“Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance” is the latest addition to the Gundam franchise, and possibly the most unique.
On Oct. 17, Netflix released their new short series, “Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance.” It included six episodes, each about 24 minutes long.
Netflix took two very interesting approaches in this series, that make it – for better or worse – stand out from most other Gundam series. It is made in English instead of Japanese, and the biggest change is that it’s CGI, unlike the traditional 2D animation we see in most other Gundam anime.
Gundam is a series that first started in 1979 with the anime “Mobile Suit Gundam.” Since then it has not only grown into a very popular franchise, but also a popular line of Gundam themed models, called Gunpla. Gundam is about a space age war between the Earth Federation Forces and the Principality of Zeon, where humanity battles each other in massive robots known as mobile suits.
While Zeon has mass produced mobile suits, the EFF has very few and is defenseless from most of Zeon’s attacks.
In “Mobile Suit Gundam,” we follow teenager Amuro Ray from the EFF, as he becomes an expert mobile suit pilot in his mobile suit known as the “Gundam,” and he is able to practically single handedly turn the tide of the war to defeat Zeon.
“Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance” is a heavy action series – with some parts almost seeming like a horror series – that follows an alternate perspective of the original “Mobile Suit Gundam” plot. While the original series was about EFF pilot Amuro, “Requiem for Vengeance” is about Zeon soldiers/mobile suit pilots who are trying to stop Amuro and his Gundam. However, the Gundam is so strong that throughout the series Amuro almost acts less like an adversary and more like a force of nature. This led to much of their interactions acting as a thriller, where the protagonists were helpless against the Gundam.
They kept most of the mobile suit designs rather close to their classic designs, while making them more realistic, tweaking their designs to be closer to real military vehicles. They also added little differences and changes to the different mobile suits, even ones that are the same model have little customizations to help the viewer differentiate between the separate characters. Some of these changes include the protagonist’s mobile suit having bars over its visor and repurposed tank treads on its armor, which makes it easy to identify between other characters who also have “Zaku” mobile suits.
Most of these altered designs have already been turned into Gunpla model kits that can be pre ordered now.
The show opens up on a very strong note, jumping right into the action and quickly introducing the main cast and opening up the mystery of who is piloting the Gundam mobile suit that is taking down entire armies. The first episode is very action packed, with some great scenes of the mobile suits.
It also showed great reference to the rest of the Gundam franchise, while still making itself unique, giving insight to aspects about the Gundam world we had not seen before.
After the first episode, sadly the quality seems to go downhill.
Characters will act completely differently from episode to episode, despite not undergoing any real character development. A lot of the plot feels very rushed, so this may explain why the characters undergo sudden changes. It might have worked out better as a longer series, or maybe if the story was less eventful but went more in depth.
The end also felt very rushed. When it appeared that the series was just about to reach its peak, everything sort of just abruptly stopped.
It seemed like most of the major characters just sort of faded into the background of the world, while the main protagonist seemed to end up at the same place she started, making the entire story seem fairly meaningless. In terms of animation, the CGI style has amazing strengths, but its weaknesses are much too visible to be overshadowed.
The series is full of amazing landscapes, and very beautiful mobile suit designs, but the people do not have that same level of quality. The human characters do not have their lips synced up with their voice lines, and their limbs glitch into each other and the rest of their model.
Once again, this was much cleaner in the first episode than the rest of the series.
Overall, the series seemed too rushed and didn’t hold up to the quality of the first episode.
The animation of the human characters was not at par with other modern CGI animation, yet the animation of the mobile suits and background shots were very impressive.
While we did see variations of many Zeon Mobile Suits, we only got to see 2 different EFF suit designs, while major characters from the original series like Kai with his “Guncannon” sadly did not make an appearance.
Still, the concept of the series and certain scenes were very interesting and could definitely foreshadow a future of more Netflix CGI Gundam series.
