Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Second Season

The conclusion of the first season left a bad taste in my mouth. That taste stayed throughout the entire second season, but by the end of it, I'd gotten so used to it that I didn't care anymore. (This review assumes familiarity with the first season of Gundam 00 and references several season one spoilers. Season two spoilers are hinted at but not explicitly stated.) STORY - Gundam 00 had a precarious premise from the very beginning. The "war to end all wars" story is one that seems to be visited often, but because it's such an idealistic goal, series pursuing it always stand on a shakyfoundation of logic and realism. As a result, it's a very difficult premise to execute well. One of biggest logical gaps for me is still the idea that Celestial Being's two hundred-year old technology can be superior to that of current-day armies, especially since Celestial Being itself seems to have a very poor understanding of the machines they're making use of. Instead, they are reliant on a supercomputer and the notes and secret power-ups passed down to them by a dead man. All of the questions I had from the first season surrounding the organization's conception and survival over the last two centuries remain unanswered for the most part, but the most frustrating thing was not knowing the ultimate purpose of CB until the series' finale. It blows my mind that most of the characters didn't even seem to know exactly what the "real" purpose of their organization was. It's one thing to keep the audience in the dark, but seriously, even the characters didn't know? Yes, everyone fights for their own reasons, but if you're part of an organization, you should maybe know what they're up to. Just sayin'. The antagonistic Innovators are introduced this season as the new puppeteers of the world, along with their half-puppets, the A-Laws. Presumably, they know what's going on, but since the point of view of the story follows the members of Celestial Being more than the Innovators, the story becomes very reactionary. CB is trying to do this to stop the Innovators from doing this. CB does this because the Innovators are going to do this. But why should the audience care if they ultimately have no idea what anyone's fighting for? The goals from the first season seem to have gone to the wayside somewhere along the way. The flimsy storyline also contributed to an entire season of awful pacing marred by way too many romantic subplots. Seriously, could there possibly have been more of them? It didn't take long for 00 to feel like one gigantic soap opera that just happens to take place in space with some kind of war going on in the background. In fact, I'd venture to say that the romantic storylines and drama were the main focus and the war, morals, and fate of the universe thing was the secondary subplot. Who will get Setsuna in the end? Marina or Gundam? Can Lyle save Anew from her overused mind-control plot device? Will Tieria ever be able to win Veda back from Ribbons? Will Allelujah ever actually do anything important in this series or say a word other than "Marie"? Will Saji ever stop being spineless, and will Louise eventually accept him again or just go to Andrei instead? Can Billy forgive Sumeragi for using him? Can Shirin and Klaus both survive to the end of the series for their happily ever after? Will Mr. Bushido ever give up on Setsuna? Will Patrick ever win Kati's heart?? It. Is. Ridiculous. To be honest, most of the relationship drama (romantic or otherwise) in 00 had the potential to be interesting, but the fact that there was so much of it limited the relevance of each individual subplot and put a huge strain on the viewer's ability to care, especially with an unclear central plotline to tie everything together. The conclusion of the second season and the series as a whole is just as bad as, if not worse than, the first season's ending. It felt similarly rushed, extremely anticlimatic and unrealistic, and didn't resolve nearly as much as I would have wanted. Many of the characters feel stranded at the end of the series, though you do get a resolution for most of the relationship nonsense, further supporting the idea that the relationships were the core of the series and that everything else was secondary. As far as the politics go, it was definitely more of a forced ending than a conclusion. A conclusion implies that things are actually concluded. CHARACTER - With a few exceptions, most of the first season's gigantic ensemble cast returned for the second season's "four years later." A new season really wasn't necessary just for a timeskip, but it was still really nice being able to see Setsuna age. He's the most interesting character in the entire series just because he matures so much as events unfold, and even as he doubts himself, his motivation, and purpose in the world, he never falls into the trap of the Jesus-kun Syndrome -- when a character becomes a preachy moralfag and refuses to kill people, often accomplishing this by disabling mobile suits in battle instead of destroying them. That isn't to say that having morals and a conscience makes for bad characters, but I find it refreshing when the morals and conscience can coincide with the resolve to fight and the knowledge that killing is sometimes necessary. Rather than instilling the pacifist streak in Setsuna, Sunrise made a good decision in having Marina around to balance things out. As irritating and useless as she was most of the time, I think she was necessary to round out the points of views in the series; that is to say, she was a good idea, just poorly executed. Lyle, the new Lockon, felt like a huge cop-out from the beginning. Sunrise actually succeeded in killing a character! ...But here's his identical twin to replace him. Great. It didn't help that they never utilized the "twin" or "brothers" aspect to the best of its potential, and Lyle's logic failed on so many levels. He did not want to be compared to his brother, but essentially agreed to take over his brother's previous identity when he joined Celestial Being by taking on his old codename, his Gundam, and his Haro. Lyle's romantic subplot with Anew was one of the ones that had the most potential, and there was a lot of good acting as far as Lyle's inner conflict and reactions went, but in the end, I don't think his character evolved as much as it could have, and static characters remain uninteresting. Allelujah was amazingly disappointing throughout the second season and pretty much drops off the map after episode seven. You wonder whether his role as a Gundam Meister actually makes him a "main character" or not since he dwindles to the point where he doesn't even have any speaking roles for several episodes at a time. Since Hallelujah supposedly "died" for one reason or another, there wasn't anything in the way of personal conflict. Instead, he spends the whole time chasing after Marie/Soma Peries. Unfortunately, Allelujah/Marie interactions are idealistic and boring while Allelujah/Soma interactions are repetitive and boring. Marie's struggle with Soma and Soma's struggle with belonging and revenge are interesting for many of the reasons the Allelujah/Hallelujah struggle was last season, but the character(s) could have stood well enough on their own without the obligatory romance/attention of Allelujah. Really, Allelujah probably brought them down by turning it into a cheesy would-be romance rather than the revenge/moral conflict it should have been. Rounding out the Meisters, Tieria changed a lot between the first and second season. It would have been nice to be able to actually see that progress rather than just accepting that development had happened, but it's still refreshing to see characters that actually grow and change, and Tieria does continue to mature. Throughout the second season Tieria struggles with the fact that he's an Innovator and his role in both Celestial Being's and the other Innovators' goals. On the most basic level, it's probably the most interesting of the Meisters' conflicts, usurping even Setsuna, but poor execution, lack of attention, and being constantly thrown back by a dozen other subplots kept it from really succeeding, especially at the end. As previously mentioned, there are probably two dozen other characters all with subplots of varying degrees of depth and relevance. Saji and Louise's is especially prominent, but the themes of their relationship cover very little that one of the others doesn't already, especially now that they're both directly involved in the fighting and are no longer bystanders. Neither of them are particularly strong or interesting characters, and I still think that 00 would have been better off without them. It would have probably saved us about ten episodes of drama. There are also still an assload of characters aside from those listed above that make appearances at random, but aren't actually relevant to anything anymore. Ali Al-Saachez will pop up again every seven or eight episodes. As will Nena Trinity, who really should have just died in the first season with her brothers. And as will Liu Mei Wang and Hong Long, who really do anything at all the entire season. All of the Innovators aside from Ribbons are pretty much interchangeable, and even Regene didn't seem to mean much in the end. ARTSTYLE & ANIMATION - The animation in the second season remains slick, and the battles are all relatively fun to watch. I really missed the Gundam Exia's design, though the 0, 00, 0-Riser, and 00-Riser are all pretty interesting as well. I didn't think the Arios was much of an improvement over the Kyrios, though honestly, you don't see Allelujah in action enough this season for his suit to really leave an impression on you. The GN Archer, which actually had a neat design, could have also been featured a lot more. Seravee and Seraphim also had a nice concept, but like the others, was ever over-shadowed by the 00 and 00-Riser. And the Cherudim? As with the Dynames, the prominence of the gigantic rifle made the rest of the suit less important, but even visually, the Cherudim was less to look at than the Dynames. The updated character and costume designs did a lot of good, I think, and I'm fond of Setsuna's older appearance. The only new characters that are introduced in the second season are the score of Innovators. They come in pairs with hilariously punny names like "Revive Revival," "Anew Returner," and "Bring Stabity." They also come in a variety of colorful flavors! Way to make it easy to spot the plot devices hiding out in the army and in Celestial Being, guys. There had to have been a better way to illustrate the concept of a race superior to humans without making it ridiculously obvious, right? The ease at which it is to spot these characters also makes the montage at the end of the series open to a lot of debate, but I really just think Sunrise is trolling us at that point. MUSIC - The music is probably what I ended up enjoying the most in this entire series. I didn't much care for the second season's first opening and ending themes, but chalk that up to my general indifference to UVERworld and Chiaki Ishikawa. Neither are terrible songs or particularly annoying -- just not my thing, I suppose. The second opening and ending, on the other hand, are probably why I even bothered to sit through some of the later episodes since neither of the singles had released at the time. "Namida no Mukou" by stereophony actually took a while to warm up to me because I found the timing awkward in many parts, but I loved the vocalist's voice and the energy in the song is just fantastic. Meanwhile, I loved "trust you" by Yuna Ito pretty much immediately. I'd only listened to a few of Ito's songs prior to that, but "trust you" just blew me away. The melody is beautiful and the steady tempo really carries it through. Furthermore, the accompanying animation was gorgeous and well-timed to fit with the music, and it left a wonderful contemplative feeling at the end of each episode -- more than most of the episodes deserved. It was also a great follow-up the animation for the second ending of the first season, "Friends" by Stephanie. There are a few episodes that end with a brief a capella version of "trust you" that I found really unnecessary and awkward, but the song itself is great.Oddly enough though, I like the TV Cut much better than the full single. Tommy heavenly6's "Unlimited Sky" is used as an insert song for some of the later episodes, which was also pretty awesome. I adore Tomoko Kawase's voice in general, but I always find her anime songs much more energetic and upbeat than her other work, and "Unlimited Sky" is no exception. It always made the battle scenes that much more exciting -- a very needed extra when you're having a hard time caring about the characters involved or the storyline at the time. Lastly, the instrumental soundtrack for 00 seemed markedly improved in the second season. The leitmotifs are a bit more prominent and the music in general seemed to compliment the mood and feeling of each scene a lot better. It was really refreshing to see/hear something actually improve between the seasons. VOICE ACTING - Average for the most part, though I suppose Shinichiro Miki gets special mention for some excellent acting involving a very emotional Lyle, and Noboru Sougetsu (Ribbons), for managing to not remind everyone of Amuro Ray, at least most of the time. The dub is still pretty awful. The best of the dub cast is Brad Swaile as Setsuna and maybe Alex Zahara as Lyle; both are pretty average. The rest of the cast either sound painfully uninspired or just... the same. Half of the female characters in this series sound the same in the dub. It's must be pretty bad when I'm offended at how poorly done the voices are for even characters I don't care about (which, in 00, is most of them). OVERALL - When I reviewed the first season of Gundam 00, my main complaints included the fact that they had more details than structure, that they didn't bother to explain a lot of what I would consider to be important backstory, and that there were far, far too many characters, all of whom were trying too hard to be the focus. The lackluster ending to the first season didn't lead me to have a lot of expectations for the second season, but I'm still rather disappointed that they managed to let all of their problems get worse rather than better. In the end, I only saw 00 through to the end for the sake of having seen it to the end, which is never a really good reason at all. Then again, maybe I only saw it through so I could eventually bitch about it here... which really isn't that great of a reason either.

If you saw Gundam 00 season 1 and you liked it, you probably wanna see season 2 as well. But Gundam 00 S2 is crappy as hell (aside from the good looks.. the production value was top notch). I have to admit that I liked Gundam 00 S1 (except for the ending). Gundam 00 S1 focused a lot on the plot/action and because of that, the character development got neglected. But that didn't matter, because even with the 1-dimensional characters, it was still an interesting and exciting mecha anime. However in Gundam 00 S2, 'they' tried to 'spice up' the character development a bit. They totally froze the storytelling and decidedto focus (a lot more) on the characters. But they failed miserably!!! The characters didn't come 'alive' one bit!!!! The result = crap. Hell.. what annoyed me the most were the things that just didn't make sense. For example the 'couple': Louise and Saji. Saji discovers something (very) important about Louise's tragedy (spoiler?) and 'every' viewer knows Louise should know about this. But for some reason whenever Saji meets Louise, he NEVER discloses this important information to Louise. What we get instead is a lot of shit dialogue like: "Saji.." "Louise!" "Saji!!" "Louise!!" The same with Setsuna.. awww .. I'm not even going to start with his "Orewah Gundammmuhhh" dialogues/monologues... In short.. Gundam 00 S2.. was bad.. very bad.. compared to season 1.. The story became predictable, the (romantic) character development was crap, some unimportant characters died, bad guys didn't actually die in season 1, you get spammed with loads of new characters, Ribbons 'bitch-slaps' female characters and they 'endure' it *cough*.. and so on... But anyways .. loads of you brainwashed *Gundam-lovers* will probably love this show anyways.. So... enjoy the sequel you guys.. :|

This review will focus on both seasons of Gundam 00. Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is the latest installment in the incredibly massive Gundam franchise produced by Sunrise. This is also the first Gundam series I watched so I will not go into differences to other Gundam series that I see so many of the older fans do. Story: Most of the story on Gundam 00 is based heavily on war, the countries who suffer from oppresion, the people who want the war to stop, and the corrupt goverments who control the people. To be quite honest I wasnt crazy with the story but I also didn't dislikeit, i thought it showed a pretty realistic view on how a corrupted goverment and military organizations can cause the murder of millions for their own benefits and yet still keep their citizens unaware and/or on their side while they do so. I wouldnt lie if I said I saw a little bit of parallels with what is happening in the world today, but thats for another time. Animation: The animation stayed constantly solid the entire series and it had some really cool and flashy effects during battles which made the show a real graphical beauty. Also watching this on HD 720p really makes you appreciate the effort put on the animation. I have nothing bad to say this. Although I will admit some gundam designs on the second season were getting a bit weird.... Sound: One of the great aspects of the series was its very varied and good soundtrack. It made a lot of the battle scenes very exciting to watch. The voice acting was also very well done, and i really enjoyed it. A lot of "pew pew" also made me XD Characters: Gundam 00 has an incredibly huge cast of characters which some I never even managed to remember their names, there is a large variety of characters that you learn to love or hate in this show. I personally was able to enjoy the characters and being able to see them mature while adapting to the changes in the world was very enjoyable. Even though the show gave the short end of the stick to some of what I thought were very interesting side character with a lot of potential, and gave us some character that I just absolutely detest and hate, Gundam 00 did a good job on giving us interesting characters. Enjoyment: I loved this series mainly because of the battles, the battles are definitely the best part of the anime and there is plenty of them so I always went into every episode looking for some great action and Gundam was able to deliver that every time. Overall: There really isnt a reason to not like this show, it is a solid mecha action anime with some solid plot and characters and features some great animation to boot. If you have never watched a Gundam anime before i think this one is a good one to start watching, I had never watched a Gundam anime before but I for one am now a fan of the series and will definitely be watching the upcoming gundams from now on.

The anime pretty much re-establishes its cast and its more central on the characters this time as opposed to the politics. I thought the politics of the first season were a nice twist and offered something different in comparison to the other Gundam series where they don't directly state modern day politics. But due to the events in this series, that factor has been conveniently written out. But does it make it up by being more character centric? In some ways, it can. But I still personally feel that the 25 episode format is still a major weakness for this series, especially if its aGundam one. Since most of the major characters are back, the story is also allowed to be more fast paced. But the problems that it gave season 1 are still presented here. I felt they could have used Mr. Bushido more, as well as Ali Al-Saachez. This series does have a handful of characters and the 25 episode format just doesn't give any external characters such as those two the presence I felt they needed and deserved. And like season 1, I just felt it really rushed things and I felt with more episodes, we could have seen things much longer and I think it would have been given proper presentation. Not only that, I felt with more episodes, i think we could have seem more of Seraphim as well in addition to Nadleeh in season 1. With 15 to 25 more episodes, I think 00, especially season 2, could have reached its full potential. I have nothing much to add about the art and animation that I've already said in my review of season 1, but I'll acknowledge a few things. I do like how the series makes Setsuna properly older by not just making him taller, but they made his face properly thinner, and they spreaded out his hair a bit, and made his eyes somewhat smaller. So I thought that was a descent touch to make him look 20 or 21, or however old he's supposed to be. But I'm very surprised at what they did with Saji, and how they aged him. I thought that was done very well. As for the designs of the Gundams, well, they're pretty much more or less the same froms eason 1, except they now have the grilled mouth plates while in season 1, they didn't have the grilled mouth plates. But other mobile suits that come in later on, especially at the end, are pretty nifty and fresh. As for the quality in HD, I saw this one Blu-Ray at a friends house, and its pretty sweet. As for the action, it does get a bit DBZ-ish. Especially when the Trans-Am system now being introduced. I'll admit in its own way, it is distinctive in comparison to other Gundam series, but i just felt that feature just made it too Shounen-esque. I'll admit the first time, at the end of season 1, it was awesome. Yes, it does make it more intense, but I just felt it was really abused. I think using it like once or twice as opposed to using Seraphim once or twice could have been better. Well, what I've already said about the quality of the voice acting in season 1 can be applied here as well. I watched this series on bluray with a buddy of mine, and sadly, there was no dub included, but I do have intensions of seeing this dubbed when I can. The background music from season 1 is still utilized, but the soundtrack is of course slightly different. The opening themes are not really dark from season 1, but are still striking in a different way that represents the tone in their own way. Uverworld sings the first theme, Hakanaku mo Towa no Kanashi and one of my favorite singers, Ito Yuna, sings Trust You, one of the ending themes. I'm sure Japanese music buffs will enjoy the soundtrack whether or not you're a Gundam fan. Hell, I hated the Cosmic Era Gundams, but I still dig their soundtracks. In the end, if you liked season 1 for its politics, then unfortunately, you won't find it here, but those features I felt were taken out for the right reasons, but the overall atmosphere doesn't significantly change which is what still kept me hooked. Still, I think it's the true Gundam of the 21st century as opposed to SEED. I do hope to see more of Gundam based on this series. I think it has a lot of potential. I still think there are unanswered questions and the universe of this Gundam has me curios. So I hope more material comes out soon.