OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)In an alternate Universal Century where Zeon won the One Year War, Amate “Machu” Yuzuriha interferes with the smuggling of a part for a Mobile Suit and meets Nyann and her team of underground Mobile Suit fighters called The Pomeranians. At the same time, a mysterious Red Gundam reappears five years after disappearing and Zeon forces try to capture it with their Gundam GQuuuuuux, but fail. In their search, they begin destroying the area Machu and Nyann are in, but Machu manages to gain control of the GQuuuuuux, somehow activating the Omega Psycommu in its programming.OUR TAKEWe’ve got a new Gundam show to look at for the next few months and it’s with a dream team combo that almost no one expected: Writer and Storyboarder Hideaki Anno, best known for Neon Genesis Evangelion and his protege, Director Kazuya Tsurumaki, best known for the original FLCL. Both obviously have worked on mecha shows before, with Anno not just working on Evangelion, but also Gunbuster, his pastiche to classic mecha that was also his directorial debut, with Tsurumaki then going on to direct on the sequel to that, Diebuster, both of which ending up adding a ton to the genre as a whole, after which they would go on to make all four Rebuild of Evangelion films from 2007 to 2021. But I doubt anyone expected the two of them to ever end up doing a Gundam show, let alone at the same time. Still, it’s a welcome surprise, and despite the show currently only confirmed to have a CRIMINAL twelve episode run, I’m very much looking forward to see what their patented brand of anime crazy does to this franchise. And naturally, that crazy is starting off by establishing that this series is actually an alternate universe sequel to the original Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979, because…of course it is.If you follow my reviews, you may know that I like accessibility, meaning that I think anyone should be able to dive into a story from its stated beginning. But going by this first episode, there are a lot of terms thrown around like “Zeon” and “Spacenoids” and “Psycommu” that I certainly recognize but may throw those new to this universe, even a slightly changed one. What’s weirder is that the compilation film of the first three episodes that was briefly in US theaters did not start here, but with a full episode’s worth of backstory about how this timeline diverged, which looks like it will be covered in next week’s episode before coming back to present with the third. But all that aside, as an introduction to the story of Machu, a young girl who finds herself thrust from her average life into the world of Mobile Suit fighting and making a strange connection to the GQuuuuuux (pronounced like the sound a duck makes), this is actually a fine start, and it seems that her bond with Nyann is only going to get stronger from here going by the ED. However, we’ll have to wait a couple weeks to get more into that, as next week looks to be all about giving us an episode of Gundam What If.
