Note: this is a rant, and a pretty big one. Mushrambo, or Shinzo as it’s also been called, is one of the guilty pleasures that I watched when I was still in my early teens, back when Dutch children’s television had yet to descend into utter crap. My taste was pretty bad at the time, but I loved catching the latest episode on television despite the series’ very obvious flaws (the two biggest fights took up 6 and 10 (!) episodes respectively and the plot suffered from some pretty bad inconsistencies (what can I say, my taste was pretty bad at the time; I was fourteen…)). So when I learned about a remake of this series on movie, by none other than the director of Mononoke, I obviously got excited to relive my teenage memories.

Well, I’d like to thank this series for completely destroying them. The movie became nothing but a freaking recap. And a very bad one as well. It’s clear that there went absolutely no budget whatsoever in this thing, and I have no idea what the director of Mononoke was thinking here.

The problem with recap movies like this one is that they take series that have a slow pacing which they use to build up their characters for A REASON. Ultimately we now have a cut-and-paste job of the best scenes of the series that move way too bloody fast to prove any sort of credibility. It’s here where a capable writer manages to condense the story so that it can create a proper story within ninety minutes, but either the director had a really bad day when he wrote this series, or the producers were sleeping through the production process and only realized that nothing had been done a day before the deadline (because really, this is the kind of movie that you can easily make within a day, and I’m really not exaggerating here).

Nothing is explained whatsoever for the ones who are new to the premise. In fact, at one point it’s so bad that the characters look back at events that NEVER EVEN HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE. At one point in the series, for example, the lead characters get an upgrade in power. This upgrade is completely skipped in the movie, and yet the characters costumes magically changed themselves.

One of the things I hoped for in this movie is an number of very sweet graphics (because despite the clichés, I remember how a lot of very nice ideas were put into the setting and it would be awesome to see what they’d look like with a movie budget), but to my despair, the graphics look even more horrible than I remembered them. It’s one thing for a movie to simply look the same, but this movie actually looks and sounds WORSE than the TV-series. WHAT!?

If I had to mention the worst part of this movie, then it’d be the voice acting. If there’s anything that comes close to downright abysmal, then it’s the voice actors of the lead characters. These guys did the impossible: they made Dutch voice-actors sound awesome. I never knew that depths like these existed.

Overall, I watched this for the sake of nostalgia. There’s no possible reason why you should torture yourself with an hour and a half of this thing. I can’t believe that Toei put Mononoke’s director on such a large piece of crap when there’s so much potential left in the guy. I know that the original series wasn’t exactly good, but it was still pretty successful in terms of its entertainment value and it had some really neat ideas for a shounen series; it was nowhere near the levels of crap that the movie explores. I’d almost say that this is some kind of rickroll, but why would someone go through the trouble for such an unknown series, let alone find its raws?

Short Synopsis: Gundam goes Macross as the Ptolemy needs to escape last episode’s battlefield.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Haha! I knew it! Sunrise is really planning to make this the next Gundam Wing: a coup d’etat is brewing inside A-Laws, and the way it looks like it’s actually going to be well executed. I remember how the rebel forces in Gundam Wing came from bloody nowhere, but in this series it’s instead carefully introduced, before it finally can hit its climax. At this point, I can only wonder how the creators can bring back Marina Ismael to the Relena-clone that she once was…

This episode was also great in terms of original content. I like the added bit of irony that Ribbons was the one who scouted Setsuna in the first place, and made him a Gundam Pilot. That also just show that innovators age a bit different from normal human beings. Either that or Rivonze was a very gifted child…

Then there’s of course the Macross-ish singing, which for once didn’t save a good guy, but rather kept a villain alive. I’m really not a fan of the invisible speakers that Marina somehow managed to conjure out of nowhere, but he idea is nice and I wonder how far the creators can bring it. At the moment, the Gundams are at the top of their abilities, and I don’t think that they’re going to get much stronger than they are now, so it’s now up to A-Laws (and the future rebels who plan the coup d’etat) to catch up with them in terms of technology again, and this episode showed the first steps to it, in terms of Mister Bushido’s new mobile suit. I have a strong suspicion that he’s one of the people planning the Coup d’etat, especially because of his connections with Zechs.

Also, there seems to be indeed a spy on board of the Ptolemy, but it doesn’t seem to be Anew Returner. It’s probably someone who’s been in the shadows for a while… how about the new girl who replaced Lichty in the second season?

As expected, this episode showed the new OP, while we have to wait an episode for the new ED. And as expected, it’s a nice song with nice visuals, but nothing really special. It’s a pity, since Gundam Wing was the one with the best OPs of any Gundam I’ve seen so far.