Yeah I agree with this a lot. The only time Fumina showed signs of real character development was after her battle with Lady and she realizes that her gunpla, by design, was limiting her solo performance. But they screwed it up anyway as it's quickly fixed about an episode later, removing any potential for real character growth. Also I'm really sick of reused Jigen Haohryu animations.
Having seen the final episode, I can't help but feel it encapsulates in microcosm the bland, committee-marketed nature of Try. No style or substance, just a generous helping of fanservice, lots of girls fighting over our lord and savior Sekai, and music that screamed 'generic up-beat ending theme' from a low-budget B-movie. The sheer lack of anything unique, visually interesting or engaging (compared to the epic final episode of the original) was just amazing by itself.
My Elf Is Better.
Agree. There's also a lack of genuine character drama and sociopolitical themes. Sure GBF is somber and grim, but it still deals with a lot of real life issues such as corruption in professional sports and child exploitation. Any characters with potentially interesting backgrounds and personalities don't even compete in the finals. This feels like a shameless toy commercial without the wit and smarts of its predecessor.
Yeah, the character density just hurt this series rather than kept it engaging. There's a lot of promise in a squad based Gunpla series—hell, you could call Gundam itself a very squad based franchise (since even in MSG Amuro had allies to back him). The sad fact is that GBFT just didn't really play to any of the strengths you get out of having a core team of characters to follow and was just too muddled a mess to do more than try to impress us with graphics versus content.
Currently piloting: MS-18N Kampfer Nachtjaeger
I too agree that Try lacks substance. It had much to show but the problem was there was no investment with the characters to make the audience actually care about who wins the fights. The Gary Stu team versus the Determinator Team is a clichéd rivalry but has been around in other tournament animes like Try. With build fighters they built up Yukki as a character with his own power steadily growing stronger and actually see him be challenged. Wth Wilfried...as much as I like that he has Shinn's voice actor, came off as a bland boring rival with no depth. Adou had more development cause f his connection with Yuuma. And Yuuma was more developed because of his connection with Sakai... You know...I think if the focus was on Yuuma and only Yuuma as a main character then the show would have done much better. But who knows.
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A committee-designed mess.
GBFT is what you get when a committee looks at the success of the original and goes 'wow, that was so awesome, but we can totally do it better!'
Thus begins the madness that is Try.
Now, let me just emphasize that I do not completely hate Try Fighters. It has some excellent episodes. 7, 9 and 22 exemplify everything Try could have been, but failed miserably at in the long run. I will happily watch those episodes again and again, but I'll never be able to forget how bad the rest of it is.
Let start at the beginning; the squad system. Having three fighters instead of one has potential, but in practice just means that triple the animation budget is needed to show all the unique machines duking it out to be visually interesting. As a result, many battles look dull as ditch-water, and it is blatantly obvious that the animation team simply didn't have the money or the time needed to make such an ambitious set-up work on a consistent basis.
Another issue is that there is no character development in Try Fighters. Interesting teams pop up in the qualifiers, then pop right back down again. Even the main cast don't have anything much in the way of personality after 24 episodes, and come off more like committee-designed archetypes than unique individuals. Most conversations that in Build Fighters would've done things like add appeal or expound on motivations instead go something like this:
Character 1) "Oh no, my [Vaguely-defined personal problem] is holding me back from [Insert Gunpla-related issue here]."
Character 2) "Then I think you should [Insert potential solution here] to make this better!"
Looking back on the series now that it's nearly finished, I can safely say that I barely even know who the main characters are. Yuuma is probably the most well-developed, but even he doesn't have much personality to speak of, Fuumina can be replaced by a teleprompter loaded with a list of 'Required Support Character' cliches, and I literally cannot think of a sentence Sekai says that isn't either 'martial arts are awesome!' or 'I have no idea what is going on!'. I've heard this series was supposed to be some kind of love-letter to G Gundam, but in my opinion it does G Gundam a massive disservice, and has even retroactively tainted that series in the minds of some.