When I recently rewatched the Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 compilation films, I did my first viewing of the original Gundam 0079 TV series before doing so. For the sequel series Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, I did the opposite by rewatching the original TV version (which remains one of my personal favorite Gundam entries) before doing my first watch of the New Translation compilation movies. Whereas the 0079 compilations were done a couple years after the show ended, the Zeta compilations were made 25 years after its TV counterpart ended. And whereas the 0079 compilations are well regarded by fans, the New Translation compilations for Zeta are generally glossed over. Going by the first installment Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation I: Heir to the Stars, there's a good reason for that.
The problems are made apparent within the first few minutes. After a short digitally animated opening with a new song by GACKT, it cuts to footage from the original cel-animated 1980's Zeta Gundam anime. Said footage is the opening scene of ~~Char Aznable~~ Quattro Bajeena doing a recon mission. Even if you've never seen the TV version, it is apparent that this scene was haphazardly edited from a longer scene. This issue only gets more glaring as the movie rushes through or skips scenes, subplots, and entire episodes to cram 14 episodes of Zeta Gundam into 137 minutes.
Oh wait, that's actually the runtime of Mobile Suit Gundam I, which covered 13 episodes of Gundam 0079.
The actual runtime of this first Zeta Gundam compilation movie is 94 minutes.
You see, for reasons I cannot fathom, the New Translation compilation films are roughly 90 minutes each instead of 2 and a half hours each like the 0079 compilations, despite Zeta being much longer than 0079 and having less room to trim things out. This restrictive runtime is a fatal blow to this compilation movie. If you've never seen the original show, you'll be confused and disoriented as the movie rushes through scenes and gives minimal explanation for what's going on. If you have seen the original show like I have, you'll be turned off by the neutering done to the character arcs and subplots in the editing process. Let me give one example that happens early on; in the original show, the protagonist Kamille Bidan is introduced in a series of scenes establishing his everyday life, his friendship/budding romance with Fa Yuiry, and his emotional personality. Halfway into the episode, a derisive comment from an elite soldier causes him to get in a fight, resulting in him being detained at the right place for him to end up with the Gundam. In this movie, we instead meet Kamille while being detained with no glimpse into his everyday life before it was disrupted. The reason he's even being detained is relegated to dialogue and a one-second flashback much later in the film, while Fa pops into the story with no proper introduction or establishment. This single omission undermines the characterizations of the very lead character and his love interest, making it more difficult to get invested in their struggles or see how much their old lives have been upended.
There were two big draws for this compilation movie trilogy, though one of them cannot be stated until I review the final compilation film. The other draw was the inclusion of newly animated scenes, much like how the newly animated scenes of the 0079 compilations were a draw. However, there's a big difference between the two: as mentioned before, New Translation arrived 25 years after the show. In that time, CGI and digital ink and paint had rendered cel animation obsolete, and anime in particular saw a drastic shift in how it looked and was made in the transition from cels to digital. This means the new scenes for New Translation have digital animation and CGI effects, while scenes taken from the original show are cels. The digital scenes DO NOT mesh with the cel animated footage in any way. While they look fine on their own, shifting between 1980's cel animation with visible film grain and 2000's digital animation with a bright sheen and modern sensibilities is jarring. Even when the newly animated scenes get to shine in the fight sequences, the insertion of shots from the original TV anime instantly kill the moment. Likewise, sequences built around cel animated footage get disrupted by the insertion of digitally animated shots, some of which have little reason to even be present. In fact, the entire idea of inserting digitally animated shots into Zeta Gundam was fundamentally doomed from the get-go because it had little reason to get an upgrade. The Gundam 0079 TV anime was rough around the edges even at the time, so the upgraded animation for its compilation films was welcome. In contrast, the Zeta Gundam TV anime had considerably beefed-up production values from 0079 TV and still looks great today. Reanimating scenes for New Translation in this manner is entirely pointless. It feels less like an upgrade and more like a half-measure between a standard compilation and a full remake.
After writing all that, you might think I dislike this first compilation movie. And you'd be correct. Heir to the Stars has glimpses of the classic Zeta Gundam, but is inferior in every possible way. It fails as an entry point or alternate way of watching the TV series because it is far too rushed for any newcomer to follow. Any strengths this film has are almost entirely residual from the source material it adapts, and the weaknesses are entirely from the changes it makes. And I still have two more of these to go.
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