Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (Anime Series) Review

 

CW: This show uses the f slur for queer people toward the start once and then essentially, no real life slurs are used again, for viewing advisement.

 

There are rare moments where I experience something again and it provides just as much wonder, joy or excitement as it did the first time I had said experience. I would say I still love Return of the Jedi as much as I did, but it's been a moment; UnderTale continues to be one of the most visceral emotional experiences for on each time I try a fresh copy on a console I've bought it on; even with fading, and though it's been a long time, the vivid memory of the echoes of the Outsider's was a book that stays with me even now on trying to have hope and kindness.

 

So it is with great pleasure, in the wake of finishing the disastrous original Mobile Suit Gundam anime, I find the spinoff, the 08th MS Team, to be as breath takingly beautiful to watch as it was to enjoy; though the show has moments of sheer brutality and cruelty that truly do feel as the original show, the daring to have hope in moments where it's hard to do so and the idea of reaching one another and forging a better future is paramount to this experience. Now to be clear; this is not a message to ignorantly embrace fascists, more the show realizing the human element and how that part of us can transcend boundary and find a way toward understanding.

 

The setting of this story occurs during a period of planetary and spatial unrest, the One Year War, a period where the space bound Principality of Zeon are warring with the resident Earth Federation. The purpose of this series is not only to focus on a war on the ground mostly and the lived experiences of day to day soldiers but also to look at a story as mentioned of two people; Shiro Amada, a Federation soldier and Aina Sahalin, an elite of Zeon. There's a lot of fiction and ideas this story plays to well; forbidden connection, idealism, cynicism, hope and cruelty and it hits those beats well while continually acknowledging the perceived reality and daring us to do a little bit better, to have that hope in spite of things. The animation and music are stellar when it comes to this, with the era of intensely well drawn Original Video Animation's shown in full force here. There are moments that are eyebrow raising, such as some of the use of nudity and as mentioned, a throwaway slur at the start that seems odd as it's never used again, but it's not too disconcerting; and the series itself is incredibly adept at relating to even the characters where it feels hardest too. There are a number of characters that tease the border of awful and somehow find ways to connect or to show a side to themselves that engenders enough sympathy.

 

This review isn't meant to talk much on the innate experience as part of the journey of these characters is in seeing them defy the military's idea of what they should be and do; and even using other characters as parallels as to what happens when different ambitions take centre stage, be they military leaders or scientists with no scruples. The story of this show is about figuring out what's right and rejecting the society we see in front of us when it asks us to do wrong and to accept that wrong as it is. And to have the backbone to be kind, even in a difficult situation. Perhaps that's why it still resonates with me, even to this day.

 

Picture taken from the Gundam Wiki by EfreetSchneid.

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