Studio Khara’s entry in the Gundam franchise is done and dusted, so it’s time to ask the big questions. Were the robots cool, and was the war bad?

Zigg’s Final Thoughts

It’s a broad rule of criticism that you should critique what a piece of media is, rather than what it isn’t. Ignore this rule and you run the risk of your analysis being merely a wishlist of possibilities, rather than a cogent look at what is actually in front of you. It’s in the spirit of this rule that I ask the question : What exactly is Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuux?

The obvious answer to that question is the premise the series was sold on – the legendary talents of Studio Khara, including Kazuya Tsurumaki, Yōji Enokido, and Hideaki Anno, together deliver an alternate history interpretation of the Universal Century timeline, exploring a world where Zeon triumphed in the One Year War, and the subsequent fallout that such a seismic event would cause. That’s the back of the box copy at least, and yet I find it’s a pretty inaccurate way to describe GQuuuuuux. True, the basic premise is an alternate history story, but really the show is largely uninterested in the political and societal fallout that would result from such an event. Instead, it’s largely taking the established idioms of the Gundam universe and using them to dress up an original story, one mostly divorced from the established style of prior Universal Century productions.

I’m deeply torn on whether this is a good thing or not. It’s true that the UC has been mined to death by both official and unofficial stories. Even the basic premise of ‘what if Zeon won?’ has been hauled over the coals for decades in increasingly tedious fan arguments and speculative fiction. In that sense I think Khara’s decision to break from the expected structure that such a show would take is a bold and smart one, giving the show a tangible identity and aesthetic separate from its somewhat reheated core idea. The flipside to such an argument is of course obvious – if you’re not going to engage with the material, why are you even bothering to set this inside an established continuity? It’s a question which GQuuuuuux wrestles with constantly throughout the run and yet doesn’t offer many satisfactory answers to.

Structurally, the show breaks down into three major threads, each one interweaving with the others at appropriate points. We’ve got Machu, Nyaan, and (to a lesser extent) Shuuji, their interpersonal interactions, desires, and joint resolution to make it to Earth. Then there’s the political and military backdrop, the machinations of Chalia Bull, the Side 3 Government, Kycilia Zarbi et al. Finally, we’ve got the mystical Newtype stuff, involving the mystery around Char, the ‘Rose of Sharon’, the Zeknovas, and associated bullshit. Of these three threads, I think the first is undeniably the one which sticks the landing the most. Though their development is hampered by the lack of runtime (a recurring issue with the show we’ll be mentioning again), the writing does a good job of making Machu and Nyaan likeable, relatable characters who we’re invested in and want to see succeed. Machu especially works well as a lead, balancing impassioned idealism with dry teenage cynicism and generally doing a good job of grounding the show when it occasionally feels like drifting away. If there’s a weak link in this aspect it’s definitely Shuji, who is simply not interesting or charismatic enough to convince in the magnetic role the script pencils him into. The idea that these two girls would become so infatuated with such a milquetoast figure strains plausibility right from the beginning, but it becomes downright damaging to the narrative once they end up on opposite sides. I know a big part of this attraction is meant to be the fabled ‘Newtype resonance’ but let’s be real, that was a bad explanation in 1979 and it’s a bad one now. The net result is that the further into the plot we go the more it feels like our leads are fighting their battles out of pure personal selfishness rather than for an ideal or a cause. There’s a way to make that work of course, but I don’t think it does in the context of the story being told.

The sociopolitical angle of the story, meanwhile, definitely feels like the part of this production that the creative team was least interested and invested in. We get a series of easy cameos and allusions (Bask Om! Gates Capa! The Psycho Gundam!) that are shorn of the power of their character and context, and mostly just feel like they’re here to be red meat to fanboys and continuity geeks. The show seems to posit that life under a Zeon victory would mostly be the same as life under a Federation victory, but doesn’t choose to play such a status quo for dark satire but instead as a benign blandness. Zeon’s militaristic backstabbing totalitarianism is presented as mostly confined to Zeon itself, with the idea that Zeon was fighting for a free association of independent colonies seemingly taken at face value and implemented accordingly. I’m not going to say that this is a pro-Zeon work, certainly not to the same extent as something like Unicorn was, but it seems completely uninterested in exploring what the ramifications of a victorious fascistic state would actually be. Hell, the ending presents Artesia/Sayla’s ascension to the dictatorship of Zeon as an unabashedly good thing, Nuremberg-esque rally and everything (that’s not even mentioning how wildly out of character such a move would be for Sayla). Stuff like killing Ghiren Zarbi after thirty seconds of screentime is a neat goof, but in exchange for that goof you’re sacrificing him having any sort of meaningful role in the narrative, and the associated depth that could bring to the setting. Even our main ‘adult’ viewpoint character, Challia Bull, is a thinly drawn study almost absent any sort of believable creed or motivation. There’s no desire to explore his personal beliefs and character beyond loyalty to Char, and of course his Newtypism.

That leads us neatly into strand 3 – the disappearance of Char, the ‘kira-kira’, and everything that surrounds it. Look, I’m going to put my cards on the table here, just as I did back when we wrapped up Witch from Mercury – I hate the space magic shit in Gundam. It has always sucked, and narratives built around it have always sucked. And yes, I think that’s just as true in highly lauded productions like Zeta Gundam or Char’s Counterattack as it is in stinkers like Unicorn. The obsessive focus on Newtypes in GQuuuuuux is deeply corrosive to the narrative and it only gets worse as the show continues and this plot thread comes to increasingly dominate the story. At the heart of it, what GQuuuuuux’s story is is an attempt to re-litigate the Amuro/Char/Lalah plotline from the 1979, an element which has already had its importance blown massively out of proportion in the decades since the original airing. To the side of that the creative team have stapled another extremely stale trope, the tired multiverse/everything-happens-somewhere concept. When those elements come out into the light, it’s the point at which we can finally see GQuuuuuux evolve into its final form – an attempt at holding dialogue with the original show, the way the original show constructs its story, and its status as the godfather of the modern mecha anime.

To be clear, if this trick works on anybody, it should work on me – I LOVE weird metanarratives and I enjoy it when shows play medium games. And yet, I found myself deeply nonplussed by everything which happens in the back half of GQuuuuuux. So much of it is simply lazy storytelling, replying on our knowledge of original Mobile Suit Gundam to bypass inconvenient little things like ‘character motivation’ or ‘things having to make sense’. You don’t have to tell the audience why they should care about Lalah’s fate because they already know – she’s Lalah Sune! Let’s not even talk about how this setup makes Lalah even more of a plot device than she was in 0079, an impressive achievement honestly. You don’t have to explain why the RX-78 can grow to giant size because…actually, I got nothing, that one is just baffling. Rather than dialogue with MSG‘s ideas, too often GQuuuuuux settles for slavish homage, falling back on franchise tropes to do narrative heavy lifting for it. Personally I don’t need to see Char & Lalah lionised for the umpteenth time, tell me why I should care about Machu and Nyaan, about the now rather than the long ago. This faithfulness to the source material is a cage that GQuuuuuux traps itself in, unable to find a new story to tell because of its dedication to the fidelity of its inspiration. I’m prepared to accept that there are some mitigating factors involved, especially the limited runtime of the show – there’s enough story here for at least double the length, potentially more – but writing to fit the length you’ve been given is a skill, and one that was lacking here.

In the end, let’s circle around to the question we had at the beginning – What is Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuux? I think where I ended up is that it’s a fun, flashy show (seriously, it never looks less than amazing) that writes some cheques it could probably never have cashed. The idea of an alternate timeline Universal Century is such a huge one, so ripe with a million potential stories, that it’s not especially surprising that Khara did not stick the landing. Still, I would have liked them to have aimed a little higher at least. More than anything else, what GQuuuuuux reminds me of is Shin Kamen Rider, and I’m not saying that just because of the Anno involvement in both. Rather, both are deeply affectionate tributes to their iconic source material, clearly assembled with great skill and love, but at the same time both unable or unwilling to move beyond the scope of the existing corpus of material. Ironically, perhaps somebody who cared less would have made the more iconoclastic creative decisions necessary for them to flourish as independent works. It’s a lot like going to see a good tribute band – you’re going to have a great time and the tunes are going to be killer. But the Bootleg Beatles are never going to make Sgt Pepper – they can only play it back to you with some mild embellishments. Much as it pains me to say it, that’s what GQuuuuuux is.

Gee’s Final Thoughts

When Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX was announced, I couldn’t imagine a more tantalizing concept. Kazuya Tsurumaki of Diebuster and FLCL fame, finally unchained from the Evangelion mines he’d been locked in for the last decade, would finally strike out on his own. And with Gundam no less! Little did I realize that Tsurumaki had merely exchanged one cell for another.

I think Gundam GQuuuuuuX is trying to tell a story about breaking free from the gravity of the Universal Century, and more broadly the legacies of the past, through the guise of its young protagonists against the backdrop of its alternate UC timeline. It’s all the more a shame then that I think ultimately, GQuuuuuuX does not succeed. It’s too beholden to the past, unable to resist the siren song of the callback and the cameo. For every impassioned speech about how we must move forward, the show can’t help but slip in just one more reference to an older, better story.

Overall, GQuuuuuuX’s decision to tell a story about teenage adolescence’s instinctual yearning for independence mirroring the aftermath of a cataclysmic war for independence AND a story about the alternate Universal Century is the anime’s undoing. Not because either thread is inherently faulty, but because the reality of the show’s production preclude a satisfactory telling of both simultaneously. To be clear, I think the intent is good, but the execution is messy, and maybe that’s what makes GQuuuuuuX so compelling and frustrating in equal measure. I actually love a lot of the thematic meat of GQuuuuuuX as a text, and wish the story had given them all the time I think they deserve. But in a world where we only get 12 episodes, I don’t mind holding Studio Khara somewhat responsible for not tempering their own ambitions accordingly.

In that sense, maybe the nicest thing I can say is that Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is the great crucible. It’s probably an awful way to get into Gundam, I can’t even imagine how incomprehensible this show would be to a newcomer. On the other hand, if you can survive it and come out the other side hungry for more, the world is your oyster. There’s 40 years of Gundam waiting to enthrall and disappoint you in equal measure. Beautifully made, compelling in fits and starts, its abundant potential peeking through the quagmire only to be dragged back by the gravitational pull that’s caught all of us. GQuuuuuuX is Gundam to its core, nobody can take that away from it.