frame as each other, I am absolutely certain she never mentions him even in passing, even with her interdimensional knowledge, and yet I’m supposed to care somehow that he’s here out of: love, and ultimately leaves her to her escapism anyway. It’s like answering a question in a test for 10 points and only bothering to write one line. And the fact that Shuji is so shallow, makes the fixation that Machu and Nyaan have towards him for this show’s Entire run both frustrating and confusing. At a point it kinda makes sense if you consider him as their vision of freedom because of when he came into their lives, but that reasoning starts to wear thin after we’ve already had them confronted with so much more about themselves and the world,,,, I’m maybe not upset they wouldn’t want him to die once he was in front of them again, but what does it add to either the characters or the story for them to be yelling at each other about Shuji of all things in their final confrontation with each other before the finale? I know there’s people who don’t find value in this, but I genuinely wonder if this show passes the bechdel test, because why do we have to spend time on this shallow, random romance when there’s more raw tension and potential for meaningful interaction between Machu and Nyaan once they’ve gone their separate ways and ultimately reconvened. There seems to be very little reflection or growth of any kind past a certain point, like they just flatlined as characters for the sake of the least interesting path they could possibly take.
So I could go on, but the point has been made: GQuuuuuuX is as mixed a bag as mixed bags get, but if you squint your eyes and don’t pay too much attention to what it actually has to Say, then for a while it makes for some cool viewing. For one thing, earlier praise aside, the show also looks great, I edited out a section of this review where I just talk about that for a while because honestly I am at this moment feeling a 6/10 for this, and I do not want to spend much more time talking about a 6/10 series. It’s like a dumpster fire, but the dumpster has a cool coat of paint on it and the fire is also mostly contained as long as you don’t look under the lid. I liked this for the most part from week to week but I have absolutely zero desire whatsoever to return to it, and I think this review has been pretty balanced and reflective of things about it I enjoyed until it gave me the worst episode in the entire franchise to contend with. If you have any thoughts about any of this, I may not love this anime, but I love (talking about) Gundam so I’m open to feedback
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