the Frivolous Faun's Corner

Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.

this is emmett and cullen they are best friends

Dog: :) fine, thanks

If you are here, you need to not be.

Over the past few months, a committee formed by me @tinyozlion, @wordsandrobots, @above-average-mecha-catgirl, and @i-gwarth gathered regularly to determine which Gundam did Gundams and non-Gundams the best. We were also joined towards the end by @variasus and @kaxtwenty for the tiebreaker rounds. These were the results!

You will find a detailed summary and explanation for each entry's ranking below. You might also notice the absence of the Build Fighters series for obvious reasons (I believe there's some original content in there but I couldn't be arsed), as well as the SD stuff for even obviouser reasons, and the outliers like Ring of Gundam or Gundam Evolve.

Also, keep in mind that everyone judged based on their own preferences and criteria for what makes a good design. This is not an objective ranking nor does it pretend to, this is the average of several subjective rankings from a very small number of highly subjective but nonetheless passionate people. And if we were occasionally harsh on an entry you liked, please keep in mind that this is not an attack on you or anyone else with similar tastes (plus chances are, one member of our merry band was in the same boat as you and equally despaired at the injustice). We will never judge, berate or mock you for enjoying something that brings you happiness.

And now, ranking time! If you need a reminder of what they looked like, click on the ◘ next to them to see a sample platter.

1- TURN A GUNDAM ◘

Yep, it’s the one. The weird one. And while there were enough strong contenders to make the winner unpredictable, none of us were displeased to see it reach the top spot. It’s bold, it’s unique, it perfectly evokes the feeling of a civilisation from 20 000 years into the future. It’s the mechanical equivalent of avant-garde haute couture (emphasis on the hot).

Mecha-catgirl’s note: Syd Mead is the only Gundam designer (thus far! I have hope!) To put a cockpit in the cock. How can you say no to that?

Words and Robots’ note: Proof if it was needed that producing something truly striking involves throwing out all the existing rules and bringing in a totally new vision.

Variasus’ note: I really wish more settings in general took that kind of approach to esoteric/alien technology, and in this instance the shape language is so immaculate that it does deserve the top stop.

2- IRON-BLOODED ORPHANS ◘

The beauty and elegance of these suits is only rivalled by the amount of thought that went into them. The way they are built around standardised frames, different lines of design with palpable centuries of history behind each of them... There is a coherent vision and a consistency that makes the world of IBO feel extremely tangible. And of course, they look sick as hell, with varied silhouettes ranging from the round and bulky Man Rodi to the slick and sharp Grimgerde.

Mecha-catgirl’s note: The entire design conceit of the various frames is one of my favorite pieces of worldbuilding and mechanical design to come out of Gundam as a franchise. The frames themselves are invariably sexy as all hell, and seeing all the incredibly interesting variations is an excellent part of the joy of watching IBO. Also Ippei Gyoubu’s designs go hard in general and especially in IBO

Words and Robots’ note: Yes I brought slides to make IBO’s case. But like Turn A, it brings an entirely fresh approach to how mobile suits work, visually. Incredibly impactful for what is essentially a design approach based around circles and stick figures.

Vari’s note: I’m not moved by that many of the designs but the new standard it set must be recognised. It’s a striking new step in Gundam and the designs that do shine to me are easily in my top 10 (Gyoubu is the GOAT).

Bill’s note: I have to admit, some of these suits are not working for me as well as they do for others, but they’re in a minority compared to the many masterpieces on display.

3- THE WITCH FROM MERCURY ◘

Just so you know, the top three were tied with a perfect score, so if G-Witch is your personal favourite, don’t let its third place distract you from the fact that each and every one of us gave it an S-rank. It has it all. Variety, personality, worldbuilding coherence (with the excellent idea of having each mechanical designer work on a different company, giving them identifiable design philosophies) and the undeniable cool factor.

Mecha-catgirl’s note: Why are all the Jeturk mobile suits so hot…. (I know why, Ippei Gyoubu’s designs are just like that)

Words and Robots’ note: All the old hits, played to perfection.

Vari’s note: This is the best art direction Gundam received if you ask me, and when it comes to mechanical design the diversity on offer is massive, and very characterful. It’s a cornucopia of treats for the eye and has some proper thoughts put behind the visuals of each “brand”, that’s what character/mechanical design is all about.

Bill’s note: G-Witch was one of the first Gundam shows I watched, and going back after having seen so much of the franchise only made me appreciate its designs even more, it’s truly one of the greatest.

4- RECONGUISTA IN G ◘

Flamboyantly creative, insanely rad, each new mobile suit is a gift for the eyeballs. The only thing that kept it out of the top tier was probably the designs’ consistency with the worldbuilding, where the prior three shined. I mean, it’s G-Reco, to have coherent worldbuilding in the designs, you’d also need to have coherent worldbuilding. Or worldbuilding. Or coherence.

Bill’s note: This was my personal top pick, I adore the designs in this one.

Mecha-catgirl’s note: CALL ME BRIGHT NOA THE WAY I NEED TO PUT A CHILD IN THAT GUNDAM. WHICH? YES. And for the sake of not having this entire document have the same comment over and over, I’m only using that line once and here. Which should probably tell you my feelings on G-Reco’s designs (why yes, several of the designs here were done by Ippei Gyoubu!)

Words and Robots’ note: A carnival of creativity. It feels like the designers were let off the leash and just allowed to have fun.

Vari’s note: I’m wasting some space to say I second everything said by the others above, Reconquista in G is simply gundam at its most fun mecha and vehicle wise.

5- VICTORY GUNDAM ◘

Surprise pick, but if you haven’t, go take a look at Victory’s design, it’s genuinely excellent. Every version of the Victory looks really cool, especially the V2’s Wings of Light, and the Zanscare suits bring back the weirdness factor from the original Zeon machines, and then take it to eleven with great results.

Haro’s note: Haro!

Mecha-catgirl’s note: I can’t necessarily call Victory as a show underrated, but I can certainly call its designs such! The Victory Hexa has bunny ears!!!!!!!

Vari’s note: It has the best insect-based humanoid mecha design I’ve seen, ‘nuff said (Shokew).

6- GUNDAM WING ◘

If Wing could be summarised in one word, it would probably be “iconic”. There is, once again, a lot of thought that went into the design works to make them consistent, and between the five distinct gundams that rewired the brains of a generation, the immaculate Tallgeese and the memorable grunts, there’s plenty enough to warrant its spot in the S-tier.

Words and Robots’ note: It’s not many Gundam series that can claim to have invented an enemy grunt as solid as the Zaku. The Leo might be as militarily sound as the average firecracker but as faceless mooks go, few shows did it better.

Vari’s note: It’s not my cup of tea, but Wing has a really strong execution of a more Super Sentai approach to mecha design that isn’t stepping in the same space as Super Robots, no wonder it was a smash hit in a demographic already primed by Power Rangers.

7- GUNDAM ZETA ◘

It’s remarkable how Gundam instantly went from an excellent but still stumbling first step to one of the best entries in the franchise, design wise. The dated animation might have not done it justice, but between the fabulous Hyaku Shiki, the Byarlant, the Masarai, and the Qubeley… it’s a very strong showing overall.

Words and Robots’ note: Plus the development of the ‘bit’ concept into full-fledged swarms of funnels wrote a whole new way of doing fight scenes into Gundam’s visual language.

Vari’s note: There’s so many new freaks and new ideas of what a mech can look like in this, its impact on the history of mecha designs is important, the og series walked so this could run.

8- WAR IN THE POCKET ◘

War in the Pocket might not have innovated much, but it did bring us a good contender for best iteration on the classic OYW machines, with some great new additions like the Kampfer and the delightfully weird Hy-gogg. 

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: Woe. Missile be upon ye Vari’s note: There’s not a single design I don’t find great in this, even its base GM is sleek and elegant. It also gave us some of the most iconic Zeon MS of the OYW, Hy-Gogg my beloved <3 <3 <3

9- CHAR’S COUNTERATTACK ◘

Again, a lot of new iterations on previous designs, some better than those from War in the Pocket, some worse (it was a really close tie between the two). But we all agreed that the Sazabi is one sexy beast.

Words and Robots’ note: Fitting for a production that caps off the story begun in Mobile Suit Gundam, there’s a real sense of the designers bringing their A-game to the task of perfecting everything done previously. The Nu Gundam (I always groan at the pun) is meant as the ultimate refinement of that original design and will likely never be bettered.

Vari’s note: Super solid all around, and probably the most iconic group of designs in the franchise after the original series.

10- AFTER WAR GUNDAM X ◘

AWGX is underrated on many fronts, and that includes its design. Almost all of the grunts are great, intelligently riffing on familiar UC faces while remaining full of personality with an identity of their own, and there are a few cool suits of the week like the Bertigo and the Correl. However, it lost a few points on the secondary Gundams, as most of them felt quite derivative of what came before. The Airmaster is the Wing/Zeta Gundam again, the Leopard is quite blatantly Heavyarms, the Virsago has the Altron arms, etc… but at least the Satellite System is creative!

Mecha-catgirl’s note: The Daughtress (and its line) is my absolute favorite alt-GM. Including the original and all the Jegans too. Also, they brought back the G-Falcon, which I think more shows should do

Vari: +1

11- GUNDAM 00 ◘

A very strong entry, with a lot of sleek and elegant suits, consistent designs backed by some good worldbuilding (the Union favours sleek, super-fast elite suits, the AEU basically copies the Union’s homework, and the HLR prefers mass-produced bulky machines, etc…) and different iterations of the four Gundams over the course of the series. Great stuff!

Mecha-catgirl’s note: Honestly, I really really enjoyed 00’s iterative design! A shame that couldn’t tip it into S-rank.

Words and Robots’ note: 00 is perhaps let down most by sticking too close to prior stylistic cues. It shines when pushing familiar ideas into new shapes but the Gundams trend towards the norm rather than elaborating on the ‘core’ conceit. Vari’s note: Very sleek designs, but I can’t get over how ugly the GN Drive looks to me and it’s a shame how every gundam had to awkwardly fit around that sphere. Not the worst imposed gimmick in the franchise but imo it comes close.

Bill’s note: The 2000s were not a great period for Gundam, but 00 stands out as the best thing that came out of it, design-wise.

12- IRON-BLOODED ORPHANS: URDR HUNT ◘

What brings this one down is the comparison to Iron-Blooded Orphans. Most of the suits are derived from show originals, and they rarely feel like an improvement, but they nonetheless deserve praise for upping the weirdness factor, and there is undeniably solid stuff in there, like Gundam Zagan.

Words and Robots’ note: I will, however, never say no to a new type of Rodi. Truly, the roundest of mobile suits.

13- MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM ◘

The one, the only, the OG. And going back, it’s easy to see why it had such an impact. The RX-78-2, the Zaku, the Dom… all designs that still serve as the basis for many modern mobile suits. There’s also something to be said about the clear differences between Federation and Zeon suits, with the former going for angular, blocky, functional designs, while the latter lean more into weird curvatured shapes. However… It's still a first draft, and they haven’t yet shaken off the toyetic Super Robot aesthetics that clash with the tone of the story. If we remember the Gelgoog, we also have to remember the Zakrello.

Mecha-catgirl’s note: You say that like the Zakrello’s bad or something, smh my head

Words and Robots’ note: Though clearly this show wins the ‘Big Zam’ tier outright.

Vari’s note: Groundbreaking designs, it’s the perfect measuring stick to which everything else gets compared.

14- G-GUNDAM ◘

Ranking this was a challenge, especially because we had to break a tie between it, 0079 and ZZ. Its design philosophy is so diametrically opposed to most other shows on this list, how can you even compare them. In the end, we had to judge it based on what it was trying to do. And… you can’t say it didn’t succeed in that regard. G-Gundam sets out to be the most fun you’ll have watching a Gundam show, this is the most fun you’ll have watching a Gundam show, and it is in no small part thanks to the Gundams themselves. Plus, putting aside the entertaining ridiculousness of the Nether or Mermaid Gundam, there are actual bangers in here, like the God Gundam, the Minaret Gundam, and (yes) the Tequila Gundam.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment:

15- GUNDAM ZZ ◘

Very much in line with Zeta, but falls short of reaching the same heights, probably because a lot of the suits are brought back from its predecessor, and most of the new ones aren’t as iconic. It does have great highlights though, like the Capule or the Quin Mantha.

16- GUNDAM AGE ◘

An interesting one, despite coming from one of the more subpar shows. Half of it iterates on what came before, in a way that feels at best like a refinement of the design philosophy of the 2000s and at worst like a generic take on the usual suspects (the Gundam, the faceless grunt, etc…). But the other half is surprisingly bold and creative, they feel alien and unlike anything we’ve seen in the franchise.

Words and Robots’ note: It does at least produce some good examples of faceless grunts.

17- GUNDAM F91 ◘

There’s a lot to like about F91. The Crossbone Vanguard grunts are great, the Rafflesia is a really cool Mobile Armour that makes for an excellent final boss, and the greebling on most of them is quite good, but the excess of the latter is also what brought it down. Most of them are overdesigned, their silhouettes end up blending together, and there are some questionable design choices on the titular Gundam.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: Den’an Gei bunny ears should’ve made it an immediate S-rank methinks. But alas.

Bill’s note: I’d define most of the suits in this one as “designs that almost worked”, especially the F91. I like the detailing and the racecar vibe in theory, but the shoulder fins feel unnaturally added to the silhouette, and that big grate on its torso is an ugly blob of visual noise.

18- 0083: STARDUST MEMORY ◘

Another OYW spin-off, therefore a lot of the designs lost points for just being iterations of the original without reaching the same level of refinement as War in the Pocket. As for what is new, it’s a mixed bag. The Gerbera Tetra is beautiful, the Val Valo is a fun crab, the Physalis is a mean machine with a weird face, and the Dendrobium is a big flying brick. Also, it feels important to mention that our discussion was almost instantly derailed into a debate around Nina Purpleton.

Words and Robots’ note: T’was ever thus.

Vari’s note: Out of all the attempt at making in-universe experimental gundam designs, this is probably the most successful in evoking the feeling they’re each made by a different team pushing an idea to its extreme, so even if it’s a mixed bag of a series I like it a lot for that. The Delaz Fleet’s scrapped together new machines are delightful too.

Bill’s note: This is my favourite Gundam show of them all, but I have to admit the mechanical design could have been better. Save for the Gerbera Tetra, that one is in my top three faves of all time.

19- GUNDAW WING: ENDLESS WALTZ ◘

Our consensus was that it's mostly a step down from the TV-show. Deathscythe Hell is turned into a Halloween costume, Talgeese III is the lesser of the three, Heavyarms’s new colour removes contrast from the line-up, and Altron… does look better in the movie. As for Wing Zero, the cool factor of the wings was offset by a variety of thematic, consistency-minded and ornithological pet peeves. It’s good, but not as brilliant as the OG.

Duo’s note: It’s not a Halloween costume, it’s really cool >:(

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: I have beef with the Wing Zero EW’s wings. They’re lacking in secondaries, so they’re just too damn skinny for how long they are. Needs more meat on them! That’s the ornithological pet peeve lmao

Words and Robots’ note: Wing Zero as a whole is too skinny, compared to the beefy powerhouse from the show. It’s a great aesthetic, at odds with what it’s following on from.

Tinylion’s Note: My bias is noted. I cannot detach the Wing Zero design from the magical girl transformation sequence and the theme song. It makes my heart sing. It makes up for the other more lackluster redesigns imho. 

20- THUNDERBOLT ◘

This one is notable for managing to feel somewhat experimental despite iterating once again on the original designs, but it nonetheless remains very hit-and-miss. And it has a bad case of overdesigning at the expense of readability when it comes to the main suits. However, the Atlas Gundam is definitely a highlight, and one of the more unique takes on the OG design in the UC.

Words and Robots’ note: For better or worse, Thunderbolt feels like the product of a group of Gunpla kitbashers having fun.

Vari’s note: Aside from grunts given a new opportunity to shine (spec ops Goggs are great), I don’t think any of their new designs shine that much. The Atlas is certainly original but I wish it didn’t look so much like a techbros’ idea of cool.

21- A WAKENING OF THE TRAILBLAZER ◘

Much like Endless Waltz, most of the redesigns felt like a step down from the original show, more of the same without reaching the same heights.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: Personally, I feel that including some of the things the aliens did in the lineup would help, but they weren’t considered due to not really being mechanical, which is a shame, but sort of gets at what the issue with AWotT in the context of the Gundam franchise is. It’s a well-executed first contact sci-fi movie, and makes excellent use of the most prominent overlapping theme between first contact movies and Gundam (that is, understanding that which is Other, and using that understanding to create peace), but it still feels… less Gundam than first contact. I do not intend this as an insult, it just leaves AWotT in an odd place in the franchise

22- SEED STARGAZER ◘

The best of the SEED shows design wise, mostly because it has a bit more creativity and intent than the rest of the SEED license. The Stargazer’s halo is a cool idea, the Civilian Astray looks really dope, and the bad guys are edgy, but in a fun way. Not great, but there is stuff to be enjoyed here.

Words and Robots’ note: Here endeth the nice things we will have to say about the SEED sub-franchise.

23- G-SAVIOUR ◘

Ok. So… G-Saviour is not great but it’s not that bad, at least not as far as the mechanical design goes. And if you ignore the janky CGI, there are a few okay machines. The Bugu is a fun take on the Zaku with cool pauldrons, the MS Rai is at least pretty bold, and the rest is bland but functional.

24- THE 08TH MS TEAM ◘

08th MS Team is not bad either. But it’s probably the least inspired of the trilogy it forms with 0083 and WitP, design wise. The highlight is the EZ-8, and while it looks quite cool, it’s not enough to carry the whole show above a C.

Words and Robots’ note: When you are just retreading the older designs, it quickly feels like very little mechanical design is actually happening.

Bill’s note: My biggest beef with the Ground Type is that the Mark II is a far superior take on the same blocky, gritty, gunmetal grey aesthetic, and they did it 10 years before 08th MS Team. Also, not design related, but if we’re following a squad of feddie grunts, then they should have been piloting GMs. Maybe they could have been better, top of the line GMs, but they shouldn’t have been Gundams. That’s one of my pettiest pet peeves.

25- GUNDAM SEED ◘

The first in the big derivative AU of a thousand marketable Gundams. But while it’s not hard to see the inspiration and motivation behind the design philosophy of this one (that motivation being, “we want to own more money than we currently possess”), it manages to avoid the realm of “bad” and land in “mediocre” because it still has a few original ideas, and executes them somewhat competently.

26- MS IGLOO ◘

Technical failings aside, it does an okay job translating the OYW designs to 3D, with the Zudah and Big Rang adding a touch of variety and originality. But it’s still rough.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: The Ze’Gok is peak. Don’t listen to the haters. Z’Gok welded to an incredibly phallic object is the ideal Mobile Suit. That’s how Zeon could have won the OYW. More Ze’Gok

Vari’s note: The Zudah should have been mass produced.

Zudah’s note: 💥

27- NARRATIVE ◘

Narrative is obviously in the same ballpark as Unicorn, but we found it somewhat superior, mostly because it went a bit crazier. The Phenex is gaudy and overdesigned to eleven, but it’s also part of the charm, and the Narrative itself looks quite good, with its weird naked skeleton of a prototype aesthetic.

Preda’s note: [RX-0 Unicorn Gundam 03 Phenex] looks like it's owned by a dictator from a former soviet country that's rich in oil reserves. Mobile suit Gadaffi

28- TWILIGHT AXIS ◘

Twilight Axis is hard to judge, because there’s so little of it. Basically all of its designs are familiar faces with one detail tweaked and a colour swap. Nonetheless, it’s not like it does anything bad, those tweaks are mostly alright additions. It’s not a full meal, but it’s a perfectly acceptable single peanut.. 

29- GUNDAM UNICORN ◘

While it does a very good job modernising the pre-existing stuff, the new ones regularly straddle the line between decent and overdesigned, frequently crossing it. The Unicorn itself is the worst offender of the bunch especially in Full Armor mode. Moreover, while the Zeonic designs have always been undeniably inspired by Nazi aesthetics, the Geara Zulus going for it so ostentatiously becomes tasteless, particularly when it’s the show going all in on conditional pacifism.

Vari’s note: If only the Kshatriya had come up in another series…

Bill’s note: Since overdesigning to the point of unreadability is one of my biggest turn-offs (as you’ll see a few entries down the line), I find the Kshatriya really impressive for pulling off such a bold and heavy concept flawlessly. It just needs to remove the nazi iconography with an orbital sander.

30- THE ORIGIN ◘

Another iteration on the 0079 designs, and while they couldn’t be qualified as failures, they’re mostly… yep. That’s a Zaku with greebling. There’s nothing exciting or original (ironically) about them. That’s in large part due to the CG, dragging it down a few more notches because it doesn’t blend well with the 2D animation.

31- CUCURUZ DOAN’S ISLAND ◘

See above, it’s more of the same.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: lol snout Zaku

32- GQUUUUUUX ◘

So… you can’t accuse it of being uninspired, but was the experiment successful? You tell us, it was the most divisive one of the bunch. The suits are really creative, novel for the franchise, a lot of it is really cool, but there were many choices that some of us found really questionable, such as the EVA inspiration mixed with the traditional Gundam designs. And again, the CG dragged the whole thing down.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: I think GQuuuuuuX’s designs were really strong! I’d call the experiment a success! Unfortunately I was in the minority in this group :(

Words and Robots’ note: Stuck in the very awkward place of reinventing the wheel using an art-style that rapidly devolves into visual overload. Seems like everything would look great as a kit but that busyness and texture doesn’t necessarily work on-screen.

Vari’s note: This series really suffered from the heavily black-lined CG indeed making everything look worse than it actually is. It is also inexcusable that we never got to see the best Guntank design in action. I’ll spare this post from my GQux mech design manifesto but yeah there’s a lot of good in here when you take the time to analyse them.

Bill’s note: I was one of the harsher critics on GQuuuuuuuX. For the Red Gundam in particular, there’s no detail that stands out, adds personality or makes the silhouette more appealing, it’s the definition of greebling that is just visual noise. But this is an especially subjective opinion based on my personal tastes, and I respect the boldness.

33- HATHAWAY ◘

While it had perfectly good grunts like the Messer and the Gustav Karl, the messes that are the Xi and the Penelope were what condemned it to the D-rank. It is somewhat justified in-universe by the UC105 meta being big chonky suits, but the execution was painfully flawed.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: Again, I thought these designs were cool and effective! But alas, I was outvoted

Words and Robots’ note: A case of the concepts being great and the execution proving so-so. The Xi and Penelope are, for me, at once too slavishly devoted to the original illustrations and too removed from the monstrous feel of Yasuhiro Moriki’s lineart. The Xi has lost its aggressive backswept angles and become a slab of overlapping plates. The Penelope looks great in glimpses, but then it stands up and it’s a bloke with a dead swan on his head. They both feel extremely awkward and make me question the point of mobile suits that cannot be easily shown in melee combat. When does the visual short-hand for ‘every soldier is a person’ become so overloaded with extra bits it breaks back down to random clumps of military hardware shooting at one another? But yeah. Many marks off for taking some very interesting art and iterating on it in precisely the wrong direction.

Vari’s note: While they’re awkward I don’t think the Xi and Penelope are *that* bad, the Xi in particular has a very nice cloaked white knight angle to the design, but again they’re failed by the cgi implementation. On the side of the Messer and the Gustav Karl tho, within the UC I genuinely feel they’re the most interesting grunts the saga has come up with, beyond looking cool they’re directly in conversation with all the grunts that came before and purely through visuals have things to say about the people using them. Should have ranked a little bit higher.

Preda’s note: this is like if anime got the anime treatment

34- HATHAWAY 2 ◘

More of Hathaway 1, adding a very slight variation on the Messer, a mass-produced Nu Gundam with unflattering colours, and the Alyzeus. BillVeusay’s note: The Alyzeus has the personality of a drawer full of the world's most unwieldy lego pieces. It has the silhouette of a weetabix that an overexcited chihuahua mistook for its chew toy. It looks like three mobile suits and an Airbus A380 got stuck together in the teleporter from David Cronenberg's The Fly. It looks like the kid of a fussy mum who insisted they wear ten layers of clothing on a cold day. It looks like Mickey Mouse ordered a bunch of magical brooms to design a mobile suit and they never stopped. It looks like the ghost of the Kowloon walled city. It looks like a still frame of head-on collision between an armoured train and a cargo truck full of dishwasher parts. It looks like the strategy was to give the enemy pilots visual sensory overload. It looks like the mobile suit division was gonna get their budget cut next quarter if they didn't use all of it by the end of the month. It looks like it tried to avoid paying extra for luggage at the airport by wearing everything it packed. It looks like the 2yo daughter of the engineer scribbled on the blueprints and the mechanics just ran with it. It looks like the pilot would need a week's formation in speleology before they'd be able to find the cockpit. It looks like someone plucked a chicken, covered it in glue, and let it loose in a hardware store after an earthquake.

Inhales. Okay, that might be my most subjective take, this is exactly the kind of thing I think of when I hear “bad mechanical design”, but it wounded me first. I called the Xi and the Penelope overdesigned and clunky, and they came up with this for the sequel. Felt like it was made specifically to annoy me.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: What could I do in the face of such reckless hate?

Words and Robots’ note: I genuinely think the Alyzeus is one of the better pieces of mechanical design this series of films has produced. Make of that what you will.

Vari’s note: Shhhh my princess, don’t listen to his venom, you’re the most beautiful flower of metal and rockets. More seriously yeah the Azyleus is a mixed bag, I think it’s a huge improvement on the Penelope when it comes to the frame itself and it being a souped up Full Armor Nu Gundam is very interesting thematically, but then it got 50 rocket launchers and 12 discordant thrusters stapled on top of that base which clutters things too much.

35- SEED DESTINY ◘

What condemned it most of all was the move to bring back the original Zaku and Dom designs with no justification other than marketability. A proof there was no thought or philosophy behind the mechanical design of this one, just an attempt to sell more gunpla. And while admittedly, each and every one of these shows exists on some level to sell gunpla, how well they hide it is a heavy factor in our judgement. This one failed miserably.

36- SEED FREEDOM ◘

22 years since the beginning of SEED, and they apparently didn’t feel the need to improve on Destiny, or come up with anything original because it’s all derivative. And worse.

37- REQUIEM FOR VENGEANCE ◘

And we finally get to the bottom. This one was ranked lowest of the lows not just for the designs themselves (the CG of the Mobile Suits were admittedly the one aspect where they did alright) but for the inherent wrongness of turning the OG machines and the clever thoughts behind them into bland gritty military-porn, like the incarnation of all of the least fun aspects of Warhammer 40k.

Mecha-catgirl’s comment: The most succinct description I’ve heard of RfV’s mechanical design is “panel-linerslop”

Words and Robots’ comment: The pursuit of ‘realism’ is a blight upon anything that remotely has a style of its own.

Vari’s note: Turns out giving the gundam franchise to the “look how cool 40k is” indie animator guy creates some dissonance, who could have thought.