Gundam MS 08th Team- Rewatch
I finally decided to sit down and write this up. Let's get this out of the way, the show isn't as good as I remembered it to be. In fact, it's not even close to being as good as I remember. Now I don't think that necessarily has to do with nostalgia or anything of that nature but rather my tastes have changed and I've seen a lot more anime since when I initially watched this as a kid. Despite its flaws, and oh boy it has them, I understand completely why I gobbled this up when I was a brat. Now I recall this being a gritty war drama coupled with a great romance. Nah~
Let's first talk about the romance. Oh my god. The romance angle is straight trash. Shiro upon meeting a female enemy pilot for the second time and spending less than 24 hours total with her (maybe not even 12 hours) confesses and says he loves her.
The fuck? There's no screentime to justify this and so it comes off as insane which hurts subsequent events as I'm supposed to buy that Shiro is completely in love with Aina despite it coming off more as a plot point than anything organic. They don't even communicate in the episodes since their initial meeting. Just verbal diarrhea of the love kind. This somehow makes the romance in
Stardust Memory look riveting, deep, and natural in comparison. That's a show where the heroine shoots at the main character and leaves him for his rival. Shiro keeps going on and on about Aina and I'm blankly staring at the screen. I might have understood if he fell in love with her or was in the process of falling in love with her after the events of episode 7 with them being on the snowy mountainside for a night. Nah, this twit confesses at the very beginning. Eledore and Karen was developed more and that shit was tacked on near the end.
The other front I remember this show being good at was that it was a grounded and down-to-earth Gundam show complete with tactics. The action definitely is grounded as it's not as exotic as
Stardust Memory or
CCA. There's more emphasis on physics and the limitations in different terrains. In addition there's very little power creep that inevitably plagues most Gundam series such as beam weapons which are still pretty rare, even at the end of the series. However it is lacking on the tactics side early on and comes up wanting in comparison to something like
War in the Pocket. Shirou doesn't really act like a squad leader in combat or preparation outside a few instances. This tone does shift a bit near the end such as the desert ambush in episode 6, the Zeon village fight in 8, and the Gouf Custom fight. However it's still not to the caliber I would like it to be.
This cardboard box has more personality and backstory than the characters.
The characters were the biggest disappointment. The early episodes waste an episode per character and the verb waste is the correct connotation. Terry has an episode where he has to get over his fear of losing his teammates. Instead of fleshing out his personality in some meaningful way, the team gets through a hard mission and that's that. Episode 6's focus on Michel comes off as irritating considering he almost gets the team killed due to his flights of fancy about his long distance girlfriend. Episode 5's focus on Eledore doesn't delve into his fear of cockpits (maybe it's explained in some audio drama or something) despite bringing it up in the climax. Only Shiro, Aina, and Kiki develop as actual characters.
Then there's him. The fuck? They didn't explain jackshit about his character. Why is Ginias so desperate to finish off the Apsalus? Why? Why? Why? He's killing off his own comrades for pretty much no reason and is desperate enough to kill off his friend, despite said friend being logical. He's such an awful villain as his goal isn't fleshed out and he's underdeveloped as a character. Ginias also has
this weird relationship with his sister that is never properly established.
The highlight of the show was obviously episode 10 with the Gouf Custom fight. Besides the mechanical animation being great, the episode is also extremely well directed. The main battle is well staged with an emphasis on distance and cover since Norris is outnumbered. It's also nice to see a fight where the enemy has a goal besides just killing the opposing pilots. It gives the proceedings a sense of realism. I love how the characters treat the fight as just another typical skirmish initially and then it quickly shifts to something out of a horror movie. There's a moment where Shirou's Gundam is disabled and he's by himself in the shadows and he's scared shitless.
However episode 10 isn't the peak of the show visually. That title belongs to episode 6 which is often overlooked in discussions of the show. It's one of those cases where you can instantly tell a different team worked on this episode. The character art, layouts, storyboarding, and animation are all topnotch.This was the first episode that Umanosuke Iida handled after Takeyuki Kanda's death. It had a really long production period compared to the other episodes so that might have something to do with the quality as well. However I think the staff themselves were a bigger reason for the spike. The
Stardust Memory Chief ADs, Toshihiro Kawamoto and Hirotoshi Sano, worked on it along with a bunch of high level animators such as Ken Ootsuka and Akitoshi Yokoyama. Anyway the result is a really striking episode that is half melancholic and half gorgeous fighting.
I wasn't really impressed with the animation quality coming off
Stardust Memory as neither the character models or mechs were as sharp. I didn't really think of
Stardust Memory as being that visually succulent when watching it but I can see now the differences in production quality when looking at the Kawamoto designs in both series. 08th MS Team's character art looks closer to what I might have expected from a TV series besides a few moments. Auditorily I don't think this is Kohei Tanaka's best work however there's a few
great tracks. I really liked Chihiro Yonekura's
theme songs, it definitely reminds me of some J-Pop stuff in the early 90's and 80's.
In conclusion, it's not a bad show despite my initial feelings when rewatching. I don't think it's a particularly good one either but then again that's in extremely short supply in the Gundam franchise. The second half of the show is stronger as it focuses less on the characters and more on the setting. I was pretty surprised though by episode 6 as I wasn't expecting that jump in quality.
P.S.
Thank you god for Kawamoto.