Gundam 00 — Episode 20
Ow, god my hurt heads. I slept on cold concrete floor last night without a proper pillow last night. I should really be sleeping early tonight…
Unfortunately, it’s already too late for that. Gah. This episode is pretty decent. I realized that the shorter each scene is in an episode of G00, the more interesting I find the episode to be. This probably has to do with the fact that I find most of the mindless dialogues boring, so rapid scene transitions serve to reset my bored-o-meter before weariness kicks in.
Summary
Sunrise covers up a gaping plot hole by having a nurse explain to Saji that Louise’s left hand cannot be regenerated because her body cells were somehow affected by the beam weapons used by the Gundams. So now we know that medical technology isn’t that incompetent three centuries in the future after all.
Saji finds out that he has to pay the bills
Of course, since Louise wasn’t actually directly hit by the beam, this raises an interesting question as to just how harmful GN particles are to human beings at long distances? Are most of the military personnels in the world impotent by now? This is a question of utmost scientific significance and requires a thorough and rigorous investigation.
Meanwhile, the three world superpowers, armed with their new secret weapons, jointly declare their intention to wipe out the Celestial Being terrorist scums for good.
That European guy is totally evil
They pledge their combine military strength to form a unified army under UN authority, giving birth to the largest army humanity has ever seen.
Meanwhile, Sumeragi orders Ian the tech guy and that male crew member, whose name I cannot remember, to retrieve and deploy the GN arms system, which is basically a smaller rip-off of the Meteor system, which is in turn a smaller rip-off of the Dendrobium system.
“So uh, we finally get to do something and possibly die soon, huh?”
Supposedly, there will be GN arms systems for all the Gundams, but so far only one is ready for deployment, which is Exia’s I guess.
Each of the power blocs receive 10 out of the 30 GN drive-powered mobile suits, GN-X, that they found in Antarctica. Imagine if the traitor within Celestial Being had decided to give them 31 mobile suits instead? They probably would’ve fought a war just to decide who gets the extra one.
What I don’t understand about the future is its preference for monochrome interfaces
The Union is assigning the Overflag pilots to its share of the new mobile suits. Graham rejects the offer because he promised Howard to defeat the Gundams with his Flag, and he is a man of his words. For god’s sake, just swap the heads or something and call it a Custom Flagdam.
That guy needs to change his barber
On the other side of the blue marble, Sergei and Soma abandon their Tierens for the spanking new mobile suits without any qualms. Patrick is busy trying to get laid and doesn’t give a damn, but he probably gets a GN-X anyway.
Is he supposed to be modelled after someone?
Meanwhile, the President of the Linear Train Corporation, Ragna Harvey, meets up with Ali to discuss the secret delivery of GN-X to the various nations. I guess Ali is not only a mercenary but a smuggler too. It sort of makes sense, since he seems to have some magical ability to hide and transport his stolen Enact around. But not really.
Evil and proud of it
Ali subtlety blackmails Ragna into arranging for him to join either the Union or AEU army as one of the pilots of the new mobile suits. Showdown with Exia lies ahead.
Kinue is stalking Ragna, who refused to accept her request for an interview. She ends up making the biggest mistake of her life by trying to pry information out of Ali. This part doesn’t make a lot of sense either. She basically asks Ali, “Hey, so what’s your secret business with Ragna?” and expects a reply. The only reason she gets one is because Ali is batshit insane…
“Stop right there. This is the hairdo police!”
…and also because he kills her after that. That’s right, with no build-up whatsoever, Ali randomly decides to stab/shoot Kinue in the stomach and leave her to die. One can never be sure when it comes to Gundam, but she looks pretty dead. Maybe she’ll be back as a cyborg reporter sent back in time to do an exposé on her own death.
It always rains when this happens
Alejandro Corner reveals his true villain self. Apparently, the Corner family has planned to usurp Aeolia Schenberg’s plans for centuries and Alejandro was bidding his time because he couldn’t do anything with Veda around. Ribonze, the green-hair uke, has the same ability as Tieria and Nena, which allows him to secretly access Veda. Thanks to him, Alejandro can proceed with his evil plans and S&M yaoi fantasies.
“I’m the bad guy. Surprise!”
They manage to locate Veda’s physical system hidden on the dark side of the moon. Man, the dark side of the moon sure has a ton of top secret stuff lying around…
Wang Liu Mei throws her support behind the Trinity siblings, an extremely bad choice that, in my opinion, will probably lead to the death of either herself or Hong Long. Probably the latter. At the very least she will surely become impotent due to increased exposure to the red GN particles. Why Liu Mei, why?
Liu Mei joins the dark side :(
The Trinity gets owned by HRL’s new GN-powered Choubu Jinx Squadron, which is a terrible name, while on a mission to destroy the League’s regional base in Guangzhou. No one dies, though.
Briareos, is that you?
Well that was a pretty plot-heavy episode. I have a feeling that the next one will have a lot more static dialogues. Sigh…
Screencaps
Europe wins
Secretary General of the UN?
This Ikeda hippie is the only foreign correspondent JNN has
It’s a phallic symbol
ZOMG who is this? Hint: Not a new character
Some things are more important than the fate of the world
Kids, this is what happens when you take candies from strangers
Face-off with Liu Mei
The HRL pilot survives, but is sterilized
Now every Tom, Dick and Harry has a GN drive
New HRL anti-Gundam tactic: Chinese martial arts
“There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark.”
GLaDOS’s secret cake factory
I feel a little hungry.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:33 am
i think there’s chance that Kinue could survive, or maybe not. We shall see in the next/next next week.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:50 am
The shifty eyed AEU leader totally rocks. I was thinking pretty much the same thing when I saw that screenshot.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:52 am
I have a question. Do the GN particles from the “fake GN drives” cause the problem with regenerating Louise’s hand? or is it GN particles in general?
February 24th, 2008 at 3:05 am
Looking for the menclave release and thanks for your awesome work each episode. I totally agree with your observation that the shorter the scenes are per EP the better the episode is…I guess its because our generation is so ADD.
February 24th, 2008 at 3:37 am
nevermind about that Kinue could live thing… if it’s Ali who did it the there’s gonna be no chance for her to live(being a experienced mercenary who would totally know how to kill a person).
Also the GN Drives given to the 3 superpowers give out red beam like the Trinity Team’s, so i guess they are those “pseudo-GN Drives”? Meaning they are somewhat inferior to the real ones?
February 24th, 2008 at 4:33 am
LoL GLADOS, the Cake is a Lie.
I take it that Ali also robbed Kinue before shooting her yes?
February 24th, 2008 at 4:54 am
Nice, first :)
February 24th, 2008 at 5:35 am
That “new character” is that woman lieutenant that slapped that flag pilot during the military exercise against Celestial Being. Also….WHY LIU MEI?!?! WHY?!?! And I liked Nena, I hope she joins the light side… I want Kinue to live :(
February 24th, 2008 at 6:40 am
GN-X, nickname “Jinx”. As much as I agree that they look like Freeza’s unknown 5th form, they kick serious ass.
February 24th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Now Saji has lost everything he has close to him. What will he do?
Maybe he will date Setsuna and generate Yaoi fantasies.
I am guessing amputation by GN particles is same as cauterisation.
February 24th, 2008 at 10:38 am
It’s not like you can build a mobile suit in a day.
It’s not like a powerful engine makes the mobile suit powerful.
The excuse for Louise’s hand was crappy.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:13 am
woah! wat a twist, though i kinda expected half of that stuff to happen
February 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am
i hope exia will get destroyed so a stronger unit for setsuna will appear LOL
February 24th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Quite a lot of plots in one episode. Can’t say they will continue to do that for all 5 remaining episodes though.
So each faction has 10 GN-X? They surely have odd designs just like most of the MS in this series. Hope the GN-X aren’t gonna be mere pushovers by the end of the first season.
And it looks like that so many people are into Portal these days.
February 24th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
wow…2 “researchers” dead already…so who’s next on the hitlist? That AEU colonel?
February 24th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Well about that whole “whether the red particles only cause the cell damage” thing. I qould guess that both the forms of GN affect them equally. The only difference we know is that the red particles simply last for a much shorter amount of time.
As for the whole Kinue thing. I can’t say i’m surprised seeing as how she really stuck her nose in too deep. The moment that someone from the organization finds out she knows anything about them she would die, just like that one pilot who’s name i’m not sure was introduced, or, if it was, i don’t remember.
Saji is going to go emo, though my guess is he’s joining in with Setsuna because he’s already somewhat friends with him. And i have a whole theory to base it on, though i am too tired to post it down.
Also, I don’t think that the new suits will be able to handle the GN arms well. I mean we saw how the meteors affected the Freedom/Justice. (10 targets x 50= 500 KO’s per second) Though i’m sure 00 will stick to a more realistic perspective, I think those GN-X suits are gonna get creamed.
Oh, and one more thing: NENA COME TO THE LIGHT SIDE!!! WAAH! NenaXSetsuna ftw :P.
February 24th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Certainly there’s a connection between the Trinity team and Ragna… But is it really the Ragna Harvey? I wonder…
Wang Liu Mei’s move is expected to a certain extent, given that 1)she considers the Trinity siblings as the Celestial Being and 2)The Gundam Meister first team’s performance so far drops her interest towards that team.
In terms of Kinue being “killed”, did she get shot in the stomach (appears so according to the picture)? Possibility of her being found still alive in such weather is certainly low…
Finally, looking at the GN drives that the HRL have, it looks most likely that they have the same limitations as those on the Gundam Thrones.