So it turns out kicking off the blog on a Thursday night with an update due Friday, nothing written, and a plan that involves spending a couple days on major updates is a terrible idea. I apologize for the delay, and without further ado let’s get started.
Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket
Almost as misleading as Watership Down’s ‘All Ages’ rating.
Gundam 0080 is rather atypical for a Gundam series. While the series keeps themes involving tragedies caused by imperfect communication and the horrors of war, it moves away from the Newtypes, battles for the fate of the Earth Sphere, and focus on ace Mobile Suits and their pilots that characterize most Gundam series. It instead chooses to show us a rather small-scale, personal side story focusing on a young boy named Alfred as he learns of the horrors of war.
The break from formula works very well for War in the Pocket. The normal anti-war messages in Gundam series fall into the trap Truffaut noted, namely that you can’t really make an anti-war film, for to show the war is to make it noble. For all that most Gundam series proclaim their anti-war messages rather loudly the fact that their protagonists are generally ace pilots piloting powerful custom machines and fighting the evil Space Nazis (Or some other similarly violent threat) rather undermines the anti-war and pacifistic messages the series attempts to convey. It’s one thing to say that war is bad, and another to say it while a Gundam kills a bunch of Space Nazis in order to stop them from ramming a space fortress into Earth.
Storytelling wise, War in the Pocket sidesteps this rather nicely in two steps. First, the protagonist isn’t an awesome robot pilot fighting space nazis. He’s a ten year old kid. He doesn’t get in the robot, he doesn’t fight the nazis, he doesn’t save anyone, nevermind the world. He simply goes from a kid who plays violent video games for stress relief and thinks giant robot fights and war are the coolest thing ever to a heavily traumatized kid who just saw his cool new friend get turned to hamburger with a beam sword. Second, the fighting in War in the Pocket is ultimately completely pointless. The NT-1 is a technological dead-end and is dropped in favor of Psycommu weaponry, so the Zeon mission on Side 6 is totally pointless. The nuclear assault that threatens the colony and triggers the last, tragic fight of the series is disarmed without a finger lifted on the part of the protagonists, rendering Bernies tragic, heroic last fight an utterly pointless, self-destructive spectacle that accomplices nothing besides getting himself killed, injuring Christina, and horribly traumatizing Alfred.
With that said, War in the Pocket’s animation is rather dated, it has, after all, been twenty-five years since it’s release. However it’s still of pretty decent quality, and has mostly held up over time. Though there are a few places where it fails to impress, notably an early scene where Alfred plays a video game, but most of the animation still looks great and the giant robot designs have aged remarkably well. Mitsuo Iso was used for quite a bit of the combat animation, and his skill absolutely shows, even twenty five years on. Yeah, it isn’t exactly Aldnoah Zero, Gundam Unicorn, or even Argevollen in terms of shininess, but it’s well animated and the detail of depicted battle damage and wear that drawn animation can depict lend it an element of weight and versimilitude that serves it rather well.
Now, it isn’t perfect. It’s a rather slow start, and if you’re in it for the giant robot fights they’re rather sparse on the ground. In addition, Alfred can grate in the early episodes and while it’s setup for some pretty excellent payoff in terms of his character arc I can totally understand not liking him much. It’s very much, and very purposefully, unlike other Gundam works, and as a result loving other Gundam works does not guarantee your enjoyment of War in the Pocket. Bits of how it sets up the idea of Mobile Suit Combat as something mythical to the inhabitants of Side 6 can feel a little clumsy, and the fact that it opens with an amazing combat sequence that isn’t really followed up till near the end of the OVA can annoy some. I feel that it’s necessary setup that enhances the work, but you may well disagree.
Now that we have all the important stuff out of the way, lets talk about something every Gundam review needs to talk about. Giant Fucking Robots. War in the Pocket contains both a host of original designs and updates of previous designs from 0079. The Hy-gogg‘s easily my favorite new mech, and one of my favorite designs from the entire Gundam lineup, it’s an awesome update of the Gogg that turns what I felt was a bit of a flop into a simply awesome aquatic close combat mech. Its flexible, lethal arms allow for incredibly cool animation during the opening fight at antarctic base, and simply witnessing them launch their arm-mounted missiles with lazy swings or grapple RGM-079s is a treat. It’s silhouette is visually interesting, and watching it jetpack out of the ocean and maneuver during the opening stages of the battle feels cool. It may be a mass produced grunt mech, but the Hy-gogg has style, in no small part due to Mitsuo Iso’s work during the animation of the opening fight.
Look at this beautiful bastard.
The other designs are pretty cool as well. Of the new Mobile Suits, the Kampfer’s got a really cool design and functions nicely, the Alex is a neat variation on the standard Gundam with a cool arm-mounted rotary cannon as well as heavy armor, the Zaku 2 Kai is a powerful-looking rework of the standard Zaku 2, and the Sniper 2 and Command GM are both pretty solid changes to the standard RGM 079. The redesigns, old Mobile Suits redrawn so as to look less dated, are all very well done. While none of them are particularly exceptional they make the occasionally goofy designs of Mobile Suit Gundam fit in perfectly, which is all they really need to do.
Of course, the fact that I just spent two paragraphs talking about how cool the giant robots are rather undermines my point about War in the Pocket’s effectiveness as an anti-war Gundam series. I’d argue that it doesn’t do irreversible damage, and certainly that War in the Pocket is still far more effective than other Gundam series. The use of Mitsuo Iso and relatively careful deployment of Mobile Suit Combat makes the fights awe-inspiring and real in a way they generally aren’t in other Gundam works, and it helps the work sidestep Truffaut’s trap. The degree to which this succeeds is, of course, up to the individual viewer, but I for one think it works rather well.
War in the Pocket is easily my favorite Gundam series so far, and I doubt anything will contest its title (Though I’ve heard that Turn A is pretty good?). It’s a break from formula in a rather effective fashion, the animation holds up rather well, and its easily one of the most effective Gundam series in thematic and emotional impact. If I had a number scale for rating these things War in the Pocket would receive something very close to the maximum score, and I fully recommend giving it a watch.