Gundam 00 — Episode 17
Wow cool, I actually found this episode to be pretty enjoyable, not because the writing suddenly took a turn for the better or anything (it didn’t), but because it’s just hilariously entertaining.
Now I may sound like I’m being sarcastic as usual, but I seriously enjoyed the sheer campiness of this episode. It’s kind of hard to describe, but at the risk of over-simplication: the episode’s so bad that it’s good. LOL.
Summary
The Trinity siblings come aboard Ptolemaios and some awkward pleasantries follow. The facade quickly disappears though, as it soon becomes clear to the crew of Ptolemaios that the three of them are a bunch of secretive jerk wads with some serious mental health issues.
I mean, they claim to be siblings related by blood. Seriously?
“We really are siblings. I’m just really tanned, that’s all.”
Nena apparently has a thing for Setsuna. This is subtlety conveyed to the audience by having her perform a mouth-to-mouth on him within five seconds of meeting him for the first time. Girls are sure liberal in the future.
“I love rebellious guys.”
Chuuuu~
Classy. This serves as a timely reminder for the audience that, yes, Setsuna is still the main character by virtue of the fact that he gets the chicks. (Even the crazy ones.)
We discover the shocking truth that evil Haro is actually Haro’s brother! This is unexpected because a father-son relationship is the industry standard for such a situation, but more so because toy spherical robots shouldn’t have siblings! Also, we learn from a scene at the start of this episode that purple Haro is actually over eighty years old! Good lord! This means that Haro’s little harem is probably more like a grandma bridge club!
Niiiisan!
That aside, evil Haro appears to have had its memories wiped when it was reprogrammed for evil because it doesn’t recognize our poor Haro, its long-lost mechanical sibling, at all. It should also be noted that big brother Haro swears like a 7th grade Halo 3 player and has eyes that blink with a glow of +3 evil. Jeez, Sunrise is sure going all out to ensure that the audience is not confused by any traces of ambiguity in the plot, huh?
Back to the main story: The trio refuses to answer any question about themselves and, every five seconds or so, Michal threatens to massacre everyone and his/her pet dog. Their real intention soon becomes clear when Nena slips off to secretly access Veda’s terminal unit, which in the eyes of Tieria is probably tantamount to having his wife raped by a stranger. The Trinitys leave after accomplishing their goal of defiling Tieria’s precioussssss, to carry out their next mission.
The rest of the episode is basically the trio spectacularly blowing up a MSWAD base and killing two recurring characters who will no doubt soon be replaced by identical personality stereotypes.
Wow, is that a Sputnik model behind him?
It is revealed that Gundam’s power generation mechanism depends on a certain mathematical theory, topological defect, and somehow this means that the devices have to be manufactured on Mars Jupiter! The logic overwhelms. So Jupiter is in some way related to 1) evil Haro, 2) GN drives and 3) Aeolia Schenberg’s real objective. Just don’t ask me how exactly.
By the way, those Haros need to talk less. A whole lot less.
Screencaps
Trinitys’ ship has four solar furnaces on board
Eviiiiiiilll
Travel in style
Posing
Many thanks to Sunrise for the helpful gender stereotyping
Sumeragi is not fooled!
Why aren’t all Gundams black considering they can only be tracked visually in space?
*wink*
Setsuna is not amused. *tsuntsun*
“Don’t piss me off! It’s that time of the month.”
Nena inside Veda
You know Howard’s going to die because he gets more dialogue lines than usual
Eins and Drei can combine, with Eins firing GN particles produced by Drei
So who said G00 wasn’t a super robot anime again?
Howard heroically charges at Throne Zwei…
…and receives multiple penetrations
Louise sets herself up for death in the near future
From episode preview: Okay not really, but close enough
This episode calls for a Futurama quotation from good old Bender: “Bender knows when to use finesse.” And so does Sunrise. (Wonder if anyone will get the reference.) Real-life would be a whole lot more straightforward if everyone behaved like a G00 character.
P.S. Mendoi-Conclave releases are getting delayed because we are having a hard time finding our preferred HD raw. I suspect it may have something to do with this…
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I must admit I do enjoy the verbal sparring a bit. It would be a bit boring if we both thought exactly the same.
Still though you seem almost compelled down the path to finding the show poor rather than it forcing you to find a way to like it. I can’t think of anyone else who was expecting the series to be like PlantES. If that’s true then right from the get go you were looking at a miss. I personally expected the series to focus a bit less on Gundams then the last one, but I mean, I’m willing to see where it goes with this.
Maybe I’ve been playing to much Super Robot Wars and thus I don’t care so much about the things that seem to bother you intensely, but still you’re essentially blaming Sunrise for you not being the target audience of the show. And it REALLY seems like you are not the target audience.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:01 pm
What’s PLANETES? to DM
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
One of the greatest sci-fi story every told through animation. Try googling.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Finally you have something good to say about the anime after the previous weeks of rant since Episode 7.
Well it seems that the Japanese government and companies are pretty stone broke, considering they have to resort to such tactics to earn money.
Neena is so cute!!! <3
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Funny post, thanks for the review, etc, etc.
The Professor mentioned Jupiter and not Mars.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Oh well DM you’re not alone; I’ve only just finished blogging in dawn. Should have done it much earlier… Nevermind it’s done.
@Peter: Have just started watching PLANETES very recently. It’s originally a manga, so it isn’t Sunrise’s own creation completely. Settings and background’s quite different from other sci-fi as it tends to be more ‘realistic’ (i.e. still quite similar to real life situation compared to settings in G00 despite being in the same universe). Do give it a shot, I think it’s worth watching.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I just got finshed watching the episode, finally, and there is one thing I have to note. I don’t think that Nena snuck into Vade to steal information, at least not direcctly. I think she hacked into it and placed something like a Trojan. I think Sumeragi also thaought this which is why she asked that mrchanic guy to place his report on an independent computer, so that the Throne Meisters wouldn’t know just how much they knew. Also DM i agree that episode was pretty funny, but it was also rather disturbing how much Micheal enjoyed killing people, even if they wer enemy soldiers, getting enjoyment out of that is just sick. Also, it was a bit brutal of Johann to completely dstroy the entire base when the target was Aifman, and it as obvious they knew where he was. Anyway that part with Nena kissing Setsuna was hilarious, especially Setsuna’s reaction to it.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I really enjoy your bloggings dude. Bad or not, it never fails to entertain me. After watching this episode… I’m expecting:
-A 20-min Battle scene between the Thrones and the Original Meisters
-Power Blocs “somehow” got their hands on a Gundam, got their Tech and starts building GN Units.
-Gundams get pwned… Endo’ story.
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 pm
And with the death of Eifman the likely hood of the major powers building their own gundams has died. Unless somehow in a later conflict between the original 4 and the Thrones, someone leaks the data on the solar furnace to the Union (if its Sumeragi), similar to how Rau gave the Alliance the Njammer canceler data in Seed.
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:18 pm
P.S. Mendoi-Conclave releases are getting delayed because we are having a hard time finding our preferred HD raw. I suspect it may have something to do with this…
I do understand what you mean about this DM. But why has it been that Menclave provided a RAW link (for the latest episode at this moment) but still appear to be looking for a good one? Correct me if I’m wrong, I just got the news this afternoon.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:28 am
its actually jupiter in the begining of the anime g00 17
February 4th, 2008 at 4:52 am
>Planetes
The sheer annoyance of Tanabe forced me to stop seeing that thing after 6 episodes.
And I’m sorry to ruin your parade, but Planetes is filled with “soulless stereotypes”.
We have a astronaut with a cocky attitude, a annoying girl who screams “love” and “peace” every chance she gets, a devorced black mother as a motherly figure, a bunch of middle aged men concerned with their job and some other unimportant guys like thar Russian dude.
I found them completely uninteresting.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:56 am
While gundam 00 is no holy grail of robot anime, it’s billion times better and interesting than those abomination SEED and SEED Destiny(and as for that matter more interesting than Planetes).
I’m actually quite surprised at how the show turned, since I was expecting it to be on the same level of SEED Destiny.
Sure it has plot holes(so as your beloved Planetes such as astronauts picking up debris moving at several km every second by HAND in space) but I found it to be the best anime in 2007.
February 4th, 2008 at 5:04 am
I cant believe you are bringing SEED to the same level as Gundam 00! SEED was much more enjoyable that Gundam 00. Gundam 00 had its chance and it blew it a bit. The start of the show was awesome and how it introduced us to the gundam meisters and their backgrounds was really cool. But so far I have not found anything in Gundam 00 that says it is better than SEED. SEED imho is the best Gundam cuz it had everything in it and in the right proportions. That said I am not trying to say Gundam 00 sucks. I just tend to agree with darkmirage. I always watch anime with a very large grain of salt. It is not realistic, it cant be ever realistic. Just enjoy it for what it is. But if we are going to compare SEED is ahead of Gundam 00 so far.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Have to say I disagree. SEED was annoying in my opinion because of the characters, I just couldn’t stand them. At least in G00 the characters, barring Saji and Louise, are bearable, if only just.
February 4th, 2008 at 7:05 am
ferret:
Do you know what is relative velocity? Do you know that when you catch a ball with your bare hands, it’s actually travelling through the universe at tens of thousands of km/s? Do you know that astronauts and spaceships in orbit move at very high speeds to compensate for the centripetal acceleration, even though it seems like they aren’t moving at all because the background references are very far away?
I think I can see why you found PLANETES to be boring. I guess G00 does provide thought-free entertainment. But I promote critical thinking and this is my blog.
PLANETES is about stereotypes the same way real-life is, it is about the breaking down of the illusion of stereotypes. The show makes the audience come to realize that the superficialities don’t matter and the characters are human. (G00 on the other hand has a bunch of robots, and I don’t mean the Gundams.)
You find the characters to be stereotypes because they happen to fall into your narrow-minded worldview as such. Are you telling me that Yuri is a stereotype just because he is Russian? It’s not like he’s wearing a fur coat and drinking vodka. You do realize that there are other races in this world, right? (Or do you prefer G00 where race is ambiguous and everyone looks the same?) I don’t know why I’m even discussing this, since it should be obvious to anyone that one of the main themes in PLANETES is the common feelings and personal experiences we share as a race in spite of differences in our race, religion and nationality.
PLANETES is a plausible heartfelt story. I can see it happening if commercial space exploration reaches a critical point in the next forty years. It also happens to be the most realistic, well researched and scientifically sound sci-fi anime I’ve see. At least I haven’t seen another that has JAXA consultants on board, an OP consisting of historical achievements in manned space travel, or explosions in space with no sound effects. G00 is impossible, not because of the science, since technology will always appear magical to those who lack the foundations to understand it so I’ll give it the benefit of doubt, but because the characters behave in such unrealistic manners that it will take a global IQ reduction of maybe 60 points to explain most of the decisions being made.
I suggest you finish PLANETES because you are showing your ignorance. If you need explosions to keep you interested, there are some in the later episodes. ;)
gundamnut:
I find it quite difficult to see any differences at all between the two. They both have interesting settings that are overshadowed by uninteresting caricatures and fangirl pandering.
darkdestiny:
The raw we provide for streaming every week is not the HD raw we use for encoding, but rather the one we use for translating and timing. The HD raw is obtained subsequently and used in the final encode.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Back to the gundam 00 story……
I support the celestial being not the 3 powers blocs.
union, AEU and HRL remind me too much of the real world countries
which i want them to be destroyed.
of course having a superior technology will defeat many inferior technology armies.
just like america………understand?
February 4th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Seems that DM’s love for Planetes have no bounds, lol…
While I do find the show (G00) to have a few loopholes here and there, only people who have an incredible amount of time and energy will go about arguing the finer details (good or bad) of the show.
Cheers to DM, maybe I will try to find the time from my busy schedule to watch Planetes :)
PS. Sometimes thinking too much is bad but then again that’s my own personal opinion bah…
February 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
And thus we have in a nutshell why Darkmirage thinks Gundam 00 sucks. It’s not as realistic as PlanetES or as much as he’d like.
@Ferret: It’s best not to talk about PlanetES otherwise you’re just going to give Darkmirage more reasons to bash 00 by using comparison of it and PlanetES as an example.
PlanetES is an outstanding show and the characters aren’t boring, just not over the top (for the most part that is). The purpose of the whole junk collecting lifestyle of the main cast IS that it is supposed to be depicting the mundane along with the characters personal lives and reaction to it all. Too often what we consider the bottom rung of the workforce is overlooked in entertainment for the more boisterous and “heroic” positions. The characters in PlanetES are woefully underepresented in all forms of media outside of perhaps documentaries. Also the character analysis is the meat of the show, whereas for Gundam it’s a lot of things.
That’s where PlanetES can be said to be more narrowly and clearly focused while Gundam 00 is more broadly focused and ominous I guess is the word I’d use. Though I think DM is trying to portray it is more obtuse than broad, which isn’t exactly the case unless you go in wanting PlanetES and the wrong mindset.
Interesting is how the competition seems to have broken down to being between whether Seed or 00 is better rather than measuring them on their own merits. Are these really the only two series vieing for top-billing in the entire history of Gundam?
February 4th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Bring on Episode 18! In the preview, looks like Graham (or another Overflag) has acquired a GN Beam Sabre!