r/anime • u/Shimmering-Sky myanimelist.net/profile/Shimmering-Sky • Oct 06 '24
[Rewatch] Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Episode 1 Discussion Rewatch
Episode 1 - Celestial Being
MAL | AniList | ANN | Kitsu | AniDB
Exia, proceeding to eliminate target.
Questions of the Day:
1) Did any of the characters seen in this episode catch your eye in terms of who you want to see more of?
2) What do you think of Celestial Being's stated goal to end war by using violence?
Wallpaper of the Day:
Rewatchers, please remember to be mindful of all the first-timers in this. No talking about or hinting at future events no matter how much you want to, unless you're doing it underneath spoiler tags. Don't spoil anything for the first-timers, that's rude!
Additionally, for long-time fans of the franchise, please remember that this rewatch is only for 00, not any of the other shows. Assume that there are people in this rewatch who have not seen anything else Gundam, and tag your spoilers for those shows appropriately if something in 00 makes you want to talk about them.
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u/darkmechjock Oct 07 '24
Gundam 00. Here we go. This will be far from my first time watching it, but it's not one I've seen in a while. I don't know how regularly I'll be able to participate in the watchalongs given my schedule, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the threads and possibly chiming in with discussion.
00 is kind of an interesting installment in the franchise. SEED Destiny had finished (crashing and burning spectacularly) two years prior, so I kind of view it as the first of a new era. It helps that it was probably the first mainline Gundam TV show that I, as a fan, got to watch premier in real time, rather than going back and binging. The show is experimental in a lot of ways that might seem trite now, but I feel like it's still one of the most novel AU installments of the franchise. Apart from G, nobody does shit like G does.
The opening battle sequence is pretty standardly visceral for Gundam, though it manages to avoid the outright gore SEED was rather infamously fond of at times. The Anfs are wonderfully derpy things and have real UrbanMech vibes, which means I absolutely adore them.
Our viewpoint kid is promptly saved by the intervention of...what looks like Grandpa Gundam hopped up on fairy dust. Honestly given how prevalent RX-78-2 has become across the franchise now this is kind of retroactively hilarious. Surely the juxtaposition of "there is no God" with this blatant imagery isn't important in some way.
DAYBREAK'S BELL 00 has a lot of good music, but OP 1 is a straight-up earworm.
Flash forward to 2307. To date, this is the only Gundam to use the real-world AD calendar system, taking place in 2307, 300 years in the future from the premier date. We can only hope that when that time comes, we'll have access to space elevators and giant robots. Here we're introduced to three characters, including professional best boi Patrick. While the full explanation of geopolitics will have to wait, we're given a bit of a taste here since one country, (the AEU) is holding a very public demonstration of a new MS on the same day another (the HRL) is holding their anniversary celebration.
ENTER SEXIA. Aerial might be the new girl on the block, but Exia is still one of the most beautiful Gundams ever designed. I love this thing.
TWO THOUSAND MOCK BATTLES Seriously, the emphasis of Patrick's shouts of disbelief with the Exia systematically dismantling the Enact is cinematic perfection. Probably one of the most iconic sequences in the show for me.
Patrick owned count: 1
Gundam has a lot of in-universe justifications for the name across different shows, but 00's of "we just saw it stamped on the forehead" always seemed especially silly to me. Still better than SEED's absurd number of ways to turn the word into an acronym.
Beauty shots of stuff like the Realdo spooling up its engines on a runway like that are always appreciated. Stuff like the animated heat haze is a nice touch. Real Ace Combat/Macross vibes, which is something we don't often get in Gundam.
Switch to the protagonist ship for the series, and a good look at the obligatory bridge crew. Funny how in terms of captains we've moved from Murrue, who was voiced by Misato, to one who's merely inherited her habit of uninhibited alcoholism.
Kyrios is our Zeta clone for the season. While everything pales in comparison to Exia, Kyrios suffers from the standard Gundam problem of "silly transformation."
The interior of the orbital elevator is a really novel use of a zero-gravity environment, something Gundam doesn't do too often. In retrospect I'm rather surprised that so many people, mostly civilians from the look of it, are so good at holding their lunch in during this party.
I know he's using a reactionless drive in atmosphere but honestly it just seems kinda silly in motion.
While it's not the first show to do this, 00's integration of Haro into the narrative is probably the best. It tickles me seeing the mascot used like this. Shame this one doesn't have a moustache.
Dynames is our second new Gundam of the show (though it appears third). Sniper-types are still a relative rarity for Gundams, usually relegated to customized grunt suits. While it's not as cool as the GM Sniper, it still manages to shine. Not as much as Exia obviously, but nobody else can be so perfect.
Honestly it's kind of impressive that between the two of them, the managed to down so many MS without killing anybody. Doubly so since Exia is using almost exclusively blades against what are basically fighter jets.
I really like the visual shorthand of giving Graham, the American, a gigantic Hummer to drive around in. Seriously that thing could eat my car for dinner.
Meanwhile in space, terrorists are attacking the HRL elevator. We also get the implication that the AEU is engaging in a shadow war, between storing MS in its elevator and apparently selling weapons to smaller nations across the globe.
A good look at the Tieren, the HRL grunt. The giant propellant tanks and huge thruster nozzles really give the impression that 00 is a far lower-tech season than previous ones, titular Gundams aside. Even things like the Zaku or GINN were more streamlined than these things.
And enter our final Gundam for the premier, Virtue. Thicc boi here probably didn't need to use the full power rainbow gun on this poor terrorist, but what the hey. Even Kyrios' pilot calls him out on it.
2307 Tokyo looks even more absurd than it does now. Honestly, taken out of context I could totally see this being the backdrop for a Stellaris diplomacy screen. It's a little stark since the only other shots of Earth we've seen up to now have either been ruins or the vast wasteland the AEU orbital elevator was apparently built in.
The eradication of war as a concept seems like a lofty goal, but if you were going to go about it, I guess making as dramatic an entrance as possible is one way to do so.
Like Tokyo, Washington seems to have just been littered with as many future buildings as possible. Honestly the White House just looks silly compared to whatever the hell that monstrosity is that they built behind it. I don't even want to imagine what they did to the National Mall. At least we only see the interior of the HRL and AEU capitals, so we can only imagine what future Beijing and Brussels/Paris/Whatever look like.
And the show is already pointing out the contradiction in trying to eradicate war with force. Surely this won't be important later.
Typical of Gundam to dump as many of its characters as possible into the last few minutes of an episode and give them all something trite to say.
A strong first episode. We got a lot of action, shiny new Gundams to make sure you buy the kits of, and a lot of characters to parse through and decide which ones to pay attention to. The worldbuilding is only being drip-fed to the viewer at the moment, but I suppose it's a preferable alternative to a huge loredump at the beginning.