Turn A Gundam

Turn A Gundam, stylised as ∀ Gundam, is Gundam's 20th Anniversary project, helmed by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino. Though relatively unknown, Turn A Gundam is what I consider to be the quintessential entry in the franchise, as well as a unique and beautiful series on its own.

Story 8/10

Narratively, Turn A Gundam is a Gundam-ass Gundam series. It tells the story of two opposing human factions engaged in a war and the stories of those affected by it as told through the eyes of a boy who by chance becomes the pilot of the eponymous robot. In this regard, Turn A isn’t really anything special. While it does have its specific twists and turns, it’s a mostly standard adventure war drama that is told competently.

What sets it apart from other similar shows is its somewhat unusual setting. Heavily inspired by late 19th Century and early 20th Century America, the majority of the series takes place on an Earth on the verge of industrialization. Gone are the typical space colonies and futuristic megalopolises of science fiction anime and replacing them are expansive fields of grass and towns of Victorian-esque architecture. These hapless Industrial-age folk make up one faction of the war.
The other is the Space-age Moonrace who, like the name suggests, live on the moon and wish to reclaim their mother planet. The huge societal and technological disparity between the two factions creates an interesting heavy contrast dynamic and the image of giant mechanized war machines going to town (figurative) on an Industrial-age town (literal) is a novel one. The gap isn’t just used for novelty though, playing a central role in the development of the story and to great effect.

Another area where Turn A succeeds is the pacing. Being 50 episodes long, the show has a fairly lengthy run time and it balances the world and character building with the plot development nicely. Unlike other Gundam series, Turn A doesn’t seem to adhere to the ‘battle of the week’ formula so strictly. As a result the pace can feel slow in comparison, though I feel it makes the war flow more naturally with it gradually escalating from small scale skirmishes into all-out warfare later in the series. This slower pacing also leads into what I think is the most fully-realised incarnation of the franchise’s anti-war and tree-hugging themes.
Nearer to the end the pacing gets a bit more hectic and maybe even a little messy, but the finale feels satisfyingly climactic and all the plot lines wrap up neatly, finishing off with one of the more memorable epilogues I’ve seen.

Turn A’s cast is a large and colourful one, both in design and personality. All of them get a good amount of characterization and the significantly smaller main cast get a good deal of development for the most part. An unfortunate outlier to this is the main character, Loran Cehack. From episode 1 to episode 50 he remains pretty much the same shining beacon of level-headedness and pacifism, going through ups and downs but staying roughly the same throughout. While I consider this a flaw, it’s a minor one, as the main story isn’t really a personal one and Loran acts more as a window through which to experience the external conflict than to be the story himself. Besides, even if a little flat he’s an enjoyable, completely inoffensive character and a top tier qt.

I’ll also note that this series was conceived after the director Tomino’s recovery from depression and as such is very colourful and fairly upbeat and adventurous in tone, especially in comparison to earlier Gundam series.

Visuals 9/10

To put it shortly, Turn A Gundam looks terrific. Airing in 1999, it was the last Gundam series to be made with traditional cel-animation and in the 2014 Blu-Ray release the colours and linework come up looking great. Given the setting, many of the hand-painted backgrounds are absolutely stunning but there are also a fair amount of significantly less-inspired locales.

The real highlight of the series however, is its amazing designs. Mechanical designs for the titular Turn A Gundam and a few of the Moonrace mobile suits were created by renowned American mechanical designer Syd Mead, known primarily for his work on Tron, Blade Runner and Alien. While some of the designs are radically different to any mobile suits before them, they make the Moonrace feel more alien and highlight the gap between the two forces. The Turn A Gundam is also impeccably designed; regardless of whether you like it or not, it features many visual throwbacks to the original RX-78-2 and manages to be entirely unique while still very clearly being a Gundam. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, that sentiment also perfectly describes the series as a whole and this consistent design coherence is very much appreciated.

Character designs are provided by Akira Yasuda, known for his work for Capcom on series like Street Fighter and Darkstalkers and who would later go on to do mechanical designs for Code Geass, King Gainer and G-Reco. These are also top notch, with the simplistic caricaturised facial designs perfectly matching the series’ light tone. More important than the faces though, is the costume design. Being set in a very class-based period, outfits have huge variation from Loran’s patched up trousers to Lily Borjarno’s extravagant red dress and they add greatly to identification and characterisation. In my opinion, the outfitting is the final touch that really makes the setting, which in turn makes the series.

As with any long running series animation quality varies, though even then I’d say that Studio 1 did a good job making Turn A Gundam look better than most series of similar length. Particularly the action sequences, each one is unique and the amount of reused footage is very low for 50 episodes. In addition to being generally well choreographed and animated, the colouring during action sequences is amazing, with highlights and tonal shading being used really effectively to render the robots. The colouring is pretty great all around, but the high intensity scenes are where it really stands out.

Sound 9/10

The soundtrack is composed by Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Stand Alone Complex, Escaflowne) and is pretty great. While there is a good amount of repetition, there’s a great degree of variation in the tracks too, though most are pretty upbeat and adventurous. There’s one recurring track composed of tribal drums and chanting that’s very memorable, though I’m still somewhat unsure of its fittingness in some scenes. There’s also some really good insert song usage, which is something I can always get behind.

Like most Tomino-directed series, for whatever reason some lines of dialogue can feel particularly awkward but other than that voice work is fine. The main cast features some recognizable names like Romi Park, Jun Fukuyama and Most Based Koyasu, but the most outstanding performance to me was by Rieko Takahashi, who voices two very similar characters and does a good job of differentiating very slightly between the two which is almost only noticeable when they interact with each other.

Overall

Turn A walks the line between too different and too similar well. It makes for an ambitious and somewhat quirky adventure, drawing from some surprising external samples while still maintaining the link to its predecessors. Hands down the best (read: my favourite) Gundam series and a fantastic stand alone adventure anime.