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Eeyeah, it's bad. Pretty bad. It's a classic example of too many cooks in the kitchen: Yoshiyuki Tomino wanted to and began production on this film as a full-length TV series, but executive meddling happened, and the end results, well... There's good reason why the Universal Century setting was relegated to OVAs after Victory and especially this. Character motivations make little to no sense, the characters themselves are bland, the pacing hits the perfect balance of "slow and monotonous" and "COMMENCE PREPARATION... FOR LUDICROUS SPEED!", the violence and body count in the movie is too ridiculous and over blown to take seriously and too mean-spirited and brutal to have fun with, there's plenty of action fluff that's just there to keep audiences glued, and the story itself is very poorly written and boasts some ridiculous shocking swerves and plot twists. It is really bad, tonally inconsistent and beyond ridiculous, but it's a damn fun time to riff if you're a bad movie fan.
However, what keeps F91 from reaching SEED Destiny and The Witch from Mercury levels of suckitude is that as you watch, you can't help but feel the things Tomino and co. got right here. The music, whilst forgettable, gives us a great theme song in Noriko Moriguchi's "ETERNAL WIND~ Hikaru Kaze no Naka", which plays as we see Frontier 4 under Crossbone Vanguard control and over the final scenes and end credits. The animation does a lot of heavy lifting to render the movie a 4/10 rather than a 2 or a 3/10, giving us some pretty solid fight scenes and setpieces. We also get ideas here that would be explored to their fullest potential in other entries in the main Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, such as the protagonist having to fight against his friend (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED), which here lasts thirty or so minutes before we get another shocking swerve as the narrative changes focus.
But what really stands out here are the mechanical designs: These are some of Okawara-san's* best work. The feddies are represented by basic Jegans who provide us with cannon fodder and a new variant, but the Crossbone Vanguard and F91 itself are really cool: The latter faction are, in the Universal Century, a band of space pirates who looted, pillaged and cobbled their way to become an Empire-like fighting force, and their suits demonstrate this, with a cobbled-together, almost steampunk, look. The F91 isn't a Gundam, being a prototype mobile suit that happens to have a mouth guard for its front vent that resembles Anaheim Electronics' RX Gundam series of MSs, and despite its smaller size than anything we've seen previously (a constant for the 1990s era of Gundam), it boasts some powerful armaments and flexible movement that more than prove it worthy of the moniker.
So ultimately, though I think this movie sucks, I don't regret the time I spent with it. The redeeming qualities do make it worth at least one watch, but it is a very baffling, confusing watch.
Apologies, I just had to type my thoughts somewhere as a way of therapy...
EDIT: Yes, I call the guy by that moniker. My respect for him as a pioneering mechanical designer cannot be understated.
However, what keeps F91 from reaching SEED Destiny and The Witch from Mercury levels of suckitude is that as you watch, you can't help but feel the things Tomino and co. got right here. The music, whilst forgettable, gives us a great theme song in Noriko Moriguchi's "ETERNAL WIND~ Hikaru Kaze no Naka", which plays as we see Frontier 4 under Crossbone Vanguard control and over the final scenes and end credits. The animation does a lot of heavy lifting to render the movie a 4/10 rather than a 2 or a 3/10, giving us some pretty solid fight scenes and setpieces. We also get ideas here that would be explored to their fullest potential in other entries in the main Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, such as the protagonist having to fight against his friend (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED), which here lasts thirty or so minutes before we get another shocking swerve as the narrative changes focus.
But what really stands out here are the mechanical designs: These are some of Okawara-san's* best work. The feddies are represented by basic Jegans who provide us with cannon fodder and a new variant, but the Crossbone Vanguard and F91 itself are really cool: The latter faction are, in the Universal Century, a band of space pirates who looted, pillaged and cobbled their way to become an Empire-like fighting force, and their suits demonstrate this, with a cobbled-together, almost steampunk, look. The F91 isn't a Gundam, being a prototype mobile suit that happens to have a mouth guard for its front vent that resembles Anaheim Electronics' RX Gundam series of MSs, and despite its smaller size than anything we've seen previously (a constant for the 1990s era of Gundam), it boasts some powerful armaments and flexible movement that more than prove it worthy of the moniker.
So ultimately, though I think this movie sucks, I don't regret the time I spent with it. The redeeming qualities do make it worth at least one watch, but it is a very baffling, confusing watch.
Apologies, I just had to type my thoughts somewhere as a way of therapy...
EDIT: Yes, I call the guy by that moniker. My respect for him as a pioneering mechanical designer cannot be understated.
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