Saturday, October 8, 2011

MS IGLOO II: The Gravity Front aka Against Incredible Odds, and Failing Miserably as Expected

"Because if you just blew up your vehicle (on purpose), no one's gonna pick you up if you don't pose..."
MS IGLOO II: The Gravity Front is a three part OVA, created mainly for Sunrise to show off their ability to produce amazing CGI. There's barely any story to it- each episode consists of Earth Federation soldiers being sent out on suicide missions against Principality of Zeon Mobile Suits. If you've never watched the original Gundam anime (actually, neither have I- though I've read wikis on it) you probably have no idea what I'm hammering on about. In that case, think of Igloo II as a Japanese Avatar (by James Cameron, not the one by M. Night Shyamalan)- watch it for the pretty pictures.

"I hope that's just a volcano. No need to shoot at it then. I'd still miss if I shot at it anyway."
The first episode is about Lieutenant Ben Barberry, an anti-MS specialist who has been ordered to provide cover for retreating troops by taking out a troop of Zeon Zakus. To aid him and his men in this mission, he is assigned a bunch of idiotic boobs, and some anti-MS missiles, which weren't all that great since they took some time to charge. Like, shouldn't you have charged them before entering the battlefield? Or perhaps their missile launchers require recharging for every shot. In that case, transfer the designer to Alaska, I say.
"How do I get up? Hello? Isn't there a ladder somewhere? I can't jump that high, you know. Hello?"
Episode 2 features Sergeant Rayban Surat (I can only assume that he's a big fan of the sunglasses), a tank driver assigned to gunner Lt. Harmon Yandell- whose surname in Japanese sounds a lot like yanderu (病んでる), which basically means 'being sick'. Which is actually rather appropriate as the chap appears to be somewhat off his rockers... at the very least, he doesn't have as many berks for comrades as Barberry did. Oh, and he gets to drive a tank- a big and fast one at that. However whether tanks are enough to take out Mobile Suits is an entirely different question...
"Oh look, I have pipes for fingers. I can't grab you, but I can poke very well!"
Finally, we have the RTX-440 Guntank in the episode 3. We get our first female star in Lt. Arleen Nazon- that's her posing in the midst of battle in the opening picture to this post. Because she conveniently happens to be a woman as opposed to a blockhead male, the directors decided to throw in some romance- entirely off-screen however, so don't get too excited. This time the EF forces are up against not just Zakus, but massive Dabude land-battleships to boot.

Time to wrap things up. Overall this OVA was pretty good. It did well in showing how hopeless the situation was for the EF until they managed to catch up with Zeon in terms of military hardware. It showed us that Sunrise can make incredible stuff when they feel like it- now how about remaking the Gundam Unicorn series in this style? Best of all, they actually managed to make the ridiculous, weird looking Guntank look impressive. Now that's something.

As they say, don't take words at face value- which is why I'm including a second viewpoint here. I had my mom watch this, and this is what she said: "It's so funny that they gave the robots giant guns. Why didn't they just incorporate the weapons into the body?"

...you've gotta admit, she does have a point. Then again Gundam just wouldn't be as interesting, would it?

Edit: Maybe MS IGLOO II: The Gravity Front aka Ignoring the General Law of Obsolescence would have made for a more interesting title without being a major spoiler... oh well. I'll just pretend that you weren't paying attention and didn't notice the inherent spoiler-ness in it. Oh, and that you're not paying attention to this final paragraph too...

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