English Dub Review: Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX “Machu’s Rebellion”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As the Cyber-Newtypes attack the city to kill Lady Kycilia, Machu and Nyaan attempt to run from the Pomeranians to protect Shuji, when a strange phenomenon occurs once again.

OUR TAKE

Holy Status Quo Smasher, Batman! Yeah, I guess we’re pretty decisively done with Clan Battles, since Machu and Nyaan basically try to rob Annqi and make a break for it with Shuji. How that was going to work in the long run is unclear since the two of them like Shuji and have increasing, barely restrained animosity for the other, but it seems the Red Gundam sensed there was way too much drama and decided to peace out with Shuji on its own, as something probably very similar to the Zeknova happens and poofs them both out of existence. Where they ended up is something we probably won’t know for at least a couple weeks, which I’ll get into at the end, but for now there’s WAY too much else to cover here. In addition to what’s happening with the main group, we have that assassination attempt that got set up last time, with rogue former Federation members making a play with Cyber-Newtypes, Deux and Gates…and getting their shit wrecked pretty much immediately. For reference, Cyber-Newtypes (and characters with similar backgrounds) in other shows don’t typically have super long life expectancies to begin with, but even Four Murasame (a similar character to Deux but was in Zeta Gundam) lasted like six episodes, and those were pretty spread out.

Chalia manages to take both of them down, as well as capture Machu and the GQuuuuuux, and gains the favor of Kycilia, but reveals privately that his plan is to kill both her and Gihren, continuing Char’s vendetta against them, as well as trying to prevent a civil war. Meanwhile, Nyaan is separated and found by Xavier, Chalia’s underling who was an envoy for Kycilia and leaves with her, taking Nyaan to work with them. Our three leads are in different places, potentially on different sides of an escalating conflict, and Machu’s mom is no doubt going to be investigated by the government for her daughter’s extra-legal activities. This is all pretty crazy plot development stuff, and the worst part is…this really should’ve been a two-parter. Like I’m definitely not saying any of this was bad, it was pretty exciting (even if I’m not thrilled about the love triangle stuff) but it all felt like it went by WAY too fast. Which is made worse by the fact that we only have five episodes left in this season, possibly this SERIES, and the next one is going to be more of the flashback from the second episode. Honestly, when I did see the second episode, I thought there may be more, but maybe they cut it because it was a movie exclusive thing. But nope, looks like we’re getting the rest next time as we dig deeper into what really happened to Char Aznable, the Red Comet. And after that…who the hell knows!