Yes GQuuuuuuX, I get the reference, can we go back to Machu now

This free form review talk blog thingy will cover GQuuuuuuX The Beginning as well as episodes 1-6 of the TV series. You should watch those if you haven’t before reading this or at least episodes 1-6 of the TV series since those are readily available. Feel free to let me know if you agreed or disagreed with this one in the comments. Or if you liked this kind of post. I am still experimenting what I want this thing to be, so if you have an opinion let me know.

GQuuuuuuX: The Beginning starts on a note where I should have realized that it had a ceiling for how much I would love it. After the opening 30 minutes of the film i fell in love with its version of the Universal Century, I should have viewed those first 30 minutes as a warning. The movie begins on an extended recreation of the first episode of Mobile Suit Gundam. There are different players involved, Gene is back in the Musai instead of out in a mobile suit, with Char Aznable taking his place. Char is the one who finds and enters the Gundam. But largely it is the same. Char speaks words similar to Amuro did, he fights using the same techniques. It is an extended sequence of just doing the original Mobile Suit Gundam again. I hate it. And yet after it is over we get an interesting set up for the premise, Zeon is winning the One Year War. We see how this change made it possible for Zeon to turn the tide. Crucially it is still a hard fight for Zeon, the war still takes until 0080 and they suffer immense losses. We see this from the perspective of Char Aznable, who befriends a fellow returning character from Mobile Suit Gundam, Challia Bull. The two then form a bond and spend the rest of the time the movie spends on the One Year War portion fighting together.

Challia and Char are separated when as a last-ditch effort to win the war the federation attempts to drop an asteroid onto the moon. Char’s team is the only one in the area able to respond and they launch. During this extended sequence, we see Char and his team execute a plan to blow up and separate part of the asteroid to redirect it away from the moon. They do this by planting explosives inside the asteroid. This begins going well however fails when Char runs into an ace pilot of the federation who is able to slow him down. During this fight, the state-of-the-art psycommu installed in Char's mobile suit reacts and creates something known as a Zeknova, which disappears part of the asteroid saving the moon but Char and his gundam are missing after as well.

This whole 30-minute One Year War section of the movie exists to set up the world as we see it in 0085, the time in which most of the TV series takes place. The movie then moves into what will be episode 1 and 3 of the TV series. Beginning the movie this way should have spelled trouble for me. It starts by being choke-full of one of the things I hate most in fiction, references to other fiction in ways that do not add to the themes of the work. The first sequence of the film is just episode 1 of Mobile Suit Gundam but in a worse art style. We see things such as the mass production of the Big Zam, a call back to an episode towards the end of that series. The ace pilot that stops Char is his sister, Sayla Mass, a fan favourite character from Mobile Suit Gundam. The movie begins by constantly pointing towards Mobile Suit Gundam in hopes you remember and like that show. The one reference that works is the inclusion of Challia Bull. They are doing interesting things with Challia that morph him from a reference to a character worth exploring in his own right. He will be a main player in the series, at least up to the end of episode 6.

Yet tied to this 30-minute sequence is a recut of two very good episodes of TV that show the skill of this creative team. We see a new crew on the Sodon, Char’s old ship from the One Year War. They are on a special assignment and are looking for Char’s disappeared Gundam. Save for Challia, all the characters are new creations for this series. They’re a joy to watch interact. We are then introduced to our main character Amate “Machu” Yuzuriha. She is excellent. A youth adrift in the world not feeling her place in it that proves that this staff understand the core of Gundam. We see this even more as as we meet the next of our main characters, Nyaan, a war refugee smuggling illegal mobile suit parts into the colony. She is chased by violent police officers who have caught her smuggling. After a bit, we see that same police force using zakus to rip off the “illegal” shelters refugees have built to live in. There is an edge there that proves the staff know how Gundam is more than just cool robot fights but actual meditations on what war and conflict do to people and society.

Machu is instantly interested in Nyaan who runs into her and breaks her phone, leaving the smuggled item into Machu’s bag. Machu learns that the item is an illegal weapons control unit for mobile suits which is used in an underground fighting ring. Machu meets Nyaan and the two go to deliver the module to the ones who purchased it, one of the fighting clans in the ring, the Pomeranians. During this, we see the aforementioned police attack on the refugees’ domiciles, who are looking for where two gundams have fled. Machu is enraged by this and attempts to commandeer the Pomeranians zaku. She ends up stealing one of the missing gundams, the GQuuuuuuX, activating its psycommu with her newtype abilities. She then fights off two police zakus before hiding the gundam with the Pomeranians for safe keeping.

The next section of the movie is episode 3 of the TV series. It features Machu being bored of her everyday life as a high school student and runs out to find where she remembers something similar to her newtype sensations. There she meets Shuji, the third member of our core trio. Shuji is another excellent character in that we mainly see him through the eyes of Machu and Nyaan. Thus, we see him as a kind of manic pixie dream paint sniffer. The two girls do not see him as a person but as a way they can get what they desire. It is a brilliant way to characterize all three. Shuji is a mentally unstable boy who lives in an air lock with the gundam Char disappeared in. He doesn’t have money and is constantly hungry. He, like Nyaan, is on the lower rungs of society in the colony. He believes the gundam is telling him what to do and obeys its commands, such as when he agrees to fight with Machu in the illegal fighting ring. The movie ends after the pair are successful in winning the first clan battle of the series.

This extended section is an example of what the show does excellently. We get great character work of our main trio; we are instantly able to understand their characters through their interactions with each other and hey set a strong base for the series to build off of. Th world is interesting, playing off Universal Century Gundam while trying to be its own thing. Machu specifically slots rather well into the role of a Gundam protagonist having the signature rebellious spirit the Universal Century protagonists are known for while still being an original character. She is part of a lineage but not derivative of that lineage. Supporting characters such as the Sodon crew provide differing perspectives on the world as military members that our civilian main trio do not have. This gives the world a feeling of being larger than the one space colony of Izuma the story has thus far remained in.

The film was a weird way to launch the start of the story of the series. It is a better than the televised version of the first 3 episodes. The TV series starts with Machu meeting Nyaan and fighting the police and is very good. It then gets sidetracked with the Char and the One Year War stuff, but crucially not all of it. Leaving out the important battle to stop the asteroid drop, the main and best part of that section, to a brief “and then this happened” abruptly at the end of the episode. The third episode is Machu meeting Shuji and fighting the first battle. Doing it this way you lose momentum of the main characters of the story, Machu, Nyaan, and Shuji. We start with Machu and Nyaan and have time to want to learn more about them only for episode 2 to be spent on a shot for shot remake of Mobile Suit Gundam, but as I said previously, worse. This is a consistent problem with the show. The A plot will be about our main trio and will be interesting, but there will always be a B or C plot that revolves around a call back to an old Universal Century character. Episode 3 features Cameron Bloom, 4 the scientist who upgrades the gundam near the end of Mobile Suit Gundam, 5 has the Black Tri Stars, and 6 has Bask Om and others.

It is as though the creative staff are uncertain people will like the story they have created and feel the need to through in references to older shows in other versions of this continuity to keep viewers engaged. When other, lesser, works do this I hate it for a simple reason; it reminds me of other better works I could go back to and enjoy more. With this show it is more complicated. The base of the show is very good. I have said I enjoy the main trio but important side characters such as the Pomeranians and Challia Bull and his Sodon crew are all enjoyable, the enemy pilot in episode 4 is a standout pilot of the week type character, the cyber newtype in episode 6 we meet briefly looks promising. The show is better than needing to remind me of Mobile Suit Gundam and with episode 6, Zeta Gundam. If I wanted to watch characters from those shows I could watch them again. I come to GQuuuuuuuX to see the new characters and their story. It is frustrating to want to spend time with them only for there to be sequences that exist to shoehorn in characters from other works.

Yet it is more complicated than that as well. By featuring characters such as Cameron Bloom and Bask Om we are learning about how similar this Universal Century is to the one we previously knew is. Or at least we are if one has watched Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta Gundam. For fans of Gundam who have not watched those shows they are learning nothing from these cameos but are just given a bunch of names and characters they don’t know. This is another reason I dislike this type of reference. I held off on writing this until the halfway point because the references did not get bad at this until episode 6. Cameron Bloom’s nature and what it says about the world does not particularly affect the story at large, it is a nod to fans of the older shows but to new fans he is just a kind of bureaucrat. One loses very little by not knowing him specifically and what that says about this alternate Universal Century. What the show does with Bask Om is different. We learn he is against Kycillia Zabi and that is his introduction. A new viewer of the show would not know that he is a federation member with extreme fascist leanings willing to do things such as gas colonies and allow terror plots to go ahead to gain control and keep people in line. That he is in some level of power paints an ill picture of the state of the Earth Federation post One Year War. A new viewer would not get that context. The show may spell it out for them down the line and yet that leads to wondering why he needed to be here now.

I blame the nature of this series for its shortcomings. Usually, when a new gundam is announced it is either in the main Universal Century or it is completely separate Alternate Universe of which there are now many. Those separate ones often play with similar themes to the Universal Century, but they are able to explore them differently. They often do this through the use of character archetypes. In an AU, it is often common to find someone in a goofy mask or sunglasses. These are known as Char clones, due to their nature as being similar to Char at least in appearance. They often form a kind of rivalry with the main character as well, but not always. This allows shows to put different lens on the character of Char, such as Jamil Neate who rather than be a rival is the captain of the ship the main character, Garrod Ran, is part of in Gundam X. This allows for these alternate universe shows to explore ideas in dialogue with the Universal Century but without simply repeating where past Gundams have ended up.

By existing as an alternate Universal Century, GQuuuuuuX is unable to escape the Universal Century in the same manner as other alternate universes. Rather than being able to play with the tropes and archetypes of previous Universal Century stories, it is weighed down by those stories. People on Bluesky are constantly wondering if their specific favourite character from earlier things will show up. There is excitement around around who will show up and I find it diminishes the excitement for the story of Machu and the gang. Each moment we spend on old characters from other shows we could have spent learning about the new characters.

That is not to say that the show does not use its time well. Once again, we return to Cameron Bloom. Through his interaction with Challia Bull we learn a lot about both the world and Challia specifically. This is good, it is dense writing that gets many points across in a short time, important for a show which likely only has a 12-episode run time. But the previous episode to that was episode 2, which wasted a large chunk of an entire episode on a shot-for-shot remake of Mobile Suit Gundam episode 1, which did not allow it to show the important parts of that section of the movie. More it seems as though the show is leaning on episode 2 style cameos that waste time and frustrate an audience who is invested in the main story. The Black Tri Stars start off well enough, giving us a window into the life of decommissioned Zeon soldiers now that the war is over. But the fight against them is an extended reference to their episode of Mobile Suit Gundam. They use the same techniques and make the same call outs. It does make sense for the same people to be fighting the same way and yet I cannot help but think of it as pandering. They set up for the fight is interesting, Machu is unavailable and Nyaan has to pilot the GQuuuuuuX, while Shuji has a fever and is not in fighting shape. But we lose out on time exploring this due to it being the Black Tri Stars. We need to see them do their iconic moves which take time and honestly are not that interesting. I found the fight against Shiiko Sugai much more interesting and also found her to be a much more compelling character as she was something new to the setting rather than just pulled from another TV show. She was able to be a better look at what our protagonists could be should they follow in her path and has a meaningful impact on the themes of the show. One can understand her as a negative look at what Machu and Nyaan’s obsession with Shuji could end up like or tie her inability to move past things as similar to Challia. The Black Tri Stars do not have that kind of thematic weight. They explain the world, which is good, but they do not explain our characters.

This half season of GQuuuuuuX has left me both interested and severely wanting. There is an interesting story of adolescence in it which I find deeply compelling and keeps me tuning in right as it drops at 10 AM. At GQuuuuuuX’s best, it reminds me why I fell in love with Gundam all those years ago watching the Mobile Suit Gundam movies in one sitting on a drive to northern Alberta. However, it cannot help but keep showing me characters from that show as if its an attempt to keep me engaged by going “look, its Gundam, you like Gundam” and I do like Gundam, but if I wanted to watch the old characters do their thing there is at least three different versions of Mobile Suit Gundam I could experience right now. I can’t get Machu, Nyaan, and Shuji’s story anywhere else but GQuuuuuuX. I wish they were trusting that it was a good worthwhile story on its own.