Trailblazer suffers from an acute case of F91 Syndrome. It is grandiose, beautiful, choppy, incoherent, spastic, terribly edited, and just plain incapable of telling the story it desperately wants to tell in the amount of time it has to tell it in.
Let's start with what good we have to work with here; the ELS. They make brilliant adversaries, being implacable, lethal, unfathomable and terrifying. Even faceless and voiceless, they manage to sail right to the top of my 'Best Gundam Antagonists' list, just below Rau Lu Crueset. The 00 writers knew exactly how to go about introducing alien life into a previously humans-only series series, and my only regret is that they were forced to be part of this movie rather than getting a season devoted to them.
Now, onto the bad. There are too many characters; the movie visibly struggles to give everyone from the series at least a tangential role in the plot, and suffers for it. On top of that it wastes precious time introducing new characters that are promptly killed off after doing precisely NOTHING of any importance. Descartes Shaman is the perfect example of this. He is introduced piloting a Mobile Armor that Ribbons Almark wishes he'd had a few years ago, and generally screams 'I will be a boss battle at some point!' in his attitude and initial prominence, but then gets killed off in a total anticlimax less than halfway through the movie. What was the point of his inclusion other than to establish Innovators are occurring naturally and justify the animation budget? Precisely none, at least in this movie.
Furthermore, Trailblazer displays traits of F91 Syndrome by not actually giving us the upgraded Gundam 00 until the last few minutes of the movie. Worse, when the upgraded 00 does appear, it plays the role of glorified taxi. The lack of any real 'antagonist' means that the movie is devoid of the climactic conflict between morally opposed, equally matched characters that usually defines the Gundam franchise. This is yet another reason why Descartes is wasted; his set up makes him the perfect villain, yet this potential is never capitalized upon.
Overall, Trailblazer isn't an awful movie. It's just far more flash than substance. The good parts at best only manage to balance the bad. It really feels like this was supposed to be Season 3, and it's a shame it didn't become that.
Where's the rest of the movie?!
Trailblazer suffers from an acute case of F91 Syndrome. It is grandiose, beautiful, choppy, incoherent, spastic, terribly edited, and just plain incapable of telling the story it desperately wants to tell in the amount of time it has to tell it in.
Let's start with what good we have to work with here; the ELS. They make brilliant adversaries, being implacable, lethal, unfathomable and terrifying. Even faceless and voiceless, they manage to sail right to the top of my 'Best Gundam Antagonists' list, just below Rau Lu Crueset. The 00 writers knew exactly how to go about introducing alien life into a previously humans-only series series, and my only regret is that they were forced to be part of this movie rather than getting a season devoted to them.
Now, onto the bad. There are too many characters; the movie visibly struggles to give everyone from the series at least a tangential role in the plot, and suffers for it. On top of that it wastes precious time introducing new characters that are promptly killed off after doing precisely NOTHING of any importance. Descartes Shaman is the perfect example of this. He is introduced piloting a Mobile Armor that Ribbons Almark wishes he'd had a few years ago, and generally screams 'I will be a boss battle at some point!' in his attitude and initial prominence, but then gets killed off in a total anticlimax less than halfway through the movie. What was the point of his inclusion other than to establish Innovators are occurring naturally and justify the animation budget? Precisely none, at least in this movie.
Furthermore, Trailblazer displays traits of F91 Syndrome by not actually giving us the upgraded Gundam 00 until the last few minutes of the movie. Worse, when the upgraded 00 does appear, it plays the role of glorified taxi. The lack of any real 'antagonist' means that the movie is devoid of the climactic conflict between morally opposed, equally matched characters that usually defines the Gundam franchise. This is yet another reason why Descartes is wasted; his set up makes him the perfect villain, yet this potential is never capitalized upon.
Overall, Trailblazer isn't an awful movie. It's just far more flash than substance. The good parts at best only manage to balance the bad. It really feels like this was supposed to be Season 3, and it's a shame it didn't become that.