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Spoilers ahead.
I finished Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, slept on it, and settled on a 9/10. It’s not flawless. The important for the story romance barely worked for me, and the political plot stays vague enough that chunks of it seem to happen somewhere off screen. Almost everything else landed, though.
Living in an artificial world
What hooked me first was Machu’s internal monologue near the start. The gravity she feels isn’t real gravity, the sky overhead isn’t a real sky, and she knows perfectly well the water she dives into isn’t a real sea either.
I love science fiction that starts there. Not another five minutes explaining how the reactor works, but someone trying to describe what it’s like to be born in space. A giant rotating cylinder full of cities is a staggering piece of engineering to us. To Machu it’s just home.
Planetes scratched the same itch years ago: EVA shifts, orbital debris, budgets, shitty jobs, people for whom being in space was just another Tuesday. The Expanse hooked me the same way before its politics took over. GQuuuuuuX spends far less time on normality of its world, but those few moments were enough to make the colony feel like a place people live in rather than a sci-fi backdrop.
It looks fantastic
Visually the show is just great. Palette, lighting, graffiti, cityscapes, interfaces, industrial machinery, I can go on and one. A plethora of shots where I paused and observe.
Something cool they did: the past plays out in a visual style lifted straight from 1980s Gundam, while the present-day story gets this aggressive hyper-stylized modern look. Simple idea that works really well especially for the show with the lineage spanning decades. The past events in the show literally belongs to an older era of animation. Then the two visual languages start bleeding into each other as the worlds and histories collide, which makes it even better.
The mobile suits are detailed and functional too. I’m not a 3D anime hater (Knights of Sidonia is one of my all time favorites), and the CG mech battles here are very clean. In a sense that you can see exactly what is going on despite ultra-high speed and flashiness of action. Mech action here is top-tier from start to finish, 100%!
And the soundtrack is magical
Good soundtrack in a Gundam show is basically a given, however GQuuuuuuX managed to surprise me here as well. A lot of it sounds like lo-fi, downtempo, trip-hop, liquid drum’n’bass and ambient electronic all stirred together. I’m probably butchering half of those genre labels, because you can’t just put a label on a music like that.
Instead of screaming EPIC SPACE OPERA at you with orchestras, GQuuuuuuX often sounds like a strange late-night city that happens to float in space. Fits the neon, the colonies and the young cast perfectly. Both ambient and battle tracks were so good I went hunting for the OST as soon as the final credits rolled.
The romance… yeah, no
Maybe it was just rushed. I never bought Machu’s attachment to Shuji, and honestly I’m not sure I bought either girl’s attachment hard enough to justify how completely their lives start revolving around him. Two interesting, capable girls fall for a mostly useless space hobo who can barely hold a conversation and shows no particular interest in either of them for most of the story. Apparently owning a Gundam really is the ultimate dating advantage.
Early on Machu was such a fascinating characters precisely because she was decisive, impulsive, had no brakes at all. Then jealousy kicked in and for a while those same qualities turned her into a hysterical mess. I had to remind myself she’s a teenager, teenagers are irrational, especially about crushes and Shuji just happened to be a nice blank canvas to project girl’s wishes onto him. Still cringed though. Luckily, the show got so much going on that it didn’t hyperfocus on that barely working relationship. The funny thing is that the tiny amount of romance between Char and Lalah worked far better. Their last scene is genuinely touching despite using a fraction of the screen time.
Machu and Nyaan, meanwhile, absolutely work
The relationship I actually cared about. From start to finish they are both just fun to watch. Their dynamic has friction, jealousy, rivalry, real affection and eventually trust, and it develops out of things that actually happen between them rather than the script insisting they share some enormous bond. When they fight together as Mavs is an emotional and cinematic peak. Also notable mention, Nyaan instinctively shooting Kycilia the instant Kycilia threatens Machu was such a good moment, man.
Nyaan ended up one my favorite character in the show. Calm, observant, and just smart. The poisoned cake scene deserves applause, really. A character reads the situation, puts two and two together and just don’t make a dumb mistake to be saved last minute by someone else??? In my anime!? Also, Casting Yui Ishikawa is basically cheating.
One major question about her, though. She hears that Kycilia’s plan effectively means killing everyone on Earth and barely processes it. I mean, she is obviously isn’t an idealistic savior of humanity; her life has given her very little reason to care about grand causes. But there’s an enormous gap between “Earth isn’t my problem” and “billions of people are about to die, whatever.” Nihilism at cosmic scale and Nyaan isn’t shown to be a nihilist in the first place.
The plot convenience that turns out not to be one
Something I appreciated far more once the series was over. Back in episode 2, Char simply stumbles onto an unattended cutting-edge experimental Gundam, with an assault ship basically thrown in. At the time I filed it under massive plot convenience. Of course he finds the magic prototype. Sure.
Then the finale flips that scene upside down. What we learn about Lalah and the nature of this universe forces a full mental rewind: this world exists because of her attempts to build a reality where Char survives. Suddenly his absurd luck isn’t luck. Reality itself was bent around the requirement that Char must not die.
It reminded me, oddly enough, of Sergei Lukyanenko’s old Line of Dreams and Emperors of Illusion novels, where reality shaped around one person eventually raises the much uglier question of whether the “real” world exists just as theme park for an adventurous god. It’s a sign of a good writing. A twist that makes a dumb-looking scene from ten episodes earlier suddenly click is much better, because it means somebody actually thought about the shape of the story.
Politics in the background
The larger political plot is harder to judge. A lot happens: Zeon factions, conspiracies, old rivalries, betrayals, Newtypes, alternate history, Char doing Char things, Kycilia doing Kycilia things, until by the end everyone is shooting at everyone else and the finale becomes an exciting chaotic free-for-all. I especially enjoyed Challia Bull’s landing ship amid all this. Outside, everyone betrays everyone, mobile suits swarm, reality starts breaking, and his crew just sits there like spectators trying to figure out what the hell is going on while making dry comments.
The political story itself stays broad and leaves a lot unexplained or off frame. Normally that would bother me more. I think it works here because this isn’t really a political chronicle; you experience these enormous events through a handful of characters who each see only fragments. The story cares more about Machu, Nyaan, Shuji, Char and Lalah than about diagramming Zeon’s power structure, so I’ll accept the vagueness. I’d still have happily taken another few episodes to let that side breathe.
Style over perfection, and I’m fine with that
The end result is a strange one. The romance didn’t work, some politics needed room, a few decisions raised an eyebrow. But the style, atmosphere, music, fights, mechanical design and sheer creative insanity outweigh all of that. Most importantly, I never felt the writers were dumbing smart characters down to railroad the plot toward a predetermined ending. People misjudge, misunderstand, some are simply faster or better positioned than others. Fine.
When the finale goes completely off the rails, Machu and Nyaan fighting together, Char and Challia chasing their agendas, Shuji arriving from another reality, decades of Gundam history crashing into each other… it somehow seamlessly works. Excellent combat animations and epic soundtrack does heavy lifting, but the story itself is resolved rather beautifully too!
I wouldn’t pretend that I’m a big oldschool Gundam fan and make a high-brow assessment of what is real Gundam and what isn’t ’cause I never even watched old 80’s Gundam. So in some way I couldn’t even appreciate GQuuuuuuX enough for all its references and callbacks to the older shows. So this is my rather independent impression and it is genuinely good! This Gundam is just a fun show. I vibed with the music, loved the visuals, enjoyed the story and it earned enough credit that I was willing to just overlook few moments that didn’t click.
9/10.
I have deliberately avoided to post screenshots from key moments and focused on style and details to not rob viewers of the visual experience, but here are a few more interesting shots.
