Anime / Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE

All spoilers for Gundam Build Divers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

"What will I fight for? And what will I not accept?
In order to not give up on myself?"

"Let's go, Hiroto. To a faraway place, beyond the galaxy, and across the universe. As far as we can..."

— Eve

Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE is an October 2019 anime series in the Gundam franchise. It is served as the fourth installment in the Gundam Build Series and the sequel to the 2018 series Gundam Build Divers

It has been two years since the dramatic battle between Force Build Divers and the Coalition of Volunteers for the fate of the EL-Diver known as Sarah. Since then, the virtual reality MMORPG game "Gunpla Battle Nexus Online" has only continued to grow in popularity, as new updates have brought all-new dimensions, missions and other content to enjoy. The story focuses on four Divers - Hiroto, a mercenary player who wanders through different GBN dimensions as he searches for something he lost; Kazami, a streamer trying to roleplay as a Knight in Shining Armor superhero; May, a skilled but anti-social player who has so far only ever done solo missions; and Parviz, an excellent builder who is having trouble finding a team due to his issues actually controlling his mech. After accidentally discovering a seemingly new prototype dimension called Eldora, these four together form an all-new team Build Divers to defend the Animal People of Eldora from a rampaging army of Mobile Suits. However, not all of Eldora is as it seems, and it soon becomes clear the new team has stumbled upon something far bigger than they could have imagined...

The first season was originally uploaded onto YouTube via official channels related to Gundam from October 10 to December 26, 2019, with the second season premiering on April 9, 2020. Starting on January 28, 2020, it began airing on broadcast TV, with a brief hiatus due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic from May 14 to July 9, 2020.

A sidestory manga, Gundam Build Diver Rize, began serialization on November 26th, 2019. It tells the story of an EL-Diver named Rize who aspires to become a top-tier player without using any of the tricks EL-Divers are known for, and to that end, constructs a Super Robot version of the Core Gundam after previously witnessing Hiroto and using a variant of the base model to access the real world.

A "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue anthology titled After Stories was bundled with the show's Blu-Ray box, set several months after the series's conclusion.

Previews: PV 1, Season 2 Trailer, Endgame PV.

Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE provides examples of:

• Advanced Ancient Humans: Eldora used to be inhabited by a race of Human Aliens called the "Ancients", who created Alus to protect Eldora from outside invaders, but the constant battle left the planet damaged. Some left for space while others digitized themselves in hopes of one day returning to see their planet reborn. Alus, who was damaged from battle, went into hibernation, leaving the sacred beast Cuadorn to look after the planet. When he woke up thousands of years later, however, he mistook Freddie's people—new lifeforms that evolved in the wake of the Ancients' disappearance—for invaders.
• Ace Custom: As standard for the Build franchise, the heroic units here are modified base units. For instance, Hiroto's PFF-X7 Core Gundam is based on the FF-X7 Core Fighter.
• Aerith and Bob: Eldoran names tend to be all over the place, with the notable exception of Freddie (with Jed a close second).
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: For all his villainy, Alus is simply an AI following the final orders his creators gave him. Since those final orders were for him to protect Eldora at all costs, it's not exactly his fault when he sees a completely different species inhabiting the planet as invaders that must be exterminated.
• Alas, Poor Villain: In episode 25, Alus's defeat is treated as a somber affair. Freddie even notes upfront that without Alus protecting and repairing Eldora over the eons, the new Eldorans wouldn't have even been able to exist, and this is more of a Mercy Kill for a Came Back Wrong guardian than revenge against an unforgivable enemy. Right before his moon base Kill Sat is completely destroyed, Alus also reveals he ultimately just wants his friends, the Ancients, to come back, and tearfully wonders how much longer he must wait for them.
• Aliens Speaking English: Despite having a setting that they use a completely alien written language, everyone on Eldora still speaks in Japanese. With the reveal Eldora is Real After All, it's even stranger the Eldorans and Earthlings can understand each other at all.
  • In Build Divers Battlogue Freddie gets a guidebook on all Gunpla that could only have come from Earth - yet he has no more problems reading it than most people would.
• All Your Powers Combined: BUILD DiVERS EX Special Attack combines Hiroto's Core Gundam, May's Wodom Pod +, Kazami's Aegis Knight, and Par's EX Valkylander to form Re:Rising Gundam, an insanely powerful Super Robot with massive defense capabilities and the ability to create a Sigil Spam Wave-Motion Gun that can blow up entire armies and wreck a moon.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The series finale has Alus invading GBN in hopes of eliminating the "people of the Gunpla" so they can't get in his way anymore. Unlike most examples, though, it's the villain who gets put in trouble, as the heroes tricked him into pulling this trope so he'd be ambushed by a force that more than outnumbers his remnant army.
• Analogy Backfire: In the second Moon battle, Kazami finds himself in trouble against the Fake Nu Gundam and its funnels, and checks his livestream's comments for ideas. Said comments tell him to remember the Stark Jegan from episode 1 of Unicorn, or the battle between the Hyaku Shiki and Qubeley in Zeta.
  Kazami: Oh yeah, great idea- THESE GUYS ALL LOST!
• And I Must Scream: Because the players' consciousness gets transferred to Eldora, it is entirely possible for an unlucky player to suffer this. This is exactly what happened to Masaki Shido six months before the start of the story, as his body on Earth fell into a coma while his consciousness was stolen and brainwashed by Alus to serve as his enforcer.
• And You Thought It Was a Game: Most certainly not Played for Laughs in Episodes 12 and 13. Until that point, team BUILD DiVERS believed they were playing a new campaign mode within GBN, liberating a race of anthropomorphic animals from fearsome machines. However, as they push through the mission, things don't line up, ultimately leading to the team failing to stop a Kill Sat from obliterating an island where the Resistance was set up at and the team never gets a signal that they lost. This one breaks Kazami as he treated this as a game from the get-go.
  • This is also true for the greater GBN player base once Magee shares Kazami's streams of their battles to rally aid to train our heroes for the final battle against Alus. Beyond Magee himself, Kyoya, Sarah, and Riku are implied to know that Eldora is not part of GBN and very much real. By the final episode, the admins are fully in the loop, as are most of the other major characters from the previous series. In the epilogue, while most still believe Alus' invasion of GBN was just an event, many suspect that it was all real.
• Another Side, Another Story: Episode 14 shows the events of the original Gundam Build Divers and Episode 1 of this series from Freddie's point of view on Eldora, as he watches the exploits of the original Build Divers through technology left by the Ancients, ending with him making contact with Hiroto and co., mistaking them for the Build Divers, after being chased by One-eyes that appeared near his village.
• Attack Drone: Hiroto has a number of armors that use remote-controlled long-range "bits", such as Mercuone, which has two underwater-focused bits that can function as missiles or boosters when attached to other units, and Jupitive, which has two large bits on its back equipped with beam guns, swords, and shields for various defense and offensive purposes.
• Bait-and-Switch: Twofold. The Nepeight Armor's place in the opening along with its late debut, and it being incomplete before that suggests that it will be the final weapon that beats Alus and the satellite cannon. It's then discarded after the team escapes the gravity well and Hiroto is forced to jettison it, switching to the Jupitive for actual combat. And THEN, he switches from that to the Re:Rising Gundam, a Combining Mecha with May's WoDom Pod and all but the core units of the Aegis Knight and EX Valkylander to deal the finishing blow.
• Behind the Black: Freddie and Parviz fail to notice a sleeping Cuadorn for several seconds when they enter the ruins inside Mount Milaag. He was offscreen from the viewers' point of view, but the angles of the scene where he is revealed imply he was right next to them.
• Batman Gambit: In episode 25, after Masaki and Cuadorn confront the defeated Alus and tell him to stand down, despite having seemingly realized the New Eldorans are not his enemies, he continues insisting he has to fulfill his central detective "My duty is to protect this planet." So, in what seems at first like another Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, Masaki says the people of the Gunpla will always be there to stop Alus, which in turn causes Alus to deem them as actual aliens coming to Eldora and constantly getting in his way and angrily determine that GBN must be eliminated to fulfill his directive... however as soon as Alus transfers to GBN, it turns out this is exactly what the heroes wanted to happen if Alus refused to stand down: The entire Coalition of Volunteers has been waiting in ambush for Alus's now woefully outnumbered army ever since Kazami's livestream made it clear Alus's moon Kill Sat was done for. Overlaps with Xanatos Gambit, because on the off chance that Alus was somehow pacified by his loss or Masaki's warning, then Eldora would have been saved without the need to trap him inside GBN.
• Beam-O-War: Alus's satellite cannon versus the Re:Rising Gundam. Re:Rising Gundam wins.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Much like the hero names of the protagonists in Sailor Moon, Hiroto's naming choices for his PLANETS System forms will only make sense if you know the names of the planets in Japanese as well as the English ones they actually use. For example, in Japanese Mercury is literally "The Water Planet", thus Mercone specializes in underwater deployment. Mars meanwhile is literally "The Fire Planet", thus Marsfour specializes in heat-based melee weapons. Saturn meanwhile is "The Ground Planet", so Saturnix is a ground-based unit with weaponized earthmover equipment like a drill and claw. Downplayed with Uranus and Neptune, whose Japanese names also come from the god of the sky and the god of the seas in Classical Mythology. Thus their focus on aerial Surveillance Drones and a Stargazer-based propulsion system for traveling the seas of the stars is easily understandable in either language.
  • Gundam Seltsam is a Fashionable Asymmetry Nonstandard Character Design mech. Seltsam is German for "strange".
  • Tertium Gundam is a custom Gundam Mk-III. Tertium is the Latin word for "third".
• Book Ends:
  • Hiroto's character arc starts in the Avalon Force Nest, fighting against Riku's team during the previous series. His arc ends in the same place, this time fighting with Riku.
  • Episode 1 of Gundam Build Divers has Sarah's first scene awakening in a field of flowers, which was later explained to be the sea of data. The final episode of Re:Rise has BUILD DiVERS visiting the same field to discover Alus being reincarnated into an EL Diver infant.
• Boom, Headshot!: Due to how Alus puts the control units for his Evil Knockoff mobile suit clones in their heads, the fastest way to defeat them is to make like it's Mobile Fighter G Gundam and aim for their heads.
• Brought Down to Badass: In episode 15, the damage to the ruins causes the Core Gundam II and Mobile Doll May to form without the PLANETS Armor or the Wodom Pod and causes only Valkylander's head and sword and Justice Knight's shield to arrive. It's more than enough to deal with the new Eldora Windams, but due to the need to end the fight, they need to find new ruins to summon their Gunpla.
• The Cameo:
  • Sarah, Nanami, Koichi and Tsukasa from the original series make brief appearances when May explains how she exists in the real world. Nanami later shows up as a background character as May's handler when she visits the rest of the BUILD DiVERS in real life.
  • Episode 24 has the majority of the Gundam Build Divers cast, including all of the original Build Divers, Shahryar, Tigerwolf, Kyoya and Force Avalon, Rommel's 7th Panzer Division, and Ogre and Force Hyakki, show up to help Hiroto and company prepare for their Final Battle on Eldora.
  • Ark, Zen, and Onoko from the Gundam Build Divers: Break comic show up among the coalition of volunteers who gather to help Hiroto and company in episode 24.
  • The finale, on top of having roughly every character who hadn't shown up yet show up, features the bizarre case of a cameo of a cameo: there's a brief appearance by Mister MS of the Gundam Build Diver Rize manga, who is basically just Minato Sakai.
• Captain Ersatz: Played for Laughs. When the system gives the team the name "BUILD DIVERS" in episode 1, May changes it to "BUILD DiVERS" to avoid having the same team name as an already-registered team... barely. Even Riku himself, all nice boy that he is, can't help but jab them a bit for the name.
  Riku: Are you guys Build Divers? Nice to meet you. We're Build Divers too.
• Cerebus Syndrome: At the start, the series is fairly standard Build Serious Business toy / game series fare. By the halfway point it has shifted to a tone far grimmer than anything the sub-franchise has seen up to this point, with scenes that wouldn't look out of place in a mainstream Gundam show. For a start, the locals the protagonists are helping aren't NPCs, but actual aliens, as the protagonists themselves experience when things go wrong.
• Creator Thumbprint:
  • In the second opening, Saturnix does a pulled back shoulders, bent arms and knees, Kubrick Stare pose seen in almost all the works of the opening's director, Masami Obari.
  • In episode 22, Kazami in the Aegis Knight does the sword held to the sky and the sword held out in front of them at a 45-degree angle while they take a wide stance poses seen in almost all the works of Masami Obari, who is also the series's action director.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In Episode 3, the Earthree loses its shield in combat, leading it to rest in the village wall. In episode 10, Kazami notices it was still there, suggesting infinite items. In episode 15, it's revealed to have saved Maiya, the kids and the farmer from the Kill Sat's attack.
  • A prominent feature in Kazami's early portrayal is his VTube series, meant to accentuate his arrogance and desire for glory. As time goes on, however, it becomes less prominent and outright seems to be forgotten after learning that Eldora is Real After All and their failure cost them actual lives. It returns in episode 23 when Magee shares the videos to rally as many divers as possible to help BUILD DiVERS train for the final battle.. It also plays a role in the next episode in helping convince Mizuki finally understand and accept her reawakened brother's passion and desire to return to the frontlines. And then yet again in the episode afterwhen it turns out that he intentionally live-streamed the final assault on the satellite to keep the Coalition of Volunteers afloat of the battle and for them to know when to be ready for Alus' inevitable attempt to attack GBN itself.
• Colony Drop: Captain Zeon's finishing move is a parody of the attempt to drop an asteroid military base on Earth seen in Char's Counterattack called not so subtly, "Axis Drop".
• Combining Mecha: Re:Rising combines the Core Gundam II, Wodom Pod +, Aegis Knight, and EX Valkylander into a single giant robot.
• Contrived Coincidence: GBN drops a new update just as the show's events start with even more realistic sensory input, more complex personalities for NPDs, and all new hidden missions. This works to keep our heroes from realizing that Eldora is not part of GBN until it is far too late.
• Darker and Edgier: Re:RISE is easily the darkest of the Build series, especially by the end of the first half. In sharp contrast to other Build protagonists, Hiroto is a Broken Ace who struggles to forgive himself for traumatic events in the past. His Ragtag Band of Misfits also gets hit with hard doses of reality, as his team's lack of coordination and unity in skill level leads to dire consequences by the first half's end. Moreover, unlike other Build series which had limited stakes due to characters staying within either a tournament or a multiplayer game, Episode 12 reveals that Eldora is Real After All and the locals are living beings whose pain and suffering—and mortality—are very real, meaning that every action the protagonists take carries actual consequences that cannot be reversed. Oh, and they are in danger of being killed or captured and brainwashed by an insane AI defense system just like what happened to the Seltsam's pilot, Masaki Shido, who had been subjected to the latter and Reforged into a Minion.
• Darkest Hour: By the end of the first half of the series, the BUILD DiVERS are utterly helpless as Alus wipes Seguri and the resistance off the map. Further, servers all over the world start glitching out, including GBN's, temporarily cutting them off from Eldora. It takes up a lot of soul-searching, as well as meeting each other in real life, for them to find the courage to return to Eldora and pick up where they left off.
• Decoy Convoy: When the Build Divers need to get back up to space again, the Resistance approaches the Space Elevator with a convoy of barges. The One-Eyes see and intercept the barges, only to find they're shooting large wooden dummies, the barges being a distraction while the Build Divers use the Nepteight armor to get to space instead.
• Digital Avatar: As players of an online game, the protagonists all have customized forms that reflect some aspect of their personality. Downplayed with the no-nonsense Hiroto, who is just himself with a ponytail and some extra gear like boots, gloves, and a poncho. Kazami meanwhile gave himself a Heroic Build to fit with his ideal image of himself as a Superhero. Parviz meanwhile added fox ears, a fox tail and Mystical White Hair to reflect his love of fantasy. Subverted with May whose online avatar is the "real" her, with her mobile doll form on Earth being a shell she inhabits in the 'real' world.
• Dramatic Irony: When he and Hiroto first meet, in his Establishing Character Moment, Kazami claims to have fought alongside Force Avalon and Build Divers. He's unaware that he's bragging about this to an actual former member of Force Avalon that fought against Build Divers. One who could have shot down Riku himself, but ultimately chose not to, but still carries a grudge towards them even now.
• Ethereal Choir: The climax of Episode 11 is set to a haunting Gregorian style choir as the full gravity of the situation is beginning to be made clear.
• Empathic Weapon: As is standard with the Gundam franchise, the pilots talk to their gunpla; and the gunpla will sometimes respond. Usually, it is unleashing new abilities based on the strong desires of the pilot; but it can also be as simple as Parviz's Valkylander leaning forward into his outreaching hand or Kazami's Justice Knight bringing up the episode of Captain Zeon to inspire him at the right moment.
• Evolving Credits: Averted for Season 1, but Season 2's opening has two subtle changes over time. Cuadorn is initially represented as a glowing silhouette (as seen in the page picture) before his debut. For the final episode, similar to those of the anime adaptations of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure from Stardust Crusaders onward, sound effects are added. Interestingly, for that final version, the brief appearance of the Nepteight Gundam remains shadowed despite already debuting in the prior episode.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Episode 12: When Parviz brings up the scale of Alus's Kill Sat attack, and how they haven't battled out despite losing, Kazami counters that there must be a bug, because if they aren't in a game—and goes silent as the realization hits him that this is real.
• Explosion Propulsion: The Build Diver's method of getting back into space relies on this: The team links hands with Hiroto's Nepteight Gundam, which absorbs a massive shot from Par's Rex Buster, which the team then rides into space. This is an actual proposed method of getting things to space, referred to as laser propulsion; in fact, the Nepteight's main inspiration, the Stargazer, was designed to be launched into deep space that way.
• Explosive Overclocking: The Dubious Arche Gundam's Trans-Am removes the system's safety features in order to let it run indefinitely. The show also points out exactly why this trope is a bad idea, since using Trans-Am unrestrained for more than a few minutes overloads the GN Drive and leaves the Dubious Arche Gundam a sitting duck on the verge of self-destructing.
• EX Special Attack: In episode 24, BUILD DiVERS obtains a special attack that allows them to demonstrate way more power than they can usually have: Re:Rising Gundam, a Super Robot that can do way more crazy stuff than the Real Robot gunpla it's built from.
• Failed a Spot Check: A egregious example at the end of Episode 16, when the team reunites with Parviz and Freddie. Kazami talks to them before raising his head a bit and finally reacting to the giant dragon standing right behind the boys, which he really should have noticed the instant he entered the room. Even worse is that it's not even a case of Behind the Black like an earlier moment in the same episode, as Cuadorn's legs are clearly visible behind Par and Freddie in the previous shot.
• Fictional Counterpart:
  • G-Tube is pretty much the GBN counterpart for YouTube, as in G for "Gundam".
  • A later episode mentions "Gunstagram".
• Foreshadowing: A couple involving May. As well as some involving The Reveal that Eldora and its people are real.
  • In the first episode, as Kazami's dragging Hiroto around the alleys, he's describing a secret mission with a "dragon-like NPD" while May is overlooking the city from the rooftops. We learn May's goal to save Masaki Shido and meet this dragon in the later episodes.
  • In Episode 4, a group of villagers asks if May's WoDom Pod is a One-Eye, which she claims is actually a "two-eyes". Episode 9 reveals that she was telling the truth as the WoDom Pod is actually a shell for the "Mobile Doll May."
  • The opening also has May initially depicted without her Gunpla, the WoDom Pod, unlike the other members of BUILD DiVERS. Subtly hinting that it may not be her true machine and teasing her true nature.
    • The 2nd opening behind the title has a stone carving of a mysterious silhouette that does not match with any of the known mobile suits featured. Episode 25 reveals it to be Re:Rising Gundam, a mobile suit consist of all of the BUILD DiVERS' mobile suits. In the epilogue, the same silhouette appears as the official team logo, appearing on a flag planted in front of the discarded Earthree shield.
  • Episode 8:
    • Kazami calls himself "a man of the sea" which he writes off as a reference. When he is seen in real life in Episode 13, he, in fact, has a fishing hobby, and access to his own small boat for fishing out at sea. It's also revealed he came from a fishing village and learned fishing there.
    • When May asks Magee if the Seltsam is the Gunpla he's looking for, he recognizes that it's based on the MK-III Gundam, but doesn't match the registration data. Then, when May asks if it's possible for it to be customized, Magee responds that the level of customization the Seltsam has is impossible for a player-controlled MK-III-based Gunpla in GBN. In Episode 13, it is revealed that the Seltsam was converted by Alus and his army from the missing Masaki Shido's Teritum Gundam, itself based on the MK-III, both explaining what Magee was looking for and how the Gunpla could be modified so heavily "in-game".
    • While shopping, Par and Kazami talk about how similar May and Hiroto are. In the last episode, May is revealed to be Eve's reincarnation, having been made from the latter's leftover data and Eve and Hiroto's feelings.
  • In episode 9, Hiroto gets his head slammed into his control console and it actually knocks him out. He's even shown "bleeding" grey "blood" from the injury. Later in the real world, he's shown with an injury in the exact same place. This shouldn't be possible in a VRMMO like GBN.
  • When May takes on Seltsam in Episode 9, she asks the pilot if he is Masaki Shido. It's revealed in Episode 13 that Shido was a GBN player who tried—and failed—to protect the Eldorans, and has since been Reforged into a Minion while his body lay in a coma for six months.
  • In various episodes, Kazami points out that some of the locations don't mesh with the Gundam series proper, like a base protected by a force field, and the moon base lacks the handles Gundam characters would grab to move in a zero-g environment.
  • In Episode 10, Parviz wonders why none of them have damaged out yet. He also notes how the shield Hiroto used in an earlier episode didn't vanish. Kazami writes the latter off as a bug, but wonders if they can duplicate weapons this way.
  • When we see the Ancients, they are dead ringers for Sarah and Eve, confirming that they used to be the Ancient Eldorans, or at least got their consciousness and appearances from them. However, while the Sarah-looking Ancient only has a different shade of near-white hair, the Eve-looking one has full-on black hair and similar bangs to May. This isn't a coincidence, as May is actually born from the remnants of Eve's data, effectively making her Eve's reincarnation.
  • There is also one of the scenes in the second opening which has May looking at her reflection on a black screen and upon touching it, the reflection changes to Eve looking back at her. This hinted that May is closely connected to Eve as her reincarnation.
  • The fact that May bears heavy similarities to Hiroto in both appearance and personality is not a coincidence. She was created from a combination of Eve's data and Eve and Hiroto's feelings for each other, effectively making her their daughter.
• Four Is Death: According to The Stinger of Episode 5, there's a fourth Resistance platoon out there, wiped out by the Seltsam.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the finale, while discussing the connection between Alus, Eldora, and the EL-Divers, Ms. Tori has a brief flashback of her avatar flying overhead a lake shore with Hiroto in his Avalon uniform on it, implying she was investigating the rampaging effects of Eve harboring Sarah's bugs and at least saw the aftermath of her Suicide by Cop.
• Funny Animal: The denizens of Eldora are anthropomorphized animals who can stand on their hind legs, wears clothes, and interacts like humans.
• Furry Confusion: Eldora may be a World of Funny Animals, but Episode 2, having established the rural environment, shows farmer Jiric (a badger) with a cart that's being pulled by a goat.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Kazami" is usually a female given name in Japanese, even though Kazami's online avatar is a male one.
• Genre Shift: The events of Episodes 12 and 13 change the entire series, shunting it from the "adventures inside a video-game" style of its predecessor into a full-blown Sci-Fi drama, just like a mainline Gundam show.
• Giant Robot Hands Save Lives: A realistic example in Episode 16: When Kazami starts freefalling, Hiroto dives after him, matching his speed to gently scoop him up before slowing down. For extra realism, when the Core Gundam lands, Hiroto makes sure that he lets the hand Kazami is on continue to fall to further cushion the impact. The resulting impact is still rough, causing Kazami to bounce off the hand of the Gunpla, but since it was slow enough and he was already close to the ground, he doesn't get hurt.
• Golden Super Mode: When Re:Rising Gundam uses it's insanely powerful Wave-Motion Gun, the entire suit turns bright golden.
• Great Offscreen War: Eldora had one of these long ago fighting off an unknown invader, and was the reason Alus was created. The damage sustained during the war caused his corruption.
• Harpoon Gun: Mercuone comes equipped with a large powered harpoon gun to use in the water, where the beam weapons Hiroto usually favors are less effective.
• Hooked Up Afterwards: Implied with Kazami and Maiya. The series ends with Eldora still connected to GBN and the protagonists regularly visiting the alien world now the war is over, and the last scene the two characters spend together has them comfortably flirting with each other.
• Home Field Advantage: Played with in the final battle. BUILD DiVERS and Masaki exploit this trope by tricking Alus into invading GBN, where an ambush awaits him, while Masaki and Cuadorn destroy his mainframe to trap him there. However, it's then initially subverted when Alus catches the defenders off-guard with unexpectedly potent firepower that can damage GBN's mainframe, thus putting them on the ropes for a bit. Ultimately, however, it becomes played straight when it turns out what Alus was initially fighting was just the advance line, showing that he couldn't possibly hope to defeat an army made of potentially every diver available, many of whom are at bare minimum on par with the five he'd been regularly been facing. Furthermore, Alus is ultimately not as dangerous as either incident two years prior, so the two admins, with their experience from those incidents, once given the space to act, easily repair the damage to the system and reinforce it from any more within mere minutes.
• Humongous Mecha: To keep with the Gundam setting, the players' robots are multiple times the size of their avatars.
• Improvised Scattershot: Parviz uses Gundrams-Am to deflect May's mega particle beam blast all over the area to destroy Kyoya's funnels.
• Insistent Terminology: When the villagers question if May's WoDom is one of the villainous "one-eyes" due to being a Cyber Cyclops, May nonchalantly corrects them that it, in fact, has two eyes... as the single circular "eye" is technically made of two separate half-circle cameras on the top and bottom. This takes on an entirely new meaning with The Reveal of her actual gunpla in Episode 9.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Subverted. With the revelation in Episode 17 that Cuadorn had traced the digitized consciousnesses of the Ancients to GBN, and Eve in Episode 20's flashback mentioning that a "guidance from the stars" led to the creation of her kind, it is implied that the EL-Divers are not so much accidental creations of a VRMMO game as much as accidental products of an interstellar Brain Uploading from the remnants of an advanced ancient civilization thirty light-years away, an idea given further plausibility during a real-life discussion between Kyouya, Katsuragi and Miss Tori at the epilogue.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Kazami, a human, develops an increasingly close relationship with Maiya, a cat-like Humanoid Alien, over the course of the series. The ending implies that they Hooked Up Afterwards.
  • Hiroto, also a human, turned out to have one of these with Eve, an EL-Diver, before he was forced to delete her by her request. Naturally, it and the subsequent war over another EL-Diver broke him rather badly. Interestingly, Eve's data and the feelings and bond she shared with Hiroto led to the creation of a new EL-Diver, May, effectively making her their figurative daughter.
• Little Bit Beastly: As in the first Build Divers, GBN once again supports adding various animal ears, tails, and other traits to the online avatars. For example, like Shahryar in the first series, Parviz looks like a human with animal ears on top of his head.
• Legacy Team: The protagonists get confused for the first season's BUILD DIVERS team in episode 1, inadvertently becoming "BUILD DiVERS". They also exhibit some of the same tropes as Riku, Yuuki, Momo, and KO-1, such as a Naïve Newcomer, a boisterous Butt-Monkey, an engineer with Jade-Colored Glasses, and so on.
• Legendary in the Sequel: The Build Divers from last season seems to have become this, with their name spoken in respect and awe, to the point that theirs is the default name for the story quest's Hello, [Insert Name Here]. Episode 14 ends up deconstructing this: while the original Build Divers are famed in GBN, the only reason they're known on Eldora is because of Freddie watching their fights through the temple ruins. He doesn't realize that the four he picked up aren't them, just that they're missing a fifth yet still kick Eldora Brute ass.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Outside of Magee, thanks to May's updates, nobody else is really aware of what's going on in Eldora and the truth about it. Eventually, Hiroto spills the beans to Hinata. Even when much of GBN's major Forces are brought in to help train our heroes, it's under the impression that it's just a story mission, but there's an implication that even then, Kyoya, Riku, and Sarah have been made aware that they're not helping BUILD DiVERS train for a mere story mission. By the last episode, it's pretty clear that said characters, along with every major character from the last show, are fully aware that they're fighting a real alien threat attacking GBN, with only everyone else still under the impression it's an event, though the greater player base suspect it by the end.
• Meaningful Echo: In episode 15, Kazami repeats the same "who cares about the small details?" line he did in Episode 1 when accepting Freddie's mission. However, instead of it being him blowing off the situation on Eldora, this time he's using it to reflect that his concerns are nothing compared to what's potentially at stake on Eldora.
• Mecha Expansion Pack: Hiroto's Core Gundam and Core Gundam II take this trope further. Rather than adding on just a backpack or flight unit, The Core Gundam can change out entire armor packs to fit different situations.
• Mecha-Mooks: The enemy Eldora mobile suits are controlled by small, robotic drones called Guard Eyes.
• Merchandise-Driven: The show is meant to help advertise various new plastic model toys being sold by Sunrise's parent company, Bandai, with over a dozen new products related to the show being unveiled at the same time as the show was.
• Mid-Season Twist: The end of the show's first half in episode 12 and 13 changes viewers entire understanding of the story so far by revealing that Eldora is Real After All, and the protagonists are not playing a VRMMORPG anymore, but fighting an actual war on an alien world 30 light-years away against an insane AI planetary defense system that can and will brainwash or kill them all if they fail.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Season 2 has most of the protagonists upgrade to more powerful suits, with Hiroto going from Core Gundam to Core Gundam II and three brand-new PLANETS system armors (one of which was actually incomplete before it shows up), Parviz upgrading his Valkylander to the EX Valkylander, and Kazami switching from his Justice Knight to the more heavily armored and armed Aegis Knight. Downplayed with May, who continues using both her WoDom and her upgraded mech that was revealed in episode 9 of season 1.
• Mistaken for Badass: Episode 14 reveals that BUILD DiVERS is this. Freddie mistook Hiroto, Kazami, Parviz and May for the original Build Divers, but while Freddie realized there was only four and not five, Kazami's It's All About Me attitude dragged them in before Freddie could realize it.
• Mythology Gag: To the point it has its own page. As is a norm for the Gundam Build franchise, the show features characters and mobile suits from multiple previous Gundam series, despite not sharing the same continuity. The first PV alone shows Kamille from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Akatsuki from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, Gundam "Alex" from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, and a modified Walking Dome from ∀ Gundam, alongside multiple others.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Thanks in no small part due to Kazami's boasting that the Resistance in Seguri will keep fighting the One Eyes, Alus learns about Seguri being occupied by Freddie's people and destroys the entire city with its Kill Sat.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Kazami's Gundam Justice Knight is visually and name-wise a combination of a giant mechanized robot Gundam and a medieval knight, with a lance, pauldrons, round shield, and so on.
• Nonstandard Character Design: The protagonists all use out of the ordinary mobile suits compared to the more standard, popular designs. Hiroto's Core Gundam is a non-standard Super-Deformed design with a normal-sized head but stubby limbs, May uses a Syd Mead designed Walking Dome, a suit with a giant head and legs but no torso, Parviz has a Super-Deformed cutesy dragon based on a short-lived 90s capsule toy line, and Kazami has a Schizo Tech giant robot knight.
  Kazami: What's wrong with you guys!? Are you being serious? I'm the only one with a proper machine!
• Not the Intended Use: The Build Divers were summoned to Eldora via the ruins, which were actually intended to allow the data of the Ancients to return to Eldora.
• Oh, Crap!: When Alus begins his invasion of GBN, he is immediately and unexpectedly met with an entire army of Divers ready to face him and his outnumbered forces. The look of absolute shock on Alus' face is extra priceless since he's an AI with no concept of emotion, so he theoretically should be incapable of surprise or fear.
• Once an Episode: Like in season 1, Patrick Colasour from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 shows up as a Recurring Extra in each of the premiere episodes.
• Once More, with Clarity: Episode 14 shows the summoning of BUILD DiVERS from Freddie's point of view. He was looking for the original team and got these guys instead.
  • The show flashes back to a previous dialogue point whenever important information or revelations come up, such as the One-Eyes deliberately missing their shots in the "start area" during their first battle because they can't attack the means for the Ancients to return or Kazami talking about a "dragon-like NPD" when looking for the hidden mission which was the sacred beast Cuadron seeking warriors to protect Eldora.
• Place of Protection: The Build Divers figure out that the ruins that "summoned" them did not suffer damage from Alus's forces, and determine that Alus's forces cannot attack the ruins. They then rally the citizens of Eldora to evacuate to the various ruins to keep them safe from enemy attacks. Sure enough, Alus's forces are completely unable to attack the ruins, but the heroes note that this is only a temporary solution.
• Pluto Is Expendable: By the end of the series there's no PLANETS system armor named for Pluto.
• Poor Communication Kills: Hiroto has never said a thing about Eldora to Hinata, who just happens to know Shido's sister, meaning that the first time she ever learned about all this business is the worst-case scenario. Fortunately, Hiroto's had a chance to explain everything, however improbable, and eventually, Hinata not only comes around but throws her full support behind him, specifically in getting Shido back. May also prevents the team from being misunderstood by the GBN playerbase by discussing their adventures with Magee regularly, and he in turn helps to coordinate the playerbase and prepare for emergencies.
• Pyrrhic Victory: In Episode 2, the Build Divers practice their plan to defend Freddie's village in a training simulation. While they are eventually able to clear it, they are only able to do so with 99% of the friendly targets they are supposed to protect being destroyed.
• Race Against the Clock: The Build Divers's attack on the moon has them out to destroy the massive weapon before it fires. It's a close fight, but the Divers fail to stop the weapon from firing the first time. The second attempt cuts it just as close, but the team succeeds.
• Ragtag Band of Misfits: This trope is hit with a healthy dose of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. Unlike the original Build Divers, the new BUILD DiVERS team has absolutely no coordination and various levels of skill. Hiroto and May are shown to be amazing fighters, but Hiroto is too lost in his quest to find the girl from his past, and May isn't much of a team player. Kazami has an amazing build, but his fighting skill is laughable and Parviz had just started when he was dragged into the mess. When training to protect a village, this lack of skill and camaraderie is shown as Kazami would charge into enemy combat and get struck down while Parviz panics and fires wildly while May and Hiroto do the solo heavy lifting. This ultimately leads to the events of Episode 6, where the entire team is called out, especially Kazami and Hiroto. Even worse, Freddie wasn't even looking for them, he was looking for the original Build Divers and before he could realize his mistake, Kazami dragged them in.
• Readings Are Off the Scale:
  • When faced with the full One-Eye army, Hiroto's Gundam simply shows a "Display Limit" error as there are simply so many enemies that it can't keep track of them all.
  • Episode 25 has Alus on the receiving end of this, as he's confronted by thousands of players in GBN all lying in wait for him when he decides to launch a full-scale, all out assault on GBN to destroy them and the game. While the readings aren't shown stopping, it symbolises how outnumbered Alus is.
• Real After All: Eldora is not a new video game setting for GBN, but an alien world 30 light-years away. Everyone on it is very much real, and despite being transferred consciousnesses in reconstructed bodies made of Applied Phlebotinum, the protagonists will face very real capture, injury or death should they fail.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Kazami, whose avatar is a muscular man with a Heroic Build and uses a Gundam styled after a Knight in Shining Armor, also wears a pink outfit with long gloves that reach up to the shoulders.
• Real-Place Background: Hiroto lives in the real-world Yokohama, Japan, with locations like the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse serving as the location for Gundam Base Yokohama and the ending credits showing Hinata walking by various other locations in the actual city like Yokohama Cosmo World.
• Recovery Sequence: The finale has a montage of the new Eldorans rebuilding all the damage from the war with the One-eyes, and Cuadron placing his floating island in the same spot where Seguri once stood before the One-eyes Kill Sat destroyed it, for the new Eldorans to visit him as they please.
• Recursive Translation:
  • In the official English translation, the suit May pilots is called a "WoDom", Which is a Portmanteau of "Woking Dome", which is a phonetic transliteration of the Japanese "ウォーキングドム", which is itself a phonetic transliteration of the English "Walking Dome". In other words, in English, it should be a "WaDom", but the proper spelling got lost in the translation from English -> Japanese -> English.
  • The official English translation in merchandise for Koichi and Tsukasa's mobile suit is the "Load Astray Double Rebake", with "Load" being the phonetic transliteration of the Japanese "ロード". But in the manga that the Load Astray Double Rebake's basis appears, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray: Princess of the Sky, it is specifically shown the "ロード" in the mobile suit's name is based on the English word "Lord", though it also serves as a pun for the "Lord's Road" its pilot plans to walk.
• Reentry Scare: In episode 12, the heroes return to Eldora by descending through the atmosphere. May rides on the Valkylander and Kazami attempts to use his shield to block the heat, but when it shatters, the Earth Armor saves him. Hiroto uses the same heat film the original RX-78-2 Gundam used to survive reentry.
• Remember the New Guy?: The flashback in episode 20 of Re:RISE shows that Hiroto was just off-screen at Avalon's base in episodes 22-24 of Gundam Build Divers... even though there are no signs of him whatsoever in the original show.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: In a sense. May and Eve are EL-Divers, yet despite being AIs there is nothing that indicates their emotions and feelings are any less real than a human's. Alus, on the other hand, might have been more human-like in the past, but his current corrupted self is little more than a hologram mindlessly pursuing its final, distorted directives.
• Robotic Reveal: Of a sort. In episode 9: May's WaDom Pod breaks open, revealing a Mobile Doll inside, and thus that she is an EL-Diver.
• Run the Gauntlet: Similar to Episode 16 of the original series, BUILD DiVERS goes through the Lotus Challenge themselves while fighting GBN's best of the best. They even decided to make it a No Casualties Run, at which point the other characters begin to wonder if they're not making it too hard on themselves, before being reassured that no, they need to do it that way since the whole thing is training for their final assault on Alus and his moon base. It takes them a whooping 40 tries to finally reach the end.
• Sequel: This show is a continuation of the Gundam Build Divers continuity, shares its name, and features a newer version of the "Gunpla Battle Nexus" game introduced in the first series.
• Shout-Out:
  • Parviz's username is taken from the 22nd Sassanid King of Persia, who also appears in the 391st night of Arabian Nights, much like Shahryar taking his username from the king in the Framing Device of Arabian Nights in the first series. His Valkylander has the nickname "Morgiana", another character from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. This is no coincidence as he is Shahryar's younger brother.
  • Kazami's former team, Mu Dish, is based on the characters from the popular Chinese story Journey to the West, with Sagari being Tang Sanzang, Yuri being Sun Wukong and Gojo being Sha Wujing. And Kazami, with his pig-headed attitude over everything and desire for fame, is Zhu Bajie. Sagari being the one female is an added reference to how Tripitaka was famously a Crosscast Role in the classic Monkey.
  • Captain Zeon shouting "Anaheim Fusion!" as he gets transported into his suit serves as a reference to Sunrise's GaoGaiGar as well.
    • The combination of the Re:Rising Gundam is one massive nod to GaoGaiGar's famous Final Fusion.
  • In Episode 11, they all state "That's no moon" when the giant orbital cannon is revealed to be hiding inside of the moon.
  • Sid's long white-haired, blue-clothed, silver armored, uncorrupted avatar is a Whole Costume Reference to Balmung of the Azure Sky from fellow Bandai Namco Entertainment sci-fi MMORPG series, .hack.
  • The Saturnix armor set has a massive claw and drill on each arm, much like the usual arms weapons for Getter-2 and all its successors from the Getter Robo franchise, while the color scheme and wheeled feet are from Getter-3.
  • A blink-and-you'll-miss-it triple reference is buried in the list of player teams in Episode 23. One of the team names is "Is the order INLE?". In addition to the obvious reference to Is the Order a Rabbit?, and the slightly less-obvious Mythology Gag from Advance of Zeta (wherein the Inle is a prototype mobile weapon), it's a second-hand nod to Watership Down, in which the Black Rabbit of Inle is a mythological figure.
  • During the final battle, one of the reinforcements is a shout-out to GodHand Tools mascot Nipako, in the form of a twin-tailed Nobel Gundam wielding an oversized pair of nippers. Her catchphrase even flashes as a Freeze-Frame Bonus.
  • Also among the reinforcements are the new Vagan-based Gunpla of the fake Shahryar and his assistant (minor antagonists from early in the previous series) that suspiciously look like the Iron Kong and Gojulas Mk-II from Zoids
  • Nami's Zakrello-based Powered Armor in the same scene shares its concept (attractive lady in powered suit), overall silhouette, and colours (red up top, yellow for the body) with the iconic suit of a certain famous bounty hunter.
• Show Within a Show: The Captain Zeon videos are an entertainment streaming series within the fictional world of Gundam Build Divers itself.
• Sigil Spam: The powerful Wave-Motion Gun of Cuadron and Re:Rising Gundam is preceded by a massive magic circle-esque pattern forming in front of them.
• Significant Double Casting:
  • Episode 25 has the voice actors for Sarah and Eve, Haruka Terui and Inori Minase credited as completely separate characters the two female Ancients シャングラ ("Shangra") and イルハーヴ ("Eruhave"), implying they are the Ancients whose data Sarah and Eve were born from.
  • For a more comedic example, it turns out that Captain Zeon being voiced by Show Hayami was not a coincidence if the fact that, in the afterparty in episode 24, Rommel is shamelessly basking in the praise Kazami is unwittingly heaping onto him is any indication.
• Stab the Scorpion: In Episode 1, May seems to be preparing to shoot Kazami for falling on her, until it's revealed when Kazami moves aside that she was actually targeting an Eldora Army mobile suit coming up behind him. However, May casually and deliberately friendly fires Kazami during the training exercises in Episode 2.
• The Stinger:
  • Episode 5. A different Resistance platoon has been destroyed - but not by the One-Eyes. It's the Gundam Seltsam.
  • Episode 26. A now docile One-Eye crosses paths with Calico and Zabun, and then joins them on their car. Then in space, the core backpack piece from Hiroto's Nepteight can be seen still floating in orbit near Alus's now-restored moon.
• Super Robot: Re:Rising, a giant Combining Mecha with a Golden Super Mode that can perform Sigil Spam laser attacks.
• Surveillance Drone: Hiroto's Uraven Gundam comes equipped with three remote-controlled, flying "sensor bits" that can be used for enemy detection, range finding, and other methods for enhancing the mech's sniping capabilities.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • The show plainly demonstrates that just throwing a bunch of random Gunpla divers together into a team with only vaguely related interests does NOT make them a good or effective fighting unit. In addition, Hiroto and May are veteran divers while Kazami and Parviz are incompetent and inexperienced respectively, creating a massive skill gap between them. Especially in the early episodes, their Dysfunction Junction causes their unit cohesion to break down, unnecessarily complicating (and outright losing) fights.
  • Episode 13 has a double dose: May tries to hail a taxi on a rainy day, but her real body is the size of a 1/144th scale Gunpla, the average size for an action figure. Not only is she not seen, to her annoyance, but she's also at risk of getting swept away by splashing water. Also, when the Divers realize how dangerous things in Eldora actually are, they don't want to go back. It's not until they reflect on the friends they'd be leaving behind, or in Hiroto's case the last request of Eve, that they changed their minds and returned to Eldora.
  • Episode 18 - evacuating whole villages proves to be tricky when the old and particularly obstinate aren't willing to go anywhere else for whichever reason. Which is just as likely to happen with humans.
  • Episode 22 has Parviz try to use his own Gunpla's version of the Trans-Am system. However, since this is the first time he's actually using it, he can't adjust to his Gunpla's vastly increased performance and literally nosedives it straight into the ground.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: A player who is Minato Sakai in everything but name seems to be roaming GBN with a slightly stylized appearance. Sure enough, he's still piloting Tryon 3 and is familiar with the protagonist groups of the original Divers, the sidestory Rize, and Re:Rise, to the point where he gets Momo back into action in episode 26 by airlifting her on the Riku Tryon and disabling the incoming fleet with a sonic blast.
• That's No Moon: Eldora's moon turns out to be a fully operational orbital weapons platform under Alus's control.
• Time Skip: The anime takes place two years after the events of the original Gundam Build Divers.
• Together in Death: In a manner of speaking. The last thing Alus sees before he's reduced to data are Shangra and Eruhave, the two Ancients he last saw before shutting off for repairs, who apologize for keeping him waiting and tell him its time to go.
• Trapped in Another World: The show kicks off with our protagonists discovering a secret campaign in a popular MMO. It turns out that they're actually having their consciousnesses transferred to serve as champions in a war on an alien world thirty light-years away, and it's entirely possible for them to be injured, killed, or captured and brainwashed by an evil AI while they're there. The first person to discover the portal to Eldora has been comatose for months, and his stolen consciousness is being used to commit war crimes on a grand scale.
• Truer to the Text: Re:RISE ends up being much closer to the classic Gundam series than the rest of the Build spin-offs. With The Reveal that Eldora is Real After All, the protagonists aren't so much playing a story-mode campaign in a VRMMO game, but actually fighting a real war to protect the civilians of a planet from an invasion by an opposing army living in orbit, much like the original Mobile Suit Gundam.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: In episode 20, Hiroto throwing up after stopping himself from shooting down the 00 Sky is replaced with the Earthree Gundam collapsing to the ground followed by the mud from the failed shot covering the machine.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • Valkylander's Avalanche Rex Buster attachment allows it to fire a massive blast of energized GN particles that can wipe out entire armies and cause irreparable damage to giant installations all by itself.
  • Re:Rising Gundam can create a blast of energy so powerful it can destroy armies and wreck planetoids. Fittingly, it's the only real match against the below example.
  • Alus's battlestation located on the moon houses a gargantuan one, and is a priority objective for the Build Divers.
• Weirdness Censor: Considering that the first series showed everyone that GBN was capable of creating a self-aware artificial intelligence, nobody in the subsequent two years seems to care about it at all. That said, it has been two years, and there are eighty-seven known EL-Divers in GBN now, so it's likely that a bit of the novelty has worn off. Only Kazami is a bit surprised when May reveals herself to be one, but even then, mostly because he's slow on the uptake and the fact that he'd be teammates with one at all.
• Wham Episode: Episode 12: BUILD DiVERS fail to stop Alus's Kill Sat from destroying Seguri, resulting in the deaths of Jed and nearly the entire resistance. When the story fails to end, the Build Divers realize that the "NPDs" are real people and the questline they are on is not part of GBN. Suddenly, GBN crashes from server failures, followed by massive server failures across the entire Earth due to a faster-than-light wave of energy from the very same Kill Sat the heroes just failed to stop on Eldora.
• Wham Line: Episode 19 has a pretty shocking one, given how the episode was about how Hiroto first meets Eve.
  Eve: I'd like you to erase me.
• Wham Shot
  • At the end of Episode 9, when the Seltsam seemingly destroys May's WoDom Pod, out of the wreckage comes a Gunpla that looks a lot like what Sarah used at the end of Gundam Build Divers, revealing May to be an EL-Diver!
  • At the end of Episode 20, Masaki/Sid is shown beginning to fight off Alus's control. However, back on Earth, his vital signs are starting to decline.
  • Episode 23 ends with Magee revealing that he sent out the call to arms, and showing our heroes all the people who Jumped at the Call. Hiroto recognizes Avalon among the names of course, but the real surprise is the original Build Divers among them.
  • The credits and end of Episode 25: Alus has invaded GBN, but that's not the Wham Shot. No, it's when the moment he arrives, he immediately finds himself outnumbered by an army of potentially thousands of divers, many of whom we know are much stronger than the five who have been repeatedly thwarting him, that was waiting for him.
  • In the finale May takes off her jacket to clothe the new-born Alus EL-Diver, which allows everyone to see that she's wearing an armband with the gem from Eve's earring, revealing that she was created from the remains of Eve's data.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Inverted. In episode 13, May explains as an electronic life-form, there was never a meaningful distinction to her between what people consider "reality" on Earth and the world the people of Eldora inhabited, with both being equally deserving of her help.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • In Episode 13, Hiroto, Kazami, May and Parviz realize that Eldora is Real After All, and that they could just walk away for their safety. No one could stop them. No one would even know what they did. However, despite their previous failings, all of them ultimately decide that they cannot simply abandon their friends on Eldora, even if it meant putting their own lives on the line.
  • Back during the second Coalition of Volunteers battle, Hiroto had a sniper lock on Riku right before he reached Sarah. Consumed by grief over losing Eve and hatred towards Riku and Eve's little sister Sarah, he almost shot down the 00 Sky with the Uraven's rifle. But recalling the promise he made to the dying Eve to protect her sister and stay a person willing to help strangers, he fires into the ground at the last second. Sadly, this doesn't stop Hiroto from suffering two years worth of PTSD and self-loathing.
• Whole Costume Reference: Patrick Colasour shows up dressed in a red, green, and yellow Robin costume in one of Captain Zeon's promos in episode 4.
• Whole Episode Flashback:
  • Episode 14 jumps all the way back in time to the previous show, explaining how Freddie learned of the original BUILD DIVERS and how he eventually contacted Hiroto and company in episode 1 of this series.
  • Episode 19 and 20 go back to the beginning of GBN through to the end of the original Divers series, showing how Hiroto met Eve, their time together, and how he eventually lost her.
• Wrecked Weapon: One of the questions that every Build series answers in its own way is why it matters if your Gunpla gets broken. This is a particularly pressing question in the Build Divers series, where it's just a game character that heals up automatically at the end of a mission. The answer this time around is that they're fighting an alien war with real stakes for the people they're trying to protect, so getting their suits blown up without achieving their mission will cost actual lives, and they're getting psychosomatic feedback that means 'in-game' injuries become real injuries (so any damage that puts the pilot in danger actually does endanger them).
• You Don't Look Like You: The PFF-X7 Core Gundam, the main component of Hiroto's main Gunpla, is said to be based on the FF-X7 Core Fighter from the RX-78-2 Gundam. However, it basically looks nothing like the Core Fighter or the original Gundam in particular and doesn't even share the same color schemes. During a press release for the series, Tōru Furuya (voice actor for Amuro Ray of the original Mobile Suit Gundam) even expressed confusion as to how exactly did it resemble the original Gundam?
  • The show itself eventually reveals that the Core Gundam was indeed inspired by the original Gundam... a 1/200 Speed Grade model of it. Hiroto had to fight a battle out of the blue and this was the only model available. The fight, where he had to exploit its small size and wrecked parts lying around the battlefield, gave him ideas for a small, modular design that eventually became the Core Gundam. And since he obviously can't use a Speed Grade as his main Gunpla, the end result is homemade and looks quite a bit more original than it should.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: As Foreshadowing for the Real After All twist, Hiroto gets his head slammed into his control console, actually knocking him out cold. He's later shown with an injury in the exact same place in the real world.

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