Before I get to work tearing into this series, I'd like to take a moment to give some credit to the small number of things that do work. The original character designs are sleek, modern, and endearing, and they are all brought to life rather well. Some of the imagery and shot composition is striking and beautiful. The swirling mass of coloured confetti used to represent Newtype space magic this time round is an inspired touch. The new mobile suit designs are interesting, and really stand out from any other Gundam project, in a positive and memorable way. Regardless of what I might think of the series that spawned it, I might still buy a GQuuuuuuX gunpla. The toy advert has won and I may not be strong enough to resist.

I hate this series. I think, fundamentally, the problem is one of trying to fit too many disparate ideas into too little time, but then more than that it's then making almost every possible choice that could reemphasise how much those ideas don't belong together. The main through-lines centre on Machu, Nyaan, and Shuji, three children who get access to a couple of Gundam and try to use them to make some quick cash in giant robot fights. The second follows a few key individuals in the brewing internal conflict in Zeon following their victory in the One Year War in this timeline. Each of these things is probably enough to nicely fill a tight twelve episodes by itself. Even taken together, you could make something about children trying to find their freedom in this new world and how the promises of Zeon have amounted to nothing and those at the top continue to scheme at the expense of those at the bottom. Even this possibility however is soon abandoned in favour of a plot that is some of the rawest, most uncut, most emotionally unengaging fanwank I have ever seen. We're in a different time, a different place, one where the arc of history followed a different path, but nonetheless it is haunted by the spectre of the Universal Century that never was. It continuously intrudes on the series in the form of visual references and a cavalcade of cameos, and then about halfway through it literally just becomes a plot literally about the existence of the original timeline. Also it dedicates a full 1.5 episodes to flashbacks, which is a lot of time in a series that is already fairly short. The intense dedication to fanservice comes at a cost to everything else. The characters get to spend very little time existing or doing much that informs the audience about their personalities. When the show actually deigns to do this, it's really rather good at it. The same goes for the rumbling political machinations. However both of these things benefit from being done consistently and they're just not, it's all snatches of moments where you can see the series almost working out of the corner of your eye. The result is when the time comes to try to hit the big emotional beats, they fall completely flat, because I do not know or care about any of these people and cannot see them as anything other than thin paper puppets being dispassionately shuffled around. The look of the show itself also suffers. There is real dedication and care put into replicating the look of some of the old Universal Century clothing, technology, and character designs. This world also has a lot of brand new, much more modern looking, clothing, technology, and character designs. They rarely if ever come close to looking like they belong together. The divide between old and new is blatant and jarring and feels artificial in a bad way.

The problems do not stop at the plotting either. Gundam as a franchise has often had a problem making fights in space look good. GQuuuuuuX seems to have learned no lessons from any of them, and if anything has doubled down on the worst elements. Combat in GQuuuuuuX wobbles between excessively frenetic, with suits hurtling around the screen in completely disorienting ways, and deathly static. The combat is entirely CG animation, which enables these problems to be as bad as they could possibly be. The mobile suit models are wonderful and intricately detailed, far too detailed to be easily readable at the speeds that they're moving. A lot of the backgrounds are also almost completely black which robs any sense of scale and makes it hard to gauge the positions of the suits in space. Considering how short the series is it also feels like the action takes up quite a lot of time, and because it's so floaty and weightless and boring it really feels like time being badly spent.

Overall, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX feels like fanfiction in all the worst ways, like you're watching action figures being smashed together by an author who only tenuously understands what made the original work endearing, and can only regurgitate images and references supported by original characters who feel like rough sketches. It's all an exercise in futility because this iconography out of context is not what makes Gundam a special franchise, it's how Tomino and those who came after him used it, to construct futures for humanity and warfare based on the worlds they lived in. This feels absent from GQuuuuuuX and it's replaced with nothing. It feels deeply hollow and out of step with what makes the franchise continue to be compelling after forty six years. GQuuuuuuX is only worth watching if you are dedicated to watching every series in the franchise or are desperate to know that other people also remember the original Mobile Suit Gundam and be reminded of it