Sardaukar Concept Art By Moebius, For Jodorowskys Dune

Sardaukar concept art by Moebius, for Jodorowsky’s Dune

*heavy spoilers for Gundam: Witch from Mercury episode 19 follow*

I’m writing this almost immediately after watching this weeks episode, so it may come off as a little disjointed, but that’s also because a lot of stuff happens, so I’m going to use bullet points:

We finally know (sorta) what’s happening with Aerial. Eri died, went into Aerial, then Prospera made other children to act as biological components, of which Suletta is the most recent, and the one with the most autonomy. I think. It’s a little unclear as to exactly if there’s just one Eri in Aerial, if there’s multiple Eri’s or if the Eri in Aerial is fractured in some way.

Lauda! He thanks Chuchu and seems to be set up to do *something*. I’m really hoping for development on him.

Kenanji Avery’s back and he has a history with Guel that’s gonna be expanded on.

We’re gonna see (more of) what Earth’s like, and we’ll maybe see Olcott again (that guy with Dawn of Fold Guel talks to).

Shaddiq’s still working behind the scenes. I’m really interested in how this is gonna play out, since I fully expect him to fail on a personal level, but I’ve no idea what’ll become of his plans.

Martin’s just not having a good time. I kinda expect him to die at some point.

The Space Assembly league’s moving again. They’re having a chat with Belmiria (and honestly I feel like if they take her into protective custody then they’ve got a case).

And now we have the delightful double-whammy of:

Prospera actually expressing DOUBT over a choice she’s made and talking to aerial about it. And Aerial’s like “no, this was the best decision, look how happy she is” and it just cuts to suletta crying. And Prospera actually seems to feel…..bad? About manipulating this child to serve her own ends? I am loving this.

We know what Elan is!

The Sculptor's Chamber, Kilian Eng

Return Of The Jedi poster by Noriyoshi Ohrai

Zaku ll from Mobile Suit Gundam by Yoshiyuki Takani.

So I’d been meaning to talk about the Gundam Build Series for a while, since I mentioned a while ago that I’m quite fond of it. I should mention that I haven’t watched either Build Fighters or Build Fighters try in over a year, so I may get some details wrong.

I really like both shows, and I think they’re about the same in terms of overall quality.

I will get one quick elephant out of the room first though. These series exist to sell toys, even moreso than the other Gundam series. This is basically the thesis statement of the entire series, and this is the main reason why they’re so very different than the “regular” Gundam series. It’s…… not too bad? Since they’re generally preaching to the choir when it comes to the actual model kits, and the designs for the show are essentially a showcase of some really cool custom models based on existing ones. Like, yes, thesis was to sell cool robots, but you can’t really accuse them of skimping on the cool robots.

At its core, it’s a story about “to be the greatest there ever was, wholly distinct from those before you” with a good sprinkling of personal growth.

The very general plot of the original Build Fighters is: Sei Iori (left, blue) is a bookish nerd whose parents run the local model shop, Sei dreams of entering the Gunpla Battle World Championships (essentially where Gundam models are animated by special particles so they can duke it out amongst each other; think fighting game tournaments but with physical objects) but though he’s really good at building them, he’s absolutely terrible at fighting with them. However, he meets Reiji (right, red sunglasses), a mysterious boy who’s really, really good at fighting with the Gunpla Sei builds, and together they form a two-man team to take on the other competitors.

It’s a pretty solid premise, and it works well. There’s a revolving cast of characters (Sei and Reiji make many rivals, who are pretty well-rounded) and the stakes start low, but get steadily higher as time goes on, giving the series a natural progression and allowing them to introduce darker elements as it goes on. Gunpla battles provides a nice, solid core for the ancillary elements to move around (though the show is still very much about the Gunpla battles).

So how are those Gunpla Fights?

They’re pretty damn good. Honestly, I’ve watched a little over half the shows they’ve made for Gundam, and I still count several of the fights in Gundam Build Fighters as my all time favourites. I’ll admit I usually like a little bit of philosophising with my giant robot fights, but you can definitely see the influence of this series on later ones, simply through the fight scenes.

Character wise? Yeah, solid. The show does wring a lot out of the “rival” template (The Main Rival, Mentor Rival, “Cool” Rival, The one who starts off goofy but is actually just as determined as the leads, etc), but there’s other side characters with their own goals. Build fighters does create a very believable world around its premise, since the rest of the world is pretty contemporary, it’s played almost like a sporting thing - fans and other people in the know can look at it and get passionate about it, but the works isn’t exclusively built around it. Due to this, a lot of the characters - even the bit ones, can feel very fleshed out. Gunpla Battle is a thing they do, it’s not there entire personality. To expand on that a little, I’m going to swing back around to the protagonists. Sei is a Gundam nerd, yes, but as above he has other aspects to him. He has friends and relationships through Gunpla Battle but they rely on who he is, not just on him being a nerd. Reiji is sorta the “cool idiot” he doesn’t really have an arc in the story, fundamentally because he’s the catalyst for Sei’s, triggering his growth as a person. Reiji just wanders about triggering other people’s character growth (other than the episode when the duo split up, but that doesn’t really change Reiji as an individual, it’s more about Sei) and seeing how other characters interact with him. It goes in well with the conclusion of the series (which I shan’t spoil) because it basically ties all that up really rather well.

The mobile suit designs are honestly pretty good across the board with this one. It’s smaller than on average, both due to the smaller series (25 episodes) and the fact that other series mobile suits get used as grunts.

Gundam Fighters Try is the sequel series, set several years later, with a different cast. I’ll probably do a separate post on it some other time, but pretty much all the points I made above that aren’t related to the protagonists also apply to it.

In a nutshell: Gundam Build Fighters: To sells toys, but the fight scenes are amazing and the characters are pretty solid.