In this episode, a berserk Saber Marionette rides around in Sailor Moon Gundam, blows up VR games, and tries to fight Domon with a ribbon. This is probably the craziest episode of the series, so hold on tight.

As the episode begins, Algo- of all people- is getting beaten up by a little girl. A little girl in a ribbon-covered robot, no less. What's going on here? Apparently, Neo-Sweden's pint-sized, blue-haired Allenby Beardsley is a mite tougher than she looks. Adding insult to injury, it took her less than 50 seconds to win against Algo. That's enough to make anyone "lose all confidence as a man", as Lloyd Irving once put it. Naturally, a worried Domon demonstrates heretofore unknown powers of disguise (huh?) in order to get the skinny on Allenby from Algo. All Algo can tell him is "be careful".

And then for something completely different. Those two ubiquitous kids lead Domon and Rain into a video arcade, which suffers from a terminal case of Pac-Man Fever (link may contain language), despite the "distant future" setting. (Apparently, no more war means no more RO or WoW either). Someone is completely owning everyone else at a popular fighting game; surprise, surprise, it's Allenby. Domon, not realising that she's a Fighter too, challenges her to a quick game. In fact, it turns out that both are so great at fighting that the game can't handle it, and promptly explodes. Wait, what?
A small trampling mob forms, everyone gets out fine, and Allenby starts to dash at the first sign of coppers. (I notice that Domon doesn't, despite having a fairly substantial criminal record...) Domon stops her in order to get her name, since he wants to be friends. Rain witnesses this part and, um, probably gets the wrong idea, not without justification. After all, the look on Domon's face as he looks at Allenby is probably his most affectionate expression in the entire series.

Domon, lost in love-love, takes a minute or two to make the crucial connection ("Allenby Beardsley equals famous Gundam Fighter") in his mind. Nice thought process there, mate.
Meanwhile, it's time to play with the ol' Wong and Master Asia cabal. As Wong munches on choco-eggs (huh, is it Easter already?), Asia's getting mighty suspicious of this Allenby Beardsley girl. Why is a petite seventeen-year-old girl able to defeat grown men three times her size (outside of Pretty Face, anyway)? Why are all her Fights under a minute long? And how has such an excellent Fighter managed to stay out of the public eye for so long? None of it adds up. There's definitely something more to Allenby than a pretty Gundam, or so Shishou has concluded. And so, just to see, it's decided that Allenby's next opponent will be everyone's favourite obnoxious samurai boy: Domon! Yeah, I bet no one saw that one coming, Wong.

Back to Allenby, she's suddenly acting more Rei than Lime- and she's getting quite the scolding from a poor-man's Gendo. Huh, weird. He doesn't approve at all of her going out and playing video games, much less blowing them up in a physically impossible manner. One of Al's attending doctors (I'm seeing shades of Gunslinger Girl's Giuseppe in him, and he doesn't seem to have gotten a name, so we'll call him "Giuseppe" for now) notes a change in her brain waves, and asks her sweetly if something fun happened to her. She promptly chews him out for "reading her thoughts", apparently totally misunderstanding his intent. (He did have to ask what happened, so I'm a little confused as to whence she's getting this mind-reading stuff. One might as well complain that someone with a basic grasp of body language is also an evil telepath...) Naturally, Allenby decides to sneak out that night and play, just to bother the nice doctors.

Would you believe it, another cute and totally improbable meeting for Domon and Allenby? That's right, this time it's the patented Ayu-Crash. Harem antics really abound in this episode, eh?
Allenby ends up hanging out with Domon and company, and notes that she's never had such a fun time doing something like eating dinner. When asked if it's okay for her to stay out so late, then, she complains that her dutiful pit squad (geneticists and all) is annoying to her, since she doesn't think they see her as a person. Rain tells her that no matter how they treat her, teammates are teammates, and they have to stick together if they want to win. This severely pisses off Allenby, and she relates her very dubious history: the government adopted her when she was an orphan, and she's been raised coldly as a super-soldier ever since. (The legality of that whole story is rather questionable.) Still, she's fine now, since she's found a real reason to fight: to beat Domon. Because they couldn't finish the video game. Wow, petty.
As the Fight is about to begin the next day, the officials from Neo-Sweden start discussing battle plans. It looks like they've got something really crooked up their collective sleeve, but Allenby wants none of it— she wants a fair fight to settle the gamer grudge. Yeah, Allenby, they only created you to win the tournament at any cost— of course they'll be fine with letting you lose over a video game. Why didn't you say so earlier?
A fairly close Fight begins, and— for the first time— exceeds Allenby's one-minute mark. It's then realised that Domon and Allenby are really, seriously, having fun, testing each others' limits just like they did in the game. "Giuseppe" is amazed, since he's never seen Allenby so happy. But, of course, her other Handlers aren't so concerned about Allenby's emotional well-being. They want to win Earth, so it's out with the sneaky tricks.

The change is immediate. Allenby is rather suddenly not herself, to say the least. She totally snaps and becomes a classic berserker. Despite the fact that she is now glowing red and looks completely different, though, Domon only notices one thing: her punches. They no longer have any real feeling or heart behind them. They may be strong, but that's it. Even from a distance, Master Asia can see as well— Berserker Allenby just doesn't have a fighter's soul. Domon helplessly to knock some sense into her. This is one of the key morals presented in the series: if we create a setting where fighting doesn't cause permanent harm, perhaps it can go from a bad way of settling conflicts to a good way for people to communicate. You can't win just by wanting to; you have to trust in yourself and your friends, and you have to do your absolute utmost. Praying desperately to get through to her, Domon uses the God Finger with all his heart. Allenby recalls that this was simply not the kind of Fight she wanted, and returns to normal, breaking the Berserker system in the process. As oddly romantic saxophone music plays, the two are able to Fight properly and normally, the way they wanted to. Domon wins, but who cares? It was fun, and that was what really mattered. Even Dr. Giuseppe is willing to say so, and Master Asia agrees that Allenby really does have potential. It's a happy ending all around.

Nattō

For absolutely no reason whatsoever, this episode throws us the weird curveball that Domon is some kind of über-spy. He even manages to masquerade as Algo's driver without anyone (not even that scary guard lady) noticing at all. Look, Domon is not a ninja. His thing is that he's a samurai. That's why his Gundams look like that, that's why he carries a sword everywhere, and that's why we call him "obnoxious samurai boy", can ye dig it?

The arcade scene. Hoo boy. Apparently future arcades include such wondrous games as "wiggle your fingers at circles with a look of intense concentration" and "make ToHeart's Akari run through Strong Bad Zone". Also there are no rhythm games at all, despite them having been the single crowning glory of arcades in real life. And where to begin with what's wrong with Allenby's game? The announcer, maybe? It would have been great, albeit a time paradox, if Domon and Allenby had faced off with a game that resembled but was legally distinct from Pop'n Music. (DDR's already been done in a couple of series, but no sign of Pop'n anywhere.) One theme of the show is "humans will always compete and we can't change that", and something OTHER than a fighting game would have contributed to that theme, showing that there are ways (like the Gundam Fight) of competing without anyone getting hurt. Besides, the explosion scene just would've been ten times funnier if produced by a super-fast game of Pop'n Music.

Most ridiculous arcade ever? Most ridiculous arcade ever.

If Domon has won so many Fights by learning his opponents' secret moves beforehand, why is Allenby willing to accept his challenge and possibly show off her own abilities too early? Good grief, girl, learn what your enemy looks like, at least.

What are some things that can make a computer explode? Contact with liquids, which can cause a short. Blocking the cooling system, which makes it overheat. Playing a video game really fast? That's just going to make the game lag, at best.

With my Moe-Moe Perceive System, I must conclude: Domon's harem is total weaksauce. He's got a tsundere childhood friend (without pigtails, even) and a bokukko, and that's about it. I would have at least thrown in a cool big sis, and maybe a hotblood-girl. (Given the love triangle developments and the nature of Allenby's introduction, I feel no remorse whatsoever at the thought of putting moe-moe girls into G Gundam.)

Trivial, trivial thing: the newspaper clipping Domon holds up from time to time in this episode features lovely black-and-white photographs. I excused the sepia-toned picture of the Kasshu family (in season one) because it was a really old picture, and the colour in really old pictures can fade, but this is apparently a hot-off-the-presses newspaper in the future. That just burns my biscuit.

Can you see what's wrong with this picture? I'll give you a hint: it gives Allenby a "statue" stat, amongst other things.

When did this become a shoujo anime? Seriously.

What's with Allenby's attacks? Mr. Nobel invented dynamite, not hula hoops. Or ribbons, come to that.

Why was it that the Gendo's response to "the Berserker system is broken" was not "WELL BUILD ANOTHER ONE THEN"? It's abundantly clear that he doesn't give a fig whether Allenby is happy or not.

The Moments We've All Been Waiting For

I love Nobel Gundam so much, mainly because it's so silly-looking that I kinda feel bad for it. I mean, come on- a sailor uniform Gundam? It fights with a gymnastics ribbon? Why is this the robot they're putting their genetically-enhanced super-soldier into? (I hope someone's done a "Motteke! Sailor Fuku" parody with Allenby already, preferably with the JAM Project cover version. It's almost too logical.)

I would totally play the Akari Escapes from a Laser Tunnel game.

Allenby somehow reminds me of the Saber Marionettes, especially Lime. Just look at her proportions, her manner of walking, her hair and eye colour, and her clothes(especially that navy jumpsuit)...then remember that she's a cheerful waifish blue-haired supergirl with the strength of ten Grinches plus two. Yeah.

The dialogue and a shot of a betting table suggests that people are betting on the arcade game. Like, with actual money. I guess that's why there are so many random bystanders watching the games...? ^_^;

Well, we've hit dating sim territory with ramming speed: Domon meets a mysterious girl in a very cutesy and improbable way, helps her with a problem, misunderstandings ensue, and his childhood friend feels a little jealous. Look, that's the entire plot of ToHeart right there. (Ironically, G Gundam was released before the original ToHeart eroge, so I could posit that ToHeart ripped it off- that's a sobering thought.) I don't know why Imagawa's tossing this love triangle at us, since Rain has basically had "THIS GIRL WILL WIN" written all over her in about thirty languages since the episode with the Canadian guy. Still, I have The Eyes That See Moe, so I'm not complaining.

Allenby wins a medal in Moe-lympics for her epic vertical crash-into-hello. That's right, she comes flying right out of the sky and lands right on her suitor's head. Ouch, the cute. (For the uninformed in dating sim policies, it's a real classic/cliché for the male and female protagonists to meet by running or biking right into each other. Jumping and landing on him, though? That's as new now as it was when the series aired. It's kind of funny what sticks and what doesn't when it comes to moe stereotypes.)

In retrospect, I should've figured out sooner that Allenby was going to go axe crazy. She's practically a deconstruction of the dating-sim heroine (years before such heroines had mainstream popularity), right down to the improbable age, funky hair colour, tragic past (if Jun Maeda wrote scenarios while drunk, we'd end up with this), and silly string of coincidences that lead her to the main guy. He doesn't pick her in the end. What's her reaction? Totally snapping, breaking out the DG cells and Nobel Gundam—which are more-or-less boxcutters on a grander scale—and goin' after that victorious childhood friend, yelling about how much she loves Domon all the while. All this, and yet everyone acted like yandere were something new and interesting when School Days and SHUFFLE! came along. Otaku have very short memories, I guess.

The reason why I hate it when people compare G Gundam to Dragonball Z is that, as demonstrated here, the battles in G Gundam are brief. Allenby takes down a Shuffle Alliance member (think about that!) in thirty seconds of real time, and her battle with Domon is maybe ten minutes long. Even the series' most significant Fights (Domon vs. Shuffle Alliance members, Asia, or Kyoji) take half an episode at maximum. Heck, even these "fighting tournament" episodes manage to develop the characters beautifully. That's because the focus isn't on the fights themselves, but on how they affect Earth's people. (And the combat isn't exactly painted in a rosy light, either. This is Gundam, after all.) Compare that to Dragon Ball Z, wherein many battles take up entire episodes in and of themselves. Also, it's explicitly stated that the Gundam Fight was created to replace war, making a way for people to compete without killing each other. Actual mortal combat is frowned upon, and everyone panics when Ulube declares himself ruler of the solar system and tries to end the Gundam Fight, worrying that it will herald a return to world wars. G Gundam might resemble Dragonball superficially, but the two series are complete opposites in terms of their most basic principles.

Next Time

Chibodee is afraid of clowns, Rain temporarily turns into Minmei, and Domon makes a fool of his Caped Wall self. Episode 31: "The Bewitching Pierrot! Enraged Gundam Maxter"

Guide: 06/29/08 | Posted By: Tally Solleni | 0 comments | G Gundam