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 5th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
On one note, it appears I can’t put a phrase above in bold. :(
February 6th, 2008 at 12:46 am
I doubt Elfman is really dead. People do not really die in Gundam, they are imbued with the uncanny ability to slip pass danger no matter how great the odds are.
Elfman is gonna return and create a pink gundam for Setsuna that is capable of shooting taiyakis.
February 6th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Hi all, and especially dark mirage, your commnents on 00 are very sharp and really hit the mark which makes them very amusing and interesting.
I guess you can think of the pilots in Celes B (A Team) not as individuals (at the moment) but as a faction (since everyone thinks in a linear fashion) until there is room for further character development.
I kinda thought the introduction of the thrones was a good thing. Instead of giving both forces (Celes B and Earth forces)gundams (like in SEED), you now have gundam pilots who claim to serve the agenda of intervention to end conflicts.
This is interesting as it juxtaposes (compares and contrasts) opposing approaches to the same idea (stopping conflicts). The power to strike (as an intervention) is now given to a bunch of self-serving megalomanics. How cool is that? Very arbitrary, very irresponsible. With great power comes great responsibility thrown to the winds…
So in a way, it is now a 3 way power struggle/interaction. Wait, that was in SEED wasn’t it? 3 way and all that? So who is the one who will be doing “the right thing”. As of now, it is all very unclear in 00. Team A seem to be the ones, but they have issues and AS’s agenda is unconfirmed as of yet.
Let’s just hope it clears up before the end.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:49 am
Sojourner, did you honestly just say people don’t die in Gundam? How many Gundam series have you actually seen? Don’t say such ridiculous things if you don’t know what you are talking about.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:36 am
He is apparently killed in that unfortunate event.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Sojourner-san, Howard doesn’t have the main character buff. Which means that he has a fair chance of being cannon fodder.
February 6th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
@Sojourner: Aifman is dead. Did you not wacth the episode or did you some how miss the part where he got vaporized by the GN Mega Launcher. I mean he took a direct hit from that thing. Noone survives through that.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I wanted this gundam series to be more tactical like it was and the gundams much more overpowering cause Exia for example got hit with that black’s suit cannon and got blown away, sad :(
also if those gundams were working as a team might as well have a super cannon in the beginning and have two seperate but very powerful mobile suits who don’t need assistance from each other to pwn
February 6th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
It’s sort of a blessing in disguise for the Celestial Being. Aifman had just managed to grasp certain information about them when he got killed. Yet another factor that led to the story’s continuation.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Believe me, we know. Him knowing that information is probably thew reason the Thrones attacked that base in the first place.
February 7th, 2008 at 3:52 am
@darkdestiny & shadow: We should really be calling the base attack/”intervention” an assassination attempt on the Prof. Which succeeded quite well.
February 7th, 2008 at 5:46 am
Heh, you’re right RmX. But man that is the flashiest assassination I’ve seen. Guess when you have godly powerful machines like that you don’t even need to know the meaining of sublety.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Weeeh, passing by…hilarious blog, i was looking for this blog for quite a while now, Setsuna’s one blessed kid lolx @_@ the power of the main character…
February 8th, 2008 at 11:49 am
For the love of mankind, I hope that my comments were not taken seriously for I cannot imagine a Gundam that shoots taiyakis. =)
@ Anon
Hmm… Pardon my impudence but was it not that my comment was about Professor Elfman and not Howard of the Thousand Penetrations? I was not talking about Warrant Officer Howard right? Gee now I am confused with the names. *all thanks to ya =p*
P.S By no means was I trying to have a go with bashing Gundam 00 or any other similar intentions that could have possibly been infered from my words.
OMG. The internet is serious business.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
“Howard of the Thousand Penetrations” ROFLMAO! Thats great, accurate but awesome.