Mobile Suit Gundam: Advent of the Red Comet (E1)

This review was commissioned by @Baron Ouroboros

Unlike most of the things I've reviewed until now, Mobile Suit Gundam is a title I have some familiarity with. I say "some" because this is one of those sprawling franchises that's been added to for decades, and from that angle I've seen a very small percentage of the whole thing. On the other hand, Gundam has also had multiple...I guess you could call them reboots? Alternate timelines? Sub-franchises? That makes it somewhat more manageable, since you have multiple self-contained blocks of it.

Anyway, this particular series is part of the original and most extensively written and explored Gundam timeline, retroactively named the Universal Century setting. In a nutshell, the pitch is that it's the not-too-distant future, and environmental pressures have led to much of the human population being relocated to space colonies. There's a cluster of these O'Neill cylinders located at each of the earth-moon Lagrange points, with each cluster or "side" having some degree of shared political identity. Side 3 is making a bid for total independence from the ruling Earth Federation, and gets off to a pretty good start under a visionary philosopher-president named Zeon Zum Deikun. Unfortunately, after his untimely death, Zeon's nascent republic is hijacked by authoritarian militarists who turn it into a Principality, and Side 3's conflict with Earth goes hot. Genocidally hot. If any of you are familiar with the "colony drop" meme, well...this is where it comes from.

The title "mobile suit gundam" comes from the war machines employed by most or all factions in the ensuing conflict. Basically, it's a giant mecha show. You could probably call it the giant mecha show, given how old and influential it is. Gundam wasn't the first franchise to do mechs, but it may have been the first to take anything even close to a hard scifi approach to them (I wouldn't quite call Gundam hard scifi, but it comes absolutely as close to it as you possibly can while still justifying giant robots as a weapon of choice for national militaries). If you've heard of the "real robots" mech genre, this is it. This is where it comes from.

I haven't seen this particular show within the Universal Century timeline, but I've seen enough others to know that "red comet" is the in-universe nickname of a popular character named Char Aznable. Char (whose real name is Casval Rem Deikun, son of the late visionary Zeon himself) is an ace mech pilot for the Principality of Zeon in its war against Earth, who also has secret ambitions of ousting the current regime and restoring an independent Side 3 to his father's democratic ideals after gaining power through the military. You could draw a lot of parallels with FMA's Roy Mustang, now that I think about it. Char/Casval's story doesn't have a happy ending. He ends up rising to the top and overthrowing the regime, but is so completely corrupted by trauma and bitterness by the time he does that he's barely an improvement over them. Char's biography was pretty well established in the various Universal Century media, but based on this show's title I'm guessing it'll be a more comprehensive telling that focuses on Char's own perspective (we've gotten Char POV before, but more often than not he's framed as the antagonist to someone else).

So, that brings you up to speed on how blind this watch actually is going to be for me. I know the broad strokes of Char's story, and I've seen some of the later parts of it in other Gundam media, but as far as details go that's basically it. Let's start.


Open on Side 3, with Casval (he hasn't yet taken on the alias Char) in bed while his father labors over the speech he needs to give during his next public appearance. It looks like Zeon was a bit more hawkish himself than he's usually been described in retrospect. He's trying to figure out the best, most diplomatic wording for his republic's declaration of war against the Earth Federation. I guess the "going hot" thing wasn't just on his autocratic successors, even if the genocidal tactics might have been.

Anyway, he's bouncing ideas off of his wife/Casval's mother, while ignoring her more practical and less rhetorical bits of advice. Like "go the fuck to sleep already, you can't work this late."

According to Zeon, he expects to be "drawn off to Golgotha and crucified" tomorrow, and he needs to have this declaration of war ready in time for him to scream it as his dying words from atop the cross. I...have no idea how literal he's being. I doubt he's actually about to be executed within the coming 24 hour period, given that he's at home with his family and we didn't see any guards posted at the door, but politician is a career path with a mortality rate just slightly lower than mech pilot in this setting, so it may not be complete hyperbole either.

He goes into the children's bedroom, where he hugs younger child Artesia. Casval pretends to be asleep, either not wanting his father's affection or just not expecting it. Also, their housecat is absolutely terrified of Zeon for some reason. Roll intro.

It's a pretty forgettable OP. So-so song. So-so montage. A couple of nice shots of tanks and mobile suits in action, ending with an appropriate close up of Char's signature bright red vehicle at the end, but otherwise...meh. Just generic anime intro.

Visually, the OP pales in comparison to the lovely panning shot of the colony's interior that immediately follows it. So, that's nice!

There's a big hullaballoo both on the colonies and on Earth, as many are expecting him to declare Side 3's independence, and the protests and counterprotests are something alright. How many people are expecting this declaration of independence to come with another of war isn't clear, but then, depending on Earth's latest ultimatum that part may just be a formality. If they've already said "we will invade you if you try to break away," then it's sort of academic.

It ends up being even more academic than that though, because Zeon drops dead at the podium just as he's about to begin the address.

The timing is, shall we say, suspicious.

The scene of the surviving Deikuns seeing Zeon's corpse is a strange one. It's not directed like a tragedy. It's directed like a horror piece. This slow, creeping music and incremental zoom-in on the corpse's face as the children get closer, understanding slowly sinking in. It's the kind of cinematography that suggests the corpse is about to bare its fangs and start speaking in tongues or something, but the only horror that actually takes place here is Zeon's own untimely death. From the perspective of his 3-6 year old children, of course, I suppose that's more than enough.

It definitely makes an impact on the viewer. Which probably is meant to communicate its impact on the children. Artesia screams when it finally sinks in. Casval, just like the night before when his father was tucking his sister in, remains completely silent.

The grieving family are consoled by one of Zeon's longtime confederates and supporters, Degwin Zabi, who says that anything he and his influential political and military family can do for them will be done.

Degwin doesn't look too grief-stricken himself. I suspect this may be the Judas figure to complete Zeon's melodramatic Jesus metaphor from before. The murder of a popular visionary leader in front of everyone just as he was declaring independence would be easy to frame his enemies for, and the tide of outrage would be easy for someone in Degwin's position to ride into dictatorial power if he promises revenge.

An older, bearded fellow watches this take place from the doorway, and looks upset about it.

That's a reactionface if I ever saw one.

News of Zeon's death gets out despite attempts to contain it for now, and the protests in progress quickly turn into riots. Beardly tells the Deikuns that he suspects a member of the Zabi family of leaking it to the press, and all but outright says that he thinks Degwin Zabi had Zeon murdered himself. A moment later, Beardly (now named as "Mister Ral") does just come out and say it, addressing the children specifically and telling them to never forget who killed their father, over mother Astraia's objections. Um. Okay, Ral. He tells them to stay away from any Zabi offer of generosity or hospitality, and insists that his own son - a uniformed and very soldierly man named Ramba Ral - chaperone them.

Cue Ramba driving the terrified Deikuns down a highway at breakneck speeds in part of an armored car fleet, literally breaking through police blockades and flinging themselves down one branch after another to get to...um...somewhere, I guess? Eventually, they get accosted by a mob of rioters. It's not immediately clear what this particular group's political leanings are, but intentionally or otherwise they're blocking the road and Ramba doesn't want to run or shoot them all down if he doesn't have to. He tries sticking his head out of the armored car and shooting some bullets into the air, but that fails to deter them.

Before he can escalate from there, some police show up to clear the road for them. On horseback. With a maliciously grinning officer in a stupid helmet named Kycilia Zabi leading them.

I'd criticize her approach here, but since Ramba had just said he was about to start shooting to kill, I guess I can't say she's worse than the norm for this society.

This colony was a shitshow long before it went fascist, it seems. Also, who the hell designs an O'Neill colony with so much wasted space? I can understand wanting to create pseudo-natural spaces in between the living areas, but just bare grass with highways cutting through it? Really? Can't you at least use that space for some pretty forests or something?

So, the Zabi equestrian team clears the road, and Kycilia keeps herself professional and mostly honest-seeming, if perhaps a bit bloodthirsty and smug. She also makes this weird comment about her own gender, and says something about how tomboyism is the Zabi way. Um...okay, I guess?

Cut back to the capital building, where the other Zabi siblings (I assume that Degwin is their father, since he looks much older than them) is demanding to know why Kycilia let the Deikuns escape in Ral custody when she had them in her grip after that "rescue." She says that she didn't think open violence between their family and the Rals would be good for their strategic position just yet, and that letting the Rals have this one for the time being was the lesser evil.

Her brothers disagree.

Older brother Sasro had hoped to kill the rest of the Deikuns in the immediate future, and to make it look like the entire family fell victim to Earth Federation agents. As I suspected, the Zabis want to use a war against external enemies to cement their new position at the top, thereby avoiding the most politically dangerous part of regime change and jumping straight to the absolute power part.

Anyway, Sasro and the other Zabis have a plan for maybe turning this failure to their own greater advantage against their main remaining local rivals, the Rals. The scene ends with Sasro and the two other Zabis whose names I either didn't catch or just haven't been provided yet leaving to plot some more, and Kycilia giving them a venomous look as her lip bleeds.

Cut to Zeon's funeral service. There's a full artillery salute outside (is even having artillery a good idea inside of a space station? How thick are these walls, exactly?) and everyone who's anyone in Side 3 is present. Also, the name of this particular station is given as Munzo; this might have been namedropped before, but if so I didn't catch it. Anyway, the service itself is fairly interesting from a worldbuilding perspective. The aesthetics of the temple they're in look Christian, but the religious rhetoric we hear during the service all sounds vaguely neopagan. We also heard Zeon talking about the "will of Gaia" briefly during his sleep-deprived ramble in the teaser, so between one thing and another it's clear that the environmental decline of earth and mass migration into orbit has spurred some new religions into prominance. Nice touch. Near-to-medium future scifi doesn't do this often enough.

The Ral and Zabi adults give each other dirty looks from across the aisle when they think no one's looking. However, Casval and a little blue-haired Zabi girl seem to be making nonverbal friends.

D'aww.

The ceremony ends with a call for Zeon's ideals to live on, and how it's on all of those present to ensure that that happens. It ends with a call of what will eventually become the Principality's battle cry throughout the franchise: "Sieg, Zeon!"

Gratuitous German mixed with military uniforms and weirdly retro-looking-for-this-setting artillery salutes. Oh anime, you so subtle. 

Granted, the next shot makes me think more USSR than Nazi Germany. The decoration scheme for the post-service motorcade is...well, you tell me.

The situation is actually pretty analogous too, come to think of it. Lenin was turned into a god/Jesus figure in all but name after his death, partly just to fill the void left by Christianity in the Russian psyche, but also partly as a deliberate move by Stalin to literally enshrine his own regime as the successor to the lamented god king.

And, if we take the Rals to be a Trotsky equivalent, which is where this seems to be going...yeah, the death of Lenin and rise of Stalinism is a pretty close parallel. Almost certainly the main intended one on the part of the creators, despite the allusion to the Nazi "sieg heil."

That said, the ice pick doesn't land on House Ral just yet. First, halfway through the procession, the car containing two of the Zabi brothers gives us our first proper explosion of this Mobile Suit Gundam installment. It's not quite up to par with the usual mech-mounted laser cannons, but it's a start.

The explosion comes from right under the seat of Sasro, the seemingly senior brother who struck Kycilia earlier, killing him instantly. The somewhat dimwitted Dozle, who was sitting next to him, just barely manages to pull himself from the flaming wreckage, miraculously alive albeit not by much.

In the car behind theirs, the little blue haired girl freaks out at what just happened to her uncles. Kycilia's reaction is totally...well...she doesn't have one. There's no sign of alarm, or dismay, or even surprise.

...

I think punching Kycillia in the face might just be a really, really, really bad idea.

Not that I think she killed (or participated in the killing of) Sasro just for that, but I doubt it helped him.

...

Kycilla almost immediately scolds her child for being bothered by this, and its kind of hilariously awful.

Also, she refers to Bluehair as a "man" of House Zabi, which...well, maybe he's actually a he? The voice and haircut both seem pretty feminine, but who knows, it can be hard to tell at that age. On the other hand, Kycilla made that bizarre comment about her own gender during the mounted rescue scene, so maybe Bluehair actually is female and she's just being weird and internalized-misogyny-y about it. Though if that's the case, you'd think she'd have cut the kid's hair shorter.

The next day, the explosion is all over the papers of course. Hehe, man, physical-print newspapers on a space colony. It's kind of amazing how quickly a franchise that started out trying to be actual scifi can turn into quaint retro-futurism, isn't it? Anyway, the obvious assassination of a Zabi was turned public opinion in their favor, and it's making the Rals look awfully suspicious. Especially since they spirited Zeon's widow and children away immediately after his own extremely suspicious death and have been keeping them under heavy guard ever since.

It's a pretty damned clever tactic by the Zabis, as well as utterly diabolical. Being willing to sacrifice two (Dozle's survival of that car bomb was almost certainly unexpected) so unceremoniously and without their situation even being that desperate yet...well, that's indicative of something alright. Granted, it makes more sense within the context of intra-Zabi politics, where Kycilia and whoever she was conspiring with may have actually been desperate, but still. Damn.

Anyway, it's looking pretty likely that the Rals will now be blamed for both of the Zabis' assassinations. That robs the Zabis of the casus belli they were looking for, but it gives them a dolchstosslegende, which is arguably better.

Daddy Ral is sure that the Zabi's own patriarch Degwin was in on this, but son Ramba isn't so sure. Sasro Zabi wasn't exactly a likable man, but he was extremely good at his job, and responsible for a good fraction of his family's success both in gaining military importance and in maneuvering against their political rivals. Even if Degwin had no affection whatsoever for his son, would he have really been so willing to discard such a useful tool?

The family meeting is cut short when the Deikuns send for Ramba. Little Artesia Som Deikun is crying inconsolably, and neither Astraia nor her brother (granted, Casval doesn't appear to really be trying when Ramba comes in) have been able to console her. It turns out she's worried about that cat of theirs, who has been home alone since the morning of Zeon's death. This would have been...two days ago, now? A while, but probably not enough time for it to have starved.

The cat is named Lucifer, apparently. We're far enough in the future for people with names like "Dozle Zabi" and "Astraia Tor Deikun" to be worshiping Neo-Gaia from their orbital habitats, but apparently Disney's Cinderella is still an enduring children's classic.

Ramba is bored and/or stressed enough to go pick up the cat himself, which in these dangerous times means he'll need a squad of bodyguards if he's going anywhere near the Deikun house. So, he puts together a platoon of armed soldiers to go pick up the housecat. I foresee consequences of the tragic irony sort. And yes, we see shortly that the streets really are that dangerous for a Ral right now, even discounting the possibility of actual enemy agents. The riots are ongoing, and there are quite a few armed rioters who are convinced enough of the Rals' guilt to kill any that they happen to come across. That cat had better be worth it.

From there, we move back to the Zabi house. Bossman Degwin Zabi is sitting in his armchair overlooking Munzo's nighttime skycurve, looking so ridiculously the part of a banana republic dictator it's sort of hysterical. He's talking to one of his remaining sons, I'll call him Paige because of his haircut, about how they should scheme from here. They've tarnished the Ral reputation to the point where even if they don't get lynched in the streets, they're unlikely to be serious opposition henceforth. We also get a hint about why Degwin might have been onboard with his own son's assassination; unlike Sasro, Degwin is afraid of a war with the Earth Federation, and is struggling to avoid giving them an excuse to launch a peacekeeping mission. Okay, yeah, that's the kind of disagreement that I could see him deciding his own son was too dangerous to keep alive over. Anyway, they're talking about how now that the Rals are on the way out, they need to get Munzo back in order before Earth starts getting ideas.

Dozle shows up then, on his feet and in uniform despite being practically mummified in bandages.

Dozle, who never seemed to be the sharpest tool in the shed, is going on about how excited he is at the public coming out in their support, and how he wants to kill the Rals with his own bandaged fists. Heedless of the fact that the people who actually blew him up are in this very room. I feel bad for Dozle, I won't lie; he seems to be the least bad member of this family, unrelated to being the stupidest. Degwin considers just bringing down the hammer and wiping out the Rals (and maybe Deikuns) in an open para/military move and hoping that'll quiet the public down faster, but over Dozle's insistence he decides against it. Partly because Ramba Ral, despite this recent turn of events, remains popular within the military, so it'll be hard to make a clean job of removing this family. Partly because Degwin has read his Sun Tzu, and knows that you should always leave your enemy a way out. So, the Zabis will just let the status quo continue a bit longer and hope that the Rals flee the station or are killed by an angry mob. The former would probably be preferable; an Emmanuel Goldstein figure is always useful to have. The Earth Federation probably isn't going to jump on this that quickly.

Hmm. Well, knowing that this is the prequel to a subfranchise that's all about a war between the Earth Federation and Side 3, I think I can safely assume that Degwin either gravely miscalculated here, or is about to be killed off and succeeded by a more hawkish dictator along the lines of Sasros.

Cut to a dingy old bar that was either built to look ancient and falling apart, or is actually on earth. Since a disguised Ramba Ral enters it shortly and the cat scratches on his face are still fresh, I'm going to assume the former. Apparently, this pub is a hangout for a bunch of Ramba's old army buddies, and he's asking them if they feel like reinlisting.

It sounds like the Munzo armed forces aren't all that eager to get behind independence. Or at least, they weren't until very, very recently.

It's also established that Ramba has been coming here in disguise for some time, long before Zeon's assassination and the ensuing turmoil of the last few days. Interesting, what new intrigue is this connected to, I wonder? There's a pretty amusing little sequence where they ask him where the scratches are from in a way that suggests they suspect rough sex, and he describes his battle with Lucifer the cat in an ambiguous enough way that they interpret it as a really, really, really weird hookup with a violent human female. With that silliness out of the way, though, he gets to the point. He's here to talk to a contact of his named Ms. Hamon...hmm, should I make the obvious joke here? Nah, too easy...about smuggling someone to Earth.

That someone could be his father, or it could be the Deikuns. Or all of the above, I suppose.

Turns out it's his father primarily, with the Deikuns as possible additions. Hamon will have to pull all the strings she has access to with the port authorities, but she thinks she can make it work.

Of course, since I already know that Casval is going to be fighting for the Principality of Zeon in a couple of decades, and eventually become its leader, the chances of him at least making it out of Side 3 are pretty much nonexistent.

That same night (I think), the Deikuns are at the Ral house trying to get to sleep. Astraia is feeling terrible about having children with Zeon and inflicting this future on them, which...well, I'll share my thoughts on that at the end, but suffice to say that this show isn't making Zeon Zum Deikun or almost anyone connected to him look good at all. The children are awoken by a commission outside the window, and they see a column of security officers marching in the gate led by Kycilia Zabi and her derpy helmet. Surprisingly, she isn't demanding the Rals' surrender, or even the release of Astraia and her kids. Instead, she just wants to talk to six-or-seven-year-old Casval.

...

Twenty minutes into the pilot of a show supposedly about him, Casval is being acknowledged by and interacting with the story for the first time. I was starting to forget that that silent little boy was actually a major Mobile Suit Gundam character. :/

...

Pretty bizarre request for the Zabi representative to be making, but well...it's a lot better than the others were afraid of, and Casval himself is as willing to go through with this as a little kid who doesn't really understand the situation around him can be said to consent to such a thing.

He looks (and acts) a little older in this scene than I pegged him at before. Maybe he's supposed to be more around 8-10 years old? Still no older than that though.

They meet alone in an adjunct to the Ral living room. Kycilia patronizes him as you'd expect an adult to do to a kid his age, and it's pretty satisfying when he cuts through the bullshit and just straight up accuses her and her family of murdering his father. She tries to play some head games and convince him that he's been misinformed, but he just tells her that if that's what she came here to do he'll just go back to bed right now. She, despite being three times his size, actually looks slightly intimidated.

Okay, finally, we're watching a show about Casval/Char being his charismatic self. I'd started to think that the show was going to be about him starting out as an introverted, silent little kid and being forced to develop that willpower and cunning in response to life as a political refugee in a war-torn world, and that he'd essentially be dead weight until that started happening. That would definitely be the more realistic approach, but it would also be the more boring one, so I'm okay with them going the precocious prodigy route instead. Of course, that in turn raises the question of why the pilot's been all but ignoring him up until now. Shouldn't this indomitable, fearless, and highly intelligent child have had anything to say until now? Or just...been given a chance to do anything besides stare at the adults while they talked and acted? Kind of a whiplash.

So, she gets down to brass tacks. She knows that the Deikun family still owns their own house, and she's requesting that they return to it and keep out of the coming chaos between Ral and Zabi. Outside the door, Boss Ral is shouting for Casval to not do it, and he needs to be restrained to keep him from bursting in.

And um.

I'm sorry.

What?

Everyone, including the Zabis, the Rals, and the Deikuns themselves, are acting like this is Casval's decision.

...

I. What. But that. He's. Wuuuuh?

I just paused this video and have been staring at it, blinking, for the last thirty seconds.

Even if this were an out-and-out patriarchal feudal society, Casval is young. At his age, the dowager queen would still be the one making these kinds of decisions. I've heard of exceptions throughout history, but...really? In a futuristic (illiberal and highly unstable, but still) democracy where women can be officers in the military? In THIS society we have the prepubescent eldest son making decisions for his mother and siblings?

Maybe Kycilia is just starting with Casval, and plans to repeat this process with each of the Deikuns in turn. Okay, that could make sense. If she can turn one of the children, maybe that child can then help convince Astraia. Except...when she arrived at the gates, she didn't say she wanted to talk to the Deikuns. She said she wanted to talk to Casval. No mention of his mother or sister.

I'm just. What do I even say about this?

...

Casval refuses, even when she says she promises her family won't "retaliate" for Sasros, and insists he's not afraid of her. Even when she tells him that her father is now the chairman of the station's government. So, she...wrestles him to the ground, slaps him in handcuffs, and starts threatening to imprison or torture him. In a sort of almost rapey way.

Remember, there's a ton of people representing various interest groups outside the door, and the Zabis live or die here based on whether they can keep up their public image as the honest true believers who are protecting Zeon's legacy from the opportunists.

We end with Casval, manhandled, held down, and handcuffed, just glaring her in the eyes and saying this:

“KNEEL BEFORE ZOD, WENCH!”

So. That's the pilot.


Well.

So, I've got notes here. Plenty to say about various aspects of the production up until that final scene. But I'm having trouble thinking about any of that now. Okay, well, I'll try.


So, to begin with, while this is a pretty well written and thought out political drama, the title feels misleading. Put simply, this isn't a Gundam episode. I'm not just saying that because the main characters aren't soldiers, or because there are no giant robot fights in it. In general, I'm all for exploring fictional settings in different ways and seeing what new kinds of stories you can tell in them. But this pilot (and to be fair, it IS just the pilot so far. For all I know, this issue ceases to be in the very second episode) isn't really using the setting at all.

The Mobile Suit Gundam franchise first started in 1979. Like many other scifi universes of that vintage, it's decided to just keep rolling with the increasingly outdated and retro-futurist aesthetics and worldbuilding instead of trying to update them. Okay, fine, I'm used to that from MGS. But I've never seen it lean into it this hard before. Most of this stuff doesn't even look like retro scifi; it just looks retro PERIOD! During the riot sequences, there's some brief glimpses of futuristic police vehicles with mech-like silhouettes, but other than that everything from the weapons (including both handheld guns and artillery pieces) to the clothing to the urban planning looks like the mid twentieth century. If you were to just change the names, replace the O'Neill cylinder background in the external shots with a normal sky, and cut out the very brief scifi-riot car shot, I'd never in a hundred years have guessed that this was Gundam. Hell, I wouldn't even have guessed that it's scifi. You could have told me that this was set in almost any third world country during almost any time in the past hundred years, and I'd have believed you.

In some ways, that's a credit to this story. The timelessness and universal quality make it feel very grounded and real. But on the other...why bother making it a Gundam story?

I might be a bit unfairly biased here. Partly because of my own expectations of the franchise. Partly because after Fate/Zero I was starting to get a little tired of cynical feudal politics with a million names to remember, and didn't realize I was about to dive right into more of the same. And partly just that ending...gyah. So, I'll emphasize it again here. As a pessimistic political drama, this episode was solid up until the last scene.

That said, even just taking it as a story on its own merits, there are problems.

The biggest of these is who exactly the protagonists are. Astraia is passive to the point of barely existing at all (it does make sense that Zeon, who was characterized as having a very frank messiah complex in the intro, would choose someone meek and submissive for a wife. But that doesn't make her any more interesting to watch). The children don't take any initiative except for Artesia asking for her cat and Casval's wtf faceoff at the very end. I guess the Ral father and son pair are the main non-villainous actors here, but we saw so little of them (and what we did see was mostly just them scrambling around taking care of the Deikuns) that I have trouble building investment. The Zabis are entertaining in their over-the-top awfulness (I found myself thinking of "Dark Crystal: Age of Rebellion's" lovably hammy Skeksis at multiple points when the Zabis were onscreen), but they certainly weren't the protagonists. Zeon seemed like he was going to be the main character of at least this one episode before dying, at first, but then he was over and done with after the first couple of scenes.

On the topic of Zeon, one thing that I did really like about this was the undertone of "don't meet your heroes." We can see that this guy was a hugely influential politician and philosopher, but it seems like anyone who knew the guy personally could tell that he was a psychological dumpster fire. Not just the messiah complex. The way that he allowed such blatantly obvious corruption and nepotism to fester in his government without seeming to even be aware of it, let alone to take precautions against it for his own or his family's sake. When we see the Deikun house at the beginning, it's noticable fairly middle-class looking. As if he didn't realize that he was living and governing alongside strongman kleptocrats in imposing mansions, and therefore took no measures to keep them in check. It also, in the context of the broader Universal Century timeline that I gave an overview of at the beginning, makes Casval's ultimate failure to save his country from itself that much sadder and emptier. It's not just that he fails to live up to his father's ideals; it's that those ideals were nothing more than the ramblings of a glorified madman to begin with. He was doomed to fail from the beginning.

That fits in with the tone and themes of the franchise, and of the political drama genre.

But, well. The ending. Okay, let's do this.

I can think of only one other work of fiction at the moment that made me do the kind of double take that I did when suddenly Babby Casval was the decisionmaker for his entire family. This other case was a much more EXTREME wtf moment than Gundam: the Origin's, but it's pretty much the same KIND of wtf.

This.

The abrupt quantum leap from realistic dynastic politics to a shonen child hero inexplicably being the center of the world made me feel the same way I did when a hideous cartoon hedgehog invaded that Final Fantasy cutscene.

Looking over what I've written of this conclusion so far, I'm actually having some serious deja vu. Not for any of my own previous reviews, but for someone else's. Prequel to a hugely successful and established scifi series, focusing on the backstory of a popular antagonist from the original. Lack of a clear protagonist. Babby antagonist going full Wunderkind out of nowhere after some time of just sitting around being a kid, just because the audience expects him to be "badass." It's hard to not see a lot of Red Letter Media's criticisms of "The Phantom Menace" applying to this. This pilot was much better than "The Phantom Menace" overall, obviously. But they have quite a few issues in common, and I suspect that it's down to similar development missteps.

...

God, that last scene was just bizarre.

...

I'll be doing the next episode of this series in a couple weeks' time. Maybe it'll recover and turn get its bearings in the second episode. The pieces are all there for this to be a good show, regardless of whether or not it's a good Gundam show. But at least for the time being, I'm going to have trouble taking Char Aznable as seriously as I once did.