#spotlights

Anime is tremendously popular the world over, but in America this wasn't always the case. In fact it wasn't all that long ago that it was widely dismissed, and getting to where we are now was a movement that took decades. Younger people (as a consequence of not being alive for this period) especially take anime's newfound popularity and indeed the perception of the validity of animation as not just a medium for storytelling but as a legitimate artform for granted now decades after Cartoon Network's paradigm shift programming block Toonami, but it really can't be underestimated how much work Toonami did in helping to teach an entire population that animation could tell stories with more sophistication and depth than your average episode of Tom and Jerry.

In the late 90s when Toonami delivered Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z to a more widespread audience than anime had previously enjoyed in America, the hunger for more of this unconventional style of animation didn't end there. Exposure to some of the best the medium had to offer at the time had the side effect of creating a demand that mainstream Americans largely didn't know they had until this point.

Fully prepared to meet this demand, Toonami offered a whole slate of incredible shows with high quality English translations and a style and attitude that understood exactly what made this new animated frontier just so interesting and engaging to Americans. Elements of Toonami's curriculum, particularly Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon, have remained required viewing for decades now and back then served as incredible gateways into the medium for a much wider audience than had been exposed to it in previous years. But when looking back at the shows that aired in hindsight and having lived through it at the time, Gundam Wing holds an incredibly important and underrated position in anime's proliferation into the west.

Gundam Wing, of all things, underrated? It's arguably still the most popular entry in Sunrise's massive mech franchise here in America. The 30th anniversary celebrations have even included collaborations with huge mainstream things like Overwatch. Most people around my age would certainly acknowledge it as being incredibly influential and balk at the idea that it's somehow underrated, especially compared to some of the other signature franchise entries that didn't enjoy as much success here. But hear me out.

In the spring of 2000 when it first debuted on American television, Gundam Wing was absolutely transformational. Its script is wordy and deliberately paced, with its central conflict around what war and peace truly mean being unheard of at the time on American television in the animation space. Its characters, largely collection of bishonen mech pilots that appealed especially to legions of female fans, play their big, bold emotions straight and wear their philosophies on their sleeve. The whole vibe is probably best compared to a stage play, and it creates a lot of interesting dynamics that allow its varied cast all sorts of interesting angles with each other. The mech design is similarly varied and interesting, having some of the most iconic suits in the franchise. Anime soundtrack mainstay Kou Otani created plenty of memorable earworms.

Gundam Wing 30 years later has become something of a joke, and it's not too hard to understand why. The animation can be shabby and rely on recycling animation for its mech battles. The central characters, almost all of which are named after numbers in various languages, are hilariously psychopathic and dysfunctional. The pacing is excruciatingly slow, and the series is not at all subtle with its symbolism, messaging or inspirations. Despite having some of the coolest individual elements ever assembled in a Gundam series, Gundam Wing somehow ends up much less than the sum of its parts and it's much easier to recommend even some of the works in the franchise that had been created a decade prior to it despite their age. The increased visibility and appreciation for some of these earlier works has made it easy for people to write off Gundam Wing, and not entirely unfairly so.

As strong as virtually every individual element of the series is, they never quite coalesce for long enough during the series' run to make its entire 49 episode run worth experiencing in the modern day and it really doesn't hold up particularly well, which makes the individual strengths of the series failing to culminate in an all time classic the same way as other things in the franchise have such a tragedy. But for all its tragic shortcomings, Gundam Wing manages to live up to its potential for a comparatively brief 90-minute runtime in the form of Endless Waltz, a 3-episode OVA later condensed into one singular movie.

One year after the finale of the television series, humanity is able to breathe a sigh of relief at long last as a terrible war looks to finally be behind them. As the population celebrates Christmas at ease for the first time in a long time, most of our protagonists have surrendered their mechs (the titular Gundams) and sent them aboard a shuttle into the sun to be destroyed. It isn't long before this false peace is shattered and war is once again on the horizon as some of the ghosts of the previous conflict begin to stir, launching a race against time to stop a fascist coup that not all of our protagonists seem to be in agreement is a bad thing.

Endless Waltz is much the same collection of strengths as the television series, with the runtime allowing Sunrise to apply the budget well and really show off all the tools the series is working with at their peak. The animation is excellent and avoids the copious amounts of reuse that the television series is known for, with a lot of well done action scenes including missile segments not unlike something you'd see in Macross. There's plenty of fantastic uses of color and lighting as well as excellent framing of shots that help it be extremely memorable visually. The script and plot are at their absolute peak, showcasing the big maximalist drama where characters truly embody their philosophies wonderfully. The performances of the voice cast, helped along by newcomer to the series and iconic voice Maggie Blue O'Hara, is excellent and really understands the material and plays the wonderfully indulgent emotional and philosophical wrecks grippingly.

Kou Otani's work shines through once again, with techno pop duo TWO-MIX returning to the series for another contribution that punctuates and closes out the film perfectly. All of these elements combine for an overwhelming amount of what the kids today call 'aura farming' all throughout the runtime.

Endless Waltz is, in a word, iconic. The television series and movie were absolutely instrumental in expanding the scope of what people looked for and expected in storytelling from animation, and it posits some very pertinent questions such as how society treats soldiers after securing peace that was especially impactful for the child of a Seabee who returned home from the Gulf War with a terrible disability and was subsequently fought every step of the way on healthcare and compensation. The characters and story their absurd symbolic and philosophical dramatics play in absolutely altered my brain chemistry and all these years later this movie remains an annual tradition to watch around Christmas time.

Serving as a sequel and prequel both to the television series that provides a shocking amount of backstory to most of its central cast, it might be hard for someone completely unfamiliar with to get into as a first experience. But if you're at all familiar with Gundam, or have previously bounced off of enjoying Wing due to its rough edges, Endless Waltz is everything good about the television series condensed into one awesome package and it's hard to go wrong. An unconventional Christmas movie? Perhaps, but not only is the date vital to the plot of the movie but it even features a track towards the end with the melody of Jingle Bells. How's that for festive?

Now, in a time where we find ourselves in a backslide towards autocracy and fascism, some of the big and bold unsubtle lessons Gundam Wing and Endless Waltz have to preach are all the more relevant. Much like an endless waltz, the three beats of war, peace and revolution will continue on forever, but hopefully we keep our fragile peace for longer yet and pull ourselves out of this nosedive. It's only us who can.

A gem hidden among the stones, Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz is undoubtedly stardust.