Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: Beginning is Fanfiction

This piece is loaded with spoilers for Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: Beginning. That said, if you're a hardcore fan of Gundam and haven't seen the movie yet, it's likely that you are avoiding any information about this film to begin with in preparation for the television series debut. Also, if you don't know anything about Gundam, nothing that counts as a "spoiler" in GQuuuuuuX will be relevant to you, so you might as well read this anyway. Have fun!

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: Beginning, the pilot film for this April’s upcoming television series Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, is fanfiction. But what kind of fanfiction? Well, that’s where it gets interesting, because GQuuuuuuX is a film of two parts and they are not the same.

The first part, which runs for about half an hour, presents a “what if” scenario. It starts nearly the same way as the original anime series Mobile Suit Gundam, where three soldiers from the Principality of Zeon infiltrate the Side 7 space colony in search of the Federation’s experimental military technology. One of those soldiers, Gene, goes on a rampage, blowing his cover and endangering the colony’s residents. Then a boy named Amuro hops into a military superweapon called a Gundam, defeats the Zeon soldiers, and accidentally sets off what will be called the One Year War.

GQuuuuuuX changes things up by switching Gene for Char Aznable, Amuro’s rival in the original series. Char is a very different kind of guy than Gene; rather than a soldier who shoots first and asks questions later, he’s a charismatic plotter willing to improvise if it gets him what he wants. So Char keeps quiet instead of going loud. As a result, he finds the Gundam before Amuro stumbles on it, and takes it for himself.

This small change ripples across the Gundam timeline. The Federation falls behind the technological arms race without the Gundam in hand. Zeon leverages their own new technology to mass produce the Big Zam. (At long last, Dozle Zabi’s dreams are fulfilled!) Meanwhile, Char connects with psychic Newtype Chalia Bull instead of Lalah Sune. His sister Artesia, who rides a modified GM Cannon into battle, takes Amuro’s place as his rival.

In the end, Char disappears thanks to a mysterious phenomenon that will likely only be explained later in the series once it airs. But while he fails to achieve his goals, Zeon itself successfully disarms the Federation and wins the One Year War. GQuuuuuuX therefore cements itself as that most hoary of premises: the alternate history narrative.

Alternate histories have been pulp fiction fertilizer for many years. There’s just something fun about going back several decades, making one change and then working out all the details from there. It doesn’t have to follow a serious subject, either; one of the most ambitious projects in this vein I’ve seen is an attempt to work out what might have happened if Jim Henson, the creator of The Muppets, was put in charge of Disney in 1980.

Culture’s obsession with multiverses feeds into the dream of alternate histories as well. Folks always ask themselves, “what if I did this small thing differently? What might have changed?” Of course, since there’s no way (that we know of) to go back in time and try again, it’s impossible to say if things would have been better or worse. But it’s always tempting to consider what you don’t have. At their worst, these kinds of stories tie us up in navel-gazing. At their best, they ask us to consider, “what if the world in which we live was not inevitable? What if there were other ways of being or ways of seeing?’

What I like about GQuuuuuuX’s alternate history is that it’s messy. Char is given everything he needs to succeed and yet is unceremoniously removed from the board without accomplishing his goals. Zeon wins the One Year War not by overwhelming the Federation through superior firepower, but by exhausting their resources to the point that war is no longer desirable. The presence of chance and human mistakes are crucial because they are what distinguished Mobile Suit Gundam from its anime competition in 1979.

Without that friction, GQuuuuuuX would risk falling into a trap to which alternate history stories are particularly vulnerable: favoritism. There are a lot of folks out there who love Char Aznable. Others love Zeon aesthetics, like the iconic Zaku infantry robot. But Zeon isn’t just a fictional faction, it’s an aesthetic of fascism that attracts people in the same way that the Empire in Star Wars attracts people. Fascistic societies collapse; there’s even a scene in the original Mobile Suit Gundam where Degwin Sodo Zabi, the dictator of Zeon, admits this. Asking “what if the fascist society didn’t collapse, actually?” not just risks providing cover for fascist movements in our world but is ahistorical in a way that Gundam itself is not.

That’s where the second part of GQuuuuuuX comes into play, which lasts for roughly an hour. This story takes place just a few years after Char’s disappearance on the colony of Side 6. It follows a new cast of teens including Machu, Shuji and Nyaan, who each struggle in their own way to live in an oppressive society. Machu lacks motivation at school, Shuji paints graffiti of shining lights from his dreams, and Nyaan trades illegal technology to pay the bills. All three are united by Clan Battles, a secret fighting ring run on scraps left over from the One Year War; and by two robots, Char’s Red Gundam and the mysterious GQuuuuuuX.

While the first part was an alternate history war chronicle, the second concerns itself with what I think of as the dregs of the original canon. Its major players include folks like Chalia Bull and Cameron Bloom. These were one-off characters in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Beneath Amuro and Char, beneath even Amuro’s friends and allies on the ship White Base. GQuuuuuuX grants these nobodies a chance to come into their own.

This is director Kazuya Tsurumaki’s specialty. While his work has always lay in the shadow of his mentor Hideaki Anno, they are not alike in this way. Anno loves grand heroes like Ultraman and Kamen Rider; that’s why he wrote the script to the first part of the film, and why he chose the larger-than-life Char Aznable. Tsurumaki instead gravitates towards kids, burnouts and failures. Folks like Mamimi, from FLCL, a high school girl who pursues her ex’s prepubescent brother to escape from her depression and alienation. Or Lal’C, from Diebuster, an ace robot pilot who learns to embrace the part of her that’s weak despite living in a society that demands that she be perfect and untouchable.

These two series, made in collaboration with scriptwriter Yoji Enokido, take place in closed worlds. In the case of FLCL, that’s a town in the middle of nowhere; for Diebuster, it’s the solar system itself, sealed from the rest of the galaxy by centuries-old events. These pressure cooker environments inevitably lead to conflict, but that conflict is ridiculous and sometimes anticlimactic. The real question is, how do you escape closed worlds like those? Is it possible to imagine something different?

Thus far, GQuuuuuuX’s second part absolutely inhabits the same aesthetic register as FLCL and Diebuster. Its world is all luminescent alleyways and heartless machines. Battles play out not with pomp and circumstance but over illegal live-streams. It’s all rather small-scale and seedy. When Machu and Shuji appear on television riding the GQuuuuuuX and Red Gundam respectively, Chalia Bull’s associates can’t help but moan: what are rejects like these the ones piloting Char’s robot? What gives them the right?

The irony is that these associates themselves are history’s rejects too. They wouldn’t matter at all if they inhabited a different timeline. It’s only here, in another timeline under the shadow of Char’s influence and absence, that they are in any way relevant. As they argue over technicalities, the next generation—Newtypes—fight blindly for a transcendent future that only exists in the shining space between them.

GQuuuuuuX’s two-part approach is a double-edged sword. The first part demands that the audience be at least familiar with the original Mobile Suit Gundam. If you can’t tell your Chalia Bulls from your Artesias, you’re sunk. The second part is much more accessible, but is so aesthetically different from the first that it might as well be a separate work. Of course, this is the point; GQuuuuuuX is a stitched-together teaser for an upcoming television series. It cannot help but be inferior (perhaps) to what you might imagine comes later.

In other respects, though, these two halves of GQuuuuuuX reinforce each other wonderfully. The dry historicity of the first part is fleshed out by the character-driven storytelling of the second. Gundam newbies might not recognize Chalia Bull, but by the time he sits down for a drink and a chat with Side 6 politician Cameron Bloom, they will know him. That’s what keeps this film from purely being a fans-only proposition.

The second part, on the other hand, is given weight and structure by the first. One of Yoji Enokido’s problems as a scriptwriter is when he loses track of character and motivation in search of abstract theme. The alternate history backstory, which was drafted by Hideaki Anno, provides a solid foundation that keeps the story in the material world. As a result GQuuuuuuX can play around with new ideas (like Mav pairing, the expectation that giant robots typically fight in pairs so that they might protect each other’s blind spots in battle) without losing track of the big picture.

We don’t know yet what the full series will be like. Will it cut up Char’s story into small chunks and seed them throughout Machu’s story? Will the alternate history grow in prominence to overwhelm the lives of Side 6’s inhabitants? The only thing I can say for sure is that Tsurumaki’s past works have all been meta projects. FLCL poked fun at Gainax, the studio that made it. Diebuster imagined a beautiful but meaningless future where young people burn themselves out for nothing. The Rebuild of Evangelion films retold Anno’s 90s TV masterpiece with a decade’s worth of emotional context. Even The Dragon Dentist, Tsurumaki’s most recent OVA, ended with a scene that evokes End of Evangelion’s infamous apocalypse.

In short, these are fanfiction guys making anime for other anime fans who are in on the take. Is that so unusual, though? Both Evangelion and Gundam are black holes that absorb the careers of anybody who comes too close. They also provide opportunities for expression (like mechanical design, or original stories) that are extremely rare anywhere else in the anime industry. While crafting fictional excuses to sell model kits, these artists have the chance to ask themselves and their audience: why are we here? What are we doing? Is there another way? Perhaps we are all history’s rejects.

Bookmarks

• For further GQuuuuuuX reading, I recommend Russell and Pike’s write-ups. Also check out this translated interview with Anno, Tsurumaki and Enokido, courtesy of Zeonic Scanlations.
• I loved this fun animated trailer for the slice of life comedy RuriDragon. Gotta read this sometime…
• Ken Pueyo did an interview with Kodai Kakimoto for AnimeCorner about this season’s melodramatic music anime Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast. - Though I haven’t seen the show yet, if it’s anywhere near as good as its predecessor MyGO!!!!! I’m sure it’s a banger.
• For Anime Herald, Borealis Capps explored Golden Kids, a mysterious failed animated project based on the work of Captain Tsubasa author Youichi Takahashi. Don’t forget: “if we don’t lose, we win!”
• Dawn H. interviewed Giana Luna and Chika Supreme, the co-hosts of the Shoujo Sundae podcast, for Anime News Network.

What I Wrote

• For Crunchyroll News, I interviewed the translator of the cult classic Japanese RPG Zakuzaku Actors.
• For Anime Herald, I wrote a historical chronicle of the 1990s Ranma ½ fanfiction scene.
• For Yatta-Tachi, I covered last year's visit to the Kaoru Mori and Aki Irie exhibit at Tokyo’s Setagaya Literary Museum.
• For start menu, I reviewed Urban Myth Dissolution Center, a modern take on the occult mystery genre popularized by Natsuhiko Kyogoku.
• Over at Unpacking the Shelf, my friend Alex and I discussed the manga series Legend of Kamui as well as our reactions to GQuuuuuuX. Not to mention, Gargoyles!

AMV of the Week

Here’s “AND YOU CAN’T COME” by TroubleClef.