Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation III - Love is the Pulse of the Stars might be the least bad of the Zeta Gundam compilation movie trilogy. Might be.
The movie makes the decision to reserve the final act to capturing as much of the final two episodes as possible, even if it means cutting down on everything else. As such, the compression goes into maximum overdrive. Within the first 40 minutes or so, 13 episodes of the TV version are covered. To cut things even further, two entire arcs were cut, leaving 7 episodes of material in the length of less than 2 episodes. If this sounds like a disjointed and badly-paced clusterfuck, you'd be correct! This entire first part is like watching the show on 2x speed, or even 4x speed. As a consequence of the cuts in both this section and past movies, character arcs take a brutal beating. The entire speech Char Aznable gives at Dakar, which was a turning point in his chraracter development that paves the way for his actions in Char's Counterattack? That episode's entirely cut. Reccoa's growing infatuation with Scirocco and gradual slide into darkness resulting in her defection? Happens with almost no build-up before and in the middle of a battle right after the AEUG flee Axis (two events that had an entire episode between them). Now her decision goes from being irrational by design to irrational by bad storytelling and editing! The arcs with Four and Rosamia are cut since Four dies earlier on in the second compilation and Rosamia....WAIT WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO HER?!? She was last seen escaping in the second compilation and...she just dies offscreen? She appears as a Newtype ghost in the climax, but we don't get an answer for what happened. So there's that.
The final act largely amounts to recreating the final battle with some trims, some extra shots, and a lot more new animation. Admittedly, the newly animated battle scenes look nice...when they aren't interrupted by 80's footage. On an amusing note, it makes Katz' death even more hilarious than the show. Rather than stupidly crashing into an asteroid from not paying attention and leaving himself open to getting shot down, Katz just stupidly crashes and dies instantly. They even add a scene early in the movie of another character saying you'd have to be stupid to crash into the asteroids! It's like they knew his death was unintentionally hilarious and chose to make it intentional black comedy this time!
And now, it's time to discuss the big change, the big selling point of the whole trilogy, and the main aspect fans know New Translation for. The original TV show ends on the bleakest cliffhanger imaginable. Most of the heroes have been wiped out in the final battle, Kamille's been brain damaged by a final psychic attack from a dying Scirocco, and Haman Karn's Neo-Zeon is free to fill the power vaccum left by the AEUG and Titans and start another Zeon/Earth war. How can the good guys recover from this massive loss? Will Kamille ever regain his mental faculties? Can things please stop being such a downer? And where the hell has Char Aznable gone off to? Find out in the sequel show Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ!* At first, it seems like this will happen in this movie as well, especially when everyone who dies in the final battle of the show also dies here.
That is not the case.
Instead, Scirocco is finished off before he can launch the psychic attack that brain damages Kamille. Kamille and Fa both emerge from the final battle intact and get their big lovers' reunion at the end of the movie. We get a montage of the various 0079 cast members still on Earth, such as Amuro, Mirai, Fa, and even a brief line of dialogue from Sayla (using archive audio of her late voice actress You Inoue) just to show us that these guys are also doing alright. Haman draws back from Axis and sends Mineva Zabi to Earth so she can have a normal education, meaning the Neo-Zeon conflicts of both Gundam ZZ and Unicorn** either don't happen or get resolved quicker and more smoothly. Char is still M.I.A. at the end, but without his AEUG protegé/hope for the future Kamille undergoing brain damage and Neo-Zeon likely less of a threat, there's a good chance Char's Counterattack never happens. In fact, the cameo of Sayla heavily implies she learns of his activities of Quattro, so maybe he'll even get a reunion with his sister down the line. In short, everybody gets a happy ending and the Universal Century conflicts after Zeta are either averted or greatly alleviated. This alternate ending is the true purpose of New Translation: for Tomino to go back to a show he directed during a low point in his depression and give it a more optimistic ending in his older and wiser years. In a weird way, some of the choices such as cutting out all the random slaps and punches characters give each other or the scenes foreshadowing Char's darker personality in Char's Counterattack make sense with this context. While outwardly easy to dismiss as just a cash grab, with the context of this revised ending, A New Translation has an artistic reason to exist.
It also completely dooms the films on a conceptual level.
Since the ending nullifies so much of Universal Century Gundam from after Zeta Gundam, the New Translation films does not work as a replacement, substitute, or even a refresher of the original show. Even if a newcomer somehow isn't confused by the haphazard pacing of these films, the ending means they'll either be confused when they move on to the direct sequels to Zeta or simply skip them altogether. Conversely, if somebody wants to check out Gundam ZZ and/or Char's Counterattack but needs a quick refresher on the basics of Zeta, New Translation fails because the new ending makes it incompatible with those installments. If you just want to see the flashy new animated sequences, better get used to that fast forward button to see them. And even if you just watch it to see a happier alternate ending to Zeta Gundam, it's within a compilation film series that loses so much of the original show's substance that the new ending feels unearned. In fact, this new ending could have easily been a short film in the vein of the Gundam Evolve shorts, which included side stories, gags, and most notably, a "what if?" short for Char's Counterattack where a character who dies in that film is redeemed and lives.
So after watching the entire New Translation trilogy, comparing and contrasting with the original TV show, and dissecting how the trilogy fails, I am left with the question: who were these movies made for? My best conclusion is that they were made purely for Tomino himself and his peace of mind. Good on him, I guess.
Notes:
*Okay, except the part with Char; his time is the movie AFTER Gundam ZZ.
**A direct sequel series to Char's Counterattack released long after that film without Yoshiyuki Tomino's involvement, where Mineva and her status by the end of Gundam ZZ plays a crucial role.
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