Gundam Franchise.
Our journey through the spin-offs set during the One Year War continue with this 12 episode OVA series. Ignoring my constant annoyance that it’s called “08th” which always made me read it as “Oh-Eighth” rather than just “Eighth” (entirely me being stupid, don’t worry about it), it’s actually a good story, very much Romeo and Juliet, just with a bit of a different setting, to say the least! Let’s take a look…
Before I move on to alternate era Gundam shows, I really wanted to finish the UC timeline first (still-being-released stuff aside, obviously!) so I’ve finally brought a multi-region Blu-Ray player and ordered a bunch of UC OVAs, films and Victory Gundam from the US (my poor wallet…). The one I didn’t order is this one, 0080: War in the Pocket, as it isn’t released on Blu-Ray in the States yet! So I thought I’d pop on my old DVD of it and kick off the UC review finale. War in the Pocket is a surprisingly fun and quite emotional mini-series to kick off non-Tomino-written UC Gundam shows. Let’s take a closer look…
Gundam Unicorn comes to a close with a feature-length finale, finally revealing what Laplace’s Box actually is, and giving us a big dramatic send off. Satisfying is the word that best describes it, even if some might find the big reveal to be a let down, but those probably don’t know much about Gundam’s history with mixing politics with action… Let’s take a look!
Although they have some big moments between them, OVAs 5 and 6 of Gundam Unicorn is all about setting the stage for the big final battle in the final chapter, but it certainly doesn’t coast its way through. There are plenty of great moments, both character based and some action scenes, but it certainly achieves the goal of making you want to watch OVA 7 right away! Let’s take a look.
Much like the Origins OVAs I reviewed a few months ago for Anime UK News, I expect this to be covered in more detail on this blog far sooner than later, but as they asked if I’d cover, I was hardly going to say no! So, for now, Click Here to read my thoughts on Mobile Suit Gundam: Thunderbolt – December Sky!
On related news, the other half of the Gundam Unicorn OVA reviews on this blog should resume next week. It’s been an unusually busy few weeks for Anime UK News reviews!
Gundam Unicorn’s next two OVAs cover similar ground, to varying degrees of success, but for the most part it’s a great slice of Gundam. Also OVA 4 sees the debut of Bright Noa, making this feel like proper Universal Century Gundam! Let’s take a look!
Three years after the events of Char’s Counterattack we have the Gundam Unicorn series, which despite sounding a bit crap, is actually really good! This comes from the kind of budget and attention that’s afforded OVAs rather than a stricter TV schedule, but it’s also a credit to the rather out-there plot created in the original novels the series is based on. So let’s dive right in and continue forward along the Universal Century timeline…
It’s been a little while since we returned to the Universal Century, mostly thanks to a slow down in UK Blu-Ray releases. Well, the Unicorn OVAs are now on Netflix is near-HD quality so I thought I’d do that, but before I get to them I didn’t want to skip past Char’s Counterattack, the big film that ties up all the Amuro and Char loose ends left over from the first two Gundam series. So let’s have a look at it (via my old US region DVD…), and see the big finale for the Amuro-Char relationship we’ve been watching develop since the very start…
The third series in Gundam history is definitely when it fell off of a cliff, thankfully redeemed by the movie “Char’s Counterattack”, released later. Double Zeta gets off to a poor start, then manages to pick up a bit before falling again, though thankfully never as low as it was to begin with. I commend Tomino for trying something different, but… yeah. Different isn’t always good! Anyway, let’s take an overall look at ZZ then!
Double Zeta reaches its conclusion, and what an odd ride it’s been. After an extremely light-hearted first two quarters and a really downbeat third one, the fourth quarter of the show seemingly tries to balance the two, but doesn’t really succeed. Still, seeing Neo Zeon implode from within was at least fun to watch! So let’s take a look at how the series ends, shall we?
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