Gundam G No Reconguista

After watching and enjoying mobile suit Gundam iron-blooded orphans, I decided to turn back the clock and watch Gundam Reconguista in G in fill the void, and it's a choice a regret.

The first 5 episodes push all of my buttons of annoyance literally throwing us in, 'you want a Gundam? Here it is!' The pacing is like going on a safari but instead of a van you're in a roller-coaster, characters and plot points go by so fast and only mentioned once or twice that a large majority of them are over shadowed by other facts and techno-babble.

Speaking of characters it occurred to me by episode 9 that I said to myself 'I don't know anyone's name'. Every character feels like a cardboard cut-out with a one note personality or no personality at all. No one acts like a real person, they all just do stuff and there's no sense of development from anyone. Bellri is the happy go lucky hero, Noredo is the best friend who happens to by a girl and doesn't like it when Bellri looks at other girls and Aida is the stubborn princess. No one is memorable to stand out to me and it feels like they don't give me any reason to remember them.

But without a shadow of a doubt the major issue I have with Reconguista in G is that it plays it to safe. It doesn't feel like there's any danger or threat to our main cast (and I use that term loosely) that when the battles start I'm not interested because I know the outcome. The worse offender of the is the ending credit theme, 'G no Senkou' by Daisuke Hasegawa for those of you who haven't seen it shows all the cast dancing and having fun, smiling and laughing which ruins any sense of drama or seriousness from what we've just seen (episodes 2, 6 and 16 being the worst offenders)

So why did I watch the whole thing? Because I know there are people who do like it and I wanted to see the light in the forest, but from start to finish I couldn't find it. Even without the Gundam title I still wouldn't enjoy this. I gave it my best shot and tried watching it in multiple ways, but for me, I'll stick with 00, iron-blooded orphans, build fighters and even AGE. yes, I like AGE.

I'm one of the biggest defenders of this series and find it greatly misunderstood. For me, it was like watching something you would find in avant-garde cinema. Not necessarily from an experimentation standpoint, but in the sense of trying to piece the narrative together e.g., something like Inland Empire or Last Year at Marienbad. It was such a perplexing and challenging experience. This only added to my appreciation for it.

The messy politics, confusing human relations, lore, characters, and sprawl of it all was fascinating for me to unpack. Each episode is dense with thematic exploration and plot movement. You cannot watch this with your brain on autopilot mode. This series makes you work to understand it all because you won't get any info bumping from the director.

G Reco is also Tomino at his most auteur, so you're either along for the ride or not. It is uncompromising and refuses to appeal to modern anime storytelling conventions. I see Gundam Reconguista as the Gundam series for the diehard Tomino fans. If his style was never for you, don't rely on this series to make you a fan of his work.

It is also quite postmodern in places because I get impression Tomino is providing meta-commentary on the franchise and fanbase throughout the work. It's not overt commentary or anything which makes it more meaningful when you find it. Turn A Gundam was getting at similar metatextual themes which makes sense when you consider the relationship the two series have together. I also appreciated how this series was like something you would've seen in the 1980s only with modern animation, so that's probably not very appealing to newer Gundam fans. All-in-all, it's not for everyone, but it was certainly for me. I think it's a masterpiece and one of the great Gundam series.

Remember how cool Gundam 00 in 2007? well Reconguista G is way too bad, too random, and too childish.

The Gundam design is ugly compared to Gundam design in Gundam 00, Gundam wing, or in Gundam Seed.

The story is freakin' confusing. It's hard to follow whats going on.

The character is also so random, Bellri is not like Setsuna or Heero Yui. Belri is childish, have no consistent mindset, and not cool at all.

The graphic is quite unique thou. The drawing is really looks like in the 80s. I don't say its +, but its quite unique. So what's the pro in this reco G? nothing, its just that bad. Gundam 00 is way better in every aspect.

Okay, I'll say that I didn't have high expectations going into this show, but in the end, it actually turned out to be fairly decent. While it's certainly not the BEST gundam, and it doesn't engross you like Gundam X or SEED or much of the original UC titles, it's certainly a lot better than trash like Gundam 00 and SEED Destiny. People above me are saying that the story is confusing to follow, but I honestly don't find that to be the case. I get the feeling that the people who are "confused" by this story are either just not paying attention to begin with or are just not wired to process a complex world like Greco's.

I will say that a major issue I did have with this show is that several characters including the protagonist join the motley crew of pro-Earthnoid pirates very willingly and on a dime, which IS kind of confusing as they essentially are casually deserting their respective forces. I feel like this part of the character development is what people latch onto and and then say that they are "confused by the story", but in reality the story is actually pretty easy to keep up with if you're paying attention.

Overall I'd actually give this one a 7/10 because it's not quite up to my tastes as far as Gundam is concerned. I'm raising the score to 8/10 though because I'm just absolutely appalled that its getting the low ratings its getting from other people, not to mention that there are people who ACTUALLY think Gundam 00 is better than this show.

To people saying that this show is too "childish", I think they are just confused by the good usage of color in this show as they are too deeply in love with the eyesore color schemes of shows like 00 which they somehow deem "more adult". But having seen most of both 00 and Greco by this point (I'm watching them concurrently) I can safely say that 00's dialogue sounds like it's out of a 11-year old's Gundam fanfiction whereas the dialogue in this show is pretty easy to follow without cringing and is fairly good, even by Tomino standards.

In short: Don't listen to 00 sycophants who give this show an absurdly low rating.