Preface
It’s been a while since I last spoke about my impressions of Turn A Gundam. I said in that first post that it was the beginning of a series of three. I had almost forgotten about Loran Cehack and the Moon Race and was ready to move on when I happened to come across a model kit for the White Doll in a local shop, and it all came crashing back.
So, after nearly a year, I’m pleased to finally be able to continue with my thoughts on Turn A Gundam.
Turn A So Far – Episodes 06 – 25
They say no news is good news. Since we last left Turn A Gundam, 20 episodes ago, not much has changed. A few new mobile suits, a few new characters, but essentially it`s all the same.
First, the mechanics. A few new (and I use that word very loosely) mobile suits have been added to the roster. Most notably, the MS-06 Borjarnon, identical to a Zaku II, and the AMX-109 Kapool, a mobile suit that originally appeared in Gundam Double Zeta. I was somewhat relieved to see the more traditional mobile suit designs appear. I said in my first Turn A post that the strange new MS we saw in the initial episodes were a welcome change. While this is still true, after 25 episodes, the novelty has worn off.
As of yet – half way through the entire series – not a single battle has taken place. A handful of skirmishes here, a half-hearted duel there, but no battles. Even as the 25th episode closes, Loran is still barely able to use his gundam. The Earth militia mobile suits literally hurl explosive devices with their hands in a desperate attempt to scratch the enemies’ paint jobs. They’ve just discovered the machine guns built into their Kapools.
The show’s major disappointment as of episode 25, for me, is the total lack of mobile suit combat so far.
In contrast to the grand campaigns of Zeon or the epic battles of operation meteor, the Moon Race`s invasion of Earth is something like a tea party, or a fencing match. Each side moves its tiny forces around, neither one really intending to do harm to the other, both obeying the gentlemenly rules of war.
The skirmishes play out like a children’s game. One side actually manages, in spite of their own incompetence, to damage or kill an enemy and both forces go running in opposite directions because some one got a booboo.
That new and refreshing Earth setting is getting old fast. The same forest and desert backdrops are being used over and over again. They seem to blend into each other, making Earth just one large, dull, over-simplified parody of itself. And the grounded gundam action is like a shuffleboard match in comparison the aerial combat we’re used to watching.
It all makes for some very dull visuals. I suppose if I was a 14 year old girl, I might be more interested in the various relationship triangles, but that’s not the case.
That being said, if I really wanted to stop watching, I would have. There’s something quality at the heart of Turn A. No one could deny the sub-par action sequences but neither should one fail to recognize Turn A’s strengths. It’s innovative in just about every way, from mechanical designs and setting to pacing and plot.
The problem is, the initial novelty of these innovations has passed. Without the action typical of most gundam animations and a stagnating plot, what meat is there in this show? What exactly am I watching here?
After thinking about it, a realization began to creep up on me. I wasn’t really watching a Gundam series, but some kind of anime drama that happened to include the odd mobile suit. The main event, thus far, has been the slightly gender confused characters and the various doppelganger situations at work, not mobile suit warfare.
To be fair, it is suggested in the 25th episode, that Loran’s calm and kind personality could change some time in the near future. Lilly Borjarnon, the lady for whom the MS-06 Borjarnon is named, comments that he (Loran) is like a panther, who will turn his claws against his keepers sooner or later. That little teaser got me excited, but should this kind of development only be a speck on the horizon or something more by now? We’re now half-way through the series and plot development is just a possibility?
Ms. Borjarnon’s hint at something darker on the horizon makes me wonder if the second season of Turn A will be a different ball game that the first. For now though, this Gundam series sticks out from the rest like a thumb among four fingers. Turn A is slower (to the point of stagnation), more feminine, more innovative, less heavy and dials down the intense seriousness most Gundam narratives live on.
It is slow, and you’re right that unlike most of the rest of the franchise, it doesn’t particularly relish battles; I thought there were maybe four or five things that the Turn-A Gundam did which were really cool in the way that your standard Gundam action is cool. That’s not very many for a fifty-episode series. I suppose both sides don’t really know what a large-scale, mechanised war ought to look like.
If my memory’s right, the second half is indeed a little tighter and sharper, though it certainly doesn’t suddenly turn into Zeta.
[...] posts about Turn-A that I’ve come across, but besides OGT’s archive, IAmZim’s, Colin’s, Koji Oe’s and Crusader’s come to [...]