Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX

Episode 8

A purple and green mobile suit, viewed from a catwalk. The emphasis on the “third pilot.” What happens if Nyaan doesn't agree to get in the robot; will Rei have to do it again? "Falling on the Moon” was the Neon Genesis Evangelion/Mobile Suit Gundam merger that Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX has been teasing ever since it was announced that Hideaki Anno would have some involvement with the series. Set in Granada, the famed Gundam city on the dark side of the moon, this episode featured Nyaan at her most lethal. Though the episode began with a flashback and some footage from the Gundam GQuuuuuuX movie, its strongest points were the original ones as it diverges from the One Year War in increasingly dramatic ways.

I've always had a soft spot for M'Quve, a terrible man who had no business as a military colonel. Everyone would have been happier, M'Quve included, if he could have lived a quiet life as an art collector. Instead, this arrogant antagonist was responsible for the deaths of thousands, in the original canon at least. Apparently this time, M'Quve has failed upward due to being the commander of the relief fleet for the Battle of Solomon—and this time, Solomon was a fight Zeon won. This flashback that takes up the first part of the episode expands on scenes from the Gundam GQuuuuuuX movie, delving more deeply into what happened to Char right before the Zeknova incident. “I can see time,” Char's final transmission, is quite the line and sounds more like something you'd say on LSD. Or at least that's what I thought the first time I heard it in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. In the 1979 show, the line belonged to Char's Newtype protégé Lalah, right before her death. Lalah was a woman with dark brown skin and black hair who looks… exactly like the woman on the swing that we see at the end of this episode. Combined with the emo-banged individual with a weirdly familiar voice, it looks like plenty of Zeon's ghosts have come back to haunt Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX.

More context at hand, the episode jumps forward five years to where Nyaan is getting acquainted with her new life as Kycilia's protégé of sorts. Nyaan is the epitome of the phrase “still waters run deep,” and the episode makes it clear that the wheels are always turning behind that perpetually calm expression. It all pays off when Nyaan stone-cold vaporizes a dude. If you ask me, everything else about the episode is set-up to get to that pivotal moment. First, Nyaan enjoys some of Kycilia's home cooking—an incongruous Kycilia factoid that seems strange at first. Kycilia appears to be anything but domestic! But Nyaan makes the connection right away: Kycilia is far too concerned about assassination, namely poison, to trust anyone else to cook for her. Connecting these dots saves Nyaan's life just a short while later when she realizes that the delicious-looking cake Miguel made for her, he also made for each of the GFreD test pilots… and she knows Xavier never got a chance to try it himself. From there it's easy for Nyaan to determine who the real poisoner is, and to dispatch him as coldly as he would have her.

Nyaan is definitely a cut above, to the point that she is able to control the GFreD (even though it's probably based on the quantum variable of the same name, calling this Gundam “Fred” just cracks me up) without even getting inside the cockpit. (This also makes me wonder about how the GQuuuuuuX seemingly autonomously saved Machu last week—was Nyaan behind that as well?) No man has ever been deader than Miguel after Nyaan dealt with him, and even Xavier seems to realize she's more than he predicted. This ruthless death gets echoed just a short while later when Kycilia makes some calculations of her own and shoots the man responsible for sourcing Miguel's poison. It's no wonder Kycilia was so adamant about bringing Nyaan with her. Within Nyaan, she sees something of herself.

There's no Shuji this episode, and barely any Machu. What there is, however, is a strong candidate for a man who might be Char. A blonde with long bangs, a piercing blue eye, and a name (Shirozu) that uses the kanji for the number four, I think it's safe to call it now. Why does the number four imply Char Aznable? Because in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, he went by the alias Quattro Bajeena. (In Japan, this name was sometimes romanized as Quattro Vagina, and you can guess why this spelling did not make it to English subtitles.) Between a closer look at who Nyaan really is and a deeper dive into the mystery behind Char's disappearance and setting the scene for his potential reappearance, this anime is getting really good. I'm looking forward to Machu's side of the story next week.

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Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Tuesdays.