In some ways I feel like Im the ideal audience for a show like GQuuuuuux. Ive only watched two Gundam series before: The Witch from Mercury which Quuuuuuxs modern sensibilities and redhead protagonist are clearly hoping to capture the audience for and the original 1979 classic which Quuuuuux is an alternateuniverse sequel to. Its a show speaking directly to the very oldest and very newest entries in this nearly 50year franchise trying to achieve some kind of synthesis between them. So youd think someone like me who only knows Gundam through those entries would be an easy mark for that. But at the same time I feel like Im in no way the ideal audience for GQuuuuuux. Because its not just Gundam 79 and GWitch this series is indebted to. Its Zeta Chars Counterattack arguably the entire Universal Century and possibly the franchises entire history. This series doesnt just use previous Gundams as lorebuilding but emotional and thematic context that assumes youve been marinating in these rainbowparticle waters for years and years on end. Its a turbonerd project speaking to the most fervently devoted to the point that even if you can understand basically whats going on if youre familiar with the original you have no context why you should care unless youve spent the last couple decades obsessing over Char Lalah newtypes and what they represent in the grand tradition of storytelling. I cant imagine Gquuuuuux making emotional sense to anyone who hasnt been steeped in All Things Gundam the way its creators clearly have. But on a third level I dont think theres any ideal audience for this show. Because you know it kind of sucks. Its a headache to make sense of where to start in so small part because the show itself is conflicted on where to start. If you watched the movie prologue that aired earlier this year which I did not you know the chronological start to this story is an alternate take on the original series in which Char is the one to get his hands on the white Gundam instead of Amuro leading to Zeon winning the war against the Federation. And if theres any reason to watch GQuuuuuux its this part of the story. Its a noteperfect mirror of the visual pacing of Gundam 79 every single musical cue and sharp edit in perfect place. As an artistic achievement its as flawless a recreation of an older animation style as Ive ever seen and I have nothing but respect for the team at studio Khara for pulling it off. Yes its little more than a nostalgia rush at the end of the day but its genuinely delightful seeing what the start of this franchise might look like with enough time and polish to push its aesthetic to the peak of its power. But while thats where the movie starts its not where the show starts. In fact this prologue is for some unfathomable reason split up throughout the show episode 2 is entirely dedicated to it then episode 8 covers the last chunk of it. Its a choice I cant make heads or tails of: why start the movie this way if the actual show doesnt? Why split it up over such a long stretch of time? Just that on its own ensures that audiences are going to come into this show with wildly different contexts depending on whether theyve seen the movie or not and how much information they have about what to expect. Especially since the rest of the show is so viciously modern in presentation and sensibilities from its character designs to its CGassisted cinematography that every cut back to the 70s way of doing things feels like an intrusion from an entirely different show. Which might honestly be part of the point considering where Quuuuuuxs story ends up going but well were getting ahead of ourselves. The point is the real story picks up years after Zeon has won the war on the supposedly neutral space colony Side 6 thats buckling under the weight of the new regime. Theres overpolicing war refugees being mistreated and the general malaise of living with a fascist boot always seconds from stomping down on your neck. Its no wonder Amata Yuzuriha better known as Machu feels such intense teenage ennui about the whole situation dreaming of going to Earth to see a real sky and a real sea free of this political malaise. But her chance might come sooner than she thinks when she ends up in possession of the titular GQuuuuuux a prototype Zeon suit that crashed on Side 6 in a scuffle. Suddenly Machu has a taste of the freedom shes been dreaming of and alongside a refugee girl named Nyaan and a mysterious fellow pilot named Shuji she starts exercising that freedom first in an illegal dueling ring called ClanBattle and then... things start spiraling out of control in more ways than one. Whew. Thats three paragraphs of this review just to explain what the hell is even going on in this show. And that should clue you in on the big issue here: this is a Gundam show with only twelve episodes to tackle all that story. Twelve A single goddamn cours Even GWitchs twentyfive episodes felt like they were scrambling to fit all their story beats in and that show wasnt trying to be a nostalgiabait sequel at the same time it was telling an original story There are some potentially interesting ideas in here with the new characters freedom contrasted with the legacy characters being bound by their past failures the nature of newtypes and their evolution into a new world but all these ideas are jammed together shoving each other for space and cutting off each others sentences and nothing has the time it needs. I can barely even follow the bizarre highconcept quantum mechanics that take over the plot at it spirals into alternate timelines and colliding realities let alone care about what it means for the characters Ive barely gotten a chance to know in a world relying on endless references to previous Gundam entries to fill in the gaping holes in its construction. Which again maybe all this works better if youve been a Gundam superfan for years and can catch all the Glup Shittos who pop up episode after episode. But even if the sight of Baz Kroll or whoever showing up is enough to make you giggle in recognition what point does it serve this story? So many of these references just exist for their own sake eating up time cheekily calling back to other shows instead of developing the story we have now. And as a result Machus story what should be the heart of this show is completely and utterly gutted. Never once does she feel like an agent in her own story someone making her own choices following her own path. Neither does Nyaan or Shuji or any of the scant few new cast members tossed into this melange of legacy heroes and villains. Every time the show turns to focus on them feels like its doing it out of obligation begrudgingly putting down its Char and Challia Bull toys to put in some token acknowledgement of this other story its pretending to be invested in. And I want to drill down on that point because what little skeleton of a story GQuuuuuux ends up telling with its new cast is so condescending and disrespectful it kind of makes me angry. Machus entire motivation is defined by crushing on Shuji a boy she has basically zero interactions with for the entirely of the show. Every single choice she makes and there are frustratingly few of those revolves around some spacecase weirdo who shows zero interest in her or her life or really anything besides his Gundam. But even that makes more sense than Nyaan deciding to get a crush on him out of nowhere. Like where the fuck does that come from? I wasnt even expecting this to be as gay as GWitch but this halfassed contrived pieceofshit love triangle is everything wrong about Obligatory Straight Romance shoving characters of opposite genders together without bothering to justify why they should be drawn to each other. Even in a more fleshedout version of this story I cant imagine this being any less belittling toward its female characters. Really its the contradiction at the heart of this show. GQuuuuuux clearly wants to be about freedom in some nebulous sense freedom from war freedom from fascism freedom from the expectations of an unfair world that seeks to define who you are and what you do. But Machu and Nyaan spend the entire show at the whims of every other character. Choices are made for them and they comply. Plot twists fall into their lap and theyre pulled along. Its not until the final two episodes they even start making their own decisions and again none of those decisions amount to anything besides wanting to bang this complete nothing of a male love interest because Man and Woman Want Kiss. And every cute reference to another Gundam every callback every fanservice moment is time taken away from doing anything to make this new story more than an unfinished draft. Why should I care about these new characters when GQuuuuuux so clearly doesnt? Look this is not a show made without passion. The people responsible for this mess clearly love Gundam and theyre having so much fun playing with all the parts of this franchise on the biggest scale possible. But if theres one thing Ive learned over my many years being a fan of something does not mean understanding it. GQuuuuuuX is a show made by people who love this franchise too much to realize theyre choking the life out of the story theyre supposedly trying to tell. Its a show swallowed by its own context so drowned in its connections to other stories that it has no time to create anything new and meaningful from the refuse. I dont even particularly hate GQuuuuuuX really I just think Tsurumaki shouldve cut Machus story entirely and just focused on a legacy sequel with all the old characters at its core because thats clearly what everyone involved was really invested in. Trying to staple on this pathetic excuse of a teen romcom just devalues the whole project. Because if you were going to tell the story of a girl struggling for freedom against the literal and symbolic burdens of history? It deserved so much fucking more than this.