Mobile Suit Gundam Wing - Operation One

With the Earth groaning under chronic over-population, mankind has taken to outer space; establishing a large number of ‘colonies’ in permanent orbit around our green-blue planet. However, with more and more people being forced out to the colonies by the earth’s tyrannical dictatorship the ‘Earth Alliance’, discontent amongst the colonists is growing. Soon war threatens, averted only by the swift and repressive iron-fist of the Alliance and the latest in military technology – powerful, and seemingly unstoppable, mobile suits (mechas). But there is yet hope for the colonists; for they have, in secret, developed their own breed of mechas - monolithic beasties forged from the rare metal Gundanium (very rare if my periodic table is anything to go by). Soon the hour draws near that the colonies will begin ‘Operation Meteor’ and unleash their fury against the unsuspecting population of Earth. But that’s not all. Unbeknownst to the Alliance authorities, a splinter group calling themselves ‘OZ’ is planning a coup from within. And if their plans succeed, the Earth’s administration will become truly evil indeed...

Episode 1: The Shooting Star She Saw
In the year after-colony 195, Operation Meteor finally begins and five ‘Gundams’, piloted by five pretty young boys, are released by the colonies. Disguised as shooting stars (sic), they speed towards the Earth; four reaching the surface without incident. One, however, piloted by the enigmatic Heero Yuw, is intercepted by an OZ battlecruiser captained by the masked psycopath Lieutenant Zecks Marquise. Meanwhile, a poor-little-rich-girl named Relena, the daughter of the Earth foreign minister, is suffering under her father's constant neglect. Witnessing the ensuing battle and Heero’s subsequent ditching in the sea, she is shocked to find Heero washed up on the beach later that day. Even more startling (to Relena and to viewers) is Heero’s enrolment at her country school the very next morning! Her schoolgirl fantasies are crushed, however, when Heero threatens to kill her.

Episode 2: The Gundam Deathscythe
With a world government to bring down, Heero busies himself with the tasks of destroying his crippled Gundam (currently at the bottom of the ocean) and hacking the school's computer to pay his fees. Still pining for the young stud, Relena comes to the conclusion that Heero's hostility towards her stems from her knowledge of his true identity (duh). Meanwhile, the other four Gundams start to reek havoc all over the world. Commandeering some torpedoes, and pursued by Releena, Heero travels to the military port to destroy his Gundam. But as fate would have it, just as he’s about to murder Releena in cold blood, he is stopped by another of the Gundam pilots. In the ensuing melee, Heero is shot, Relena survives and the Gundam’s are torpedoed. Pretty standard stuff.

Episode 3: Five Gundams Confirmed
Taken captive by the Alliance, Heero lies retrained on a bed in an OZ military hospital. Luckily OZ, and his voluptuous captor ‘Major Sally’, still have no idea just who this strapping young specimen really is. Visiting Heero in hospital, Relena arrives just in time to witness his escape (with a little help from the mysterious Gundam pilot from Ep.1. that is!). Meanwhile, believing that a Gundam attack is imminent, Lieutenant Zechs travels to the Mediterranean mobile suit factory to help in its defence. His predictions are well founded when two Gundams arrive and level the place.

Episode 4: The Victoria Nightmare
At Victoria Base, the OZ organisation’s most prestigious training facility and factory for ‘Aries’ mobile suits, Zechs’ old flame Lieutenant Noin has risen to become the most respected pilot trainer on base. A reformed pacifist, Noin is livid when the base is attacked by a young boy and the trainee’s dormatory (and its contents) are blown to pieces. In hot pursuit of the boy, Noin finds herself face-to-face with a Gundam, and her Aries suit is quickly disabled. To her unending shame, however, it’s diminutive pilot refuses to kill her because she’s a woman.

Episode 5: Relena’s Secret
Travelling to the colonies on yet another diplomatic mission, Relena accompanies her father out into space. However, when he is rubbed out by an OZ assassin, with his dying breath Relena’s father tells her a long-held secret about her ‘real’ parents. Meanwhile, OZ uses it’s own assassination to begin investigations within the colonies and, Gundam repaired, Heero begins flying missions again.

Gundam Wing is typical of many anime produced cheaply for a younger audience. The characters, (especially the villains) are one-dimensional and oh-so stereotypical, and the action is poorly motivated. The writing and dialogue is weak and there’s an annoying lack of exposition; the viewer continually confused about what they’re seeing on-screen. Additionally, the production seems to suffer from an acute identity crisis; constantly flipping between mindless Transformers type action that might appeal to young teenage boys, and a teenage-girl-oriented ‘Bisshonen’ or ‘cute-boy’ romantic subplot. In true Saturday-morning style, these two elements are repeated ad-nauseum, with the development of only the thinnest of main story arcs.

Given these deficiencies, it’s possible that many younger anime fans may still get a kick out of Gundam Wing. But with so many other more sophisticated mecha productions out there, older mecha-heads may well want to look elsewhere to satisfy those anime cravings.

Much like the quality of its writing, in terms of its animation Gundam Wing is typical Saturday-morning anime fare. Cost-cutting techniques such as panning stills are used heavily to convey movement in place of character animation, and in general the backgrounds are simple and lack detail. During the Gundam action sequences, the animation quality does improve marginally, but we’re never talking high quality here. So too, the mechanical and character designs are derivative; the series indistinguishable from the raft of other cheaply made Mecha/Transformer/Giant Robot series' (at least to my eye) already out there in anime land.

In terms of digital presentation it’s all good news; Madman having produced yet another great MPEG transfer. The full-frame image is clear and sharp and exhibits a full and vibrant palette that is complimented by deep solid blacks. There’s nothing in the way of aliasing, only one or two white specks here and there, and only the slightest amount of macro-blocking in the background of one or two of the darker scenes. And with five episodes presented on a dual-layer disc, the layer change seems to have be positioned between episodes. Basically, Madman have done their usual great-job with the medium, and their treatment of this first volume of Gundam Wing should please any fans out there.

In terms of audio, Gundam Wing comes complete with both the original Japanese soundtrack and a serviceable English dub; both of them quite rudimentary Dolby Digital two-channel mixes. Emanating almost exclusively from the centre channel and filled with much overused giant robot sound effects, these mixes only expand to fill the front and rear channels during the catchy Jpop theme tunes and when the dramatic score kicks in. At these times the soundtrack sounds nice and full, but these moments are relatively few and far between. The subwoofer, meanwhile, has quite a deal to do, adding body to the score and some nice low-end to the many explosions that punctuate proceedings.

The English language aspects of the disc are quite a mixed bag. Thankfully the translation sticks very close to the original Japanese script – no problem there, the dialogue is banal enough – but the English voice actors that Sunrise have found are only average at best. In hindsight, I guess they’re all in keeping with the entire production; good actors may well have seemed out of place here. Interestingly, lip-synch is actually much better in the English version than the original Japanese!

All in all, Gundam Wing isn’t the best anime you’ve ever heard, but again, that’s the kind of production we’ve got here. Like it or loathe it, it’s been made quickly and on the cheap for a younger, undiscerning audience.

Whilst this first volume of Gundam Wing sports some reasonable animated menus, it contains only a nominal number of extras. Curiously, the menuing system does not provide access to the episodic chapter stops.

• Profiles: Seven quite small pages of text giving a little back story for the characters of Heero and Relena, as well as some operational statistics for Heero’s ‘Wing Gundam’.

• Madman Propaganda: Trailers for current and upcoming Madman releases Robotech, Macross Plus, Cowboy Bebop, Transformers – The Movie (oh god) and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

OK, so you might have guessed by now that I didn't enjoy Gundam Wing all that much. It's derivative, predictable and just generally badly written, and despite being terribly-serious it contains neither well-constructed action or character development. Basically it's just another early-morning transformers cartoon. You younger anime fans may well get a kick out of Gundam Wing, but the whole thing bored me feckless.