First Impressions / Gundam

Summary:

On Earth, Lockon visits a gravesite and finds the same kind of flowers that he’s carrying already at the grave. He suspects that this is from a certain someone, and that man – who looks a lot like him – is watching from a distance. It has now been four months since Celestial Being started all this, and they’ve conducted over 60 interventions. The Exia and Dynames are at this moment arriving on the Ptolemaios for some maintenance. Allelujah worries that the enemy will attack during the overhaul, and Sumeragi placing the chance on God doesn’t make him feel much better since she’s supposed to be the tactical forecaster. Over at the Human Reform League’s high orbit station, Sergei is addressing a special elite unit whose mission it is to destroy organizations that continue armed interventions and to capture mobile suits. He later oversees the deployment of a two-way communication system that allows them to cover 80% of the area of their geosynchronous orbit. It also allows them to detect Gundams due to how the particles that Gundams emit prohibit communication.

In Japan, Saji has been assigned a report on the future of world strife, but more importantly, Louise’s mother has arrived to bring her back to Spain. Louise of course doesn’t want to go, but Saji doesn’t quite have the guts to say anything. Across the city at JNN headquarters, his sister asks her editor to allow her to do an investigative piece on Aeolia Schenberg so that they can figure out Celestial Being’s true objective. Since she’s begging, he decides to give her one-month. On a nearby TV, there is a news report on United Nations aid to Azadistan because of the energy depletion situation there. The UN ambassador is Alejandro Corner, but Shirin is privately suspicious of him because of how nothing is being asked for in return. Back in space, Lichtendahl finds Christina alone in the Ptolemaios’ bridge and volunteers to take over so that she can go eat. She ends up dining with Setsuna and Tieria, but it’s awkwardly silent during the meal. Lichtendahl meanwhile sees that the GN drive has been fully charged, but he doesn’t notice an alarm light blinking on Felt’s display. The Human Reform League’s communications system soon detects the loss of communication, and Sergei decides to bring out his entire special force, including four transport ships and Soma.

Unaware of what’s going on, Lockon finds Felt crying by herself in a room, and she tells him about how her parents were in Celestial Being and were second generation Gundam Meisters. Today is the anniversary of their deaths, though Felt doesn’t know exactly what happened to them. Lockon recognizes that Celestial Being members are bound by confidentiality, meaning that he doesn’t know the pasts of everyone else either. Figuring out Felt is following in her parents’ footsteps, Lockon calls her a strong girl and comforts her. To Felt’s surprise, he then reveals that his real name is Neal Delandy. He also tells her that he’s from Ireland and that his parents were killed by terrorism because he thinks it’s unfair for him just to find out stuff about her without her learning something about him too. When Allelujah suddenly enters the room looking for Lockon, he gets embarrassed because he thinks he’s interrupting something going on between the two, but Lockon tells him not to misunderstand. Over on the bridge, Christina returns from lunch, notices the warning, and realizes that the enemy knows their position now.

When she finds out what’s going on, Sumeragi checks up on the status of the Gundams and learns that the Exia’s maintenance is done, but the Dynames’ leg generator is still down. Since they can’t get out of the Human Reform League’s communications area, she directs the Ptolemaios to the orbital rings’ power generation satellite so that they can take advantage of the zone there where there’s already no communication due to electromagnetic radiation. Sumeragi also sends out the Kyrios and the Virtue as diversions, but onboard the Human Reform League transport ship, Sergei recognizes what his opponent is doing. He decides to respond accordingly by having the first three transports launch all of their mobile suits and by having the second and third ships go out on autopilot. Back on the Ptolemaios, Sumeragi explains that in her initial plan, the enemy would have seen through the diversion and headed for the Ptolemaios instead. This way, they could have used the Kyrios and the Virtue to swing around and attack the enemy from behind. However, Sumeragi knows that the enemy has responded to their feint with a feint and guesses that the enemy has already launched the mobile suits from those transports.

The problem is that since Sumeragi can’t tell Allelujah and Tieria about all this due to the radiation preventing communications, they have to figure it out themselves and come back to the Ptolemaios. By her forecast, this will take six minutes, and in that time, the Ptolemaios will get attacked by the main enemy force. She knows all this because the same strategy had been used 18 years ago during a previous dispute, and the Human Reform League commander at the time had been Sergei. As for the Exia and the Dynames, the former is launched to intercept stuff in front of the Ptolemaios while the latter stands on top of the ship and snipes at whatever is incoming. Lockon first fires at the enemy transport ship in his sights, but he misses because the change in weight of the Dynames has thrown off his aim. The enemy ship responds with a barrage of missiles, and Lockon and Setsuna are only able to blow up some of them before they reach the Ptolemaios. Fortunately, the Ptolemaios is equipped with a GN Field as a shield, however Sumeragi then realizes that the ship their facing is unmanned and is on a suicide attack.

To keep this from happening, Lockon fires a special set of missiles that hit the ship and blow it up from within. By this point though, Christina is panicking because she doesn’t want to die. Felt tells her that they’ll survive, which echoes what Lockon told her earlier before he launched in the Dynames. Lockon then reports that the enemy mobile suits have appeared, and Setsuna counts 36 in total. Unfortunately, the Dynames isn’t able to hit any of them with its rifle, and even the Exia is only able to destroy one before the others move away. From the way the enemy mobile suits are attacking at a distance, Sumeragi suddenly realizes that Sergei isn’t after the Ptolemaios – he’s trying to capture a Gundam instead. She’s particularly frustrated that her forecast was off since she had decided not to make any more mistakes. The Kyrios meanwhile is rushing back towards the Ptolemaios, but it enters a minefield and gets hit repeatedly. Once Allelujah gets out of it, he senses something similar to what he felt back during the low orbit station gravity block incident. When Soma and her group appear and approach the Kyrios, Allelujah recognizes her mobile suit.

Preview:

This episode featured a few interesting revelations about Lockon and Felt, namely that Lockon has a twin and that Felt’s parents were second-generation Gundam Meisters. The current generation is the third one (at least the Gundams are, not sure about the pilots), so that can’t have been too long ago. Depending on how much development they end up giving Felt’s character (I personally want to see more since she’s quickly becoming one of my favorite characters here), that might be important later on. As for Lockon’s twin, I don’t quite get evil vibes from him, but it’s rather hard to tell right now since he had no lines and looks exactly like Lockon. It’s hard to imagine that they’d be on the same side though since we haven’t seen them together.

As for the battle, I can’t help but wonder if they would have just been better off having the four Gundams all stay there to protect the Ptolemaios rather than (what I thought was a riskier move) splitting up and trying to outwit the opponent. Of course, they wouldn’t have gotten into this mess in the first place if the crew had been manning their stations and paying attention. Instead, they’re in a situation now where the Kyrios (and maybe the Virtue too) is in danger of getting captured. I highly doubt that Tieria will allow that to happen to himself or the Virtue, but he might be helpless if the target becomes the Kyrios. The preview hints at some hidden ability of the Virtue though, so who knows what will happen. I wouldn’t rule out a self-destruct mechanism as some people have suggested, but it seems rather early to be destroying a Gundam.

40 Comments

  11. Kind of nice to see that the HRL is in the lead to capture a gundam (at least what the screenshots look like). After all the planning and scheming the Union and AEU went through, Soma pulls into first place.

    Yay for chunky-looking mobile suits!

    melchior
    Reply

  12. I don’t see why the other factions think they’ll be able to discover the secrets of the Gundam just by capturing them. The way I see it, the Gundams have tough security protection (eye scans mat, voicech etc). Furthermore, the meisters are well disciplined so they will most probably do something about it if their secrets are about to be compromised. Don’t forget there’s always the trusty self-destruct mechanism, which I’m sure packs a punch seeing how a GN drive is able to power up such a big cannon (points at Virtue.)

    dward
    Reply

  14. You do know that felt is 14 right? She’s the youngest character in the show at this point. So saying that she’s somehow got any “romantic” stuff going on with what’s his name who’s like, 26 iirc, is reaching. Unless gundam likes to support pedobears now. heh

    GP
    Reply

  15. @dward: You’re obviously not a very big believer in reverse engineering :P. That said, I would agree with you. I would think that the Gundams would have some sort of scecurity protection in them to prevent someone from hacking into their systems. But if you’re the League or the AEU or the Union, even a remote possibility of cracking the Gundam mystery is worth a battalion of your own MSs (considering each Gundam is presumably as powerful as a battalion all by itself).

    On another note, it’s due time that we finally get a Gundam show where the Gundams aren’t all-powerful, and the pilots are still human when it comes to piloting (aka. can make mistakes). At least in terms of the battles, 00 is at least shaping up to be a better series than SEED.

    Kai
    Reply

  17. ….well, that post came out totally wrong. Lets try that again:

    Felt: Nii-sama~~~ ;_;

    Lockon: Yes, fly into the waiting arms of your elder brother, little sister! =D

    Felt: Nii-sama! >.

    Kurotetsu
    Reply

  24. @Omni:
    It’s kind of unsettling how you and I have the same tendencies/reactions towards anime (Clannad, now G00).

    I was saying a couple of episodes how Felt is becoming one of my favorite characters…

    偶然だろう？

    divine
    Reply

  26. Neil Delandy, eh?

    Mm, he’s still stupid sexy Lockon to me. And there are two of them.

    Lockon + Felt = brother/sister relationship of D’awww.

    Of course this may just be setting him up for death. Which would make me sad.

    Great episode.

    cantfakethefunk
    Reply

  30. LIONS AND LAMBS….ONE DAY IS THE LIONS DAY….BUT TODAY WAS THE LAMBS DAY….AND COME ON WITH 5 PEOPLE WORKING ON A BRIDGE AND ONLY ONE “RETARDED” CONTROLLING AND NOT KNOWING HOW TO OPERATE….THIS PLOT SUCKED VERY HARD HERE!!!
    BUT IF SOMEBODY DIES I´LL BE HAPPY….COME KILL SOMEONE NOW!!!THE AUDIENCE IS DROPPING FAST……………..

    Tensai Otaku
    Reply

  36. I wouldn’t say that the plot sucked Tensai, maybe you could explain… Anyways, I just think the show started multiple plot developments in one episodes. Christina, Allejuah, Sumeragi, Felt, and Lockon development, Saji sister setting out to find the truth and coming down to the fact that Celestial Being is not the perfect organization.

    One thing though is that they’re revealing the past of different characters very very slowly, and by slowly, I mean super slowly. Development needs to go faster. Btw, anyone see some Lockon fights turn into a Gundam Seed Mu la Fraga vs. Rau…. I hope it doesn’t end up like that.

    Sora no Kaze
    Reply

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    JOEL PEREZ
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