Name(s): Mobile Fighter G Gundam / Kidou Butouden G Gundam / Mobile Fighter G-Gundam / 機動武闘伝Gガンダム
Director(s): Yasuhiro Imagawa
Format(s): TV series (49 episodes)
Genre(s): Action / Mecha
Studio(s): Sunrise
Release Date(s): April 22, 1994 – March 31, 1995

Oh, I remember being a fan of Mobile Fighter G Gundam. I recall entering discussion threads on forums, all-too willing to espouse the merits of this anime I had secretly only seen a scant few episodes of during its syndication on Toonami. Standard genre and franchise favorites would crumble before my rehearsed catch phrases sourced from G Gundam‘s characters and theme songs. I would laugh at the thought of the franchise’s typical sci-fi melodrama, drowning their fandoms out with my cries of blunt super robot stupidity and larger-than-life action. Shining Finger! I GET A CHANCE! Forget all of Amuro and Kamille’s wimpy bullshit—G Gundam is a REAL MAN’s anime! You were either cool enough to know, or a dorky, no-fun pseudo-intellectual.

Then I did something no one should do: I actually sat down and watched all of Mobile Fighter G Gundam. I came out from the other side bitter and jaded, and with it, I held nearly all of G Gundam in utter contempt. I will not pretend otherwise; I hated watching this series. I was heartbroken to discover that my idea of G Gundam was far more enjoyable than what G Gundam actually was. I will never claim I was truly better off in blissful ignorance, with the absence of the forbidden fruit in my fat tummy.

But damn, that time certainly had something going for it.

How did I get here? The earliest I can recall knowing what a “Gundam” was would’ve been around the time Gundam Wing was airing on Toonami. I didn’t watch it, but I had a cousin who did. Despite my then lack of interest in mecha anime, I had always liked mechs as a concept. I can’t remember a point in my life where I didn’t find mechs cool, and I collected various mechs all throughout my childhood, even though I never knew their origins. I had an entire bin full of just my “robot toys,” and for the longest time, to me, any mech with more than two colors was a “Megazord.”

I remember one Christmas receiving a set of Gundam Wing model kits from that same cousin, despite me never showing personal interest. Maybe it was just an assumption from my uncle that it was what kids were into, or it was the suggestion of my cousin—never found out. They mostly gathered dust, as models were a completely foreign concept to me at the time, though I did eventually return to them and put at least a few together. They’re long gone, now. They were cheap, very small scale model kits intended for a younger demographic. Oh, and I think my uncle included a SUMO model from Turn A Gundam. No idea why. Did not discover what the hell that one was until way later.

I think I tried to get into Wing if I happened to see it on TV. I had only recently gotten into Dragon Ball Z, and I had no awareness of what “anime” was, so I had no reason to really give Wing a chance. When my childlike brain found the scenes of characters talking boring, and the larger plot inscrutable, I was likely quick to decide it was “boring.”

The same thing didn’t happen with G Gundam. As with Wing, I would only catch it by sheer circumstance. Maybe it shared an adjacent timeslot to DBZ at some point; I don’t know. For whatever reason, it caught my eye, and I was able to follow it enough to the point I looked forward to catching more episodes. I can’t recall ever making a serious attempt to follow it, probably due in part to starting it mid-series, but I had a general fondness for it.

Eventually, that just stopped. If you were a kid prior to the mid-to-late 2000s, you know how this goes. You like a certain TV show, and at some point, it just stops airing. You never find out why. You never find out where it went, if anywhere. It’s just done and possibly gone forever, and you move on to something else. That’s what happened with me and G Gundam. It was a tryst of sorts.

But one thing never left me:

That fucking music, man. G Gundam has so many catchy themes that are permanently etched into my psyche. When YouTube first became a thing, one of the earliest soundtracks I can remember playing on repeat was that of G Gundam‘s. I’ll go more into its music later, but suffice it to say, the nostalgic grip from music is possibly stronger than any other. I haven’t the slightest doubt in my mind that most of my positive recollections of G Gundam were propped up by its music, and honestly, I think that’s the case for many people who haven’t seen the series in an age.

As images of G Gundam faded from memory, visuals conjured up by its music replaced them. I imagined a series about brotherhood, good vibes, high-octane fights, and adventure. I had an impressionist view of G Gundam. No wonder I held reverence for it. Even typing those descriptors out now, I find myself second-guessing what I know to be true. “Was I wrong in my assessment? Maybe G Gundam is that fun show from my childhood.”

But, no. I’ve been down that road already.

It had always been some nebulous goal of mine to actually watch the whole series. After all, I already “knew” I liked it, so why shouldn’t I finish it? I don’t remember if I had any particular reason for putting G Gundam off for so long. I know finding quality source rips of the series was really difficult for a long time, especially for the English dub audio track, so that could’ve been it. It’s also possible that I prioritized mecha anime that had been in more of the Super Robot Wars (SRW) games I had played. Funny, that, as G Gundam is now probably among the most commonly featured series in the SRW games that happen to have been translated into English.

Come 2015, I just did it. No… No, that’s wrong. I started the series in September 2014, but I was so damn bored by it that I didn’t finish until August 2015. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch one episode per day. I was seriously considering dropping the series at multiple points, but out of some stupid sense of completionism, I didn’t. If you, dear reader, find yourself at my deathbed, I give you permission to remind me of this.

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Notes for when I edit this into a cohesive review eventually.

This show is complete junk. When I was a kid, it was embedded in my mind as the coolest thing ever. I didn’t see it since. I have to imagine the same is true for many people, because though I loved, and still love G Gundam conceptually, its execution of all those concepts is incredibly awful and embarrassingly lazy.

The Gundam franchise is frequently aimed towards children, but never has so much of a series been cynical enough to use the excuse of its main target audience to shoot for the lowest possible standards allowed.

Where to begin:

1. The series deserves some credit for beginning AU, daring enough to try something drastically different in style, and solidifying some series traditions like the masked ace.

2. The episodic nature of the format means it revolves around several stories in a row that A. aren’t interesting in the slightest and focus far too much on drama that’s impossible to take seriously given the show’s ridiculous settings and characters and B. have nothing to do with the overarching storyline usually so it’s literal padding and not even good for world development, not that G Gundam ever gives us a reason its world is worth developing.

3. The symmetrical writing of the show is a fucking embarrassment, lazy, and predictable as hell. At the exact halfway point the show finally gets some overarching plot development, and then immediately after the halfway point abandons it to go right back to episodic Gundam fight crap after giving us some bullshit about it being the “finals” even though we’re in for another half of the same garbage. Don’t promise us a climax you’re not going to deliver. There are so many scenes where the worthless side characters speak at the exact same time because they’re just a filler supporter role for Domon and have no important victories of their own. Everyone gets their own episodes in a row, powers up in a row, etc. There is literally not a single attempt in this show to subvert the viewer’s expectations. 90% of the show is the illusion of progress, and the illusion doesn’t last once you realize the shit they’re pulling for the umpteenth episode is the same shit you’ve seen before that’ll be there for the entire series.

4. Every fight is horrible. Movement and action is extremely lacking. The progression of each fight can generally be summed up as: villain and Domon go head to head, villain traps Domon somehow, Domon does something extremely obvious and simple to break free, Domon uses Shining Finger (and it is always Shining Finger) to win. There is no excitement, and there isn’t a single scene where the heroes lose to make suspense possible, even though the competition plot means there’s the perfect excuse for the heroes to lose without sacrificing their place in the finals or their lives.

5. Domon has a downright abusive relationship with Rain that’s actually very uncomfortable to watch. There’s literally over a dozen episodes where hes’ a megacunt to her, he or she runs off, Domon says he learned his lesson, and she comes back only for it to happen again because this is an actual abusive relationship. Domon does not change despite what the characters try to say as forced by the script. By the end he still hesitates in battle in the face of important goals like a rookie and is a douchebag. I actually found myself originally really liking Rain and finding her attractive to actually feeling repulsed by her because she lets Domon treat her like dirt so much. She has far too little confidence.

6. The animation is trash and looks like it came out of the ’80s. No doubt all the battles being so dull with so many scenes of Domon standing around getting hurt without moving were to save even more money.

7. The music is actually above average for any anime series, though there is a serious lack of tracks for such a long series and not even the music can save the series’s insane repetition, especially as it plays a part in that with the same themes being repeated at the same moments that come on like clockwork to lose all their significance.

8. The actual plot when you strip away the meaningless episodic individual plots of worthless characters is basic and as unambitious as the rest of the show. The show has no serious appeal because of this but doesn’t have any ironic fun appeal either. A lot of the stupidity and silliness comes from their complete lack of care for the show, and the humor is undermined in the many parts where the show frames a dramatic scene with dark lighting and sad music but it’s about something stupid like being traumatized by clown terrorists (this actually happens), and the drama is undermined by that very same stupid shit. They don’t co-exist at all because G Gundam has literally no self-awareness. It writes whatever junk it takes to fill a series and none of it is good.

9. The Mobile Suit designs are awful. Yes, we can pretend to like them ironically and laugh at an epic windmill being attached to a Gundam, but is it really that goddamn funny? The humor has no context to frame it as such, and is only a further result of how lazy everything about the show is. Spain gets a Gundam. What do Spaniards do? Fight bulls? Okay, so it has a giant bull head in the middle of it. Just a bull. Hilarious. Many of these Gundams could have played off their stereotypes to even make something that looks semi-respectable like Dragon Gundam accomplishes. Imagine the bull Gundam but with a thicker design all around its body without increasing its size to have the build of a bull while also adding on horns that might actually be cool for what we’re using as inspiration here. But no. Fuck.

There is literally no reason this superhero kung-fu homage had to be so terribly done. These homages are not inherently worthless, but G Gundam totally lacks the passion of them, not to mention the innovativeness and ambition that created its ancestors during a time when such a thing didn’t exist. That’s true creative bravery. G Gundam isn’t an evolution of any of its homages and contains none of their possible values. G Gundam is a heartless show masquerading in vain super robot charisma it copied from other shows that were replaced by anime’s constant evolution. There’s no reason for this show to be made or watched, and the iconic images and songs it’s remembered for are superficial and can be experienced in their full power in tiny little clips on YouTube. Don’t bother with the series.