G Gundam

 

Whoever says Gundam Wing is the shittiest among the Gundam series must be ignorant about G Gundam. I finally got the chance to read the manga. I am not a fan of it right from the start. But at the last few pages of Gundam Wing manga, there are always 4-panel comic strips with cross over character from Gundam Wing and G Gundam. Although most of them are kinda lame, some are funny nonetheless. That's why I thought G Gundam has interesting characters and hopefully interesting stories too.

After my cousin who stays in US successfully help me get the old Gundam Wing mangas via amazon.com, I decided to try shopping using amazon.com too. As I mentioned previously, Amazon is kinda sucky. The second hand mangas have good price. In fact, I got all 3 volumes of the G Gundam manga at less than $1 each. However, the shipping fee is the killer at about $12.49 for each. Ridiculous relative to the price of the items but reasonable enough relative to the price in Kinokuniya (if they are still available).

Anyway, I find G Gundam is like a "joke" among the other Gundam series. There is no war here. To prevent the various factions from warring, a Gundam competition is held every 4 years. The purpose of this show of power and might is to deter war. And the colony represented by the champion has the right to be the leader/ruler until the next tournament. So basically it is something like fighting tournament with robots instead of human. Thus throughout the story, it is mostly about various fighters fighting one another. Throw in missing brothers, revenge for parents, and self-regenerating evil Gundam as the final "boss" make the whole mess even messier.

The concept of the robots are quite unique. Unlike typical gundams, the pilots here do not control the robots like war machines. The robots are something like physical manifestation of the pilots dueling with their respective martial arts. Inside the cockpits, the pilots are not controlling buttons etc but they are physically punching, kicking, etc. I think the anime may be interesting as I would like to see how they depict the robots moving like humans although frankly, this will be like a Dragonball goes haywire in mecha form

Shit! What the fuck did I just watch?

Honestly, Gundam mangas are never good. They are crap compared to the anime. However, the manga never fails to capture the main events in the anime. Thus even though there may be hope that the anime will be better than the manga, I am not interested simply because the plot is unappealing. After all, what makes Gundam series so engaging is the plot (the conflicts and the twists), the action, and the characters (though the mangas always fail in the characterisation department).

So far, among the various Gundam series which I have come across, I have to say that SEED is still the best. My favourite is still Wing. And G Gundam is the shittiest. Boo... Meanwhile, I should give Gundam 00 a try and hopefully it is something closer to SEED than to G Gundam =p