Hogan Reviews

Time for another “I don’t really do these anymore but since I’ve done them for all of the other Gundam series I don’t want to break the streak now we’re near the end” Overall Review, this time for the decidedly un-Gundam-like Mobile Fighter G Gundam. If you’re in the mood for a bit of over-the-top silliness and martial art film tropes then G Gundam is for you, but if you’re looking for a “real robot” war story like most Gundam shows you’ve picked the wrong one. Let’s take a quick overall look then, shall we?

Cheating here slightly, but in terms of quickly going over how the world of G Gundam is set up the first paragraph from the first review sums up well enough that I’ll just copy and paste it here. Everything else is newly written though, I promise! 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: his lost brother Kyoji.

The main frequently-fighting cast in their skin-tight fight suits!

The show as a whole is pretty neatly cut into four sections (which was a handy coincidence given I always split these longer shows in four lots of roughly 13 episodes!) with the first and third quarter being a traditional “monster of the week” format but with “Gundam Fighter of the Week” instead, with each episode seeing mostly Domon but sometimes one of his allies fight a new opponent with a mini story tied to them that gets solved within the 20-odd minutes and that rarely plays any importance in the plot as a whole. The other two quarters focus on the bigger overall plot involving Master Asia and the Devil (or Dark) Gundam which I’ll get to in a bit. Due to this there are parts where the show starts to drag and become a tad too formulaic followed by some crazy-arse story episodes, so it’s not a smooth ride, just when you start getting into the rhythm of one thing it switches to another. Domon as a protagonist is fine, he’s you classic hothead who learns to calm down (a couple of times…) and eventually the power of friendship and love wins out, and his relationship with Rain works as well as any male-focused show can in that at least she actually does a few things other than just being a love interest. His immediate allies are all… fine. They all have a single personality quirk that they rarely move far from: George de Sand from Neo France is your classic dutiful and wordy knight complete with sniffing roses and the like, Chibodee Crocket from Neo America is your classic cocky ladies man, Sai Saici from Neo China is the young boy who is obnoxiously shouts and screams all the time and tries to ogle all the ladies because he’s a growing boy ho-ho-ho etc (plus a few martial arts dojo tropes thrown in), and Argo Golski from Neo Russia is your stern, stoic mountain-of-a-man who underneath that exterior is actually a kind hearted soul. Eventually Allenby Beardsley, the female fighter from Neo Sweden, is added to the protagonist side and she fills the fight-obsessed tomboy trope, while the short-lived Schwarz Bruder from Neo Germany rounds out the cast as a the strict mentor hiding his true identity behind a mask (but the name might tip you off as to what that identity is…) Now this isn’t me complaining and expecting anything deeper from a show such as this, these basic characters fit the more simple action-focused storytelling here, but I felt it needs to be said nonetheless.

The two ends of the design spectrum in the naff Devil Gundam and the great Master Gundam.

As for the villains? Master Asia is about the only one that stands out. He’s Domon’s former Master who as it turns out believes the Devil Gundam wiping out all of humanity from Earth and allowing nature to reclaim the planet is a good thing. The fact that despite this the fact it still feels like he’s training Domon and at times respects his student’s strength makes him a little bit more layered than most other characters in the show. The Devil Gundam itself is I guess the other main antagonist. It was created by Domon’s family as the “Ultimate Gundam” that can restore Earth to its former glory in a peaceful manor but when the Neo Japan government arrived to steal it for nefarious purposes Domon’s brother Kyoji takes it instead and heads to Earth only the impact scrambles its circuits and not only does that cause it to become hostile but it also absorbs Kyoji into itself as its “core”. My only issue with the Devil Gundam is that it gets two or three different satisfying endings and so by the time its finally actually finished off the impact is lessened a bit. The only other real antagonists are Prime Minister Wong, your corrupt politician who just wants power over as much of humanity as he can gain at any cost, and Ulube Ishikawa, who is a general in the Neo Japan army who wishes to use the Devil Gundam to conquer other nations rather than stick to the whole Gundam Fight thing. Neither of the latter have any substance but again with this type of show they don’t need to do anything more than twiddle their figurative moustaches and send some lesser baddies against our “heroes”.

The Neo Swedish Gundam stuck in “rage mode”, which was a whole thing for a couple of episodes…

The actual mech, or Mobile Suit, designs range from the great (the two main Gundams, Master Asia’s Master Gundam, some of the more silly-but-still-fun designs like the George’s Rose Gundam or the Gundam Spiegel for Neo Germany ninja Schwarz) to the bad (never liked the Devil Gundam’s giant Gundam head with another Gundam poking out of the top of it thing…) to the weird (Gundam shaped like a windmill anyone?) The animation is good-to-great, especially for the time, and the soundtrack is suitably OTT. The ending, which I won’t go into great detail about (you can check my fourth and final individual review if you want that) is certainly “epic” and ends with the most infamous and on-the-nose example of the “power of love” perhaps ever committed to screen. What better way for the show to go out than in some really crazy and cheesy show of weird powers?

Overall Thoughts:

That hand of his is burning red! … Also his hair is gold, but that’s less relevant in the pre-move speech, apparently.

Mobile Fighter G Gundam is not very Gundam-y and therefore a lot of hardcore Gundam fans will dislike it (in some cases immensely!) but if you’re in the mood for something off-the-wall crazy that mixes mechs with martial arts cheese and super robot nonsense then it’s hard to find better… probably because no other show has tried to mix those things together before or since!