It’s finally time for our next archive anime review series and it’s also the return of looking at an older Gundam series, though really “Mobile Fighter G Gundam” isn’t a Gundam series in nearly every way you’d normally count one as, beyond having white mobile suits called “Gundam” in it, though even then there are tonnes of them of all colours, shapes and sizes. Instead G Gundam is far closer to the old fashioned “Super Robot” shows that the original Gundam tried to distance itself from, with some Shonen fighting tropes thrown in to make things even weirder. The important thing though: does this mean it’s bad? No, it’s quite fun actually…
The world of G Gundam is a very, VERY weird place. Each country (or “Neo Country” I guess…) is part of a unified whole with most of the population living in space colonies, and to decide which country has ruling power over them all a “Gundam Fight” is held every four years, with the winner’s country getting political dominance. The Fights themselves take place on Earth, often in cities and other areas that still have a population of poor people unable to afford a colony residence, so the people of Earth tend to look down on them, or run in fear from them. Gundams are controlled in their cockpits but rather than traditional controls they’re moved by the fighters themselves who have full-body tracking suits that allow them to perform martial arts moves and the like and have their Gundam mimic them exactly. Finally, the Fight is a knockout tournament where any Gundam whose head has been destroyed is disqualified, and the last one standing wins… So yeah, not your typical Gundam set up, or Super Robot set up either, to be honest! The story opens as the 13th Gundam Fight begins and our main protagonist is Doman Kasshu, the Neo Japan Gundam Fighter who has come to Earth with the Shining Gundam and his childhood friend Rain Mikamura, who acts as his support crew, for a lack of a better term. While willing to fight for his country his real reason for heading to Earth is to find someone who he has a single photo of that he spends a lot of these early episodes showing people in hopes they’ve seen him (yes, he’s doing a missing person search across the whole globe by showing people a photo in hopes of them having to have ran into the person…)
Domon gets ready to Gundam Fight in his “cockpit”.
The first chunk of G Gundam follows the Super Robot “monster of the week” format quite closely but instead of monster it’s “Gundam Fighter of the week”. In the first episode Domon encounters Michelo Chariot, the Neo Italy fighter and managers to take out his Neros Gundam’s head in a duel after the fighter kidnapped some local children to coax him into the fight. Episode 2 sees Domon fight Chibodee Crocket (yep…) the Neo American Gundam Fighter who sides with our hero when Neo America doesn’t trust he can win and tries to take Domon out pre-fight, and then has a fair duel and loses (but doesn’t lose his suit’s head). Next up is Sai Saici, the Neo Chinese Gundam Fighter in the Dragon Gundam, who is just a kid but manages to fight toe-to-toe with Domon to a draw, then Episode 4 Domon encounters George De Sand from Neo France, who initially refuses to fight Domon due to his uncouth nature but comes round when he helps George rescue Princess Marie Louise from kidnappers (George once again loses to Domon but the head of his Gundam Rose is left on). Episode 5 has Domon arrested in Neo Russia in an attempt to keep him from competing, only to then escape and duel the Neo Russia fighter Argo Gulski, who is being forced to fight with a bomb strapped to his chest to insure cooperation from the former space pirate.
Episode 6 is an odd one. Domon is kidnapped by his own Neo Japanese government and taken to the Neo Japan space colony to undergo virtual reality tests to prove his has what it takes to represent them (a bit late there…) but the “illusionary situations” he takes part in are clearly at least partially true. We see Domon return home after training with “Undefeated of the East” Master Asia for 10 years, where we see the mystery person in his photo is his brother Kyoji. We then see Domon’s father and Kyoji show him the “Ultimate Gundam” but the police soon break in, accidentally kill Domon’s mother, arrest his father and then Kyoji tries to escape to Earth onboard the Ultimate Gundam but it crashes to the surface. Domon is then told the Ultimate Gundam will revive and continue to evolve using his brother’s body as its “core” and that it was up to Domon to head to Earth and destroy it. We then see this evolved state of the Ultimate Gundam, called the Devil Gundam (or “Dark Gundam” in the dub) but at this point Rain tries to stop the simulation as its too cruel and gets hurt, snapping Domon out of the illusion and giving him access to his golden “Super Mode”, giving him the power to break free. How much of this is exactly what happened in the past and how much of it was twisted (beyond the last bit obviously!) is left up to the viewer, but it was pretty obvious that it was intended as a quick lore dump.
Yeah… not really what anyone was expecting from the first official Gundam side story, but hey… It works in its own insane bubble!
Domon and Rain head back to Earth and we resume the weekly Gundam Fights, starting with Chico Rodriguez from, you’ll be unsurprised to hear, Neo Mexico, though he is on the run from his own government because he doesn’t want to Gundam Fight because his sister is dying, so Domon stages a battle where the Neo Mexican Gundam is destroyed but Chico and his sister are elsewhere and go into hiding. Episode 8 sees Andrew Graham of Neo Canada take Rain hostage to lure out not Domon but Argo as during the latter’s space pirate career Andrew’s wife was killed during one of his raids. This leads to something of a three-way fight that ends with Andrew realising that what he’s doing has put Rain in danger and therefore is putting Domon through what Argo did to him, and Argo admitting the collision was an accident and he actually tried to save Graham’s wife, so all three make up. Episode 9 sees Domon fighting the Neo British fighter Gentle Chapman who despite his name is known for being anything other than gentle and in fact often cheats to win. Chapman actually ends up dead by the end of the battle saying that this is the true fate of all Gundam Fighters (which um, doesn’t seem to be the case so far…) Episode 10 has our duo head to Neo Egypt to fight the Pharaoh Gundam only to find out its pilot is actually already dead and was revived by Devil Gundam cells, or “DG Cells”, leading to it having healing properties. Domon destroys it with his Shining Finger (don’t think I’ve mentioned that yet… that’s the name of his powerful attack… Yep.) while in Super Mode.
Episode 11 similarly sees its Gundam pilot, this time from Neo Turkey, taken over by DG Cells though its pilot was alive in this case. It was an old friend of Rain’s so she manages to get through to him long enough for Domon to break him out of his infected Gundam and save his life. I’ll leave the last two episodes for the Spoiler Section because believe it or not things get even more crazy, but as you can see the one thing you can safely say about G Gundam is that it doesn’t slow down, that’s for sure…
Overall Thoughts:
If you can guess which country this Gundam is from then… you know your stereotypes! Well done.
G Gundam gets off to a fun start but I’ll admit a lot of these episodes feel a bit samey. It’s the reason I’ve enjoyed Super Robots through Super Robot Wars but have never really gravitated to the shows they come from. Still though, there is some fun to be had here so long as you don’t take anything seriously, which is a mistake I made when I first watched the show without any idea of how far from other Gundam shows this was… well, a little idea but not enough as I stopped a couple of episodes in. The second watch and this one though I knew what to expect, and that is zany martial arts drama with Gundams and monsters, with plenty more to come…
Domon and Rain head to Neo Japan after rumours of the Devil Gundam appearing there and are soon confronted by a bunch of single-eyed mobile suits controlled by DG Cells. He struggles until he is helped by a mysterious man who very swiftly is revealed to be his master, um, Master Asia. Together the two of them plough through waves of the “Death Army” suits barehanded and find out that the suits are “manned” by zombies reanimated through the DG Cells. In the next episode the two of them head out across the area to search for survivors and Domon ends up having to fight Chibodee, Sai, George and Argo, all controlled by DG Cells. While this is happening Rain is hiding in the Shining Gundam’s cockpit but has to don the motion suit herself and fights off attacking Death Army suits, which she does.
Domon immediately regrets befriending Sai Saici.
Domon soon returns and enters the cockpit just in time to help pilot the Shinning Gundam and fight off a mysterious new Gundam suit that appears, with Rain and Domon actually doing a move together (within the Gundam, which is doing just one motion… somehow…?) The duo soon reunite with Master Asia where they plan their next move…
Hogan Reviews 