Gundam 00 — Episode 11
Yet another boring episode. I think someone should ban Sunrise from making any “character development” episodes because frankly I don’t give a damn about the Gundam Meisters.
In fact, let’s just turn all the Gundams into unmanned weapon systems that are controlled by Veda through mesh networking!
Summary
Because this is a “character development” episode, nothing much happens. Basically, Allelujah/Hallelujah flies into HRL’s space colony 全球 (a terrible pseudo Chinese name that only a Japanese could come up with) and blows up the Super Soldier Organization’s research facility with a lot of angst in between. Also, apparently it’s illegal to drink in space until you are twenty! (Either that or Sunrise thinks that Japanese laws will become international in 300 years.)
Screencaps
Once the fighting starts, you just know that the black guy is going to die first.
“Ian attached my instrument back, if you know what I mean.” *wink*
Apparently this is Lieutenant Ming’s lover before he got blown into stardust
I hate her less now, mostly because I’m tired
Magic!
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Who’s that on the right?
How can anyone have a serious discussion dressed like that?
I want a monitor like that too
Be careful Allelujah!
Tieria and Veda sitting in a tree…
Colony drop!
Inside the colony
A wise old man—you can tell from his beard
Shirin, do I look grand yet?
Why does Sunrise insist on wasting time every episode to give every single character airtime? There has to be a limit to fan service!
I still want my episode 9 back. :(
December 20th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Dunno what the hell some of you have against a little story inbetween the pretty beam weapons and explosives. Especially you DM, you were all gaga over the politics in the early episodes. If all you want is mecha combat, you would be better off playing a game of that type instead of waiting a week for a 20 minute episode.
Anyway. Sumeragi is not a drunk. She just drinks sometimes. Big difference.
Maybe its different here since we start drinking 5 years earlier than they do in the states, but i think some of you are just complaining for its own sake.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:25 am
i can never take tieria seriously with that zetsubou-sensei voice of his. =)
everytime he whines i can almost imagine him bursting into his despair mode.
“i used nadleeh at such an early stage….. im in despair!!!” =o
December 20th, 2007 at 3:43 am
I dont like pinko either but they all had good reason for being depressed after that battle.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Huh, but this isn’t real story. Real story is like Seikai no Senki.
This is just twenty minutes of giving airtime to all the random characters. It’s stupid.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:11 am
There are also 5 times as many main people in this show. Nobody is going to do a 10+ season production right from the start. It necessarily has to be somewhat compressed.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:14 am
if you don’t like the show, don’t watch it
character development is a good thing, it’s one of the things that puts anime head and shoulders above all the usual crap on TV these days
December 20th, 2007 at 11:37 am
I am amused that you think this can actually be called character development. Real character development happens naturally as the story progresses, not when you create an entire episode to force background information down people’s throat.
As for Gundam 00 having more main characters than other shows: No. It’s more like it can’t decide on who should be the main character and this seriously affects the story-telling. Just look at the other Gundams. You need a main character or the story is going nowhere while you cut 20 minutes into tiny bits to give everybody airtime every single episode. (Baccano did pull that off but that’s another thing altogether.)
December 20th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Veda seems to be a supercomputer that determines what should be done next for the Gundam Meisters.
December 20th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
This is a filler episode. A flashback that usually happens when there is a lull between battles -_-
December 20th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I’ve got to agree with DarkMirage on this one. This has way too many characters to be able to sufficiently develop every single one of them.
According to wiki, Setsuna is supposed to be the “main protagonist”. But what has he done exactly in the past few episodes?
And everyone’s still trying to figure out what louise and sagi have to do with the whole thing. Its like they don’t want us to forget them before its time for them to actually play a part in some way.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
It is very possible that there is no main char in the classical sense.
Think about it for a moment. What kind of show is this? We have the political background, we have space elevators that harvest solar energy which is what a lot of people would consider the ideal way to fuel the world.
They are describing the world as we know it, plus space elevators and solar energy. CB is really only there so it doesnt have to appear to be an educational political show. As such, they are all the main chars.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
In a show that has no real main characters, the plot has to be everything, so it’s even stupider to waste time on a pseudo “character development” episode and giving everyone airtime.
December 21st, 2007 at 12:52 am
well the grand poohbas making the show seem to think differently from you
oh if all you going to do is bitch about how bad it is, why are you even bothering to watch the series at all? seems kinda counter-productive don’t you think?
December 21st, 2007 at 1:28 am
While I don’t mind the show yet, I do hate how people throw around the term “character development” anytime there’s not a mobile suit battle in a Gundam series. People seem to confuse character development with air time. In this episode, none of the characters have “developed” in any way. None of them are significantly different. Even Allelujah is essentially the same person. Character development is the changing of how a character acts/feels/thinks. Character development has absolutely no correlation to air time or amount of dialog. So, people, stop thinking it does.
However, this isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy this episode. It gave a good back story to Allelujah, and does explain some things about the others walking around all of the time. This isn’t character development, it’s character defining. And this is something that I like in a Gundam series. I don’t like to be given seemingly interesting characters (like in Gundam W), and then no back story at all. This strategy will very quickly make people dislike these characters. Heero is a great example: he was an interesting character to begin with. “Oooh, young kid who seems to have no feelings. Wonder how he got that way.” But that is quickly squashed when we get NO background on him. So now asking most Gundam fans, they’ll say that Heero is an uninteresting character. Which is true; there’s just no way to properly relate to him, or even attempt to understand his feelings and actions.
Gundam 00 has started in a very nontraditional way for Gundam series. While we’re used to seeing the whole “Kid steals a Gundam, next forty episodes revolve around a ship” way of storytelling, we get something very different with Gundam 00. The Gundam Meisters already have their mobile suits, are already properly trained, and are already part of Celestial Being. This means that we can’t immediately see how these characters were before the series began (meaning we’re already losing character development that a regular Gundam series would have). We’ll have to give it some time before we can understand them. We also don’t have the “Ship” storyline. Normally in a Gundam series (from Mobile Suit Gundam, to Z Gundam, to Gundam X, to Gundam SEED, and so on) we have all of the characters together on a freedom ship. In Gundam 00 we don’t have this. Even though Celestial Being has a flagship, it’s very rare that all of the characters are on this ship; and when they are, very little “development” goes on. So instead of being handed character interaction on a episode-by-episode basis, we have to deal with getting tidbits here-and-there. It’s just the way the series has set itself up. Hopefully this will turn out to be a decent way to tell a story in the Gundam universe.
I think some people are jumping on this series too quickly in saying that it is bad and has very little character development. It needs to be given time. We’re only 20% through the series. Just wait it out. The series isn’t set up in such as straightforward manner as Gundam series traditionally are.
On the opposite hand, I think too many people are jumping onto this series saying it will be the best ever and has extreme characters. This can be just as false a statement. Again, we’re only 20% through the series. While there are high hopes for this series, there’s no guarantees. Again, time is needed before determining the status of this series, and whether or not the characters will see actual development or not. I think it’s just a slower series because of the initial setup: no character defining to start with, no central location for characters to interact, a good amount of characters (hopefully they will all develop eventually, but it will take time), a very detailed world, a back story that seems to go back two centuries, et cetera. There’s a lot of shit to cover. So just wait it out to give full opinions about the series. Mobile Suit Gundam was slow as shit also; but that doesn’t ruin the whole series. It all comes together in the end.
Just my two cents (plus tax); no refunds.
December 21st, 2007 at 1:29 am
You may have a point there DM. Im not totally crazy about it either, the politics and conflict between the different factions is more fun.
December 21st, 2007 at 1:44 am
jesse:
As counter-productive as criticizing someone’s opinion on his own blog after taking the time to read it? You are free to do (or stop doing if you prefer) that, so I don’t see why I can’t bitch about boring G00 episodes.
Also, I happen to be the translator for the fansub (”ThePaper” if anyone pays attention to opening credits at all), so I kind of have the responsibility to watch every single episode. (And many, many times over too.) Why did I volunteer for it? I guess because the first few episodes were pretty decent. I am so gullible.
Rudy A Winchester:
I agree with you and that is why I like to use quotation marks when I refer to the so-called “character development”. Episode 11 is highly redundant and ultimately just a filler.
But although it’s still too early to judge the whole series, I think it’s far to say that particular episodes are crappy. That’s all I’m doing. I haven’t given up on G00 yet. (Although I can’t really do that even if I wanted to due to the aforementioned commitment.)
Guner:
Politics and conflict are the only reason I started watching G00 and sadly they are severely lacking in recent weeks. Episode 9 made up for it with good pacing and somewhat realistic combat, but that’s about it.
December 21st, 2007 at 1:57 am
This episode definitely wasn’t the most interesting one by any means. The earlier episode did seem to hold attention more. However, at the same time, this episode was needed in some form or another. It seems we’ll eventually get the background for all of the Gundam Meisters, and this was giving us Allelujah’s. While it could have been done better, in the end it would have been the same message. We get to know a little more about Allelujah. Though maybe this episode could have been handled better: less jumping around, and maybe add something paralleling Allelujah’s encounter at the Cyber Place of Freaks. This episode did seem to much out of focus for something so concrete and pinpointed.
December 21st, 2007 at 3:44 am
I agree with you all, to some degree. This episode was not focused on the main character at all… which. its.. kinda weird.
I loved the ending.. where the psycho kid and the big boob chick gets “Crunk”…. hahahaha, looking foward to more episodes… with more action though and less blah blah blah… “help me”, blah blah..
December 21st, 2007 at 7:15 am
Gundam Zero, if you meant Setsuna, don’t forget that this filler episode is already dedicated to Allelujah, mainly.
Rudy A Winchester, agree with you for both of your replies. It’s good that you point out that character backgrounds/history is pretty important.
Somehow I feel that the Celestial Being still have some (though not much) stuff to tell us about, for instance abilities of Tiera’s new high-mobility MS, the Nadleeh.
December 21st, 2007 at 7:58 am
so far i think seed is better and they shouldn’t releas the show till at least 20 shows have been made(i like to watch a full series in a weeks time(-:anime binge:-) )