EPISODES 37-41
I read about it, I was warned about it and here it is: the point where this series goes downhill again.
It starts off innocently enough with the revelation of the new Nahel Argama (which is fast becoming one of my favorite ship designs) but then weird things start happening. First off, why is the AEUG suddenly so uptight about teenagers in Gundams? Probably 'cause Wong Lee doesn't like Judau much, I guess. So Judau and the Junkyard Kids pull a Star Trek III and nab the Nahel Argama for themselves, while Bright heroically sacrifice's his command to prevent Shinta and Qum from being in the show at all. YYYEEEESSSSSS!!!!
But then we revert back to the status quo of the first 17 episodes of the show where nothing much is going on, especially now that we're in the home stretch of this series. The AEUG is written off as suddenly Federation-like so that Judau and the You-Know-What's can be the stars, Haman decides to dye her hair blond and and do her best Bond Girl impression by sneaking onto the ship and then Tigerbaum. Oh, Tigerbaum....
One nice thing though is the return of Mashymre and his svelte new partner Illia Pazom. Now THIS is how Mashymre should have been from the start! He's so much more... villain-y like this. Too bad he's only going to be around for a few more episodes before following in the footsteps of Vegeta. Illia looks and sounds like an interesting character, but again, it's just too bad that she's only got a few episodes left before the end. I imagine she didn't show up earlier because she was thought up late in production perhaps?
So yeah, first the Moon-Moon sisters show up again. Why are these hippies back again? Didn't they make a big stink about how Sarasa or Rasara or whichever should not leave the colony? And now they're here and suddenly ZZ has gotten much more like the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And then Tigerbaum. Oh boy, here we go...
Now, there's nothing wrong with a colony being built to imitate environments on Earth, they do it all the time in Macross (Frontier's Island 1 was built to imitate San Francisco and Shibuya, for example) but somehow it doesn't work here. It just makes it feel like the show is suddenly caught in a bad kung fu movie. And this Stampa guy... Holy Protoculture, Jabba the Hutt is less slimy than this guy. And smarter too. This guy could have been at least creepy what with being a pervert, mafioso and pedophile but he just looks, acts and feels like a moron.
You know, I'm going to take back some of my previously words. I though Moon-Moon was the lowest point of the series... no... no, it's this. Totally this. These two episodes actually made me mad, whereas Moon-Moon just had me shaking my head and groaning.
It's all even capped off with appearances by ugly MSV suits. I swear, all it would have needed was an appearance by the Juaggu and that would have been the end of everything.
All in all, it was a descent from dramatic heights to mediocrity. And somehow I don't think it's going to get too much better. Since there's only six episodes left, the last entry will be on those episodes. Alright, final lap ahoy.
