Browsing through Netflix’s new series, “Gundam Mass for Retaliation,” takes most of the three hours. It is a 3DCG animated series produced by Bandai in collaboration with Safehouse and was aired on the streaming device last week. There are not many redeeming qualities to be found. It seems bad, like a video game cutscene shown in the middle of the film. It looks bad, with precise dialogue delivered by shows rarely matched by the crude movements of the animated heroes. Its action sequences seem weightless in all the wrong ways for mechanical animation like Gundam, not to mention attempting to take an inspiring decision in framing the series’ combat from the perspective of those on the battlefield. But for the most part, “Gundam Mass for Retaliation” has little to say other than that it is largely a harmless waste of time.
This is a rare good thing for this series. When the show premiered, there were many doubts among Gundam fans about the idea of focusing on the original adversaries’ perspective of the show, the Principality of Zeon. While the franchise has long played with exploring the nature of right and wrong across its myriad factions, and the systemic abuses of power that can corrupt even noble intentions, “Gundam Mass for Retaliation” is set in the last month of the One Year War, the devastating star-spanning conflict between Earth and the secessionist space colony known as Zeon depicted in the original film. The mobile suit Gundam — the remnants of Zeon’s armed forces were under direct control of the ruling powers thus making them overtly fascist.
The series has always been clear about the parallels between Zeon and Nazi Germany to the point where it has given the faction a texture that surpasses this analogy. While there have been Gundam stories told with Zeon heroes before, a Western-led series telling one at this point in the franchise’s timeline leads to much hesitation about how “Mass for Retaliation” is likely to value characters who, at best, will be duty-bound soldiers “following orders only” or, at worst, supporters of what has become Zeon’s cause at this stage of the ongoing “Gundam Universal Century.”
“Mass for Retaliation” largely takes this approach at best, simply because it has little to say about its characters beyond the fact that they are soldiers and find honor in doing so. Its heroes never waver at any point about why they are fighting in a war that they are clearly losing, regardless of the atrocities they endure as their numbers dwindle, being constantly pursued by roaming packs across the Romanian countryside through a new deadly prototype suit belonging to the Union, the Gundam EX. Their simple description ends with the phrase, “We are soldiers and we do what we are told,” even when joined by an external doctor in the field, Dr. Kasuga (Maxwell Powers), who constantly pushes them to reconsider. Why do they keep shedding blood. For a series that has always reckoned with the politics of violence, on both human and mechanical bodies alike, it seems like an incredibly missed opportunity. Yet again, the alternative was a profoundly unstable valuing of fascism’s creeping ascendancy, so perhaps this was for the best.
That is until its baffling ultimate moments. In the culmination of the six-episode series, “Mass for Retaliation,” the primary protagonist, Captain Eria Solari (Celia Massingham), clashes with Gundam EX in a desperate final battle to buy time for her remaining friends to return to Zeon forces in space, and to contact a Gundam pilot who slew her soldiers. The mobile suit squad have spent the last six episodes attempting to wipe them and their allies out. After realizing that the Gundam is being piloted by a child soldier – one of the Union’s early attempts to exploit the younger generation and harness their burgeoning Newtype powers’ cognitive and psychic understanding – Solari convinces him, being a mother herself, that both have long since tired of fighting each other, be it as individuals or as exemplars of the Union and Zeon at large. But tragedy strikes: one of Solari’s fighter pilots defending the evac fleet stabs Gundam in the back as he distracts her with a cry, instantly killing the pilot and instilling fear in Solari.
In the climactic storytelling of the series, this moment spurs Solari to carve out a new life for herself, choosing to stay on Earth and fight with the remaining Zeon forces in Africa. She describes her new comrades in Africa bluntly as remaining forces, pockets of Zeon’s military left behind after the war that continue to fight even after the defeated Principality signed a peace treaty with the Union.
We have seen stories of these remnants, in Africa and all around the globe, throughout the Century’s tales that followed the first Gundam Century: vital elements in shaping the world and playing a role in it as the direct heir to Zeta Gundam and ZZ Gundam showcased in later entries like OVAs “Stardust Memory” and side stories across a series of visual media like manga and video games. Their primary goal being that they don’t just try to continue the One Year War to a devastating end, but their ongoing resistance paves the way for an eternal conflict that drags both the Earth Federation (whose governing system is a perennially criticized source in later Universal Century texts, moving away from the heroic minimalist power portrayed at the outset) and the eventual collapse of Zeon into multiple leftover political and military movements in increasingly bleak places.
Decades of conflict after the One Year War, including the near-destruction of Earth itself in “Char’s Counterattack,” partially scars these countless times of endless operations. Mobile suits arms race that “Mass for Retaliation” succinctly deals with the ongoing, and both sides continue to exploit the next generations of youth to maintain their power systems as part of this ongoing conflict. In the fight to stop a future where child soldiers are still present, Solari ultimately chooses to help create this future regardless.
This will be an interesting conclusion for the series, and will at least say something grim about the nature of Gundam war cycle. But not just “Mass for Retaliation” did not allocate time to give Solari’s decision any kind of dramatic impact – it literally comes out of nowhere in the closing minutes of the show – it explicitly depicts this decision bluntly as something noble and good, to the point that the final orchestral swell accompanying her proclamation was described in Netflix’s closed captioning as a piece “growing more heroic.” The show ultimately ends on this framed idea as optimistically as possible, conflicting with the rest of the series’ understanding of its place in Gundam timeline to create a tonal dissonance, even for audiences not familiar with this wider context of the franchise, it still seems like a complete surprise to the main character they spent three aimless hours following. It is the first time the Mass for, in fact, has attempted to say anything of importance about its world or characters is painful – perhaps it would have been better if it simply did not attempt to say anything at all.
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