Just watched Cucuruz Doan last night and honestly, I'm in awe.
Even to audience without familiarity with Doan episode, throughout movie the staffs really shown they did the homework, spectacularly.
Different from Hathaway where the delivery goes hard from start to finish as if its a machine with high precision, Cucuruz Doan delivered comfy ride, strong reminder of 80's, with classiness of modern Gundam. This one is part I appreciated a lot from Sunrise as nowadays we got plenty remake but most of them come out as quick cash grab happened because there's no blockbusters available anytime soon; not many willing to explore how to emulate 80's-90's charm that made that work something to be remembered, let alone properly timing when to be modern and when to be a classic.
When it comes to VA, well, I have to say Furuya Tohru went 120% here.
He really bring young Amuro naivete back, something I didn't expect after used to his 'serious, older Amuro' voice for his clones like Ribbons (00) and Amuro (Detective Conan, no kidding his name is Amuro; also known as Furuya on his flashback. LOL). Shunsuke Takeuchi voice act is also amazing; too good I expected he's the typecast for the rough, gentle big bro roles in future after Doan, if not chuuni works antagonists like Revolver.
Definite score, 8 of 10 from me too. Fun ride, nothing extravagant, just enough for everything (Gundam reputation, Doan story, etc), definitely my bar for 'test for remake / reboot' anime. The minus is only, you at least need to be familiar with Zeon. It easy to mistaken them as band of Sunday cartoon villain in front of chad figure like remake Doan.
