At this point, you all know my feelings on Gundam Wing by now. It's a series that thinks it's a serious war drama when it's actually a ridiculous, campy, convoluted mess that tries way too hard to be the epic of the year at the expense of more important things like coherent storytelling and character development, gleefully pulling stuff out of its ass just to be bigger and more bombastic than it really has any right to be. And yet even with all of these huge problems, it still did pretty good in Japan and was the series that put Gundam on the map in North America, being a mainstay on the Toonami block for quite a while. So in light of its popularity, Sunrise decided to make a 3-episode OVA called Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz in 1997, which would then be recut into a theatrical movie with a new Two-Mix song and some new footage slotted in a year later. Fitting how I wrote this review not only on GW's 30th anniversary, but right as Endless Waltz is being screened in US theaters for the very first time as part of this celebration. Now that I've seen it, I've gotta say...seriously, why couldn't the series have been more like this?! Endless Waltz actually goes out of its way to address a lot of my issues with the show, even if it winds up having its own problems!
A year after the events of the TV series, it seems like all is going well. The Eve Wars have ended, and both Treize Khushrenada and OZ have passed from existence. The Earth Sphere Unified Nation (ESUN), and a special peacekeeping police force known as the Preventers, rose from the ashes of OZ. Since they figure they will no longer have a role in the post-war era, four of the five Gundam pilots put their Gundams on a giant disposal satellite headed for the sun, with Wufei being the lone holdout. Peace reigns supreme on Earth and in space...for about a year: on the anniversary of the Eve Wars' end, a rebellion occurs on newly-completed colony L3 X-18999. The rebellion, led by seven or eight-year-old Mariemaia Khushrenada, who reveals herself to be Treize's daughter, kidnaps Relena Darlian (now the Vice Foreign Minister of the ESUN) during a diplomatic visit to the colony. As the Gundam pilots investigate further, they discover that Mariemaia's grandfather—Dekim Barton—really controls the rebellion. Dekim plans to use X-18999 to go through with the "original" Operation Meteor— crashing the colony into Earth and letting the Gundam pilots take control in the chaos—if the ESUN doesn't comply with his demands. The Gundam pilots must prevent Dekim from seizing power over the ESUN, but two things complicate matters: most of the pilots don't have their Gundams, and the only one that does—Wufei—has defected to Dekim's side.
I know a lot of people, both Wing fans and non-fans alike, have their opinions on Endless Waltz. Some say it's a great conclusion to the TV series, others say it's a hot mess that's worse than the series, and so on. I'm of the opinion that while it does still have its own set of issues, I actually think Endless Waltz makes an effort to improve upon the TV series and remedy a lot of its issues. It may not have succeeded a lot of the time, but it tried. For one, the movie actually bothers to explore the backgrounds of the Gundam pilots and actually flesh them out for once! Sure, it's not to the level of Episode Zero, but it's a lot more than the TV series bothered to do! We actually get to see and learn about the events that made Heero into a suicidal nihilist, the reason Trowa got roped into piloting Heavyarms and even how he got his name, and, most of all, it actually bothers to give Wufei something resembling a character arc! Is it weird that I feel him having an antagonistic role wound up actually helping him in terms of rounding out his character? For one, his motivations for being an antagonist here actually make sense and are coherent this time around compared to his wishy-washy, all-over-the-place characterization in the TV series, though a more concrete explanation for why he does what he does here is still relegated to another side story manga called Battlefield of Pacifists. Seriously, what is it with Wing and delegating all its most important stuff to side stories that aren't in the TV series or movie?!
The biggest improvement from the TV series to the movie is obviously the animation. Sunrise really stepped up their game here. Wing's animation in the TV series was serviceable, but there were times when the characters would be really off model, and often times the colors would be flat. None of that is present here. The designs on both the characters and mechs are more detailed and sleek, gone are the wonky facial expressions and flat colors, and the action sequences are a feast for the eyes. Seriously, the way explosions and missile barrages are animated here, knowing that they're all lovingly hand painted, just amazes me and we'll never get to see anything like that again. Though even Endless Waltz had to have some sequences using very wonky CGI, but it's only used for showing asteroids. Not that that makes it any less jarring. The soundtrack also continues to be an absolute banger, Two-Mix's two new songs included. Though I kind of wish they could have found a way to integrate White Reflection into the movie rather than relegating it to just the OVA, considered the inferior version of Endless Waltz. Maybe they could have used White Reflection as an insert song and had Last Impression just be the ending theme. Them giving the song the shaft like that is doing it a massive disservice since it's still a pretty damn good song on its own!
One of my biggest issues with Gundam Wing in general was how convoluted it got a lot of the time. In an attempt to be this big, sprawling epic war drama, it had way too many things happening all at once, with characters constantly changing sides and going places on a dime, often for little to no reason, and it became far too complex for its own good, sometimes even leaving things completely unresolved and with no real payoff whatsoever. It could have benefited from limiting itself and cutting out a lot of unnecessary fat, and I'm guessing a lot of production issues behind the scenes resulted in how it came out. I know that was the reason episodes intended to explore the pilots' backstories got cut in favor of recap episodes and relegated to the Episode Zero manga. Endless Waltz, being a movie, cuts away all of the fat and focuses on one particular plotline that's guaranteed to have the biggest payoff, and is all the better for it. This also allows for all the relevant characters to have a role to play in the movie, no matter how small, their actions being the culmination of all of what little development they got in the TV series, even if the plot itself is still your standard cliche "Villain is gonna destroy the Earth because he's evil and he must be stopped!" plot.
That said, Endless Waltz does have some pretty serious flaws that prevent it from achieving true greatness, with two of them being especially egregious. For one thing, all the Gundams got complete redesigns. This in itself isn't a bad thing, though considering how the series ended, they'd have to fish for some sort of explanation for why they'd redesign the Gundams and then have them be sent into the sun to be destroyed. Instead of doing that, Sunrise decided it'd be a great idea to just act like these redesigns have always been around, both in the opening sequence and in flashbacks that take place before the TV series starts! Like...what?! I know Gundam is primarily made to sell merchandise and Gunpla kits and all, and if you wanna market new toys, fine, but don't do it in a way that completely ignores and disregards continuity!! Seriously, I know for a fact that no kid who watched the TV series would be stupid enough to not notice that the very bright red Heavyarms is suddenly navy blue and not be baffled by the movie treating it like it was never bright red! I think part of this is due to the fact that Endless Waltz was made with different staff than that of the TV series, similar to how that Digimon Adventure 02 movie Hurricane Touchdown was also made by different staff than the TV series and had its share of continuity issues as a result of the staff not doing their research.
Speaking of flagrantly ignoring continuity, this is gonna go into spoilers here, but I can't possibly tip-toe around this so I'm just gonna go all in:
So yeah, Endless Waltz isn't a perfect movie, and it's in no way a standalone movie, but its attempts to at least address some of the TV series' flaws and be actually comprehensible makes it a valiant effort all around. The fact that it was also made to celebrate the Gundam series' 20th anniversary also shouldn't be ignored, considering its influence on later Gundam series down the line and its impact overseas. Now I'm curious as to Yoshiyuki Tomino's thoughts on Wing as a whole. But yeah, Endless Waltz might appeal to you more if you're already a dyed-in-the-wool Gundam Wing fan, and it's an interesting little novelty that I might come back to every once in a while.
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