Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 2 (Part 1)

—Review Score: 8/10—

The first part of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 2 is over after 13 episodes. The second season continues the events in the first one after 4 year time skip. Gundam 00 Season 2 started strong, with exciting action sequences and lots of awesome mecha right from the first episode.

Using the same 4 main Gundams formula, Season 2 introduces the new and improved substitute for Exia, Dynames, Kyrios, and Virtue. 00 as the current lead mecha replaces Exia which already outdated by the start of the season; while Cherubim, Arios, and Seravee replaces Dynames, Kyrios, and Virtue respectively. Beside the main Gundams, the regular mecha looks better too. The capability of current-gen mecha in Season 2 shown as equal or even surpassing the Season 1 Gundams. These great mecha guarantee tight battles throughout the season.

Gundam Meisters were separated after the final battle in Season 1, and the first episodes of Season 2 dealt with the resurrection of Celestial Being as a whole organization. It was shown here that the characters in the second season had developed after the time skip. The characters development are not limited to their personality, the combat skills of Gundam Meisters are also improved.

The story escalates into a whole new level, with the Innovators as the new antagonists. There’s also a lot of politics and uncertainty of which character is on which side, the usual Gundam routine. The romance relationship of several characters also took center stage on a few episodes. As a whole, Gundam 00 Season 2 still convey a heavy story of war and its effects on people. The story is hard to swallow that there’s an episode without any mecha action sequence dedicated to make some points of the story clear. Several new characters also introduced in the second season, making the scale of this season felt larger than the first one.

On the visual and audio department, so far Gundam 00 Season 2 does pretty well. As with any animé, the animation quality gets better with time. The sound effects are great, so does the voice acting. However, missing from this season is the familiar Celestial Being theme that’s always played before.

Gundam 00 Season 2 tries to put a change on the general episode structure. Rather than putting ending theme after all of the current episode’s story and finishes up with next episode preview afterward, the ending theme is played on the 3/4 of the current episode’s length. This creates some extension of the current episode which helps on keeping the pace of the story high at the end of each episode. But it’s still not enough to make this season more engaging than before. As always, most of the episodes felt as a standalone, it’s just not that engaging to make you impatiently wait for the next episode.

All things considered, Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 2 is a must see animé for mecha fans, especially for Gundam fans. The combination of great action sequence, interesting story, lovable characters, and the good balance of those elements making this animé series an enjoyable entertainment package.

(Picture Credit: Gundam 00 MBS Site)