Rating: A
Rewatchable: Yes
Gundam Wing is one of the AU Gundam series. In the future, the colonies were built and relations between Earth and the colonies was happy until the United Earth Sphere Allience decides to take over the colonies in the name of 'peace'. *ahem* Colony leader Heero Yuy, an advocate of real peace, is assisinated, and the colonies become disorganized. As a result, UESA manages to control the colonies. In an act of rebellion, five Gundams are sent to Eath to retaliate against UESA, and namely OZ, the secret organization within the UESA responsible for assinating Heero Yuy. Enter the series.
This is, in some ways, a typical mecha show. You've got your Gundams which go around blowing things up. You've got your bad guys that start wars and try and take over everything. Basicly, if you look at the surface, you've got a typical shonen series.
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
One of the main reasons I'm still into GW is the fact that it's a very complicated series. Not only do you have rival political groups and various factions within those groups, nothing is really what it seems. The lines of good and evil aren't really drawn very well. As the situation changes, the Gundam pilots (who, being the main people of the series, are naturally the good guys) become confused. They realize that the bad guys they were sent to destroymay not be the real enemy. They become lost and spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what they should do. One of the points I got out of the show is that good and bad are mostly shades of gray. Yes, in the end, there's an enemy to fight. But for a while, he wasn't the bad guy. And you realize at the very end he isn't a bad guy at all. He was the enemy, yes, but his reasons for doing so were valid. Not that I think the extreme he went to was good, but it was understandable.
The other main reason I still enjoy GW is the characters themselves. I think the creators took a lot of time developing characters that could very well be real people. There aren't really any simple people. Hilde probally comes closest, but she has her twists as well. There are also no static characters in GW. Everyone changes, if only a little bit. Probally the biggest character change was Relena. A lot of people bash her because she's annoying, or she stalks Heero, or she drives a pink car. Granted, she can be annoying, espically at the beginning of the TV series! But by the end, she's grown up quite a bit. She still has her immature moments, but she's learning how to handle herself in the real world. And if you ever read the manga, the change is even more apparent. In fact, I prefer manga Relena to the TV version, simply because she makes more sense in the manga. But either way, she changes and grows. So does every character in the series. That kind of character development is what I do enjoy watching in drama, which is why GW is still on my favorites list.
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