spoilers for Gundam Build Metaverse, as if anyone actually cares about the plot for this one

Gundam Build Metaverse is the latest 3 episode Oobari Gundam anime, and much like Gundam Breaker Battlogue, it’s stupid and terrible. It’s selling the Metaverse as something great for Gunpla and as if it’s any kind of positive thing to speak of, rather than a predatory version of VR with 796% more microtransactions and crypto peddling. It does all this by showing previous main characters from other Gundam Build shows all happy while the kids play with their toys in this Metaverse which is hardly a leap forward from the VR diving from Divers. It’s at least a little disturbing, even insidious, all for a concept that stopped being relevant several months before this show aired.

Discarding the ethics of peddling the metaverse, this show is, again, fucking shit. It’s entertaining after the first episode, but it’s a show whose plot and character motivations are as slapdash as they come. It feels as if at least a full episode is missing on establishing how our characters even get to the point where the plot starts to happen, as it just cuts to that in a post-credits scene after a full episode of just establishing happy fun times. Suddenly we’re watching the main antagonist beat the main protagonist’s mentor so bad it reveals her true identity.

Let’s slope down a bit, though? Who are these people and why should we care? The latter part can’t properly be answered, but the former is much easier. Rio Hojou is a kid who is super positive and has a passion for Gunpla building, and there’s hardly much else. He’s whatever. His Gunpla tutor and secret Metaverse mentor, Seria, is a cute, silver-haired store clerk who is nice but aloof. Not much to her either aside from having shit taste by binging ZZ all night. Main thing about her is that she feels so much guilt for her sister resenting her that she quit Gunpla for a while and had to create an alt so that people didn’t recognize her. Said sister, Mascarilla, is still bitter at not being able to rise to her sister’s level and at her sister throwing her dreams at championship away for her as she views that as mockery and pity. This is established in one quick flashback scene, with no proper build-up to this antagonist’s dynamic with Seria, or even her damn existence. She just shows up out of nowhere and fails miserably at getting the audience to be invested in this threadbare plot starring planks of wood. She also is largely composed of generic villain quotes throughout the majority of her fight against Rio, and her emotional breakdown at the end is entirely unearned.

What doesn’t help is how the anime tries to balance this plot with exploring the Gundam Metaverse setting and slamming the returning cast of previous Build entries together like action figures. Riku, the MC from Build Divers, recruits Rio to compete against two of Riku’s friends, Ayame and Momoka. Hiroto, the MC of Divers Re:Rise assists Rio with a smile on his face and brawls against the brash MC of Build Fighters Try, Seikai. Meijin Tatsuya Yuuki from Build Fighters literally crashes a tournament and runs into that show’s protagonists, Sei and Reiji and they battle again. If the show had just been legacy characters coming together to fight it out in a Battlogue, this show would have been way better. It still would be creepy that it’s pulling the Metaverse bullshit, but it wouldn’t have to half-ass some cheap plot with Rio and Mascarilla. It instead would just be more fanservice in an AU timeline literally built upon Gundam fanservice. It’s nice to see Hiroto be more positive considering he started out so gloomy and aloof in much of Divers Re:Rise, but seeing that and him having a new, dark Core Gundam isn’t enough when clearly his fight and these other fights all have to play second fiddle to a poorly cobbled together excuse for a plot. Said plot also just ends with no real resolution before giving us a post-credits scene of Rio and Seria preparing to battle so that one of them can face Mascarilla in the finals of a new tournament.

It’s not like the show is well-animated, either. Episodes 1 and 2 only have remotely decent bits when a Gunpla is starting up and we get close-ups to the heads shining with a glimmer of sliding light. The artwork on the gunpla for the first two episodes is shockingly flat compared to any other 2D Gundam anime of the past several decades. The animation is also generally limp and floaty, even with some of the beams. Oftentimes, characters and their mechs just stay frozen in the air for absurdly long periods of time until the plot dictates they can move or until we cut away to something else entirely, and it becomes an actually noticeable thing in this show, unlike any other mecha anime. Only episode 3 gets the fluid animation and detailed mecha shading to make this show even remotely visually appealing. Much of the interiors are ugly hyper-realistic texture hell, and the new character designs can be vibrant but feel kind of hit or miss with their Metaverse designs, while Seria and the buff manager Jim look neat IRL. At least we have people rocking Haro heads in the metaverse? Oh, and the new mechs generally look cool, at least when they’re drawn well in episode 3 and some select bits of the other episodes.

As for the music, it’s pretty solid after episode 1. Yuuki Hayashi returns after composing the tracks for Build Fighters and Fighters Try, tastefully reusing past themes and incorporating some nice new tunes for this show. Nothing quite tops the best of the Fighters shows or Re:Rise, but there is some neat stuff here. The BACK-ON OP, “Hikari no Kaze” is an alright, happy and relaxed techno rock song, and the ED, “Days of Birth” by LINKL PLANET, is to be skipped every time outside of the cute visuals.

The Gundam Build timeline has always been a glorified toy commercial, and technically a game commercial with Gundam: Breaker Battlogue. This is not a secret by any means. However, on top of model kits being generally less sketchy than the now barely relevant metaverse, the better Build entries provided new characters worth caring about because they are engaging to follow in stories that aren’t half-assed. The most entertainment to be expected from Gundam Build Metaverse for most people is in pointing and clapping at both the references (like the Barbataurus from Breaker Battlogue) and returning favorites guiding our new characters while battling it out. That and the action animation in episode 3. Fellow Gunpla builders also might get a slight kick out of the surprising level of detail episode 1 goes into showing how people build and even touch-up kits compared to some other Build entries. Otherwise, this anime is either boring slop or a laughable mess.

Also, a bunch of Metaverse Gunpla prototypes just got leaked, so have fun with that knowledge. Hopefully the Core Gundam II hits store shelves soon.