The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX

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Amate Yuzuriha is a high-school student living peacefully in a space colony floating in outer space. When she meets a war refugee named Nyaan, Amate is drawn into the illegal mobile suit dueling sport known as Clan Battle. Under the entry name "Machu," she throws herself into fierce battle day after day, piloting the GQuuuuuuX. Then, an unidentified Gundam mobile suit pursued by both the space force and the police appears before her, along with its pilot, a boy named Shūji.

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is an original anime project. The anime series is streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Tuesdays.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Hello, I will be your reviewer who hasn't seen the original Gundam series commenting on the newest Gundam, Gquuuuuux. I'm afraid my Gundam mainstay is Gundam Wing, although I did read the manga of the original Gundam when it was first released in English. All of this is to say that I simply don't have the background knowledge that would reveal the Easter eggs I'm assured are present here – but despite that, I had a good time with this introductory episode. (As a note, the theater run of the first three episodes never made it to my town.)

There's an intriguing mix of heady action and plot setup here. Our heroine, whose name I don't think was mentioned, is fully aware of the oddity of her situation. She knows that her world is artificial, that the “sky” is actually beneath her, and that the gravity that binds her to the surface is false. This knowledge doesn't seem entirely comfortable for her. Nonetheless, it is a piece of her everyday life, an understanding that just is until she gets kicked over by a girl jumping the turnstiles at the train station. She's knocked off balance in more than one way by this encounter, especially since the girl, either accidentally or on purpose, leaves an installer key in the redhead's backpack. When she looks it up online, she realizes that it's what allows civilian-flown mobile suits to use weapons, and from that point on, her day-to-day life is altered.

Some of the elements of this story are fairly pat. We know that the girl will be able to activate the psycommu system in the Quuuuuux Gundam because its official pilot, Xavier, can't. Naturally, the military police will try to destroy the strange mobile suit in its territory because that's what they do. And the specter of the past war with Zeon, to say nothing of Char, will hang over every action and thought the commanders of Quuuuux will have because nothing is so dangerous as nostalgia, especially when war heroes are involved. It doesn't matter who can make the psycommu system work, as long as it does.

I don't love the character designs for this, particularly our heroine's; there's something a bit too squished about her face for comfort. But the freewheeling images of mobile suits spinning through the air are excellent, and the dark color scheme gives the impression of both outer space and the weight of the past. The English dub is also pretty good, sounding natural without being too faithful to the subtitles, and my only real sticking point is that “psycommu” is still said with the “u” at the end; I would have thought in English it would be pronounced as “psycomm,” which would be more natural.

I fully expect that people with more Gundam experience will get more out of this episode than I did, and it wouldn't be my first suggestion for an entry point into the franchise. But it's still fast-paced and engaging, so if you don't mind missing a few bits and pieces, it's worth checking out.

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Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc. (Sunrise) is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.