Hooboy another build-up episode- first half is the remaining 0079 era bits from the movie with Char trying to kill Kycilia with a big asteroid provided by the Federation (the more things change, the more things stay the same it seems). There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it freeze frame of Lalah stopping Char from shooting Sayla in Newtype space just before the Axis Shock/Zeknova happens that I didn't catch in the movie, but it's here in the show.

Overall I'd say this entire sequence felt better with the movies chronology, since it set up the big mystery of this timeline (what happened to Char?) and highlighted the danger of the Zeknova. I guess this was as good a place as any to put this tho, because we really couldn't continue the back half here without this context.

I'm not going to get too deep into the back half- a lot happens here. (And a distracting amount of Eva references.) But I do want to highlight a smaller character scene/detail that's only possible because we're playing in a franchise with 46 years of material-

Nyaan is a refugee from Side 2. Side 2 was the colony that Zeon gassed and then dropped on the Earth, the event that kicks off the One Year War.

That dinner scene between her and Kycillia would be like if George Bush gave a home cooked meal to an Iraqi kid, promising asylum and college entry if they just signed up for the US Military to test their latest weapon systems.

The entire back half, Nyaan has a deep-seated sadness within her, almost like her soul is being weighed down by gravity.

Oh shit is that my favourite Gulp Shitto, Quattro Bajeena!?

(Have some Kycillia Obaa-chan cute fanart.)

Wow, what an episode.

The episode title references "The Plot to Assassinate Girhen", a spin-off manga series for the OG Gundam, which in turn is a reference to the movie "The Plot to Assassinate Hitler".

No robot fight, and most of it was exposition and table setting, but this is the good kind of exposition and table setting cos I can't wait till next episode to see how everything comes together for the climax. Last week I complained about too much teen angst and not enough politics, but this week I'm practically drowning in it. I'm not even mad that Kycillia's cameo wasn't even 2 seconds lol. Two whole Zeon factions (Kycillia and Gihren), Side 6 itself and the motherfucking TITANS?!?

I didn't expect them to show up at all- repurposed in this timeline as the Space CIA (the official description on the show's website for Bask Om is that he is "Preparing to create a Far-right Special Forces unit" lmao). I am a bit worried if all the super deep-cuts to Gundam lore is alienating new viewers (Gates Capa? Really?), but so far it's relatively self-evident in-context and I think everything going on with the main trio + Challia is compelling enough (Goddam Mr. Bull certainly knows how to make an entrance).

Speaking of the main trio- I'm really happy with how they decided to handle Machu + Nyaan. Machu screaming "That's my space!" is probably the rawest, most realistic thing a teenager could say there, and I'm glad they didn't drag out the interpersonal conflict beyond this episode, because while they might not be overly interested in politics, politics has certainly taken an interest in them.

we Eva now

Sidenote: there are college entrance exam books alongside immigration procedure manuals on Nyaan's bookshelf in her apartment, so we probably know her motivation now (thank you Japanese speaking fans for pointing that out)

Next week: In Universe in the OG Gundam timeline, the Second Neo-Zeon War (the events of Char's Counterattack) is also known as Char's Rebellion.

Welp, if last episode was a basically an 80's Tomino episode of Mobile Suit Gundam, this episode is straight out of 90's Gainax... right down to the egregious fanservice. Bleh...

Also, I was joking about the problematic polycule with the Space Ghost of Char Aznable I didn't think they'd actually go for it lmao

(that visual storytelling through blocking tho)

A lot of people are going to draw comparisons to FLCL here for the first half, and yeah I see it. Teenage angst isn't what interests me in the show though, it's the political commentary: here's hoping Tsurumaki can connect the dots successfully to make the personal political (as I suspect is his intention), but also I get nervous when a character like Nyaan gets depicted in this way since I'm reflexively expecting The Swerve: I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and wait to see how it plays out tho.

Next week: we assassinate a fascist!

Not even being subtle

Also in the same scene they allude to a coming Zeon civil war (classic fascist infighting), which kinda adds higher stakes to Challia's quest to find the Red Comet.

Another banger episode, although we just speed ran a whole bunch of UC tropes all at once. Shiiko's a pretty good antagonist, and the stuff that happens in this episode is really going to push the main cast in interesting directions, so I'm all for what they're putting down even if it's a bit familiar- Tsurumaki was really channeling his inner Tomino in that (admittedly very cool) dogfight, right down to the comic panel cut-ins and dialogue.

(Also, something tells me that if they're in a rush to get through all this kind of story stuff early on, that they're planning some wild swings later, but that's just a hunch).

Remember,

So the explanation for the silly title is revealed in this episode: it's a programming placeholder. This is totally incidental world-building and not important foreshadowing at all.

Here's Shuji, the last main character to show up, and because he's a blue haired Newtype he gets to be the neurodivergent coded one. I'm half expecting a highly problematic polycule that may or may not involve the Newtype Space Ghost of Char Aznable to form, but also that's been done before so...

The term M.A.V. is brand new vernacular for Gundam, essentially meaning wingman as explained in the episode (although they don't tell us what the acronym is lol)- it's a pun of マブダチ mabu-dachi, which means BFF. I don't think I need to point out all the homoeroticism going on here.

I generally don't like 3d animated mecha, but man seeing that dogfight in the cinema was truly something.

Probably what I'm most excited about with the story, is that essentially the Space Nazi's won Space WW2 in this universe... and the result is militarized police, unscheduled aircraft carrier visits and back channel diplomacy heavily weighed in the hegemonic party's favour. That the Nazi's winning would result in something essentially indistinguishable from American Imperialism- that's a pretty cool statement to make.

Also 2v2 live streaming Giant Robot Death Battle

Episode 3 concludes the rest of the footage from the movie, so from here on out it'll be all new! Excited to watch the rest with everyone!

GQuuuuuuX is director Kazuya Tsurumaki's (FLCL, Diebuster) pet project: from interviews it seems like all the impetus for this collaboration between Studio Khara and Sunrise can be attributed to him.

However, this episode? The lovingly rendered shot-for-shot recreation of the the first episode of the original 0079 Gundam (minus some alt timeline shenanigans), complete with remixed versions of the original bgm and sound effects? This is all Anno, and probably the closest we'll get to a Shin Gundam.

Anno's major contribution to this project has been on the scripts, with him fleshing out this alternate timeline while Youji Enokido (Revolutionary Girl Utena) wrote the "modern" segments of the story. To say that the staff list for this is kinda cracked would be an understatement.

The theatrical release had the movie start with the footage from this episode, along with another 15 mins or so of extra footage that paced things better. It's a bit disappointing that we couldn't get an extra long episode to get the entire prologue, although I get the feeling that we'll see the events that were cut for time here later on in the show as a flashback. (Also, going from this Gundam Origins artstyle to the rest of the show's hyper-stylized Pokemon-esque designs did induce some whiplash)

(Challia Bull was a "villain of the week" who was easily dispatched in the original show, in episode 39 to be exact- now in 2025 he's experienced twink rebirth via Yaoi fanshippers. What a time to be a Gundam fan, this is the best kind of "fanservice"- Gundam would have died stillborn if not for Yaoi fanshippers keeping interest in the show alive until Sunrise sorted out their merchandising funded model. Thank you Anno for giving the people what they want)

Edit: Also we finally got the opening, and it has a bunch of callback's to Zeta Gundam lmao

Anno cooked with this one. All Zaku's are Bastards

Usual caveat that corporations aren't our friends, including Bandai Namco (Interpret This Bandai Executives), Joyce's quote from Disco Elysium, etc. But I had the chance to see the preview movie in theatres and this show has got to be my most anticipated anime of the year so far.

We are haunted by dead futures that cannot come to pass.

If anyone wanted to keep track at home, 3Whysmen summarized the timeline neatly in a post on the subreddit:

This is from X7, which wasn't Disco Elysium 2. Disco Elysium 2 was Y12, Y12 was cancelled when Kurvitz, Hindpere and Rostov were fired. X7 development began after that firing and ended after the mass firing where Tuulik was let go.

X7 was supposed to be fairly far in production when it was cancelled and supposedly had a playable alpha build that was circulating on a USB at some point. Where as the cancelled sequel Y12 didn't seem very far into production when it was cancelled.

Also, that this surfaces when Tuulik's NDA expires and he gets to start working on whatever it is they're working on at in Summer Eternal... let's just say that there are no such things as bad coincidences.

For what it's worth, I'm not sure how I feel about what's presented here: a lot of it reeks of sequelitis and a "more for the sake of more" narrative/design philosophy that... I feel kinda misses the point of DE's elegant mechanical simplicity and how those mechanics reinforced the narrative being told. Of course, we can never actually know if that was actually the case, since the moneymen strangled this in the crib.

But maybe it's better that way- the Disco Elysium sequel in our mind will always be the best one.

Edit: Derp didn't realise CredibleBattery also posted the link as well but I guess I'll just leave this post up cos I don't want to delete and type everything again

Just gonna present these with no contexts lol

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'M SO EXCITED FOR THIS IT LOOKS SO GOOD!!!! I hope the "first 3 episodes" promo movie gets picked up for distribution in cinemas where I'm at soon

Goddam Gundam fans really eating good recently

(just ignore Requiem for Vengeance)

Oh boy, I can't wait for all the chuds to

Also I didn't know whether to post this to movies or games lol.