Gundam Reconguista in G

Alt title: Gundam G no Reconguista

TV (26 eps)
2014 - 2015
Fall 2014
2.71 out of 5 from 915 votes
Rank #17,193
Gundam Reconguista in G

The new era begins! The turbulent era known as the Universal Century has ended. Now, mankind looks towards prosperity and peace in the new era known as the Regild Century (R.C.). One of the most important resources in this era is the Capital Tower - a space elevator which towers over the land connecting Earth to space. Its purpose, to transport the Photon Batteries the Earth relies on for power. It is worshiped as a holy place.Tasked with protecting the tower, one day on a practice mission, young Capital Guard cadet, Bellri Zenam is attacked by a high-performance G-Self Mobile Suit. Despite having never before encountered the G-Self, he feels a strange connection to it and its pilot, a space pirate called Aida Surugan.Little does Bellri know that he is about to uncover truths which will shake the entire Regild Century.

Source: The Right Stuf International

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Reviews

Funkgun
4.5

Welcome back Tomino. It has been a while since I tried to decipher a story thrown at me with as much force as dirt through a Dyson Vacuum. Gundam: G no Reconguista reunites not only Yoshiyuki Tomino with his crowning achieving of Gundam, but also gives us his compadres who helped with the character designs of Turn A Gundam and the same character designer and mecha designer of King Overman Gainer. But wait that is not all! It also is set in the old Universal Century (now living in a new timetable) to have fun with again.  Can it be watched without seeing the original series? Yes. Will it be confusing?  Maybe a bit. An example : There are a few key terms like Minovsky Particles which ruin communication/ long range weapons and radar to be used effectively and thus allow a certain fictional belief that Big ass robots are actually an effective measure on the battlefield.  (let’s face it, a two legged mecha is a giant ass target on a battlefield) There are other things like newtypes which might come in to play, and discussions of cleaning debris from the Universal Century where the elevator to space travels through. UC was the timeline in which the original Gundam was. Know only that this era, is set so far past Gundam’s original timeline, I doubt old nemesis or characters to have much to do with anything from older GD titles. So this CAN be watched without prior Gundam viewage, but I do warn that it might not be the BEST title to start your Gundam watching on. So, Story, where is a safe place to begin? Seems to be that the haves (The Capital) are at odds with the have nots over power… Actual power, like energy. The orbital elevator is already a target by Pirates and what appears to be a clever renaming of America called Amerias.  It is hazy who is the real bad guy, and that is OK by me. It is a hallmark leaning all the way back to Mobile Suit Gundam, where your bad guys are not always cut and dry. Especially later in Gundam series when black and white is grey.  But then we have one issue. Who is the audience supposed to at least have a vested interest in?  There is so much murky water, that I am not sure who to give a fuck about. It also comes at you like an unrelenting Labrador wanting to be pet. If you are not ready there is a lot to take in and not a lot of time to configure it in your head. It drifts off the rails about the 4-5th episode and only regains traction about episode 9.  And that brings us to Characters. The protagonist has no real goals to start, but is kinda creative and just does his own thing.  I think it would be refreshing to have a morally ambiguous character for a change, that could care less who was who and just chased after the “red” headed pilot of the Gundam in the title. The overall cast are too complex to be believed. they seem to flutter along making choices that do not have a pattern. At one point, hey let's help this side, in another, hey let's help that side. They are detailed in the eyes of the writers who assume you understand why they make choices.  Down right detailed cel drawn. Even the Mecha have an old school hand drawn quality to them. I am not sure how much computer touch-ups are done, but there are a few jarring moments that still show the difference of CG vs the rest. Any time they show the ball-system shuttle it looks odd and I am sure that it is computer all the way. These might be the only moments that are lackluster, outside of that, the movement, and interesting camera angles are fun and unique. Action:  this has no spot on thei score scale but I would flip a solid 7 or 8. I can feel the weight (or weightless ness) of the Mecha when they are in combat, and so far in each episode they have delviered at least some combat. They even go as far as showing damage to the Gundam itself, making it less daunting as indestructible.  The Sound is well done as in a mecha title, and the voice acting is solid enough. Title is awkward in delivery, and in unpredictability . Keep your eye out for characters running into walls, or into the top roof of a ship, or even falling oddly out of a two legged biped walker. For some reason Tomino has added a bunch of odd moments, and I can only think it is for his own pleasure. Overall, it is a muddled experience. If you want awkward Gundam situations, by all means check this one out. If you want a good experience for your first Gunda, I'd try a different one. 

gh02t
3

I am unabashedly a fan of Mobile Suit Gundam and I have been since long before I even knew what "anime" was (thanks Toonami). I've seen very nearly every Gundam series in existence and have many fond memories of various moments in the series (08th MS Team is the best of course). It is no secret to me then that Gundam has truly been floundering in the past few years. Despite their [many] faults I rather loved SEED and SEED: Destiny, but since then the giant robot show that had a major role in establishing anime as a medium hasn't been doing so well. 00 had an interesting first half and weak ending, followed by a movie that was embarassingly terrible. AGE actually ended up being OK, but was too childish for what became a fairly serious show. And then Build Fighters, which was clearly targeted towards children, but is just as clearly an unforgivable blasphemy. Gundam Unicorn was stuck in there and sure it was pretty awesome, but it always seemed like more of a side project than something that marked a new direction for the series. Some people might correlate the drop after SEED (which is really a love letter towards the original series) with the waning influence of the original creator Yoshiyuki Tomino. These people are wrong. Alot of people view the early series that he had the most influence over like the original and Zeta Gundam with rose-tinted glasses. They forget that those series were chock full of incompetent storytelling, ADHD pacing and touchy-feely bullshit. Not to say they weren't awesome because they were at the time, but anime has moved on since then and it seriously takes a strong stomach to make it through the original series these days (watch the movies instead, they're like a highlight reel). They're also forgetting that Tomino was responsible for the hot mess that was the previous series he worked on, Turn A Gundam. So Tomino was invited back to make a new series for the 50th anniversary of Gundam and there were rumors of the coming of a new age where Tomino-sensei would reboot the series and take us back to the golden age of the Universal Century. Instead he proceeded to make Gundam: G no Reconguista, which is basically the same as Turn A. For me this was the equivalent of unwrapping the biggest, heaviest Christmas present under the tree with my name on it, only to discover that it is full of moist and steamy dog poo. So yeah, G no Reconguista is shit. Anybody who says otherwise is mistaken. It's objectively worse than Turn A which, while not the worst real Gundam series (which is undoubtebly After War Gundam X, none of the SD Gundam series count), is itself also shite. There are of course people who disagree with me and like Turn A. I feel like Turn A has enough going for it that I'm not going to condemn you for liking it (G Gundam is my guilty pleasure after all), but even if you enjoyed Turn A there isn't anything to be had in G no Reconguista. It's terrible. Now I really just put a lot of words into saying that this show is awful so perhaps I should explain why. It's pretty straightforward, really - the show is incomprehensible. Imagine if you wrote what was probably a decent story, because I do get the sense that there was a coherent idea in the writers' heads, and handed it to a bunch of really pretentious 5th graders. You ask them to edit it and make up your storyboards. What you get back is G no Reconguista. It's an ambitious and broad plot that we are forced to view through a pinhole that only shows us about 10% of what we need to know to follow along.  That's right, this show is completely inscrutable. Particularly egregious is the tendency for characters to shift alliances from one episode to the next. In one episode two groups might be fighting each other to the death, then in the next they're buddies, then enemies, then BFFs and so on. It's a pattern that repeats over and over and over and over. There is almost never any clear explanation of why either. I still don't really know why the MC (Bellri) went from a prisoner of war to ace pilot or why the stupid Mars people do whatever it is they do (PHOTON BATTERIES!!!). Also some character's roles are never really explained; for example what does Bellri's mom do, like ever? Or the Space Pope dude and that insidious guy with the white hair? Or the Amerian president guy. Or the mask guy (Luin? as another aside, at one point they allude to him somehow being raised as food? Maybe I heard wrong or mistranslated it...) Or pretty much any character. Note that I couldn't remember any of the names for the characters I just mentioned. The main reason is because most of them have total gibberish bizarre space-people names. OK, Gundam SEED did that too (Mu La Flaga...), but I'll forgive it because it had memorable characters. On the other hand, G no Reconguista just has paper cutouts in the places where characters are supposed to go so it's pretty hard to remember. It also likes to assault you with new characters at every turn and plenty of them look alike, so you probably need to make a dossier if you really want to keep up. But don't worry this is the first Gundam since Turn A that doesn't use cold opens, so you'll get a nice little synopsis at the beginning of every episode to keep you up to date... yeah right. One other major issue I had was that some episodes seem like they were incomplete rush jobs. Particularly earlier on a few episodes are more like slide show storyboard drafts; mostly still shots that cut back and forth with some talking over the top. I'm guessing they were pressed for time trying to make it in time for the 50th anniversary and had to cut corners. There are at least 4 episodes I can remember where this happens and the scenes are quite lengthy (up to half the episode), with rapid cuts between frames that at times made me feel literally sick. Oh and on that note the outro video is probably the worst I've ever seen. It looks like a cheap flash video with a Gundam sprite moving back and forth. I could go on and on about the infinite depth of shitty writing/directing/production on display here, but I just want to move on. What's good in GnR? I'm glad you asked, I was just wondering that myself because it's actually hard to come up with stuff. It is a high-budget affair and the animation is OK, though it has that same ugly plastic quality that AGE did. The mecha designs, of particular importance in a Gundam series, are... well I guess they're giant robots and all but I wasn't particularly floored. Sound is... OK? Not much original but it's not awful. I do suppose the first two episodes were interesting enough, back before the plot started to get totally off track. I'm really struggling here to find things that I can say are good about this show, seriously. So yeah, even the most die-hard of Gundam fans should avoid this one. I watched it all so that I could tell you not to. I'm going to go watch 08th again for like the 30th time. Why the hell can't they make a genuine new series in the UC era? It's all Gundam fans have wanted for eternity. They can still take it in a new direction, but Gundam is all about the UC. Dear Sunrise: if you make another real Gundam series in the UC, I will buy 10 million copies and keep you in business all by myself. 

ShojiroKatsuragi
4.2

Intro Gundam hasn’t been my favourite meta-franchise over the years.  They have produced some decent anime, but rarely anything good.  I have to admit that I don’t particularly care for the mecha genre, but if an anime has a good story, I’ll generally enjoy it regardless of the genre.   So let’s take a look at this anime. Story - 1.7/10 Story, well, it’s very important.  It binds the episodes of your anime or the issues of your manga together.  It’s what I consider the backbone of any anime.  It’s just a must have. On the surface one might think that GGR has a pretty decent story, but as you delve further into the nitty gritty of the anime, glaring omissions and serious flaws show their fangs.  These range from story elements left unexplored, to poorly thought out connections between events, to just plain idiotic decisions made by characters for plot’s sake. Action - 3/10 Action is a very broad term, so let me narrow it down for you.  In this instance I look not at physical action, as that is left to animation, but the frequency of events.  In an action anime your story is plot driven, and - as such - you need the plot to constantly be on the move.  You need things happening at every turn that takes you in a new direction, or advances towards the next turn. GGR is lacking.  Yes it has some small twists here and there, but for the most part these don’t change the direction of the story, but only influence conversation and scenes superficially.  From episode 2 to episode 24 the story barely changes. Now many fans will argue that a major happening in them middle of the series is when the protagonist finds out he is related to the character we would have considered his love interest, but nothing changes in the story as a result, and so what could have been a good plot twist, turns into white noise and filler.  It’s linear plot if I’ve ever seen one.  With that said, I’ve seen worse, at least there are some things - even if minor - happening in every episode. Balance - 1.5/10 The anime is all over the place when it comes to balance.  It jumps from half an episode of pointless conversation to half an episode of pointless combat.  Despite being balanced in terms of the time spent on each component, none of that time serves to strengthen the story, and is simply filler.  I haven’t seen such a poorly balanced anime since Neon Genesis Evangelion.  And that’s an accomplishment for all the wrong reasons. Surprise - 0.5/10 There was nothing compelling about this story.  The only reason I watched it through was to review it at the end, and to be able to say, I had the perseverance and self-discipline to watch this through to the end. Animation - 7.7/10 Animation and sound are the skin and make-up of an anime.  Animation brings the written story to the visual medium, and grants expression to the writer’s view and desires.  This is one of the redeeming parts of the anime.  The visuals were what this anime was all about, and luckily the team that worked on it did a marvellous job. Colour - 8/10 The colour scheme of this anime is reminiscent of Eureka Seven and its sequel, and rightly so, as the anime has the same character designer Kenichi Yoshida.  It’s thanks to Yoshida’s unique approach that this anime is redeemed, slightly. Animation Style - 9/10 As mentioned before, GGR has the same character designer as Eureka Seven: Kenichi Yoshida.  Yoshida has a unique style, and it was great to see him doing what he does best.  His inclusion in the team and the use of his style gave GGR a very different feel to other Gundam titles.  His style is always easy on the eyes and gentle on the senses.  His style of hair animation is what strikes one first of all, and it makes you feel like there is hope. Motion - 6/10 As is to be expected from a Gundam title, with it’s heavy focus on combat, and it’s long history and vast experience with mecha combat, GGR has fluid combat and well done motion.  But Sunrise’s style of motion animation just didn’t fit with Yoshida’s character designs.  It felt just a little off.  It didn’t feel like the mecha should move quite as they did.  This is especially so when it comes to the physics of combat.  Damage was unrealistic, and motion completely ignored Newton’s laws.  I don’t mind stretching things a little here and there, but completely ignoring these laws is a serious flaw for me. Sound - 7.25/10 Sounds - 7/10 Again, as one can expect from a Gundam title made by Sunrise, the fathers of mecha action anime, the sound was beautifully done and marvellously simplistic.  Engines and combat was well rendered and crisp.  But I felt that the engine sounds didn’t match with the mechas.  The engines didn’t have the bass one would expect from an engine of their size.  It left one with the feeling that the sound emulation software in the cockpits of the Gundam pilots were less than satisfactory. Music - 7.5/10 Music was the other redeeming factor of GGR.  The opening theme was beautifully done.  I enjoyed and appreciated very much the fact that they didn’t go with the normal J-pop or J-rock one has come to expect from anime.  The instrumentals worked well with the animation, however I found that the lyrics were removed from the themes of the anime.  It ultimately resulted in a beautiful song that could just as well have been played on its own and still be just as related to the anime as when it was played as the introduction to the anime. Characters - 0.04/10 ~ 0.1/10(Anime-Planet doesn't accept a score less than 0.1/10) Here I have a bone to pick with Sunrise.  Now I know that Gundam isn’t about the characters or the relationships between them, but if they were able to produce characters like Setsuna F. Seiei and Allelujah Haptism then surely they could have done better with these characters then they did. Motivation - 0/10 Motivation is one of the floating titles in my review that I couldn’t find anything to say about, and not because the anime was good and I didn’t have anything bad to comment on, but because the anime didn’t have any of it.  I couldn’t find a single in-cling of motivation anywhere in the story.  The reason for the space pirates doing what they do, the reason for the super-advanced humans doing what they do.  Yes, the latter is explained, but the reason is so superficial it’s basically, they do it because they do it.  The reaction of our protagonist is so unrealistic it’s almost laughable.  He has a little inner conflict when he finds out about his relation to what we would have considered his love-interest, but an episode later it’s all completely forgotten and he is happy-chappy again.  And even when his monologues hint at his inner conflict, his actions don’t represent or express that conflict.  This results in a purely superficial piece of commentary that has no meaning. Breaking from Archetypes - 0.5/10 GGR is as shounen as one can get.  All the archetypes are there:  the idiot protagonist, the shallow love interest/sister, the unrecognised secret admirer of the protagonist, the horribly shallow antagonist, and the pages and pages of pointless cannon fodder support characters.  What makes this worse is that the anime tries to give a few of them a backstory that’s almost as shallow as the characters themselves.  It’s just horrible and embarrassing. Main Characters - 0.5/10 I have very little to say about the main characters.  Non of them are unique.  They are all simply archetypes with unique faces.  Their conversations are bland, their emotions are bland and predictable, and their development is so superficial your could barely consider it putting on make-up. Support Character - 0.5/10 Two words:  Cannon Fodder. Importance to Story - 0.5/10 You could just as well put a couple of rocks in the character’s places and you would still be able to tell the story just as horribly.  You could also remove 90% of the support characters and you would still be able to tell the story with no problem, only with less flashy battles and emptier ships. Conclusion This was a horrible anime.  If it wasn’t for my goal of being able to review the anime afterwards, it’s refreshing character designs, and it’s good sound, I likely wouldn’t have made it past the second episode.  If you’re bored at home with nothing to do, and you’ve seen all the decent and only moderately horrible anime out there, then you could give this anime a shot.  Just don’t expect anything more than visuals.  You might as well play Call of Duty Advanced Warfare Multiplayer, you’d get the same amount of story and the same depth to the characters.

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