Gundam 00 — Episode 19
I’m dead tired. I spent the whole of Friday and Saturday directing traffic for this silly parade thing and reached home at 1am for two consecutive nights, and I didn’t even get to see the parade. Sigh.
Episode 19 is pretty damn boring and the only high point is the new insert song LOVE TODAY by Taja. But meh, I guess at least the Trinitys didn’t talk too much.
Summary
Setsuna almost gets pwned by the Fangs. Tieria and Lockon comes to aid Setsuna against the Thrones.
The Trinity siblings realized the fatal flaw in their docking system
Tieria unleashes Nadleeh’s secret power: the ability to control any mobile suit that is linked to Veda. I don’t understand why the Thrones are linked to Veda and I don’t understand what good is such a hidden ability except to fight against other Gundams, but whatever. He knocks Eins and Drei out, but the system fails before he gets to deliver the final blow. Apparently the hacking done on Veda somehow affected Nadleeh.
RaaaaaahXephon!
It’s not that Nadleeh’s secret system is particularly effective…
They are just momentarily shocked by the crimson long hair, that’s all
The battle ends in a boring draw. Before retreating, Johann tells Lockon that Setsuna’s real name is Soran Ibrahim and he was once a member of the KPSA, a Kurdish anti-government guerilla group that was responsible for the suicide bombing that killed Lockon’s family.
Setsuna lost his left eye during the battle
Louise tells Saji to go back to Japan because she knows that their relationship cannot last, and she wants Saji to achieve his dream of working in space. *Cues emo insert song*
“Goodbye Saji… I’ll miss you.”
“My ring… :(”
Frankly I think this plot development is way too extreme considering she only lost her left hand. It’s not like she’s paralysed waist-down and horribly disfigured or something…
Kinue traces the name Ragna to Ragna Harvey, the president of the Linear Train Enterprise. Apparently he is also a major stockholder of JNN. Unconcerned about the prospects of losing her job, she presses on with the investigation.
In face of the overwhelming power of seven Gundams, the various world leaders are on the brink of giving in to Celestial Being’s demands of disarmament, that is until they are secretly contacted by an unknown entity from within Celestial Being, a rat if you will.
“So you’re Kurdish? WTF I thought you were Japanese!”
Lockon and Setsuna have a small one-on-one emo talk with Tieria acting as the third party. Lockon takes out a gun and melodramatically waves it around in front of Setsuna, while delivering some of the most clichéd and uninspired dialogue lines ever. I find Lockon’s reaction to his discovery of Setsuna’s real identity to be pretty illogical.
“I am Gundam. There is no God. I can’t believe I just summed up my entire life story in two sentences.”
Also, why was Ireland attacked by a Kurdish terrorist group? I thought the whole point of Lockon’s Irish heritage was to link him to Ireland’s centuries-long religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics, which has nothing to do with any disputes between Shiites and Kurds. It’s almost as if Sunrise decided to treat all terrorists as one monolithic plot device to be used whenever it is convenient.
Down the rabbit hole
Anyway the episode ends with a bunch of Union, HRL and AEU military personals entering a secret facility in Antartica, to be greeted with what appears to be a crap load of solar furnaces. Gasp! Gundams for everyone!
The mother load
Screencaps
Ready! Fight!
Tieria misses his target
Preparing for a colonoscopy. “Nurse, get me my gloves.”
Liu Mei is one of the bad guys now :(
“Maybe I should have asked for a necklace instead.”
Chuuu~
“Nice to meet you, Saji. Please make babies with me!”
“Stupid humans.”
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”
Relativity at work
They don’t look like Gundams to me
The fine art of stereotyping perfected
I scored 2310 for my first SAT! Woot!
February 19th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
@Tempura
uhmm so the manga and anime tell the same story just in a different perspective or something?
February 19th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I hope liu mei won’t turn out to be part of the bad guys =( She’s too cute to be evil!
February 19th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
@ the whole if the ptolemaios has a GN drive or not
In episode 3 “If we have a weak point, it’s that, without the Gundams, the operational time of the Ptolemaios would be extremely limited.”
or says Allelujah and that wouldn’t be the case if the ptolemaios had a GN drive
February 19th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
If by obvious culprit you mean Setsuna, I would have to disagree. He may have been a part ofthe group that comitted the bombing but remember that there was a scene in one episode showing Lockon standing near the body bags and out front of the bombed building. He was a kid at the time, so Setsuna would have been a baby at the most probably not even born at the time of the bombing. If you mean by the obvious culprit being a middle east group than yeah Sunrise over uses that. The last thing I should mention about the fact a middle eastern group attacking Ireland, this series takes place 300 years from now don’t forget that. Nothing has happened now to make them attack Ireland but something could have happened then.
February 19th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I don’t see why the writer of this website disliked the episode. I thought the opening fight was sick, seeing the gundams finally attack in a formation, albeit for a short time was a cool thing to watch I mean no more crazy “we are gundams we’ll blow everything up all the time no matter what” stuff. Also seeing Nadleeh use that that to disable the others was crazy i loved that and to have it forcibly disabled by the UN guy was a plot twist im waiting to see unravel, and the end with the 30 GN drvies leads us to see the GUndams and are going to get owned and then get sick upgrades and start owning again (lol). YEa ill admit the whole Saji thing was boring as fcuk but i fast forwarded that and yea why the fuck are the Kurdish bombing Ireland when there is a war in their homeland, Sunrise clearly needs to do more reasearch on the Middle East before they make charecters from there i mean I was so pissed off when in Gundam Wing the only Arab there was a blond haired blue eyed little faggot whos only mate was his bloody Gundam sad!
That part is really dumb (the kurd Ireland thing) and the Iranian princess looks chinnese! whY!!!! lol
either way i’m glad Setsuna is doing something cool
O also I wikipediaed Soran it is an area in Kurdistan and the name of a specefic group of Kurds
February 19th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
nah…did u guy saw the unID suit at the end of the episode?its chasing the thrones but the scene was very brief i couldn’t see much of the particulars..but im pretty much sure i saw red GN particles emitted from its form…nevertheless i like sumeragi position in the picture with the comment “Preparing for a colonoscopy. “Nurse, get me my gloves.””…..awesome sexy
February 19th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
When (if) G00 gets dubbed, I wonder if they’ll give Lockon an Irish accent. Lol.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Again no surprise at Kaioshin hating this episode review as he has pretty much all of them. I really like episode 18 too and said as much in my episode review, but he didn’t get it, which would make him one of the few. As it stands I don’t imagine how anything I can write will ever satisfy him. At least he continues to try and temper it with some unconstructive commentary.
Jeez, sorry. If you want to read about people going “ZOMG Its lazers on Gundams and purdy exploshuns! KEWL!” (which seems to be your criteria for “liking an episode”), then please proceed to AnimeSuki forums or something.
No wonder you got banned on certain blogs. You go around asking for it.
February 19th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Personally, I think the caption for the scene with Exia and Zwai crossing swords should be “Gundam Fight! Ready… I haven’t said ‘GO!’”
February 19th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Wonder if they will make a big mecha with 2+ GN drives now that they have a bunch of them. Say, a bigger Exia with the forcefield from Virtue for example, or maybe just a bigger Virtue with a much faster recharge rate between shots. Or better yet, give Dynames Virtues forcefield.
On another note, its about time we see what super soldier Allelujah could do against the thrones. Between the versatility of his gundam and his super soldie-ry, im thinking he probably is the strongest Meister. Now if only they could fix that headache of his.
February 19th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Guner: I agree that Allelujah would be the strongest meister with those things in mind. However unless Sunrise does something unprecedented with the characters (we all know the chances of that) then Setsuna will turn out to be the strongest meister. He is the main character after all. In anime like this you can count on two things with the main character (this is especially true in Gundam). The main character in the end is always the strongest, and the main character has all the important girls in the right age group tripping over themselves to get him.
February 19th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
By the way for those of you who want a gundam series that has alot of flashy fights with big explosions go download Gundam Wing. SO far its the best gundam series I have watched in all areas of the things we want (character development, combat, political spects). As for combat itself the last 10 episodes at the most is where its at. First off you have litereally two armies fighting each other with the gundams and showing up, and totally pwning face, shortly after the battle starts. This battle culminates with a absolutely brutal showdown between the two best gundam pilots, Heero and Zechs. I mean it when I say brutal, those two beat the crap out of each other, throw each other around, and through the walls of a gian space battle ship with corridors large enough for the gudams to stand up in. Great battle altogether, best I have seen in any gundam series so far.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
holy crap! watching the episode preview, it looks like bloody alejandro has given away tons of those fake GN Drives! I’d like to see how they get out of this. But isnt it a little soon to throw this kind of plot twist in? unless gundam 00 has less than 50 episodes, which i doubt
February 20th, 2008 at 2:03 am
That’s a pretty odd assumption to make for somebody who prefers the dialogue driven episodes of Star Trek DS9 for example, to it’s blow em’ all up movie counterparts. My enjoyment of the series has little to nothing to do with “Kewl explosions” (although I don’t see what’s wrong with being drawn in a little by something like that if it’s well done). I don’t know where you could have possibly gotten that unless you confused my post with Takeo’s. My criteria for enjoying an episode is a balance of elements that I find intriguing. That can be just about anything as long as I feel it was done well and adds to a series in some way.
I’d also like to know how my commentary has been unconstructive. I’ve done nothing but critique or counter your critiques with the restraint and the respect that anyone should have for another persons opinions. Also, you can’t really temper something with the same element such as a negative impression with a negative response as you imply I did, but that wasn’t my intention anyway nor did I mean to imply the situation called for it. In fact I don’t even know where I said I hated this episode review either, nor how I came across as hostile in any fashion. I thought my statement was very clearly laid out as lack of surprise that you found the episode to be in your own words “Pretty damn boring”, or rather, unenjoyable.
And considering that wasn’t even my main point I don’t get why you take such offence unless I’m to understand that you didn’t find the episode unenjoyable as you stated afterall.
By the way, I meant to say that I got the impression that “you didn’t like Episode 18 much either by comparison to the majority of viewers”, not that you didn’t like Episode 18. Again that’s what you get for typing something late at night after a day like yesterday was for me.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:09 am
I believe if you freeze a certain frame towards the end in the ep 20 preview, you can see an all white suit. Plus, you see Alejandro Corner and that weird green hair kid in spacesuits. WTF is that kids name again anyway? Ok, back on topic. That white gundam that you can see is probably where the 5th solar furance is (real one). I bet if the AEU or someone tries to put a solar furnace on an Enact, it’s gonna blow up or something, lol. I still love how they chose Antarctica as the setting for it. I guess in 00 global warming never happened :D