Gundam 00 — Episode 9
This episode is a pretty good one because we are finally seeing some semblance of actual combat tactics being employed. Also, it has some character development for Felt, which is good. (But maybe not. Refer to the last line of this entry.)
It’s a Haro harem!
Louise and Saji do make an appearance in this episode, but thankful it is a short one. Dear Sunrise, please hurry up and kill them already! :(
Summary
We jump to about four months since Celestial Being began their armed interventions. They have since conducted over sixty attacks. Although the AEU and Union pledged to defend themselves against Celestial Being’s intervention, there has been no large-scale battles since Moralia. Mostly because Gundams pwn everyone too quickly.
The only power bloc that has declared its intention to actively crackdown on Celestial Being is the Human Reform League. Sergei has formed a new special task force with a rather silly name (chiobu? lol) to annihilate Celestial Being, steal its Gundams and sexually violate its bridge bunnies. (Maybe not the last part.)
His plan involves using billions of dollars of tax money to send out tens of thousands of communication devices to form a network in the area around the orbital ring. Since GN particles disrupt communications, all the HRL task force has to do is to see which communicators are malfunctioning in order to pinpoint the Gundams’ locations. Sergei’s a fricking genius!
And in no time, HRL manages to locate Ptolemaios. This means that Ptolemy does indeed give off GN particles, which seriously begs the question of why it needs Gundams for energy. Perhaps GN drives and solar furnaces are two different things after all.
The Battle Plan
Oh my god! A real battle plan! This makes the Seikai fanboy in me squeal with delight.
Immediately after they receive a hit on their spanking new networked detectors, the HRL task force launches an assault on Celestial Being, making it the first time so far in this series that Ptolemaios has come under any threat.
The HRL task force identities three separate regions where communication has been jammed. The first one is of course Ptolemy. The other two are actually Kyrios and Virtue which are scrambled as diversions after the Ptolemy crew realized that their location has been compromised.
HRL transport vessel
The HRL force consists of four multi-purpose transport vessels loaded with mobile suits. The vessel type codename is written as ラオホゥ in katakana, so it’s probably either Raohou or Laohou. I’m guessing it’s 牢厚, but I’m not sure.
According to Sumeragi’s plans, Kyrios and Virtue (top and bottom) are meant to be obvious diversions. She is hoping that the enemy will see through it and therefore ignore them.
Following that, she plans to have them circle around from the back and, together with Exia and Dynames which remain on Ptolemaios, form a classic pincer attack.
Unfortunately, Sergei is a fricking genius! He responds with his own diversion by sending two empty transport vessels to engage Kyrios and Virtue. Sumeragi doesn’t know that these two vessels have already unloaded their mobile suits and by the time she realizes it, it is too late for her to change her plan.
Unknown to the Ptolemy crew, the entire bulk of HRL’s mobile forces are actually concentrated around the two transport vessels heading towards them. Ptolemy, pinch!
Sergei’s tactic is brilliant on many levels.
Most importantly, the first move that he anticipates Ptolemaios to take upon realizing that it has been discovered is to head to the solar energy generator satellites. This is because the satellites give off electromagnetic radiation that interferes with communication, thus camouflaging the interference caused by the ship’s GN particles. And Sumeragi does indeed take that course of action. This is a fatal mistake because it cuts off Ptolemy’s communication with Kyrios and Virtue, allowing Sergei to lay an ambush for all three of them.
That said, Sumeragi is amazing too.
Within seconds of observing the enemy’s course of action, she deduces Sergei’s entire plan and even identifies him as the commanding officer in charge because he used the same tactic 18 years ago during the Fourth Solar War. Like seriously, how the heck can she do that? Of course, it’s too late by then as Ptolemy has already lost contact with Kyrios and Virtue and cannot tell them to head back.
I’ll leave the rest for you to appreciate when you watch the episode.
Speaking of Seikai, this episode does indeed give off the Seikai vibes. Ah, how I miss space combats fought in the two-dimensional planar universe with space-time bubbles and automated mines… Please for the love of Haruhi, watch Seikai no Monshou/Senki if you haven’t already. It’s one of the greatest sci-fi epics ever, according to me.
I digress. Moving on.
Screencaps
Lockon in a suit
Lockon visiting a grave
Lockon’s twin(?)
Evil(?) twin(?)
“Nice ass.” “Which one?”
Louise’s mother
Levitating earrings
Half the headline picture is a rooftop
Does she ever smile?
Representatives from the United Nations
DUN DUN DUN DUN!
OMG Felt is crying! T_T
Don’t come any closer you pervert!
My name is Neil Dylandi (no, really; that’s his real name)…
…and I am a child sex predator
What the hell is with that homoerotic blush?
Glow-in-the-dark Ptolemy
The peach ironman!
She doesn’t fire a single shot in this episode
I am kind of disturbed by the character dynamics between Felt and Lockon aka Neil… Felt, stay away from the abunai oniichan!
December 4th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Whoa. lol
The ending does say something about “Virtue reveals his hidden abilities” yeh?
Maybe its massive shoulder cannons will pop off and convert into mobile armors and the manwoman controls them using newtype abilities. ^^
December 4th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I think that’s really Tiger in chinese, the HRL’s transport vessels.
Anyway, loving the series so far. What is interesting is the fact that the Gundam Meisters have code names. Wonder what’s Tieria and Hapitism’s real names…
December 4th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
The preview for the next episode shows Kyrios and Virtue captured. I suppose that makes them lucky they were being shot at with rope instead of guns… bleh i hate when luck is what saves the day.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
I hope they have Hallelujah take over and turn on Allelujah’s comrades.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Lolz I myself think Sumeragi’s tactic just doesn’t work. If it was me, I would:
1/ Strip Felt and throw her outside Ptolemaios, this will make all the MS pilots going “AWE” —> they will lose control over their MS and will collide to each other —> Die. lolz
2/ Strip Setsuna and do the same tactic. The girl-who-has-a-pink-MS-and-never-smile will fall for him and will go crazy like in the earlier episode.
3/ Proceed to strip other girls in the Ptolemaios if 2 tactics above fail to eliminate the whole enemy MS team. Sumeragi is going to strip last to deliver the final blow.
This will just work. Believe me!
December 5th, 2007 at 2:09 am
I second the Seikai comment. But unfortunately it makes almost every other space combat anime look silly. Maybe except Starship Operators (Shinon and Rio FTW). ^^
December 5th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Lockon’s real name is neil delaney
December 5th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Rather than diversions, I think what Sumeragi was trying to do was more of a flanking maneuver, which is a basic yet important military tactic. Sergei might have anticiptated this and has taken this as an advantage to him so he can capture the two flanking gundams with his own flanking forces, while making Sumeragi to think that their original target is Ptolemaios itself with the rest of his force as suppression (and possibly the real diversion).
It looks like that Sunrise is trying to put in some real and practical stuff into this series (e.g. political backgrounds and military tactics) but not to make them too complicated or else that could have drawn away viewers’ attention. But afterall these are just my opinions, but I hope you’ll appreciate them.
December 7th, 2007 at 6:48 am
December 7th, 2007 at 6:49 am
Oops. forgot that HTML is not supported, so I can’t embed images.
http://mine.icanhascheezburger.com/View.aspx?MAIGNFEELDLE128414548588708750.jpg
December 7th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Since Ptolemy is not a armed vessel, it should just turn its head away from the enemies. The enemies don’t have what-ever-particle and should be detected by them easily. In the modern warfare, ‘flanking’ refer to attack from side, not rear, else the 2 friendly forces will end up shooting at each other (Ptolemy at risk of taking Virtue’s cannon….).
Whatever the outcome, 00 sucks. I mean…. each episodes doesn’t link up well. They forgot all the ‘terrorist’ thing, Pink MS forgot to go berserk, and hell they forgot the existence of Graham Acre.
December 7th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Looks like most of the things I wanna say had been mentioned by the repliers. Busy lately.
Ky, the terrorists that fight against the CB are all eliminated in Episode 8, thus not much news in the time span between Episodes 8 and 9. Anyway, only the HRL are involved in space, so no Union members. Finally, I’ve got nothing to say about the white-haired girl, but it seems that something is fixed inside her (to prevent her from going crazy), or she managed to compose herself. Not to mention there may be other possibilities.
To make things worse, Sumeragi cannot communicate with the Gundam pilots! It’s a bit too bad, although it’s a good chance to observe the hidden abilities of Kyrios and Virtue, or their pilots.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I guess some people just dont pay attention. The berserk problem was fixed way back in episode 6. Too bad nothing was done to help Allelujah.
This is a real mess. Allelujah is in trouble, Lockon seems to have problems aiming, and Sumeragi really fucked things up by blocking communications. They could just as easily have killed them all off without trying to run and hide.
December 8th, 2007 at 8:58 am
I quite liked this episode as well. It brought back good Seikai/Starship Operators vibes, although did not approach the awesomeness that is LOGH, but I digress.
The one thing this episode sorely lacked was bouncing bridge bunnies after the ship was hit. The one thing it finally had was one member of CB that ACTUALLY SHOWS ANY LIKING OF WOMEN. This is probably the biggest event of the episode.
December 8th, 2007 at 11:02 am
After GN-004 has been unveiled on 6th December, I’m not sure whether I’m looking forward to the next episode.
And off-topic: next season of Code Geass should be on air between the two 00 seasons I think - there are recently magazine coverage of it along with a new character.
December 8th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Hey, Guner, don’t forget they say Allelujah had a friend named Hallelujah that could take the former’s place in the fight.
December 8th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Happened to be looking at the Episode 10 screenshots in GundamS.net. Man, do Gundams have long hair (the GN-004 appears to have that).
December 8th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Finally, Guner, I gotta admit, should there be something that was fixed inside Soma, I may have missed whatever was said about her in Episode 6.
December 9th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Its great that we learn that all CB members have real names and that totaly retarded names like Halleluja are only Codenames (though retarded ones).
Makes that series kinda…better.
And for the GN particles…well, i think there are 2 logical theories.
Either the ship has GN particles but cannot create them, meaning it has to restock on particles every now and then from the Gundams in order to stay operational.
Or it does not have GN Particles and the fact that the communication-network-plan worked is due to the coincidence that the Gundams were onboard the ship.
I think the frst theory sounds more convincing. After all the Ship (can’t spell the stupid thing) also uses GN particles to defend itself. Would be retarded if it would do that without having any for itself.
But it still doesnt seem to be able to create them.
December 28th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I’ve made a good discovery and I’m proud of myself for it, so I want to share it with all you Gundam 00 fans. I found a website where you can watch all the episodes online - guys, they’re free too! Here it is:
http://www.gundam00episodes.com
There’s no need to thank me DarkMirage and all others :p lol