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leafy sea dragon wrote:

I remember Gundam Wing was genuinely popular in the United States, and it was talked about all over the school when it was on. You even had commercials for the models on broadcast TV, and Toys R Us and FAO Schwartz and such were selling them. Then, they showed Mobile Suit Gundam, and people kind of tuned out at that point. Discussion on all things Gundam just petered out as it aired.

Maybe it's because you Canadians never got Mobile Suit Gundam to kill interest.
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I Don't know about the west, But Here in Canada Gundam seed was really popular back in the day, YTV and Bonix Had a trailer not CM (if I remember ) even to the point a lot of the kids in my High school were really into Gundam thanks to Seed
(but destiny killed the hype )

Whitesox123 (neat, a sox guy, Chicago pride!) wrote:

That it actually has a MC that is willing to kill

So was Christina (War in The Pocket), Kou (Stardust Memory), Shiro (08th MS Team), Heero (Wing), Garrod (X), Shinn (Destiny), the entire cast of MS IGLOO, the meisters (00), Flit and Asemu (Age), Aida (G-Reco), and Io (Thunderbolt), wanting to kill is not inherently a good trait. Of course unlike the others Mikazuki is willing to murder people that were tied up, drugged, and posed zero threat to him.

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a serious plot focusing on semi realistic problems

With the exceptions of G,Turn A, and the SD entries every Gundam entry has the plot being serious with problems that are at least semi real; in fact take away the serious portion and G would be removed what with character dynamics and inner conflicts. That's actually another critique of Turn A that took me until now to notice.

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or a well developed cast of characters?

I'll give you Galieo and to a lesser degree Kudelia (I want to count Ein, but I can't). The rest though? Nearly everybody was acting identical to hen they were starting, in fact the only real changes were learning to write and cook aside from the kill count.

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Please tell me how its the worst.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can speak for myself and I think this is a good opportunity to educate the people that liked IBO to see how it can be viewed in an unfavorable light (devoid of insults no less!).

-Very inconsistent animation composed of off-modeling, bad proportions in far shots, cheap techniques in combat style, and storyboard holes that are plot points (Barbatos teleporting in the final battle anyone?). For all the stock footage SEED and Destiny have they are at least drawn well for the time and are usually fluid.

-If you're not into slice of life anime the amount of dialogue is absolutely horrifically time consuming, it feels more like reading a homework assignment every weak in what is traditionally an action sci-fi franchise with the titular mecha being the main focus and this being the first series where 2 in 3 episodes have no action to them. The only other series that come close to low action to talk episodes are Turn A, Destiny, and G-Reco. The dub might have a chance since it isn't a massive amount of reading. When someone wants to watch a series about robots in war, dialogue pertaining to things outside of it is not what most are going to expect.

-Even giving the dialogue the benefit of the doubt it throws so much at the audience you have no idea what is important, what is filler, what is world building, and everything in between to the point where things like foreshadowing come out of nowhere and when a major event happens the reaction is comparable to whiplash.

-The antagonists are a joke. Okay they're corrupt, what do they do? Bring order to a distant colony (Mars) and smoke out terrorists at a colony. What else? Nothing. They're barely much of anything, so much so the second quarter is dealing with criminals instead. They don't do enough, let alone anything worth point the "there's your bad guy" finger at. The protags on the other hand aid a mafia (and unless you know about yakuza culture it might go over your head, someone had to point this out to me later), murder people that can't fight back, break ally ranks, aid said colony terrorists killing who knows how many civilians, and are self centered. You have McGills playing sides, but he is one guy, not an entire faction.

-Pacing can be seen as.... Yeah. Take any other Gundam series and within 18 episodes you have: An established conflict, multiple in-universe tide changing conflicts, and impact of those events in-setting. IBO on the other hand was just mercs going through a blockade after fighting crooks and some political talk happened in the final ep we don't know what will happen until next season. This is ignoring things like poor scene transitioning (like not showing the opening to the final battle) and the fact that the Mars to Earth subplot was done in SPT Layzner and it worked in that series because the grim tone was well established and had constant dread and isolation as its atmosphere, taking advantage of war horror elements. There is no real chain of events that interconnect nor is there any tone of grim, dread, or isolation which brings to probably the biggest sin of IBO:

-It isn't a war story. War is encompassing, it changes histories, politics are redrawn, many people on all sides die, the effects are widespread, and especially in Gundam (minus Turn A, oh hey another critique!) it is cosmopolitan. IBO? Got none of that aside from death and even then a grand total of spoiler[only two] main protags bite the dust. The effects of war are not there. Keep in mind this series was meant to be gritty and realistic, but it has so little of that and most series were at least able to get those portions down correctly. It didn't go as far as any of the UC series or even Wing, Cosmic Era, or 00 were willing to go. It promised a turkey dinner and we got bones and giblets.

I say all this as someone that was not that interested when it was announced but still gave it a chance to prove its worth. If you like it that's perfectly fine, but IBO does have things going against it that can lead many such as myself to lead into the notion that it is on the lower end of the franchise spectrum to the point that I would not be surprised it would be declared as "worst".

Last edited by dark13 on Fri May 13, 2016 1:01 am; edited 4 times in total

I don't even like Slice of Life and I enjoyed IBO a lot We get a lot of Character development from key characters like Akihiro, Biscuit,kudelia and Mikazuki who for all we know Loves War why do I bring this Up ? this one scene here https://youtu.be/pOl5XqVTC_o?t=200

and this one here I could agrue he is actually very trigger happy ?https://youtu.be/pOl5XqVTC_o?t=1362 Remember we are only seeing this from kudelia point of view not Mikazuki,for the Negatives you say you don't bring up the positives I remember, Squee the Mod of Gundam forum was saying the same thing to you ( only he was much more detailed) your free to not like that fin But if you going to talk about the Negatives Bring up the positives I for one could argue G reco could kill the Hype for Gundam in the west ( like the Original did ) Because New Viewers never saw UC so they would get Confused and not care, especially since Tomino got shafted again with a change of plans and couldn't flesh it out as it was apparently intended or simply couldn't do what he wanted. Also, G-Reco is definitely meant for those who know what happened in the UC timeline prior , But I won't because Just as G-Reco has many Negatives to the show there are Positives as well. Once again I'm not sure how you can Judge This Gundam anime when its not even done yet, I would agree if it was complete But its Not how do you know these issue you have won't be fixed for season 2 ?

HELL YES it's about time that Gundam makes its triumphant return to Toonami, I know that I'll be tuning in to watch the English dub premier. Very Happy

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-If you're not into slice of life anime the amount of dialogue is absolutely horrifically time consuming

While it may have bothered you (and possibly other viewers) overly long character chatter is part of the point in attempting to characterize otherwise non-combat members of the established cast.

The only issue may be more in the nature that there is minimal focus on the supposed main protagonists, some justified as Mikazuki IS a sociopath who other that the limited number of individuals that he considers "important" he would be able to murder them without second thought if ordered by Orga.
Orga and Kudelia certainly needed more character focus, but I digress for length.

In the end, if the method in which the story telling "felt off" then that is subject to viewer experience, but just as well IBO is far from the worst of story telling in any of the Gundam Franchise.

I'm pleased to see this will air over here. My brother can finally enjoy it.

I'm on Freeview so no Toonami for me but this has reminded me to get caught up on IBO because that shit was the best Gundam in years!

I should check this one out sometime!

TBBH, DuelGundam2099 said is right.

I think Toonami should air shows like Aldnoah.Zero or Knights of Sidonia instead of this IBO crap. :/

FenixFiesta wrote:

While it may have bothered you (and possibly other viewers) overly long character chatter is part of the point in attempting to characterize otherwise non-combat members of the established cast.

And that is perfectly fine for non-combatants. War orphans, military officials, and mecha pilots which make up most of the cast in a war story though? Not so much.

dark13 wrote:

But if you going to talk about the Negatives Bring up the positives

I liked Ein and the scenery art was decent. I'd list more if I could.

About time Gundam returned to Toonami. I knew it would happen one of these...years. XD

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And that is perfectly fine for non-combatants. War orphans, military officials, and mecha pilots which make up most of the cast in a war story though? Not so much.

You may have "some" point that IBO may have messed up when the story attempted to characterize the otherwise "canon fodder" side characters, however, Gundam as a franchise whole has often gotten around to trying to establish SOME sort of character out of otherwise faceless mook combatants that might appear even for only one episode out of a given two cour season.

At the very least, IBO did not create a long term Katz type character who seemingly existed only to screw up the organization and be a "take that" at would be fan boy pilots.

FenixFiesta wrote:

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And that is perfectly fine for non-combatants. War orphans, military officials, and mecha pilots which make up most of the cast in a war story though? Not so much.

You may have "some" point that IBO may have messed up when the story attempted to characterize the otherwise "canon fodder" side characters, however, Gundam as a franchise whole has often gotten around to trying to establish SOME sort of character out of otherwise faceless mook combatants that might appear even for only one episode out of a given two cour season.

At the very least, IBO did not create a long term Katz type character who seemingly existed only to screw up the organization and be a "take that" at would be fan boy pilots.

Plus the show isn't even done yet so I think a lot of the issue he might have could be fixed. In my Opinion the show handled some of the Orphans really well ( I already listed a few examples ) I don't think its the best Gundam anime But its no where Near as worst as what some people would have you believe.

pajmo9 wrote:

I think I'll pass on this. This had to be the worst gundam series I've ever seen.

just be glad it wasnt AGE or the build fighters series which would have killed any chance of the franchise getting back on TV again let alone on AS again after they made a mess of gundam seed with their half assed edits and censorships. while IBO had its faults, its definitely decent to watch and it fits the audience to a tee. too bad code geass didn't get IBO's timeslot during its run. it would have been more successful instead of that crappy 5am slot and cause of that its highly unlikely that akito the exiled will get and AS broadcast release when it comes to the US.