The mother of all high production budget series has now come to a close. Gundam has always been close to my heart and I have always enjoyed the cheesy mechanical robots fighting it out in space. However, I always looked at it as just that. Gundam has always been the awesome action-packed robot-fighting anime. The way I viewed all the different Gundam series changed a couple of years ago when Sunrise rolled out the very successful Gundam series called Gundam Seed. Seed was able to incorporate the action that Gundam provides with a very solid character development and story and turning it into something truly memorable. Sunrise quickly followed up with the sequel to the series and named it Gundam Seed Destiny. Destiny, in my opinion, was not as successful as its predecessor, but certainly remained entertaining in my mind.
The newest installment in this long series is none other than Gundam 00. I began watching it with hopes that it will continue the new direction that Sunrise took with Seed. This did not happen. Focus was taken away from the characters and placed more on the political back story. I could no longer relate to any of the characters. The situation worsened when at the end of the first season, characters that I did not know about started dying. The tone of the show suggested that I should have been sad. But really, I was not sad at all.
In an attempt to regain some foundation, some fast-paced revelations (Code Geass R2 style) were added in the second season. Unfortunately, this was not enough. I did not like any of the characters anymore. Their reasons for fighting made little sense. The political back story was over-done and everything was just falling apart. From that point on, I followed the show for the laughs. It was great to see Andrei kill his father due to sheer stupidity or Mr. Bushido turning into an irrelevant character that is better off dead. Marina Ismail is simply useless to the main plot and her role in the overall story is irrelevant since she isn’t even a girlfriend to Setsuna.
I still enjoyed the show because of the always amazing animation and battle scenes. Some of the fight scenes against the Momento Mori were visually impressive. Of course, this series has been able to take advantage of the 720p definition unlike its predecessors. Overall, if we were to discount the visual appeal of the show, the series as a whole is in my opinion, a step down from Gundam Seed and even Gundam Seed Destiny.
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