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Gundam Mk.II (A.O.Z. re-boot ver.)

If this is a good show. (the axes mean nothing and ignore the limited nature of the visual metaphor, art is a lot more nuanced than this)

And this is a bad show.

This is Gundam Wing.

The core of the shows is alright at worse, but there’s some elements that just suck really bad, and a few that are way better but don’t make up for the rest.

The music. The OPs and EDs are really good (all of them), lots of great background tracks too. (The Boy Who Stole the Wings of Adolescence is great)

The costume designs. The design of the costumes is the single greatest thing about the whole show.

The mechanical designs. The designs of the grunt suits are just great, Leo, Aries, Tallgeese, and later the Serpent are all great designs.

Now for the bad:

The characters. Except for Duo who’s a funny guy there’s really not much to the main cast. Wu Fei’s got 3 things going on: Nataku good, people who fight bad. I’m not worthy of piloting Nataku. Trowa does have a character arc with the whole circus and amnesia things, EW does add a bit to his character but I don’t know if I care much for that. Quatre has the his relationship to the Maganac corps and 3 lines about his family and is imo the least likeable of the main cast with Wu Fei. Heero like to blow his gundam up mostly, the whole shtick about wanting to kill Relena is the most interesting thing going on about him, especially when it comes to Relena becoming queen.

The Gundams are lame. Gundams are cool, but Gundam Wings didn’t think they were cool enough, so it tried too hard and make them lame. I’m not a big fan of hyper-specialised Gundam, but Gundam X did that worse. They’re also way too powerful for the show’s own good. I don't think there's much fun to seeing Heero vaporize a dozen Leo in 1 buster rifle shot in all that often. The episode in 0079 where Zeon Solders on Wappa placed bomb on the Gundam had weight to it. Now someone is trying to blow the sandrock up, why should I care it won't even get scratch. It just eleminates any stakes for the sake of "wow look at the gundam it's so powerful". It’s not like there’s no instance of the show depicting the suits as strong but not overpowered.

But then it’s back to this immediately after.

And finally the ???

The Mobile Dolls. It’s an interesting concept, they show even exploits that concept in interesting ways, until they’re put into mass production and now they’re just cannon-fodder free of any human tragedy and they’re as uninteresting as could be

The plot. I think there’s interesting ideas in there, the early episodes reflect the Zabi’s (mostly implied at the time) rise to power, and that’s genuienly really cool, later events feel like they’re inspired by events of previous show while it adds some unique context around it, and the end is just Zech’s Counterattack. But the end results is just so muddled, so much so that I still haven’t managed to wrap my brain around it. Too many backstabbings / episode.

1st episode. It’s really cool, for the above mentioned reason, but also because it’s just a really well made episode, and then the Gundam shows up and do the things Gundams do in Gundam Wing

Now Endless Waltz

a.k.a “Actually operation Meteor was eeeeeevil” the movie. And it feels very inconsequential

The whole thing about operation meteor is cool but I wonder if it wouldn’t have been more interesting in the show.

At the end of the day I didn’t hate watching Wing, I had a decent time even. I don’t regret watching it either after putting it off for a certain amount of time, but I’d have been just fine not having watched it, I don’t feel like I missed on anything all that time.