Summary:

With Taribia’s return to Union, the US president promises them an increase in aid and energy supplies. Marina thinks that this series of events was a scheme that used Celestial Being, but Shirin disagrees because Celestial Being is carrying out their will of eliminating war, even if they’re turning their backs to public opinion. She suggests that Marina revise her idea to try to use them, and she sees Marina off to a multi-country tour. Marina promises to do her best because solar energy is necessary to save Azadistan, and when Shirin asks her why she embraced this role, Marina confidently claims that it’s because only she can do it. Meanwhile, at the Human Reform League’s orbital elevator linear train terminal, Saji and Louise are about to embark on their trip to space, and his sister instructs him to study hard because, even though he’s going on this study trip on a scholarship, she’s paying for the travel expenses. She feels a little better that Louise is going with him, but she still warns him not to go too overboard and not to do anything weird to Louise. Unbeknownst to them, Sergei and Soma are also at this terminal, ready to depart.

Over on the Celestial Being side, Allelujah gets a mission plan for observing a mobile suit’s performance experiment, and Lockon warns him to be careful because they’re now hated after the Taribia incident. Back on the linear train, Louise is having fun with the pseudo-zero-gravity, but a decidedly more somber atmosphere is present in Sergei’s cabin. When Sergei mentions that he hasn’t heard yet the reason why Soma volunteered for the superhuman organization, Soma reveals that she didn’t volunteer. Instead, she’s a designer baby created for the superhuman program. Sergei then remembers to how a scientist had earlier filled him in on the nanomachines inside Soma’s body that allow her to be active for extended periods of time in space environments. He hadn’t cared to hear the technical explanation and was more concerned about the course they were taking. The linear train eventually arrives at the Human Reform League’s low orbit station, and Saji and Louise are greeted by a man named Bols Assan who is supervising the study trip. Bols takes them out in spacesuits, and Saji and Louise are able to see the beautiful view of Earth from above. However, Louise falls off the edge, and Saji does too when he tries to save her, though fortunately Bols grabs both of their safety tethers in time.

Elsewhere in the station, Sergei and Soma are introduced to the MSJ-06II-SP, the Tieren Taozi. It is to be Soma’s mobile suit, and Sergei wonders if it’s the trump card against Gundams. Two days later, Allelujah is headed up on the linear train and has a chat with a flight attendant about enjoying the view of Earth from above. The flight attendant claims to understand how he feels since there’s so much trouble on Earth that an organization like Celestial Being would appear. Around this time, Saji and Louise are walking through the low orbit station’s gravity block and pass by Wang Liu Mei and Hong Long. Wang Liu Mei sees Saji looking at her and smiles at him, but Louise pulls on Saji’s ear for looking that way. Outside the station, Soma is testing out the Tieren Taozi, and is following a designated course so well that Sergei marvels at the super-soldier’s power. However, he notes that she’s still a young girl. Part of the way through, Soma senses something and starts feeling a pain in her head. At almost the exact same moment, Allelujah experiences the same thing, and the headache causes him to switch to a different, more volatile personality that is angry at whatever got inside of him and wants to kill it.

The pain is so traumatizing for Soma that she starts firing on the station, and it breaks a section of the gravity block off – the part that Saji and Louise are in. Allelujah is distracted from his anger when he sees the block floating away, but his inner voice calls out to him, referring to this new him as Hallelujah. He remembers back to a scene from his past where he and someone else were onboard a ship wondering if they were going to die, and someone had asked Allelujah to kill him. This memory causes Allelujah to regain control of his body, and he rushes off to do something about the gravity block. Soma meanwhile has calmed down, so Sergei radios the control room for a damage assessment. He learns that there are 232 people in the block needing saving and that it’ll take another seven minutes for the rescue team to come out. The problem is that the gravity block will get pulled into the Earth’s gravity in 14 minutes, so Sergei decides to start the rescue operation by himself. He gets there with 450 seconds left and assesses that he’ll have to raise the orbital altitude of the gravity block. Sergei tries to accomplish by accelerating his Tieren against the structure, but he quickly realizes that it isn’t enough due to the gravity block’s mass.

With only 200 seconds remaining, Sergei is worried that he’ll get caught in Earth’s gravitational sphere too at this rate. Right as he is wondering if they’ll have abandon all these people, he notices something rapidly approaching on his radar: a Gundam. Wang Liu Mei is at that moment trying to tell Allelujah that this isn’t the mission he was given, but he cuts off the transmission because she doesn’t understand what it feels like to drift in space. With less than 20 seconds left, the Kyrios pushes against the gravity block and gives it everything it has. Allelujah also broadcasts a message to everyone inside to gather in the center of the three blocks. Following his instructions, everyone in there dons a space suit and does just that, but Louise is still worried and wants to tell Saji something before its too late. Sergei meanwhile tries to tell the Kyrios to leave before this gravity block gets pulled in, but Allelujah feels that failure is not allowed in Celestial Being and declares that there’s not just one Gundam Meister. As if on cue, a beam rifle shot originating from Earth then blows through one of the connectors between the three blocks, and it breaks one of the now-unoccupied blocks off.

The beam rifle shot came from none other than Dynames piloted by Lockon, and he has Setsuna in the Exia clear away some clouds so that he can fire a second shot. This shot separates the remaining two blocks from each other, and the Kyrios pushes the only occupied block away. It is at this point that Sergei finally realizes that the Gundam pilots have succeeded in decreasing the mass so that they can accelerate the remaining block into a stable orbit. The Human Reform League’s rescue team soon arrives, so the Kyrios takes off, and Sergei lets him go since he’s very grateful. Everyone is saved, but onboard the Ptolemaios, Tieria isn’t happy that their given mission was abandoned to prioritize the rescue of lives, especially since they’ve now let the world know about the Dynames’ ability to fire to high altitudes. He notes that Sumeragi was the one who changed the mission and gave Lockon those instructions, but she tries to defend herself by saying that she wasn’t helping Allelujah – she was protecting the Gundam. This leads to Tieria declaring that a person lacking in aptitude shouldn’t be piloting a Gundam, and Sumeragi quietly questions him back about that.

On the rescue ship, Saji asks Louise what she was about to tell him earlier before they got saved, but she refuses.

Preview:

They finally stopped jumping around so much and concentrated on one thing! I spent a good deal of the episode wondering if they were going to suddenly switch to some Union/Graham stuff, but they never did, and I think it was for the better. With the politics also kept to a relative minimum, needless to say, I loved the episode and hope there are more like it. The political stuff isn’t horrible, but I much prefer this type of pacing for a Gundam series.

In terms of the story, Allelujah’s change of personality was one of the more interesting things this episode had to offer. It’s been hinted at in previous episodes, but this was the most definite proof we’ve seen so far. They hint that he was drifting out in space as a kid with someone, so I wonder if he had a twin or something named Hallelujah, and the two of them somehow became one. His mental change has a physical manifestation too since it’s accompanied by a change of which side of his face his hair is covering and a change in eye color. Perhaps he also has nanomachines inside of him, and that could be what caused the Newtype-like reactions that he and Soma got.

The way Tieria sees Allelujah will probably lead to tension down the road, especially if more things like this start happening. Come to think of it, given Tieria’s personality, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he became an antagonist eventually, and he might already be on that path. Speaking of which, it’s also becoming clearer that Sergei is likely to end up being one of the good guys given how concerned he’s been over the age and maturity of the various pilots and just generally how honorable he seems. I could see him as a voice of reason of sorts inside the Human Reform League for as long as he’s alive, or for the entire series if he can survive it. For the time being though, it looks like Patrick Corlasawar (or someone who resembles him except with more hair) and a new mobile suit are going to be appearing next week.

55 Comments

  1. oh thats a detailed summary! thanks alot! now i’m starting to get interested in gundam lol, haven watch any series so far but since its been receiving so many good comments from fans, i guess i’ll give it a try some time hehe…

  2. @AsPHERE – I thought the same thing. It may be pink, but at least it doesn’t have Haros and hearts painted on it.

    Just saw the raw for the episode, and it was intense. Seeing Kyrios half transformed and pushing the block was amazing, The high powered sniper rifle was delicious, and watching Exia cutting… clouds was brilliant! Tieria is definitely a bit of a jerk. I see conflicts arising between him and the other pilots. Best episode so far, and there wasn’t even an actual battle in the episode.

    Thanks for the summary Omni.

    Amuro1X
  3. Ok, the writers of this show need some classes in physics. I know it is anime but they need to decided in one thing or another. First how did louise and Saji FALL DOWN when there shouldn’t be any gravity to FALL.

    I think Tieria is on the right here. Their mission is not to save life, and this probably will come to bite them in the ass. I think they should take the gundam from Allelujah
    and take the command from that bitch of sumeragi.

    golthin
  4. “Ok, the writers of this show need some classes in physics. I know it is anime but they need to decided in one thing or another. First how did louise and Saji FALL DOWN when there shouldn’t be any gravity to FALL. ”

    From what I can understand, they are not far enough from Earth to eliminate gravity all together.

    Vallen Chaos Valiant
  5. I am surprised that people talk about Allelujah as a jerk, as though it’s new. This isn’t the first time he did this. He always acts annoyed and pissed off. At the end of episode 2 (after Gundam meister’s first sortie), he openly questions why a “kid” (aka. Setsuna) is allowed to be a Gundam meister despite Setsuna’s obvious talents. In that same episode, when he and Allelujah were descending down to Earth, Allelujah wondered aloud about atmospheric entry despite their simulations. And Tieria told Allelujah to go home if he’s afraid. Not to mention how he seems to put down Sumeragi whenever she talks to him.

    Tieria, for all his feminine looks, is perhaps the most driven out of the four Gundam meisters. Lockon seems more laid back, Allelujah is introspective and somewhat schizo, and Setsuna just obeys orders like a machine. But Tieria, out of EVERYONE who is a member of Celestial Being, is devoted to his missions with a vengeance. Remember that he’s the one in Episode 1 who declares that as Celestial Being they will “judge the people of the world” (prompting Sumeragi to comment on how that’s “cruel”).

    But let’s not judge characters just yet. People forget that this is just the 5th episode in what is probably going to be a 50-episode series, and also that we know NOTHING about any of the Gundam meisters. So the odds that Tieria is a cold-hearted jerk “just because he is” is extremely low; it’s far more likely that some past event has caused to be as

    Kai
  6. WHY CANT WE JUST FOCUS ON SETSUNA JUST FOR ONE EPISODE
    SERIOUSLY!! WTH
    don’t get me wrong this new series is great and all
    but i just wished they’d give us a bit more character interaction or something!!
    and no i don’t mean it between saji and louise

    Hei
  7. @AsPHERE
    I know what you’re talking about. I watched Zeta and I love it with a passion. I’m just saying that in response to people comparing it to Meer’s ZAKU.

    @Hei
    We’ll get some more of Setsuna in the next episode and definitely later on. Allelujah was in some desperate need of characterization, so this was his episode.

    Amuro1X
  8. I usually love politics and do find it rather interesting, as a law student it is pretty hard to avoid it when discussing law.

    however, in this series while it is still interesting, i openly admit i am waiting for my emotional high… where is it?

    It is all well and good to set up a story, but you need to draw the audience in and become emotionally attached to the characters. This is the 5 episode and all i am getting is… ‘?’ and next?

    I want them to move forward dammit!

    Elegant Destruction
  9. So far so good for Gundam 00, hope we will get more and more character development. I dun wan anymore GSD where we have so many junkie characters sitting around wasting screen time and does not give value add to the story which is already bad enough.

    raijinoh2002
  10. So far it’s my most fav episode of gundam 00. I think thr are still a lot of story to tell us about the character. So I’ll just wait for it & see.
    I almost break out crying (it’s a happy tear) for Saji accident in the space. It’s like you know you’ll die at the next moment but fortunately end up alive.

    Kaede
  11. I am disappointed that they didn’t continue with what they started at the beginning. I prefer to see this series include more politics/war/intrigue on a large scale instead of the usual (and boring) high-school romance present in 99% of the anime out there. Saji and Louise are very much useless characters in my opition and also pretty ugly in terms of character design/drawing compared to the rest of the cast.

    Kalessin
  12. For the record, the got their orbital physics pretty much bang-on.

    The thing to remember is that they’re NOT in orbit – they’re at a stationary point over the earth’s equator. As they get higher up the elevator the centrifugal force increases until, at geostationary orbit, it exactly balances gravity. In this episode, though, they’re below that altitude, so there’s still a lesser amount of gravity, which is why the gravity block falls.

    the solar ring and the centre of mass of the elevator would be at geosync. The elevator should extend to a counterweight above that; if you were in the counterweight the apparent “gravity” would be away from Earth.

    When they’re on the train, they say that the deceleration of the train simulates zero G: their deceleration, plus centrifugal force, cancel out the reduced gravity.

    Given how handwavey sci-fi shows usually are, I was pretty impressed. Up until the physics-defying gundam showed up, anyway 😉

    panda monium
  13. it’s not only the next episode,it seems it’s going to be Setsuna’s Hattrick episode.
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Heecarl_reez
  14. answer to why that dam gundam is pink….. every is blind in space, so by having it pink u give it a big “red marker” telling you “come on and shoot me already!” and since everything else in space is “darkness” it makes it pretty easy to aim and shoot with no need of any laser-sights for it lol

    IfOnlyYouKnew
  15. -I was liking Alle the best of the gundam meisters for some reason

    -You know I wonder why so many people think Setsuna is the main star of this show. I wonder why so many want him to be. I like that they spread the focus of the show around to other characters.

    -Has anyone else noticed that the show so far has focused on the characters affected by the Meisters and not the meisters. Almost as if the GM’s are a force acting on the “Main” characters. Interesting approach. Gamble though.

    Terror.and.Love
  16. The Newtype thing is from 0079 (the original) and more prominently in Zeta Gundam. Seed just stole it for about 10 minutes in the entire series, and never explained it fully. It’s a little sci-fi for me, but I’m glad to see it being developed early, rather than having about a hundred Newtype flashes in the last 2 episodes (GS, I’m looking at you). However, I wasn’t expecting such an extreme reaction from it, unlike the other series.

    Mike

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