The Good about Gundam The Origin

My last post about Gundam The Origin focused on what bothered me about it, but as you know I don't like to be a negative nelly, so now that the TV version's Adult Swim run has finished let's talk about what I liked.

Number one, Sayla Mass is awesome.

It's ironic really, the main selling point of this prequel was supposed to be the origin story of Char Aznabel (the subtitle is Advent of the Red Comet) because in our modern cynical society the backstory of a villain is much more marketable then the backstory of a hero.  But low and behold it was their approach to Char I found endlessly frustrating while the story of his oft forgotten Imouto is what kept me engaged.

She was already the most underrated character of the franchise.  As you may recall I made the mistake of first checking out Origin when I hadn't seen any other UC material yet, I knew about Char because he has an entire TVTrope named after him, but I didn't know he'd also have a sister.  I was worried this was a character who was gonna be fridged before the prequel was over, then when I watched the Trilogy (when the last two episodes of the Origin OVAs weren't out yet) I saw she was still around and was thus quite happy.

In the original show/trilogy she's arguably just as important as Char and Amuro, she was present for their final confrontation and is potentially just as qualified to be a Gundam pilot.   The problem is she kept being excluded from the sequels because the Seiyu was repeatedly unavailable, now seeing her given this awesome backstory makes me even more annoyed we have no idea what she was doing during all that stuff.  If you really want to keep milking this franchise Sunrise then reboot the post OYW UC timeline now that you have another actress Japanese fans can accept as Sayla.

I also really enjoyed everything with Ramba Ral & Crowley Hamon and their group.  They were always vital to humanizing the Zeon side in the original Gundam Anime, and this prequel managed to do them justice.

I've long been annoyed at how new installments of this franchise always seem to be behind the original in having a diverse cast of interesting female characters.  When you compare the original MSG to the major western SciFi franchises of the same time in this area it blows them out of the water.  But now it seems every new Major Gundam show just opts for having a Leia/Padme wannabe as the main female lead.  So it's amusing how it took a prequel to get another Gundam Anime I'd actually watch for the women.