Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team

Name(s): Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team / Kidou Senshi Gundam: Dai 08 MS Shoutai / Kidou Senshi Gundam: Dai 08 MS Shotai / 機動戦士ガンダム 第08MS小隊
Format: Original video animation [OVA] (12 episodes)
Release Date(s): January 25, 1996 – July 25, 1999
Studio(s): Sunrise

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team seems to be universally loved, and I concur that it’s indeed pretty great. To be more specific, it’s the kind of great that makes you wonder why more anime aren’t this good. The storyline isn’t particularly unique, but it’s well-told in ways you figure would be decent writing sense. That’s not to mitigate its successes though, as this series is evidently better than most, regardless.

The 08th MS Team‘s most important aspect is its characters. The scenario and politics are far less convoluted than your typical Gundam series, and it’s perhaps the fact that some of the duller exposition is cut out due to this that such strong attention has been paid to the characterization. Here’s where the first bit of common sense comes in: dialogue is attributed almost equally across the entire 8th team. No one feels neglected, everyone is distinct with their own tone of speaking, and it really says something when no character feels wasted in a 12-episode series. When someone was being focused on specifically I was never uninterested, and when they weren’t the center of attention I didn’t feel like I hadn’t gotten enough before. The main character doesn’t feel totally center stage, and his comrades actually feel like such rather than being complements to him.

That said, possibly the only significant flaw with The 08th MS Team is that the romance isn’t given enough time to believably build, but it’s made up for somewhat that when the two do spend time together you feel a natural chemistry from them. Shiro Amada does take things over during the finale, but this is to be expected. There are constant moments to remind you that the 8th team are normal people having to suffer through a war.

The setting is also unique by Gundam standards, and should interest those outside of it as well, being set on Earth in a Vietnam-like jungle setting. It’s nice to see Gundam battles won through sheer strategy and skill instead of having the victories weakened somewhat by Newtype handicaps. Despite the fact that most episodes take place in the field, The 08th MS Team isn’t primarily an action anime. Since the fighting revolves around a lot of recon and guerrilla warfare, this allows for the team to have a lot of downtime to flesh out their characters and interact with each other. Perhaps the best way to describe the series is that there’s almost never a moment that isn’t lively.

Every part of The 08th MS Team‘s script feels perfectly natural, and there’s a genuine sense of risk felt when the group lands in a bad situation. I often found myself entertaining the notion that a character might die and becoming concerned about them. It’s really surprising how fast this gets under your skin.

Since this is an OVA, the animation is expectedly much higher quality than your typical anime. While still not too impressive, it’s nice to watch something with a good frame rate throughout.

And lastly, I have to hand it to the original Japanese voice cast and sub group. While I dislike people’s general allegiance to the original voices because I don’t think someone who doesn’t speak the language can properly judge an acting performance, I have to eat my own words for once. The subs seemed to convey the exact tone of what was being said on screen, at least from what I could pick up through tone, volume, pacing, etc. Cultural barriers be damned. I’d call this the best Japanese anime voice acting I’ve ever heard, if my solely English judgment means anything.

It’s a little depressing how most Gundam series break the 50 episode mark, and one of the ones with the best writing only gets 12. Granted, there’s certainly a connection there, but I’d wager this could’ve ran for 26 episodes with the same storyline while still maintaining interest. But that’s all hypothetical. When you get right down to it, The 08th MS Team is just a classic military story told with heart and carefully written to never have a truly dull moment in the proceedings. These soldiers may not end up saving the world like your usual mecha heroes, but their personal trails feel nonetheless important.

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Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team – A Battle with the Third Dimension

Name(s): Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team – A Battle with the Third Dimension / Kidou Senshi Gundam: Dai 08 MS Shoutai – Sanjigen to no Tatakai / 機動戦士ガンダム 第08MS小隊 三次元との戦い
Format: Special (1 episode)
Release Date(s): February 22, 2013
Studio(s): Sunrise
Original Publication: August 20, 2014 (3:27 AM)

14 years after its conclusion, Sunrise creates a 10-minute original story for The 08th MS Team. It captures the tone of the original OVA perfectly. With a largely different staff, it’s very commendable that they understood what made the series great.

10 minutes is a meager and bittersweet helping considering the fantastic series was relatively short to begin with, but it’s enough time to remind us of what we loved the first time around: strategy, teamwork, and companionship. It’s unfortunate that Karen and Elenore are neglected here, and that the antagonist is some random new guy, but we do get to see some character interaction between two team members we didn’t get much of before. As such, this little short actually does add something to The 08th MS Team‘s legacy, if not much. The animation is great, too. Recommended. And don’t worry, there’s no “3D” at all.

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Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team – Miller’s Report

Name(s): Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team – Miller’s Report / Kidou Senshi Gundam: Dai 08 MS Shoutai – Miller’s Report / 機動戦士ガンダム 第08MS小隊 ミラーズ・リポート
Format: Movie
Release Date(s): August 1, 1998
Studio(s): Sunrise
Original Publication: December 23, 2016 (6:32 PM)

Beep boop robutts. The 08th MS Team is a top tier Gundam series, but I’m not going to talk about why here. This 50-minute movie, Miller’s Report, takes place two thirds of the way through the series. I watched it hoping for a decent amount of new footage since it’s framed with an original story as intelligence officer Alice Miller investigates Shiro Amada. Sadly, this ended up just being what it was meant to be: glorified padding between releasing episodes of the OVA.

The movie recaps most of the events surrounding Shiro and Aina’s relationship, and combines it with the aftermath of what happened when the OVA took place with some footage cut out and some footage added. Structurally, it’s very weird in this way. It’s chronologically consistent at the beginning, then delves into a long flashback, then goes back to chronology and follows the OVA in an abridged format until it ends before the final act. Miller is only given basic characterization and is only seen in a few minutes of the total running time.

I guess if you’re super desperate for more of The 08th MS Team, then this could do as it retcons some additional detail into certain episodes, but it doesn’t really improve the experience much. The best part of watching this was OZC’s video encode, which was absolutely incredible. If more encodes of old series got this treatment, then maybe life wouldn’t be so terrible. Go watch A Battle with the Third Dimension instead.