Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island

This Doan's Island movie feels, overall, out-of-place. While the episode it is adapting has a self-contained plot, pulling it out of Mobile Suit Gundam and stretching it to the length of a movie has resulted in an empty experience. This movie would have been better off as a shorter episode in an OVA of reimagined 0079 escapades. Character animation is emotive and interesting, but very exaggerated, just like The Origin OVA's. The writing and characterization is also just as exaggerated. Mobile Suit combat is done in stylized CGI. This looks pretty good at points but also has awkward moments where you notice the anti-aliasing on faraway models. Inregards to the plot, the movie can't seem to decide whether or not it needs to justify itself or not. The stakes are sometimes played up unrealistically or literally raised in comparison to 0079's Episode 15. At other points, it tries to feel like the episode should; a moment of downtime and an exploration of Doan's dilemma. A Zeon pilot deserting to look after war orphans; what does this teach Amuro? Maybe I'm just pessimistic about modern imaginings of the Universal Century, but I did come in with a positive outlook. I won't say this is a bad movie by any means, just a sort of disjointed thing. It doesn't fit as a replacement for the original Episode 15 and it isn't a good follow-up for the Origin OVA's.

Cucuruz Doan's Island is the retelling of an episode of 0079 that I barely remember. In the process of fleshing out the story, it expands the original episode to nearly two hours. To be quite honest, I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I'm not one to enjoy CGI, but it was used pretty effectively here. It doesn't look great in every scene, but when it works it looks absolutely amazing - especially in scenes that are darker. Darker scenes tend to hide a lot of the flaws in CGI, and during these darker scenes it goes from being just okayto being really amazing looking. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than a lot of other CGI I see used in anime. There a lots of little touches that evoke the feelings of the original series - from the soundtrack, to the visuals. They even had some Dezaki styled still frames in there. It's a nice fusion of the classic 70s look and sound, with a more modern presentation. I was surprised how nostalgic it made me feel. I really missed this cast. Everyone felt in character, especially Amuro. At some point the chronology got switched up, so now Sleggar is part of the White Base crew at this point, even though he didn't show until way later in the original series. He actually fit in really well though, didn't feel out of place at all. I'd say, aside from Amuro that he, Kai and Bright were the best handled out of the main cast. Overall it wasn't perfect, but it is absolutely enjoyable. If you are a fan of the original series, it is a must watch.

Cucuruz Doan's island is a fun (yet kind of unnecessary) experience. The infamous island episode of the original Mobile Suit Gundam is notorious for various reasons. The disjointed staff causing the animation to be extremely inconsistent (if hilarious) and the episode itself being considered "filler" being some of them. Tomino himself has disowned this episode in future releases and broadcasts. The infamy of Doan's island says a lot about Yasuhiko's balls in trying to stretch it from a single self contained 25 minutes episode into a full movie with almost 2 hours of runtime. I dare to say it's a fruitful experiment as it delivers a decentfilm, but the reason it was made in the first place is what interests me the most. The movie itself is good. You have very expressive and well made character animation accompanied by decent cgi for the Mobile Suits, a nice score, good directing and stellar voice acting as expected. The plot makes a mistake by trying to share the focus between the high stakes of the One Year War and the personal touching story of a Zeon deserter trying to raise orphans and atone for his sins. None of them are fleshed out well enough, despite the middle portion of the movie being fairly bloated. Doan's character is well written enough however, and the soul and intent of the original episode remains. But WHY was this made? Simple, they wanted to test waters for a full 0079 remake. Yasuhiko is behind the remake/reinterpretation of the original Mobile Suit Gundam in manga form called The Origin, and by the success the OVAs and this movie seem to have had, I'd say I'll be fine if he did it. Despite the movie itself being fun, I just can't see it as anything more than a test. Also, the Doan Zaku, pure SOUL

Considering that this is a feature-length adaptation of a single TV episode, I was pleasantly surprised at the pacing. It doesn't feel stretched too thin. Much of it is reminiscent of the Ranba Ral arc from the original series, in that it gives Amuro some downtime away from White Base. Despite that, the stakes are ultimately appropriately high for a movie by the climax. The story only falters in the resolution of one major conflict, which ends too quickly and easily, and is the main vestigial element betraying that this was originally all over in 25 minutes. Overall it feels like a classic Tomino-style warstory. The animation is excellent, especially for the well-directed mobile suit battles. Character designs retain the look of The Origin, being faithful to the original series for the main cast while having some minor characters seem relatively unhinged almost to the point of parody. While this is primarily an Amuro story, its depiction of Bright Noa was particularly interesting. Having only seen the movie trilogy version of the original, he's portrayed as mature and confident from the outset there, but this movie reveals uncertainty and a lack of experience, making him seem more the 19-year-old out of his depth that he was at that point. The only aspect of this movie I didn't like was that the story gives a huge amount of screen time to various annoying little kids. This was probably unavoidable given the nature of the story, but these kinds of characters were a recurring weakpoint in the early Gundam shows. At least they're not as annoying as Quess.