Kidou Senshi Gundam Unicorn

There aren't a whole lot of proper reviews for Gundam UC on MAL, which is sort of upsetting. I'm not one to write incredibly detailed reviews because for that, just watch the damned thing. For me, this review, or rather a reflection would serve as a tool to cure my anime hangover that Gundam UC left me with. This is also for those who need proper intuition with this epic metaseries. *Spoiler Free, duh* The issue with Gundam Unicorn is that it sort of sits at a paradox. As a standalone, it's a hell of an anime; but your experience greatly depends on whether you havethe knowledge of the Universal Century (you know, Mobile Suit Gundam) to fully grasp the scope of the anime. Unicorn serves as the penultimate conclusion to the Universal Century story that started back in 1979 in the timeless tale known as Mobile Suit Gundam 0079, the OYW (one year war). Growing up with Gundam, the story seen with my eyes absolutely differs from those who wanted to simply watch "a mecha" or "a gundam". Go find a Gainax anime or Studio Bones anime, for Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn is a direct continuation of CCA (Char's Counter Attack) rather than a new high budget Gundam project. It's not simply a Gundam... it's THE GUNDAM, and the final chapter for that matter. An example, those who rate this lowly also believe Banagher Links is a whiny two-dimensional cookie-cutter protag, and that Riddhie is an emo cry baby, and Mineva Zabi is a lifeless zombie, and Full Frontal's a bad guy who has evil/bad intentions and everyone should die. Those are associations created by those who do not fully comprehend the story told. If you haven't watch the previous TV series, and many times before for that matter, you're better off not watching it at all because it's not meant for you. This is an entirely exclusive experience, and you're not welcome to watch or rate unless your a fan of Mobile Suit Gundam... because Unicorn is simply not meant for you. If one plans to watch this improperly, you'll be taking back about a tenth of the experience (that being animation and ost), while Gundam aficionados are getting the full 100%. On a brighter note, it's never too late to watch the classics, because you're missing out on the most important anime of a lifetime. Go back an enjoy the masterpieces that are MSG 0079, Zeta, ZZ, CCA, even the OVA's 08th MS, and 0080. Go ahead and enjoy the metaseries and immerse yourself in it's rich universe. I may have came off as pretentious or discouraging, but truth be told, it is what it is. On a side note, don't you dare read this and think you're ready http://kotaku.com/5987499/heres-what-youll-want-to-know-before-watching-gundam-unicorn Oh yeah, and Art/Sound/Characters/ Enjoyment/Overall 10/10, like that matters.

Hey, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn is finally a complete package and it's great, but who wants to read gushing? Not me, and I baselessly suspect I'm not the only one who combs through reviews for the most critical ones instead of the most adoring ones. With that said, this review will explore what makes Unicorn either worth mounting or nay, so saddle up! Let's start with disclaimers: watching previous entries in the Gundam Universal Century is optional, but it is a highly advisable option if you want to get the most out of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. You will be able to follow the story, butscenes will definitely be lost on you. Also, for newcomers, the ending will make your brain leak out of your britches, so prepare a fresh set. With that out of the way, the story begins like most mecha shows in that a young boy, in this case Banager Links, lives in a nice little space colony. After everything that happens to a nice little space colony happens, he finds his way to a super, awesome prototype mobile suit, a weapon called the Unicorn Gundam. The one who possesses the Gundam has the key to Laplace's Box, a mysterious secret that has the power to turn the tide of the war. Hence, since both the Earth Federation and the remnant peoples of the outer space nation of Zeon desire Laplace's Box, Banager becomes the fulcrum of the conflict by default. What a conflict it is! The fights and action in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn are spectacular, making several minutes of clashes between nameless grunt mobile suits highly entertaining to watch. This is doubly true when the battles are set against the grand sound track or the commendable, if sometimes long-winded, backdrop of the philosophical character dialogue that this series loves. However, the biggest problem with Banager Links as the protagonist---and indeed the show itself---is that he rarely involves himself in the conflict at all. It becomes obscenely common for Banager to strap himself into his machine and fly into every battle to make emotional pep talks with absolutely nothing of consequence happening as a result. He feels his way out of situations and screams his chipmunk head off about how everybody is wrong. This, of course, solves nobody's problems, fails to advance the story, and even agitates the situation, as it should. The problem is that it can quickly irritate the viewer, too. If you are a mature viewer intrigued by the war drama aspect and practical conclusions to conflict, Banager's naivety will infuriate you almost incessantly until you will have to get your enjoyment from the other characters. Finalizing on that, if you enjoy your protagonist to best opponents through strength, skill, or smarts, you'll be gravely disappointed by Banager's complete reliance on his mobile suit; it's to the point you'll be surprised the Gundam doesn't brush his teeth for him before bed. Thankfully, the other main characters tend to make up for Banager's lack of depth. A renegade princess who actually has a goal, a desperate young soldier at odds with his station in life, and an adoptive father trying to atone with his daughter make great highlights of the show. They bring forward one of it's strongest aspects: emotion. Gundam tends to utilize emotion well, even exploiting it heavily, but this entry revels in that fact, making every main character a hook for your empathy and investigation. Side characters are a different story, though. Sometimes, a character that another met only once conveniently becomes extremely important to them for no real reason other than presumable horniness, love at first sight, or advanced understanding; in the Gundam's Universal Century timeline, evolved humans called Newtypes are much more in-tune with those around them, as well as other dimensions. Becoming invested in someone hastily makes sense for a Newtype, but it doesn't work for the viewer, who cannot appreciate these side characters without proper development. You might be dissatisfied to hear yourself ask "who was that?" during an apparently important scene, not knowing why it was important or why they were there, no matter how keenly you were watching. It isn't too frequent, but it does happen more than once, and it doesn't so much mar the show as much as it seems like missed potential, which is a sentiment that it shares with the plot. As everyone searches for answers to Laplace's Box, the viewer is along for the ride, but never allowed to speculate because placement and destination is ambiguous. Outside of the concept of Laplace's Box, its identity not revealed until very late in the progression; for all you know it could be slang for a part of a female's anatomy. So, make no mistake: your enjoyment of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn mostly hinges on how willing you are to indulge in an elongated, science fiction action-movie with sappy themes. Although each of the large scale action scenes could serve as a climax, it plays out exactly like a movie with one goal and little development. If that's up your alley or if you like mechs, space, or high technology then you'll likely find the show extremely compelling. Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn is compelling, it just needed a little more to spur it ahead of its glaring character flaws. Thank you for reading, now it's time for me to...hoof... it.

My view on this series basically boils down to this: many rehashed elements, not much substance. If you want to watch this just for the mecha aspect, it's pretty enjoyable due to the very high production values. If you're looking for a good story and solid characters to go along with that action, well, you might be disappointed. Unicorn builds upon previous Gundam series set in the Universal Century (UC) Timeline, so you shouldn't watch this until you've watched the UC Timeline's core content (0079, Zeta, CCA). And because Unicorn came out after those other Gundam series, I'll use some comparisons to highlight the placesI feel Unicorn went wrong. There shouldn't be any spoilers for any series in the main review, just comments on the general direction of things. However, there is a spoiler section at the end that covers some things specific to Unicorn that I felt I needed to address. Despite the issues I have with this series, I would still recommend Gundam fans to watch it, especially since my opinion seems to be of the minority. Anyway, on with the rest of the review... Note: This review was rewritten on 2015/11/28. It contains the same arguments and opinions, but with more concise writing, hopefully. Story: The story of Unicorn starts off using a formula that has become very common for Gundam series. Basically, some event kicks off around the MC's home area, causing them to get pulled into a conflict. In 0079, Amuro was caught in a fight or flight situation within his home territory, and the same was true for Kira from Gundam Seed. Zeta Gundam was different in that Kamille put himself and others in harm's way due to his rebellious nature, rather than just trying to protect people. I felt this was important to bring up, because it marks the difference in the MCs of the various series. Some start off just trying to survive or do the right thing, while others are displeased with the life they have. In Unicorn, things are a little weird. The main character, Banagher, starts off a bit like Kamille, in that he makes choices that pile up, which result in him being pulled into a conflict. Although, unlike Kamille, it's almost as if Banagher's making an instinctual decision to be involved, since most of the time there's no reason for him to even care. It's like he realizes he's the main character of a show and is responsible for moving the plot forward. To make it even worse, he routinely blames other people for his continued involvement, even though he's given several chances to leave. That mentality gets old really fast. As for the actual story-line, it follows the mystery of Laplace’s Box, which rumors say holds some great power. I really do mean rumors, since each side has almost no idea what the box is or where it's located. Yet, apparently, this rumor is important enough to basically revitalize a war over. Most of the story involves the various factions traveling place to place and fighting as some clue about the box's mystery is revealed. When the mystery behind the box is finally revealed, well, it's pretty underwhelming. It's hard to explain why I felt this way without spoiling anything, but essentially its significance is overplayed. There's some major logical missteps the writers made in trying to make the box seem important (see the spoilers sections if you want to know the specifics of what I mean). In reality, the infrastructure of where the box is located is actually more useful than the box itself. Once the box's secrets are revealed, there's some pretty important monologuing, but it's not clear whether that amounts to anything. There's basically zero conclusion to the initial premise of the story, which is, "War is bad, so stop killing each other all the time." Instead, the ending is essentially, "Alright, cool, we found it, the end." All in all, the story is a real mess that seems completely lost and ends up amounting to nothing. Characters: Overall, there's the same standard affair of characters as nearly every other entry in the UC timeline. I found this boring since the presence of some characters felt forced and only done to appeal to fans. Also, many characters have either no character development or very erratic changes in personality. I've already gone into a bit of detail about the MC and his actions in the beginning, but in terms of the entire series, he has almost no character development. As stated earlier, he likes to blame others for his problems. Kamille from Zeta did this, but it was a bit more reasonable since people were doing some pretty nasty things. Most importantly, Kamille's complaining decreases over time and he becomes a person of action. Banagher, however, complains all the way from episode 1 to episode 7. In the end, he never seems to reach any real resolution with the actions he made, the actions of others, or why the whole mess started in the first place. Ultimately, he fulfills the strategic role of a Gundam pilot and not much else. As for side characters, many of them also exhibit no character development. Now, character development is not always needed to make for a good show (see Baccano!), but there's a disturbing amount of still characters in Unicorn. Although, there was one character that seemed like they were trying to make up for this void by flipping personalities every couple of episodes. These changes came across as extreme and unsubstantiated reactions whenever they occurred. It was kind of like, "Oh, I guess that happened." So, again, like the story, the characters are a mess. Combat: This might seems like a strange category, but due to the core of the Gundam franchise being about mechas blowing each other up (IMO), I figured it was important to discuss this in detail. While past Gundam series have always had a decent case of what I'll call Dragonball Z Syndrome (i.e. talking in the middle of a fight), Unicorn has a near terminal case. The flow of combat is constantly interrupted by impromptu conversations held between pilots, even when they are enemies with each other. Although I'd make the argument that past series would be better if the flow wasn't interrupted as much as it was, it never got to the point where I was actively groaning that I hope they start fighting again. In regards to combat strategy, this series basically has none. In past series, whatever factions the MCs belonged to would come up with strategies to win the battle. In other words, there was a good sense that these were somewhat realistic, strategic military battles. Unicorn's battles feel like poorly thought out skirmishes where each side hopes that their fighters are stronger than the fighters on the other side. This is a little bit understandable since the scale of the conflict in Unicorn is smaller than the earlier series, but still, the faction leaders could at least put a little bit more effort into their combat plans. In regards to the individual battles throughout the series, very few people are shown using any basic strategies. Mostly they rely on magical shields and flying pod lasers to fight and defend. I think a character used an asteroid as cover once in the entire series. It's really disappointing to see this as Gundam has a history of pilots making the best use of their environment in order to win. Instead the pilots use their mobile suits as nothing more than amplifiers for their pre-existing special abilities. This is a problem I've had with other Gundam series as well, where it feels more like a super-robot show rather than a real-robot show, but Unicorn is one of the worst offenders yet. Expanding a bit more on the pilots' abilities, people like Amuro and Kamille were decent pilots when they started out, but they weren't great. They basically had to rely on their natural talent, their usually OP mobile suit, and the support of other characters to get them through a battle. As time went on, they became very good pilots, and combined with their other abilities, they became extremely effective in battle. In Unicorn, this isn't what happens. Banagher can immediately pilot his mobile suit extremely well and there's almost no development in his fighting ability. So not only did the writers forget to develop his actual character, but they forgot to develop his physical and mental attributes as well! Art/Sound: Generally speaking, it's all very good. The animation looks great, with the mobile suits being particularly well-done. The sound effects and BGM are also great. The art quality is basically the only thing that saved this series for me. So even though I found everything else sub-par, the battles are still fun to watch. Voice Acting: I watched the English dubbed version and the voice acting was quite good. Everyone's voices seemed to match up with their intended characters, and the performances themselves always matched up to what was happening on screen. In other words, no complaints here. Conclusion: As a whole, Unicorn really disappointed me. The visuals combined with it being set in the UC Timeline made me hope they would be doing something interesting. Instead, it was just a compilation of poorly re-imagined characters, the inclusion of elements that dragged past series down, and generally poor writing all-around. Spoiler Stuff : Seriously, don't read any of this unless you've seen the whole series. (***Spoilers***) New-Type Stuff: This connects to the disruption of combat mentioned above. While many other Gundam series have had the same out of body things occur during fights, none of them seemed to break up the action like Unicorn did for me. Also, very few people express shock when it happens. I know we’ve seen it before in past series, and that the universe is probably used to new-types by now. But, I still think communicating telepathically or spiritually with another person would freak most people out. Banagher’s First Kill: Banagher doesn’t know he has killed someone until he is told after the fact. He expresses shock, but then gets over it by the end of the scene. It seems kind of strange that it isn't ever brought up again in any detail given how much he complains about killing in general throughout the rest of the series. Laplace’s Box: The location where it is found is actually more useful than the box itself, since the location has infrastructure that allows Mineva to talk to all of humanity at once in an attempt to change their mind on how to govern space people. Yet, there's no indication of whether it worked. There isn't even a single scene of the general public watching her broadcast. The two ship captains are also seen clearly ignoring what she is saying as they discuss getting drinks together. It's strange that the whole series revolves around each faction arguing about what the future should look like, and then no one listens when someone lectures them about it. Also, the extra article in the founding principles only holds importance if people want it to. The current government can just say, "We didn’t sign that into law." Not to mention people have never operated under the belief something like that was ever true, so why should it hold so much weight all of a sudden? If something like that was important enough to the general public, they would have made it a law already. Clearly a large portion of people just flat out disagree that the space-noids should have more self-control, so it's not like some 100 year old slab is going to change their mind. The only truth is the one people choose to accept.

So for me this was really hard to watch as I am a HUGE Gundam fan, most specifically of the UC timeline, which for some reason this takes place in. Why was it hard to watch? Well It completely mutilates the message of UC as a whole and tries to make Zeon, the bad guys since the first series who have done some REALLY bad stuff, seem like good guys and that every atrocity they committed was justified and okay. Aside from UC this just in general sends really mixed signals in terms of motivations and what is even happening. I'll include a spoiler sectionat the end after my overall to go more in depth to what I meant at some points as it's hard to describe why I disliked this some things without spoilers. If something I say seems vague it's probably because I'm trying to refrain from spoilers, so assume I explain it there. Story: 1 Easily my least favorite thing about Unicorn was the story. Concerning the story I really have not much to say because aside from it being what I disliked the most, it's also one of the weakest things about this show in my opinion. The show honestly has fan fiction tier writing at some points. First off, I have no idea why they decided to shove this right in between CCA and F91 and put it so close to CCA while leaving it really far from F91. Secondly, the attempted justifications of Zeon and trying to make them look like good guys makes absolutely no sense in UC due to every series before it (the original, Zeta, ZZ, and CCA) all portraying Zeon as terrible people. Also another thing that really dragged this down a ton for me was a lot of plot conveniences, ESPECIALLY in the last episode. Another thing is that it never portrays the overlying "war is bad" theme in every series before it, instead it just gives off more of a "I need to stop war because I don't like it" feel. Aside from a story that tried way to hard to be complex which ultimately made it confusing, the ending was god awful and atrocious. Art: 6 I will give Unicorn props here for the art being pretty good, especially the animation. I would rate it a bit higher if it didn't start to rely on CG more and more as the series went on, with some fights even being mostly CG. I do give major props to Unicorn for the fight scenes in episode 4, they were extremely well done and had little CG from what I remember. As for mech designs, as I guess that can be included in this, I for the most part did not like them with a few exceptions, those being the Neo Zeong, Unicorn (when in attack mode, normal mode looks horrible), Banshee/Banshee Norn (ditto of Unicorn side note), Zeta Plus (got like 10 seconds of screen time in episode 7 but I still liked it), and the ReZel. Honestly the mech designs were pretty ugly or just look upgraded versions of older suits. I'll only cover the mains as mook suits are pointless to get into. The Sinanju, didn't quite like this one much as it looked weird and was just basically a buffed Sazabi, the Sazabi being infinitely cooler than it. The Kshatriya, just looked like a mega buffed Zaku; it was alright. Rozen Zulu, I just didn't like this one, dunno why. Sound: 5 Don't have much to say here. The soundtrack was alright and did it's job. No one song really stuck out to me and it just in general seemed kind of average. Sound design was alright, nothing to really comment on. Character: 3 The characters almost tied with story for my least favorite thing, except I actually liked a very few amount of characters whereas with story I completely hated it. I'll go in order of most hated to most liked when I'm talking about them. Angelo - Seriously? Someone thought he was a good character? I hated Angelo. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about him. Aside from being the most annoying character in the show, the amount of things he actually does is very low so he really has no reason to exist. Banagher - Worst MC in UC. Aside from completely irrational decisions that are just really annoying in general, and I'm pretty sure his brain is 100% empty because of how incompetent he is until the plot needed him not to be, and then he became jesus in a giant mech. How incompetent he was at times was extremely enraging. Being able to never shut up about "Audrey" was annoying as hell too. It seemed like he was playing a game of "How many times can I switch allegiances in one show?". I really hate him all in all. Riddhe - GOD. I hate him with all my heart. He was alright in the beginning and seemed like a cool dude but I slowly started hate him more and more as he became more and more off an ass as the series went on and how he was in the end was fucking awful. Full Frontal - Yada yada Char rehash yada yada. At least come up with an original villain. It literally just took Char, made his 50x less badass and charismatic, gave him long hair, and made his logic 50x dumber than Char. I really felt nothing from him and Banagher's "rivalry" if it was even supposed to be one. The reason Char and Amuro worked is because they were both interesting and fleshed out characters, key word being INTERESTING. Neither Banagher nor Full Frontal were interesting to me and felt like Unicorn was just trying to do something that actually worked before. Now onto some I liked or thought were tolerable, gonna switch and go most liked to least liked here. Don't have very much to say here though. Zinnerman - He was a bro and a total badass. Easily my favorite character in this show. His relationship with Marida was handled alright so props to the writers for that. Marida - I liked Marida. She was written decently. Don't much else to say to be honest. Audrey, or should I say Mineva (which any person that had watched Zeta or ZZ could tell from a mile away so that build up made no sense) - She was alright and I found the one scene where she completely disassembled Cha- I mean Full Frontal's logic and idea hilarious. Enjoyment: 2 This show was a chore for me to watch. Not only did the 1 hour episodes make it hard to sit around for, it overall just bored me. My memory of this is somewhat hazy of this despite having watched this in a little over a week, because I honestly just stop focusing at times due to how boring it was. I often had to rewind to read a line I missed because I wasn't focusing due to how bored I was. The only reason this gets a 2 instead of a 1 is some of the fights scenes were really entertaining and the soundtrack was nice despite sounding somewhat average. Not only did this show bore me to tears though, but also insulted my intelligence as a UC Gundam fan by the aforementioned attempt to justify Zeon and just overall a very poor and forced feeling entry that adds nothing to UC and fails to be an homage if that's what it was going for. Overall: 3 God this show was a chore and one of the worst Gundam series I've seen yet. This show was absolutely atrocious and I never want to watch it again. Aside from terrible characters and story the way the show is presented to the viewer is done very poorly as it is filled with exposition dumps from what I recall, which just confused the hell out of me; there's a fine line between complex and confusing and I don't think Unicorn understands that as it seems to confuse the two. This show's writing honestly feels fan fiction tier, which it practically is already. It shouldn't even be canon since it adds nothing at all to UC as a whole. Honestly if you are looking to get into UC Gundam skip this show when you get to it, the only reason you should watch it is cool fights and decent music. This show honestly could have worked if they changed a few things, changed the name of the series and tweaked the story a bit, but since it has the title of Mobile Suit Gundam on I can't cut it slack. If you're done here, thanks for reading my review and let me know what you thought of it, I'm just starting to do reviews so I would really appreciate constructive criticism. Below here are spoilers so unless you want to know them or have seen the show, beware. -----------------------------SPOILERS BELOW HERE------------------------------- Now for the spoilers I couldn't get into above. I'm not gonna categorize this so it might not have much flow, so apologies in advance. First off let me get to the worst part of this show as a whole, the ending. How did they perfectly pull off the barrier to block Gryps 2 without anyone doing it before and no one knowing anything about how it worked or what it did? Now some other questions. How exactly does one invoke the Unicorn Awakened? Why does Riddhe change back to the side of the Nahel Argama in a split second? He went from being totally edgy to new bestie in under a second? Dude what happened to hating newtypes, now you're helping one? That's another thing; Riddhe. him suddenly becoming edgy because muh waifu was really dumb and he just turned into an even worse character. That sudden snap back to being perfectly normal and nice because the plot needed him to was also just absolutely terrible. All these tie into the plot conveniences I was talking about earlier with a few things I'm probably forgetting because my brain is trying to erase this trash from my mind. Now, Laplace's Box. Did it really need to exist? It adds nothing to UC at all or even the show itself because you don't even see how the people react to it. Also what really sucks is the amount of character death in this show, which is astonishingly low, which is also unusual for a UC series. Also, can we all just take a moment to let how completely stupid and absurd ACTUALLY LITERAL UNIRONIC TIME TRAVEL is? How? Why? I thought this was UC, how the fuck does time travel even happen? How did that even work? Unironic time travel is where this show's fan fiction tier writing really shows itself. And my last point, Loni Garvey. Another place where the fan fiction tier writing shows. First her backstory about her parents just serves to demonize the EFF in a really bad attempt to make Zeon look good. Also Banagher not wanting to shoot a girl he met like a day or two beforehand who was literally mass murdering innocent civilians and was now trying to kill him was extremely infuriating. By the way, saying "We just wanted autonomy and for all spacenoids to be free!" doesn't justify starting a war that killed half the human race and multiple dropping of things on earth. Well, now that's out of the way, I have nothing left to say. I assume you read the second to last sentence in the paragraph above, so there's no need to repeat it. Thanks for reading!

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