Kidô senshi Gandamu: Fukushû no Requiem

I have not finished watching this series yet, but the animation of the characters is distractingly bad, so bad I felt like expressing my displeasure here. This is really just related to the expressions of the characters. The rendering looks very decent otherwise, but, I swear, ReBoot, a 3D animated series exactly 30 years old, the second such ever, has much better facial expressions and mouth movements. How can that be the case in 2024? Otherwise from that, the voice acting, action and pacing is pretty good, but I hope the production company fixes the glaring weakness in subsequent iterations.

Im surprise there is no review yet for this amazing series, so I'm gonna start the ball rolling here. This series presents a refreshing, "down-to-earth" perspective on the Gundam universe, offering a grounded look at the human cost of war rather than the usual large-scale strategic warfare that many fans may expect.

The story deviates from the typical tactical war games that have become a hallmark of the franchise. Instead, it focuses more on the human element-the tragedies and chaos that arise from conflict. Admittedly, there are moments when the characters seem unsure of what to do, which can pull the viewer out of the immersion. Still, despite these occasional lapses, the narrative remains engaging and binge-worthy, a testament to the creator's vision. Notably, this is the first mainline Gundam series produced by a Western team, which makes the achievement all the more impressive.

One of the standout features of this series is the battle scenes. The mobile suits feel massive and imposing, with their movements and speed depicted in a way that's both believable and thrilling. This is the most "grounded" portrayal of mobile suit combat since Gundam Thunderbolt, and it surpasses even that in terms of realism. However, while the fight sequences are excellent, the character animation could use some improvement. I'm hopeful that with a larger budget in future seasons, this aspect will see significant enhancement.

For newcomers to the Gundam universe, there may be some terminology that doesn't quite resonate, but the core story is simple enough to enjoy without prior knowledge. Overall, I'd rate this series a solid 8/10-an impressive achievement and a worthy addition to the Gundam franchise.

I really love Gundam and have been watching and playing with it since the 80's.

But I have an extremely hard time trying to enjoy this due to the absolute wonky and amateur looking visuals.

As if they hired a company that only showed them pictures of what it could look like and the character facial details which looked amazing. So they accepted them for doing the visuals and never asked for actual movies scenes and just released it with full confidence.

I mean the characters look, act and behave so unrealistically.

Especially their facial expressions... It's just a pain to watch and only those that don't care about visuals would be able to enjoy this.

I'd rather listen to this as if it's an audio book then expose myself to these horrific visual.

The CGI is the worst I've seen in many years, it's so bad that even Final Fantasy Spirits Within from 2001 did a lot better than this movie, voice acting ranges from quite good to "friend of the director" quality but unfortunately outside the main characters the voice acting is significantly worse.

The story does seem interesting and the main characters have some depth and interesting personalities, it's just a shame it's wrapped in such mediocrity and obviously had a shoe string budget.

Save yourself some time, go watch one of the anime especially given how many there are now and how deep the story and characters are in each of them.

I am a huge Gundam fan, so it's sad to see how bad this one is, but again it's Netflix so wasn't expect much.

The CGI is really bad, like we had better CGI movies 5 or 7 years ago, this looks more like cut scenes from a PS3 game. It's not helped along by the bad lipsync or that it was made with English mouth movement in mind instead of Japanese, as only a tourist would choose the English option.

It's also got all the modern DEI thinks to check of, which is something you will notice really fast, and given it's something that means lower quality in the story and work in generel I would say they don't break that mold here. They even use the classic "touch girl" hair style we are seeing every time now, so when ever people I know and myself sees the half bold haircut we tend to write the show of then and there as they all go the same way anyway.

The sounds the Zaku used seems off when you are used to them sounding in pretty unique way. I don't know why they changed it here.

The ending is... well it's bad, I don't know why they don't focus test their shows, or at least hire fans to make them. We have seen with One Piece that it can be done, if they listen to the creator and have fans working on it without change everything to please the modern none existing audience.

I can't really give it more than 2 stars, as I see many trying to pump up the scor, and because it's not really that good even if you could look past the nightmare inducing CGI.