Not much needs to be said about Gundam Narrative's relevance, in short, it's the next Novel adaption of a Universal Century Gundam medium. It's an ok follow up after binging Unicorn because, in a way, it acts as an epilogue to that. However, underneath Narrative is a contrived mess of meandering potential, and a hollow entry as a Gundam film.

There are some good parts, mainly the action which was always top-tier. The style is good, and I'm glad that it is another distinctly Gundam show. Narrative has killer songs by Hiroyuki Sawano, much like Unicorn did. Vigilante is another one of Sawano's songs that is a headbanger, so much so that it's yet another Sawano song that's ended up on my workout playlists. It's a given that the music has been exceptionally good lately, especially with Sawano collaborating with LiSa for the end credits song narrative.

With all that said, this film is filled with space magic. I don't mind it in small doses, but if you just want to see Gundam and not Evangelion, then you're gonna be annoyed. In Evangelion, all this metaphysical stuff made sense because it relied on religious symbolism, spirituality, and just being a complete mindfuck to get its point across. Except for Gundam, focusing solely on mysticism ruins the core message, especially when the original focus of the series was its commentary on a human-conflict in a post-WW2 era. The original UC Gundams worked because they were relevant messages applicable to any time. I could not give two shits about Gundam where the focus is on super robots piloted by superhumans that can quickly resolve the plot, partly because there's no deeper meaning to it. There are also instances where you actually need to have watched Gundam Unicorn to understand background context and their character significance. Narrative is not a good starting point for Gundam newcomers, and arguably an even worse starting point than Unicorn.

A majority of Narrative feels kind of dull, especially after watching other Universal Century films like Gundam Thunderbolt that does everything better. It kind of reminds me of those mech shows from the 2010s that were all trying to compete or dethrone Gundam. Many of their stories ended up being generic as they chased trends instead of establishing them (see Aldnoah Zero for wasted potential), and Gundam Narrative is no different. It's trying so damn hard to be a unique mech show that it stumbles into cliche most of the time, especially when it tries to use space magic as an excuse for storytelling. It's super annoying that the Newtype trope has devolved into nothing more than a huge McGuffin for the writers. For something that's titled Gundam Narrative, there's not much of a cohesive plot, and the literal narrative fails as a result.

The story itself moves at such a piss-poor pace, and so much of the film treads water at parts. There were some flashbacks that occur right in the middle of a battle, which completely ruined the pacing of the current scene and film as a whole. It's not to say that I wasn't entertained, the action held my attention, but the whole reason I love Gundam so much is its complex themes that are rooted in hard sci-fi. Narrative makes action its main focus, which really drags the film away from its commentary on war (if at all), and it becomes ever more convoluted when Newtypes are thrown into the mix. What's even worse is that even the action is far and few between, often appearing at unconventional times. The main cast is uninteresting and unrelatable because they're Newtypes with god-like superpowers. The next Char successor barely even gets much of a character introduction too, and he just shows up with no real backstory as if you're supposed to know who he is already. Even the inclusion of Unicorn seems sort of half-assed, in what I can only assume is a way to promote new Gunpla.

I don't know if the novel was any better, but this movie does an atrocious job of convincing me to read it. I say again, this over-reliance on Newtype BS needs to stop. I don't want to keep repeating myself over and over again. Space magic has just gone off the rails and serves only for plot conveniences. Narrative isn't garbage, but it's only redeeming traits are its soundtrack and animation. If you actually eat up the Newtype plotline you'll probably love this one, the entire movie revolves around that, but it won't save the contrived plot and generic characters. The plot could have been good, but making Narrative a singular movie clearly didn't do justice for the more fleshed out novels. As someone who doesn't care about the metaphysical aspect of Gundam, Narrative was a very forgettable film. Really my only reason for watching this was it's because it's more Gundam. If you're expecting fulfilling storytelling, look elsewhere, or you'll be sorely disappointed. To quote Jeremy Jahns, "You won't remember this in T-minus 1 day.