Ɐ Gundam is not only the best work by Yoshiyuki Tomino I know, but also his most personal in the good and the bad. It bears his usual writing-as-you-go problems: the pacing languishes for the middle series then in the end a hurried flurry of politicking sets up the finale, the characters are quite static, and given its many sub-plots, vast world, the crossover backstory, or the stated power of its machines, it feels in the end rather small and restricted. The final fight was particularly disappointing: I expected the heroes to use all they had learned to settle the fight and prevent the threatened cataclysm, but instead it just kind of happens. Though I can add the big bad had made himself a threat by then.
But against this are major strengths, ones rarely found in the genre. Mechanical designs are elegant and unique, breaking away from suits of armour for an art-deco look. Everyone in the cast has their own role and motivation. Where others have once-an-episode fights that rarely affect the plot before the finale, Ɐ starts with a tense stand-off where the focus is not on winning each battle but on not letting it escalate. Each encounter matters, and the protagonist's disabling techniques, with no recycling of animation, visualise his pacifism perfectly. It also illustrates well some causes of wars, as a mix of loyalty, political myopia and irreconcilable interests draw leaders towards a conflagration few of them wanted. SEED by comparison has a better backstory, greater scope and danger, and more character drama, but Ɐ made me care more, however small the stakes. Crucial to the atmosphere is that the world feels big beyond the plot, whilst that of SEED seems to exist only insofar as it affects the war.
Yet the biggest draw is a core theme, working on several levels, something that Zeta and Victory badly lacked. The narrative is self-contained but is also a look back on the twenty years of the franchise that preceded it, parodying its tropes while playing them out very differently, such as showing mobile suits being used for civilian purposes. And finally it is Tomino's victory celebration over depression, which gives a deeply personal weight to its theme of accepting the past in all its troubles and learning from it. And in doing so he has shown himself best able to break out of the very conventions he created years before.
Like a butterfly in moonlight
Ɐ Gundam is not only the best work by Yoshiyuki Tomino I know, but also his most personal in the good and the bad. It bears his usual writing-as-you-go problems: the pacing languishes for the middle series then in the end a hurried flurry of politicking sets up the finale, the characters are quite static, and given its many sub-plots, vast world, the crossover backstory, or the stated power of its machines, it feels in the end rather small and restricted. The final fight was particularly disappointing: I expected the heroes to use all they had learned to settle the fight and prevent the threatened cataclysm, but instead it just kind of happens. Though I can add the big bad had made himself a threat by then.
But against this are major strengths, ones rarely found in the genre. Mechanical designs are elegant and unique, breaking away from suits of armour for an art-deco look. Everyone in the cast has their own role and motivation. Where others have once-an-episode fights that rarely affect the plot before the finale, Ɐ starts with a tense stand-off where the focus is not on winning each battle but on not letting it escalate. Each encounter matters, and the protagonist's disabling techniques, with no recycling of animation, visualise his pacifism perfectly. It also illustrates well some causes of wars, as a mix of loyalty, political myopia and irreconcilable interests draw leaders towards a conflagration few of them wanted. SEED by comparison has a better backstory, greater scope and danger, and more character drama, but Ɐ made me care more, however small the stakes. Crucial to the atmosphere is that the world feels big beyond the plot, whilst that of SEED seems to exist only insofar as it affects the war.
Yet the biggest draw is a core theme, working on several levels, something that Zeta and Victory badly lacked. The narrative is self-contained but is also a look back on the twenty years of the franchise that preceded it, parodying its tropes while playing them out very differently, such as showing mobile suits being used for civilian purposes. And finally it is Tomino's victory celebration over depression, which gives a deeply personal weight to its theme of accepting the past in all its troubles and learning from it. And in doing so he has shown himself best able to break out of the very conventions he created years before.