The confrontation between Machu and Nyaan ended up being kind of a nothinburger, and Machu easily succeeded in awakening Lalah. So what did that do? As we discovered later in the episode, something. Maybe the third impact again. We can never have enough of those, I suppose.
Enter Char.
The final confrontation with Kycilia happening on a theatre stage was a forceful, but still pretty good visual symbolism. As they have their talk, the play is crashed by the MCs of the show, who take the wheel in the usual search of Mr. Walking Plot Device, who sheepdogged them back into Lalah’s presence. Kycilia gets unceremoniously dispatched as not relevant anymore to the plot, and both Chekov’s guns go off, not at who’d you’d expect.
Char getting subconsciously magically dressed into his uniform by Lalah was utterly hilarious and blatantly a “hey guys its me, the guy from the merch” moment.
And while the battle outside rages on, we discover - Mr. Walking Plot Device is… from the UC, and might be, if I interpreted the scene correctly, Amuro Ray - here to destroy the G-Spam timeline.
Queue the late 80s Album Oriented Rock / Synthpop blend, it’s Beyond the Time time, and time to bring back the RX-78-2 to the fight for the cool of it. Gonna buy the merch yet?
My cynical commentary aside
Any thoughts on the episode? I liked most of it, beyond the quick dressup scene I mocked and the finale. Lalah as a world ending threat (or is she? that’s actually a question that remains unanswered and is interpreted differently by characters!) was probably an inevitable plot development, in a society that knows only the apocalypse and status quo (I’m talking to you liberals), and Char vs Machu vs Nyaan could have been a decent final battle for it.
However, the ending was just awful imo. If that is Amuro in the graffiti man’s soul, or inside that Gundam, then any conflicts from the G-Spam universe become completely meaningless.
It all becomes background noise to Amuro vs Char, because Tomino wrote so in 1979 and 1988.
Oh shit! Oh fuck!
Lol, this GQuuuuuuuX is a messy bish. I feel like I’m watching a daytime soap opera. It’s all very busy. Can’t say I feel overly negative about any the revelations, and Shuji is finally interesting, at least.
I’ve been very “wait and see” with Shuji because in FLCL there’s a character just like him whose actions can only be contextualized after watching the whole show, but also I understand how not fun it is to have a blank cipher of a character while watching week-to-week. Usually they do a better job making the character compelling by way of mystery but I don’t think it worked quite so well here in this show.
Been like 20 years since watching FLCL, you mean manic pixie girl? Or eyebrows?
I’ll have to give it a rewatch one of these days. Only 6 eps iirc.The underage smoker childhood friend lol
Ah yeah I can barely visualize them. I’ll have to give it a rewatch. It was one of my favs.
Edit: as soon as I hit post they popped in my head nice and clear. Know exactly who you mean.
I’ve enjoyed the show so far, but I’m curious to see how it will hold up on a second watch in a month or two. Will all the cool scenes be pointless if you know what happens? Will the plot have the same impact without suprise?
It’s kinda interesting how few gunpla kits we’ve gotten from this series. GWitch had a hell of a lot but there are only a handfull for gquuuuuuux.
It’s kinda interesting how few gunpla kits we’ve gotten from this series. GWitch had a hell of a lot but there are only a handfull for gquuuuuuux.
For some reason they’re widely spacing out the kit releases. Probably to avoid spoilers for the show while it airs, but last I heard they’re selling ok.
Queue the late 80s Album Oriented Rock / Synthpop blend, it’s Beyond the Time time, and time to bring back the RX-78-2 to the fight for the cool of it. Gonna buy the merch yet?
How did you feel about the RX-78-2 showing up vs the equivalent that happens in 00? You just finished that one recently, so I’m sure the comparison had to cross your mind.
However, the ending was just awful imo. If that is Amuro in the graffiti man’s soul, or inside that Gundam, then any conflicts from the G-Spam universe become completely meaningless.
It all becomes background noise to Amuro vs Char, because Tomino wrote so in 1979 and 1988.
I wanted Amuro to show up in this, but as an absolute nobody with a boring job who has nothing to do with the plot. I blame myself for willing this into existence.
There’s so many other interesting Tomino things to reference (even in Gundam), but yeah, they don’t have the same popularity as CCA.
00 does get a bit silly sometimes (especially in season 2).
The direction is strong enough that I don’t have too strong feelings about that cameo, even if it did make me roll my eyes when I saw it on screen. In this, it feels like the cameo is the central plot element.
Nuuuuuu you can’t just steal my thread from me nuuuuuu
(I’m kidding post away. I’ve been waiting 24 hrs to make the threads after the show each week since that seemed about when people had watched the ep, but we’re getting to the end and if people want to react immediately that’s fine too. Also, like it could be WW3 soon so…)
The final confrontation with Kycilia happening on a theatre stage was a forceful, but still pretty good visual symbolism.
It’s a recreation of a scene in the last episode of Zeta Gundam, with the exact same setup of people debating ideology while pointing guns at each other. Just that it’s Kycilia instead of Haman this time, I guess.
What’s kinda weird/interesting here is that Kycilia is spouting off rhetoric that’s almost word-for-word Char’s Counterattack Char, to Char, and Char’s having none of it. The scene only works as Gundam interrogating itself as meta-text, because it’s about the futility of fascist death-cults misinterpreting historical materialism and the dramatic irony of the same people making the same mistakes over and over and over again no matter how many times they get a do over… and then the punchline is this Loony Tunes ass FLCL moment
because as much as the old smothers the new, the new has the energy to bring something new to the table.
Char getting subconsciously magically dressed into his uniform by Lalah was utterly hilarious and blatantly a “hey guys its me, the guy from the merch” moment.
Ginga Bishonen Char Aznable
Char saying what y’all have been thinking for the past 6 episodes
However, the ending was just awful imo. If that is Amuro in the graffiti man’s soul, or inside that Gundam, then any conflicts from the G-Spam universe become completely meaningless.
Last ep isn’t going to (just) be Amuro in Gramps vs. Char’s Red Gundam, it’s going to be Machu fighting for the right for her timeline to exist, because the point of multiverse stories is that no matter how bad things get, a better world is always possible. After all,
: “In the dark times, should the stars also go out?”and also as tribute/send-off to U.C., and a creative statement that the new doesn’t have to be beholden to the old.
Also as the target audience Beyond the Time is the sickest beat drop ever to give a character who came from “the other side” so I forgive all GQuuuuuuX’s many failings and will be buying the merchandise.
(For real I’ll leave my real criticisms till next week, provided we’re not nuclear dust)
Edit: The title for next episode is a quote from Tomino’s autobiography: “That’s why I am… on the path to Gundam.”
Nuuuuuu you can’t just steal my thread from me nuuuuuu
Too slow, old man. Newtype reformation can’t wait.
(I had seen the episode, had thoughts and was sure I was going to forget a lot about it by the time your post was up, so I attempted to copy your style and made a post 😔)Good catch about the Zeta Gundam scene. It’s been a while since I watched it, so I don’t remember the details.
Kycilia leading herself into an ideological funnel towards CCA Char is one of my favorite ideas of this show.
That picture of Amuro with the basketball goes hard.
Too slow, old man.
It’s ok, like Challia I simply long for a world where Newtypes can post as Newtypes
Kycilia leading herself into an ideological funnel towards CCA Char is one of my favorite ideas of this show.
Right?! The show has so many really neat ideas (the writer’s subverting things by Chekov’s gun going off on Kycilia was just
) that I wouldn’t say no to more, although from what I’ve read in interviews I think the 12 episodes we are getting are more a self-imposed creative limitation Studio Khara decided on rather than something enforced by either executives or the market.That picture of Amuro with the basketball goes hard.
Amuro Rey will never be ballin’
(The basketball is Char’s escape pod from the end of CCA lol)
I laughed out loud when the shot of the theatre seats came up. A title card of “Hey folks, do you remember Zeta Gundam” would have been less subtle. No Scirocco equivalent here, though!
What’s kinda weird/interesting here is that Kycilia is spouting off rhetoric that’s almost word-for-word Char’s Counterattack Char, to Char, and Char’s having none of it. The scene only works as Gundam interrogating itself as meta-text, because it’s about the futility of fascist death-cults misinterpreting historical materialism and the dramatic irony of the same people making the same mistakes over and over and over again no matter how many times they get a do over…
This Char also hasn’t been through the events of Zeta and ZZ (AEUG eventually being co-opted into the Federation) to get to the point where he decides the only path forward is yeeting a rock at Earth.
This Char also hasn’t been through the events of Zeta and ZZ (AEUG eventually being co-opted into the Federation) to get to the point where he decides the only path forward is yeeting a rock at Earth.
I mean, he almost dropped a rock on Granada and it was literally postmodern author-as-God fiat that stopped that from happening
And then his solution to being trapped in this timeline for being too beloved by the author/audience stand-in Lalah is to “disappear” (the) God (of this world), so he’s not ideologically out of the anti-hero woods yet, but yeah this Char is closer to Quattro Bajeena given what he says to Kycilia about Newtypes. Which is really interesting, since Zeta’s probably the one time we see the character at his best, fumbling attempts at mentorship and revolution and all.
Hey, some people are just predisposed towards wanting to giving up, saying “fuck it”, and throwing the biggest rock they can find at the imperial hegemon.
audience stand-in Lalah
Glances at my MAL yeah, I guess I have done a 時が見える
I mean, this is the same idiot whose best plan for assassinating space hitler involved joining the space Wehrmacht, so him taking “unlimited genocide on the first world” to it’s logical extreme should’ve been very unsurprising in retrospect
All the prequel stuff Yasuhiko added in the Origin makes his plan seem incredibly silly, too.
Kinda why I consider Origin non-canon, because Casval makes more sense as a poor kid in over his head just opportunistically going with the flow because he’s out of options, rather than some Machiavellian schemer playing 4D chess.
Also Kamille and other newtypes being utterly broken as weapons of war.
Thought I’d share a cool comparison of Amuro returning to the Gundam vs Char returning to the Red Gundam. It’s interesting how the two robots/pilots entering the cockpits are mirrored in these scenes (they missed the opportunity for the yuri pose lmao).
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
