Good lord. Not a worthy sequel to Unicorn, kind of an okay standalone thing, but undercooked is a massive understatement. I think it would have benefitted from being an OVA slightly shorter than Unicorn, because none of the characters are necessarily that memorable at all, Zoltan is probably the only character I'll remember anything about, but due to how short the movie is, saying I "liked" him is a stretch. It has some neat, if unnecessary extra newtype lore. Narrative's biggest problem is that I have no reason to care. It's so underdeveloped that even if it brushes on interesting themes or has potentially thought-provoking dialogue between characters, they're so flat otherwise that I can't connect and don't care, especially compared to Unicorn which had all of that, fully realized and had interesting/likeable characters like Banagher, Marida, Full Frontal, Mineva and this may be a bit controversial, but I'd say Riddhe as well (he's more interesting than likeable though). Narrative has like, three characters that I think I'll remember. Jona, the worst Gundam protagonist I've seen up to this point, Rita, who's name I only remember because of how many times Jona yells it, and Zoltan, who you could just call Liquid Frontal, but then that reminds me of both Gundam Unicorn AND Metal Gear Solid, which are both better uses of my time than thinking about Narrative. Maybe the Phoenix Hunting novel it's supposed to be an adaptation of is way better, but I can hardly say I care enough to check it out the same way I am with High-Streamer, Beltorchika's Children, Hathaway's Flash or, more topically, the Unicorn novels themselves. I also found the soundtrack to be a step down from Unicorn as well, with the best songs from Narrative being directly lifted from Unicorn itself. The only real redeeming qualities that Narrative really has in my opinion, is the mecha design, but also, going into anything Gundam related, finding badass mecha is like going into a shoe store looking for shoes, it's everywhere. (Seriously. Even G-Savior has good mecha designs. Fuckin' G-Savior.) The standouts for me being the Narrative Gundam C-Packs, Gundam Phenex (which, out of its fellow Unicorn units, the Unicorn and the Banshee/Banshee Norn, the Phenex has the best look in Unicorn mode. Unicorn still has the best Destroy Mode design though.) and the Neo Zeong, which was also a nice throwback to 0079, because who doesn't love the Zeong? The Sinanju Stein was also pretty cool, but I can't help but prefer Frontal's classic Red Comet version of the Sinanju.
Overall, Narrative is not that good and not really worth your time at all, even if you're dying for more post-Unicorn Universal Century
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