Admirable attempt to have a pistol shaped like -the other organ-.

I finally caved in to boredom and began watching Gundam 00, two years after its debut and millions of blog posts behind the pack. Despite its giant cast of characters (and plethora of boring voices), Double-O does have substance to it… with the usual quirks which bangs one on the head reminding one: “It’s a cartoon, fool!”

After four episodes, one notices that before being a hack-and-slash show, Double-O is big on politics. This is a refreshing change from the previous Gundam with the country unions receiving no representation other than in the form of crazed idealists and fundamentalists. What irks me is the obviousness of the creative team not having done their homework.

Three hundred years into the future, three shafts 50000 kilometres long with antannae stretching thousands of kilometres wide are the world’s only viable source of energy. While these contraptions are impractical and, more clearly, absurd from an engineer’s point of view, one is able to forgive this implementation for without such ‘marvels of engineering’ biped machines of war wouldn’t exist either.

But what of the change to society and methods of communication? One observes in Double-O that:

  • People still use handphones! Are we to believe that a device which has evolved so greatly from a concept in the 19th century still retains its 21st century form in the 24th century?
  • People wear the same clothes as well. Fashion hasn’t evolved either. Think of how we dressed 300 years and how we dress now.
  • Loser wearing a crappy looking school attire can still attract a voluptuous blonde female classmate.

And some mind-baffling wonders, like:

  • Logistical security is still as crappy as it is now, allowing giant robots to be smuggled successfully with raw materials, even after a terrorist organisation with advanced technology declares their intention to fuck shit up (hell, even a state of emergency isn’t declared!).
  • Celestial Being has no seniors in it. An organisation which takes on the world is run by a super computer and a company of young adults and teenagers.
  • Setsuna diving into the ocean and swimming in his full attire and his unconcerned release of his real name to strangers.

It’s these little things that chip away at the grandeur Double-O could have easily achieved. If the sensibilities of the Takahashi Ryousuke-Nozaki Toru team (Gasaraki, FLAG) were included in the circle, Gundam 00 could have been great indeed.