Gundam Reconguista in G
ガンダム GのレコンギスタIn the 1014th year of the Regild Century, humanity has seemingly prospered after previous centuries of war. This is due to the ability to harvest power through the use of photon batteries, and an orbital elevator known as the Capital Tower, which has become something of a religious icon for the new age. However, various threats to the Capital Tower have necessitated the creation of an academy meant to teach promising students how to defend and repair it, named the Capital Guard Academy.Gundam G no Reconguista begins with Bellri Zenam, a student at the Capital Guard Academy, and his classmates undergoing a practical exercise in repairing the Umbilical Cable of the Central Tower. Unluckily for them, they get attacked by the mobile suit known as "G-Self," piloted by the female space pirate, Aida. Though Bellri and his classmates manage to capture her and the mobile suit, the Capital Guard Academy also comes under attack shortly afterwards, and they are quickly overwhelmed. Realizing that they need the power of the G-Self to defend their home, Bellri hops into the cockpit and heads into action himself in an attempt to defend his friends and home.
Reviews
ubaumbach - 2015-07-25 09:45:44
Such a waste.
Technically, it's very interesting, a nice homage in terms of design and animation to the 80's mecha. The OST is cool too.
But the problem is that they (maybe) tried to tie so much with the 80's that the story is a complete garbage.
Nothing has sense. The characters are all dumb, they act dumb, the defy all logic (and they are totally cliche but that's actually almost a good point in this case), the scenario is a total garbage. The strategies makes me want to smash my head on the wall ("hey look we're going to trick the enemy with an inflatable spaceship placed 200 meters away from the real one").
It really is a waste because visually, the rendering is pretty cool and coherent. But that's the only coherent thing in this anime.
breanna68 - 2015-04-25 03:25:29
This got me a bit hyped since this is handled by the father of the Gundam franchise himself Mr. Yoshiyuki Tomino. But after watching the entire thing I came to the conclusion that even father figures can also lost their charm. I expected to see a grand tale of power struggle 2000 years after the events of the Universal Century. What I got is a TV show about a bunch of people who randomly picks up fight with random factions with the goal of just pissing off each other and make up afterwards like nothing happened. Wow.
Bellri Zenam is our poster boy MC. Cheeful, talented, and somewhat courageous enough to stand up and fight when situation calls for it. One day, on his space survival drill, an unknown group of mobile suits suddenly attacked their area. They claim to be space pirates, albeit really dumb ones for not doing enough damage to intimidate the people for their demand. Bellri, being the cool guy that he is, hijacked a space elevator maintenance mobile suit and used it to fight and eventually capture one of the mobile suits. What follows is a story of...oh, wait...this is where it all fell apart. Really. Summarizing the overall plot is simple, its a power struggle between two factions in earth. But the events that suit followed are so confusing, mishandled, poorly executed, and just messy overall. First there were two factions, the Capital tower and their Capital guards and they are at conflict with the country of Armenia. Then somehow the Capital guards have their own agenda and are now doing uncosolidated skirmishes without the consent of the Capital Tower. Then later on the spacenoids called the Towasanga were involved, for some 'reason'. Then much later another group, the G-IT group became involve because of earth issues. And then some sort of Venusian king became involve and...oh crap I lost track.
The faction caught between this clusterfuck was the so called "space pirate" crew of the TerraFauna mothership. Well, think of them as Eureka Seven's Gekkostate, only more organized. This is where the whole thing became head scratchingly confusing. They are an independent crew that don't know how neutrality works. I mean, they welcome in ther crew a Capital army cadet, an armenian woman, a towasangan top pilot, and somewhere along the way, some G-IT crew and other spacenoid I don't even know got there in the first place. If you feel this review is confusing, just imagine how hard it is for us, the ones who finished this all the way through.
Let's talk about the characters since this is the least confusing part of this damn thing. Bellri is a capital guard cadet, he can pilot a gundam-like mobile suit (the word "gundam" is obselete in their timeline) called the G-self. He is very conflicted all thoughout this whole ordeal simply because he has to put up with all the bullshit the TerraFauna and the people around him has to undergo with. Alongside him was Aida Surugan a self-proclaim space pirate who can't aim for shit despite piloting a literal long range mobile suit called Arcane. Like Bell, she is very conflcted as well with the events in this entire show. She and Bell share something special, but yeah, I won't spoil that for the sake of the viewers (or those attempting to finish this damn thing). Another pilot was Raraiya Monday, a mysterious girl with amnesia and for some reason acts like a 4 year for some reason. She receovered her memory later on, and then became totally irrelevant to the story despite being one of the main characters. Hard. Do I need to talk about the others? I feel like it would just be a waste of out time since their roles ricochet like mad in this utter nonsense. And oh there is Char clone here too...but he sucks and his mobile suits are so ugly that Bandai probably will never release their gunpla kits, ever.
One of the redeeming quality of this show is the art and animation. Everyone is pretty and colorful, not the washed out world that the UC saga gave us. Mobile suit battles are all hand drawn 2D, so that is a plus. CGI are used but only in motherships and some Space colonies, and they done quite well. I would say alot of effort were place into the production value of this show. Sound is not bad too. Sound effects are spot on, a standard in gundam shows. The OST fits perfectly as well. I could only wish the 2 opening songs arent forgettable (not to mention lazy for the sequence are just bunch of random scenes per cour). The ED is quite amazing though, its catchy and stellar with a cool ED sequence animation too.
So it is dissapointing? Definitely, since my expectation for this is quite high upon announcement. Would I recommend this? Only to hardcore gundam fans though, but even them would probably turn this down fast as well. People who are just looking for decent mecha action will definitely turn this down since the story confusing as hell, the characters have alot of inconsistencies, and some battles are just underwhelming.