Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Episode 26 and 27

I'm back and still kicking. I expect that I'll be writing more in the coming weeks as my wife gets back to work and I get fewer hours at work. Boo-urns. Anyway, two episodes!

First and foremost: Come on. Really? Setuna recruits Lockon's brother, the brother looks very similar to Lockon, and then he also takes the codename of Lockon? That's just...lazy? It's something, anyway.

After New Lockon is recruited Setsuna spins my Miss Sumeragi's place, outs her to her friend as, basically, the entire reason that Celestial Being was as effective as it was four years ago, and takes her, more or less against her will, back to space where the others are waiting. Getting the band back together can be hard.

Anyway, When Setsuna gets there there's already a battle being waged at the mothership. Tieria's doing his best, but he's barely able to keep them at bay, let alone win. Setsuna bails out of the transport while it's still in space, and right into the cockpit of a new prototype gundam with two engines in it that they've been unable to get working. But Setsuna shouts at it and bangs on the coontrols enough to get it up and going, and he wins handily.

End episode. Next one. We're rescueing...Allelujah? I guess that looks right. Anyway, Allelujah has been held in a detention centre for the last four years and for whatever reason the information gets leaked to Celestial Being. Everyone gets all upity, and a rescue mission is launched. New Lockon is included even though he's never been in a mobile suit before. And he does well. Go figure.

What I want to know is: why did they even build a replacement gundam for Dynamis if they knew Lockon was dead? Wouldn't it be easier to build the sort of Gundam that the new pilot would be most efficient with than trying to force the replacement to be as good a sniper as Lockon was before he lost his eye?

I guess not. Anywho, plan succeeds, giant robot fights, things explode, Allelujah is rescued, and they have enough time to get the princess that Setsuna has a weird love-threaten dynamic with. Saji begins to understand that just because the Gundams did bring fighting to his doorstep and made him suffer, it doesn't mean that there wasn't fighting before they showed up. End of episode.

I'm Dave, and this has been your Virtual Reality Check.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Episode 26

I'm back, folks! First chance I've had in a little while to really watch anything worth writing about. First episode of the new season. This episode felt a little weird. Maybe it's because the last few episodes of this have been so packed with crazy. Hard to say. Anyway, it's four years after the massacre of the Celestial Being operational crew. Saji, who has had everyone he cares about taken away from him because the Gundams existed, but befriended Setsuna as his idendity as the pilot of Exia was kept secret. Anyway, Saji has fulfilled his dream of going into space. He's a glorified forklift operator, from the looks of it. Anyway, his supervisor is arrested for being a rebel against the government. Saji is taken too. Guilty by association.

Setsuna breaks into the work camp that Saji is being held at (by accident. Setsuna didn't know he was there. He was there to give the government a bloody nose), and saves him from being the victim of a military weapons test. They escape the facility on Exia (who clearly hasn't been repaired at all in the last four years. Still missing an arm and half its face), they get into trouble as Exia is outdated tech, and an old comrade of Setsuna's whose name slips my mind comes to the rescue in a brand new model of Gundam. Once everyone is safe Saji flips out. The episode closes with one of the government's mobile suit's pilots revealing herself to be Louise, Saji's paramour. :O

It definitely feels different from the first half of the series, but I'm hoping things will get back into the swing of things shortly.

I'm Dave, and this has been your virtual reality check.