While I was in Japan for three and a half months (I’m back now, by the way), I finished the entirety of the Gundam saga. Minus a couple of episodes of Gundam Evolve, Gundam Seed Astray, and the upcoming Gundam Unicorn, I’ve seen every major Gundam work of manga, movie, or anime. And honestly, Gundam Evolve and Gundam Seed Astray aren’t that major. At any rate, that includes Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, the final story in the Universal Century. Taking place over twenty years after Crossbone Gundam, Victory Gundam features Earth being attacked by yet another evil space empire: the Zanscare Empire. Young Uso Evin and his friend/potential-but-never-explored love interest Shakti Kareen get caught up in the fighting between the Zanscare and an A.E.U.G. look-alike resistance force called the League Militaire. Uso, only thirteen, ends up getting to pilot the League’s brand new, mass-produced Victory Gundam and ends up facing against such opponents as Cronicle Asher, Shakti’s uncle and brother to the Zanscare Queen (guess who Shakti really is), Fuala Griffon, a completely mentally unstable Newtype, and Katejina Loos, his former friend and greatest enemy.
Once again, we get a lackluster Gundam series. So, what’s bad about this one? Most of what was bad about Zeta Gundam, though not as much. For one, the characters are wholly uninteresting. Shakti is a mishmash of various previous Gundam female protagonists (Sayla Mass, Fa Yuiry), the vast majority of the League Militaire is vapid and uninteresting (see Shrike Team), save perhaps Odelo Henrik and Marbet Fingerhat, and the villains’ motivations entirely unclear. We never really figure out what Fonse Kagatie, the real mastermind behind the Zanscare, is trying to do, as it’s not clear if he actually believes in the Zanscare Queen, Maria Pia Armonia, and is just nuts, or if he was manipulating everything all along for his own benefit. You get some indication that it’s the latter, but it’s not entirely clear. Why does Katejina Loos go so evil? Not sure. The reasons stated in the show are that 1.) she believes in the ideals of Zanscare and 2.) she wants Cronicle and Uso to fight for her love. Pedophile much? Eww… And how does she even know Uso? I’m still wondering about that.
Then, there’s the absolutely abysmal portrayal of women. Aside from Marbet Fingerhat, who is an actually decent pilot and interesting character, and Fuala Griffon, basically everyone woman is defined by her womanness and/or her love relationships. Even worse is the Shrike Team, which is introduced simply to have expendable people to slaughter in order to advance more important characters’ plotlines and make the show seem realistic. Definitely a case of Women in Refrigerators, if you know what that is. Katejina is also pretty terrible, as mentioned above. She even makes a bunch of female pilots dress in bikinis and fly around in a space station with bazookas just to throw Uso off. That… is just messed up on so many levels, as well as being completely pointless.
And believe me, there’s more ridiculous stuff. Like the mobile suit designs. Most of Zanscare’s mobile suits either fly around by beam rotors strapped to their wrists (can also turn into helicopters) or fly around inside giant car tires. I’m sure a rotor couldn’t support the entire weight of a mobile suit if strapped to a wrist, and I’m pretty sure that car tires don’t belong on giant spaceships and can’t make you float on water. But according to Victory Gundam, they can! Then there’s the idiocy of the Victory Gundam and Victory 2 Gundam themselves, which are made up of multiple core fighters that generally only dock in mid-fight. Yes, because as we all know, it’s so much more efficient to have suits made up of multiple parts that have to dock and can easily be shot down. Which they totally make ridiculous with the fact that the Gundams are mass-produced, so the parts get shot down all the time. Sure, the animation’s good for the time, and the voice acting is good. The music is even pretty dang good compared to other Gundam series, minus the fact that the opening and closing theme songs are way too happy for this show. But the plot is absolutely abysmal, second only to that of Zeta Gundam in terms of crapiness in a Gundam show. Really, there is very little good about this show. It’s another example of one of Tomino Yoshiyuki’s extremely depressed periods, in which tons of people die, and there’s really very little happiness in the end. There isn’t even a great ambigious ending. It just… ends. But hey, someone out there will like it anyway.
Story: 2.8 Animation: 8.5 Soundtrack: 7.8 Voice Acting: 9.0 Overall: 4.3
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