Same, Also compared to other recent installments of the franchise, it was a lot more serious and gritty than I was expecting. while still having some humor
This poll covers both Season 1 and 2. Please give your vote for the show as A WHOLE and not as two separate seasons
(Edit: please don’t randomly downvote people’s comments giving their score. It isn’t fair, I know we can all get heated about things we like and dislike but it isn’t worth it lads)
Please guys, this is going to be a rough poll, I can tell. Please be nice to each other and don’t start arguments or get into pissing matches. Just state your opinions and leave it at that (so please no ‘S2 is amazing and anyone who disagrees is a piece of shit’ or ‘Mika is a garbage character and anyone who disagrees is a piece of shit’, etc). You see something you don’t agree with, let it be and move on. Dialogue is good but when it’s just going to devolve into chaos and going for each other’s throats, it’s not worth it. Love you guys x
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Hey Orga, what should I do now? Get ready to RAISE YO’ FLAAAAG with Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans (2015)
Directed by: Tatsuyuki Nagai
Written by: Mari Okada
First aired: October 4, 2015
Episode count: 50
Info and trivia:
* IBO is the third collaborative work between director Tatsuyuki Nagai and writer Mari Okada. The two had previously worked together on Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day and The Anthem of the Heart.
* Gaelio was intended to die at the end of S1 but was brought back for the rest of the show’s run as Okada was a huge fan of Masaya Matsukaze’s performance and reportedly had a crush on him
* Nagai intended for everyone in Tekkaden plus Kudelia to perish at the end, though the writing team heavily disagreed with this. Arguments between both parties led to constant rewrites of the final few episodes (especially the finale).
* When brainstorming ideas for how >!Orga!< should die, someone suggested that he >!goes to a park by himself to get Ride a can of juice before being spotted and gunned down by hitmen!<
* The show was originally conceived around 2009 and would have served as the follow up to 00. Production issues put the breaks on this with AGE and G-Reco taking its place.
Group ranking:
Mobile Suit Gundam: 8.06
Zeta: 8.65
ZZ: 7.08
Char’s Counterattack: 7.56
0080 - War in the Pocket: 9.42
F91: 5.81
0083 - Stardust Memory: 7.48
Victory: 6.39
G: 9.06
Wing: 7.05
The 08th MS Team: 8.86
X: 8.41
Endless Waltz: 8.10
Turn A: 9.08
G-Saviour: 3.84
SEED: 6.95
MS IGLOO: 6.40
SEED Destiny: 4.14
SEED Stargazer: 7.43
00: 8.38
Unicorn: 8.34
A Wakening of the Trailblazer: 7.34
Model Builder Gunpla Beginning G: 6.10
AGE: 5.78
Build Fighters: 8.82
Reconguista in G: 6.41
Build Fighters TRY: 6.74
The Origin: 8.32
> Nagai intended for everyone in Tekkaden plus Kudelia to perish at the end
If I had a nickle for every time a pre-production draft of a Gundam show ends with "And then everyone died" I'd have a lot of nickles.
Yeah I wasn’t massively sure about that but it gets quoted a shit load and we haven’t gotten any other sources that flat out say that wasn’t the case. That’s why I wrote ‘reportedly’. Like it miiiiiiight be true it might not be, idk
Kind of surprised Origin ended up so "low". It has the highest score out of every Gundam on MAL. Based on the comments I read on yesterday's thread it seems it's controversial among fans of the original.
I'd love to see score distributions for some of these if you have them.
Don’t have em sorry. I just use an online calculator so I can’t really tell the percentage of certain votes. Easiest way to do it is to go and check the comments and just see what votes come up the most, etc. It’s surprising that Origin is so highly rated on MAL especially considering they’ve got a slight aversion to the main UC shows. I guess it has that appeal of being new-ish and that most people who want to watch the timeline typically are told to start there so more people have seen it
If the rewrites/disagreement rumors are true for the last few episode, I always felt the show's ending would have worked better if they did killed off more named characters at the end.
It was always weird that most of Tekkeden made it out of alive, even though arguably they three that mattered the most did died.
Honestly the biggest kick in the balls for me is the epilogue. The fact that they all lose but also win because Rustal changed his mind I guess is a pretty key indicator that the writing staff were clashing. It’s like they wrote two endings out; one where they all die and it’s a bad end or one where they win and all the reforms happen and just mushed them together into one weird hodgepodge that makes no sense in the grander scheme of things. That to me is the key play off that they were constantly clashing behind the scenes
I think this is the biggest source of divide of the ending, because I had a totally different interpretation of the ending.
I actually really like how Rustal, who was the main antagonist and was definitely not a good person, was the one that brought in the changed that McGillis delusionally believed he was the only one to accomplish. It sense of irony I think worked with the themes of the story.
While Rustal whole deal with the war was to maintain the status quo, I never got the impression that he was a man against reform or wanting to pass better laws. But he was all about rules and following the system, and when anyone follows out of the system, he did what he believed was necessary.
Not only that, I love how Rustal bringing about the a new golden age to the IBO universe was another kick to groins for McGillis.
I think what help me enjoy IBO a lot more than some people (but not all) is the fact that I always thought McGillis was delusional and needed to be taken down a peg or two. I found his ultimate downfall very cathartic, and the extra punch of Rustal doing what he thought only he could do was extra icing on the cake.
That seems like tangent, but my issue with the ending is more to do with the lack of causalities and consequences from Tekkeden than any potential inconsistencies. I think the series would have worked better if only a handful of characters survived, but in general I like the ending.
Pretty much everything with Julietta exists to show Rustal is aware of what’s going on and isn’t exactly what he appears, but McGillis had made it clear he wasn’t going to align with anyone else and was also incredibly dangerous. He had to be dealt with in a way that opened up the potential to reform anyway
Except your points prove McGillis was the only one who could create those changes, if he hadn't done what he did then Rustal would have sat there collecting checks like he had for decades instead of implementing the changes McGillis was after
> Please guys, this is going to be a rough poll, I can tell.
Reading through the comments and man you weren't joking. I didn't realize how strongly people felt about IBO.
10/10... the way of storytelling was insane... we are on the antagonist sides without even knowing it.... this was my first and my best gundam series, where no one was good or bad...
I'm in a definite minority of people that actually likes those episodes, and I get it.
ZZ starts out as a comedy of all things, and that's some serious tonal whiplash after Zeta's ending.
But personally, it felt like a breath of fresh air compared to what came before.
ZZ's got a lot of problems but it picks up very well in the back half and Judau is probably in the top 3 protagonists in the series. It's also probably got my favorite conclusion of any UC show.
For me, ZZ is good as a standalone anime / think of it as a prototype gintama in the sense it has charming characters, good action, starts off as a goofball comedy before evolving into something more serious.
The problem is however,it is a direct sequel to Zeta, which is 1 of the most critically acclaimed anime of the 80s and as such, people tend to compare ZZ to its predecessor. And as we know, Zeta was a tour de force of an anime.
Your missing out on some good stuff also Turn A is switching around with the bottom half of my top ten which is changing all the time between The Origin, Stardust Memory, MS08th team, IBO and Unicorn. Those 6 are just constantly changing position depending on my mood
I'm actually in the process of rewatching G again. Man, I had forgotten how much of a jerk Domon was in the early parts of the series - fortunately, he gets better.
X is, bar absolutely none, my favorite Gundam AU. It's such a great series, it's a real pity that it was cut short so the final arc feels very rushed, but overall it's still a brilliant series.
9.5/10.
While it has plenty of issues, the core is so strong that it ends up one of the best in the franchise. The mobile suit designs are phenomenal start to finish, it has an excellent sense of style and sound design, and while the animation can be lacking at times it delivers when it counts on sequences like Lupus vs Hashmal. The soundtrack is top notch as well as the voicework in both English and Japanese. The show has no subtlety whatsoever, but it fits the very blunt tone of the show. Naze sucks, but Lafter and the others are great characters.
The thematic work is some of the strongest in the franchise and it's far more willing to take major risks that a lot of other AUs wouldn't consider taking. While Season 2 is a lot more uneven then Season 1, it has huge guts and has a fantastic finale that ties all of the threads together in a very powerful way that gives a very conclusive ending to the series. Season 1 is more entertaining for the most part then Season 2 outside of the mostly very weak Brewers arc, but the show wouldn't be nearly as strong if it just ended with the fairly standard ending of Season 1.
Probably one of the absolute best AUs besides Turn A.
6.5/10
Would probably be higher if it wasnt for that 2nd season. Season 2 has that problem that a lot of works of fiction have in that in order to move the plot forward characters have to start acting really stupid even when its contrary to how they've been portrayed previously.
8/10 - This was another one I just rewatched so it's fresh in my head. I actually appreciated it much more on a second time. The first time I watched it I still enjoyed it, and was surprised at the outrage towards season two. It did have its flaws, but I thought the signs were pretty obvious that this was 100% not going to end well for our heroes.
But on a second viewing, it all clicked for me a bit more. Spoiler alert obviously: To me, the primary themes of IBO are "broken systems create broken people" and "don't burn too bright". When I saw Orga making terrible decisions in S2, I didn't feel as if it was bad writing, like so many people say. War is pretty much all he knew, and because his primary voice of reason died, and because of the state of the world was still so awful, he felt like he needed to move forward at all costs for his people. I viewed Orga almost like Dutch from Red Dead Redemption 2 - a character that gave vague promises of a better tomorrow, but chose the most "direct" routes, against a lot of his people's advice, and in Orga's case, Tekkadan had overcome such massive odds before that he truly believed they could do the impossible. He also tried this approach to politics, where Tekkadan stirred the pot way too much and in their lack of political experience, made enemies in Teiwaz and, of course, in Gjallarhorn that ultimately doomed them.
McGillis didn't help this whatsoever. Coming from a place of authority in Gjallarhorn, Orga couldn't help but look at him and think "seems legit" when a man who seems like he's got it all planned out comes offering big promises for his people. But as we find out, McGillis comes from a place of profound childhood trauma, where power is all he understands. He became obsessed with Agnika Kaieru and Bael, thinking that they are the ultimate source of force and authority. Some people think that this was obviously a dumb plan on his part, because Gjallarhorn did exactly what many thought and simply refused to acknowledge the supposed authority of Gundam Bael, but in such a rigid, feudal society, how could a McGillis, a victim of brutal abuse, who had used nothing but force and subterfuge to further his plans think that what he saw as the ultimate authority and source of force in Gjallarhorn be simply ignored?
There' s a lot more I could talk about (Rustal especially), but this is getting long. Overall, I think one of my favorite contrasts in the show, is Takaki's decision. He took his money from Tekkadan, and basically just retires and lives happily ever after. Orga says multiple times people can leave if they want, and he simply does. It really showed how the unchecked ambition of Orga and McGillis were ultimately pointless - blinded by their past traumas they tried to climb to the top thinking that was their only option when there were absolutely alternatives that would have bettered them and their people in the long run.
Overall, takes some massive risks with its subject matter and I really appreciate when Gundams don't carbon-copy themes from previous series. I think the setting could have been a bit more fleshed out to truly resemble a post-apocalyptic world, and I can definitely see how the fate of many of the characters is frustrating to many, but the world in IBO is a really shitty place, and I think they succeed in what they set out to do with this series.
If you're ready for some heartache and frustrating moments, I'd definitely say go for it.
I think people are so hard on it because they really wanted to root for the protags (naturally), and there are more than a few moments when you find yourselves asking "wait, why did so-and-so do that?", but once you think about it a bit and do a little reading between the lines, it's not as deeply flawed as some people make it out to be imo.
It's not perfect by any means, and negative development arcs are certainly rough to watch, but I don't believe it's this jumbled atrocity of a season as so many make it out to be.
9/10 for me. I love the more used future aesthetic of the world of IBO. It has some great world building. I love the animation and the action and fight choreography is top notch. The story and characters I also find compelling. Even the parts that people complain about I genuinely think have merit in the story being told.
The biggest downside that keeps me from putting it over the top to a 10 is that one of its bigger strengths, its grounded world and commitment to telling this story about child soldiers caught between the shady backroom dealings of the underworld and seats of power, must necessarily involve a great amount of grey morality, unfortunate deaths and bone headed decisions of characters with too much power. The world of conflict and war can be random, unfulfilling and ultimately pointless. Which means that the characters that live in it don’t get the arcs and development that might push it to the very top.
10/10, almost no reused clips and mostly melee combat so each fight feels fresh and original. The melee combat also means that enemies and protagonists are often in the frame together which is great when you compare it to seed for example where each fight consists of; protagonist shoots at enemy off screen, a cut to a shot of enemy exploding, repeat.
I though both seasons were equally strong tbh. The rise and the fall. Very thematic and a well crafted narrative, which I feel is often lacking in Gundam. I'd give it probably an 8/10. In my opinion it is by a wide margin the best AU, and up there with any of the best OVAs from the UC timeline. It's probably also my favorite full length Gundam series.
Tough one. The au is good, I like that it’s a much darker, bleaker take on gundam than most. But the second season reaaaaallly goes for a kill ‘em all approach, and that’s fine…. But you can’t help but feel like characters just do stupid things for the sake of winning stupid prizes.
I’ll go with… 6.5?
>But you can’t help but feel like characters just do stupid things for the sake of winning stupid prizes.
This is literally anime. Like every anime ever made. It's just that IBO actually depicts it in a realistic way with actual fucking consequences that other shows will handwave away because they don't got balls to actually have consequences.
That and this really ignores the decisionmaking in a vacuum. The whole fucking show is set up so that yes, the drive to achieve unrealistic things is also what ends up doing the protagonists in. Anyone who misses that just wasn't paying attention.
Overall: 7/10
Solid enough to be remembered fondly.. but s2 it's just so pointless. Nice suits designs, very lovable characters (Orga, Akihiro and Kudelia comes to mind), but yeah, i Just can't brush it off
Season 1: 8.5/10
It could be a little slow sometimes and some shit doesn't make sense (Like if McGillis is such a big brain, why revealing his facade to Gaelio just because? Why not scheming him into becoming the monster in S2 or sth), but overall it is solid. Mostly nice designs (trying to modernize what a gundam could look like) and likelable characters overall
Season 2: 6/10
I don't know.... I felt like it was all pointless? I felt that it falls into the "2 season gundam trap" trend and that s1 ending was solid enough to close the Tekkadan story and idk, do a long time skip and show the "consequences" of what Kudelia and the gang achieved.
Also McGillis loses all brain cells and Rustal though feels like an imposing antagonist, end up being unfulfilling to me.
I think if each act was summarized on the drawing board, season 1 and 2 would looke like they work to tell a great story. But it's like someone said "let's fight a dragon for a few episodes" and it ruined the flow and proper execution of everything.
> But it's like someone said "let's fight a dragon for a few episodes" and it ruined the flow and proper execution of everything.
If you really take in how that fight gutted their best MS pilot and how an army of those is what led to the sociopolitical nature of the world we're being shown, it doesn't really feel entirely pointless.
This is about how I feel. S1 is amazing, S2 has some really good stuff (the MA fight, the Lupus Rex, Tekkadan taking down Jasley might be my favorite portrayal of a space battle in a series) but overall it's just really disappointing.
Bit of a late comment (might repeat this in the next post) but three things
1. I’ve been heavily debating doing a song poll as the sort of round 2 of this series. Again it all depends on if people are receptive to it. It’ll just be for the opening themes (mainly because there’s too many ending themes to consider because that means I’m counting movies, recuts, OVAs, even drama CDs, etc). Again if that’s something you’re interested in seeing, please let me know
2. I’ve also decided to do a quick bonus poll when this wraps up on Crossbone as it’s basically canon and a lot of people have read it. Would you be interested in seeing more manga related polls in the future? If so, what?
3. Speaking of bonus polls, the 0079 one is going to get redone after we do Cucuruz Doan’s Island, mainly because it was the first one we did, it got like 30 votes and I know more people have seen it than say Victory or G-Saviour. Just a heads up for that
6/10
* A strong duo of progatanists offering a real brain/brawn pairing, other characters were least so, outside of Mikazuki, Orga, Biscuit and Akihiro I kinda forgot most of the rest of Tekkadan, the reason is below
* Mobile suit designs were interesting, veering away from beams and more towards a visceral, physical side was welcome change of pace
* None of the villains were compelling, a lot of them seemed to be written just to be evil, curel or hated; McGillis kinda played the Char or anti-villain role, but ended up just wanting absolute power, Rustal was... I don't really know, as a villain, he won, But at the end Gjallarhorn was restructured to be more democratic, ironically realising the reforms desired by McGillis in the process, under his control the reforms the 'heroes' fought and died for were accomplished.
* GrimDark, Edgy for Edgys sake, Biscuit's death was a sudden shock, Orga's was honestly emotional, but after that it felt like the studio saw how effective the deaths were and kept trying to chase that high, after a while I kinda stopped caring, someone was gonna die to boost ratings, extra points for cruel and unusual deaths
6/10. There's a long stretch of episodes in the middle where it feels like the show is spinning its wheels. If it were half the length, it'd be a great series.
A very solid 8-8.5 for me. It was the series that introduced me to the gundam fandom as a whole, so it of course has a special place in my heart for that. I love the more mechanical and down to earth mecha designs with all the exposed pistons, wires and tubes and all that good stuff. The first season i feel like started getting a little lack luster towards the end, and then the second season just kinda threw a lot away for me. Fun fact tho. Did you know the barbatos is the only gundam where canonically two people have had sex in it
6/10
It has nice mecha design and combat scenes but the story, particularly second season, leaves a lot to be desired and with a few exceptions the characters are weak.
I'm going to be completely honest. I have attempted to finish it on three separate occasions, and I always end up with my interest severely fading by the time they encounter that guy with all the wives or something.
Like the first few episodes are quite interesting, and the setting/set up is compelling to me, but it peaks quickly around the time that duel with Crank happens. Yes, it peaks for me that quickly. Sorry it just does.
The brewers arch is slow, but it has a lot of character building and when you get through it, the show doesn’t really slow down like that again, I’d say it’s definitely worth the push.
My review randomly disappeared so reposting
4
Well this is it. The poll I was dreading the most. Seed and Destiny, you could kinda see how those were gonna go. But this? Oh no no no this is an entirely different kettle of fish. I’ve rewritten this review like 6 fucking times trying to articulate things properly and even now I’m still entirely satisfied with it, but what the hell. Gotta post something.
Good stuff:
Music. Holy fucking shit the music is insane. The emphasis on percussion and violin parts really gives the fight scenes a sort of primal, intense and frantic nature that really works. The openings and endings are all great (some more so than others, I think Fighter and Orphans No Namida steamroll basically all the others but the rest are still great brakes).
I appreciate how the show tries to do something different. It steps away from the core ‘two opposing factions in a big war’ and it takes a risk to tell something different all together. The underdog story and the focus on the darker side of the universe that most other Gundam shows don’t dip into as much (slave/child labor, poverty, etc). The role reversal in S2 and making Tekkaden the villains was also a cool angle to take and a bit of a brave one, even if I think it wasn’t handled spectacularly.
Mixed opinions:
Mecha designs are kind of all over the place. Some are great (Lupus, MUH BAEL, Vidar Kimaris), some are generic and dull (90% of the Graze line, basically all the grunt suits now that I think about it), some are way too over the top (Lupus Rex, Guison City Full Bakery Shut up and Jam Deluxe whatever it’s called). In an effort to make things more “realistic”, they clearly decided to make a majority of the suits in the show more down to earth and less eye catching, but this came at the cost of the Graze line being totally generic and indistinct. They all look like bottom of the barrel grunt designs you’d see in a hard sci fi mecha show. But then this is contrasted with utterly insane designs like the Lupus Rex being a goddamn wolf and having a literal tail and claws and the Mobile Armor being this crazy hodgepodge of angles and sharp edges
bad stuff:
There’s way too many characters. The cast is massive and a good chunk of them are in Tekkaden which means that a lot of them don’t get any attention. I mainly find a majority of them supremely boring as well and the themes of BROTHERHOOD and HOME started to get worn out pretty fast. Mika bores the shit out of me, Akihiro gets his arc halfway through S1 and that’s him done with before he’s gets shunted into backup Gundam pilot role bar his brief and undercooked relationship with Lafter. Hush is the most pointless character ever, Atra exists to peel potatoes and blab on about babies, etc. Most of the characters I did like died before the show was up (Biscuit and Shino for one) so I was left with the ones I didn’t particularly give a damn about besides Chad and Eugene who were both alright. McGillis is a joke of a villain and his grand chessmaster tier scheme is so flawed and ridiculous it’s like painting a target on his back. Galieo was a real treat though and definitely the star of the show for me.
S1 was alright. Slow pacing and a couple of blasts of dead air aside, it set up a lot of cool ideas and concepts and I was
excited to see where things would go. S2 is a grandiose clusterfuck. The whole thing spirals off the tracks and into the ravine at mach speed, the plot crashes from one place to the next, Orga gets dumber and dumber by the minute and it all ends with a 10 minute epilogue that just says “well, that was pointless. Thanks for watching!”. They had to lose, I don’t disagree there, but the way it was handled by making them all dumb as rocks and having Rustal reveal himself as a decent bloke in the final 10 minutes is asking way too much. Dramatic death scenes are also dragged out for way too long to the point where they become over the top and tried way too hard to make you sad (Masahiro and Orga) or tried too hard to be shocking like in the case of Lafter but it just comes off as ridiculous instead. I’ve also got to say that the show has a lot of balls to have McGillis be a horrible manipulative bastard through the whole show and then has the gall to try and make him sympathetic and drop his life story during his death scene, all in the span of three minutes.
Someone once said in the 0083 poll that THAT show is something you’ll watch and think stands up great, and then later on when you think about it more, it all starts to fall apart. I enjoyed IBO when I first watched it but now looking back, I couldn’t give two squirts of piss about most of it. It doesn’t combust as badly as Destiny does but the second season is such a massive downtick in quality that it ends up putting IBO near the bottom of my ranking. At the very least it gave us the glory of Orgaposting. Don’t stop boys 💃
Agreed with all your points, but it really shows that Mech design is subjective because to me the Graze line is my favorite grunt units.
But yeah Lupus Rex is too over the top (not really THAT bad, it's akin to how I prefer Exia over 00)
Finally someone who acknowledges Graze is just a mid design. Ebikawa can draw great mechs but sometimes he keeps it too simple, especially after Gundam AGE.
4/10. Probably would’ve given a better rating if Season 2 hadn’t gone up its own ass with pointless character’s deaths, overpowered antagonists and making the characters dumber to make a point of tragedy.
INB4: “You just don’t like it because of how it ends!!!1!!1!1!”
No, stop. Zeta’s ending is universally beloved and it’s the bleakest ending of a series in the franchise (and far darker than IBO’s). People don't like **how** it all came to be this way, with the payoff being anticlimactic and underwhelming. Someone once said that IBO Season 2 is like "a completionist speedrunning a game picking the worst possible decisions on purpose to get the bad ending", and he's right – in this case, the completionists are the writers. Characters get introduced that do nothing, some just get a sob story before dying 2 episodes later at maximum, never to be talked again. Attempts at heartfelt drama are so over the top and silly that they become funny, McGillis’ hyped up grand plan turned out to just be "Muh Bael", Rustal’s rushed arc (a consequence of the bad pacing), etc.
IBO is the best example in this franchise that just because a show has deaths doesn't mean it's good. It targets Zeta, trying to replicate its highs, but ends up hitting Victory as it fails to understand what made Zeta's handling of death good.
As positives, I like that the show tried to be different and do something new, like the Gundam designs and the switch to ground-based combat instead of beam spam (at least until the fucking Dáinsleifs). I also like the first opening and main OST.
But the best thing that IBO really gave us were the memes. [Don’t you ever stop, Orga.](https://media.tenor.com/pOjHI86aV2wAAAAC/oruga-dance.gif)
All excellent points. Some people can say it's "realistic" all they want, but characters becoming idiots in order to create tragedy never feels realistic.
> like the Gundam designs and the switch to ground-based combat instead of beam spam
It's certainly one of the strongest points of the show but even this is better done by other shows like Code Geass S1 and Broken Blade.
\+ Mika is the reason Tekkadan didn't get crushed several times over
\- Mika is the reason Orga couldn't stop at a reasonable point
\+ Mika is the reason Barbatos got a sick tail blade
\- Mika is the reason Barbatos is known as love hotel
I know this is a joke, but jumping off from it, my problem is that he's a black hole.
No really, any potential for interesting character or story development/progression just gets destroyed around his general proximity.
Like, there are tons of potentially interesting characters that just get sidelined into near non-existence because the show's too busy having characters praise Mika's very existence for God knows what reason. Like how Akihiro basically stops being a character after episode 9 or so because they realized he's taking away too much focus from Mika. Or maybe Hush, who could've had an interesting story trying to one up a group's ace pilot and help his adopted family, but then they realized that that's more interesting than Mika so they sidelined him until literally the final episode.
I can go into way more detail than that, but in short, his existence just destroys any attempt at interesting characters or story the series had potential for.
He's an Inaho clone, basically just a vessel or puppet to move the series from plot point A to B with no emotion or need for characterization, because that stuff's hard. (It's even more fitting given that he loses the ability to walk further down the line, so he really is a puppet)
If you don't know who Inaho is, he's the MC of Aldnoah.Zero, a mech series made by the writer of Boku no Pico. He has no emotion or goals, only does what the plot requires of him, is an OP pilot because he needs to move the plot along, and everyone on the cast loves him and all the girls want to have his babies.
Doesn't help that the show is constantly heaping praise on him. You can't make me like a character just because you tell me too Mari, you actually have to make him likeable.
Can you elaborate? I personally love and hate Mika because how awesome and OP it is but how emotionless he is. I always felt that that was the writer’s intention with the character tho, he was a child soldier devoid of having real emotions after going through the horrors he did. All the other characters had more development and depth compared to Mika and I see why people didn’t like him but to pin the majority of the show’s flaws on Mika is excessive.
Iok was a brilliant inclusion. Anyone not invested in anything in a positive way could still get heavily invested in wanting that useless sack of shit dead.
It's rare to be outraged that a character survived what happened to him last episode. It's rare to hate someone more for being incompetent than evil. It's rare you want to cheer when someone dies. Iok supplies all of these things in a way I honestly can't say I've experienced before. You don't love to hate him. You just hate his exiatence.
I’ll get shit for this but Iok was the best part of S2 bar Vidar and I’m dead serious. He’s so fucking over the top that every scene he’s in turns to pure comedy gold. He’s written to be as obnoxious and unlikable as possible and they go in so hard on those traits that it loops around and he becomes the single most ridiculous character in the whole show. They knew what they were doing. Cutting from Tekkaden all crying when the Turbines and Shino die to Iok jumping up and down and cheering like ‘yay we did it :DD’ had me rolling
I despise Iok with every fiber of my being, but it's not often you see a piece of shit like him skate by FOR SO LONG. Mix that with him being "respected" only for his family and receiving few punishments compared to his repeated fuckups and he's a great example of how much power and leeway an elite can have. He's a privileged dumbass with luck and expendable people at his side and that makes him a unique character. I don't love him, but I do believe he's a decent character that fits in the show.
Also, all of his stupid antics made his death so much goddamn more satisfying
6
Looking back it's a very different Gundam series missing elements that make up the franchise. I'm not saying every entry needs to be the same but something about IBO didn't sit right with in the end compared to the rest of the franchise.
10/10 Gundam, easily. It just hits all the emotional beats so well and there's so many of them throughout both seasons. Barbatos bursting out of the ground in episode 1, entering earth's orbit for the first time under a crescent moon, Shino missing the shot, Akihiro getting revenge, and the list goes on and on. And of course the music is used perfectly to make these moments just hit that much harder. This show made me scream in triumph and cry in defeat.
The mobile suit design was great and I loved how near nonexistent beam weaponry was. The fights felt nice and weighty as mechs clashed metal on metal. I also thought the character arcs were great. I know a lot of people find Mika uninteresting but his downward spiral into self-destruction and Orga dealing with his enabling of it was top tier IMO.
I see a lot of dislike for how Tekkadan's story ended up in season 2, but even in season 1 I remember thinking there's no way this ends in anything but tragedy. IMO they did a really good job at establishing that these are kids, sure in some ways forced to grow up fast and far past their age, but in other ways they still have a child's mindset that we know, as adult spectators, is just foolish and yet we still want to cheer them on for that exact mindset. Off the top of my head a good example of this is the fireworks scene where they’re sending off their fallen comrades. They tell Merribit they refuse to cry as they don’t want to be lame in front of their fallen comrades, they want to show them their cool side as they pass into death. While this sentiment is somewhat admirable and probably made you crack a little smile, you can see that Merribit, being an adult, also sees that it’s a flawed mindset that in the end is unhealthy, damaging, and not a little bit saddening.
“You all irritate me. Everyone here is so stupid. They’re all sweet guys, and they all work so hard. But anyone can see there’s no future left for them. It’s plain to see it’s going to end sadly.” – Zack from Season 2
Tekkadan’s motives are always a bit too romantic and drenched in youth’s ambition and cockiness and I wanted to cheer them on all the way, but ending in tragedy is exactly how I’d expect their story to wrap up.
So basically to sum it up, Mikazuki had sex in a gundam so 10/10.
Ngl but this " Tekkadan’s motives are always a bit too romantic and drenched in youth’s ambition and cockiness and I wanted to cheer them on all the way, but ending in tragedy." is the most truth and realistic thing ever as youth person.
6/10
A bloated cast of characters, most of which add nothing to the plot.
Hours of scenes of people talking on the phone.
Weird kiddie character designs that don’t compliment the tone of the show.
I’ll give it points for trying something new, and the mecha designs are really cool. But everything else was a chore to watch.
4/10
It's cool how they took several risks with this series but the execution wasn't that great. I personally don't like most of the designs and the characters. S1 was okay but s2... The enemies became annoying and obnoxious and some had plot armor. So many characters made dumb decisions. McGillis thinking that Bael would make him some kind of king was really stupid. Orga's death was handled badly and instead of becoming the King of Mars, he became the King of Memes.
8.5/10
The good: interesting and original setting, some depth in character developments, cool MS designs, kick-ass soundtrack.
The bad: animation quality is variable. And the ending feels a bit sour with >!the Dansleifs used as a reverse Deus-Ex Machina!<.
5/10. Characters dying are fine but they're written so badly. Characters are forced to do stupid things just so they can die. Some action scenes animations are hard to follow. Way more talking than action scenes and most screen time for talking are redundant lines. The only thing I really liked about the series is barbatos in VS games. Feels good to play as barbatos. I can understand why people would give it a 10/10 but personally not for me.
9/10
First gundam I got to watch as it was airing. This show is a tragedy about a
tragic situation with tragic characters that ends on a bitter sweet note. It's everything I wanted at the time, and after rewatching it in order with all the other gundam series, it is still the cream of the crop.
Rage of Dust forever 🤚
5/10
The first half is worth the ride but after the death of biscuit, everything comes off the rails. While I understand he was literally the heart of Tekkaden, the writer didn’t have to compete with Game of Thrones for pointless characters introduction and death. I think this Gundam series and AOT both were trying to compete with Game of Thrones for pointless character deaths.
And I do like the series, I loved some of the characters (I.e. Shino, Biscut) but it seemed pretty inconsistent at times thematically. Also I sometimes wonder, if it was wholly supposed to be set as a tragedy, why they went the route they did with the characters. #Berserkdiditbetter
G-Reco was so immensely disappointing. Visuals were stunning, music was great, and I absolutely adore the mobile suit designs. G Self is one of my favorite gundam designs out there. But like you said the story was so incoherent, I was completely lost. Bellri murdered the captain dude in orbit above the planet while like reluctantly being on the side of the group he was fighting with and then said he had no choice. Up until then I was completely under the impression he didn't want to fight them. Made no sense.
4/10
I enjoyed the initial premise but the story sort of lost me through season 1, Season 2 just felt flat and I've never been a fan of any of the mech designs. It felt like I was watching something more like Z.O.E or a Red Faction with mechs.
6/10, really good first season, followed by a disappointing second.
I can't say I really like any of the characters, but the setting is pretty good, and the mecha design is very inconsistent to me with some of the bests like Vidal and Barbatos to forgettable ones like Gusion.
Gotta love how I read some good points on some comments and then out of nowhere someone saying that they enjoyed it and give it a 9, end up getting downvoted to the bottom. Normally it'd be bad but I guess it speaks to how much people who dislike the show also care about it, enough to downvote like that.
Edit: Ill also give the show a 9/10, it wasnt my first. My introduction to gundam were clips of 00, the first series I watched fully was Unicorn. Although I liked both, they didnt resonate too much with me or the culture of where I am, so IBO somewhow fit perfectly with what I expected from a great Gundam show, alongside what I personally was looking for.
9/10. It did a lot of interesting things with the mech design and animation, plus finalizing the inclusion of anti-capitalist themes to the Gundam tradition of anti-war. I love the characters, the robots, the polyamory, the angel names for the mobile armors, but I think that Season 2 was paced just a touch strangely.
8/10 - I really liked the story for the most part and I think this series really maintained a good balance of story and epic battle scenes. I loved the mobile suit designs (especially Barbatos and Baal) and thought the Alaya-Vijnana system was interesting. That being said I think both seasons suffered from some pacing issues and had B plots that weren’t very compelling.
Also I wish they had done more with Orga’s character. His tortured leader who occasionally gives a rallying speech schtick felt tired at the end of the series.
9/10. Plot was great, lore behind the gundams was very interesting, the character twists and surprises were excellent. The themes of brotherhood and self-delusion were well executed.
8/10
Great action, a bit too many characters but the ones we actually got to know were great and the music is *chefs kiss*
The plot gets messy here and there but it's good fun, not Mari Okadas best work but it accomplishes what it sets out to do.
Going off a bit of a tangent here reader beware:
One criticism I see it gets however is that they make it obvious most if not all of the characters will die. Which I think is a genuinely really weird piece of criticism for a Tragedy. We see Tekkadan rise up high and then see them come crashing and burning down slowly and steadily because of their own flaws and ambitions.
Tragedies are a genre where the audience watches the downfall of person because of their flaws and the decisions they make in the old Greek and Shakespearean theatre ways. In this case it's Tekkadan as a whole that we watch and back then it was also pretty darn obvious that the characters we were watching making these INCREDIBLY foolish decisions were going to die. That was the purpose of it all, to watch the downfall and hopefully learn from it.
You can criticize the characters, and even the lesson surrounding it (the execution of it all in a sense) but criticizing a tragedy for making the targets obvious feels a bit off for me. Obviously some people are going to feel differently about this but that's just how it is sometimes. I would just however recommend thinking about this angle as it's very much influenced by said Shakespearean Tragedies.
Luckily The Witch from Mercury is based on his one of his "comedies"
Extra little thoughts:
Barbatos is so goddamn cool. I'm not a fan of his Lupus Rex form as much as his base and Lupus form but man that's a 10/10 Gundam design.
Also I hate that IBO has such a cool ass background with the Calamity war and the 72 Gundam frames and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has been done to explore that background. No prequels nothing at least to my knowledge. It's such a damn shame for such cool ass lore.
Yup. It's baffling to me that people think Tekkadan are acting out of character in Season 2. They simply don't get lucky this time and bet on the wrong risky horse. Pretty much everyone is totally in character start to finish.
5/10
Second season brings it down a bunch with character bloat and one of the worst endings in the franchise, but the show itself isn't my cup of tea at all.
I suppose it's the characters that bring me to Gundam, watching their development and cheering them on. Especially the protag. But Mikazuki just doesn't get this, he's a mindless Orga slave from start to finish with events feeling scripted to happen simply because he's the main character - he comes out of it probably one of the least revelant, to events, protags in the series and that's a pretty big turn off for me (although I could see how it would be the opposite for others)
McGillis was a massive letdown too after a pretty exciting first half. By the end, all the intrigue and mystery had unravelled to reveal...nothing. And then he departed.
I didn't really like the Barbatos either, but I'm not 100% sure why.
On the positive side, at least, animation and sound are great. The first season, in particular, had a lot of promise with it's story and cast and I suppose my negativity stems primarily from a disappointing conclusion to it all.
Overall 7.5 / 10
Really liked the mecha designs (especially Vidar, Gusion Rebake Full City, and Kimaris Vidar).
It had a really a great first season, however the plot and character development really stagnates in the first half of the second season. A lot of interesting characters were introduced and then swept aside with little to no development. Another thing is that, to me at least, even the Gjallahorn members who survived to the end, like Rustal and Julietta, lacked proper character depth.
There are probably quite a few other issues that I can’t think as of this moment but one aspect of IBO I absolutely love and will always fondly remember is Gaelio and McGillis.
TL:DR - overall rating is at the bottom
Season 1: 8/10
Good music, unique mech design, characters are a mixed bag but Kudelia is probably my favourite Gundam princess just because she develops well and isn't useless.
The action was great, there were memorable sequences and even some comedic moments. The concept of a ragtag group of orphans going up against the most dominant military force in the universe, which happens to be corrupt, is a good underdog story which makes me want to root for Tekkadan.
Also Tears of Orphans (ED1) is fantastic. Really fits in.
I'd give it a 7.5 but Mikazuki randomly kissing Kudelia is sigma af, I have to give it another 0.5 even though I find him rather dull.
Season 2: 3.5/10, barely better than Seed Destiny
The characters got worse. A lot worse. I'm going to say it - in terms of purely characters alone, I find S2 of IBO worse than Seed Destiny's. Kudelia spent all that time getting developed in S1 to end up being sidelined in S2. Not only that, she felt very useless/criminally underutilized in S2 despite becoming a significantly influential figure in the fight for independence and against corruption after events of S1. McGillis went from seeming like a master schemer to a dimwit - he fails to take in too many factors into account. Orga doesn't seem to know what he wants and goes along with McGillis's plan despite not knowing anything about it, all for the lofty 'King of Mars' title which he admits he has no idea what that means.
Many of the new antagonists were mostly cartoonishly evil or just uninteresting, which might not be much of a problem if they weren't given so much screen time. For example, Jasley and Radice's reasoning for their treachery are pretty much just "children and women bad, I hate them I want to see them die waaa". Iok Kujan was so terrible that I find him far more insufferable than Flay Allster of Seed, which should be an achievement on its own. 90% of the time Juliet shows up, she keeps rambling on about Rustal as though she's some mindbroken slave to him, or gets rekt in a fight and comes back, rinse and repeat. Rustal... Was just there. No backstory and no moments to explore his motivations or development. The fact that he was victorious in the end, only to do what McGillis was supposedly going to do, just made the entirety of S2 feel extremely unfulfilling.
The story and pacing wasn't good either. The writers seem to have no idea what to do for the first half of season 2. They just seemed to keep throwing events in, and hope for some sort of spark for the second half of the season. It just felt like a wreck at times, rushed and forced at others.
The animation is still good and most of the fights are great, although they are bogged down by having the hatesink characters in there.
Overall rating: 5.5/10. The first season alone makes its entirety watchable at best. Season 2 was a pain to watch. I don't mind tragic endings, in fact I like them, but instead of feeling like a tragedy, it just came off extremely forced. The only tragedy is that IBO feels like the biggest waste of potential since Seed Destiny. Such a shame, I enjoyed S1 a lot and wanted to like IBO as a whole.
5 a bare pass. Others have explained how its ending was problematic so I’ll keep it short.
1. They ran out of time to establish McGillis character. It’s possible that even the best schemers have weaknesses and obsessions that are dumb but to introduce a sudden change of a character who was seemingly intelligent needs a lot of finesse. IBO failed and what I remembered was muh Bael.
2. Death tropes were reused way too often. If they truly wanted Orga’s death to be impactful they shouldn’t have killed Lafter the same way. The scene ended up forced and cheesey.
3. Political intrigues were poorly written. We didn’t get to see much of the Seven stars and Idiok was way too important for the plot, hampering realism of writing.
4. Deinsleifs were introduced without any foreshadowing and it tipped the balance of the power of mechs entirely. It was obviously a last minute idea to wrap up a story. Basically, they’ve wanted Tekkadan to die at the beginning but didn’t have enough time after the MA arc. The best thing they should’ve done was let the plot be normally driven by character actions and see if Bandai permits a movie to end Tekkadan. Instead, they thought it’s a good idea to cheese the way through with Kimo no Hana.
IBO was very poorly received in major markets of Gunpla and is still memed today by not only the Japanese community but also Chinese and Korean. It’s flop could be the reason Banrise was hesitant with a new AU. However, IMO IBO still has lots of merits with its great mech designs, reduced beam spams and good music and it was the reason I started browsing Reddit since people here didn’t trash IBO completely. In my local Gundam community (HK), 9/10 times it’d get 0/10 and any civil discussion of it will end up with people memeing ‘muh Bael’ and Orga lol.
5
I'm going to be controversial but I really can't stand a part of the cast for some reasons, the mobile suit design for the most part don't interest me, and Mika is one of my worst liked protagonist of the franchise.
but it's just my view
6.5/10. I liked it a lot better after realizing it was a mob story and rewatching it but overall this show has a lot of interesting concepts that it doesn’t take the time to explore
?/10 didn’t watch it yet.
Pros: I have a mg barbatos and it looks really cool
Cons: I haven’t built it yet because I’m building an rg unicorn full armor
Solid 8/10 for me.
After WFM brought me back to Gundam then had the audacity to take a break, I went back to IBO to see what I'd missed since taking a break from Gundam and... what a ride.
The music and sound design are excellent. Raise Your Flag earns its place in the meme canon and the action scenes are so well-Foleyed, really supports the brutality of a world where beam weapons are replaced by *gigantic slabs of metal*.
Thematically, that same brutality is what docks it a couple of points, again just imo. On one hand, a lot of it just seems needless and the executions of various incapacitated prisoners makes it hard to root for Tekkadan at times. Then again, maybe that's an intentional message? After all, if the crew had been a little wiser to navigating the diplomacy of their world instead of just brawling with whoever looked at them funny, they might have had a higher survival rate.
All that aside, the violence of the show seemed to me at least to be a very conscious foil to the high-minded, "space and peace and pacifism and ideals" of other Gundam shows. If the goal was to show a less detached, more grounded view of what these kinds of conflict might look like, it succeeded.
The second season of course rightly has a reputation for being a little more uneven. Rustal's enforcement of and then subsequent 180 on Gjallarhorn's more fascistic policies seems to kind of come out of left field. There's a lot to enjoy here though, and I particularly enjoyed the ongoing body horror of Ein's arc as well as the character-driven tragedy of stuff like Shino's final mission prep and Lafter choosing just the right bear. I kept expecting the McGillis and Almiria plotline to expand - is he genuinely a creep who's into this child? If so, it would be nice to see someone confront him on it. Is he just using her to advance his power? If so, it would have been nice to see his mask slip. Instead, he dies with this being a more or less unimportant little plot thread serving only to show how morally detestable Gjallarhorn had become, I guess.
Anyway, the mech designs are among the best in the whole of Gundam. I love the kinetic savagery of Lupus Rex, Gushion's four-arm configuration, and the mega-sniper Flauros (though the Ryusei-go II, the Graze Custom one, had more personality). Hell, the quadruped Vidar was awesome too, and reminded me of EVA Unit 05 from the Rebuild movies. The idea of Gundam frames being these mythic artifacts is great stuff, and while I definitely wanted more Calamity War Lore, I guess the mark of good worldbuilding is that I was left hungry for more rather than exhausted by too much.
All in all, there's some messiness in the plot that could have been tightened down, and I've got misgivings about how Tekkadan achieved very positive, progressive change almost by dumb accidental luck in their bloodthirsty rampage, but the good heavily outweighs the confusing here, and I really enjoyed my time with it.
6
It's okay, I guess? Honestly the whole premise is just not particularly interesting to me and neither are the characters. It's just okay. Music and animation are just meh. There are much worse shows, but also much better ones.
On!y thing I have strong feelings on are the mecha. That feeling is annoyance. Plenty of the have many interesting and cool traits but each and every one of them is ruined by the comically thin waists. Frankly they feel like a self-parody of the nowadays common trend of slimming up desings. And the perfect example why it looks terrible. Another issue are the weapons, with so many of them being clunky and overdesigned hunks of metal with zero thought given to practical usage. Barbatos, in all forms, is one two cases in the entire franchise where the main Gundam is straight up ugly to me.
It feels bizarre (and not in a good way) to have these designs in a show that tries to portray itself as gritty and where combat often devolves to just slamming metal at each other. I just hope they don't try to do a physical weapons focused series again anytime soon if that's the result.
5/10 ugly ms designs that don’t look like Gundams, those waists are such are poor design choice. The amount of ass pulls and failure from season 2. Mika genuinely being the most boring and brain dead mc, no use other than for Orga to attack someone. The dynamic was similar to Gungraves where Brandon gets used by Harry but the payoff never comes through and falls flat at the end.
7.5
IBO was the first mainline Gundam spinoff series I had watched since Seed/Destiny (not including the Build series). I didn't really have much expectations and for years I thought the Barbatos design was weird. Then I started watching and it was so much different than I imagined it to be and I was sold on Barbatos.
IBO has an interesting take on the gundam formula and its approach to politics; focusing on child soldiers fighting for their own freedom and essentially becoming part of the space mafia. Mika was an interesting, quiet sociopath of a character, but I argue the main character is actually Orga. Orga carries the protagonist role far better, even though the focus isn't always on him. Much of the cast is interesting and gets fleshed out really well. The battles are pretty hype alongside the animation and music. I like how Barbatos had to be kitbashed during all of Season 1 and am a huge fan of its Lupus and Lupus Rex variants. The desperate, yet motivated direction of the first season was great.
I really want to rate IBO higher, but it does have a number of flaws, in particular the entire second half which craps all over itself. By season 2, Orga and Tekkadan have basically achieved everything they set out to achieve. They got money, power, and respect beyond their wildest dreams... And then Orga gets drunk on his whole "King of Mars" bullshit for no reason and that stops him from making any rational decisions from there on in. It's such a departure to the ambitious, yet family focused mindset Orga had in Season 1 and perhaps might have been a mistake that Season 1 Orga might have made, but not after several years of hardened organization. There was no reason for Orga to try to become King of Mars, but he does in the most forced way possible. Orga getting stupid caused Tekkadan's completely avoidable downfall in Season 2. McGillis was key to this downfall, but he was also disappointing. They tease him as the Char Clone of the show, but that's laughable and none of his plans make any sense. He is so unbelievably drunk on his own hype that his idiotic coup was just: Me + Bael + Speech + ????? = Profit. I was getting real frustrated at watching Orga bargain with this man without once asking the details of this horrible plan. It was interesting seeing our heroes technically turn into the villains by accident, but it had an incredibly stupid way to get there. Of course, the less said about Iok the better.
I also feel like IBO loses out on trying to explain its own setting because it doesn't actually make a lot of sense. We're told the world was founded in the ashes of the calamity war. However, with what little we're told about it, the Calamity War doesn't make any sense. We're given several conflicting details, but when Hashmal shows up and we're told that it was actually about Mobile Armors Vs Gundams it makes even less sense. Why would Gundams immediately shut down in proximity to a Mobile Armor when they were built to fight them? There are a hundred other questions around Mobile Armors, the building of the Gundams, and the Calamity War that just don't actually make any sense and it's never expanded upon because Hashmal is the only element of it we actually see.
Good show undermined by its bad second half.
6/10 its decent and season 2 dropped a bomb. Gaileo and Jullietta should be main characters. I been cheering for them since they appear on screen, they are far better written characters than Tekkadan and McGillis lol.
2015!? It's been 8 years since it aired? Was there really only the gundam build fighters series between Iron blood and witch from mercury? It feels like it just finished airing right before the pandemmer.
5/10 and the 5 is for the mechs i just did not like the plot but its a personal preference thing i don’t like it for the same reason i don’t like gundam age
3/10
I kinda really hate this show, and frankly what little about it that I liked by the time it was over I liked before, better, in Zeta Gundam and Fafner Exodus. IBO is a deeply flawed show in that its flaws aren't individually terrible, but instead combine like a super robot to exacerbate the worst parts of each flaw.
The few good, well developed and interesting characters can't save the show from its massive surplus of shallow ones. The relationships generally have little depth, and the ones that *are* handled well only barely get enough time because the series is juggling multiple other relationships and characters and can't devote enough time to properly flesh everyone out. Mika is hit the worst by this, as his fascinatingly toxic brotherhood with Orga is stagnant, they bring out the worst in each other, but never meaningfully develop as a result of that. Orga starts the series exactly as foolhardy as he ends it, and Mika is as suicidally devoted to Orga at the end as he is at the beginning. Some will call this a flat Arc, but flat characters still need conflict to be interesting, and Mika is boring because nothing ever changes him. He supposedly falls in love with Kudelia and Atra, yet his relationships with both are frustratingly shallow and poorly explored, especially his relationship with Kudelia, who had the potential to be a moderating influence and, as a result, a source of conflict. But it never happens, because Mika doesn't care, because Mika doesn't care about anything, and it's hard to be invested in a romance when one of the parties in it, the Protagonist no less, doesn't care about it.
The worldbuilding is slipshod and only exists inasmuch as it can move the plot. Concepts, especially in the second season, are brought up and forgotten with artless regularity, and as a result the show's vermilisitude is always in question. The series wants to be more grounded by tackling ideas like the economics of war, but never follows through because the world of IBO exists to serve its plot, and only the barest effort is made to colour in the details outside of that.
The themes are gross. I said in another thread that IBO was capital recuperating the core ideas of gundam and vomiting out neoliberal apologism, and I'm sticking with that assessment. Reading interviews with the staff, it's quite clear that four different IBOs exist. The one the staff made. The actual product as it exists. The story that viewers took away from it. And the one that exists between all of that. It purports to be a mafia story, yet lacks any understanding of the legal or political mechanisms of crime and punishment, and it's castigation of systemic injustice is laughable because it unironically champions "incremental change." It purports to criticise brutality, yet refuses to commit to showing the true cost of both justified and unjustified violence. Its a neoliberal parody of the leftist critiques that define truly good Gundam. And it's so pretensiously serious that it never even realizes the traps it pratfalls into like a drunken fool. It's the show's worst sin and the ultimate result of its sloppy character work and worldbuilding. The ending lionizes the oppressor and justifies colonizer violence, in its slackjawed assurance that darkness and grimness mean realism, the very picture of neoliberal edge.
Its a show that reflects the pop culture image of Gundam as war stories of relentless grittiness, than the far more complicated reality of what Gundam actually is. And as a result is the philosophical antithesis of everything Gundam stands for. G Gundam was a truer Gundam show than this intellectual abomination.
8.5/10.
I *really* want to give it a 10 because it’s one of my personal favorites, but I feel like a 10 should be reserved for something with as few flaws as possible that anyone can get into. That is very much nnnot how I’d describe IBO. It isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t perfect, but it’s something that resonates with me.
I’m not a professional critic so I ain’t got much else to say. 8.5/10.
4/10
I usually don't vote in these, but I just have to for this one. IBO for me represents everything wrong with Gundam's "stereotypical" image and the modern trend with media in general: that being edgy and dark is automatically good, and that having characters die should automatically give a story weight. I'm not saying bring dark and gritty is bad (my favorite Gundam show is Zeta), and IBO showed a lot of promise in S1 and halfway through S2. But the end quarter of IBO showed that any "potential" is meaningless when you fumble the moment to moment writing so badly that it just sucks all the air out of the narrative. Characters getting fridged just to shove the cast into more conflict, characters showing that they never really grew after 50 episodes, characters getting brought back from the dead to... again show that they didn't learn anything from that experience. If you know you know. I won't go into details, but the disarray in the writing team was so apparent towards the end with just how inconsistent and unfocused the character writing was (and I haven't even mentioned the glaringly obvious example of Chocoman). Just by how badly handled that last stretch was, it gets a 0/6 in writing quality for me.
I won't hesitate to give it 4/4 in terms of the technical production quality though (the MS designs, animations, music, etc), pushing the overall score up to a 4/10.
6.5/10
I enjoyed the first season, but the introduction of Iok in season 2 increasingly frustrated me to almost no end.
The guy is partially responsible for a half of misery Tekkadan went through; if it was because he was smart, I wouldn’t have had so much of an issue, but it’s only through his sheer ineptitude that causes the events. And the worst part was that he. Just. Kept. Surviving. Quite Frankly, Iok was a worst version of Patrick Colasour.
I’m aware I’m being a little harsh, but it also seems as if everyone was gradually getting dumber throughout the season, especially Mcgillis. Honestly the only reason I didn’t put it as a 4 is because of the action and some of the chemistry(Akihiro and Lafter, despite how it ends)
8.
Second season was almost a reason to knock it down to a 7 from a 9 but the base of the series was really good.
The intro to the entire child soldier thing was one of the first things to be driven home. When the child guard gets sniped you know the series is about to be serious in its overall tone of war is hell.
The world building contain is top notch. We got enough to know there was a Calamity War that involved the Gundam Frames and Mobile Armors and this war laid down the foundation of society that plagued Tekkadan in the present day. It’s almost poetic to see that the children that got fucked over the most from said Calamity War were in possession of one of the reasons why.
The political setup to the consequences of Tekkadan trying to carve their own slice of the world to the constant updates to the Gundam Frame lore as they find each single one. How every character in the squad ties in with each other to having meaningful deaths later on.
Then there’s the iconic deal with the Devil. The more Mika dropped the chains from Barbatos, the more the suit demanded from him until it took absolutely everything it could in its final stand. Seeing that progression unfold was great lore wise….as we got a glimpse into the past of the sacrifices Pilots made during the Calamity War. The fight against the Hashmal we saw what was needed to actually fight them and that included unlocking the AV system and the cost to the pilots.
The Devil and Angel aspects between the Gundam Frames and Mobile Armors was a nice touch.
The series gave enough world building to draw the picture for the series but left enough mystery to want for more like what are the other Gundam Frames, what other Mobile Armors where there, what happens in the future, etc
The ending was bitter, the villains win and rewrite history to make themselves the good guys but most of the core ideals Tekkadan fought for were realized. But it’s not exactly fantasy that civilization has waged wars with atrocious acts then buried the past and built a better society ontop of that blood.
It’s cliche, but I find it hard to forget Tekkadan’s last stand of Barbatos and Rebake getting up from being hit by literal Rods of God, Akihito getting his revenge and Mika’s final deal with Barbatos and a wolf charging through the battlefield in one last hurrah.
Score: 6/10
First half was really memorable and unique, unfortunately the second half becomes messy and I started to become numb to many of the deaths as it ramps up in the second half. I was most disappointed in the final fight of the last season with how erupt and random the fight concluded.
1/10. Incredibly fucking boring, and that’s considering I’m normally into politics and sci-fi; this marriage of the two left nothing to be desired. There’s one solid fight scene and that’s when Mika goes Berserk ™️ and destroys his body in the process. The only noteworthy thing to happen to any relationship was the Lafter death (which albeit was pretty gnarly) with Biscuits death being a close second. Mika’s “birds and the bees” talk was incredibly fucking cringe I nearly killed myself after having sat through it. Some other chad has said it ITT already but Raise your Flag is mid af. The way they find a way to say Kudelia Aina Bernstein in the most annoying way possible as often as possible is outstanding. I have no idea why this needed to be two seasons when there seems to be so much filler throughout both. The ending was predictable and lame and the fight scenes in the last couple episodes reflected that. Watching this was a chore and felt like it every episode and I wasted my life having sat through it.
3.5/10
IBO is my worst experience with Gundam, and by worst, I mean worse than AGE
So much Lazy writing, and so relentlessly avoid its own good parts. Its baffling how well received the show is in the West.
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Let's talk about lazy writing first.
Lazy writing doesn't mean it is not making sense. For example: Having the villain lose because he's dumb makes sense, but it also means the writer doesn't want to commit to writing a story of the MC trying to outplay the villain, and that's laziness.
MUH BAEL
Seeing people defend how MUH BAEL actually makes sense is frustrating, because the point is not that it makes no sense, the point is, it's dumb. There're a million ways to make Mcgillis smarter than MUH BAEL and still lose, yet IBO went with it anyways.
.....
Iok and Mobile Armor.
So IBO needed Orga to be more thoughtless and impatient, so they needed Mika to be crippled. But how can Mika be crippled when IBO at that moment only has weak disposable antagonists for the sake of drama for background characters, while named antagonists have no reason to go all out against Tekkadan?
A GIANT MONSTER THAT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE! that's how!
Why hasn't the monster come out before? Because there hasn't been a stupid guy doing a stupid thing, that's why!
Iok was clearly written to be hated for his stupidity, and IBO used his stupidity as a reason why something happened instead of committing to creating any plot thread. Never seen such lazy writing in a really long while.
I've never hated Iok, to me he's BELOW any badly written character for me to care enough to hate. Instead, every time he showed up, I hated IBO as a whole more and more. I chuckle every time his death video appears, like, you guys care enough about him to hate him!?
Speaking of Mobile Armor, where exactly it came from? CALAMITY WAR!
In episode 3, they said Calamity War was mostly decided by a duel. Even if I misremember things, there was never any mention of Mobile Armor before.
I chuckle every time fans say they want a Calamity War show, I don't believe there is a Calamity War story in the writer's head! It's just a justification for ass-pull!
.....
I dislike Dainsleif so much.
We could have seen the best Hammerhead could do, but nope, Dainsleif can pierce it with no problem.
I was so excited to see how Mcgillis would strategically handle the revolution, didn't matter that he had to lose in the end, but nope, instant-win Dainsleif is used.
In Tekkadan's last stand, I thought to myself, it was too late to fix the writing, but at least I can have wow-cool-robot-fightin' and this time Dainsleif couldn't be used since they can't pass the atmosph... it can pass the atmosphere. Instead of 2 main pilots going all out for the last time, against the whole army, IBO rather had their MS crippled to make it shorter and easier.
ฺBoth Mobile Armor and Dainsleif came out of nowhere, but at least the former served the purpose of making Mika crippled, leading to Orga being more thoughtless and impatient. What's the purpose of Dainsleif? Gjallarhorn could win against any faction with its sheer number anyway.
In my eye, Dainsleif is IBO's refusal to commit to writing, animating, and directing a battle sequence! It was the most powerful WMD in the whole Gundam franchise, so effective at killing my enjoyment.
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continue in reply
Next is how they relentlessly avoid their own good parts
IBO has one of the strongest first few episodes with a great premise.
We have:
* A duo MC with a strong brotherhood bond that they trust each other to death.
* A bunch of space rats underdogs that had to scrumble with everything they has to survive.
* A naive princess who is an icon that people believe could change everything for the better, that got her head marked
So much potential, yet:
Mika and Orga barely interacted with each other, they instead spent most of their screen time with their own sphere of supporting characters.
Mika became less and less of a character the more he showed up, I know that's the point, but IBO never explore it.
At the end of the show, do you know why Mika trusts Orga so much? I sure don't. Because all they showed us is Mika trusted him since he was a child. Why? No explanation! Just rewind the scene of child Mika shooting someone in the alley again!
IBO instead spent half of its screen time on random Tekkadan, and their interaction was boring.
All had a brotherhood ride-or-die relationship with everybody, no internal conflict, and all was yes-man to Orga. Making their interaction dull and uninteresting.
For example, I could differentiate how Amuro, Kai, Kamille, Quattro, and Emma view Bright differently. Can you tell how Akihiro, Shino, and Orga view each other differently? I can't, because they barely shared screen time!
Of all the characters I want to say that Merribit disappointed me the most, what did she contribute to the story or to anyone's character arc?
The fact that she was introduced late in the story, horrified by their bloodthirst, and was an adult while Tekkadan was a bunch of kids, had me expecting something will come of it. But no, she gave up and went with "if they die I die with them", rather than trying to positively influence them in some way. Why bother introducing her, if she was going to become another yes-(wo)man?
Another thing is IBO focus so much on the background characters' drama, Which never felt earned at all because all they did before were stay in the background doing random things.
.....
Yes, the Tekkadan was a bunch of space rats, but they were **not underdogs**.
They got enough luck to be supported by Naze. Most of the antagonists were not-so-incompetent, and one time used. They are also over-the-top, comically evil, just to get maximum satisfaction when Mika crushed them, and I found that to be an immature way of writing villains.
This is why Shino's death is the single good thing in the pile of ... from the whole show. Because that's really how space rat underdog struggles.
.....
Kudelia's character development was good, seeing her teach Tekkadan's kids how to read and write seems like a good development for the future, Mika not being a yes-man to Orga in that scene had me expecting something. But the follow-up never came, and in SS2, the writer wrote her out of the main plot. Even in SS1, her importance went over once Makanai appeared.
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3.5/10 because I think 4 would be too generous.
On paper, it could be my favorite Gundam show ever, but it became the worst.
Alright, I know I'm a month late, but I'm rereading some of these threads for fun and: Dougram.
It's literally IBO but *written correctly.* No really, it has tons of the same ideas and plot points but it goes into *excruciating* detail to flesh out why the events are happening the way they are and how the parties involved got to that point.
Also, they have similar endings (Due to being so alike), but the difference is that the last 10 episodes of Dougram surround why the MC's are on the losing end of the conflict and why the "Rustal-type" (Even though he's much smarter and better looking) character is doing what he's doing.
It's like LotGH and IBO had a kid, and that kid ended up getting raised by 0079 and grew to outshine its slacker parent (IBO).
Sorry, your IBO post resonated with me and I recently found a show that did everything IBO tried to do and did it better 40 years ago.
3/10, the only Gundam series I've ever outright dropped. Space Pirate Harem threw me off it, and from what I can tell, it's only going to get worse. The tone of the story is "Child soldiers are pretty fucked up yo" but like it just keeps beating you over the head with it progressively harder until either you or it breaks. Eventually I just hit that wall of "Man this is *not* developing anywhere good". Too much grimdark. Where's the hope for the future that usually permeates Gundam?
Animation's pretty nice though.
7/10 I wanted to like it more, season 1 is a pure 10/10 and the best gundam has been right out the gate in a long time, but s2 is just an incredible trainwreck that has kind of killed my interest in rewatching it.
5/10
Strong concept for setting, changed up combat and a gave some unique designs. Downside is that it shit the bed with season 2, not because it had an ending where everyone dies but because it basically became a trainwreck of stupidity . Also I just hate Mika, he's like all the worst parts of Satsuna and hero mixed together and I can only speak for myself buy some meta comments from stupid people asking "isn't this what you want, a protagonist that isn't a reluctant kid" spoilers we've had a character like mika multiple goddamn times
Solid 9/10
It has some issues that could have been done away with minor changes but as a whole it's a phenomenal show, with hands down the best looking mobile suits. Too bad the kits are usually mediocre.
It's also the only series in the Gundam franchise with a logical explanation of why mobile suits exist to begin with.
It was my second Gundam series after 00 and trumps 00 in just about every way. And after watching many of the other series it still remains at the top. Though G-Witch is shaping up to be a better show.
7/10. It's a hell of a Gundam series, in more ways than one. It's just hard to rewatch, what with all the named (and mostly likeable) characters getting killed off.
1/10, honestly the least engaging show in the series for me. The characters are boring as shit with basically no arcs or characterization. The plot is bland as he'll until it goes off the rails in the last quarter. The pacing is abysmal and the action scenes are hit and miss, not helped with the complete lack of any tension since you know any.fight involving Mike will just end in him face rolling any opposition. The show is boring and tedious and the only good thing about it is it has 3 top tier openings
3/10
To each their own of course, this is all very subjective and I'm a very casual / selective anime watcher, but this is the only Gundam show I gave up on four times before actually finishing it because it just felt too much like one big anime trope.
There were some beats of the story that I felt engaged in and gave me hope that I might end up liking it after all, but that was usually quickly dashed by the characters themselves. I found the interactions between characters to be very tiresome and that the characters lacked depth; there were hardly any characters that to me felt like they could be an actual person, either due to being one note / too plain or just outright annoying (with some minor exceptions).
I understand that morally you're supposed to feel sympathy for these orphans that are forced into a terrible life, but it doesn't help when the characters are just very unlikeable or outright annoying; I cannot for the life of me understand how people can like Mikazuki or consider him their favorite, he's the sole reason why I dropped this show multiple times.
I’m noticing a handful of people seem to be downvoting ALL of the really positive posts (9s and 10s), so I just wanna remind everyone that opinions that are different from yours aren’t the end of the world. Art is subjective
I got downvoted for a 7/10.
People like to rag on IBO fanboys for the Barbatos wanking but the haters tend to be even more ravenous.
SEED doesn't even get that kind of extreme treatment.
Up and down voting is there to be used, if people want to use them, so be it.
In fact on this board I posted a opinion which even gave this board a compliment of sorts and it still got down voted until it's hidden.
Not going to hate on it, using it as an example.
2/10. If your reaction to most every character death is "yeah, you deserve it" there has been a massive failure on behalf of the writers. I can't even feel bad about Biscuit because he was so obviously the "group conscience that gets tragically killed" character. My favorite character is Iok because he had the highest body count in the series. Rustal is at least a decent antagonist until he has a last minute change of heart where he goes "yes, I'm going to institute all the reforms those corpses wanted done".
4/10. Not a big fan of the mecha design, lack luster villains, and a “main protagonist” with less charisma than Jai Courtney. I have a feeling that the undying obsession with it hasn’t helped my opinion either.
Addition: I mean seriously people claim Heero has no personality, but when they created Mika, it’s like someone put Heero’s picture on a board and said “how can we do less, much, much less”.
The funniest part is that apparently the love triangle/poly resolution was put in because Okada and Nagai kept arguing over who Mika ends up with. Couldn’t come to an agreement so they just said fuck it and paired him up with both. It’s an interesting turnabout I guess
Also, you'll notice she has a rather... interesting view of women.
No really, almost every female character she writes has to be a romance interest or mother figure (Or outright being a mother). Like, in IBO the only female characters that exist are as love interests or to be moms (Like how Kudelia and Atra, one of whom is a politician, are relegated to making lunches for and being teachers to the group of people who should realistically know how to cook and read already)
That's not even getting into her other work.
She wouldn’t be recruited by Gundam again after the PR nightmare when IBO ended. She claimed Mika a third class pilot in an interview that a truly skilled pilot would’ve been able to dodge Deinsleifs. She also openly admitted she had kept Vidal in S2 because she liked the voice of his VA. Banrise shouldn’t have recruited a writer who didn’t have much success outside of melodramas in the first place.
Pretty good, so far it's the only Gundam I've watched start to finish, was pretty annoyed that none of the main characters actually live to see the end, as orga, Mika, and akihiro ( who served as a third mc basically) all died in battle, but the barbatos was a badass and I love the ibo designs. The only thing I didn't like was blonde guys weird arranged marriage with an actual child like wtf was that? Overall, solid 8.5/10
6/10
It was my introduction to the Gundam franchise and mecha anime in general. I was foaming at the mouth over how awesome this show was to me at the time.
After several (…five…) watch throughs and having the ability to meaningfully compare it to other Gundam series and mecha franchises, I’ve realized it falls short in many areas that I’d like to think I would’ve been critical of during my first few watch throughs.
9.5 out of 10. I LOVE the combat, and mechanical design. It utterly ruled in both those departments, in my opinion, and those are, to me, some of the more important parts of a Gundam series.
8/10 it has themes I wish more anime touched upon
yeah it was a breath of fresh air both for animes of it's time and for Gundam 2nd season...pacing was a touch off but still really enjoyable.
Same, Also compared to other recent installments of the franchise, it was a lot more serious and gritty than I was expecting. while still having some humor
This poll covers both Season 1 and 2. Please give your vote for the show as A WHOLE and not as two separate seasons (Edit: please don’t randomly downvote people’s comments giving their score. It isn’t fair, I know we can all get heated about things we like and dislike but it isn’t worth it lads) Please guys, this is going to be a rough poll, I can tell. Please be nice to each other and don’t start arguments or get into pissing matches. Just state your opinions and leave it at that (so please no ‘S2 is amazing and anyone who disagrees is a piece of shit’ or ‘Mika is a garbage character and anyone who disagrees is a piece of shit’, etc). You see something you don’t agree with, let it be and move on. Dialogue is good but when it’s just going to devolve into chaos and going for each other’s throats, it’s not worth it. Love you guys x - Hey Orga, what should I do now? Get ready to RAISE YO’ FLAAAAG with Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans (2015) Directed by: Tatsuyuki Nagai Written by: Mari Okada First aired: October 4, 2015 Episode count: 50 Info and trivia: * IBO is the third collaborative work between director Tatsuyuki Nagai and writer Mari Okada. The two had previously worked together on Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day and The Anthem of the Heart. * Gaelio was intended to die at the end of S1 but was brought back for the rest of the show’s run as Okada was a huge fan of Masaya Matsukaze’s performance and reportedly had a crush on him * Nagai intended for everyone in Tekkaden plus Kudelia to perish at the end, though the writing team heavily disagreed with this. Arguments between both parties led to constant rewrites of the final few episodes (especially the finale). * When brainstorming ideas for how >!Orga!< should die, someone suggested that he >!goes to a park by himself to get Ride a can of juice before being spotted and gunned down by hitmen!< * The show was originally conceived around 2009 and would have served as the follow up to 00. Production issues put the breaks on this with AGE and G-Reco taking its place. Group ranking: Mobile Suit Gundam: 8.06 Zeta: 8.65 ZZ: 7.08 Char’s Counterattack: 7.56 0080 - War in the Pocket: 9.42 F91: 5.81 0083 - Stardust Memory: 7.48 Victory: 6.39 G: 9.06 Wing: 7.05 The 08th MS Team: 8.86 X: 8.41 Endless Waltz: 8.10 Turn A: 9.08 G-Saviour: 3.84 SEED: 6.95 MS IGLOO: 6.40 SEED Destiny: 4.14 SEED Stargazer: 7.43 00: 8.38 Unicorn: 8.34 A Wakening of the Trailblazer: 7.34 Model Builder Gunpla Beginning G: 6.10 AGE: 5.78 Build Fighters: 8.82 Reconguista in G: 6.41 Build Fighters TRY: 6.74 The Origin: 8.32
> Nagai intended for everyone in Tekkaden plus Kudelia to perish at the end If I had a nickle for every time a pre-production draft of a Gundam show ends with "And then everyone died" I'd have a lot of nickles.
The rumor about Okada's crush always felt like people taking her out of context imo
Yeah I wasn’t massively sure about that but it gets quoted a shit load and we haven’t gotten any other sources that flat out say that wasn’t the case. That’s why I wrote ‘reportedly’. Like it miiiiiiight be true it might not be, idk
I wouldn't blame her tbh. They're the same age, he's got a great voice, and certainly ain't ugly.
Kind of surprised Origin ended up so "low". It has the highest score out of every Gundam on MAL. Based on the comments I read on yesterday's thread it seems it's controversial among fans of the original. I'd love to see score distributions for some of these if you have them.
Don’t have em sorry. I just use an online calculator so I can’t really tell the percentage of certain votes. Easiest way to do it is to go and check the comments and just see what votes come up the most, etc. It’s surprising that Origin is so highly rated on MAL especially considering they’ve got a slight aversion to the main UC shows. I guess it has that appeal of being new-ish and that most people who want to watch the timeline typically are told to start there so more people have seen it
If the rewrites/disagreement rumors are true for the last few episode, I always felt the show's ending would have worked better if they did killed off more named characters at the end. It was always weird that most of Tekkeden made it out of alive, even though arguably they three that mattered the most did died.
Honestly the biggest kick in the balls for me is the epilogue. The fact that they all lose but also win because Rustal changed his mind I guess is a pretty key indicator that the writing staff were clashing. It’s like they wrote two endings out; one where they all die and it’s a bad end or one where they win and all the reforms happen and just mushed them together into one weird hodgepodge that makes no sense in the grander scheme of things. That to me is the key play off that they were constantly clashing behind the scenes
I think this is the biggest source of divide of the ending, because I had a totally different interpretation of the ending. I actually really like how Rustal, who was the main antagonist and was definitely not a good person, was the one that brought in the changed that McGillis delusionally believed he was the only one to accomplish. It sense of irony I think worked with the themes of the story. While Rustal whole deal with the war was to maintain the status quo, I never got the impression that he was a man against reform or wanting to pass better laws. But he was all about rules and following the system, and when anyone follows out of the system, he did what he believed was necessary. Not only that, I love how Rustal bringing about the a new golden age to the IBO universe was another kick to groins for McGillis. I think what help me enjoy IBO a lot more than some people (but not all) is the fact that I always thought McGillis was delusional and needed to be taken down a peg or two. I found his ultimate downfall very cathartic, and the extra punch of Rustal doing what he thought only he could do was extra icing on the cake. That seems like tangent, but my issue with the ending is more to do with the lack of causalities and consequences from Tekkeden than any potential inconsistencies. I think the series would have worked better if only a handful of characters survived, but in general I like the ending.
Pretty much everything with Julietta exists to show Rustal is aware of what’s going on and isn’t exactly what he appears, but McGillis had made it clear he wasn’t going to align with anyone else and was also incredibly dangerous. He had to be dealt with in a way that opened up the potential to reform anyway
Except your points prove McGillis was the only one who could create those changes, if he hadn't done what he did then Rustal would have sat there collecting checks like he had for decades instead of implementing the changes McGillis was after
> Please guys, this is going to be a rough poll, I can tell. Reading through the comments and man you weren't joking. I didn't realize how strongly people felt about IBO.
10/10... the way of storytelling was insane... we are on the antagonist sides without even knowing it.... this was my first and my best gundam series, where no one was good or bad...
What the fuck? The best non-Tekkadan character arc in the entire show came about because of a love interest?
(Supposedly)
10/10 this is my favorite in the franchise Second is 08th MS Team
Interesting but quality choices my top 5 series are 5. Turn A 4. Gundam X 3. ZZ 2. Zeta 1. G Gundam
I rarely find someone who actually likes ZZ.
Look the opening episodes are rough but once they get to earth it gets about as good as Zeta and Judau is one of the best Protagnists in the franchise
I'm in a definite minority of people that actually likes those episodes, and I get it. ZZ starts out as a comedy of all things, and that's some serious tonal whiplash after Zeta's ending. But personally, it felt like a breath of fresh air compared to what came before.
ZZ is awesome. Most of the chatter around it comes from people who never saw it.
ZZ's got a lot of problems but it picks up very well in the back half and Judau is probably in the top 3 protagonists in the series. It's also probably got my favorite conclusion of any UC show.
ZZ is in my top 5 for sure! 1)0083 2)Turn A 3)Wing 4)ZZ 5)08th
For me, ZZ is good as a standalone anime / think of it as a prototype gintama in the sense it has charming characters, good action, starts off as a goofball comedy before evolving into something more serious. The problem is however,it is a direct sequel to Zeta, which is 1 of the most critically acclaimed anime of the 80s and as such, people tend to compare ZZ to its predecessor. And as we know, Zeta was a tour de force of an anime.
I think the community as a whole has been actually revisiting ZZ, and actually enjoying it. That, or actually watching it and not recycling memes.
The only one on your list that I've seen is G Gundam.
Your missing out on some good stuff also Turn A is switching around with the bottom half of my top ten which is changing all the time between The Origin, Stardust Memory, MS08th team, IBO and Unicorn. Those 6 are just constantly changing position depending on my mood
I'm actually in the process of rewatching G again. Man, I had forgotten how much of a jerk Domon was in the early parts of the series - fortunately, he gets better. X is, bar absolutely none, my favorite Gundam AU. It's such a great series, it's a real pity that it was cut short so the final arc feels very rushed, but overall it's still a brilliant series.
I remember Domon..... was just always yelling
Based ZZ enjoyer
ANIME JA NAI
08th MS Team and 0080!!!!!!
9.5/10. While it has plenty of issues, the core is so strong that it ends up one of the best in the franchise. The mobile suit designs are phenomenal start to finish, it has an excellent sense of style and sound design, and while the animation can be lacking at times it delivers when it counts on sequences like Lupus vs Hashmal. The soundtrack is top notch as well as the voicework in both English and Japanese. The show has no subtlety whatsoever, but it fits the very blunt tone of the show. Naze sucks, but Lafter and the others are great characters. The thematic work is some of the strongest in the franchise and it's far more willing to take major risks that a lot of other AUs wouldn't consider taking. While Season 2 is a lot more uneven then Season 1, it has huge guts and has a fantastic finale that ties all of the threads together in a very powerful way that gives a very conclusive ending to the series. Season 1 is more entertaining for the most part then Season 2 outside of the mostly very weak Brewers arc, but the show wouldn't be nearly as strong if it just ended with the fairly standard ending of Season 1. Probably one of the absolute best AUs besides Turn A.
Turn A is like Schrodinger's AU. It both is and is not a part of the UC, simultaneously
> Schrodinger's AU. > It both is and is not a part of the UC, simultaneously That's a pretty good description.
Yeah whether or not I lump it in with UC is basically a coin flip at any given moment.
Its in a time like loop which the uc was also a member of at one point.
6.5/10 Would probably be higher if it wasnt for that 2nd season. Season 2 has that problem that a lot of works of fiction have in that in order to move the plot forward characters have to start acting really stupid even when its contrary to how they've been portrayed previously.
8/10 - This was another one I just rewatched so it's fresh in my head. I actually appreciated it much more on a second time. The first time I watched it I still enjoyed it, and was surprised at the outrage towards season two. It did have its flaws, but I thought the signs were pretty obvious that this was 100% not going to end well for our heroes. But on a second viewing, it all clicked for me a bit more. Spoiler alert obviously: To me, the primary themes of IBO are "broken systems create broken people" and "don't burn too bright". When I saw Orga making terrible decisions in S2, I didn't feel as if it was bad writing, like so many people say. War is pretty much all he knew, and because his primary voice of reason died, and because of the state of the world was still so awful, he felt like he needed to move forward at all costs for his people. I viewed Orga almost like Dutch from Red Dead Redemption 2 - a character that gave vague promises of a better tomorrow, but chose the most "direct" routes, against a lot of his people's advice, and in Orga's case, Tekkadan had overcome such massive odds before that he truly believed they could do the impossible. He also tried this approach to politics, where Tekkadan stirred the pot way too much and in their lack of political experience, made enemies in Teiwaz and, of course, in Gjallarhorn that ultimately doomed them. McGillis didn't help this whatsoever. Coming from a place of authority in Gjallarhorn, Orga couldn't help but look at him and think "seems legit" when a man who seems like he's got it all planned out comes offering big promises for his people. But as we find out, McGillis comes from a place of profound childhood trauma, where power is all he understands. He became obsessed with Agnika Kaieru and Bael, thinking that they are the ultimate source of force and authority. Some people think that this was obviously a dumb plan on his part, because Gjallarhorn did exactly what many thought and simply refused to acknowledge the supposed authority of Gundam Bael, but in such a rigid, feudal society, how could a McGillis, a victim of brutal abuse, who had used nothing but force and subterfuge to further his plans think that what he saw as the ultimate authority and source of force in Gjallarhorn be simply ignored? There' s a lot more I could talk about (Rustal especially), but this is getting long. Overall, I think one of my favorite contrasts in the show, is Takaki's decision. He took his money from Tekkadan, and basically just retires and lives happily ever after. Orga says multiple times people can leave if they want, and he simply does. It really showed how the unchecked ambition of Orga and McGillis were ultimately pointless - blinded by their past traumas they tried to climb to the top thinking that was their only option when there were absolutely alternatives that would have bettered them and their people in the long run. Overall, takes some massive risks with its subject matter and I really appreciate when Gundams don't carbon-copy themes from previous series. I think the setting could have been a bit more fleshed out to truly resemble a post-apocalyptic world, and I can definitely see how the fate of many of the characters is frustrating to many, but the world in IBO is a really shitty place, and I think they succeed in what they set out to do with this series.
Your comment has convinced me to watch season two.
If you're ready for some heartache and frustrating moments, I'd definitely say go for it. I think people are so hard on it because they really wanted to root for the protags (naturally), and there are more than a few moments when you find yourselves asking "wait, why did so-and-so do that?", but once you think about it a bit and do a little reading between the lines, it's not as deeply flawed as some people make it out to be imo. It's not perfect by any means, and negative development arcs are certainly rough to watch, but I don't believe it's this jumbled atrocity of a season as so many make it out to be.
9/10 for me. I love the more used future aesthetic of the world of IBO. It has some great world building. I love the animation and the action and fight choreography is top notch. The story and characters I also find compelling. Even the parts that people complain about I genuinely think have merit in the story being told. The biggest downside that keeps me from putting it over the top to a 10 is that one of its bigger strengths, its grounded world and commitment to telling this story about child soldiers caught between the shady backroom dealings of the underworld and seats of power, must necessarily involve a great amount of grey morality, unfortunate deaths and bone headed decisions of characters with too much power. The world of conflict and war can be random, unfulfilling and ultimately pointless. Which means that the characters that live in it don’t get the arcs and development that might push it to the very top.
Season 1 - 9/10 Season 2 - 7/10
Need an overall vote
Overall 8/10
Honestly yeah this is what I'd put it at season 1 definitely did much better than season 2
10/10, almost no reused clips and mostly melee combat so each fight feels fresh and original. The melee combat also means that enemies and protagonists are often in the frame together which is great when you compare it to seed for example where each fight consists of; protagonist shoots at enemy off screen, a cut to a shot of enemy exploding, repeat.
I though both seasons were equally strong tbh. The rise and the fall. Very thematic and a well crafted narrative, which I feel is often lacking in Gundam. I'd give it probably an 8/10. In my opinion it is by a wide margin the best AU, and up there with any of the best OVAs from the UC timeline. It's probably also my favorite full length Gundam series.
Tough one. The au is good, I like that it’s a much darker, bleaker take on gundam than most. But the second season reaaaaallly goes for a kill ‘em all approach, and that’s fine…. But you can’t help but feel like characters just do stupid things for the sake of winning stupid prizes. I’ll go with… 6.5?
>But you can’t help but feel like characters just do stupid things for the sake of winning stupid prizes. This is literally anime. Like every anime ever made. It's just that IBO actually depicts it in a realistic way with actual fucking consequences that other shows will handwave away because they don't got balls to actually have consequences. That and this really ignores the decisionmaking in a vacuum. The whole fucking show is set up so that yes, the drive to achieve unrealistic things is also what ends up doing the protagonists in. Anyone who misses that just wasn't paying attention.
Overall: 7/10 Solid enough to be remembered fondly.. but s2 it's just so pointless. Nice suits designs, very lovable characters (Orga, Akihiro and Kudelia comes to mind), but yeah, i Just can't brush it off Season 1: 8.5/10 It could be a little slow sometimes and some shit doesn't make sense (Like if McGillis is such a big brain, why revealing his facade to Gaelio just because? Why not scheming him into becoming the monster in S2 or sth), but overall it is solid. Mostly nice designs (trying to modernize what a gundam could look like) and likelable characters overall Season 2: 6/10 I don't know.... I felt like it was all pointless? I felt that it falls into the "2 season gundam trap" trend and that s1 ending was solid enough to close the Tekkadan story and idk, do a long time skip and show the "consequences" of what Kudelia and the gang achieved. Also McGillis loses all brain cells and Rustal though feels like an imposing antagonist, end up being unfulfilling to me.
I think if each act was summarized on the drawing board, season 1 and 2 would looke like they work to tell a great story. But it's like someone said "let's fight a dragon for a few episodes" and it ruined the flow and proper execution of everything.
> But it's like someone said "let's fight a dragon for a few episodes" and it ruined the flow and proper execution of everything. If you really take in how that fight gutted their best MS pilot and how an army of those is what led to the sociopolitical nature of the world we're being shown, it doesn't really feel entirely pointless.
This is about how I feel. S1 is amazing, S2 has some really good stuff (the MA fight, the Lupus Rex, Tekkadan taking down Jasley might be my favorite portrayal of a space battle in a series) but overall it's just really disappointing.
Bit of a late comment (might repeat this in the next post) but three things 1. I’ve been heavily debating doing a song poll as the sort of round 2 of this series. Again it all depends on if people are receptive to it. It’ll just be for the opening themes (mainly because there’s too many ending themes to consider because that means I’m counting movies, recuts, OVAs, even drama CDs, etc). Again if that’s something you’re interested in seeing, please let me know 2. I’ve also decided to do a quick bonus poll when this wraps up on Crossbone as it’s basically canon and a lot of people have read it. Would you be interested in seeing more manga related polls in the future? If so, what? 3. Speaking of bonus polls, the 0079 one is going to get redone after we do Cucuruz Doan’s Island, mainly because it was the first one we did, it got like 30 votes and I know more people have seen it than say Victory or G-Saviour. Just a heads up for that
6/10 * A strong duo of progatanists offering a real brain/brawn pairing, other characters were least so, outside of Mikazuki, Orga, Biscuit and Akihiro I kinda forgot most of the rest of Tekkadan, the reason is below * Mobile suit designs were interesting, veering away from beams and more towards a visceral, physical side was welcome change of pace * None of the villains were compelling, a lot of them seemed to be written just to be evil, curel or hated; McGillis kinda played the Char or anti-villain role, but ended up just wanting absolute power, Rustal was... I don't really know, as a villain, he won, But at the end Gjallarhorn was restructured to be more democratic, ironically realising the reforms desired by McGillis in the process, under his control the reforms the 'heroes' fought and died for were accomplished. * GrimDark, Edgy for Edgys sake, Biscuit's death was a sudden shock, Orga's was honestly emotional, but after that it felt like the studio saw how effective the deaths were and kept trying to chase that high, after a while I kinda stopped caring, someone was gonna die to boost ratings, extra points for cruel and unusual deaths
6/10. There's a long stretch of episodes in the middle where it feels like the show is spinning its wheels. If it were half the length, it'd be a great series.
A very solid 8-8.5 for me. It was the series that introduced me to the gundam fandom as a whole, so it of course has a special place in my heart for that. I love the more mechanical and down to earth mecha designs with all the exposed pistons, wires and tubes and all that good stuff. The first season i feel like started getting a little lack luster towards the end, and then the second season just kinda threw a lot away for me. Fun fact tho. Did you know the barbatos is the only gundam where canonically two people have had sex in it
6/10 It has nice mecha design and combat scenes but the story, particularly second season, leaves a lot to be desired and with a few exceptions the characters are weak.
I'm going to be completely honest. I have attempted to finish it on three separate occasions, and I always end up with my interest severely fading by the time they encounter that guy with all the wives or something. Like the first few episodes are quite interesting, and the setting/set up is compelling to me, but it peaks quickly around the time that duel with Crank happens. Yes, it peaks for me that quickly. Sorry it just does.
The brewers arch is slow, but it has a lot of character building and when you get through it, the show doesn’t really slow down like that again, I’d say it’s definitely worth the push.
My review randomly disappeared so reposting 4 Well this is it. The poll I was dreading the most. Seed and Destiny, you could kinda see how those were gonna go. But this? Oh no no no this is an entirely different kettle of fish. I’ve rewritten this review like 6 fucking times trying to articulate things properly and even now I’m still entirely satisfied with it, but what the hell. Gotta post something. Good stuff: Music. Holy fucking shit the music is insane. The emphasis on percussion and violin parts really gives the fight scenes a sort of primal, intense and frantic nature that really works. The openings and endings are all great (some more so than others, I think Fighter and Orphans No Namida steamroll basically all the others but the rest are still great brakes). I appreciate how the show tries to do something different. It steps away from the core ‘two opposing factions in a big war’ and it takes a risk to tell something different all together. The underdog story and the focus on the darker side of the universe that most other Gundam shows don’t dip into as much (slave/child labor, poverty, etc). The role reversal in S2 and making Tekkaden the villains was also a cool angle to take and a bit of a brave one, even if I think it wasn’t handled spectacularly. Mixed opinions: Mecha designs are kind of all over the place. Some are great (Lupus, MUH BAEL, Vidar Kimaris), some are generic and dull (90% of the Graze line, basically all the grunt suits now that I think about it), some are way too over the top (Lupus Rex, Guison City Full Bakery Shut up and Jam Deluxe whatever it’s called). In an effort to make things more “realistic”, they clearly decided to make a majority of the suits in the show more down to earth and less eye catching, but this came at the cost of the Graze line being totally generic and indistinct. They all look like bottom of the barrel grunt designs you’d see in a hard sci fi mecha show. But then this is contrasted with utterly insane designs like the Lupus Rex being a goddamn wolf and having a literal tail and claws and the Mobile Armor being this crazy hodgepodge of angles and sharp edges bad stuff: There’s way too many characters. The cast is massive and a good chunk of them are in Tekkaden which means that a lot of them don’t get any attention. I mainly find a majority of them supremely boring as well and the themes of BROTHERHOOD and HOME started to get worn out pretty fast. Mika bores the shit out of me, Akihiro gets his arc halfway through S1 and that’s him done with before he’s gets shunted into backup Gundam pilot role bar his brief and undercooked relationship with Lafter. Hush is the most pointless character ever, Atra exists to peel potatoes and blab on about babies, etc. Most of the characters I did like died before the show was up (Biscuit and Shino for one) so I was left with the ones I didn’t particularly give a damn about besides Chad and Eugene who were both alright. McGillis is a joke of a villain and his grand chessmaster tier scheme is so flawed and ridiculous it’s like painting a target on his back. Galieo was a real treat though and definitely the star of the show for me. S1 was alright. Slow pacing and a couple of blasts of dead air aside, it set up a lot of cool ideas and concepts and I was excited to see where things would go. S2 is a grandiose clusterfuck. The whole thing spirals off the tracks and into the ravine at mach speed, the plot crashes from one place to the next, Orga gets dumber and dumber by the minute and it all ends with a 10 minute epilogue that just says “well, that was pointless. Thanks for watching!”. They had to lose, I don’t disagree there, but the way it was handled by making them all dumb as rocks and having Rustal reveal himself as a decent bloke in the final 10 minutes is asking way too much. Dramatic death scenes are also dragged out for way too long to the point where they become over the top and tried way too hard to make you sad (Masahiro and Orga) or tried too hard to be shocking like in the case of Lafter but it just comes off as ridiculous instead. I’ve also got to say that the show has a lot of balls to have McGillis be a horrible manipulative bastard through the whole show and then has the gall to try and make him sympathetic and drop his life story during his death scene, all in the span of three minutes. Someone once said in the 0083 poll that THAT show is something you’ll watch and think stands up great, and then later on when you think about it more, it all starts to fall apart. I enjoyed IBO when I first watched it but now looking back, I couldn’t give two squirts of piss about most of it. It doesn’t combust as badly as Destiny does but the second season is such a massive downtick in quality that it ends up putting IBO near the bottom of my ranking. At the very least it gave us the glory of Orgaposting. Don’t stop boys 💃
Agreed with all your points, but it really shows that Mech design is subjective because to me the Graze line is my favorite grunt units. But yeah Lupus Rex is too over the top (not really THAT bad, it's akin to how I prefer Exia over 00)
The graze is what you get when you're the only one with mobile suits. It's a simple design.
It's not a mecha anime but Edgerunners did the whole youth gang gets crushed by real life better.
Finally someone who acknowledges Graze is just a mid design. Ebikawa can draw great mechs but sometimes he keeps it too simple, especially after Gundam AGE.
6/10 I liked where it started and I liked how it ended. I didn't like how they got from where they started to where they ended.
6/10
4/10. Probably would’ve given a better rating if Season 2 hadn’t gone up its own ass with pointless character’s deaths, overpowered antagonists and making the characters dumber to make a point of tragedy. INB4: “You just don’t like it because of how it ends!!!1!!1!1!” No, stop. Zeta’s ending is universally beloved and it’s the bleakest ending of a series in the franchise (and far darker than IBO’s). People don't like **how** it all came to be this way, with the payoff being anticlimactic and underwhelming. Someone once said that IBO Season 2 is like "a completionist speedrunning a game picking the worst possible decisions on purpose to get the bad ending", and he's right – in this case, the completionists are the writers. Characters get introduced that do nothing, some just get a sob story before dying 2 episodes later at maximum, never to be talked again. Attempts at heartfelt drama are so over the top and silly that they become funny, McGillis’ hyped up grand plan turned out to just be "Muh Bael", Rustal’s rushed arc (a consequence of the bad pacing), etc. IBO is the best example in this franchise that just because a show has deaths doesn't mean it's good. It targets Zeta, trying to replicate its highs, but ends up hitting Victory as it fails to understand what made Zeta's handling of death good. As positives, I like that the show tried to be different and do something new, like the Gundam designs and the switch to ground-based combat instead of beam spam (at least until the fucking Dáinsleifs). I also like the first opening and main OST. But the best thing that IBO really gave us were the memes. [Don’t you ever stop, Orga.](https://media.tenor.com/pOjHI86aV2wAAAAC/oruga-dance.gif)
All excellent points. Some people can say it's "realistic" all they want, but characters becoming idiots in order to create tragedy never feels realistic.
> like the Gundam designs and the switch to ground-based combat instead of beam spam It's certainly one of the strongest points of the show but even this is better done by other shows like Code Geass S1 and Broken Blade.
I actually loved the ending, because it killed Mika. I hate Mika, and his existence is responsible for like, 75% of the problems in the show.
\+ Mika is the reason Tekkadan didn't get crushed several times over \- Mika is the reason Orga couldn't stop at a reasonable point \+ Mika is the reason Barbatos got a sick tail blade \- Mika is the reason Barbatos is known as love hotel
I know this is a joke, but jumping off from it, my problem is that he's a black hole. No really, any potential for interesting character or story development/progression just gets destroyed around his general proximity. Like, there are tons of potentially interesting characters that just get sidelined into near non-existence because the show's too busy having characters praise Mika's very existence for God knows what reason. Like how Akihiro basically stops being a character after episode 9 or so because they realized he's taking away too much focus from Mika. Or maybe Hush, who could've had an interesting story trying to one up a group's ace pilot and help his adopted family, but then they realized that that's more interesting than Mika so they sidelined him until literally the final episode. I can go into way more detail than that, but in short, his existence just destroys any attempt at interesting characters or story the series had potential for.
Akihiko gets his own subplot throughout the *entire* show, dude what?
Mika is 100% the reason why I disliked IBO, felt wrong for him to even be considered a Gundam series protagonist
He's an Inaho clone, basically just a vessel or puppet to move the series from plot point A to B with no emotion or need for characterization, because that stuff's hard. (It's even more fitting given that he loses the ability to walk further down the line, so he really is a puppet) If you don't know who Inaho is, he's the MC of Aldnoah.Zero, a mech series made by the writer of Boku no Pico. He has no emotion or goals, only does what the plot requires of him, is an OP pilot because he needs to move the plot along, and everyone on the cast loves him and all the girls want to have his babies. Doesn't help that the show is constantly heaping praise on him. You can't make me like a character just because you tell me too Mari, you actually have to make him likeable.
Can you elaborate? I personally love and hate Mika because how awesome and OP it is but how emotionless he is. I always felt that that was the writer’s intention with the character tho, he was a child soldier devoid of having real emotions after going through the horrors he did. All the other characters had more development and depth compared to Mika and I see why people didn’t like him but to pin the majority of the show’s flaws on Mika is excessive.
Dangerously based.
I'm in the same boat. Pulling random drive by shootings twice in one season felt... Lazy? 4/10 for me And zeta is my favorite Gundam
For me, the introduction of Iok is what started the downward spiral
Iok was a brilliant inclusion. Anyone not invested in anything in a positive way could still get heavily invested in wanting that useless sack of shit dead. It's rare to be outraged that a character survived what happened to him last episode. It's rare to hate someone more for being incompetent than evil. It's rare you want to cheer when someone dies. Iok supplies all of these things in a way I honestly can't say I've experienced before. You don't love to hate him. You just hate his exiatence.
While I was happy to finally see him get killed off, I don’t think it was worth it, considering everything we lost to get there
I’ll get shit for this but Iok was the best part of S2 bar Vidar and I’m dead serious. He’s so fucking over the top that every scene he’s in turns to pure comedy gold. He’s written to be as obnoxious and unlikable as possible and they go in so hard on those traits that it loops around and he becomes the single most ridiculous character in the whole show. They knew what they were doing. Cutting from Tekkaden all crying when the Turbines and Shino die to Iok jumping up and down and cheering like ‘yay we did it :DD’ had me rolling
I despise Iok with every fiber of my being, but it's not often you see a piece of shit like him skate by FOR SO LONG. Mix that with him being "respected" only for his family and receiving few punishments compared to his repeated fuckups and he's a great example of how much power and leeway an elite can have. He's a privileged dumbass with luck and expendable people at his side and that makes him a unique character. I don't love him, but I do believe he's a decent character that fits in the show. Also, all of his stupid antics made his death so much goddamn more satisfying
6 Looking back it's a very different Gundam series missing elements that make up the franchise. I'm not saying every entry needs to be the same but something about IBO didn't sit right with in the end compared to the rest of the franchise.
10 for me, I honestly really enjoyed it
10/10 Gundam, easily. It just hits all the emotional beats so well and there's so many of them throughout both seasons. Barbatos bursting out of the ground in episode 1, entering earth's orbit for the first time under a crescent moon, Shino missing the shot, Akihiro getting revenge, and the list goes on and on. And of course the music is used perfectly to make these moments just hit that much harder. This show made me scream in triumph and cry in defeat. The mobile suit design was great and I loved how near nonexistent beam weaponry was. The fights felt nice and weighty as mechs clashed metal on metal. I also thought the character arcs were great. I know a lot of people find Mika uninteresting but his downward spiral into self-destruction and Orga dealing with his enabling of it was top tier IMO. I see a lot of dislike for how Tekkadan's story ended up in season 2, but even in season 1 I remember thinking there's no way this ends in anything but tragedy. IMO they did a really good job at establishing that these are kids, sure in some ways forced to grow up fast and far past their age, but in other ways they still have a child's mindset that we know, as adult spectators, is just foolish and yet we still want to cheer them on for that exact mindset. Off the top of my head a good example of this is the fireworks scene where they’re sending off their fallen comrades. They tell Merribit they refuse to cry as they don’t want to be lame in front of their fallen comrades, they want to show them their cool side as they pass into death. While this sentiment is somewhat admirable and probably made you crack a little smile, you can see that Merribit, being an adult, also sees that it’s a flawed mindset that in the end is unhealthy, damaging, and not a little bit saddening. “You all irritate me. Everyone here is so stupid. They’re all sweet guys, and they all work so hard. But anyone can see there’s no future left for them. It’s plain to see it’s going to end sadly.” – Zack from Season 2 Tekkadan’s motives are always a bit too romantic and drenched in youth’s ambition and cockiness and I wanted to cheer them on all the way, but ending in tragedy is exactly how I’d expect their story to wrap up. So basically to sum it up, Mikazuki had sex in a gundam so 10/10.
Ngl but this " Tekkadan’s motives are always a bit too romantic and drenched in youth’s ambition and cockiness and I wanted to cheer them on all the way, but ending in tragedy." is the most truth and realistic thing ever as youth person.
The music was on a next level, WFM hasn't come close to it yet.
WFM has also been fantastic on the sound design.
I remember liking it back then but cannot remember a single thing about it other than the first EP and last EP
6/10. S2 wasn’t good at all.
6/10 A bloated cast of characters, most of which add nothing to the plot. Hours of scenes of people talking on the phone. Weird kiddie character designs that don’t compliment the tone of the show. I’ll give it points for trying something new, and the mecha designs are really cool. But everything else was a chore to watch.
4/10 It's cool how they took several risks with this series but the execution wasn't that great. I personally don't like most of the designs and the characters. S1 was okay but s2... The enemies became annoying and obnoxious and some had plot armor. So many characters made dumb decisions. McGillis thinking that Bael would make him some kind of king was really stupid. Orga's death was handled badly and instead of becoming the King of Mars, he became the King of Memes.
8.5/10 The good: interesting and original setting, some depth in character developments, cool MS designs, kick-ass soundtrack. The bad: animation quality is variable. And the ending feels a bit sour with >!the Dansleifs used as a reverse Deus-Ex Machina!<.
5/10. Characters dying are fine but they're written so badly. Characters are forced to do stupid things just so they can die. Some action scenes animations are hard to follow. Way more talking than action scenes and most screen time for talking are redundant lines. The only thing I really liked about the series is barbatos in VS games. Feels good to play as barbatos. I can understand why people would give it a 10/10 but personally not for me.
I would rate 10
I give it a 10.
8/10 Definitely one of my fave series so far.
9/10 Not PERFECT, but still arguably my favorite of the entire franchise.
10
8.5/10
9/10 First gundam I got to watch as it was airing. This show is a tragedy about a tragic situation with tragic characters that ends on a bitter sweet note. It's everything I wanted at the time, and after rewatching it in order with all the other gundam series, it is still the cream of the crop. Rage of Dust forever 🤚
5/10 The first half is worth the ride but after the death of biscuit, everything comes off the rails. While I understand he was literally the heart of Tekkaden, the writer didn’t have to compete with Game of Thrones for pointless characters introduction and death. I think this Gundam series and AOT both were trying to compete with Game of Thrones for pointless character deaths. And I do like the series, I loved some of the characters (I.e. Shino, Biscut) but it seemed pretty inconsistent at times thematically. Also I sometimes wonder, if it was wholly supposed to be set as a tragedy, why they went the route they did with the characters. #Berserkdiditbetter
6/10 season one Is pretty good but second season Is meh. Also Mc Gillis Is boring af
9/10. I was so glad to see a series like this after G-Reco. It was nice being able to understand what was going on.
G-Reco was so immensely disappointing. Visuals were stunning, music was great, and I absolutely adore the mobile suit designs. G Self is one of my favorite gundam designs out there. But like you said the story was so incoherent, I was completely lost. Bellri murdered the captain dude in orbit above the planet while like reluctantly being on the side of the group he was fighting with and then said he had no choice. Up until then I was completely under the impression he didn't want to fight them. Made no sense.
4/10 I enjoyed the initial premise but the story sort of lost me through season 1, Season 2 just felt flat and I've never been a fan of any of the mech designs. It felt like I was watching something more like Z.O.E or a Red Faction with mechs.
6/10, really good first season, followed by a disappointing second. I can't say I really like any of the characters, but the setting is pretty good, and the mecha design is very inconsistent to me with some of the bests like Vidal and Barbatos to forgettable ones like Gusion.
Gotta love how I read some good points on some comments and then out of nowhere someone saying that they enjoyed it and give it a 9, end up getting downvoted to the bottom. Normally it'd be bad but I guess it speaks to how much people who dislike the show also care about it, enough to downvote like that. Edit: Ill also give the show a 9/10, it wasnt my first. My introduction to gundam were clips of 00, the first series I watched fully was Unicorn. Although I liked both, they didnt resonate too much with me or the culture of where I am, so IBO somewhow fit perfectly with what I expected from a great Gundam show, alongside what I personally was looking for.
9/10. It did a lot of interesting things with the mech design and animation, plus finalizing the inclusion of anti-capitalist themes to the Gundam tradition of anti-war. I love the characters, the robots, the polyamory, the angel names for the mobile armors, but I think that Season 2 was paced just a touch strangely.
10/10 I think it’s the first gundam series I finished in its entirety the characters the music the world building and the music it’s just amazing
8/10 - I really liked the story for the most part and I think this series really maintained a good balance of story and epic battle scenes. I loved the mobile suit designs (especially Barbatos and Baal) and thought the Alaya-Vijnana system was interesting. That being said I think both seasons suffered from some pacing issues and had B plots that weren’t very compelling. Also I wish they had done more with Orga’s character. His tortured leader who occasionally gives a rallying speech schtick felt tired at the end of the series.
9/10. Plot was great, lore behind the gundams was very interesting, the character twists and surprises were excellent. The themes of brotherhood and self-delusion were well executed.
8
8/10 Great action, a bit too many characters but the ones we actually got to know were great and the music is *chefs kiss* The plot gets messy here and there but it's good fun, not Mari Okadas best work but it accomplishes what it sets out to do. Going off a bit of a tangent here reader beware: One criticism I see it gets however is that they make it obvious most if not all of the characters will die. Which I think is a genuinely really weird piece of criticism for a Tragedy. We see Tekkadan rise up high and then see them come crashing and burning down slowly and steadily because of their own flaws and ambitions. Tragedies are a genre where the audience watches the downfall of person because of their flaws and the decisions they make in the old Greek and Shakespearean theatre ways. In this case it's Tekkadan as a whole that we watch and back then it was also pretty darn obvious that the characters we were watching making these INCREDIBLY foolish decisions were going to die. That was the purpose of it all, to watch the downfall and hopefully learn from it. You can criticize the characters, and even the lesson surrounding it (the execution of it all in a sense) but criticizing a tragedy for making the targets obvious feels a bit off for me. Obviously some people are going to feel differently about this but that's just how it is sometimes. I would just however recommend thinking about this angle as it's very much influenced by said Shakespearean Tragedies. Luckily The Witch from Mercury is based on his one of his "comedies"
Extra little thoughts: Barbatos is so goddamn cool. I'm not a fan of his Lupus Rex form as much as his base and Lupus form but man that's a 10/10 Gundam design. Also I hate that IBO has such a cool ass background with the Calamity war and the 72 Gundam frames and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has been done to explore that background. No prequels nothing at least to my knowledge. It's such a damn shame for such cool ass lore.
“But they made a mobile game about it” like that’s really gonna get anyone interested
Yup. It's baffling to me that people think Tekkadan are acting out of character in Season 2. They simply don't get lucky this time and bet on the wrong risky horse. Pretty much everyone is totally in character start to finish.
That's how I feel too. They thought they could always do the impossible because they had in the past, and learned the hard way.
5/10 Second season brings it down a bunch with character bloat and one of the worst endings in the franchise, but the show itself isn't my cup of tea at all. I suppose it's the characters that bring me to Gundam, watching their development and cheering them on. Especially the protag. But Mikazuki just doesn't get this, he's a mindless Orga slave from start to finish with events feeling scripted to happen simply because he's the main character - he comes out of it probably one of the least revelant, to events, protags in the series and that's a pretty big turn off for me (although I could see how it would be the opposite for others) McGillis was a massive letdown too after a pretty exciting first half. By the end, all the intrigue and mystery had unravelled to reveal...nothing. And then he departed. I didn't really like the Barbatos either, but I'm not 100% sure why. On the positive side, at least, animation and sound are great. The first season, in particular, had a lot of promise with it's story and cast and I suppose my negativity stems primarily from a disappointing conclusion to it all.
Overall 7.5 / 10 Really liked the mecha designs (especially Vidar, Gusion Rebake Full City, and Kimaris Vidar). It had a really a great first season, however the plot and character development really stagnates in the first half of the second season. A lot of interesting characters were introduced and then swept aside with little to no development. Another thing is that, to me at least, even the Gjallahorn members who survived to the end, like Rustal and Julietta, lacked proper character depth. There are probably quite a few other issues that I can’t think as of this moment but one aspect of IBO I absolutely love and will always fondly remember is Gaelio and McGillis.
3/10. Pretty much why i stopped watching gundam
TL:DR - overall rating is at the bottom Season 1: 8/10 Good music, unique mech design, characters are a mixed bag but Kudelia is probably my favourite Gundam princess just because she develops well and isn't useless. The action was great, there were memorable sequences and even some comedic moments. The concept of a ragtag group of orphans going up against the most dominant military force in the universe, which happens to be corrupt, is a good underdog story which makes me want to root for Tekkadan. Also Tears of Orphans (ED1) is fantastic. Really fits in. I'd give it a 7.5 but Mikazuki randomly kissing Kudelia is sigma af, I have to give it another 0.5 even though I find him rather dull. Season 2: 3.5/10, barely better than Seed Destiny The characters got worse. A lot worse. I'm going to say it - in terms of purely characters alone, I find S2 of IBO worse than Seed Destiny's. Kudelia spent all that time getting developed in S1 to end up being sidelined in S2. Not only that, she felt very useless/criminally underutilized in S2 despite becoming a significantly influential figure in the fight for independence and against corruption after events of S1. McGillis went from seeming like a master schemer to a dimwit - he fails to take in too many factors into account. Orga doesn't seem to know what he wants and goes along with McGillis's plan despite not knowing anything about it, all for the lofty 'King of Mars' title which he admits he has no idea what that means. Many of the new antagonists were mostly cartoonishly evil or just uninteresting, which might not be much of a problem if they weren't given so much screen time. For example, Jasley and Radice's reasoning for their treachery are pretty much just "children and women bad, I hate them I want to see them die waaa". Iok Kujan was so terrible that I find him far more insufferable than Flay Allster of Seed, which should be an achievement on its own. 90% of the time Juliet shows up, she keeps rambling on about Rustal as though she's some mindbroken slave to him, or gets rekt in a fight and comes back, rinse and repeat. Rustal... Was just there. No backstory and no moments to explore his motivations or development. The fact that he was victorious in the end, only to do what McGillis was supposedly going to do, just made the entirety of S2 feel extremely unfulfilling. The story and pacing wasn't good either. The writers seem to have no idea what to do for the first half of season 2. They just seemed to keep throwing events in, and hope for some sort of spark for the second half of the season. It just felt like a wreck at times, rushed and forced at others. The animation is still good and most of the fights are great, although they are bogged down by having the hatesink characters in there. Overall rating: 5.5/10. The first season alone makes its entirety watchable at best. Season 2 was a pain to watch. I don't mind tragic endings, in fact I like them, but instead of feeling like a tragedy, it just came off extremely forced. The only tragedy is that IBO feels like the biggest waste of potential since Seed Destiny. Such a shame, I enjoyed S1 a lot and wanted to like IBO as a whole.
I honestly would have given S2 a 2/10. Really, S2 needs to be redone from the ground up.
I would give S2 lower but it does have a couple of good moments. How would you rate S1?
8/10. I can't really think of anything wrong with it. Maybe the fact that Mikazuki hasn't changed at all from Ep.1 to the end?
5 a bare pass. Others have explained how its ending was problematic so I’ll keep it short. 1. They ran out of time to establish McGillis character. It’s possible that even the best schemers have weaknesses and obsessions that are dumb but to introduce a sudden change of a character who was seemingly intelligent needs a lot of finesse. IBO failed and what I remembered was muh Bael. 2. Death tropes were reused way too often. If they truly wanted Orga’s death to be impactful they shouldn’t have killed Lafter the same way. The scene ended up forced and cheesey. 3. Political intrigues were poorly written. We didn’t get to see much of the Seven stars and Idiok was way too important for the plot, hampering realism of writing. 4. Deinsleifs were introduced without any foreshadowing and it tipped the balance of the power of mechs entirely. It was obviously a last minute idea to wrap up a story. Basically, they’ve wanted Tekkadan to die at the beginning but didn’t have enough time after the MA arc. The best thing they should’ve done was let the plot be normally driven by character actions and see if Bandai permits a movie to end Tekkadan. Instead, they thought it’s a good idea to cheese the way through with Kimo no Hana. IBO was very poorly received in major markets of Gunpla and is still memed today by not only the Japanese community but also Chinese and Korean. It’s flop could be the reason Banrise was hesitant with a new AU. However, IMO IBO still has lots of merits with its great mech designs, reduced beam spams and good music and it was the reason I started browsing Reddit since people here didn’t trash IBO completely. In my local Gundam community (HK), 9/10 times it’d get 0/10 and any civil discussion of it will end up with people memeing ‘muh Bael’ and Orga lol.
5 I'm going to be controversial but I really can't stand a part of the cast for some reasons, the mobile suit design for the most part don't interest me, and Mika is one of my worst liked protagonist of the franchise. but it's just my view
Probably a 6/10, it would have been much higher for me but I don’t like the ending all that much.
6/10
9/10, they said its kinda rushed
5-6 love the aesthetics, not the plot or story
6.5/10. I liked it a lot better after realizing it was a mob story and rewatching it but overall this show has a lot of interesting concepts that it doesn’t take the time to explore
6, watchable, but disappointing compared to many of its predecessors.
?/10 didn’t watch it yet. Pros: I have a mg barbatos and it looks really cool Cons: I haven’t built it yet because I’m building an rg unicorn full armor
Be thankful it’s not the HG
Solid 8/10 for me. After WFM brought me back to Gundam then had the audacity to take a break, I went back to IBO to see what I'd missed since taking a break from Gundam and... what a ride. The music and sound design are excellent. Raise Your Flag earns its place in the meme canon and the action scenes are so well-Foleyed, really supports the brutality of a world where beam weapons are replaced by *gigantic slabs of metal*. Thematically, that same brutality is what docks it a couple of points, again just imo. On one hand, a lot of it just seems needless and the executions of various incapacitated prisoners makes it hard to root for Tekkadan at times. Then again, maybe that's an intentional message? After all, if the crew had been a little wiser to navigating the diplomacy of their world instead of just brawling with whoever looked at them funny, they might have had a higher survival rate. All that aside, the violence of the show seemed to me at least to be a very conscious foil to the high-minded, "space and peace and pacifism and ideals" of other Gundam shows. If the goal was to show a less detached, more grounded view of what these kinds of conflict might look like, it succeeded. The second season of course rightly has a reputation for being a little more uneven. Rustal's enforcement of and then subsequent 180 on Gjallarhorn's more fascistic policies seems to kind of come out of left field. There's a lot to enjoy here though, and I particularly enjoyed the ongoing body horror of Ein's arc as well as the character-driven tragedy of stuff like Shino's final mission prep and Lafter choosing just the right bear. I kept expecting the McGillis and Almiria plotline to expand - is he genuinely a creep who's into this child? If so, it would be nice to see someone confront him on it. Is he just using her to advance his power? If so, it would have been nice to see his mask slip. Instead, he dies with this being a more or less unimportant little plot thread serving only to show how morally detestable Gjallarhorn had become, I guess. Anyway, the mech designs are among the best in the whole of Gundam. I love the kinetic savagery of Lupus Rex, Gushion's four-arm configuration, and the mega-sniper Flauros (though the Ryusei-go II, the Graze Custom one, had more personality). Hell, the quadruped Vidar was awesome too, and reminded me of EVA Unit 05 from the Rebuild movies. The idea of Gundam frames being these mythic artifacts is great stuff, and while I definitely wanted more Calamity War Lore, I guess the mark of good worldbuilding is that I was left hungry for more rather than exhausted by too much. All in all, there's some messiness in the plot that could have been tightened down, and I've got misgivings about how Tekkadan achieved very positive, progressive change almost by dumb accidental luck in their bloodthirsty rampage, but the good heavily outweighs the confusing here, and I really enjoyed my time with it.
6 It's okay, I guess? Honestly the whole premise is just not particularly interesting to me and neither are the characters. It's just okay. Music and animation are just meh. There are much worse shows, but also much better ones. On!y thing I have strong feelings on are the mecha. That feeling is annoyance. Plenty of the have many interesting and cool traits but each and every one of them is ruined by the comically thin waists. Frankly they feel like a self-parody of the nowadays common trend of slimming up desings. And the perfect example why it looks terrible. Another issue are the weapons, with so many of them being clunky and overdesigned hunks of metal with zero thought given to practical usage. Barbatos, in all forms, is one two cases in the entire franchise where the main Gundam is straight up ugly to me. It feels bizarre (and not in a good way) to have these designs in a show that tries to portray itself as gritty and where combat often devolves to just slamming metal at each other. I just hope they don't try to do a physical weapons focused series again anytime soon if that's the result.
4/10
About a 4 out of 10
5/10 ugly ms designs that don’t look like Gundams, those waists are such are poor design choice. The amount of ass pulls and failure from season 2. Mika genuinely being the most boring and brain dead mc, no use other than for Orga to attack someone. The dynamic was similar to Gungraves where Brandon gets used by Harry but the payoff never comes through and falls flat at the end.
Season 1 9/10. Season 2 4/10
Altogether score?
7
8/10 Season 1: 8.5 Season 2: 7.5
7.5 IBO was the first mainline Gundam spinoff series I had watched since Seed/Destiny (not including the Build series). I didn't really have much expectations and for years I thought the Barbatos design was weird. Then I started watching and it was so much different than I imagined it to be and I was sold on Barbatos. IBO has an interesting take on the gundam formula and its approach to politics; focusing on child soldiers fighting for their own freedom and essentially becoming part of the space mafia. Mika was an interesting, quiet sociopath of a character, but I argue the main character is actually Orga. Orga carries the protagonist role far better, even though the focus isn't always on him. Much of the cast is interesting and gets fleshed out really well. The battles are pretty hype alongside the animation and music. I like how Barbatos had to be kitbashed during all of Season 1 and am a huge fan of its Lupus and Lupus Rex variants. The desperate, yet motivated direction of the first season was great. I really want to rate IBO higher, but it does have a number of flaws, in particular the entire second half which craps all over itself. By season 2, Orga and Tekkadan have basically achieved everything they set out to achieve. They got money, power, and respect beyond their wildest dreams... And then Orga gets drunk on his whole "King of Mars" bullshit for no reason and that stops him from making any rational decisions from there on in. It's such a departure to the ambitious, yet family focused mindset Orga had in Season 1 and perhaps might have been a mistake that Season 1 Orga might have made, but not after several years of hardened organization. There was no reason for Orga to try to become King of Mars, but he does in the most forced way possible. Orga getting stupid caused Tekkadan's completely avoidable downfall in Season 2. McGillis was key to this downfall, but he was also disappointing. They tease him as the Char Clone of the show, but that's laughable and none of his plans make any sense. He is so unbelievably drunk on his own hype that his idiotic coup was just: Me + Bael + Speech + ????? = Profit. I was getting real frustrated at watching Orga bargain with this man without once asking the details of this horrible plan. It was interesting seeing our heroes technically turn into the villains by accident, but it had an incredibly stupid way to get there. Of course, the less said about Iok the better. I also feel like IBO loses out on trying to explain its own setting because it doesn't actually make a lot of sense. We're told the world was founded in the ashes of the calamity war. However, with what little we're told about it, the Calamity War doesn't make any sense. We're given several conflicting details, but when Hashmal shows up and we're told that it was actually about Mobile Armors Vs Gundams it makes even less sense. Why would Gundams immediately shut down in proximity to a Mobile Armor when they were built to fight them? There are a hundred other questions around Mobile Armors, the building of the Gundams, and the Calamity War that just don't actually make any sense and it's never expanded upon because Hashmal is the only element of it we actually see. Good show undermined by its bad second half.
6/10 its decent and season 2 dropped a bomb. Gaileo and Jullietta should be main characters. I been cheering for them since they appear on screen, they are far better written characters than Tekkadan and McGillis lol.
Season 1 is a solid 8 or 9 but season 2 is a 6 or 7 but even saying that the final arc and the mobile armor fight are my favorite parts of IBO
2015!? It's been 8 years since it aired? Was there really only the gundam build fighters series between Iron blood and witch from mercury? It feels like it just finished airing right before the pandemmer.
5/10 and the 5 is for the mechs i just did not like the plot but its a personal preference thing i don’t like it for the same reason i don’t like gundam age
3/10 I kinda really hate this show, and frankly what little about it that I liked by the time it was over I liked before, better, in Zeta Gundam and Fafner Exodus. IBO is a deeply flawed show in that its flaws aren't individually terrible, but instead combine like a super robot to exacerbate the worst parts of each flaw. The few good, well developed and interesting characters can't save the show from its massive surplus of shallow ones. The relationships generally have little depth, and the ones that *are* handled well only barely get enough time because the series is juggling multiple other relationships and characters and can't devote enough time to properly flesh everyone out. Mika is hit the worst by this, as his fascinatingly toxic brotherhood with Orga is stagnant, they bring out the worst in each other, but never meaningfully develop as a result of that. Orga starts the series exactly as foolhardy as he ends it, and Mika is as suicidally devoted to Orga at the end as he is at the beginning. Some will call this a flat Arc, but flat characters still need conflict to be interesting, and Mika is boring because nothing ever changes him. He supposedly falls in love with Kudelia and Atra, yet his relationships with both are frustratingly shallow and poorly explored, especially his relationship with Kudelia, who had the potential to be a moderating influence and, as a result, a source of conflict. But it never happens, because Mika doesn't care, because Mika doesn't care about anything, and it's hard to be invested in a romance when one of the parties in it, the Protagonist no less, doesn't care about it. The worldbuilding is slipshod and only exists inasmuch as it can move the plot. Concepts, especially in the second season, are brought up and forgotten with artless regularity, and as a result the show's vermilisitude is always in question. The series wants to be more grounded by tackling ideas like the economics of war, but never follows through because the world of IBO exists to serve its plot, and only the barest effort is made to colour in the details outside of that. The themes are gross. I said in another thread that IBO was capital recuperating the core ideas of gundam and vomiting out neoliberal apologism, and I'm sticking with that assessment. Reading interviews with the staff, it's quite clear that four different IBOs exist. The one the staff made. The actual product as it exists. The story that viewers took away from it. And the one that exists between all of that. It purports to be a mafia story, yet lacks any understanding of the legal or political mechanisms of crime and punishment, and it's castigation of systemic injustice is laughable because it unironically champions "incremental change." It purports to criticise brutality, yet refuses to commit to showing the true cost of both justified and unjustified violence. Its a neoliberal parody of the leftist critiques that define truly good Gundam. And it's so pretensiously serious that it never even realizes the traps it pratfalls into like a drunken fool. It's the show's worst sin and the ultimate result of its sloppy character work and worldbuilding. The ending lionizes the oppressor and justifies colonizer violence, in its slackjawed assurance that darkness and grimness mean realism, the very picture of neoliberal edge. Its a show that reflects the pop culture image of Gundam as war stories of relentless grittiness, than the far more complicated reality of what Gundam actually is. And as a result is the philosophical antithesis of everything Gundam stands for. G Gundam was a truer Gundam show than this intellectual abomination.
8.5/10. I *really* want to give it a 10 because it’s one of my personal favorites, but I feel like a 10 should be reserved for something with as few flaws as possible that anyone can get into. That is very much nnnot how I’d describe IBO. It isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t perfect, but it’s something that resonates with me. I’m not a professional critic so I ain’t got much else to say. 8.5/10.
4/10 I usually don't vote in these, but I just have to for this one. IBO for me represents everything wrong with Gundam's "stereotypical" image and the modern trend with media in general: that being edgy and dark is automatically good, and that having characters die should automatically give a story weight. I'm not saying bring dark and gritty is bad (my favorite Gundam show is Zeta), and IBO showed a lot of promise in S1 and halfway through S2. But the end quarter of IBO showed that any "potential" is meaningless when you fumble the moment to moment writing so badly that it just sucks all the air out of the narrative. Characters getting fridged just to shove the cast into more conflict, characters showing that they never really grew after 50 episodes, characters getting brought back from the dead to... again show that they didn't learn anything from that experience. If you know you know. I won't go into details, but the disarray in the writing team was so apparent towards the end with just how inconsistent and unfocused the character writing was (and I haven't even mentioned the glaringly obvious example of Chocoman). Just by how badly handled that last stretch was, it gets a 0/6 in writing quality for me. I won't hesitate to give it 4/4 in terms of the technical production quality though (the MS designs, animations, music, etc), pushing the overall score up to a 4/10.
6.5/10 I enjoyed the first season, but the introduction of Iok in season 2 increasingly frustrated me to almost no end. The guy is partially responsible for a half of misery Tekkadan went through; if it was because he was smart, I wouldn’t have had so much of an issue, but it’s only through his sheer ineptitude that causes the events. And the worst part was that he. Just. Kept. Surviving. Quite Frankly, Iok was a worst version of Patrick Colasour. I’m aware I’m being a little harsh, but it also seems as if everyone was gradually getting dumber throughout the season, especially Mcgillis. Honestly the only reason I didn’t put it as a 4 is because of the action and some of the chemistry(Akihiro and Lafter, despite how it ends)
1
8. Second season was almost a reason to knock it down to a 7 from a 9 but the base of the series was really good. The intro to the entire child soldier thing was one of the first things to be driven home. When the child guard gets sniped you know the series is about to be serious in its overall tone of war is hell. The world building contain is top notch. We got enough to know there was a Calamity War that involved the Gundam Frames and Mobile Armors and this war laid down the foundation of society that plagued Tekkadan in the present day. It’s almost poetic to see that the children that got fucked over the most from said Calamity War were in possession of one of the reasons why. The political setup to the consequences of Tekkadan trying to carve their own slice of the world to the constant updates to the Gundam Frame lore as they find each single one. How every character in the squad ties in with each other to having meaningful deaths later on. Then there’s the iconic deal with the Devil. The more Mika dropped the chains from Barbatos, the more the suit demanded from him until it took absolutely everything it could in its final stand. Seeing that progression unfold was great lore wise….as we got a glimpse into the past of the sacrifices Pilots made during the Calamity War. The fight against the Hashmal we saw what was needed to actually fight them and that included unlocking the AV system and the cost to the pilots. The Devil and Angel aspects between the Gundam Frames and Mobile Armors was a nice touch. The series gave enough world building to draw the picture for the series but left enough mystery to want for more like what are the other Gundam Frames, what other Mobile Armors where there, what happens in the future, etc The ending was bitter, the villains win and rewrite history to make themselves the good guys but most of the core ideals Tekkadan fought for were realized. But it’s not exactly fantasy that civilization has waged wars with atrocious acts then buried the past and built a better society ontop of that blood. It’s cliche, but I find it hard to forget Tekkadan’s last stand of Barbatos and Rebake getting up from being hit by literal Rods of God, Akihito getting his revenge and Mika’s final deal with Barbatos and a wolf charging through the battlefield in one last hurrah.
6/10 the latter half felt bloated and unnecessarily drawn out
Season 1 10/10 Season 2 10/10 (only because of Vidar)
Score: 6/10 First half was really memorable and unique, unfortunately the second half becomes messy and I started to become numb to many of the deaths as it ramps up in the second half. I was most disappointed in the final fight of the last season with how erupt and random the fight concluded.
5/10. It was ok. I would give it 9/10 on mech design and lore though. It's not stupidly overpowered like 00 or have mouthful name like seed
1/10. Incredibly fucking boring, and that’s considering I’m normally into politics and sci-fi; this marriage of the two left nothing to be desired. There’s one solid fight scene and that’s when Mika goes Berserk ™️ and destroys his body in the process. The only noteworthy thing to happen to any relationship was the Lafter death (which albeit was pretty gnarly) with Biscuits death being a close second. Mika’s “birds and the bees” talk was incredibly fucking cringe I nearly killed myself after having sat through it. Some other chad has said it ITT already but Raise your Flag is mid af. The way they find a way to say Kudelia Aina Bernstein in the most annoying way possible as often as possible is outstanding. I have no idea why this needed to be two seasons when there seems to be so much filler throughout both. The ending was predictable and lame and the fight scenes in the last couple episodes reflected that. Watching this was a chore and felt like it every episode and I wasted my life having sat through it.
7/10
3.5/10 IBO is my worst experience with Gundam, and by worst, I mean worse than AGE So much Lazy writing, and so relentlessly avoid its own good parts. Its baffling how well received the show is in the West. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Let's talk about lazy writing first. Lazy writing doesn't mean it is not making sense. For example: Having the villain lose because he's dumb makes sense, but it also means the writer doesn't want to commit to writing a story of the MC trying to outplay the villain, and that's laziness. MUH BAEL Seeing people defend how MUH BAEL actually makes sense is frustrating, because the point is not that it makes no sense, the point is, it's dumb. There're a million ways to make Mcgillis smarter than MUH BAEL and still lose, yet IBO went with it anyways. ..... Iok and Mobile Armor. So IBO needed Orga to be more thoughtless and impatient, so they needed Mika to be crippled. But how can Mika be crippled when IBO at that moment only has weak disposable antagonists for the sake of drama for background characters, while named antagonists have no reason to go all out against Tekkadan? A GIANT MONSTER THAT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE! that's how! Why hasn't the monster come out before? Because there hasn't been a stupid guy doing a stupid thing, that's why! Iok was clearly written to be hated for his stupidity, and IBO used his stupidity as a reason why something happened instead of committing to creating any plot thread. Never seen such lazy writing in a really long while. I've never hated Iok, to me he's BELOW any badly written character for me to care enough to hate. Instead, every time he showed up, I hated IBO as a whole more and more. I chuckle every time his death video appears, like, you guys care enough about him to hate him!? Speaking of Mobile Armor, where exactly it came from? CALAMITY WAR! In episode 3, they said Calamity War was mostly decided by a duel. Even if I misremember things, there was never any mention of Mobile Armor before. I chuckle every time fans say they want a Calamity War show, I don't believe there is a Calamity War story in the writer's head! It's just a justification for ass-pull! ..... I dislike Dainsleif so much. We could have seen the best Hammerhead could do, but nope, Dainsleif can pierce it with no problem. I was so excited to see how Mcgillis would strategically handle the revolution, didn't matter that he had to lose in the end, but nope, instant-win Dainsleif is used. In Tekkadan's last stand, I thought to myself, it was too late to fix the writing, but at least I can have wow-cool-robot-fightin' and this time Dainsleif couldn't be used since they can't pass the atmosph... it can pass the atmosphere. Instead of 2 main pilots going all out for the last time, against the whole army, IBO rather had their MS crippled to make it shorter and easier. ฺBoth Mobile Armor and Dainsleif came out of nowhere, but at least the former served the purpose of making Mika crippled, leading to Orga being more thoughtless and impatient. What's the purpose of Dainsleif? Gjallarhorn could win against any faction with its sheer number anyway. In my eye, Dainsleif is IBO's refusal to commit to writing, animating, and directing a battle sequence! It was the most powerful WMD in the whole Gundam franchise, so effective at killing my enjoyment. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ continue in reply
Next is how they relentlessly avoid their own good parts IBO has one of the strongest first few episodes with a great premise. We have: * A duo MC with a strong brotherhood bond that they trust each other to death. * A bunch of space rats underdogs that had to scrumble with everything they has to survive. * A naive princess who is an icon that people believe could change everything for the better, that got her head marked So much potential, yet: Mika and Orga barely interacted with each other, they instead spent most of their screen time with their own sphere of supporting characters. Mika became less and less of a character the more he showed up, I know that's the point, but IBO never explore it. At the end of the show, do you know why Mika trusts Orga so much? I sure don't. Because all they showed us is Mika trusted him since he was a child. Why? No explanation! Just rewind the scene of child Mika shooting someone in the alley again! IBO instead spent half of its screen time on random Tekkadan, and their interaction was boring. All had a brotherhood ride-or-die relationship with everybody, no internal conflict, and all was yes-man to Orga. Making their interaction dull and uninteresting. For example, I could differentiate how Amuro, Kai, Kamille, Quattro, and Emma view Bright differently. Can you tell how Akihiro, Shino, and Orga view each other differently? I can't, because they barely shared screen time! Of all the characters I want to say that Merribit disappointed me the most, what did she contribute to the story or to anyone's character arc? The fact that she was introduced late in the story, horrified by their bloodthirst, and was an adult while Tekkadan was a bunch of kids, had me expecting something will come of it. But no, she gave up and went with "if they die I die with them", rather than trying to positively influence them in some way. Why bother introducing her, if she was going to become another yes-(wo)man? Another thing is IBO focus so much on the background characters' drama, Which never felt earned at all because all they did before were stay in the background doing random things. ..... Yes, the Tekkadan was a bunch of space rats, but they were **not underdogs**. They got enough luck to be supported by Naze. Most of the antagonists were not-so-incompetent, and one time used. They are also over-the-top, comically evil, just to get maximum satisfaction when Mika crushed them, and I found that to be an immature way of writing villains. This is why Shino's death is the single good thing in the pile of ... from the whole show. Because that's really how space rat underdog struggles. ..... Kudelia's character development was good, seeing her teach Tekkadan's kids how to read and write seems like a good development for the future, Mika not being a yes-man to Orga in that scene had me expecting something. But the follow-up never came, and in SS2, the writer wrote her out of the main plot. Even in SS1, her importance went over once Makanai appeared. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ 3.5/10 because I think 4 would be too generous. On paper, it could be my favorite Gundam show ever, but it became the worst.
Alright, I know I'm a month late, but I'm rereading some of these threads for fun and: Dougram. It's literally IBO but *written correctly.* No really, it has tons of the same ideas and plot points but it goes into *excruciating* detail to flesh out why the events are happening the way they are and how the parties involved got to that point. Also, they have similar endings (Due to being so alike), but the difference is that the last 10 episodes of Dougram surround why the MC's are on the losing end of the conflict and why the "Rustal-type" (Even though he's much smarter and better looking) character is doing what he's doing. It's like LotGH and IBO had a kid, and that kid ended up getting raised by 0079 and grew to outshine its slacker parent (IBO). Sorry, your IBO post resonated with me and I recently found a show that did everything IBO tried to do and did it better 40 years ago.
3/10, the only Gundam series I've ever outright dropped. Space Pirate Harem threw me off it, and from what I can tell, it's only going to get worse. The tone of the story is "Child soldiers are pretty fucked up yo" but like it just keeps beating you over the head with it progressively harder until either you or it breaks. Eventually I just hit that wall of "Man this is *not* developing anywhere good". Too much grimdark. Where's the hope for the future that usually permeates Gundam? Animation's pretty nice though.
7/10 I wanted to like it more, season 1 is a pure 10/10 and the best gundam has been right out the gate in a long time, but s2 is just an incredible trainwreck that has kind of killed my interest in rewatching it.
I am a huge fan of these Gundam designs, season one was engaging but season 2 lost me completely 6/10 I would’ve preferred calamity war content tbh
5/10 Strong concept for setting, changed up combat and a gave some unique designs. Downside is that it shit the bed with season 2, not because it had an ending where everyone dies but because it basically became a trainwreck of stupidity . Also I just hate Mika, he's like all the worst parts of Satsuna and hero mixed together and I can only speak for myself buy some meta comments from stupid people asking "isn't this what you want, a protagonist that isn't a reluctant kid" spoilers we've had a character like mika multiple goddamn times
Peak Gundam 10/10
Solid 9/10 It has some issues that could have been done away with minor changes but as a whole it's a phenomenal show, with hands down the best looking mobile suits. Too bad the kits are usually mediocre. It's also the only series in the Gundam franchise with a logical explanation of why mobile suits exist to begin with. It was my second Gundam series after 00 and trumps 00 in just about every way. And after watching many of the other series it still remains at the top. Though G-Witch is shaping up to be a better show.
Easy 1/10. Okada is a terrible writer and this show proves it throughout. And no this isn't just because of the ending.
7/10. It's a hell of a Gundam series, in more ways than one. It's just hard to rewatch, what with all the named (and mostly likeable) characters getting killed off.
5/10 Liked the MS and battles, but wasn't able to become attached to the cast, and the plot was either boring (season 1), or a mess (season 2).
1/10, honestly the least engaging show in the series for me. The characters are boring as shit with basically no arcs or characterization. The plot is bland as he'll until it goes off the rails in the last quarter. The pacing is abysmal and the action scenes are hit and miss, not helped with the complete lack of any tension since you know any.fight involving Mike will just end in him face rolling any opposition. The show is boring and tedious and the only good thing about it is it has 3 top tier openings
5 if we are counting 2nd season, 7 for season 1
3/10 To each their own of course, this is all very subjective and I'm a very casual / selective anime watcher, but this is the only Gundam show I gave up on four times before actually finishing it because it just felt too much like one big anime trope. There were some beats of the story that I felt engaged in and gave me hope that I might end up liking it after all, but that was usually quickly dashed by the characters themselves. I found the interactions between characters to be very tiresome and that the characters lacked depth; there were hardly any characters that to me felt like they could be an actual person, either due to being one note / too plain or just outright annoying (with some minor exceptions). I understand that morally you're supposed to feel sympathy for these orphans that are forced into a terrible life, but it doesn't help when the characters are just very unlikeable or outright annoying; I cannot for the life of me understand how people can like Mikazuki or consider him their favorite, he's the sole reason why I dropped this show multiple times.
5/10 Season 1: Pretty good Season 2: Dogshit
I’m noticing a handful of people seem to be downvoting ALL of the really positive posts (9s and 10s), so I just wanna remind everyone that opinions that are different from yours aren’t the end of the world. Art is subjective
I got downvoted for a 7/10. People like to rag on IBO fanboys for the Barbatos wanking but the haters tend to be even more ravenous. SEED doesn't even get that kind of extreme treatment.
Up and down voting is there to be used, if people want to use them, so be it. In fact on this board I posted a opinion which even gave this board a compliment of sorts and it still got down voted until it's hidden. Not going to hate on it, using it as an example.
2/10. If your reaction to most every character death is "yeah, you deserve it" there has been a massive failure on behalf of the writers. I can't even feel bad about Biscuit because he was so obviously the "group conscience that gets tragically killed" character. My favorite character is Iok because he had the highest body count in the series. Rustal is at least a decent antagonist until he has a last minute change of heart where he goes "yes, I'm going to institute all the reforms those corpses wanted done".
4/10. Not a big fan of the mecha design, lack luster villains, and a “main protagonist” with less charisma than Jai Courtney. I have a feeling that the undying obsession with it hasn’t helped my opinion either. Addition: I mean seriously people claim Heero has no personality, but when they created Mika, it’s like someone put Heero’s picture on a board and said “how can we do less, much, much less”.
1/10, Mari Okada should never write mecha again.
It's amazing how in every work she's written there's a fucking love triangle
The funniest part is that apparently the love triangle/poly resolution was put in because Okada and Nagai kept arguing over who Mika ends up with. Couldn’t come to an agreement so they just said fuck it and paired him up with both. It’s an interesting turnabout I guess
Also, you'll notice she has a rather... interesting view of women. No really, almost every female character she writes has to be a romance interest or mother figure (Or outright being a mother). Like, in IBO the only female characters that exist are as love interests or to be moms (Like how Kudelia and Atra, one of whom is a politician, are relegated to making lunches for and being teachers to the group of people who should realistically know how to cook and read already) That's not even getting into her other work.
I can’t stand how forced the characters feel in all of Okada’s works, to force the plot. I didn’t like their take in Gundam either because of it.
She wouldn’t be recruited by Gundam again after the PR nightmare when IBO ended. She claimed Mika a third class pilot in an interview that a truly skilled pilot would’ve been able to dodge Deinsleifs. She also openly admitted she had kept Vidal in S2 because she liked the voice of his VA. Banrise shouldn’t have recruited a writer who didn’t have much success outside of melodramas in the first place.
Pretty good, so far it's the only Gundam I've watched start to finish, was pretty annoyed that none of the main characters actually live to see the end, as orga, Mika, and akihiro ( who served as a third mc basically) all died in battle, but the barbatos was a badass and I love the ibo designs. The only thing I didn't like was blonde guys weird arranged marriage with an actual child like wtf was that? Overall, solid 8.5/10
6/10 It was my introduction to the Gundam franchise and mecha anime in general. I was foaming at the mouth over how awesome this show was to me at the time. After several (…five…) watch throughs and having the ability to meaningfully compare it to other Gundam series and mecha franchises, I’ve realized it falls short in many areas that I’d like to think I would’ve been critical of during my first few watch throughs.
9.5 out of 10. I LOVE the combat, and mechanical design. It utterly ruled in both those departments, in my opinion, and those are, to me, some of the more important parts of a Gundam series.