Gundam 00 — Episode 24
As you can imagine from this picture, episode 24 is pretty emo. If you haven’t watched it yet, maybe you want to do that first before reading my usual cynical tearing down of what many people may find the most touching episode in the series. On the bright side, we are almost done! (Until season 2 at least.)
If I had to use an analogy to describe this episode, which I don’t but I shall anyway, then I would say that it’s like the fireworks during New Year celebrations. They are pretty nice and colourful but they last only a short while, burning themselves up in the process. Also, the whole fireworks get old after a while when you see them every year.
This is a very shitty analogy, so we shall stop here and move on.
Summary
Ptolemaios and the UN forces regroup their troops after the furious fighting in the previous episode. With just 11 Jinxes left, the UN receives a mysterious reinforcement in the form of a gigantic gold space pimpmobile. The two sides then clash in a final battle for survival, though it seems clear that Setsuna and gang stand no chance against the flying bling fortress.
“That’s no moon…”
Episode 24 is what Sunrise has been saving up for all this while, baby! And by saving up, I refer to the human cast of the series. Just like soylent green, the secret of Sunrise’s patented storyline formula lies in the death of human beings, and, continuing from episode 23’s light appetizer, we are slowly moving into the main course of total annihilation.
Patrick, a long lost member of Team Rocket, finally bites the dust in this episode, courtesy of Tieria Erde. While logically speaking it’s a miracle that he even managed to make it this far, from the perspective of story-telling it makes little sense to have him die at this point of the story, especially considering he just barely escaped death in episode 23.
Dr. Moreno, the doctor who wears a pair of dark sunglasses while he treats potentially-fatal wounds, dies an attack that takes out the entire starboard side of Ptolemaios. Since he had a total of about five seconds worth of appearance in the entire series, I wonder if his meaningless existence was the remnant of an aborted subplot, or if Sunrise really, really wanted to have someone who wears sunglasses in the show?
So he does have eyes…
Halfway through the episode, Christina and Lichty start to share their life stories. This is where you start to sympathize with them before they die later on in the episode. Yes, they die. To her credit, Chris saves Feldt’s life with a white lie, thus preserving the sanity of thousands of fanboys. The world owes you one, Chris. From a storyline viewpoint, this probably paves the way for Feldt to mature into a hardened Gundam Meister with a sexy body.
A cyborg’s got to do what a cyborg’s got to do
On the bright side, Sunrise can now lower the budget and lay off a few seiyuu.
That said, I am not heartless. Though the whole thing was a blatant attempt to create an emotional moment after so many episodes of weak character development, I did fall for it (a little). Christina and that guy, may you rest in peace and not be resurrected as brainwashed cyborg killing machines by the villain in season 2.
By the way, if you are wondering about Lichty’s cyborg body, his parents were orbital elevator technicians and he lost them, along with half his body, as a child during the Solar Conflict .
Screencaps
Is she going to do something or what?
Setsuna is mentally preparing himself for the ensuing rape
Question to Europeans: What’s with the funky colours?
“What’s that weird thing you’re using?” “A pencil.”
First the gold pistol, now this. Definitely compensating for something
Pikachu suit
They need to nerf this in the next patch
“Fire ze missiles!” “But I’m le tired.”
So, has anyone figured out why space smoke is pink in Gundam?
“HULK SMASH!”
It’s amazing how the rest of the room is completely blown apart
This is like Survivors in space
:(
:O
T_T
As a bonus for finishing this review, I present to you a short story.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Omg, sunrise runs out of money. Wang Lui Ming (or similar) is wearing old costumes!
Anyway, i like it when ppl die in animes. There are so many animes out there were they find poor excuses for not killing.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:51 am
wait, what happened to that trinity girl? setsuna saved her ass, then left her in shock? what if right now, during the 24th episode, she has been having a day-long seizure or something. nobody would know, unless you know, somebody actually IS with her…
and Roy Mustang, i umm dont think its out yet
March 25th, 2008 at 7:53 am
I hope Setsuna kills stupid Alejandro in his golden elmeth/bigro/big zam knockoff, KILL EM ALL!
March 25th, 2008 at 9:04 am
though, all weird jokes aside, I feel the urge to point out that a character dies in almost every other episode, and that a good amount of the original Ptolemiaos crew has been blasted to smithereens.
I can almost imagine the board meetings at Sunrise…
Producer: LOL HAY GAIZ! Here’s this HYOOOOGE list of people that we’re gonna kill off! Take a gander!
Artists and Animators: yay! less work!
Writers: yay! more dramatic deaths!
*elsewhere*
Fans: Oh no! a chain of random plot devices!
honestly, the whole dramatic death or loss of incredibly minor character is kind of…filler-ish? can’t find a word for it. someone help me.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Well, that really surprised me that a golden gundam that has been loaded with like 7 gn drives was made and nobody knew about it, and those side containers can just get disconnected? so why didnt they just take one each adn start shooting instead of waiting at the bridge to get shot? Sunrise is killing all the MS so they can earn more money by bringing in new suits later in the series, they had trans am and they chose not to use it but just literally get owned. And what happened to grahem(flag pilot) he hasnt shown his face, can we jsut see him kick some ass..~~
March 25th, 2008 at 9:56 am
@ leo: well, not just the mobile suits, but characters that were brought in just to die or something.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:18 am
“I run a blog and can’t get views unless I’m needlessly bitter and cynical! Pay attention to meeeeee!”
March 25th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Thank you for translating G00 o.o and… >_>
sorry about lack of politics, I think the political education process for Japanese youth HAS to be mixed with a lot of explosions =( it’s like African Americans calling each other niggers while Obama is trying to get elected =/
March 25th, 2008 at 10:58 am
It’s funny because Sunrise bashing actually went out of fashion a while ago when they started getting their act together following Gundam Seed Destiny. The new trend is Gonzo bashing. If people haven’t already seen it, give Dragonaut a try (actually don’t). It’ll give everyone a whole new perspective on what haphazard writing is.
Okay, all jokes aside, I still think Sunrise is doing fine with this series IMO and I think the majority of people agree on that one. Speaking of agree, I have to side with you on the whole Wang being a pointless character thing. Throughout all of Season 1 she didn’t do a single thing beyond act self-important. The writers will have to get on that next season to make sure she isn’t completely wasted. Even Marina the so called useless princess has had a bigger effect on the series in regard to influencing Setsuna to find his own conclusions to what makes the world tick.
Yes I came back, but only because I have an uncanny sense for when I’m being parodied. I love how I always end up being an elitist jerk who ends up telling everybody what to do all the time in parody. In reality only 25% of that is actually what I’m like. :p
By the way, about that whole bottoming out of Bear Stearns. Analysts are saying to liquidate (RRSP’s only I imagine) and apparently the EU is looking for a way to further decouple from the U.S economy. The EU as I understand it has been looking for economic independence for a while now, but is now the right time? Seriously I don’t know, I’m no economist. What I do know is the Canadian Dollar dropped an entire cent in one day last week, which strikes me as something to be alarmed about. It’s funny because old Bushy is saying the economy has never been sounder…….why he feels the need to talk about the economy I’ll never know. Last time he did that back in his first term the stock market took a nosedive if I recall. It’s times like these I wish I was still in University so that I could get an economics prof’s perspective on all of this….
Well anyways, like I suggested last time, Legend of The Galactic Heroes is a great series that also happens to have a lot of politics. You get a bit of analysis on Monarchy versus Democracy too along with the inner posturing and ladder climbing of the characters. LOGH kicks the crap out of 00 in every respect as it stands at this point, but I still think 00 is a very good show so far. I can’t really rank it overall though since it isn’t done.
….By the way, the smoke looks purple to me. Am I going even colour blinder?
….One last thing, despite our disagreeing on the overall quality of the show, I appreciate that you stuck with it and continued to translate. That’s the mark of a true fansubber. I’ve seen way to many other subbers leave viewers cold and dry when they stop being interested in a show themselves and it is pretty selfless of you to keep on trucking despite your disappointment with the show. So good job.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Nerodon:
Woulnd’t the GN-X accelerate to really high speed just before crashing. That’s a really big mass force were talking about. Most of the weapons used by the Gn-X if not all are energy based (therefore thermal damage) best example, when lock-on’s armor gets penetrated by a Gn-X’s saber.
The bullets and artillery shells of the previous episodes were most likely moving at a similar speed than normal tank shells today.
Each shell weighing about 100 kilos fired at a speed of about 900 m/sec
makes an impact force of 90 Mega Joules
…etc
After reading your dissertation, I feel compelled to point out that force is measured in Newtons, not Joules. You have confused it with kinetic energy. Additionally, “Mega Joules” is one word; and there is no such thing as a “mass force.”
Hope that helps.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Patrick is still alive, his cockpit unit is intact… Remember when his enact got shot in half? This is similar.
Why are the main characters dying? Well in a real war with such MS they would have all died off ages ago, end of story. Most of the other gundam series were total BS in this part.
NOTE: Sunrise still existed because of Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny… Remember how GS and GSD both had their plot modified to suit the fans…
Oh yeah Dark mirage, you going to do a code geass review?
March 25th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
There is a rumour that Nena is NOT going to make it into Season 2…and it is pretty hit right now in Japan.
Does that mean she will die too?
March 25th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I don’t think Patrick’s done just yet, check out his GN-X after Tieria’s shot, seems like the cockpit is still intact. ^^;
http://www.marvinryan.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/patrickcorlasawar2.jpg
March 25th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
@Martin: Thanks to our good friends Fukuda and Morosawa who don’t appear to work there anymore…..at least I hope not.
And you I still don’t know where along the line all of these negative traits started to get attributed directly to Sunrise, but a lot of different people work on different series when it comes to their shows. Unfortunately the entire studio get’s blamed for the mistakes of two of it’s former employees and now they have one of the worst reputations in the western anime community for no good reason and many people act like they can’t do anything right. How long is it going to be before people let the stigma of Gundam Seed Destiny go I wonder. 5, 10 more years? I mean how long ago was that anyway and how many solid shows have they done since. Xenoglossia, Code Geass, Gundam 00, Gintama, Freedom, Votoms Pailsen Files…it just goes on. I lost a bit of faith in Gundam after that Seed Destiny, I thought that it may have even killed the franchise because it was so poorly handled, but all has long since been forgiven as they got their act together not too long after.
Still I guarantee the drama continues through to Code Geass R2. We’ll get the initially “Lol Sunrise Trainwreck” internet meme and then everyone will just end up liking it anyway. Meanwhile I’m just going to skip all that and blog it straight up from the beginning.
Episode 25 should be out on Saturday March 29th by the way Roy Mustang. By that time the week after, Code Geass R2 will have begun airing. It’ll probably be hard to miss the moment it goes on air as the internet is liable to go a little haywire then. Anyway, The only thing I’m really worried about with the new Code Geass is that the character designs look like they might have taken a hit in artistic quality. I hope it turns out to just be the way they look as static images. Character designs tend to look kind of crappy when you see them on series homepages.
March 25th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
@svenz
rail gun (equipped on flag and enact)is a new technology (as in now..)which propel projectile at high velocity using enormous amount of electricity resulting off-the-hook muzzle power. how powerful? it travels at mach7,can hit target 20km apart with accuracy of hitting centermost of a 3m square target.The high velocity generates kinetic power better than a conventional shells;without using gunpowder. today’s most advance tank can achieve about 2km/s muzzle power with effective range of 700m; which can still do collateral damage.
that rail gun guaranteed a hole where you can peep timbuktu through it even if u r equipped with the most advance/thickest armour in the world. my exia model’s box stated that it weighted 57.2 ton, comparable to challenger II tank. If a 15 hour of barrage of those ordnance doesnt give any splint to its form, i dunno what kind of metal they used to construct it.but hey, this is just fictional,wth rite?
March 25th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
i hate to burst some peoples bubbles but the gundams were always vulnerable, the only reasons they had survived thus far are
a)in most of the early episodes they were doing the the attacking rather than being attacked
b)in those instances they had the element of surprise
c)they used gurella warfare tatics (hence why the 15 hour bombardment plan almost worked, if the thrones hadn’t shown up, they would’ve been captured for sure)
d)they operated in hunter killer teams, one fast melee unit supported by one firepower unit (surely you people noticed that once the gundams ended up on their own they usually got owned in some fashion?) the fact dynames was permanently out of action not only took away a quarter of their firepower it completely messed up how they operated
March 25th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
i actually liked it…though im not raving about it either…it’s sort of like a necessary episode..i hope all these questions and so on would get answered in season2…anyway, thanks for the review Di!! ^_^
March 25th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
I can picture Felt piloting Dynames in season 2.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
dude dm that pikachu suit and hulk smash made my day man LOL super funny ass shiett. keep doing yur thing man.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
pikachu suit. oh boy that’s brillant!