Mobile Suit Gundam 00 The Movie: A Wakening of the Trailblazer
劇場版 機動戦士ガンダム00 -A wakening of the Trailblazer-The year is 2314 AD, two years after Celestial Being's last great battle and the world faces a new crisis. A derelict Jupiter exploration ship, abandoned 130 years ago, has left its orbit and is approaching Earth. The ESF has also begun to exploit the power of Innovators through Descartes Shaman. The world's exposure to GN Particles has resulted in many people awakening as True Innovators. Realizing the military benefits of such individuals, the Earth Sphere Federation has begun to research Innovation and exploit the emerging Innovators' abilities. As Celestial Being and its Gundam Meisters begin their final mission to save humanity from an unimaginable threat, the Extraterrestrial Living-metal Shape-shifters (ELS), Gundam Meister Setsuna F. Seiei is about to discover the true purpose of his evolution as an Innovator and the nature of the "dialogues" for which Aeolia Schenberg's plan had prepared the human race. (Source: Wikipedia)
Reviews
lonnie.ankunding - 2015-04-28 04:41:45
SPOILERS FOR GUNDAM 00 and AWofTB AHEAD
ANIMATION AND SOUND
To start off, this is a pretty movie. Everything looks good, and sounds good, and both your eyes and ears will very much thank you after your viewing. However, does this mean that the finale to the much acclaimed Gundam 00 saga is just as good? Sadly, not quite. While it provides the final details to what Aeolia's plan really was, the movie was quite pointless and in some places counteractive to the development of the world and it's characters.
SETSUNA (Characters)
Of course, we have our Protagonist, Setsuna. Throughout the course of events in the 00 series proper, he comes to reach a certain understanding and rekindle his humanity as he opened up to the crew and eventually realized his status as an Innovator. AWotTB takes that and turns it right around, completely circumventing the character development faced in the series in order for Setsuna to have something resembling a character arc in the new movie. His Innovator status which helped him achieve understanding in the show now serves to be a source of alienation from the rest of the crew where it hadn't before. Does it really make sense for it to be that way? The movie might tell you so, but the reviewer thinks otherwise. Throughout the course of the movie, Setsuna comes to grips again with his Innovator status and "reawakens" again. Only this time, he's less of a human then ever before, as now he's literally part alien on top of all this, as though being an alien isn't as alienating as just being an enhanced human was. But hey, if he's okay with it, who am I to judge? Why should character development have to make sense?
ELS (Story)
Then we get to the main "villain" of the story, the alien life known only as ELS (pronounced 'else'). The reason I used villain in quotations was because once you actually learn their motives, you realize that there really was no villain in the first place, but what can be tied up into just misunderstandings that led into hostilities. The ELS are a species that learn through joining itself with a foreign host, assimilating it into a sort of quantum brainwave hivemind. This is not intended as a sign of aggression, the ELS are a peaceful species. However, this act of joining can severely damage human brain function and is overall aggressive in appearance, which lends itself to the reason of why Humanity began fighting back. Instead of actually providing a new villain that challenged the new world that Celestial Being fought for, the movie uses abstract alien life that eventually resolves itself by Setsuna becoming the Silver Surfer and realizing they actually meant no harm, complete with big flowers of UNDERSTANDING in space. Now while the presence of the recurring desert flower isn't really an issue, as the ELS after joining with Setsuna come to see it as a symbol of peace and understanding, the whole conflict just seems like a waste of time.
OVERALL
In all, the movie felt to me like a bunch of questionable decisions put into two-hours that weren't really needed in the first place, and as a result any potential it may have had is quickly diminished. The show ended fine. Did you really need to open up romantic subplots with Feldt again only to drop them right when it seemed that Setsuna could actually love something other than GUNDAM? No. At least that would've been actual progress for his character different from the show. What was the point of introducing a new morally ambiguous pilot only for him to completely job and die halfway in the movie? There was none, its just the same kind of forced drama that went into the decision to reintroduce Ribbon's character model for an early conflict. Why introduce Mehna Carmine, the original human that would serve as the basis for Nena Trinity? Because Nena is dead and the 11's (Otaku) don't like that, so you try and bring the next closest thing by tying her mirror image up with an already established character like Billy. It's just not good story telling.
While the insight into Aeolia's plan and the people surround him who had influence on the plan like E.A. Ray was appreciated, it does not justify the length of an altogether disappointing, albeit nice and pretty, movie.
At least Andrei died.