This show is a mess
With everyone crying that the plot makes no sense and even its creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino, giving it "15 points out of 100," I approached with caution. While some things bugged me at first, I pressed on, telling myself, 'It's not that bad, Turn-A was worse.' Eventually, however, I caved in about 2/3 of the way through. This is the worst Tomino Gundam by a mile. While the animation, music, mechs, etc are all great, this series fails so hard on story and characters that it simply isn't worth watching.
As many have pointed out, this series is simply too complicated. There are so many countries, factions, ships, mechs, and characters that it quickly becomes incoherent. And it's not that the story is impossible to understand, it's actually pretty simple when you boil it down. Rather, it's that nothing has any flow or purpose to it. Reconguista is so obsessed with its own military/sci-fi minutiae that there's generally only a minute or two per episode left over for story and characters. Anyway, the show basically amounts to a dogpile war where 4 separate countries are all at war with each other for control of earth. They're constantly allying and betraying one another, while trying to obtain the most powerful weapons. If the original Gundam was a World War 2 metaphor, then Reconguista would definitely parallel World War 1, with all-out war escalating in the face of rapidly evolving military technology. That's actually a decent premise for a Gundam show, but it's handled so poorly that I never felt invested in anything.
In the middle of this conflict is a typical White-Base-type space ship that houses most of the protagonists. While the different countries have clear motivations, pretty much everyone on this main ship has no motivation for anything they do. They're on a happy-go- lucky space adventure - they go wherever they please and join whatever fights they please. It also steadily pulls characters from all sides of the war onto this ship, with little justification. Our main protagonist, for example, joins this group of pirates and starts FIGHTING HIS OWN PEOPLE because
. He has a crush on one of their pilots? I think? Bell's female friend Noredo also joins the pirates because
? And the pirates let an enemy civilian on their ship because
? What I'm getting at here is that nothing is justified in this show. Things just happen with little purpose or consequence, all the way to the end. The biggest facepalm to me was a trip they take to a space station toward the end of the show. This 3 or 4 episode arc served no purpose other than to introduce one more faction to the already over-complicated dogpile war. One of the protagonists just wanted to go there so they went, and once they got there, they immediately came right back! WHY? There's not even any resolution at the end. There's one final battle and then the main character bails on everyone and climbs Mt. Fuji for no reason at all. I'd say spoiler warning but it was so random and unsatisfying that I don't even care.
Sadly, the characters in this show are about as awful as the story. Tomino seems to have airlifted in the main 3 characters from Turn-A Gundam, his last Gundam series which I also hated
(why do I keep watching these?). Bell, the main protagonist, is relentlessly positive. He keeps smiling and follows the story wherever it takes him, just like Loran in Turn A. It's impossible to get invested in a character like this because he, himself, is not even invested in anything that's going on. Even worse, his female friend Noredo spends the entire series whining and nagging, like Sochie in Turn A. That's her entire character! She just whines and nags, contributing nothing. Because y'know
that's what women do, they whine and nag *EYEROLL* (that was sarcasm if that wasn't clear – this show's portrayal of women is so terrible in many other ways
). The final character, Aida, is stuck up and unappreciative of Bell, but he never stops following her around like a puppy dog
bleh. Aside from those 3 characters, the other 50-or-so characters get hardly any characterization at all thanks to this being an over-stuffed mess.
I could compliment the animation, mech fights, or soundtrack but it would be a waste of both of our time. This show sucks, even if you're a die-hard Tomino fan. Sure, it's technically part of UC Gundam but nothing of importance happens in this show and it generally feels like it was written by a 5 year old. There are many many better Gundam series than this. Do yourself a favor and watch any of them instead of Reconguista in G.
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