Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX Review

Rating:

GQuuuuuuX is a Gundam Placeholder

Main Voice Actors: Tomoyo Kurosawa, Yui Ishikawa, Shimba Tsuchiya
Created By: Hajime Yatate, Yoshiyuki Tomino

Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX is the most recent Gundam series. Taking place in an alternate timeline where the Federation lost the One Year War, three teenagers from different walks of life are united by a stolen prototype and the reemergence of a lost gundam. 

Does GQuuuuuuX shine alongside its predecessors or crash and burn? Let’s find out.

Glossary

Mobile Suit: A giant robot designed for combat in space. Gundams are incredibly powerful mobile suits designed for specific types of combat.

Principality of Zeon: An interstellar empire that fought a war against the Earth Federation for control of space. It is ruled by the Zabi family and based on Nazi Germany.

Colony: City-sized space stations that Spacenoids live in. In this timeline, Zeon rules over the colonies while allowing them some self-governance, resulting in political friction.

Newtype: Space-raised humans who have evolved many psychic powers, including empathy, foresight, and a superhuman understanding of technology. They are prized for their ability to use Psycommu weapons, but not widely known to exist.

Psycommu: A device that channels Newtype powers to use weapons that shouldn’t work. The most common are autonomous drones called Funnels. An overloaded psycommu can perform impossible feats, but risks the pilot’s disappearance.

The Good

GQuuuuuuX in Clan Battle

Machu is a brash, disaffected teenager who hates living a privileged life on a Colony. She bumps into a smuggler called Nyann while returning from school and accidentally grabs a key she was transporting. A series of events lead Machu to a stolen mobile suit codenamed the GQuuuuuuX. Machu discovers that the key activates the mobile suit and allows her to pilot it.

Machu and Nyann deliver the GQuuuuuuX to The Pomeranians, a gang participating in illegal mobile suit fights. She joins them to keep piloting the GQuuuuuuX and learns that the gang keeps Nyann on retainer. They also meet Shuji, an eccentric artist who found the legendary Red Gundam. He claims to hear the Gundam’s voice and joins The Pomeranians after realizing that Machu can also sense his muse.

The GquuuuuuX was lost by a Zeon fleet. Its intended pilot, Xavier, is desperate to atone by recapturing the mobile suit, though commanding officer Challia Bull is more interested in Machu. He knows she must be a Newtype because she could activate its psycommu, a power that he wants to exploit.

For Want of a Nail…

Mobile Suit Gundam: GquuuuuuX is an alternative history at heart. Machu, Nyann, and Shuji are all important, but the changes caused by Zeon’s victory loom over every beat of their story.

At the height of the One Year War, the Federation created an extremely powerful mobile suit called the Gundam. Zeon discovered the plan and attacked, resulting in teenager Amuro Ray hijacking the Gundam and joining the war. In GQuuuuuuX’s timeline, Zeon officer Char Aznable participated in the attack and stole the Gundam before Amuro could.

Char was already an ace pilot, but the Red Gundam helped him win the war for Zeon. He is presumed dead after disappearing during a disaster. Zeon built on his victories to force the Federation’s surrender and claim dominion over space.

Many characters who died in the original timeline survived because of the changes. Zabi family patriarch Gihren rules Zeon in seclusion, fearful that his spymaster sister Kycilia will assassinate him. Many of Amuro’s victims appear in small roles while Villain of the Week Challia Bull was promoted to main cast.

Kira-Kira

Newtypes have always been a major part of Gundam’s story, but they aren’t widely known about in GQuuuuuuX. So what happens when many begin to awaken?

Machu sees another world the first time she pilots the GQuuuuuuX. It appears as a multi-hued, sparkling realm where she can psionically connect to other Newtypes. She dubs it the Kira-Kira (Sparkles) and pilots the GQuuuuuuX to continue experiencing it.

The Kira-Kira spreads to other pilots over time. Shuji obsessively draws it, and Nyann’s personality changes dramatically the first time she experiences it. Some Newtypes can resist the side effects that consume others.

Aside from its addictive nature, the Kira-Kira has another major drawback. Newtypes who lose control while connected can create massive tears in reality called Zeknovas. One of those resulted in Char’s disappearance and a psycommu weapons ban.

The Bad

GQuuuuuuX’s Continuity Cavalcade

Gundam has experienced a resurgence thanks to popular spinoffs, including “The Witch From Mercury”, “Iron-Blooded Orphans”, and others on our list of the Top 5 Gundam Series. GQuuuuuuX was partially made to introduce new fans to the main timeline, the Universal Century, but dense lore is an albatross around this series’ neck.

Char and the Zabi family are important, but draw screentime from the main characters and present-day plot. Recreations of iconic scenes with altered context are made for long-time fans and mean nothing to newcomers.

Later cameos are especially frustrating. How are new fans supposed to recognize Psycho Gundam pilot Deux as a predecessor to Zeta Gundam’s breakout character Four Murasame? When Char’s lover Lalah Sune mentors Machu and references her death in the main timeline, only fans will understand what she’s talking about. Who the hell is Artesia and why does Char hesitate every time he sees her?

GQuuuuuuX tries to be an introduction, but demands newcomers already know the lore. That’s a bad call because those viewers won’t have the Gundam Wiki open in another tab to look all this up. 

Beyond the Time

12 episodes isn’t enough time for Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX to do everything it must and everything it wants to do. This series chokes on its ambitions.

GQuuuuuuX’s first five episodes are spent establishing the characters, mobile suit fight club, and showing the timeline’s development. Episode 7 sends the pacing into overdrive as the show throws plot beats and new mobile suits at viewers too fast for them to digest.

Various factions, a separated cast, and constantly changing locations make the plot chaotic. A late scene encapsulates the problem when Machu crashes into a standoff between Char and Kycilia and has no idea who they are or what they’re doing. 

The final episode is where this all falls apart in a jumble of massive plot twists, infodumps to connect legacy characters to the modern story, a rushed explanation for the Big Bad, one character turning traitor out of nowhere, and several super modes for the mobile suits that were never established or explained. The showrunners ran out of time and didn’t cut anything.

The Verdict

Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX is two shows in one. It’s the story of Machu and her friends searching for freedom in a Zeon-ruled world and a Gundam counterpart to Marvel’s What If. Both stories are worth telling, but not together.

I enjoyed GQuuuuuuX, but can’t recommend it unless you know the franchise well and can look past severe flaws.

Image copyright Amazon MGM Studios.

Jared Bounacos

Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.