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.