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「秘密のモビルスーツ」 (Himitsu no Mobiru Suutsu)
“Secret Mobile Suit”
After getting a glimpse of a UE mobile suit at Madorna’s workshop last time, I’m still torn over whether I’d be happier if he actually turned out to be an accomplice. I like how he and his wife Laraparly remain “good” people in the story — the latter of whom started nudging Emily toward becoming Flit’s supportive girlfriend — but I’m somewhat disappointed at the missed opportunity for a huge conspiracy involving the UE. With the way things stand now, it’s still very possible that the UE — or more specifically Eden — came from the future though. “Yark Dole” is revealed to be Gira Zoi from episode five, and Desil Galette the pilot of the black “Zedas” mobile suit, making them the faces of the UE and confirming what the trading card game inadvertently revealed over a month ago.
Thus far, there hasn’t really been anything to disprove the theory that Eden’s taken it upon themselves to guide mankind towards technological growth. Instead, there’s been plenty to support the notion that the destruction or subjugation of mankind is not their goal, such as Desil’s decision to call his mobile suit back when he had Flit and Woolf pinned down. The UE’s unusual timing for retreats has been the most confusing aspect to their attacks, which is why I’m leaning toward the idea that they have some greater goal in mind. It draws some similarity to the premise of Gundam 00 too, where Celestial Being made themselves enemies of the world for what they believed to be the greater good. I rather enjoyed the whole “armed intervention” bit in Gundam 00, so I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing something as radical in Gundam AGE even if we’re viewing it from the Federation’s perspective. After all, it sure beats the possibility that Eden’s just messing around with mankind.
As for this episode in particular, I didn’t find anything to be overly convenient progression-wise, outside of Vargas’ speedy Gundam delivery service (“5 seconds flat or your money back!”) and maybe the decompression of the Shaldoll cockpit as Flit hopped into Titus without a spacesuit on. The first wasn’t nearly as unbelievable as the truck delivery, whereas the second I was a little forgiving of because Woolf did tell Flit that he has fifteen seconds max in a hard vacuum and to exhale his lungs before decompression so they don’t pop. Yes, it still stretches believability on how Flit’s eardrums, sinuses, and blood vessels didn’t rupture within seconds of rapid decompression, but for the purpose of an anime, it’s better than if Flit simply hopped cockpits thinking there would be no risk. Humor-wise, I actually got a good chuckle out of Flit calling the G-Exes out as a knockoff Gundam, simply because everyone was probably thinking the same thing last time.
Now it may surprise some people when I say I didn’t have any major qualms with the bridge scene where Grodek finally revealed his plans to the crew and how he isn’t really their captain. It was a little hard to accept that they’d believe Emily’s eyewitness account of Dian talking about abandoning Nora, but it wasn’t too hard to swallow with Woolf confirming that it’s something the Federation captain would pull. I would’ve been more bothered if the entire crew got on board Grodek’s thirst for revenge and became rebels without any objections, so hats off to Adams for being the voice of reason in a fairy tale-like development. However, it wouldn’t reflect well on the crew if they didn’t rally together after learning that the Federation was going to let their colony be destroyed, so if I had to choose between this outcome and everyone marching off of the Diva, I’d have to go with what happened here. Granted, the addition of Euba and Zalam is questionable at best, seeing as they sorely lack firepower to take on UE, but at least Grodek has pilots with some experience. The AGE System is set to churn out the Spallow (not “Sparrow” surprisingly) parts too, as hinted several times in this episode and confirmed in the preview, so I guess its speed is going to be the difference-maker next time.
Preview
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Omake
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just 2 episodes & the heavyweight champion gundam was placed out of commission for ninja gundam.
looks like Laraparly’s small talk with Emily manages to turn her character around.
Looks like things are gearing up for the end of this era’s storyline.
And Spallow looks pretty badass in the preview. Can AGE get the viewers back?! Find out next time!
@Divine: There’s just one thing that is problematic with your comparison to Celestial Being and Gundam 00. CB never intentionally destroyed entire colonies and killed mass scores of civilians. I’ll have a hard time accepting their “ends-justify-the-means” approach if that is indeed the case with Eden. There better not be a whole forgiveness plot because Eden has a lot of innocent blood on their hands (targeting civilians is going a little bit too far for a greater cause).
I never meant to imply that their approaches are the same — only that they both used radical means and made themselves enemies of the world.
The spallow kind of looks like a mini double o raiser xD i am gundaaaaaaaaam!
Like I said, First Generation is going to end pretty soon. They even spit out the “rival machine”(Gira Zoi’s black UE, the only one Flit wasn’t able to defeat in Episode 1+2, and typical mechanic to transforming into a plane) and last upgrade to age-1(and making the latter an epic fail cliff hanger. lol). This timely attack by UE seems like a plot device to show off spallow and stuff in more episodes so they can use Diva’s attack towards UE base as a conclusion to first generation.
Emily finally realize she’s in love with Flit. Hurray for the obvious. Character Development. ^.^
On the Good Side, they finally cleared up how you can remote-upload data to the the Age system (as seen as age-system working during Gundam’s fight with the black UE). Most of the time (during the 8 episodes) they were manually uploading the data with the Gundam docked, so it’s confusing. I also do like the take on the other Point of View to UE’s “Armed Intervention” to prepare humankind though. I like 00(esp. 1st Season) a lot.
Madorna should have checked to see if the UE suit had a cockpit
On the upside, since he’s talking about all sorts of “design principles” and stuff about the Zedas, he should have a detailed scan of the unit, right?
Though I did have to laugh about the untouchable UE outsourcing the upgrades of their almost invincible units.
At 9 episodes in, this puts us AT LEAST halfway through Flit’s arc, right?
Gotta say, I have a hard time figuring out how they’re gonna handle the transition to his son.
maybe the arc ends with a grown up Flint talking to his son
“and that’s, how i met your mother.”
according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_suit#Exposure_to_space_without_a_spacesuit , it’s fit perfectly with Wolf said.
wow… now this is informative…
now that scene in macross where hikaru went out to space seems plausible now too…
Thanks for the explanation. Flit’s jump is quite beliveable then, though the animation lacked the environmental’s air decompression.
I guess those giant posts were deleted? Thanks Divine.
Yeah, way too spammy.
And here I went through the trouble of filtering out all the background comments and even making it so the brackets wouldn’t hide the names once I realized the error I made.
As Gundam Underage draws to its close, I’m disappointed its ending.
huh?…are you referring to this story arc or the series? The series is most likely going to run for at least 50 episodes
with AGE and 00 comparison brought up so blatantly by Divine, I think I have to say something about it:
Eden’s current method of “trashing” colonies felt more of a suppression of normal humans, as well as cherry-picking the “newtypes” to their cause, seeing how Desil just told whoever is piloting/remote-piloting the Zedas to back off as more of a amusement to him (ya, I’m not as convinced that he is piloting that monstrosity).
Another thing to nitpick: does AGE system have monitoring systems connected to Diva’s sensors? I thought Flit has to connect the AGE device to some offloading unit to transmit data to the system in order to process the data.
…
(crap, did I just wrote a run-on sentence without anyway to rewrite it?)
Caption time: Ramming always works, but remote ramming might not work.
…and I think I’ll try not to compare the remote launchings between Arios and AGE Titus…
The way these gundam characters are drawn and behave, we forget that they are actually 14-15 year olds who definitely should not be acting that way. They’re acting like 8 year olds seriously.
Got to agree with Divine about Madorna. It would have been interesting if Madorna was an accomplices with the UE, but this episode burned that bridge. I guess G-Exes will just have to be some crazy custom machine. I did get a laugh when Madrona started confiding with Asuna on MS mechanics. “Men and their toys” indeed. It still brings the question of what the Zedas was doing there. I can only assume that the UE were purposely trying to draw attention
Flit gets some massive steel balls though, for leaping into a space vacuum with no suit. Also Emily isn’t an insufferable twat anymore. That’s always a plus.
The thing is, the age system feels a little OP at this point. Well, not really OP, but it creates things far too fast. I would have liked to watch Woolf mentor Flit, so that Flit can improve his piloting skills, which would lead to less reliance on the age system.
I found it weird that someone who can make the g-exes, with his place being attacked, could only lend those weird weak mobile suits with virtually no weapons. The plan to attack UE seems to be suicidal as well, especially if its just Zalam and Euba helping. Please give them some of them dots rifles, cause those spray guns they use won’t do.
Why do i feel like because of this suicide mission, someone may pull a kamina in the next episodes? Don’t die Woolf! Don’t try to make the impossible possible. xD
I wonder Why they disassemble the whole mobile suit first, get every freaking data about it and build another one. Hello, that mobile suit mobility and armor are top of it class and we see in ep 1 about how much UE keep their technology secret. BTW that UE transform like a flag except for it rifle
This is what? …the… SEVENTH tanned girl with purple hair in anime I’ve seen who’s oozing sexiness? Those colors seem to go together well.
Madorna should have a partial or full UE schematics right? That could be very very useful, possibly more so than the AGE system. The AGE system is useful for playing catch up when your tech level is lower than others but when your tech level is higher than anyone else, it becomes useless as there are no challenges to overcome. The UE schematics should allow a much more immediate and larger boost to all performance statistics.
Also will someone just give the Titus a DOTS rifle? The effect of high mobility of reduced if you’re engaging at range. The enemy is likely to remain within your visual area (like how a far away race car moves so slowly across your vision compared to a race car 3m in front of you). Flit is not going to hit anything given his absymal piloting and gunnery skills but at least he won’t have to constantly be ninjaed from behind, however funny that was.
The good thing about this episode was the transfer between mecha at least having some quick nod to physics and biology though as Divine pointed out, doesn;t really account for several areas.
I Found that Ambush scene quite funny as well.
UE: Surprise Butt***! xD
Not just the Titus, either. Preview shows the colony factions using their normal equipment as well, so they may as well be unarmed.
So while it’s Diva + 4 ships + colony MS against the UE, what it really breaks down to is Diva (which can’t even hit the UE MS) + beam cannons on ships (assuming they work) + useless + Gundam + G Exes + useless (sorry Largan, but you are).
awww~~ no more gundam maxter? i expected it to perform a spinning tornado attack with all the laser spikes (shoulders&knees) as a finishing move~ XD
But the scene of them rushing out to chase the enemy with no weapons at their disposal…. ahem
I have only been following the posts off and on but i had to comment on that orange one in the first pic. That really trips memories of Super Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross for me. Like the enemy mechs from that show I love the space helmet face plate designs. What a treat this retro design is to see.
And since we have Normal>Gafran, Titus>Baqto, and Spallow>Zedas… next episode, the UE send out a few of each, causing the AGE system to either melt down or give up entirely and just spit out Freedom.
As for the AGE system, if all it needs to develop more powerful armor is to be put in a situation that it can’t adapt the current equipment to, why not just run a simulation against some imaginary completely broken enemy? It’d then churn out something that would be able to solo the UE stronghold.
We’re also seeing just how poor a pilot Flit is, though. Once again, he has the element of surprise, manages to hit (for the only time in the battle) the Baqto, and he does it with a punch instead of all of the beam sabers on the Titus.
Not sure how much I like the idea of how quickly everyone jumps on board with mutiny and treason, though. The sort of bloodthirst that Flit and Grodek display also would (in my mind, at least) disqualify the both of them from command and combat roles (close emotional attachment to the enemy is a BAD THING for command and combat decisions)…but that’s not something I worry too much about in an anime.
I like the idea of how quickly everyone jumps on board. I hate anime with characters that are afraid to fight or don’t to want to kill anyone.
I like when they just do what have to do.
And looks like the UE Mobile Suits are like those Mobile Dolls from Gundam Wing.
Rather late, but it’s not that they don’t want to fight or whatever… they literally agreed to TREASON in about thirty seconds!
the real question is will the AGE system also spit out a Kira Jesus Yamato along with the Freedom?
The sad part is that even he would be an improvement over the current characters.
I don’t know, but we’re in episode 9, one Gundam upgrade, and it’s still pretty difficult for them to fight against UE. LOL.
https://randomc.net/image/Gundam%20AGE/Gundam%20AGE%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2011.jpg
I think this sums up the show pretty well.
How exactly?
From left to right.
First picture: Oh sista what the f*** is this show
Second picture: Oh no he (Akihiro Hino) didn’t.
Third picture: =O people think I’m a little b****?!?! Say whaaat?
Jokes.
Wow, I really hope this isn’t nearing the end of Flit’s arc; that would be EXTREMELY disappointing. I thought this would be a 3 season show with each addressing a new protagonist (Flit’s offspring). I was expecting a comprehensive story along with each new generation, starting with the first. Perhaps I expected too much from this series but maybe I spoke too soon. We’ll see.
On another note, this is the first time I’ve ever skipped parts of a Gundam episode because it was too unbearably bad. Gundam has always alleviated my stress during final exam season but Gundam Age seems to be doing the opposite. I hope the rest of you are enjoying the series, though.
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