Mobile Suit Turn A Gundam: ∀ Gundam

[Munsu]

Well, finally the fansubs for this series that I've been waiting for have been released. Here's the full series by Anime-Gundam:
http://www.anime-gundam.org/bittorrent/%5BAG%5D%20Turn%20A%20Gundam%2001%20-%2025.torrent
http://www.anime-gundam.org/bittorrent/%5BAG%5D%20Turn%20A%20Gundam%2026%20-%2050.torrent

Any of you guys seen this one? Is it any good? Decent? Awful?


It is the far future, in the year 2345 of a new calendar - two thousand years, that is, after the dawn of the space age. After centuries of peace, the people of Earth have lost the technology they once possessed and forgotten that they once traveled in space. But a lost tribe of lunar settlers, the Moonrace, have retained the scientific arts... and now they regard their mother planet with envious eyes.

Hoping to return to their ancestral home, the Moonrace contact Earth's feudal lords and attempt to negotiate the transfer of a chunk of the planet's territory. But soon, unable to make a deal with Earth's rulers, the Moonrace decide to seize the land they desire by force. Anticipating an extraterrestrial invasion, Earth's feudal lords organize militias armed with cars and biplanes to do battle with the Moonrace's army of giant two-legged war machines.

Caught in the middle of this war of the worlds is a youth named Loran Cehack, who finds a mysterious artifact - a relic of Earth's forgotten space age - entombed in stone. Will this ancient mobile suit enable Loran to avert the conflict and make peace between Earth and moon?

*taken from animenfo.com*
http://www.gundam.channel.or.jp/program/_ta_tv.shtml
http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=916
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=917

[Illrenmazou]

I haven't watched it yet but I hear a lot of praises for this series. Proving that a non depressed Tomino can make a good show :D

[darkshadow]

I watched it, though it was very good, badass at times even, Turn A is a beast.

[Harima Kenji]

It's a good and enjoyable series. It's not as combat based as other series as I recall, but it's very entertaining. Likeable characters, good story.

[masamuneehs]

wow. i just finished this and really felt like it was one of the more enjoyable Gundam series I'd ever watched. There wasn't half as much fighting and death in it as I'd come to expect from a Gundam series, but still there were epic moments and some really cleverly done things.

still, it's not a series without its flaws. i thought they did a poor job with not bringing in certain characters way up until the series was almost over, and even though it was nice to see so much development from minor characters (some of whom I really came to like, even a few I absolutely despised early on in the series), I couldn't help but feel they spent too much time on a few of them.

also, it's the first time in a Gundam show I've simply suspended any and all expectation for halfway decent battle tactics or treachery. i'd have never made it through otherwise. suffice to say, if you're looking for a serious war piece, this is not the Gundam you're looking for.

music was really hit and miss. some tracks got used to death, and the two OPs were just god awful. SFX seemed to have phoned it in as well. this and the graphics were a step back from the earlier Gundam Wing (which, I assume, is because the entire show was animated with drawn cells instead of all the computer gizmos they use now). voice acting was pretty good though.

best thing about this show are the characters and their interactions. there were lots of small things about many of the characters that I didn't get to appreciate until the show was almost over

Awards and Scores:

Best Character - Kihel Heim / Dianna Soriel. Okay, maybe I'm cheating by putting these two together, but I think it says something that my favorite character(s) from a mecha show were two non-combatant women.
Runner Up: Harry Ord
Overall characters: 9 out of 10

Best Action Scene - Mobile Suit Battle on the Moon's Surface (ep 46)
This mobile suit battle stands out for me, not just because of the fact that it was pretty uncomprimising with inflicting critical damage on mobile suits, but because the sense of seriousness throughout made it unlike almost all of the mobile suit battles before it.
Runner Up: the Fleet Battle.
Overall action score: 5 out of 10

Best Emotional Scene - Visit to a Graveside
The premise and delivery of this scene were excellent. Really did a great job setting the tone for future character developments which would be shaped by this event.
Runner Up: The Accension of the New King
Overall Emotional score: 8 out of 10

Best Mech - Whatever the hell that thing Corin Nander piloted. That was a freaking sweet looking mobile suit.
Runner Up: Merrybell's Custom Bandit
Overall Mech score: 6 out of 10

Best Musical Track - The Cocoon of the Moon by Aki Okui (ED2 song)
Good lord. When this song first came on, it just slapped me, because it was so perfectly eerie and yet beautiful at the same time. It made me watch every single time the ED ran. This song gives me shivers.
Runner Up: whatever that classical piece was they used for some battle scenes
Overall music: 6 out of 10

Best Voice Acting - Jun Fukuyama as Keith. I'm probably a little biased since this guy's put in real good work in a lot of anime recently, but I was really impressed by the depth of the wide range of emotions that Keith harbors at different times in the series. Almost overshadowed other more important characters on screen because of the voice.
Runner Up:Rieko Takahashi for Dianna/Kihel, Gou Aoba(who?) for Guin
Overall: 7 out of 10

Best Plot Point - The Double (see below)
Runner Up - The love of the dedicated soldier
Overall plot score - 7 out of 10

Best Comedic Point - Earth morons in space
Runner up - Ensign Yanny
Overall comedy score - 8 out of 10

Best Subversion of a Classic Anime Trope - Everyone knows how to pilot mechs and how shit in space works, even if it's their first time going there.
Runner up - the platinum blond ace pilot with obscured face (see below)
Overall originality score - 9 out of 10

Overall score - 8 out of 10. More like a low 7 if you're a graphics Nazi.

Placement among other Gundam series - below 08th, 0080. Almost all the way on the opposite spectrum from Wing, so hard to say which is better between those two. Better than Zeta, a little better than the original 0079 (granted, the original is still the best piece of "original" work in the Gundam-verse, outside of 08th and 0080). Way better than Gundam X, G Gundam (which is actually the Gundam series this is most like, even though they're almost complete opposites, strangely enough) and, of course, better than 0083 and SEED Destiny.

at this point, this post enters spoiler territory. I think this is the first anime I've ever seen to really pull off the "body double switch" gimmick and actually make it work to seriously further the plot and characters. One of the most interesting things in this show was watching Kihel and Dianna have to mimic each other almost to the point where they became the same person. despite that, they managed to still have their own personalities, and i thought that Kihel's love story was particularly interesting.

Lily and Guin posed a really interesting couple too (even though that didn't work out.... I was also a little confused by how it appears that Guin ends up with Marybell, even though he basically confesses that he's actually in love with Loran). Lily acts tough and brash, but she's secretly a coward and can't even stand to ride in a car without blocking out the outside world with her umbrella. Guin is pure ambition (and I like how they explicitly explored how similair he and Josef are in the last few episodes), and even though you had a feeling he'd end up a bad guy, his betrayal was pretty shocking because he'd already been through so much.

I don't think I've ever seen a character get the shaft as royally as Sochie gets. Seriously, wow. She was my least favorite character throughout the entire show, but even I felt bad for how things ended up for her.

Harry Ord has to be the most anti-climactic "facially obscured ace" in Gundam history. He was still bad-ass, and the best military character in the show by far (Yanny gets second for comedic worth),but I kept waiting for them to explain his past, his sunglasses, for something to change. I thought we were in for it when he pulled the gun on Kihel, but he ends up being essentially the same guy from episodes 1-50.

Corin Nander was so fucking annoying when he first showed up. Christ. But somewhere in the "traveling monk" phase he started to grow on me. Bruno and Jacop too, although it was because they weren't half as stupid later on in the show. Prize for most annoying stupids goes to all of the Red Team. I hated them so much.

Midgard, that's an ugly motherfucker.
Pou, that's an annoying motherfucker.

Merrybell, Sweatson, Agrippa, the whole lot of "oh shit bad guys be on the moon!" people were all so crappy. Sweatson particularly got annoying, and Agrippa was a total disappointment for a guy made out to be a conniving bad-ass from early on in the show. I thought they could have done better using existing characters instead of trying to shove Merrybell and Sweatson at us towards the end and have us give a damn.

Gym (Gyn?). A lot of Gundam final enemies have spouted stupid nonsense, but his rant was ridiculous. He went back and forth between contradictions, and couldn't even beat a kid in a sword fight. He totally deserved that off-screen death.

Fran and Keith. Man, insanely complete minor characters. Really liked Fran in particular. Their side stories were interesting, because even as the "outsiders" they represented "the common folk's side of the tale" for most of the show.

Pacing in this show was awful within episodes, but very good over the episodes. We don't even get a battle in the first episode, and the war is ridiculously lopsided for such a long time. The battle at the end was the first real full-scale one, and it really felt epic even though it was quite small in comparison to many other Gundam shows' fights. The skirmishes throughout were pretty good too, although I could personally have done with a bit more ruthlessness and death.

I don't know if I like or don't like that the "premise" of this show is "everything that happened in previous Gundam shows didn't matter, because people ended up basically wiping out civilization as we know it a few times". It's like it took all of the blood, metal and tears from the other shows and were like, "yeah, that's all cute and all, but this is ultimately what it adds up to", which is almost insulting because the other shows were far more serious in giving the proper gravity to the subject matter than this one. On the other hand, I thought it was pretty badass, and they could have probably made an entire series out of the parts described as culminating the Black History.

For a real war drama, I liked 08th MS Team and 0080 much better. For a political fare, Wing and SEED are more thought provoking. But for an overall enjoyable viewing experience with giant robots and memorable characters, this is one of the better Gundams out there.