Congratulations to Mobile Suit Gundam 00 for being the first Gundam show I watched for reasons that weren’t “Yuri” or “Shonen Yaoi”.
The premise of this show grabbed me almost right away. In the year 2307, humanity subsists off of Solar Power. Three global “power blocs” war over who gets to control its distribution. Enter “Celestial Being”, a terrorist organization that uses Gundams to perform “Armed Interventions” with the goal of putting an end to all warfare. By fighting BOTH ARMIES in Mobile Suit conflicts, they try to disincentivize fighting at all.
Gundam 00 has a pretty obvious thesis: War is bad and it happens because someone is pulling the strings. While in real life you can’t exactly pin war’s existence on one person, it is nice that 00 acknowledges that international conflicts don’t just happen by accident. They happen because politicians seek conquest. “War is Bad” is not necessarily NEW for Gundam. It wasn’t new in 2007 either. But what makes 00 stand out from the other Gundam series I’ve watched and read is that our protagonists stand directly against All Military Forces On Earth, that Setsuna F. Seiei turns to the camera and asks, “Why do we go to war?” By putting the focus somewhere that ISN’T a traditional military while still centering ongoing military conflict, we get to examine the way people are affected by government and terroristic violence from multiple angles.
Earlier this year, I levied complaints at The Witch From Mercury for lacking this element. (Don’t worry, Suletta. I still love you.) It was refreshing to see not only the perspective of Child Religious Crusade Soldier, Setsuna F. Seiei but also Lockon, who lost his parents in a terrorist bombing, Sumeragi, an ex-military tactician whose lapse in judgement cost her partner his life, as well as Louise and Saji, who are a perfectly normal, loving couple of civilian teens. Because of all these perspectives on events, the world feels lived-in. I know what normal people think of Celestial Being. I watched the public opinion of them wax and wane over the course of the season. Many of the events in the story are ripple effects from Setsuna having the worst day of his goddamn life. Turns out that time period was pretty bad for everyone else too.
There is something I’m disappointed with, though. A little over halfway through the season, the Trinity Team is introduced as a Secret Second Celestial Being Division… and they just kind of feel like when Misa got added to Death Note because Light had worked himself into a position where he wouldn’t get caught without there being someone Less Cautious Than Him involved in the plan. They show up and start acting with impunity so that the world gets way more riled up about destroying Celestial Being than they already were. This is, of course, intentional. They were expressly created with the intention of tricking them into building resentment for Celestial Being. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating to watch a psyop play out on my screen. I’m not sure what I expected the Trinities to be, but this was not it. I found them lacking in ideology compared to the rest of the cast.
The animation in this show is so slick. The mobile suits flow through space beautifully. The direction of the slower scenes is so full of incredible shots. There’s a lot of Trauma Dreams And Flashbacks that have awesome transitions. I always feel remiss to not bring up the animation in my anime reviews, but I also know a lot less about reviewing animation than I do about writing. I don’t have too much to say besides, “It’s good!”
If there’s one thing you got from this, please let it be that you SHOULD give Mobile Suit Gundam 00 a look. While I hear season 2 isn’t great, I REALLY enjoyed my time with the first season.