After watching the series and the movie (see its review), i watched the special editions of the anime to see what is different and new. Being a big fan of gundam 00, i had a very high expectation of this special edition and hoped that it will be better than seed/ destiny 's special editions which were basically just rehashes of the series.
Spoiler!
Some background info: Gundam 00 special edition is split into 3 parts : I:Celestial being, II: End of World and III: Return the World. Part I corresponds roughly to season 1 of the anime.
The movie starts off incredibly well, as young setsuna struggles with his machine gun we see ribbons almark in the 0 gundam ( see my Hg review) on his armed intervention mission. A special scene which we do not see in the anime already.
Patrick first appearance remains unchanged.
Nothing special here as well as virtue makes its debut.
That's right, virtue packs a punch.
There are some extra scenes throughout the movie that looks very cool. The ss above shows exia in the reflection on a tieren ground type's blade.
Of course, exia proceeds to exterminates the tierens like a hot knife through soft butter.
The hot knife i was talking about.
The initial scenes were very much condensed, and we do not see much of the planning before any of the intervention. This is quite disappointing since it implied that sumeragi's tactics were not explained. The gundams went straight on their killing spree, and we were not told whether was it at sri lanka or moralia , etc.
I almost thought it was duo.
Nonetheless, dynames got an extended fighting scene against the flags. Instead of sniping them down with not much difficulty, we see dynames moving around in the battle against the flags.
Awesome. Dynames' fans rejoice.
Everyone loves the original lockon stratos.
However, most other action scenes were altered to shorten them. For example, in the gundam capture operation planned by sergei smirnov, we do not see the tactics of him and sumergi at all, The incredible nadleeh escape scene was left out in its entirety.
We only see nadleeh much later in the battle with the thrones.
Also, kyrios' escape was shortened such that it did not escape from the container. Instead hallelujah took over early and fought only a while before escaping.
Only soma's pink tieren taozi was shown and the epic killing of Adjutant Ming was left out. This was far too rushed i think.
The scene where allelujah/hallelujah destroyed the super human institute was well done though, as we see the scene and find out about his background at the same time.
I thought the thrones were good guys when they first appeared.
The appearance of the thrones remain intact. But some scenes were changed to shorten them. For example,
Instead of being ambushed after destroying the ship, exia got rammed head-on by ali's custom flag. Seriously exia would have dodged that.
Setsuna vs graham aker, who did not do much until the end of the movie.
Of course most fighting scenes still revolve around setsuna. I feel that the trans-am scene was too short though.
Disturbing image alert!
For some reason unknown, the special scenes involving alejandro corner is particularly disturbing. In his hotel room while watching exia fight, we see ribbons almark wearing a bathrobe? What were they doing, i wonder?
I was a little suspicious of alejandro when he seems a little too friendly with ribbons in the anime. In the special edition, i guess it is official that he is.....
So that is how ribbons got close to alenjadro. So much for being a innovator/innovade...
Regene also makes an early debute as she states that ribbons accelerates aeolia's plan by his own will.
GN-X appearance was quite rushed as well.
The thrones did not do much before ali decimated them.
Michael trinity did almost nothing in the movie before he got killed by ali.
One of the major special scenes involved dynames once again.
Trans-Am Dynames
Dynames did not go trans-am in the series. So only in the special edition we can see it in trans-am mode.
After destroying a few of the battleships, dynames faced throne zwei 1vs 1. In the original anime, dynames managed to overpower zwei until daryl kamikazed into it. In the special edition, daryl was non-existent. So dynames got hit by the fangs due to lockon's injured eye.
Also, it is revealed that lockon was not killed by the explosion of the Gn-arms immediately. Instead, his visor cracked and he died of space decompression. This scene is unique to the special edition and the ps2 game only.
Trans-am kyrios.
Nothing new about the super soldier scene.
Alvatore died of blades overdose. Nothing new here as well.
This is also in the original anime as well. But after building my Mg exia ignition mode, i watched this scene and saw that exia lost its entire head during its fight with graham. So i suppose setsuna picked exia's head up after the battle?
The ending was interesting enough, we see tierra alive and kicking, unlike in the anime where his fate is unknown until s2.
This scene, however makes the whole movie worth its salt. After the battle, we see setsuna and his cool desert goggles and jeep.
Conclusion:
This movie is in no way supposed to replace the whole of 00 s1. It is more of a recap with some cool new scenes. Hence if u watch this movie without watching the series, u will not understand what is going on. For instance, graham aker's fight and rivalry with setsuna seem meaningless in this movie as we do not see the deaths of daryl and howard at all.
Saji's sister kinue crossroad was also left out and we only see a flash of her with during celestial being initial announcement to the world.
Some suspense was also lost since we know about ribbons in the very beginning.
The awesomes:
1. Cool new scenes such as ribbons in 0 gundam.
2. Story is retold in a slightly different manner. Eg. setsuna narrated some parts like a recollection
3. Hong long was left out. I never knew what he was for in the anime in the first place.
The not-so-awesome
1. Too rushed at times. Could have been made into 2 parts.
2. Some characters were left out. Eg. daryl, kinue... This affected the story.
3. Sumeragi 's tactics were not explained.
Thus, i recommend this to people who have already watched the anime. Those who have not should not watch this as a substitute. The original anime is still the way to go.
Exia!
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