Name(s): Mobile Suit Gundam F91 / Kidou Senshi Gundam F91 / 機動戦士ガンダムＦ91 / Mobile Suit Gundam Film: F91
Format: Movie (120 minutes)
Release Date: March 16, 1991
Studio(s): Sunrise
Related: Mobile Suit Gundam F90

Gundam F91 Review

Oh boy, the weird one. Mobile Suit Gundam F91‘s production background is probably more well-known than the actual contents of the movie. Originally planned for a full-length series, vague reasons that were never really elaborated on halted Gundam F91‘s production after screenplays were written for a mere 13 episodes. Presumably wanting to keep the Gundam brand strong, Sunrise decided to salvage existing material and create a single theatrical film.

The result is the most universal reception of a Gundam series ever: that the movie was a very apparent hatchet job of a story and ultimately not very satisfying. It’s universal to the point where even I have to agree on both of those accounts. But before that conclusion, let’s take a more detailed than usual look of this nearly “lost” Gundam entry.

Gundam F91 Characters

In keeping with the mecha tradition of terrible names, a young man named Seabook Arno and his friends end up on a war ship after their space colony comes under attack by forces calling themselves the Crossbone Vanguard. It’s a mostly typical Gundam set-up and story. Seabook reluctantly fights but still finds the time to complain about adults, and the “brat pack” here is reminiscent of ZZ Gundam’s.

Thankfully, they’re far more resourceful and mature. In the movie’s beginning, as the group attempts to escape from the colony war zone, it’s actually rather refreshing to see a reasonable bunch of teenagers interacting with each other without going into fits over nothing or trying to sell each other out to the enemy. But I digress.

It turns out Seabook’s childhood friend, Cecily Fairchild, is actually part of the Crossbone Vanguard’s royal family and through the typical cheap plot device of Newtype mind tricks ends up going along with them despite having no reason to do so (she’s practically a stranger to her real family). I also don’t see why the Vanguard put so much effort into retrieving her in the first place, as they reveal they don’t actually care much about the possibility of her dying despite their original plans to use her as a spokesperson for the commoners.

A Scrambled Story

Already, I can’t ignore Gundam F91’s truncated story structure. If you thought Tomino-penned Gundam series were hard to follow before with the thinnest excuses possible for major character motivations, then F91 is downright bewildering thanks to its editing. The script feels no better than if full episodes that existed before the movie’s production were simply cut into snippets, like the franchise’s compilation movies.

Scene transitions are extremely improper, with abrupt cuts and any establishing detail skipped over to save time. A sense of movement is often removed, which means you get scenes like characters flying around at the end of battles and suddenly they’re instantly back on the mothership without smoothly aiming the direction there first.

There’s pretty much no character development because there’s no time, and the supporting cast from the beginning never gets to rise above background noise. Without scenes spent on characters deliberating or giving introspection to their choices, you end up with those same thin motivations as mentioned before to the depth of being transparent.

In Gundam F91, a minor enemy character, who has no relevance to the larger plot, makes a huge decision to defect after a five-second scene barely implying she’s jealous of another pilot’s special treatment by her captain. Five minutes later, she’s dead forever. In a movie already struggling to save time, they gave scenes to someone that doesn’t matter and amount to no emotional payoff. Gundam F91 jumps all over the place like that, which makes it a frustrating watch, because there’s enough here to make someone think it could’ve made a solid series.

Relatively Sober Tomino Writing

The writing (or at least what we get to see) comes across as more tolerable than some other Tomino works. In F91, it’s relatively rare to see our characters make completely nonsensical choices. Even whining about adults and “needing to understand each other” while blowing other people up is kept to a minimum this time around.

Still, nearly all of the usual Universal Century Gundam tropes are present. It’s one of the easier Gundam settings and casts to buy into, and what inhibits further investment isn’t immersion-breaking inane plot details like some series, but rather the lack of plot details entirely to greater establish that setting and its characters.

The movie is still attempting to be a character drama, but there’s no breathing room for them to grow on you because the movie keeps shoving details about the actual war down your throat with little else. There’s still some top-dollar Tomino dialogue here and there (“When you had to stop breast feeding, your mother was hysterical”). But relatively speaking, the core of Gundam F91 is fairly solid and usually keeps its head out of the clouds.

The Villains

Speaking of the Crossbone Vanguard, I have no idea where they got their huge forces, since they were apparently clandestine rogues, but it seems like no one in the movie cares. They have a Zabi family-esque monarchy rulership and clearly want control over space, but any attempts to make them a little more interesting fail because of how unclear they are.

They want to unify the colonies and stop Earth’s pollution and yadda yadda. But in one scene, they’re ordering their troops not to harm colony civilians. In another, they’re killing them indiscriminately with automatons. If there’s a reason for this, I probably missed the five-second scene it’s in.

Gundam F91 and Star Wars Plagiarism?

The real head of the antagonists is Cecily’s father, a man known primarily as “Iron Mask” due to the metal helmet he wears over his entire head. In an explanation I think anyone would recognize as hysterical except for Tomino, Iron Mask wears his helmet out of shame because his wife left him for another man. Let’s cut to the chase: Iron Mask is Darth Vader. He is literally Darth Vader. He is Cuck Vader. Even the English dub track makes him sound exactly like Darth Vader, because they knew it too.

Iron Mask also has a long black cape, and there’s literally a scene implying he kills someone with Newtype mind-tricks. And you know what? I don’t even care. This guy still has some of the most charisma out of any Gundam villain, because if you’re going to rip a villain off, then Darth Vader is an extremely worthy candidate. Iron Mask may not amount to much by the end, but in a movie where no one does, he’s at the very least cool, which works.

Audio

The hilarious Star Wars knockoffs don’t even end there. The royal family structure and culture bears resemblance to that of Star Wars as well, even down to Cecily being Darth Vader’s daughter. And before you ask, no, Seabook is not related to her. One of the first songs played in Gundam F91 opens very similarly to the main Star Wars theme, and another is even more unmistakably a copy of the “Imperial March” theme. It’s downright uncanny.

Return of the Jedi came out nearly 10 years before this movie, so why Gundam is copying it now, and why they feel the need to when the original series debuted in the late ’70s alongside Star Wars, is as much of a mystery as anything else concerning this movie’s production. On the subject of audio, the English dub is also fairly high-quality and practically a who’s-who of big ’90s anime voice actors.

Artwork and Mechanical Designs

Being a movie, the animation is extremely nice and the art looks like it came from a classic early Gundam series due to the return of franchise alumni Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. The fight choreography is tight, full of movement without frames getting too chaotic, and those just looking for quality Mobile Suit animation from this movie won’t be disappointed. Gundam F91 also possesses some of my favorite Mobile Suit designs of the franchise, courtesy of Kunio Ookawara.

Gundam F91 takes place very late in the Universal Century timeline, and this distance is accentuated by the complete lack of Zakus (finally) and their replacement with Crossbone Vanguard’s grunt suits that have an unusual “gas mask” face and wield lances instead of sabers. There’s a subtle mystique to many of the Mobile Suit designs that make them look like a part of a distant culture, such as the F91’s shoulder “feathers” and the Vigna-Ghina’s back fins. It’s a change of pace from standard Gundam designs without their unique traits being too over-the-top and ridiculous.

Gundam F91 Verdict

Though it has more to offer than its reputation implies, Mobile Suit Gundam F91 is still ultimately just a well-produced, somewhat fun adventure that never has what it takes to be emotionally rewarding. For a two-hour romp, it’s worth the time to UC fans as it possesses enough of the attitude that made those longer series endearing.

It’s a shame that the reunion of the original Gundam series’s team was prevented from creating a more fruitful experience, because Gundam F91 seems to show there was enough of that skill still left in them. In the end, this movie that doesn’t even have a real conclusion might be all we have for a long time, and it’s still somehow more enjoyable than some 50-episode Gundam series.