G no Reconquista

[Harima Kenji]

Anyone following this series?
What are your views?

For me:
It's been 22 episodes in right now, and personally I'm forcing myself to keep watching, hoping to find something to like about it. I've finally had enough.

I am a HUGE fan of the Gundam universe, but this series is an incomprehensible mess. The storytelling is terrible; you have no idea what is going on or why it is going on. There are many different factions who's motivations are unlear and you just don't know what they are about.
Is there a war going on? If so, between who, and why? They introduce some sort of conflict, only to abandon it a few episodes later without resolution. Characters seem to jump from faction to faction (Manny) without anyone caring about their affiliation).

The characters lack any kind of motivation to do what they do, I don't care about any of them. If next week one of the protagonists dies, I couldn't care less about it. The MS battles they are in don't seem to make any sense at all, they are only there because it is a gundam series. I haven't found a good reason for many of the battles. Besides from that they are not exciting at all, the pacing is slow and the protagonists never truly need to fight for their lives.

The mobile suit designs are weak. None of them are memorable, even the G-Self looks uninspired to me. I do see it as a good thing that the G-self by itself is a basic design, without bells and whistles.

A very personal thing: I don't like the art direction and character designs, they seem crappy on purpose to make it look more retro.

I don't mind them breaking from standard Gundam traditions, but at least make it relate to the Gundam spirit. Turn A Gundam broke with many traditions and still managed to be entertaining to me.



I can go on and on about this, but I'm interested in what you think. When I look up reviews on the internet (even gundam fansites), none of them seem to share my thoughts, although many of them seem to be Tomino-fanboys that only like it because he is heavily involved.
Just because the creator of the whole series is involved, doesn't make it good. People should have learned that from the Star Wars prequels..

[vejita613]

You are not alone. In fact, you pretty much took the words right out of my mouth. The only thing I would probably disagree with you on is the fact that Turn A was entertaining. To be honest, I haven't really been a fan of Tomino other than MSG and maybe ZZ. His style of story telling has always been boring to me. Why do these character exist? How do they progress the plot? Why is this battle significant? What are they even fighting about? These seem to be questions that I constantly have with most of his Gundam series, not just Reconquista. His story telling is out dated. His mobile suit design is trash, but supposedly hes doing that to spite Bandai. About the only satisfaction I get from any of this is watching all these UC fan boys try so desperately hard to pretend it's any good. These same fan boys that like to put themselves on a pedestal and trash every other AU series like Wing, SEED, G Gundam, etc. Wake up. It's a terrible show so far and apparently the numbers are proving it. And at the pace it's moving, it won't get any better.

But you know what? I'll still give it a chance. I'm only on episode 20 right now. I haven't downloaded the next few episodes The only motivation I have to continue watching is because of the fact that it is a Gundam series. But make no mistake, in my opinion the most entertaining Gundam series currently airing is Gundam Build Fighters Try.

[Harima Kenji]

I will finish the series as well, but I'll wait a while and watch it in bulk, I think I read somewhere that it only has 26 episodes... so in about a month it's done. Given the fact that in ep 22 the G-Self has the 'perfect' backpack, I see it ending soon. I was really hoping for the G-Self to be upgraded in Towasanga, despite it being a prototype. Not that it is needed, since the suit was overpowered from episode 1.

And yes, the Build Fighters spinoffs are far superior to this series. The worst fights in BF Try still outclass the best fights in this series.

[Kraco]

One of the most confusing and annoying thing about this is what Harima Kenji mentioned: The various factions lose their meaningfulness when people are free to travel between their ships/bases unhindred, more or less, and nobody gives a shit. They are even allowed to take gundams with them, which are the most importants tools of power in this show. It's certainly also true that half of the thing the characters have done so far has been 100% scripted on the spot, relating to no personal motivation or a larger picture. They just do random stuff to keep the weird beyond measure plot going on.

Otherwise I think the larger picture is slowly revealing itself.

1. Mankind nearly destroyed itself in the past, and thus a portion of mankind took off to the space taking advanced technology, especially energy technology, with them. They went to Moon (Towasanga) and Venus (globe).
2. Weird religion was founded on Earth with a monopoly to the energy distributed from Venus via Moon in limited amounts. The religion also created the technology taboos meant to keep history from repeating itself. Break them and lose the energy supply, I reckon.
3. Somebody from the space came back to Earth a couple of decades ago not satisfied with the frozen situation. Caused some big incident. He apparently brought technology with him.
4. The aforementioned still has sympathizer in Venus (G-IT).
5. Towasanga (Dorett) wants to maintain the current situation, even by using force, including the fact no Earthling must ascend higher than the top of the space elevator.
6. Venus officially wants to maintain the status quo as well.
7. Earth has a couple of military factions (Capital Army, Ameria) who want to be equal to the space folks, which makes them also compete with each other.
8. The unofficial Venus side faction G-IT plans to reclaim Earth, that's the reconguista.
9. Megafauna does whatever the hell it wants (that's being a pirate, alright), although one would guess they would sympathize with Earth.

Feel free to correct any of my interpretations.

[vejita613]

That pretty much sums it up as far as I can tell and it does seem to clear some things up for me. I think I will follow Kenji and wait until everything is released and then watch it all at once so that everything will still be fresh.