GQuuuuuuX Record #8: Falling on the Moon

Our Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX coverage continues with the eighth episode! There will be spoilers after this point.

This week’s GQuuuuuuX is divided cleanly into halves. The first finishes up Char’s story from the second episode, completing the arc previously depicted in the film Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: Beginning. In UC 0079, the Federation attempts to ram the battle fortress Solomon into the Zeon lunar colony of Granada. Char and Challia Bull lead the charge to knock Solomon off its axis.

Secretly, though, Char intends to let Solomon obliterate Granada anyway so that he might wipe his enemies, Zeon’s powerful Zabi family, off the map. Unfortunately he is waylaid by his sister Artesia, and then by the mysterious Zeknova phenomenon that erases him, the Red Gundam and a big chunk of Solomon from the world. The change in mass knocks Solomon off its collision course with Granada, and changes history to favor the Zabis.

Attack on Solomon

Char’s attack on Solomon is a fun watch for fans of grand-scale robot action. The sheer number of ships and explosions calls back to director Hideaki Anno’s previous work on Gunbuster, with its lasers popping swarms of insectoid space monsters like bubble wrap. It also reminds me of the film Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0+1.0, which kicked off its finale with a homage to the classic science-fiction series Space Battleship Yamato. These riffs might be disorienting for newer fans unfamiliar w/ these older series, but are clearly still relevant to Tsurumaki’s generation.

There are other little nuggets, too, that I missed the first time around. The first and most important is that Lalah Sune makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in a Newtype flash during Char’s battle with Artesia. GQuuuuuuX has already been haunted by the mysterious “La La” sound that accompanies the “Kira Kira,” but this episode (and the next episode too, if the preview is any indication) mark her first appearance in the series. Since GQuuuuuuX has been defined by embracing minor characters from the original like Challia Bull and Cameron Reed, I’m curious to see what it does with Lalah, who was famous for burning brightly and quickly.

The Zabi family will be our next enemy

Something else that stood out to me is the sequence where Char explains his plans to Challia Bull. “As soon as we win this war," he says, “the Zabi family will be our next enemy.” We learned in the previous episode that Bull plans to eliminate both Gihren and Kycillia Zabi despite cooperating with them on the surface. But I’m surprised it took me this long to realize that he’s likely still following Char’s instructions from the One Year War. Did you ever go through a breakup so bad it led you to assassinate your ex-boyfriend’s archenemies? Clearly the Red Comet still burns in Bull’s heart.

I do have to wonder, though, what a fan without past experience with Mobile Suit Gundam might think of this part of the episode. They don’t know who Lalah is. Worse, they don’t know who Artesia is, and this episode doesn’t give any indication why she might be important. (She’s Char’s sister, in case you didn’t know.) Does the series intend to clarify this later, or are viewers unschooled in Gundam lore out of luck? (A recent This Week in Anime column was clarifying in this regard.)

A delicious slice of cake

Those new viewers, though, are served a delicious slice of cake with the second half of this episode. I expected that “Falling on the Moon” would solely fill in the missing material from the movie. But it also tells the story of Nyaan’s introduction to the moon colony Granada. Surprise: Granada sucks! Side 6 was a big cage of skyscrapers but at least the view was pretty. Plus it had busy alleyways and noodle restaurants. The sky of Granada is the empty blackness of space, with only the blasted corpse of Solomon to serve as a distraction. There are no locals, only highways.

Xavier joins Nyaan in this episode as her number 2, and is the only major character to not have blood on his hands. His friend Miguel tries to poison Nyaan with cake, then threatens to shoot her. In response Nyaan psychically connects with her new robot, the GFreD, and vaporizes Miguel so thoroughly that the metal he’s standing on melts. Even Kycillia assassinates her assistant after discovering he orchestrated the attempt on Nyaan’s life.

Eating it too

The second half of “Falling on the Moon” is a great example of Yoji Enokido’s strengths as a scriptwriter when working with Kazuya Tsurumaki. He introduces cake as a simple visual metaphor. Kycillia eats her own cake and serves it to Nyaan. She offers Nyaan a scholarship, but Nyaan doesn’t want a scholarship; she wants a friend who will bake her a cake. That friend could have been Miguel, but he won’t eat his cake together with Nyaan, so Nyaan knows it’s poison. It’s a cruel joke that would be right at home in an episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena.

It isn’t just that everybody in this cold landscape is one itchy trigger finger away from slaughtering each other. It’s that the conspiracies pile so deep that you might miss them. Xavier didn’t even recognize that Miguel killed two of his colleagues until Nyaan found him out. Just how many more bodies lie entombed in Granada? How many sacrifices might Nyaan be expected to make for financial security?

What can Machu see right now?

Certainly, Nyaan's life in Granada is more comfortable in many ways than Side 6. Her living space is much bigger. Her face is no longer bruised. She even has powerful people like Kycillia looking out for her interests. How long will that last, though? Her encounter with the GFreD is framed as if she were Shinji encountering Unit-01 for the first time in Neon Genesis Evangelion. That would make anybody else run screaming for the hills. Not to mention, Shinji might have been caught up in a conspiracy to transform all of humanity into orange goo, but at least he had Misato and his friends at school to look out for him. Nyaan just has Xavier and he’s mostly useless.

Granada is on the far side of the moon. Despite being closer to the Earth, Nyaan still can’t see it. All she can see is the broken battle fortress Solomon, a relic of the past. What can Machu see right now? We’ll find out next week.

This week’s addendum

The Char and Bull Power Hour: It’s all coming together.

This Week’s Moment of Violence: Some fierce competition this week, but gotta hand it to Miguel exploding into dust like a popped bubble.

The Coding Corner: Worth pointing out that the name of the GFreD is (just like the GQuuuuuuX) a programming joke.

Where is Artesia: Am I alone in wanting to see more from Artesia? What role did she play in GQuuuuuuX’s alternate continuity? Not knowing the answer just makes me ruminate on it more, of course…

Where is Char: A mysterious blonde-haired man with blue eyes appears at the end of this episode. Is this Char? A clone of Char? Who can say what GQuuuuuuX will pull on us with just four episodes to go.

Friends of Gundam: Here is some more Gundam fanart.

Bookmarks

For Anime News Network, Kambolle Campbell wrote about director Shinichiro Watanabe’s corporate dystopias.

For scrmbl, Alicia Haddick covered the currently airing Japanese live action drama series News Anchor.

For RetroXP, Marc Normandin reviewed the recently translated Sega Saturn classic Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die.

For No Escape, Kale Hultner wrote about the modern state of cultural criticism (particularly games criticism.)

Amelie Doree is back at it, covering the 2005 Black Cyc visual novel Mugen Kairou.

What I Wrote

For Comics Beat/KComicsBeat, I teamed up with Hilary once again to cover the E-Soul Arc of To Be Hero X.

On Unpacking the Shelf, my friend Alex and I spoke about Kate Beaton’s fantastic graphic novel Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands.

AMV of the Week

Here's "Ah, Poor Bird" by Eccentric Fanboy.