Penguin Truth's Somewhat Incomplete Gundam Tier Chart Part 3: Not Sure If Want

MY SOMEWHAT INCOMPLETE GUNDAM TIERS CHART. Tier Review: God Tier - High Tier - Mid Tier - Low Tier - Shit Tier MID TIER These entries are all decent if you're fond of the elements of the franchise, but none of them particularly excel in their elements. However, like the Low Tier, there's an entry or two I haven't quite finished, so bare with me. Mobile Suit Gundam F91 is an example of production problems ruining what could have been amazing. The movie was originally intended to be a full length Gundam television series, but because of problems on the staff the story was pared down to a lean 115 minutes after only thirteen scripts were written. Just watching this reveals what great potential was wasted on such a short feature. That being said, on its own, the movie is decent. It really has the feel of a serious Universal Century anime. The issue, then, becomes the obvious hurried pacing and the lack of satisfactory conclusion. Therefore, this movie is practically destined to remain on this tier. It could have been great, but instead it was just sort of okay. The first full Gundam series to take place outside of the Universal Century timeline was the oddity Mobile Fighter G Gundam, which takes the "real robot" Gundam franchise and skews it drastically into a "super robot" program. Here, instead of wars, nations solve their disputes via the Gundam Fight, a tournament in which the space colonies send their representative fighter in a Gundam planetside to take part in one-on-one battles for the right to win their nation the right to control the others for a four year period. All common sense is thrown out the window in this series, where a well-trained man can take on giant mecha with a scarf and love can be fired from hands as an attack. Sort of a send-up of over-the-top martial arts/wuxia films and the Gundam franchise at large, the tongue-in-cheek craziness in G Gundam is something that reminds you that, hey, this is a show about people fighting in giant robots, have as much fun as you want. The fact that it doesn't take any of this seriously is what makes it so fun to watch. That being said, it really isn't very Gundam-ish and really lacks a sense of grounding. It's a pretty good series, yes, but it's not a great one by any means. I must admit, that, like Victory Gundam, I still have not finished After War Gundam X, a show whose premise is a "what if" scenario using the Universal Century's set up. So, much like in the Universal Century, there are Newtypes. However, from the research I've done into this show, they end up being different then the concept in the UC era. The show is pretty enjoyable, with a main character named Garrod Ran who might be one of my favorite main characters in a Gundam anime. He's very energetic, but very wise beyond his years, though a tad reckless and in need of guidance. That guidance is largely given by a secondary character, Jamil Neate, a sort of Quattro Bajeena/Amuro Ray hybrid. The romance between Garrod and Tiffa is sweet. The whole Garrod-Tiffa-Jamil dynamic seems to have influenced the Renton-Eureka-Holland situation in Eureka Seven, where the mentor is somewhat jealous of the younger man who has a deep connection with a special, withdrawn girl. Though Jamil is a lot less of a jerk than Holland, thankfully. Unfortunately, I've only seen half of the program to date, so my view is less than complete, but the show is certainly enjoyable, though not as exciting as it could be. Not to mention that the mechanical designs leave a lot to be desired. Still, Newtype dolphin! Similar to the premise of the OVA itself, the folks at Sunrise experimented with Gundam: MS Igloo and unlike those brave Zeon weapons testers, they didn't fail spectacularly. They just didn't succeed all that well. There's very little remarkable about the first full three dimensional CGI entry in the Gundam franchise. The CGI looks creepy and the situations are repetetive. There's nothing particularly damning about this feature, but nothing outstanding either. Mid tier is where it belongs. The latest Gundam entry is Mobile Suit Gundam 00, directed by Fullmetal Alchemist director Seiji Mizushima. The series is unfinished, now well into its second season (another odd decision by Sunrise staff, which accomodated the continued production of trainwreck Code Geass into its own second season), but so far, it's pretty good. It takes a while to get started, though, refusing to hit its stride until around halfway through the first season, and not really picking up the pace until episode 18. The main protagonists seemed to develop so slowly that fans amassed around the supporting characters, antagonists like Graham Acre, Patrick Colasour, Sergei Smirnov, and Ali al Sarches. Ali is a particularly disturbing example of strangely misaimed fandom, considering his brutality. Hell, he's one of my favorite characters. When the show got towards the halfway point, though, it excelled at an exponential level with each new episode. The second season started off strong, and though it has dipped a couple of times, it's picked up as of the writing of this paragraph. The writing isn't particularly strong, nor the dialogue, but the concepts and execution are very impressive. This series has somewhat redeemed the franchise after the disaster of the CE era programs, but so far it hasn't quite worked its way up past this tier. TO BE CONTINUED - Penguin Truth

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