Okay, standard disclaimer for minor spoilers before going into the actual review, but also a quick PSA in case it's needed for some reason: if you're not already enough of a Gundam fan to have sat through most of the UC timeline before watching this, there's kinda no point in you watching it. So if that's why you're here go watch ZZ or something and keep on going ! for everyone else, the tl;dr on this review is at the bottom after the last rainbow breaker.
Alright, so Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is the latest instalment of the "ace pilot in a prototype gundam" timeline, with a minor twist in that its focus is on the perspective of Zeon soldiers mostly just trying to survive against the Federation's newest and shiniest weapon. Right out of the gate there are a couple of barriers around the presentation of this anime that might put a few people off. For one thing, there does seem to exist a subset of people who think anything at all that even suggests that Zeon's average soldier isn't just turbohitler in space is inherently morally wrong, and if you're one of those types you are going to have an altogether awful time because this does very obviously humanise the Red Wolves, which are the Zeon squad we follow along with for the duration of its short run. I happen to not mind stories that do this anyway, but I appreciate the execution in this instance a fair bit. You get to see how it is that this constant cycle of war and loss is maintained by the sheer inertia of all the violence that preceded it, there is no rationalisation, no real conscious thought, only people tormented by loss who feel justified in inflicting the same sense of loss in return, they lose themselves and their very humanity in moments where the drive for revenge consumes them, and that is the tragedy that unfolds throughout this show and in its ending. And in that context, the only way to end that chain is for so much as one person to abandon vengeance, and not lose their empathy.
To an extent, Ilya, our protagonist here, embodies that. She is a grieving mother thrown into the thick of this desperate struggle to survive, her only hope and solace being that she'll be reunited with her only son, though she constantly fears that the war will take him away from her just like it robbed her of her previous life before the army and robbed her of her husband as well. I was, though, left feeling pretty unconvinced and underwhelmed by where this story left her character after the final episode, because it felt like a pretty random regression that was both a betrayal of Requiem's overall message and a complete flip on who she was for the entire runtime of the show up to that point, as someone holding on to hope even in the midst of fear and hardship. I don't have too much to say about the rest of the cast other than that they played their roles well enough for the most part and one or two of them like Alfee and Hayley were fun to watch for different reasons. The former because he added an extra dimension to Ilya's character by painting a picture of her life outside the pure plot of Requiem, and was fun in his own right, and Hayley because the outline of her character could've been very compelling, a bit like Illya but without anything left to fall back on.
The whole thing is a bit of a flip on something like 08th MS team, in fact a character from there makes a cameo appearance here, but I'm not sure if thinking about it in those terms will make it better or worse for fans of that particular OVA. I mean, the parallels extend beyond the thematic idea of seeing your enemies as human beings and breaking free of your own anger, there's a sequence in this show that feels very much to me like a recreation of a sequence in that show, with some of the same inherent cynicism behind any story that stakes its pride on presenting war with full deference to pure "realism". In that respect, this may end up being a frustrating watch by the time it's run its course, and I definitely felt a measure of disappointment in it and its characters myself, however I might try to rationalise that.
Truthfully speaking, though, with only six episodes we don't quite spend enough time with any of these characters, Ilya included, for me to have felt particularly impacted when they struggled. But there's enough in how the Gundam EX acts as this insurmountable force of nature, for the audience to almost naturally feel the same desperate fear as our protagonist and her crew at points. In terms of pure spectacle, as long as you're not someone who turns their nose up at CG anime (the second of those barriers I mentioned earlier), then this is honestly pretty cool. Not even vaguely as stylised, expressive and innovative as the 3D animation in something like Girls Band Cry from earlier this year, which is a real weakness when it comes to character animation even when considering that the team behind Requiem were obviously pursuing realism in every aspect. In any case, I at least had no real complaints about the look and feel of the mobile suits or any of the action throughout the show's six episodes. I mean, it did have a noticeable amount of shots of the EX just standing there, looking menacing rather than Doing anything, and there's more than one convenient cutaway that saves Ilya's life, and they glaze the EX a bit much, with a handful of the usual "mfw the suit is mobile" reaction shots, but in the grand scheme of things I ended up not really caring about that. You might be more bothered if your tolerance for that sort of thing is different though I suppose. A lot of the action is reminiscent of the work in Gundam Hathaway, where the focus is on the human level, away from the giant robots, and you see the pure chaos and destruction that can unfold for everyone in the area when even just one mobile suit shows up on the scene, GM's are usually nothing special in any given Gundam series but here they managed to make them genuinely feel like threats and like game changers, which is pretty cool.
Now for the last barrier, I watched Requiem dubbed in English all the way through, and it was not what I would describe as the best experience. Aside for the first episode which was genuinely Painful, I did end up finding myself mostly enjoying the vocal performances of the main voice actors, they felt suitably lively and expressive when they needed to, but they were let down facial animations I can only describe as generally lacking any sign of the human life, passion or vitality that the voice actors put out. Beyond that, a lot of the mouth movements didn't feel like they synced up with a lot of the speech, so I actively avoided looking at it, in a weird way it was more distracting than watching old Chinese movies dubbed in english, maybe because those didn't take themselves quite as seriously so the audio mismatch added to the charm and humour of a lot of them. I don't know if the sub is any better on that front, but it might be worth exploring.
Additionally, the sound design was almost perfect in every area except for: two. One, pertaining to the voice acting again, there was a sequence in the final episode where two pilots were talking to each other over the radios in their mobile suits and to my ears it sounded like they might as well have been having a casual chat on a bench in a park somewhere. Maybe just a weird personal gripe of mine, but I tend to prefer context specific filtering that tells you without telling you when characters are just talking, vs when they're using a radio that might have interference from, say, minovsky particles, vs when they're using the speakers on their mobile suits to project their voice. This show did manage to draw that distinction in the first battle of the first episode, so when there's no difference at all it bugs me and kinda takes me out of the moment in what was otherwise a pivotal scene, and I acknowledge that that might be a dumb complaint but I really wanted to mention it. The second minor gripe pertaining to sound design is,,,, actually, who cares? if you wanna know you can ask me and we can chat about it. Let's move on to the final score and general overview.
So, the long and short of it is that Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is a cool show with a worthwhile message that for the most part I only really had a few minor nitpicks of, pertaining to the voice acting performances in the English dub and the lack of expression in the facial animations. It is, however, brought down by what I feel was an unsatisfying resolution to its protagonist's character arc, and its short length depriving it of much opportunity to truly endear its cast of characters to the audience. It's a fun ride while it lasts, and so I give it a clean 70 out of 100. If you're a Gundam fan who's not an inferior spec- ah, I mean who's not a hater of CGI anime, and you're looking for a decent binge, then this will probably hit the spot.