It is the year U.C. 0096, three years has passed since the end the second Neo-Zeon war which ended with influential Newtype pliots Amuro Ray and Char Azanable being listed as K.I.A. after Neo-Zeon's last attack on Earth. This story introduces us to 16 year old Banagher Links a young engineering student living on Industrial 7 space colony, when remnants of Neo-Zeon called "The Sleeves" arrive at the colony to retrive "The Key to Laplace Box" from the elusive Vist Foundation. Banagher saves the life of a mysterious girl name Audrey Burne, who he has an uncontrollable devotion to help her in her quest to talk to the head of the Vist Foundation.
When the Sleeves decided to try to take "The Key" by force and starting fighting Earth Federation forces inside and outside the colony, the confusion and destruction around him leads Banagher in the cockpit of the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam, and the beginning of him learning he's past and he's destiny in opening Laplace's Box, that could either destroy relations to space or forever bring peace.
Episode 1: "Day of The Unicorn"
There is one thing this episode had in spades that looks like it'll be a staple for every episode is the Mech action, I mean you can't have a Gundam series without Mobile Suit battles, but Unicorn does it with a classic meets hi-def style that out shines even the fights in Gundam 00 (which I also highly enjoyed). I really think it has to do with the Universal Century's type of Mobile Suits and their weaponry of just beam sabers, beam rifles, missiles, and machine guns, nothing too powerful, battles being won more on the skills and tactics of the pilots then on machines capabilities and most importantly there was only ever one Gundam at a time unlike in the Alternate Gundam universes (Wing, G, SEED, 00) that usually had anywhere from 4-10 Gundams on one or both sides dominating the battlefield. So after saying that I can say this OVA series not only is a new story set in the Universal Century but also pays great respect to the type of storytelling, character motivations and mech desgin and fighting that was laid before in the previous U.C. Gundam tales of the One Year War, Zeta Gundam, and Char's Counterattack.
This episode introduces the new antagonist of Full Frontal who is called "The Second Coming of Char" cause of he's ability of piloting he's red mobile suit the Sinanju at three times the normal speed of other mobile suits, appears to be a Newtype and also of he's blond hair and red uniform. People also recognize he's voice and even when unmasked looks identical to Char Aznable right down to the scar between he's eyes, but could Char have survived the event of the Psycoframe fueled pushing of the Axis asteroid out of Earth's atmosphere three years ago? I really loved hearing and seeing Full Frontal in this episode, he's english voice actor, Keith Silverstein, does an excellent job sounding like the One Year War Char, but I wish they could of got Michael Kopsa who provided Char's vioce for the original series and the Char's Counterattack movie back cause Full Frontal sounded great as charismatic pilot and captain, but is missing that great leader and Newtype idealist tone that should of been there that would of made us better believe this is the same Char.
Episode 3: "The Ghost of Laplace"A lot of cool stuff in this episode, like appearances of enemy mobile suits from previous series like the Dreissen, Geara Doga, Drac-C, and Gaza-D for the fans to find, for me it was awesome seeing the new Delta-Plus is action, which is an evolution of the Hyaku Shiki with an added Waverider flight mode. I'm not 100% sure but I'm pretty sure the Kshatriya's Psycoframe cockpit is the same exact one form Char's Sazabi's from the way it was described, so it adds a little more possible evidence to the Char/Full Frontal connection. I have to give props to ECOAS Commander Daguza just like in episode 1 he's not afraid to straight up just go and shoot a mobile suit in the face with a hand held rocket launcher, this time at Full Frontal's Sinanju. Another great moment in this episode is getting some background on Marida Cruz, which is a great connection to the ZZ Gundam tv series.
I know my "reviews" haven't revealed a lot about the actual story of what happen in each episode, I wanted to stick to what I liked about each episode, and opinion on things cause if you are a Gundam fan then you most likely already seen or read up on what happened or know from information of the original novel stories and also didn't want to spoil to much for any that haven't seen it yet. If you haven't, then if your any kind of Gundam fan, or Mech anime fan you should definitely need to watch these, it scores 10 out of 10 on ever possible scale of rating.
No comments:
Post a Comment