To be fair it is a 16 year old anime so don't expect much fancy graphics. In fact gundam seed is the first series to get CGI for its gundams so Wing's gundams are not in CGI. I will split the review into 2 halves : before the pilots got their upgraded gundams and after.
First Half:
Starting with the music i actually liked the opening song: just communication. Classic i guess. On a side note gundam wing only have 2 OPs and i ED and the OP only change at ep 40 to Rhythm Emotion which is a good song as well. I disliked the ed though. Not that the song"it's Just Love!" is awful, just that Bandai decided to show clips of Relena having fun with some animals (eg.lions) and i think that basically sucks.
I think gundam wing started out pretty badly. Heero seems to be a rather horrible pilot that cannot dodge and he crashed his gundam before he started his mission. Then Relena the perfect girl saved him and they went to the same school. Instead of staying low profile, heero decided to tear relena's birthday invitation card in front of other students causing a big commotion. Things started to get better after ep8/9 when heero and the other gundam pilots got tricked into killing the pacifists ( in one swoop apparently since they were all in one pacifist plane). That was the first sign of good plot.
Things get more exciting as Heero fought Zechs ( Wing Vs Tallgeese).
Things get even more exciting when Heero blew himself up along with Wing. I definitely did not expect that.
Major plus point for Wing's story writer.
Shenlong gundam looked quite ugly at first but the design sort of grew on me. Wufei has a rather weird personality it seems...
While Heero was walking around apologizing to the Pacifists' family members, other gundam pilots got pretty busy fighting around and finding their purposes of life.
Zechs wore a mask within a helmet apparently. Tribute to Char.
Second Half: This is where gundam wing starts to shine i think. The new upgraded gundams were very well designed and the plot was really good.
Epyon, judging from its distinct red and evil looking nature, we can all tell it is a antagonist suit. So i was surprised when heero yuy got the suit from treize ( the smart alec that tricked the gundams into killing the pacifists).
Apparently in the second half of the series there is some kind of gundam swapping game going on. Wing zero
(the badass main suit, equivalent of freedom in seed) got passed around from pilot to pilot. First Quatre manufacture it, piloted it then he lost control due to the zero system. Then it got captured by the enemy, which send a test pilot who in turn got killed by the zero system. Zechs then showed up in tallgeese and took zero for himself.
Zero vs epyon.
After zechs fight heero, heero decided to trade epyon for zechs's zero. This is much like a pokemon trade where 2 trainers fight their pokemon and decided that the opposing poke was better.
Epyon appearance is rather fancy it seems.
But one of my favourite gundam appearance was sandrock. It appeared with an army of grunts. ( quatre had quite a few servants) to take out the opposing grunt suits.
Altron (shenlong's upgrade) was pretty kickass too. It is one of the few gundams that uses a flamthrower. ( not sure how practical that is.)
Altron also uses a twin beam trident, really cool looking. Good to have a chinese pilot once in a while.
But Bandai decided that deathscthye had the most fans so it got its MG hell custom version first.
The five gundam pilots got together as a team in the end and despite horrible teamwork they did manage to stop an impending disaster. Not going to spoil the ending for those who have not watched the anime, i will say that i really loved the ending. In fact i like it more than seed destiny's ending which was too similar to seed's. ( destiny'ending was so bad bandai had to add a Final plus to appease angry fans)
Characters:
In the beginning i thought heero was the crazy pilot who apparently was not too smart as well. Then as the series progressed it became clear as day that all the characters were insane. Special mention goes to Lady Une, who was already irritating at first. Then she turns out to have a split personality which makes things even worse. I was glad when she was shot while trying to save the gundam pilots. (she started out being the gundam's enemies, then lets just say she changed her mind after breakfast) Apparently Sunrise decided that she was the best after all and she revived. She proceeded on to escape from the hospital, steal gundam wing, hijack a space shuttle, and save the day by getting in the way of a laser weapon.
It is in fact official that heero was the only sane pilot. Duo maxwell said it himself when the five pilots got together.
A cool screenshot from the Op rhythm emotion
If only relena was this cool in the anime. She was annoying in the beginning,but somehow she manged to be the leader of the sanc kingdom. After many soldiers died in battle trying to protect the sanc kingdom, she decided to surrender in the midst of the battle. She could have made up her mind earlier...
She did become a more likable character towards the end though. She was so bad in the beginning that i had to skip all her scenes, which is plenty. My favourite scene of her was in the last ep ( Spoliers!) when she tore up Heero's birthday card for her. That kinda makes up for him tearing her card earlier and is in fact a meaningful scene after what they have went through.
Duo Maxwel and Hilde. My favourite pair in the anime. Hilde looks much better than relena, though i have no idea why she defected over to duo's side so incredibly fast after meeting duo. I guess duo must be really popular.
Action scenes:
One major disappointment of the anime is the reused shots of grunts getting shot down. There always seems to be 3 grunts standing in fixed positions, getting destroyed in the same way in different background.
Everytime shenlong attacks, this is the exact same pose he does.
Only major scenes such as epyon vs zero is well-done and fluid. Other grunt fights are unimpressive.
Conclusion:
The awesomes:
1. Heero's green tank top
2. The MSs have very good designs
3. Gets better and better towards the finale
4. Wing zero vs epyon is truly epic
5. Characters like Quatre and wufei gets developed rather well.
6. Just communication is a great OP.
The not-so-awesomes
1. Beginning of anime was horrible
2. Many plot holes, eg. how did lady une manage to steal wing and the space shuttle??
3. Lady Une is really the worst
4. Many scenes of grunts are reused
5. Infiltration of military bases seems pretty easy
6. Wufei is rather sexist initially, he was pretty bothered when he realised his enemy is female.
My score: 7.0/ 10
After watching the 49 episodes of wing, i must say this is a really good anime even by today's standards. I probably complained too much about lady une but i think i should give the anime more credit seeing it is made in 1995. It is to be continued in Endless waltz, which i will talk about some other day.
Adding to my Mg wishlist: MG wing zero.
Anyone knows what does just wild beat communication means?
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