On Gundam AGE
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE tries to build a big multigenerational plot arc like Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack did, but in the space of one 49-episode season in a standalone timeline. It mostly pulled that off, but a lot of Gundam fans don't like it. Their reasons are their own; here's mine.
This is the AGE Builder, the primary component of the AGE System. The AGE System is composed of a combination thumb drive and phone and mobile-suit operation key (the AGE Device), an autonomous factory (the AGE Builder), and whatever its outputs are (the Gundams AGE, their weapons, some spaceship upgrades). The AGE System uses feedback from its outputs, captured in the AGE Device, to generate solutions to loosely-specified problems ("the enemy MS is too powerful!"). The AGE System manufactures those solutions using an autonomous factory (the AGE Builder). Over the course of a one-year war, the AGE System develops several radically-improved mobile suit designs, equivalent to a generational leap in technological development. In the case of one solution, the Photon Blaster Cannon, the AGE System also provides a power supply for the cannon that is greater than the power supply of the battleship the PBC is mounted in.
In short: the AGE System is 1) a massive energy supply and 2) a radically transformative integrated R&D pipeline.
Readers of this blog with a certain mindset will have all sorts of ideas about how to use this, so let's describe how it's used in Mobile Suit Gundam AGE:
In the year 115 AG, the AGE System is used aboard the first-of-its-class flagship Diva to fabricate upgrades to military technology.
In the year 141 AG, the AGE System is used aboard the de-mothballed Diva to fabricate upgrades to military technology.
In the year 164 AG, the AGE System is used aboard the re-de-mothballed Diva to fabricate upgrades to military technology, before the Diva is sacrificed in battle.
Readers of a certain mindset are wondering what happened during the other years. As far as I can tell, the answer is: nothing. The AGE System was not used for any purpose.
That's the problem with the AGE System.
Now, I could go off on a tangent about how someone could use the AGE System for mass civilizational uplift (AU where Fezarl Ezelcant steals the Diva and fixes Mars) but instead I'll talk about how the AGE System is used in the story.
The AGE System is initially presented as a gacha-pull system: Sometimes it gives a good upgrade; sometimes it gives a bad one. But this happens perhaps twice, and thereafter it's a deus ex machina machine: Just at a point of narrative tension, where the heroes might lose, the AGE System whips out a new day-saving upgrade, and the heroes win again. It's not really the central feature of the story, though: the story is about the interpersonal relationships between the protagonists and antagonists, and the sparring sides of the Federation and Vagan. The AGE System is primarily a way to introduce new toys for the show to advertise, but there's no real emotional impact of their inclusion. And for all its importance to the Federation's war effort during wartime, in peacetime it doesn't get used, even by the people who used for wartime R&D. They develop minor upgrades to the post-war MS, and other than that, there's no progress in the setting. The setting only advances technologically during war, at all other times being in stasis. For all that the wars are caused by politics, we see none of that, and none of it changes in ways that the audience sees. (well, there's one on-screen arrest, but we don't see the fallout, because the POV character changes right afterwards) It's a really boring setting.
Here's the other thing: The Federation has the AGE System. What do their enemies, the Vagan, have? They appear to have stolen access to an archive of banned advanced technology from the Before Times. The Federation is playing technological catch-up to the Vagan, and their only technological advancement comes when they use the AGE System. The Vagan have a cheat sheet. The Federation is vibe-coding. Through the power of piloting while yelling really hard, the Federation wins.
...
I think Mobile Suit Gundam AGE would've been a better story if all that R&D was the result of a talented engineering team headed by the Asuno, Dyson, and Gunhale families, getting feedback from the pilots. Keep all else the same. This one swap would result in better pacing, sustained tension, and more character development, sure, but it would also better establish the differences between the Federation and the Vagans: the Federation are doing R&D and understand the principles by which their machines work; the Vagans are copy-pasting high-powered tech they don't understand. In this version of the story, the Federation wins through teamwork, effort, and understanding, not RNGesus.
The multi-generation rivalry and base conflict can stay; that's the good part of Gundam AGE.
If you want the AGE System, then the story really does need to commit to the random-tech-per-episode toy advertisement bit. Build the story around the upgrade process in a way that moves at more than one mech per generation. It should be a story about surfing the wave of future shock, of adapting or wiping out, of continued humanity in the presence of immense changes in way of life, and the ways that technology can help form new connections across intergenerational divides and interplanetary space.
