Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance

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.

I'm a major gundam fan and this show was a honestly a disappointment. The concept of showing these events from the regular soldiers point of view was a great idea in my opinion. I like that it shows the struggles of war in a more dark tone than gundam normally does.

This is definitely not a children's Gundam side story, it's rated MA for a reason. Just putting this here incase a parent didn't realize.

As far as the bad goes: I really did not like the animation style. It's one of those weird attempts at trying to make animation look more like live action and it just doesn't work. I don't like how the MC contradicts her morals for the writers to try and make her look like a beacon of morality. This is kind of a theme throughout, you can tell it was written for western audiences. I also don't like the heavy plot armor to keep the show going. I would rather have seen some of the main characters fall. It would have made the story more realistic. It's hard to explain well without spoilers, but there's many situations where atleast one of them should have either made a sacrifice for the team or fell heroically, etc. Not doing so took all the weight of the decisions away and makes everything feel pretty pointless. Most good war movies show this because it's important to make the characters actions feel important. I feel like MC should have been like the only one to survive the horror which could have fundamentally altered her view of humanity.

Overall I like the base idea, but the executive was pretty bad imo.

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 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.

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.