Gundam Wing Review

When I watched Gundam Wing the first time all those years ago back in 2016, I was like, "what was the hype even about, what was so special about this?" While I like it a bit more than I used to I can understand why me from all those years ago was never a big fan of it despite me thinking the series is decent overall.

I'll start with the good, the setting and world like a lot of Gundam shows are fascinating and interesting, I always loved the idea of mankind moving up into space colonies and one day leaving the earth which could happen someday, and I love how this franchise explores that possibility, and it's still just as interesting here, even if much of the backstory is clumsily delivered through narrated exposition a lot of the time, and I feel like the show could do a better job at weaving in backstory and exposition in better. The characters are also decent, Heero is a strange character at first but he started to grow on me, the villains like Trieze and Miliardo are also solid enough. However characters like Catra and Wu Fei aren't particularly that great, Catra being hard to sympatheize with after the actions he does later in the series and Wu Fei just comes as a smug brat a lot of the time. I do like Duo Maxwell a lot and he's a pretty entertaining character and the rest of the cast is just okay overall. Relieena is also somewhat tolerable for a pacisfist character since she never contradict herself that much or at least I can't recall.

This is where the series tends to break it for me, my big issue with Gundam Wing is the frequent time jumps and perspective breaks with characters, there's a lot that happens on this show but it never feels like you are going on a slow gradual journey with them, it feels more like a highlight reel where you will follow one character one minute for a few episodes, then they will be written out of the plot for a while and then you follow another character(s) and then after a while they will be written out of the plot. It makes for an awkwardly disjointed narrative where it's hard to get overly attached to anyone and their plight, Relianna's character development later in the show felt particularly jarring since she had shown up in so long. There's a "death" of sorts that happens later in the series and the whole time, I am wonder, "are they ever going to explain what her fate actually was already?" It makes me appreciate the original series and many other Gundam shows in how they are written since the cast was generally always together in one location, meaning you didn't have to break the perspective of other characters nearly as often since they were always near by. It made the narrative feel less disjointed ans stilted as a result. Most of the cast in Wing are always seperated and are off in different places so far away from each other as opposed to the story following two groups in the original series like the White Base and the Zabi family.

The last few episodes are easily the best since the series by that point is following 3 factions and the most of the characters are together making the story feeling it doesn't need to break off into subplot land nearly as much anymore. It actually feels like I am following a group and their stuggles rather than having it be the highlight reel.

Overall, I like Wing a bit better than before but not by much, this show will always be a reminder of how I take certain tropes for granted and how bizarre a story can be when these tropes are not being followed.