This Week in Anime

Get G-Recked

Jean-Karlo
What's this!!! This thing has more power and more armor than a mecha, it's completely different! This is no Zaku, this can only mean... IT'S A GUNDA—!

Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino has set himself apart as being a very opinionated storyteller. Much like Captain Jack Sparrow, even if you don't like his works you probably have heard of them, at least. The likes of Aura Battler Dunbine, Space Runaway Ideon, and Overman King Gainer are nevertheless influential even if they don't always hit their mark. And, y'know, Mobile Suit Gundam has been the anime equivalent of Star Trek since the '70s. It may lack much of the flashy flair of modern Alternate Universe Gundam like SEED, 00 or G Gundam, but make no mistake—this new G-Reco isn't just for show.

Tomino cares very little for traditional sensibilities in storytelling. This is a guy who thinks killing off the entire cast at the very end of the show is perfectly reasonable and will not hesitate to do it as a matter of fact. He's also very unafraid of very bizarre turns of phrase.

His naming schemes are also pretty out-there, he of the infamous names "Bright Noa" and "Char Aznable".

That's one thing that struck me about G-Reco, right out of the gate. The robots may look particularly toyetic this time around, and the characters are pleasantly colorful and memorable, but so much of the aesthetic and visual language behind the G-Reco movies is taken straight out of the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Dramatic moments are punctuated with bizarre color filters, there are constant cut-ins to demonstrate pilot reactions, robots are almost intentionally weird, and all throughout there is politicking that shouldn't make sense and yet... does.

With all this preamble, we ought to fill folks in on the story. Taking place long after the Universal Century (the mainline Gundam timeline), the Earth has kinda-sorta-not-really settled into a peaceful-ish situation. SU-Cordism, a religion that worships the Capital Tower space elevators, reigns supreme and has banned all technological progress. Meanwhile, a war rages between Ameria and Gondowan for photon batteries, the main power source in this universe. And the only place these can be recharged is the Capital Tower.

Smash cut to a bunch of teenaged pilot candidates, featuring this ball of sunshine: Bellri Zenam, or Bell for short. He's a prodigious pilot, having been skipped up two grades. He and his fellows are candidates for the Capital Army, a peacekeeping group that helps protect the Capital Tower from space pirates looking to plunder photon batteries.

Between Raraiya and the other cheerleaders, I wanna take a moment to applaud G-Reco for its wide diversity in character design. There are more people of color in these two movies than I've seen in several months of working for this column. A lot of this feels like Tomino's attempt at portraying Americans, and I appreciate that he has put effort into ensuring that people of color are part of the story as villains, heroes, and people in-between.


In a genre that has a very bad habit of forgetting to place people of color in the future, I appreciate the effort. Claudia LaSalle would be proud.

It was a nice touch! Definitely some well-thought-out engineering that helps make these bipedal mechs more believable.

I appreciate that they're called "Shanks". I know it's weird, but it feels like such a fitting, well-worn name for these things. What else would you call them? What else would people call them after having used them for so long? Again, Tomino's writing is weird, but you can't fault him for his worldbuilding, hare-brained as it might be.

This is Aida Rayhunton, who denies being part of the Amerian army. But she actually is. She also denies being a Princess of Ameria. But she actually is. And she denies any proper link to the G-Self, which... is actually true. She has it, but she and her countrymen know about as much of it as anyone else does.

The Capital Army imprisons her, but during another raid from space pirates Bell goes and rescues her because... actually, I'm not entirely sure. He's a bleeding heart and he didn't want her to get hurt in the crossfire?

Again, Tomino can be weird with his characters. Character intentions and desires make sense when you finally have the whole picture, but they go about it in weird ways. Or worse, characters will exist to symbolize one of Tomino's beliefs, which can be just weird. So bizarro emotional whiplash like Bell flippantly having breakfast after killing a man is par for the course.

I have no idea what to say about the Gundam Toilet other than that it must have one hell of a bidet at its command. If you think Japanese toilets are next-level, imagine taking a crap inside a mobile suit... And then imagine having to do that surrounded by women. (Normally, you have to pay a lot of money for that!)

This is the kind of thinking you can only attain when your soul is no longer weighed down by gravity.

With that said, at least the space pirates have a sensible purpose: as mentioned earlier, SU Cordism prohibits any technological advancement. This means that the only power source worldwide are Photon Batteries, which themselves cannot be replicated. Aida makes the very relevant point that the world could easily transition to solar power and end the power shortages. Real world subtext aside, the movie doesn't even bother letting us hear Bell's rebuttal; much like random bits of background obscuring Dr. Claw's face, the ongoing battle blocks us from hearing Bell's indoctrinated reason why solar energy is bad.

Again, Tomino has never hesitated to put his opinions out there, and weirdo that he might be he tends to have his fingers on the pulse. The original Mobile Suit Gundam was all about how the oligarchy of the world would never accept or recognize colonial independence without a ton of war and bloodshed to convince them, also space colonists are kinda-sorta the next step in Human Evolution vis-a-vis the whole "souls not weighed down by gravity" thing. Reconguista in G is about how technocracy is simply a tool of the ruling class to maintain their political and economic interests in place, as well as a convenient tool to dictate world policy. After all, if Capital Tower allowed solar energy, they wouldn't have a justification to establish the Capital Army in the face of the growing war!

...Hehehe. He said "nut".

This is where our Char-archetype, Luin, comes in. An instructor who was also friends with Bell, Luin fights as Commander Mask in an attempt at redeeming the social standing of the Kuntala. In a world of demagogues, Luin genuinely believes in his cause and is quite unflatteringly broken-hearted when his first mission ends in the deaths of his fellow Kuntala.

One factor is how fast the Capital Guard starts revealing their true colors once the pirates have hold of the G-Self. Bell may have grown up under SU Cordism doctrine, but he has strong moral fiber.

Yeah, that feels like something left behind in the TV version of G-Reco. That whole sub-plot is just forgotten and Bell just... decides to fully ally himself with the space pirates. Though Aida might have to do with that. See, Bell went and killed Cahill, a pilot working for Aida and also apparently her betrothed. Aida, against her wishes, is forced to forgive Bell for it, even though she really doesn't want to.

So I presume Bell appreciates the gesture from her?

There's a detail about the connection between Mask/Luin and Bell that I appreciate. So, the mobile suits in this universe can generate Minovsky Particles, a long-running part of the Gundam universe. These interfere with communications equipment or radar. In the case of G-Reco, the only way around them is direct contact with the enemy mobile suit to form a direct connection. This not only ensures pilots not recognizing who they're fighting until the last minute, this is also a cute contrast; you can't communicate if you're coming at someone with the intent to kill.

I was so ready for matricide to happen. I was pleasantly surprised when Bell's mother survived.

We also needed Bell's mother around due to her connections to the Capital Tower; her link to the pope lets the cast uncover that Photon Batteries apparently weren't made by people on Earth. The implication is that external powers from space created both the batteries and the Tower, and that's part of why it's "taboo" to replicate the batteries; humanity can't in the first place. They're just too advanced.

Meanwhile, the Capital Army has fully gone rogue and broken the church's taboo on technological advancements in updating the Mack Knifes—all in an attempt at capturing the G-Self.

I'm a sucker for robots with long blocky legs that also serve as wings (see: Beast Machines Buzz-saw, who I sadly don't own). If I had any skill with painting, I'd get myself a Mack Knife Gunpla and turn it into a Mack Knife Custom in neon blue-and-pink. It'd be incapable of doing anything but sitting sideways in chairs and binge-watch tokusatsu and VTubers three times faster.

We also seem to finally get some insight into Raraiya: space is her home, it seems. What that means, we'll have to either wait and see or just watch the G-Reco TV series.

I won't pretend G-Reco is the most sensible thing or that I had an easy time making heads or tails of it. But I will say that I have a ton of respect for Tomino as a creator: this is unmistakably a story with his fingerprints all over it. He isn't some old environmentalist bloviating over his pet topics while trying to bludgeon you with how cartoons used to be made, dammit, while he puffs on his cherry cigarettes. He doesn't even care about what other people are doing. He's doing his own thing, and the result is... I think it's beautiful? This feels like meeting up with a longtime friend whose first reaction is to tell you to go fuck yourself, but you know he only says that to people who he's known and cared for for years—like you. And I feel like Tomino's hitting all the marks here. The strife between a rogue band of pirates against a religious dogma that's lost control of itself rings true in an age where we need sustainable energy as of seven years ago but the powers that be refuse to do it. The future generation is our only hope, and it's our goddamned fault that this weight is falling onto them. I cannot in good faith demand anyone to watch this right now because yes, Tomino and his decisions are weird. But when you speak this clearly, this from-the-heart, this confidently... I can't help but respect you.

Goddammit, he put a toilet in a mobile suit and you will watch people use it twice.

I'm a weirdo who tends to prefer genuineness and honesty of voice to polish. So I can see a lot of people getting weirded out by G-Reco's sensibilities the same way I would imagine people getting turned off by the original Mobile Suit Gundam or Ideon: Be Invoked or stuff like that. Like, yeah, sure: I can only recommend this to people who want to freebase Tomino. If you're interested in Gundam, frankly, you'd be best served watching Iron-Blooded Orphans or G Gundam because those are so much easier to consume. But Tomino's voice is so clear here that I'd at least ask people to look into the G-Reco movie on a lark. At the very least, it's stunningly pretty.

For how anal-retentive I am, I am okay with all this jargon being thrown around. Like Joe Dirt said to Kicking Ass, née Kicking Wing, "Don't focus on the wrong part of the story". But again: I won't blame people for feeling lost. You're talking to a degenerate that likes RUSH.

And for the love of God Gundam, give us a courtesy flush!