Gundam Reconguista in G Episodes 1 and 2 Discussion / Poll

[DuelGundam2099]

I'm glad you guys find it 70s/nostalgic/surreal and stuff because I sure as hell didn't see it, it seemed very grounded and modern to me. With that here are pros and cons of the first two episodes:

Pros:
-Vulcan guns actually do significant damage to a standard MS (what happened in X does not count, the armor was too light)
-Great looking scenery and setting
-Actually trying to connect it with the UC timeline
-It had action

Cons:
-Very mediocre music
-Boring cast is boring
-Thunder does not sound like that
-Contrary to is what is said here I do not think the animation is that good (it is decent though)
-They are playing Raraiya's foreshadow bits with G-Self too much
-Why do these buildings have ugly interiors?
-Why is medieval technology (IE drawbridges) used?
-Is it the rest of the world versus space pirates? Some information about the socio-political climate would be nice (every other Gundam series did it so why can't this?)
-Bad pacing (Brain Powerd, Turn A, King Gainer, and even L.Gaim and ZZ had it so I am not surprised)


It sounds like I am harping on it, but I am not, it is just first impressions.

[Mikethemaster]

Originally Posted by Revan21

It was extremely childish, even more so than AGE, and a lot more stupid.
It seemed like non of the characters could even imagine that a mobile suit battle involves actual deaths, so everyone is genki and trusting towards the terrorists, who are handled like misunderstood school bullies or something.

Hurry up with GBF, because I'm dropping this right now.


Note: I have watched every Gundam there is, but I cannot show the slightest interest towards this one. Everything is just too lame about it.

It would be messed up if gbf sold more units than this series made by the man who made gundam I think the target audience would vastly prefer gbf to this I like it.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Mikethemaster

It would be messed up if gbf sold more units than this series made by the man who made gundam I think the target audience would vastly prefer gbf to this I like it.

Actually, it won't be strange at all. GBF, by design, is a show used to promote Gunpla a lot more than G-Reco. And it has an army of sexy modified mechas from various series. Also, Tomino's goal is not really to sell toys of the story he wrote. He would rather people watch and be immersed with his story. So, if GBF2 is selling more kits than G-Reco, that would be normal .

[Mikethemaster]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

Actually, it won't be strange at all. GBF, by design, is a show used to promote Gunpla a lot more than G-Reco. And it has an army of sexy modified mechas from various series. Also, Tomino's goal is not really to sell toys of the story he wrote. He would rather people watch and be immersed with his story. So, if GBF2 is selling more kits than G-Reco, that would be normal .

I mean DVD and Blurays i know GBF 2 is used to sell kits. But this is the man who created one of japan biggest franchises so people who are fans of his work will buy this maybe Gen Urobuchi will buy this and try sething lighter heart Nah dude like despair to much.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Mikethemaster

I mean DVD and Blurays i know GBF 2 is used to sell kits. But this is the man who created one of japan biggest franchises so people who are fans of his work will buy this maybe Gen Urobuchi will buy this and try sething lighter heart Nah dude like despair to much.

Oh, so that's what you meant. Yeah, pretty much. But also won't be a stretch if GBF2 won the competition since (I assume) that anime will be a lot more fun .

When you said "unit", it sounds like you're talking about model-kit and action-figure sales . For BDs & DVDs, we usually use "copy" .

[Faerie]

I like this. I really like all of the cast, especially the girls stood out positively to me. All of them. Slingshot girl in particular is surprisingly awesome. Come at me
But seriously, the only one I'm a little on the fence about right now is actually Aida- the one I assumed I'd like the most... and that's only because of the stupid "insta-infatuation" angle which is just plain dumb wherever and whenever it happens and there better be a twist to it.
Heck, even black-haired girl has a lot more life to her than you'd expect. Awesome.
The male cast arguably is forgettable by contrast, with the exception of maybe the MC and blue haired guy.

I also enjoyed what we saw of the world and how it's a little different compared to other recent (and imo somewhat tired) shows of its genre.
The pacing was good and overall this looks like a winner to me. Can see how it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but for me this is pretty spot on.
Really hoping this will finally be a good Gundam show again after that awful embarassment a few years ago (not counting GBF here, which is just awesome in its own right).

[S.Freedom]

Spoiler for about episodes:

I don't suppose anyone would be kind enough to point me in the direction of where to watch the episodes would they?

Because I've checked my usual spots and found nothing. Any help would be appreciated.

Anyway things sound interesting.

[ZeroXSEED]

G-reco preorder, at 10.000 copies already surpassed Aldnoah (kek)

GBF final sales barely scratched 2.400 mark

So no, it won't sell 'less' than GBF

Oh and for what it's worth, GBF also sell less gunpla than Unicorn in general, so we'll see.

[Mikethemaster]

Originally Posted by ZeroXSEED

G-reco preorder, at 10.000 copies already surpassed Aldnoah (kek)

GBF final sales barely scratched 2.400 mark

So no, it won't sell 'less' than GBF

Oh and for what it's worth, GBF also sell less gunpla than Unicorn in general, so we'll see.

I don't if your offended or what but it sure sound you are. So how much did Aldnoah sell. GBF only sold 2400 that pretty good to me but to japan if your not selling 10,000 units or copies of blurays than your a failure they really need to bring their expedtion a little but glad G-Reco sold over 10.000 already. Unicorn a given it had a good plot and great animation value and it handle itself well. I am guessing your a die hard gundam fan because you got kind of offended, it was a joke
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode 2 was better than episode 1 by far, but i really don't who this guy is, chill who is he? does Bell know him?

[ZeroXSEED]

Nah, I'm not offended or anything. I'm sorry if my post sounds like that.

Aldnoah sold about 8000 copies, or 8400 copies I kind of forgot

Also, sales of GBF gunpla are affected by their shit base model selection and marketing. Most of Zeon suit aside from Beacgguy sell badly, either because oversaturation (Zaku and Kampfer) or because bad quality in general (Q Papy and Miss Sazabi).

Add Build Mk.II to that, both HG and MG sell like ass.

[Mikethemaster]

Originally Posted by ZeroXSEED

Nah, I'm not offended or anything. I'm sorry if my post sounds like that.

Aldnoah sold about 8000 copies, or 8400 copies I kind of forgot

Also, sales of GBF gunpla are affected by their shit base model selection and marketing. Most of Zeon suit aside from Beacgguy sell badly, either because oversaturation (Zaku and Kampfer) or because bad quality in general (Q Papy and Miss Sazabi).

Add Build Mk.II to that, both HG and MG sell like ass.

Glad Aldnoah a hit I wounder if the actors will get more notice I know Asseylum's will. But back on topic. I was talking about their dvd sales motr than their gunpla sales. I thought their sales increase a good sum after GBF aired.

[Kaoru Chujo]

I came in expecting this to be a bit childish, just from the appearance, but I got over that fast. I'm not actually much of a Gundam fan (except Turn A and UC), but I found ep1 pretty enjoyable. The story starts from here.

I thought the way the girl was so afraid was well done (seiyuu Fukui Yukari), and the hardness of the captured pilot was also well done (seiyuu Shimamura Yuu). The harsh way the guys treated their captive was unpleasant but dramatically effective. And Mark Ishii in his debut role as Bellri worked for me, skating a line between indifferent and sympathetic.

[Mikethemaster]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

Oh, so that's what you meant. Yeah, pretty much. But also won't be a stretch if GBF2 won the competition since (I assume) that anime will be a lot more fun .

When you said "unit", it sounds like you're talking about model-kit and action-figure sales . For BDs & DVDs, we usually use "copy" .

Oh soory didn't mean to get you confused but who knows maybe GBF might bomb hope not than we wouldn't get anymore seasons Than again we still get stuff like Beyblade and B-Daman so maybe blur-ay sales doesn't matter as long as they sale toys they will continue making GBF series kind of like pokemon but they actually change leads each season.( I mean GBF if I confuse you,)

[Kanon]

I've watched most of Tomino's shows, but none of them have ever given me this weird feeling G-reco has. Not even ZZ. The writing and the characters are so awkward. It's like Tomino wrote this while half stoned. Everything happened so fast I could barely make sense of the events.

[Klashikari]

Watched the first episode and really... what the hell did I watch?

Honestly, it was a horrible pilot episode, hands down.
Cinematography wise, a lot of scenes are awkwardly connected together. Sure, they want to give that retro feeling to that series, but why not doing something like Unicorn? Really the very first scene is enough to give you an idea how bizarre the presentation was: stoic camera plan, brutal camera transitions etc... even silly DRAMATIC camera shaking at times.

Whereas Gundam franchise is known for being quite HAMy at times, this one takes the cakes during the fights (I can't be the only one facepalming at that "I'M USING MY BEAM SABER" scene, right?), and fights are scrambled into a mixture of cut-in dialogues and awkward transitions altogether. And this is quite stupid because with all the awkward flow, the sense of "urgency" and "intensity" of the battles went down to the drain. Hard.

But the biggest issue the first episode had was the completely asinine and bland background exposition: the storyboard had absolute ZERO consistency in term of story exposure, you barely have the time to learn characters name and that there are space pirates... alright, and?
There is little to nothing to care about, and characters are so washed out I can't even be amused by the gimmick stuff around (cheerleaders JK in space... really Tomino?).
Hell, dialogues are completely nonsensical most of the times, and it almost sounds like Seiyuu have no idea what they are talking about either (I swear Bellri sounds like a psycho, and it is worse with his teehee prpr faces).

Production wise, I'm arguably not impressed at all. Suffice to say, the retro feeling was done right... maybe too perfectly because the animators indulged themselves a lot of times with inbetween being almost inexistent and other blatant cutting corners stuff.
Mixing that with CG doesn't help much, resulting into a very weird visual presentation.
The only thing I believe was noteworthy was the sceneries...

Truly an anachronic series. We are in 2014, not in 80-90'.

[ReddyRedWolf]

Its a little confusing without much explanation in the setting.

One thing I did catch. Earth developed space elevators originally to clear space debris. Along the way they developed an alternative energy source harnessing energy from Earth's atmosphere.

Space pirates steal batteries from these elevator trains. Aida said they wouldn't need to steal if Earth was covered in solar panels. Bell was about to argue why that is crazy til he gets interrupted.

My guess with Earth switching to this new alternative energy means one thing... There are no longer shipment of fuel from Jupiter. Spacenoids are suffering because of that. Those space debris are probably abandoned colonies.

The solution space pirates see is that covering the Earth with solar panels would solve their energy crisis. Earth won't budge as it found a good energy source industry. Not to mention the Earth faction probably views Earth should be preserved not just abandoned. (Yeah that old UC debate only without the Newtype argument.)

So space pirates steal batteries from trains as they do not have the industry to produce an alternative energy source for their own. This could mean nobody is building colonies anymore.

[kakakka]

Oh, this is for episodes 1 and 2.

My rating is only for episodes 1, oh well.

There is not much the first episode. Only bits interesting were around the end. It's a bit disjointed in some parts (Really have to rewind that fight scene tbh). Nothing really promising start.

Now to head for episode 2.

[Dr. Dahm]

Originally Posted by ZeroXSEED

Nah, I'm not offended or anything. I'm sorry if my post sounds like that.

Aldnoah sold about 8000 copies, or 8400 copies I kind of forgot

Also, sales of GBF gunpla are affected by their shit base model selection and marketing. Most of Zeon suit aside from Beacgguy sell badly, either because oversaturation (Zaku and Kampfer) or because bad quality in general (Q Papy and Miss Sazabi).

Add Build Mk.II to that, both HG and MG sell like ass.

Okay dude seriously where are you getting your information from cause unless it's a really faulty source I'd swear you're deliberately trying to mislead people or are totally making things up for the lulz. This is not even remotely true, the GBF line of models exceeded expectations for Bandai and combined with Unicorn led to a record year of profits for the franchise and a renewed interest in model kits for younger generations that AGE failed to achieve. The Bearguy was even the franchises first major success with the female demographic and became a really popular Christmas gift in Japan which opens up future possibilities since never before has there really been a big selling kit for females possibly because they tended to just take the approach of taking a regular suit and painting it pink . The Sengoku Astray, Star Build Strike, Zaku Amazing, Amazing Exia and Wing Gundam Fenice were also quite strong sellers among others. I believe the Qubeley Papillion didn't do all that well though for a main characters suit, but there's no real "selling like ass" that went on there.

Also there seems to be some misunderstanding here but Build Fighters is an afternoon show and those aren't made to sell Blu-Ray discs so much as toys. The fact that it charted at all is kind of a wonder. By contrast something like Aldnoah.Zero which airs at midnight very much is made to sell Blu-Ray discs and to a lesser extent music singles as a measure of success because other than that there just isn't a lot of merchandise for it not already included in the Blu-Ray packages as extras and if they really are planning on doing model kits there's no sign of them yet. That franchise was also conceived to be the next big step in robot anime so while 8,000 units for one volume (the popular episodes in Japan I should mention at that) can be seen as a general success, for what they were aiming for it's kind of mediocre to sub-par realistically. Not much better first week performance than Valvrave's first volume which many also hold up to be Blu-Ray sales disappointment.

Part of the problem is that robot anime just aren't seen as desirable as they were even going back to 2008 and the likes of Gundam 00, Macross Frontier and Code Geass with only OVA's like Unicorn and Akito The Exiled managing anything of note in terms of disc sales. Genre fans were hoping that Aldnoah could become the first robot anime in the 2000's to break the 10K barrier but at this point it looks like that goal is going to be hard to achieve if not flat out impossible. It might be possible for the first volume but after that is very iffy since again those were what Japanese fans see as the "good episodes" written by fan favorite Gen Urobuchi and everything after that is seen as when the franchise lost it's chance at being seen as a huge hit. One must not forget that after the 3rd episode and first volume went up for sale that show was looking at something like 25K and lost a significant amount of momentum afterward when fans found the story not as interesting as anticipated.

As for G-Reco, to me it really doesn't say built to sell Blu-Rays even though the first volume is kind of doing okay. It just seems far to unconcerned with trying to appeal to the late night otaku that normally buy these things and more about just celebrating the 35th anniversary by handing the reins back to Tomino one last time to just roll with whatever crazy idea he has. The model kit preorders so far aren't doing too bad along with Build Fighters, but these things tend to be measured in retail sales which we won't know the full story of until Bandai Namco's next financial report is release in May 2015. For now people can read The one for 2014 that has a breakdown of their biggest franchises and a bit of commentary on how they performed. Needlessly to say if the model kits for GBF had actually "sold like ass" we would not be seeing a second season of the show at all let alone so quickly.

Anyway if people have any specific questions about the content of the opening episodes I can probably shed some light and speculation because it seems like I noticed a few more things and really I just don't feel confused at all so much as I realize that not everything the characters discussed have been fully fleshed out yet. To me this isn't so much a matter of frantic pacing as common sense world building since if you rush into things and keep everything so simplistic that everyone fully understands the full implication and meaning of your work right away than it means it's probably pretty shallow and simplistic and your going to have a hard time finding ways to keep people interested later on.

Originally Posted by ReddyRedWolf

So space pirates steal batteries from trains as they do not have the industry to produce an alternative energy source for their own. This could mean nobody is building colonies anymore.

People probably think of it as a throwaway line or maybe didn't even notice it, but when one of the cadets answers the question about what the satellites are for he says it's for clearing the debris from the U.C era of the past. It occurred to me that what if what they are talking about is the remains of the colony era and they're all gone. I just don't think the current society has colonies of the U.C era period and from what I gathered those nuts might actually be their version of habitats in space with people living on them as extra living space in the Capital which could be a vertical city. The way the girls talk about their tickets and it only being good to the next nut makes it sound like the Space Elevator goes on for a while yet and that it functions almost like a train line taking people from habitat to habitat. Could be wrong of course, but the thought intrigued me.

[Kunagisa]

I ... liked this quite a bit, even more than GBF season 1 (and I liked that A LOT).

The story's not that complicated, yet, especially if you read brightman's link. My favorite so far are the characters' personalities. Everyone getting slapped and not giving a crap. The "unable-to-get-beat-down" personalities are the same reason why I loved Glasslip last season and I'm 100% sure I'm in the minority for that so ... welp.

I'm always a fan of new seiyuus, quite often some of the ones that people traditionally would call 棒読み. Ishii and Shimamura are great as the leads (though the latter is far from new). Something about the animation and somewhat outlandish ... culture (not sure if this is the word I should be using) of the setting gave me greater immersion as a viewing experience than almost all the other Gundam series I have watched.

After reading through the other posts I realize there aren't much for me to add, but I believe in Baldy-sama so consider me sold for now.

[ChocolateBarZ]

Originally Posted by ZeroXSEED

G-reco preorder, at 10.000 copies already surpassed Aldnoah (kek)

GBF final sales barely scratched 2.400 mark

So no, it won't sell 'less' than GBF

Oh and for what it's worth, GBF also sell less gunpla than Unicorn in general, so we'll see.

To be fair GBF was sold through two BD Boxes as well as DVD singles it's total sales were:

Blu-ray BOX版 【全2巻】
巻数　　　初動　　　　　 累計　　　 発売日
　　　　限定(通常)　　限定(通常)
BOX1 3,845(2,483)　*,***(4,616)　14.03.26 ※合計 8,461枚
BOX2 4,046(3,802)　4,305(4,046)　14.06.20 ※合計 8,351枚

Which is pretty damn good for what's technically a children's anime being sold as a high price box set. G-reco doesn't seem like the type of show to push merchandise like GBF so seeing it doing this well is a surprise in itself the reception in Japan is also positive.