Forum - View topicBeyond Die Hard – Why Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz is the Preeminent Christmas Film
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Zeino
Posts: 1098 |
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I'd very much disagree about Wing TV lacking atmosphere and ambience but otherwise good piece. It helps that the movie version of EW is probably the best Gundam film by a long shot and that the only other choice to get something holiday out of Gundam is 0080 which while great, is also deeply sad and might be a bit too much for some people given the year we had. Meanwhile Endless Waltz ends on a note of hope that maybe a better future can still lie ahead. A good message to have in the troubled times we live in.
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ResistNormal
Posts: 117 |
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Nothing like Sitting around the fire and enjoying some hamburgers watching Gundam 0080. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 4817 |
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I just rewatched it last night and it's still really great and I just really enjoy how the characters sans Wufei have really matured in it and the animation and mecha designs still look good. Though I love the new footage in the movie version I still kind of prefer the TM Revolution songs in the OVA version more. I wish there was a way we could get the movie version that also has White Reflection in it.
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tintor2
 Posts: 1817 |
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I remember enjoying this movie as a teen but kinda complained why they made the Wing Gundam look even cooler just to trash it. It was a nice conclusion to the story and every character reached their journey's end. I repeat, that was the end.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5915 |
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Supposed to be a dismissal of the mangas  ?
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DRosencraft
Posts: 665 |
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I fondly remember watching Endless Waltz on Toonami right around Chirstmas as a kid. Has always been my favorite Gundam, and the reason I'm optimistic yet fearful of a Frozen Teardrop anime being made one day. Re-watching EW it is a yearly tradition for me.
To this day, however, I don't know why TSO's Christmas Eve Sarajevo is stuck in my head every time I watch it, and vice verse EW replays in my bead whenever I hear Christmas Eve Sarajevo. Like, if I didn't know any better I would swear that song was actually in EW. |
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Rob19ny
Posts: 1669 |
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Endless Waltz originally released on 1/25 so they at least got 25 right even thought it was 1 month after Christmas. I can't do it this year, so next year I'll rewatch the whole series just in time for Christmas.
TMR entered the Gundam series with SEED. |
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Firefly251
Posts: 354 |
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Wufei did mature, but in a more minor way until end. He was raised to follow his belief growing up to become the pilot. Then had his friends/home destroyed and then peace came after Libra was beaten. he had no place to go back to and his reason for doing his job (piloting gundam) was no longer needed. He had no view on what he should do anymore and he just joined a group that needed his skills which he saw as only thing he had left. |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 381 Location: PA / USA |
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Probably a really controversial statement, but as much as Ghost in the Shell's original film gets a ton of praise, I think Endless Waltz is better than it on successive viewings and holds up more than Ghost in the Shell does after all these years (mind you, I'm more a Standalone Complex Fan).
The pacing of the film, the characters, and all of their history together; the action, the animation, the music.... this was probably the singular greatest moment in both Gundam and Toonami back in the day (prior to Iron-Blooded Orphans) and is possibly one of the singular most important moments in anime to cap off the 90's before Fullmetal Alchemist rolled on in and dropped jaws. I'm still playing the Endless Waltz soundtrack to this very day. It has some very "PS1-era Xenogears/FF7" sort of sounds going on in places, and the overall atmosphere the film+soundtrack gives is this haunting, mysterious vibe that preys on nostalgia - very much a 90's sort of anime style, and the sort of tone/vibe I wish we saw a lot more of in recent years. The one fatal flaw of Endless Waltz? You have to watch the TV series before it for full enjoyment and holy crap is it a slooooooooooog. The original Gundam Wing designs were really bland - you play practically any Gundam game with Wing characters and 9 times out of 10 the Waltz Custom editions of the cast's MS lineup is more fun & full-featured than their Wing counterparts. The pacing of the TV series is all over the place, they probably could have condensed a ton of episodes, and the ultimate conflicts and payoff in the show fizzle pretty hard - every criticism Chrono Cross got for lacking focus and featuring too many characters, Gundam Wing suffers from over 49 drawn out episodes. Ouch. ....but then something magical happens. Endless Waltz swoops in and fixes everything. Suddenly each character has a purpose, their history is relevant, and the pacing is practically pure perfection. Wealth and glory to the winner~ |
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AkumaChef
Posts: 821 |
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I feel the same, including about the music. I have all the Wing CDs and I still play them regularly too. Both the BGM and the vocal pieces are fantastic.
While I do agree that you need to have seen all of Wing TV to appreciate every last detail of Endless Waltz I don't think that is as much of a problem as many of the reviews I have read made it out to be. Even if someone has seen no prior Gundam content I think Endless Waltz is quite accessible on its own. Sure there are some details here and there that they won't get but the story overall is so powerful that it doesn't matter much, at least in my opinion. I've shown Endless Waltz to numerous people with no prior Gundan experience (both anime fans and non-fans) and it's universally loved. Of course if you have seen all of Wing then it only gets better.
That's true of every Gundam TV series which I have seen. It's almost a staple: as the show progressess the characters' mobile suits get damaged, then upgraded with more powerful versions later on. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4469 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket is my favourite Gundam anime by far (not that I've seen that much beyond the UC OVAs and Wing which I watched at an anime club in the 1990s) but every year I intend to add Gundam 0080 to my annual Christmas anime watchlist (which is mostly on DVD and Blu-Ray so I don't know if "watchlist" technically applies) however I never actually get around to watching it during the Christmas season because it's almost 3 hours long and I already have The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya as the one two-and-a-half-hour-plus butt-numbing Christmas anime that I reliably watch every year. |
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ShaolinWolf
Posts: 96 |
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I just want to say this was a really great article, with a clear thesis, and well presented arguments to back it up. It goes without saying I'll be following the author's work from now on.
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