Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (1995–1996)
2/10
This show is pretty bad.
16 March 2016
Warning: Spoilers
First off, I only did not give this a '1' for 2 reasons: first, I want to reserve '1' for something I am sure is truly the worst of the worst; and this show did have some serious "so bad it's good" laughs

Example, paraphrasing here : Guy 1: "My robots are invincible" Guy 2: "Invincible?! didn't you see that Gundam pilot kill them all!?" Guy 1: "Yes!" (What?)

"Oh no! Manager! Are you OK!?" A circus employee talking to her boss, and referring to him as "manager" when he takes a pistol-whipping for her. This is at least the 4th time we've seen the manager in the series at this point, including for most of the episode in question, and they didn't even come up with a name for him. The employee who has known him for years apparently just always calls him manager, lol.

"You claim to be protecting the weak (long pause) but, in fact (last part really stilted, followed by a long pause), you are not protecting the weak (long pause), at all!" Like he was reading his lines straight from a script with a font so huge he has to constantly flip pages.... The saddest part of the third example is that that guy is probably the BEST of the voice actors (the guy who plays Duo).

The plot involves so many people changing so many sides, and so many pointless exchanges of the "Throne" of earth, it is beyond ridiculous. Within a year, the rule of Earth goes from a UN-like body to a Corporation, to the "Romefellers" (VERY thinly veiled Rockefellers), to a teenage girl (which was power given directly from the power-greedy Romefellers who have been plotting to take over the Earth for generations after having power for maybe a couple of months), back to the head of the corporation.

The teenage girl also reformed a dead-nation in an episode without any explanation of how, and became enemy #1 to the Romefellers before they gave her the title of "Queen of Earth." Honestly, this stuff doesn't make any more sense if you watch the show, because the show doesn't even TRY to explain how it COULD make sense. The author is unsure whether this is for better or for worse though...

Lastly, the motivations of all the characters are insane. I don't think there is a single character outside of the Queen of Earth who makes any sense at all (and while her character motivations make sense, they are idealistic beyond reason, and everything that happens in her storyline also makes no sense, like making a nation from scratch and becoming Queen of Earth). They just do things for the sake of doing things, which usually involves blowing people up.

Like I said earlier, there is a LOT of side-switching, so characters end up fighting with the people they hated in the previous episode ALL THE TIME. No, really, ALL THE DAMN TIME. First the main characters (the Gundam pilots) hate the UN. Then they hate the corporation and fight with the UN. Then the Corporation gives them everything they should have wanted, but they keep fighting them anyway. Then they fight the initial people they were supposedly defending the whole time (the colonies they were supposedly fighting for initially). Then (some of them) fight with the Corporation. Then they join with the corporation (well.. half of it, because of course it splits into 2 factions, because this show doesn't have enough factions already) to fight the Romefellers. Then they fight against the corporation again. Then they fight the colonies again.

Finally, and most heinously, we are supposed to sympathize with a character whose reaction to his father being killed is to annihilate 2 colonies. While their size is never explicitly stated, the colonies contain (at least) hundreds of large skyscrapers, suggesting populations of millions, if not 10's or even 100's of millions. This kid is literally worse than Hitler, but we're supposed to like him.

Like I said originally, this show is pretty bad.
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