This Week in Anime

Is Gundam 00's Craziness a Bug or a Feature?

Jean-Karlo
Good day, on this week's This Week In Anime, my associate Nick and I will be discussing an anime about war. We'll be discussing topics like the economic and human cost of war, demagoguery, struggles for resources, child soldiers, and escalation of conflict through an arms race. And to help us with this topic, we brought a special guest today, here they come right no—aw Christ, they got me again

IT'S A GUNDA—

Once again, we're stepping into the world that made the anime fandom say "Wow! Cool robot!" With Bandai and Sunrise finally sharing it on their GundamInfo YouTube channel, we'll be covering Gundam 00 today. It's not quite as widely-regarded as other newer Gundam entries like Iron-Blooded Orphans or SEED—in fact, 00 sadly never aired on Cartoon Network like so many other Gundams before it—but Gundam 00 has the particular honor of having a lot to say about the time it came out. It's really weird, on-the-nose blunt stuff!

Like I said, Gundam 00 had a lot to say about the time it was made in! And it was made right smack dab in the middle of The War on Terror, so those political analogues that the Gundam franchise is known for are particularly blunt here. And yes, many of the conflicts center around a fictionalized Middle Eastern nation suffering from resource shortages. The only way this could be more mid-00s is if it was pumping Black Eyed Peas every second.

Oh, we haven't even begun to delve into the treasure trove of Gundam names in 00. Strap in, we're going in hard.

So, it's like this: it's the year 2307 AD. Not even a weirdo splinter of the Gundam timeline, just flat-out 300 years into the future. Earth's supply of fossil fuels has been depleted, so humanity develops solar technology. But the most efficient way of gathering and transporting solar energy is with an orbital ring supported by three massive orbital elevators. Much of the world's nations coalesced into three big blocs, all of which clustered around one of these pillars. The Americas, Japan, and Oceania banded together to become The Union of Solar Energy and Free Nations, aka The Union. Much of Europe and Africa became the Advanced European Union (AEU), and Russia and China become the Human Reformation League (HRL). Various other nations were left out in the dust, being that they didn't participate in funding the construction of these pillars—which was the fate of several Middle Eastern nations.
While this should have led to prosperity for the Earth, what with solar energy being free, the nations still squabble over that last goddamn percentage with each other. So there's a cursory attempt at curbing war with military treaties enforcing that no military power should have more units/advancements than the other nations. But this is all just pretense: there's very much a cold war at play what with advancements in military hardware and personnel. The story begins with a propagandized showing of one of the AEU's cutting-edge mobile suits, the Enact, piloted by Mr. Special up there and available now from Bandai Dot Com in High Grade, Real Grade, and Master Grade model kits!

All three military blocs are left scrambling because these mysterious four units, known only as "GUNDAM"s, are just that much more advanced than anything else currently fielded: stronger, faster, and equipped with weird quantum-particle generators that grant them not only near-limitless power but also conveniently jam communications (the old Minovsky Particle chestnut!). Nobody has enough time to wonder which of the other blocs is responsible for them because a transmission from Aeolia Schenburg declares they're from his organization, "Celestial Being." They have but one purpose: ending all war on Earth, by any means necessary. This is shocking for two reasons: first, Dr. Schenburg was responsible for enacting the (tense) peace the world enjoys in the first place by having pioneered the solar technology everyone is using. Second: Dr. Schenburg has been dead for 200 years.


Also, all of the Gundams have the word "GUNDAM" etched into their little forehead crests like it's a branding thing.

Yeah, about those pilots, let's introduce them! So let's start with Tieria Erde; he pilots the Gundam Virtue, an absolute unit of a mobile suit packed to the gills with heavy armor and heavy ordinance. He's comparatively diminutive next to it, and also a massive stickler for the rules. He can usually be seen judging his fellow pilots for what he considers to be moral failings; he's dedicated to Celestial Being's cause, and isn't entirely convinced the other Gundam Meisters are up to the task.

The Kyrios is a much simpler, angular take on the Wing Gundam, seemingly designed for hit-and-run strategies. Allelujah, on the other hand, has a dark secret raging inside him, and it all has to do with how his hair cascades over his eyes. Welcome to Gundam 00.

We'll come back to this guy's deal later, because it's both a) important and b) a hoot.

Oh, but another thing: he's voiced by Richard Ian Cox in the English dub, so he's automatically my favorite. I'm an old Inuyasha fan, so sue me.

Fitting for a guy named "Lockon Stratos," he and his aim go perfectly with the Dynames, which can shoot objects in orbit with pinpoint accuracy from the surface of the Earth. "Wow, cool robot!" indeed.

Speaking of "cool robots," Lockon is the designated keeper of Gundam mascot Haro this time around; Haro acts as Lockon's second, controlling the Dynames's movements while Lockon aims.

And speaking of terrorists, we have the man of the hour: Setsuna F. Seiei. He pilots the Gundam Exia, which is the main Gundam so of course it has a sword-gun and heat sabers. He's like Sosuke from Full Metal Panic, only not played for laughs: he has history of having served as a child soldier, and has the detached demeanor to show it.

Setsuna didn't have what you can call a "normal childhood," hence his attachment to military equipment. An indoctrinated child soldier who might have even killed his own parents after having been convinced it was "God's will," Setsuna still has the resulting PTSD from it all, making him quite eager to end war by any means. He wants peace so badly he'll kill for it.

And the craziest part is how so much of it is tied together. Like, take Saji Crossroads and Louise Halevy. A Japanese student and a Spanish exchange student who is whipping him into shape to be her boyfriend, the two find themselves in the middle of many of Celestial Being's missions—or witnessing acts of terror, like the detonation of car bombs in their city. This is between stuff like Louise trying to sell her mother on Saji being a good boyfriend or leading him on a leash through dates.

Meanwhile, Saji's sister Kinue Crossroad is a reporter for JNN (a cable news network, yes, based off of CNN). She also tries investigating Celestial Being and its many comings and goings.

There's also Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Smirnov, of the HRL. A man whose greatest sin is genuinely believing in the cause of his nation, he opposes Celestial Being on purely political grounds: anything that threatens his nation is an enemy to him. He's tasked with caring for Lieutenant Soma Pieres, a teenager from the HRL's super-soldier program. While he's as concerned for her as he would any other member of his army, he does care for her a bit more than others, possibly because of her age.

It's interesting that Sergei's staunch beliefs don't make him out to be a villain, only an antagonist. He opposes the Gundam Meisters plenty and at one point gets within a hair of capturing the Kyrios, but it's never out of malice or greed or any active desire to cause harm—heck, he regrets the loss of even one of his men. Sergei's a career soldier but he's aware of the human cost of his actions. He ultimately opposes Celestial Being because Celestial Being just isn't his ally in his cause.

Graham Aker really wants to learn as much as he can about the Gundams, knowing that their advanced tech is the key to military supremacy worldwide. The problem is standing up to one in the first place; he couldn't beat Setsuna if Setsuna rolled over and died, let alone capture him.

Ali al-Saachez is far more malicious: he's not just a mercenary, he's the man who recruited Setsuna as a child soldier all those years ago. He still engages in many of the conflicts Celestial Being has to interfere with because besides making a profit, Ali is perfectly happy watching the world burn.

Also, he's voiced by Scott McNiel in the dub, and man was it nice to hear his weird Dinobot growl again.

Also important to the story is Sumeragi Lee Noriega, Celestial Being's Combat Forecaster. She's something of a leader to the Gundam Meisters, charting all of their plans with pinpoint accuracy. She's also their resident Misato stand-in, being a woman potentially pushing her 30s who drowns her sorrows in alcohol. She's skilled, but she's failed before and that failure haunts her.

I remember reading in Newtype USA (yes, that was a long time ago, and yes, I still have that issue) that the character designs for Gundam 00 were courtesy of Loveless creator Yun Kouga, who was always great at designing whole casts of distractingly hot men and women. And yeah, she's also pretty generous to the figures of all of her female cast. So, uh. Cucumber?

Wang Liu Mei is a socialite who helps Celestial Being acquire the funding it needs. But she's nowhere near as important to the story as the actual Gundam Princess, Marina Ishmail. The crown regent of the country of Azadistan, Marina is desperate to restore her country's economy. Unfortunately, Azadistan used to be renowned for exporting oil—with solar energy being the main fuel source and Azadistan not having helped build any of the orbital towers, it's all she can do to beg other countries for aid.

So, I've been dancing around this, but: Gundam as a franchise loves reusing old archetypes and themes. As I mentioned in our old Gundam Wing column, Gundam 00 feels significantly like a retread of Gundam Wing. Marina fulfils much of the same role as Relena Peacecraft, but I think Marina works a bit better: while Relena wasn't nearly as useless as her haters make her out to be, Marina feels much more important to the story by virtue of starting with actual political rank. She too hates war, just like Relena, but where Relena is coming from a moral and idealistic standpoint, Marina is coming from a much more urgent one. She knows the cost of war. She knows how much it hurts people, and she deeply feels for the people who've been hurt. More than restoring Azadistan to its former glory, she just wants people to live without having their lives destroyed like Setsuna.

Definitely. Where Heero and Relena had a bizarro teen romance going on, the relationship between Marina and Setsuna feels much more engaging. Setsuna represents all of Azadistan's past sins; Marina can't afford to be an idealist like Relena because good intentions won't unmake Setsuna's past as a child soldier. If she wants peace, she's going to have to reconcile with the fact that there are decades' worth of bloody messes that need cleaning up first, even without her country's conservative and reconstructionist sects at each other's throats. Meanwhile, Setsuna feels like he takes Heero's "child soldier" angle and plays it more for drama. Gundam Wing glazed over Heero basically being a trained child assassin, Gundam 00 shows how much Setsuna's been outright scarred by his past. He's not a robot, the kid has PTSD and doesn't know a life without killing. He doesn't have any anger for Marina, he just doesn't quite see her as an enemy—but he has every reason to.

Again, the "War on Terror" stuff feels extremely on-the-nose, especially for someone like me who grew up in the thick of that era and its constant debates on religious fervor causing war, clamoring for expendable resources and military interference. But sometimes, you need to drop those anvils.

And even then, only one of the Meisters gets much insight. Well, technically two...

So, remember how Soma Pieries was from a super-soldier project from the HRL? Well, it turns out... so was Allelujah. His brain was experimented upon using quantum brain particles, and the results were a split personality—one you can differentiate from his main personality from how his hair falls over his face.

Where Allelujah Haptism is much more mild-mannered and cautious, with tons of reservations about killing... Hallelujah Haptism is cold-blooded and blood-thirsty. Is he a split personality Allelujah simply developed as a result of trying to dodge the weight of killing his fellow test subjects? Is he a whole other person living within Allelujah caused by exposure to quantum particles? The real answer is simple: he's both, and it's wild.

And wouldn't you know it, anytime Allelujah and Soma are within spitting distance of each other, their brain waves make each other wig out—and it awakens Hallelujah from within Allelujah's brain.

Mixing political intrigue with Shenanigans™ is already Gundam's bread and butter, but yes: Gundam 00 veering between hard-boiled real-world political discussion and a killer pretty-boy with a split personality definitely seeks to rival the madness that was SEED or SEED Destiny at its worst.

Years ago, our buddies at Anime World Order had an episode about Gundam 00 and I do agree with them that the Beerfest twist was probably written in after the fact to respond to fan outcry. I'm just saying, Sunrise went back and edited Gundam SEED following a character reveal in SEED Destiny; Gundam 00 foreshadows the twist, but you can't convince me it wasn't tossed into the story after the fact in an attempt at covering their butts. Sunrise has done it before, and they'll do it again!

Ever since the original Mobile Suit Gundam made its villain have a disco song as his theme, Gundam has been goofy. I mean, for Christ's sake, they put a toilet in the cockpit in G-Reco. But a lot of people might not be able to handle this brand of insanity. It's one thing when your show goes all-in on the madness, like G Gundam. It's another when your show paints all of the madness with melodrama, as with Gundam Wing. It's another when you have this, which feels like an old Dick Tracy strip where Dick Tracy has to take on Al Qaeda.

It's not a bad decision, just a very bold one and if you can pull it off I'll congratulate you on your huge, huge balls. But if you slip and mess up... well, you'll forgive me if I keep my camcorder handy.

I'm gonna be frank: I love Yun Kouga's character designs. This is the thirstiest Gundam, as far as I'm concerned, and it's not even the one where someone boned in the pilot seat. And the Gundams themselves have amazing, varied designs, so it's eyecandy everywhere! But also: I definitely appreciate Gundam 00 and its story. As I said, it's weird and goofy and on-the-nose but I find that the political allegory works. Yes, even with the weird, crazy movie that throws a massive curveball to the whole show. Having seen 00 after Wing also makes me appreciate how its themes and character archetypes are used even further. It's a shame 00 never aired on Toonami because I think the old Wing crowd would have gotten a lot out of it. Also, my aged anime fan heart appreciates that this was the last Gundam to have a dub cast featuring the old Canadian stand-bys. Richard Ian Cox, Scott McNiel, the late Kirby Morrow, Tabitha St. Germaine... I get really nostalgic when I think of Canadian dub casts for Gundam shows. You had to be there, man.