Mobile Suit Gundam F91

Spoilers for Gundam F91

Potential is something that can be rather frustrating or even tragic when unfulfilled, depending on the circumstances. If nothing went wrong in terms of production and the product simply wastes its potential thanks to bad writing, it can be rather irritating. For better or for worse, Gundam F91, Yoshiyuki Tomino’s attempt at creating a new UC Gundam saga, is certainly the latter. It's like a rising college football player dying of CTE, with the victim being unable to tap into its potential for reasons far beyond its control. What was planned as a full 52 episode series reduced to a mere 13, and those 13 being gutted to create a film that was clearly not meant to be one. It's ultimately not the movie's fault that it's bad, it was never meant to be one in the first place until executive meddling damned this project.

Installments like this are a testament to the importance of pacing. Since the events of this movie were originally meant to be 13 episodes, it only makes sense that a lot of information and character/world-building would be taken out. Unfortunately, this is of huge detriment to the movie. I mean, starting your saga almost verbatim like the original and having other important similarities is already not much of a good thing, but when character progressions/decisions and deaths are unexplained or not explained well at all, that's when we have a problem. There are multiple emotional scenes in this movie such as the initial attack on the main cast’s homeland, the death of Seabook’s dad, and the reunion of Seabook and his mom, all of which don't leave nearly as much of an impact because the bad pacing didn't allow us to establish anything properly, giving us little time or reason to care before tragedy or even tear-inducing happiness strikes.

There are other problems, some of which also involve cutting. The subplot about Cecily’s earrings goes absolutely nowhere since I think it probably would've become more important later on if this were to have been the 4-cour series this was meant to be, at one point, they cut from the middle of a major battle to a scene way later where Seabook snuck out on his own (how and when did he do that, and where is the city he want back to in relation to the base he and his friends are at?) which raises a ton of problems, even aside from the ones above, since it's probably the worst and most unnecessary cut yet. There is no reason we couldn't have seen Seabook’s first major battle in full since it probably would've only lasted a few more minutes. Did they really need this movie to not go past the two hour mark? If so, there were probably other ways to trim the movie down a bit more. The finale is ok and probably the most interesting part of this movie, but the ride to get there got gutted badly. Regardless, we’re not getting a more fleshed out retelling of this (or the rest of what Tomino wanted this to originally be), and that saddens me because this movie really needed to be the way it was intended for it to actually be good.

As mentioned previously, part of the reason the characters aren't very good is that the pacing doesn't allow us to really get invested in them whatsoever, sullying a lot of the emotional impact behind the drama they face. When the introduction is a bunch of our protagonists bickering at each other, it's hard to really feel a sting when their homeland gets attacked, and when some of them die, not only is it not that impactful since we hardly get to establish a connection with these people before the attack that happens 5 minutes into the movie, but some of these guys we don't see until sometime into the attack, mere minutes before their death. The main villain is a typical royal imperial who doesn't remove his mask or have much of a personality, and the grandfather is only there for a few brief moments and is just a father who has to put on the royal guise of the Rohan family, but there’s hardly much to them. Like with the protagonists I’ll be mentioning, if they allowed this to be as it was intended, we probably could've fleshed them out a bit more to make them more interesting.

Seabook is basically another Amuro Ray in practically every sense of the word, including the fact that a parent of his left to work on the Gundam he would end up piloting by chance. Hell, his mom just appears in the movie with no introduction and then they bond but thanks to the aforementioned issues, it doesn't sell as well as it should. His sister is initially very perceptive of her mom’s true feelings and self for her age but then when she actually meets her she acts like her mom is not a good person, which is rather inconsistent. It's not like the former is realistic for a child but then to switch to the latter for no apparent reason other than their dad dying while escorting Seabook, is really jarring. Cecily is a princess character who hangs out with and sympathizes with the common people, enough so that she initially forsook the throne like her mother did and then did so again just to be with her friends after realizing that the Rohans are just as bad as ever. At least it's a fresh spin on a trope that would be as tired as a sloth. No other character is with really bringing up however, like the typical arrogant prince character, a girl who only switches to the good guy side because her master took interest in Cecily (why she has disdain for her, we'll never know), and her master who has a grudge against the Rohans and let's the good guys go in the end. I don't need to reiterate the potential lost for character building, do I? No? Ok, moving on.

Much like Char's Counterattack, while the writing is lackluster at best, the visuals are some of the best not only in the franchise, but in its respective decade. The character designs look pretty appealing, the mech shading is great, and the action and animation is all very fluid and simply a wonder to look at. The sheer detail and fluidity is something to grasp at and all of this simply executed the best of what 90’s animation had to offer, even though it came out very early into that decade, and it looks even better than Char’s Counterattack, which already had some of the best-looking and most fluidly animated visuals of the 80’s. The mech designs look great as well, especially the F91 and the Vigna Gina (what a laughable name by the way). Even with everything bad I've said about this film, at least it was able to look so gorgeous that to this day, it is still a top contender for the title of most well-animated Gundam anime.

Another similarity between the two films is that the OST isn't that memorable. The OST for F91 is at least better than CCA's due to it sounding more cinematic. I also prefer this film's ED titled "Eternal Wind" to CCA's ED. It's a peaceful yet somewhat emotional track, though I do find it a bit odd that it sounds like it was recorded live instead of how songs usually sound in all non-live venues. Regardless, this is a decent OST for the movie.

Bad pacing and cutting aside, this film feels rather milquetoast, minus the emotional scenes that invariably fail to strike a chord with me. The action was somewhat entertaining and well animated, and it was pretty cool to see all of the new developments in technology since the events of CCA (I especially love the laser flag) but overall, my experience felt rather meh, not even in a borderline zen way but like when you watch a show with your kids and feel nothing other than just “well this is a thing I'm watching”. The fact that I have no real emotion at all during the film barring certain minor points really sells how ineffectual this film really is. It's basically a throwaway movie.

This movie feels like the first special edition recap to a mediocre series we were robbed of. It's a real shame since this was supposed to be a grand and involved jumpstart of a new saga in the Universal Century timeline. We all know the story now, and I think it's really sad what happened here. Now, all we're left with is this unfortunately mediocre movie, regardless of how visually stunning it is. At the same time, what was presented here might not even be compelling if it went as planned. I'm not sure if that hurts more or less than the idea that the material was at all promising. Well, with all that said, I think it's time to bury this one and hope for a revival. Either we hope for that or hope for an adaptation of the Crossbone manga.