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 4:45 pm
GN Drives for everyone, mistake, they could have had something different. Like give the AEU, HRL and Union Nuclear Fusion powered suits, bring back the Minovsky partical.
February 24th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
The EU leader is pulling off the political handshake joke. Cunning.
February 24th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
If Kinue really dies, then there’ll be no one to find out the truth of the Celestial Being. Sigh…
February 24th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Dang, Kinue was kinda one of my favorite charas too, I hope she had some of Kira’s plot armor with her and is found still alive next episode D: *hopes*
Also, the “I’ll make you into a man”-lieutenant girl is totally hawt with her hair down and about Patrick getting a GN-X, there is someone in 23:57 that’s piloting a GN-X in space but thanks to the bandai logo kinda being in the way, I’m not sure if it’s Patrick or Ali…
February 25th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Awww I liked Kinue. I hope she doesn’t die.
Why Kinue and not Louise… sad :(
February 25th, 2008 at 2:33 am
@darkdestiny, TehShien, and Dazzer: She’ll be sure to come up later in the series, when no one expects it. After all the spoilers only said “leave the stage”. =D
And I wonder if there really are no strings attached to the GN-X units. It’s starting to sound like a Trojan horse scenario thanks to the thoughts of a few others.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Mhm.
The GN Drives that the GN-X have are exactly the same as Gundam Thrones.
The main reason would be that ~THEORY~ Ribbons leaked the information inside Veda, and then Gundam Thrones + HRL, AEU, and Union have got all the information about GN Drives.
Anyone else think that Ribbons is Tieria’s brother?
They both seem like b*****ds.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:10 am
@Dez: Ribbons is at least very similar to Tieria, if not born of the same maker. They are the same in their androgynous nature (too many scenes in this episode where he looked like a woman) and their link to Veda (the ability to interact with Veda-related tech + the eyes).
February 25th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Kinue died? Well… everyone kindda saw that coming. Go GN-X! Pwn those Thrones!
February 25th, 2008 at 7:36 am
loved the episode, especially the review. indeed, the twist of fate for kinue is quite sad… but, she could still be alive (pulls a monty python & the holy grail on us) “I’m not quite dead yet!” “Actualy, I’m feeling a bit better!” In the end, I still think she’ll sadly die. WTF is up with the rain=sadness cliche? I still don’t get how it turned out this way. If anything, rain should equal hope. Rain makes crops grow, refills fresh water sources, and enriches the land in general. The only bad things it really does is cause flooding and/or other water overabundance problems.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:09 am
我考……is there any http free download address? I’m greedy as this is gundam
February 25th, 2008 at 8:33 am
哦买高的：有也极少，因为HTTP相对来说成本还是高一些。可以试用IRC的XDCC。
February 25th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I sure hope liu mei recognizes the error of her ways and goes back to the good guys :D
Since she and alejandro are both observers / agents of veda, i guess one should be in the good side while the other should be in the dark side..
Also, I have this horrible feeling that saji will be a gundam or flag or whatever pilot in the next season of g00 O_O (God forbid)
February 25th, 2008 at 10:28 am
omg, that was hilarious. loved your part on…well…everything
February 25th, 2008 at 10:35 am
So the Conner family has be plotting to upsur Schilebergs plan for genartions and Alejandro works for them?
February 25th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Apparently the Corners have a grudge towards Aeolia Schenberg ages ago, and they plot to spoil his big plan which started in the timeline of Gundam 00. Like parents, like son, I guess?
To Dez and RmX: that’s absolutely true. Otherwise could Neina be Tiera’s sister? *sniggers*
February 25th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
So that’s where GLaDOS gets all her cakes :O
February 25th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
What would anyone get out of foiling a plan for world peace anyway?
February 25th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
where can i download this episode for free? =)
February 25th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Wow slightly amusing episode review (as per usual) though i can’t help but feel this episode lacked a tiny bit. There are still to many questions i want answered, such as;
1) Why can’t there be more episodes with less dialogue?
2) Oh my god why do i see Appleseed resemblance here?
3) The thrones need to die, why don’t they die? Gayness on wheels.
(not really a question..oops…)
4) Why do i love the reviews on this web page? (completely irrelevant i know)
and finally 5) Why can’t Setsuna actually be cool and the not scenes over cliched?
Ok I’m done with my random question rant. I only hope that the series makes up for the dead ends, plot killers, horribly long talk scenes, and pray for awesome second gen mobile suits.