YMMV / Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Rita. While she is undeniably as sweet as the movie portrays her, much of her actions and motivations are ambiguous. To wit, the movie reveals that she had foreseen the events of the final battle against Zoltan and the Neo Zeong II, but doesn't make clear just when she had done so. This can be interpreted to mean that she either saw it before she went missing, back during hers, Jona and Michele's experimentation's with the Titans or even back when she foresaw Operation British when they were children. The ambiguity of just when this vision took place can change the perception of the character, which also isn't helped by her not having the same amount of focus as her friends do, due to being dead during the present day scenes.
• Awesome Music: After Unicorn, Hiroyuki Sawano showcases his genius music again to this film.
  • "VigilaNTe" really pumps you up and this is first played when Jona tries to capture Phenex. With a closer examination of the song, the layered lyrics of both the male and female vocals quickly establish themselves as a narratively (heh) fitting duet.
  • The theme song for the movie, "narrative", is a cool collaboration between Sawano and LiSA.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Rita is dead and her powers are controlling the Phenex. This was apparent from the very heavy-handed trailers, but once the first 23 minutes of the film were released on Youtube, it was essentially confirmed.
• Contested Sequel: Even shortly after its release, the film already gained a reputation for being one of the most polarizing entries in the series as a whole. The fans that like Narrative like it for its soundtrack, mecha designs, battles, and giving a feeling of closure to Unicorn. The one who hate it do so it being a rehash of Unicorn (or worse), being too different from the novel without adding anything of substance, the sheer obviousness of the film being used to sell model kits^note Gundam has always been a vehicle to sell models, but while The Phenex was always in the novel, the addition of the Sinanju Stein and the Neo Zeong II is pretty egregious since those kits already existed to begin with), and the retconning/oversimplification of the meaning and origin of Newtypes.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Some fans were outraged by Narrative defining the previously-ambiguous and interpretive abilities of Newtypes (including confirmed time travel and an afterlife), feeling that it ruins the mystery surrounding them to have a clear list of their capabilities.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Those who have watched Dude, Where's My Car? let out a chuckle when they heard the name of the Sinanju Stein's pilot. "ZOLTAN!" *shapes thumb and forefinger of both hands into a Z-shape*
• I Knew It!:
  • Many people expected Banagher Links to appear in the film since Audrey/Mineva's appearance.
  • Although the marketing tried to keep it ambiguous, most fans figured Rita was Dead All Along before it was officially revealed in the film.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Some feel that the mobile suit roster consists of too many variants of suits from Unicorn as opposed to from other sources or just new designs. To wit, the conflict revolves around a Unicorn Gundam, the villain uses a Sinanju with access to a Neo Zeong, there is a Badass Crew with three Jestas, and a Silver Bullet holds the line against the aforementioned Neo Zeong in the climax.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • In a very minor extent, some of them mentioned the "NT-R" meme from the Unicorn OVA series after the title's reveal.
  • The pose of the three characters on one of the official posters◊, which could be described either as a game of Twister gone wrong or something out of JoJo (or possibly based on this ancient statue) . It was widely mocked upon reveal, with artists rushing to draw other characters in the same awkward pose.
    • Later becomes an Ascended Meme as Bandai provided a backdrop for the attendants to recreate the pose at C3AFA Tokyo.
    • The English VAs joined in too.
  • Jokes about Bright-slapping is completely inevitable as Luio slapped Jona.
  • As of lately, jokes about Rita being a Gundam beating Setsuna and Ein were starting to crop up lately.
  • Don't forget Chiyo's father: "I wish I were a bird!"
  • Ribald jokes about Rita needing her man to come inside her to help her activate NT-D mode are making the rounds in Phenex videos floating around Youtube.
• Narm: It's Gundam so expect some unintentionally hilarious dialogue:
  • Brick announcing out of nowhere that he has no interest in women to Jona is so abrupt and random that it's hilarious. It eventually gets payoff in that it does get used to establish his Undying Loyalty to Michele, but that doesn't change the fact that it got laughs in American theaters.
  • Birds birds birds birds birds. The motif is so heavy handed that it can turn serious scenes of foreshadowing, of character development, and of real pathos into hilarity.
• Narm Charm: Jona's Core Fighter being a goddamn bird. It comes from nowhere, makes no sense, is hilarious, and it is awesome.
• Nightmare Fuel: The brief scenes we see of the experiments Rita went through and the state of her body afterwards are...unpleasant, to say the least.
• The Scrappy: Zoltan is not popular with fans, due to his one-dimensional Psychopathic Manchild personality that make it impossible for one to sympathize with him because he comes off as a bad fusion of Full Frontal, the Frost Brothers and Rau Le Creuset, but with none of the charisma or threatening factor of any of them. His ridiculous design has also been routinely criticized for being out of place and looking like a stereotypical edgelord fan OC. It also doesn't help that the final battle with him is basically just a retread of the final battle with Full Frontal, but with less spectacle that also eats time away from other characters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Okay, after a Blink-and-You-Miss-It moment of getting trashed in an ambush in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, the beloved Gustav Karl is getting more screen time, a fight, and even a model kit release! Aaaaaand it's never seen again after about five minutes into the film.
  • Rita is still a major character within the film, but of the three protagonists, she gets the least amount of screentime and character development. Sure, this is because she's Dead All Along and only exists as a ghost possessing the Phenex, but it would have actually been fascinating to see Rita's backstory after being separated from Jona and Michelle. Or maybe see more of her time during the events of Unicorn and how she eventually became the pilot of the Phenex. In fact, one could argue that the film would largely have worked better if Zoltan had been cut from the film entirely and Rita be the main antagonist instead, thus making the central conflict of the film far more personal.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The marketing suggested Rita and the Phenex were going to act as main antagonists throughout the film, or at least were the central conflict of the movie. However, while Rita is largely the driving force of the film, she's unambiguously a good guy and receives the least amount of focus even for her Dead All Along status. At the least, the tragic nature of her backstory is nowhere near focused on enough or actually all that relevant to her motivations as we understand them within the film. While they are important to the story still, they are dropped as the main conflict fairly quickly once Zoltan appears, which eventually just ends up pushing Narrative into being mostly a retread of Unicorn finale, but with much weaker characters and story.
• Unexpected Character: While Banagher showing up wasn't that surprising, given he was the protagonist of Unicorn, nobody expected that Takuya Irei, Banagher's former roommate, would join him as part of the Garencieres Jr.'s crew, given how minor a character he was in Unicorn.