Anime is bad for me, watching Gundam 00 24 when I should've been working…
24 March 2008
It’s quite fitting, actually, that my first post since moving in is Gundam 00-centric, I just having built an Exia model and all, despite how tragically I messed up. I’m a beginner, cut me some slack, I was just happy nipping the little pieces of the runners and having them snap together. It’s three in the morning and realistically I should be in bed, but, somewhere between cramming for physics and history, I randomly decided to watch G00 24.
I’m not really sure what to make of the show anymore. It’s like one of those summer blockbusters that you walk away from feeling pretty good because it had action, it had, or attempted to have, minimal drama, it had the good guys win in the end despite innumerable odds, sorta like the anime Die Hard or Lethal Weapon. You know it’s not going to win an Oscar, or even a Golden Globe, but there’s a part of me that indulges in the flash and bangs and sappy character deaths. Speaking of which, did you notice that in the span of two episodes half the cast just dies?
Let’s start with Lockon Stratos. The mystery behind his laughable name is finally revealed in the opening flashback of episodes twenty four, I’m the man that can snipe you from the stratosphere, or something along those lines. He’s my personal favorite of the bunch, as one of friends put it, the relatively rational one of the group. He’s the G00 equivalent of Duo, with the appropriate humor and good looks. Except Duo didn’t die in the end. Seeing him with the eye patch reminded of me of the post-anime Roy Mustang, both looked equally awkward with half their face hidden behind a patch. You know, I was honestly incredibly sad. I built a Dynames model, too. In fact, his gundam was probably the first gundam model I ever assembled. I took for granted that major characters don’t die no matter how many times they try. Hearing that Haro chant “Lockon! Lockon!” was like a slap in the face, Lockon Stratos is dead, Lockon Stratos is dead.
Moving on to episode 24, the death count goes up. Not only does Alex Corner show up with the strangest looking mobile armor, all decked out in gold and what not, but he has the need to blast the living day lights out of the Ptolemy and in the process killing Chris and Lichty. I actual felt tears coming. They had me hook, line and sinker on this one. They never really kill anyone immediately, they make their deaths drawn out, until all the emotional dialog, crying and screaming passes over and then whatever piece of hardware is floating by, on the verge of exploding, explodes. The sad thing is, just moments before, when Chris, Lichty and Feldt were talking, the thought that Christ and Lichty were a cute couple ran through my head.
My only question is: what now? With one episode left to go and a rumored second season (or is it just me?), with Lockon dead, Virtue and Kyrios happly incapacitated, what the hell is going to happen now? I caught some spoiler flak while browsing through gunpla models, Exia and the GN arms combine and turn into, what looked to me, like that oyster Pokemon, and following that train of thought, with Trans Am and all, is it going to blow Alex Corner to hell. (The one thing that you have to love, or at least I love, abot G00 is that Lockon got his revenge. I was just trying to draw a comparison between Claymore and G00 when I realize, gee, Clare never got her revenge.)
Setsuna is the title of the last episode and I’m guessing everything, everything is in his hands. Their existence is to live, there is no God. In world like this, there certainly is no God, Chris and Lichty, Lockon, that Crossroad reporter, Louis, everyone, everyone’s life seems to be marred in one way or another beyond repair by a godless world. I beg you, change the world. I never understood the change the world bit. How are some toy robots with some fancy light up gimmick supposed to change the world? I’m just not feeling it. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to be, maybe it’s all just futile and whatever they struggle for isn’t going to do anything. Maybe Setsuna will discover a new truth, because G00 isn’t like Gurren Lagann, it’s not even like Gundam Wing, it’s a pragmatic, albeit somewhat naive, take on the world. Something along the lines of this here is the real world, stuff happens, deal with it, move on. Live.
Second season is no rumor. They split the show in half. It begins again in October.