Victory Gundam Final Thoughts

Victory Gundam Final Thoughts

Good points:

-Animation, music, character designs etc. all very good, definitely some top quality early 90s work from Sunrise (The animation in Victory feels far more consistent compared to G which came after it, but that's probably due to differences in directorial styles between Imagawa and Tomino)

-As far as Gundam protags go, Uso is pretty good and likeable. Again, Tomino pulls this nonsense he did in F91 where because Uso's mom is the suit designer, that means Uso has inherited some sort of genetic predisposition for being able to pilot suits made by her. It's still ridiculous here, but in general the evolution of Uso's abilities as a pilot is well-handled

-Mech design is pretty cool in general; Zanscare has cool designs with some unfortunate color schemes. V1 is OK but V2 is a very slick looking suit.

-The contrast between Uso and Shakti mid-season is well done. Shakti, in general, is the glue holding a lot of the plot together, but she has a very understated presence until the very end.

-The themes of the show, in general, are -somewhat- well done. It's a big mess about the role of men and women in wars, children, motherhood, and of course war itself. Sometimes it succeeds at making a point and sometimes it doesn't. In general it feels juuuust barely consistent enough to pass, but ultimately it's a toy commercial so not too much criticism can be leveraged.

-Battle scenes in general were good with a pretty good mix of Earth and space battles, and the battles around Angel Halo were neat.

-In general the plot feels like it's always moving, even if it's via extended chase scenes.

-Victory did a good job of making the mobile suits feel like they can take a little damage before exploding (as opposed to them being like Zeta where they were like balloons that would randomly explode if a beam shot went too close to them)

-Victory is a watchable and enjoyable show and people who cite the DVD jacket as a reason to not watch it are full of it


Bad points

-The first 5 episodes, and this isn't even Tomino's fault. That is the weakest start of any Gundam show in existence simply because it doesn't make a lick of sense due to it being out of order.

-The scope of the world is never made clear. What kind of societies are present in this world? How many people are alive? This is a little unusual for Tomino who likes to do a lot of worldbuilding. The influence and relative power of the various factions is only barely explored as well. We know that the Earth Federation's military is screwed because it's pretty much nothing but kids, but why is it like that?

-Wildly inconsistent characters. Katejina's motivations for switching sides are a total mystery until the very end, and even then a very shaky justification is given (because Cronicle was nice to her??) Marbet's only job in the show is to have absurd amounts of plot armor because she's pregnant and Tomino is trying to make a point with her.

-Uso needed a fixed rival through the series to serve as a persistent enemy for him instead of a medley of female antagonists who are summarily killed off and Cronicle who barely ever does anything noteworthy. Katejina should have filled this role but I feel like Tomino was pressured into a male Char clone and he might have made Cronicle useless on purpose, which leads us to:

-Cronicle in general is the weakest Char clone in any Gundam series, and that's even worse than Mr. Bushido. He never demonstrates any serious aptitude as a pilot, and he has no clear ambitions at all, turning him into a glorified grunt with some plot armor that expires in the last episode in the MOST UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS DEATH IN THE SERIES.

-Weird sexist bullshit. "Women shouldn't fight in wars because... babies???", the bikini squad (are you serious) and various women appearing butt-naked for no apparent reason. It's Tomino so this stuff gets a pass but it's still very obvious and silly.

-Again with this ZZ nonsense where CHILDREN are schooling trained soldiers. At this point it doesn't even register for me but it's still silly

-Tires in space lol.

-Fuala is defeated by embryo space magic.

-Speaking of space magic, Tomino really goes overboard with the definition of Newtype powers in this show and Maria's healing/psychic powers are just straight up magic.

-Guillotines and space aristocrats. Lol. Less emphasis is put on this later on because I think even Tomino realized that this was kind of ridiculous and it doesn't make sense for the aristocrats to be using guillotines.