Cheap Mobile Suit Gundam Wing - Shooting Stars (Vol. 1) (Video) (Masashi Ikeda) Price

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Customer Reviews of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing - Shooting Stars (Vol. 1)

Not the worst out there, but ultimately weak
Ah, Gundam Wing. Like many other Americans, this was the series that got me "into" anime (unless you count the time I spent watching DBZ, but I'm trying to forget that particular bit of fandom). One of the spinoffs from the original UC (Universal Century) Gundam storyline, Gundam Wing takes place in the AC (After Colony) timeline, giving it no connection to its predecessors... or so Bandai would have you think. Although GW was my first anime series and will always hold a certain place in my heart (somewhere far, far above DBZ), after a few more years I decided it was time to look back on it with a more critical eye. My perceptions had changed with experience.<
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>It's not that Gundam Wing is a BAD series... it's just not very good. I don't need to bore you with too many story details, since the plot is summarized perfectly well in the Amazon review above. It echoes the conflict of the UC timeline (spacenoids versus Earthlings, although neither term is present here.) The problem is entirely in the execution; Gundam Wing is very slow and repetitive. <
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>Let's take it from the top. The series spans 49 episodes. Fifteen to twenty of these could be cut without impairing the story one bit. These extra episodes are generally interludes in which one of the Gundam pilots meets the people - usually townspeople or guerilla fighters in some wartorn part of the world. After a couple of these, however, you realize that they're all pretty much the same: a Gundam pilot lands, talks to some people, hears a little speech about how great Total Pacifism (tm) is, and then is forced to fight to save his new friends from a sudden onslaught of bad guys. Conversations between the rivals Heero and Zechs follow a similar pattern, with lots of harping about the nature of rivalry and conflict (I lost count of the times somebody said "Why are we fighting this meaningless battle?" during the series.) Ultimately these speeches are nothing but filler - they sound nice until you realize that there's very little substance to them; they're there solely to make the series sound more intellectual than it actually is.<
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>The politics of the story are similarly repetitive; the Earth and colonies are seized by a series of evil organizations, with another always appearing to replace its destroyed predecessor. You learn nothing about any of these groups, and don't really care when a hated enemy suddenly becomes the Gundams' ally. <
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>Fans of UC Gundam will notice many suspiciously familiar events and characters. Zechs and Relena, children of a murdered visionary who end up on opposite sides of the conflict, replace Char Aznable and Sayla Mass from Gundam 0079. Heero, Zechs' rival, is intended to echo Amuro Ray - although while Amuro was human (sometimes annoyingly so), Heero is a flat and lifeless character. The Zero System replaces the superhuman Newtypes. Colonel Bask's colony laser from Zeta Gundam appears in two different incarnations here. The original concept for Operation Meteor (described in Endless Waltz) is a blatant recycling of Operation Stardust and the Zeon colony drop, while the final battle on the Libra battle station is a ripoff of the finale to Char's Counterattack. Even Endless Waltz continues the tradition, with Treize's daughter Mariemeia and her captor Dekim Barton replacing Mineva Zabi and Hamarn Karn of Zeta Gundam and ZZ.<
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>The series' "action" is very weak, consisting of invincible Gundams mowing down hordes of hapless enemies - combat seems entirely too easy, and there's very little sense of danger at any time. About halfway through there's a brief stretch where the Gundams inexplicably start losing, but it's only a couple of episodes before they're back on top again. To top it off, the animation is pretty choppy, and there are many scenes where the same clip of animation is pasted onto different backgrounds to represent different locales. <
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>I could go on, but you're probably getting the picture. Although GW is still a decent show, it lacks the intensity and depth that makes other anime series (the UC Gundams among them) great. It's fun mindless entertainment, but once you move on to something smarter (Cowboy Bebop was my next series), you probably won't look back. Not bad as an introduction to anime, and a good serious show for younger viewers... but those who demand MORE will look elsewhere.

Gundam is good
For all you GW haters out there, you need to cool off! I've seen the original series, 008, 0083, 8th MS team, and Seed. I enjoy Gundam Seed the most. GW is a close second. You can complain that the story was too complicated, or too unrealistic, but look...Gundam design has changed since 0083. Gundams are more bad ass than ever. You want to bitch about the past, fine, you do that. Your kinda like someone that thinks DOS is great, and won't switch to Windows cause you say "look at all the cool thing I can do with DOS." The original series sucked! The White Base looked like a retarted floating box. I'll stick with the newer age Gundam thank you! I recomend 0083, 8th MS, GW, and Seed.
GW has it all. Cool charaters. The best mecha design out of all the series besdies Seed! GW was a bold experiment for the Gundam series and it succeded much to the Relic's (old Gundam fans) dismay!