[Ghostfriendly]

According to Tomino, Gundam is still very relevant because 'the real world hasn't progressed and may even have regressed'. I can well believe this, watching a film that glorifies neo-fascist terrorists in the ignoble tradition of Battle Royale II and the May 15th incident (Do remember everyone, Char Ansible was a fascist lolicon). Where the 22nd century heroine is a prostitute and sexualised trophy rather than a head of state, with vomit-worthy feminine intuition, while the action centres on a miserable chauvinist and a plank in a blazer. Even the female pilot is presented as a fragile, sobbing ninny. The Gundam wiki explicitly says she's not skilled enough to be a regular pilot; this is simply unacceptable.

Sympathetic prostitute/mistress characters need a good reason for their job, usually the historical period, which Gigi absolutely lacks. They absolutely need to be physically brave and tough; Helena from Eden or Luca from Berserk would have stood up to a Gundam on foot rather better than Hathaway, or his abusive, foolish father. Code Geass understood that sympathetic terrorists, real or fictional, must strictly confine themselves to liberating their homeland from recent invasion by an absolute tyranny. Schnitzel's aide even reminded him at the end that fighting for power rather than a people is 'only terrorism'. However corrupt the Earth government is, assassination is not a means of political change, unless reactionary. Certainly not by a group with a supervillain-worthy political program revering the memory of Char, whose clear presentation as a fascist was one of the better things about Gundam. One of the worst is the abiding Japanese idea that any motive is noble if sincerely believed in; a sick joke that is certainly no longer funny in the age of Trump. No one who wasn't absolutely desperate, deficient or immoral would actually support Mafty, and this film absolutely fails in its duty to remind the public of that.

Of course, this is all from a novel written in the 1990s. Of course, it is still profitable for filmmakers to regurgitate chauvinist rubbish from the 1990s, if they're not making new series like IBO and 86 which are just as bad, because some people haven't changed.