Latest news with #CharAznable
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The ‘GQuuuuuuX' Endgame Is About the Messiest Relationship in All of ‘Gundam'
What is Mobile Suit Gundam about? Sometimes, it's about cool robots. Sometimes, it's about the horrors of war. Sometimes, it's about the balance of power, and the exploitation of have-nots by the haves, a cycle of class conflict that is inextricably interwoven through the cycle of military conflict. But really, a lot of the time–especially in the series' foundational Universal Century setting–Gundam is a story about the two most divorced people to have ever not been married. And now Gundam GQuuuuuuX, in its own remixing of that timeline, is seemingly going to close out being about Char Aznable and Amuro Ray too. I've written before that GQuuuuuuX's narrative has been haunted from the very beginning by the 1979 anime's main characters. Char has been the most present of those specters, both in how the series has repeatedly flashed back to his exploits in the One Year War, to the man himself lurking in the background waiting for pieces of his plan to fall into place. Now, in GQuuuuuuX's penultimate episode, Char begins making his moves in the open, casting off his 'disguise' as Shirouzu as he makes clear to everyone around him his aims: to stop the Rose of Sharon and its mysterious alternate Lalah from inadvertently destroying reality as this 'remix' of the Universal Century has come to know it. Char and our heroes alike, however, find themselves at odds. Machu can only see the struggles of the Lalah she encountered on Earth in this trapped alternate version of her, and so Char's desire to save the world by destroying her sees Machu race to stop him. It further turns out that Shuji, making his grand return to the story after mysteriously vanishing a few weeks ago, is by her side against Char: purportedly first as an extension of the dormant Lalah's psionic will, but then, in a climactic heel turn, through a revelation that he too is from the same reality as Lalah… pulled into this aberrant timeline in an attempt to erase it. How Shuji intends to do that, and why, is left unclear, save for GQuuuuuuX's most audacious twist in the episode's final moments: emerging beyond the Rose of Sharon's psionic gateway to another world comes a Gundam. The Gundam. Not the re-imagined Mobile Suit we've seen in the show's prior re-imagining of the One Year War; there is no lanky, skeletal, almost Evangelion-esque frame here. This is the RX-78-2, as seen in the classic Mobile Suit Gundam—and, presumably, inside it is some version of Amuro Ray. That bit remains uncertain, to be fair. Perhaps the reality Shuji is from is one where he is the pilot of the first Gundam, perhaps, just as Char said of Lalah, he is using his vast powers as a Newtype to somehow possess Amuro and fling him at his new foes like an attack dog. Perhaps it's someone else in there entirely, or no one, and it's the Gundam itself being puppeteered by Shuji. For what it's worth, GQuuuuuuX's invocation of 'Beyond the Time' in this episode, the rock-ballad anthem that acts as the ending theme of Char's Counterattack, almost feels like it has to be Amuro in some form or another, rather than a fake out. We already know Lalah has seen visions of other worlds that play out the fateful encounter between herself, Char, and Amuro that ended with her sacrifice in the original series over and over in infinite combinations. Surely now then, it is time to see that battle play out again, but this time with the fate of a universe at stake. Because after all what is the story of the Universal Century if not that of Char Aznable and Amuro Ray? The evolution of Char and Amuro from wartime rivals to uncertain allies, to once-again foes yearning to understand their confounding connection to each other, is one that plays out across Gundam as a series for the best part of its first decade. Bonded by Lalah and the emergence of them both as Newtypes—capable of this heightened connection and understanding, but forever only on the brink of actually understanding each other and their visions for the world they fight for—the cycle of Gundam, in the Universal Century at least, is largely defined by the relationship between these two men. We haven't seen a GQuuuuuuX version of Amuro throughout the series so far—his role in the alternate version of past events is left pointedly out of the picture. Perhaps that's the true aberration Shuji speaks of in the creation of this world is, in some ways, that there could be some version of Char's story without him, one that lacks this fundamental figure that defines so much of it in the original Gundam. If GQuuuuuuX is going to make reframing and remixing the original Gundam its defining trait, there's probably no other way it could've ended than Char and Amuro, in some form or another, making their deal the whole universe's problem.
Gizmodo
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘GQuuuuuuX' Is Taking Its ‘Gundam' Remix to a Whole Other Level
Last week, I said that Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX's remixing of the original Gundam continuity was letting several of the original series' biggest characters haunt the narrative, from the absent Amuro Ray, to the slightly less absent Char Aznable, and then the one figure who's really been skirting around the edges of GQuuuuuuX's periphery in earnest, the mysterious Lalah Sune. This week, Lalah stopped skirting… and then some. To the surprise of no one after last week's setup, episode nine of GQuuuuuuX, 'The Rose of Sharon,' is indeed for the most part about Lalah Sune making her way into the series' narrative, as Machu manages to escape confinement with the GQuuuuuuX and head to Earth, where she finds Lalah forced to work at a lavish brothel. But while this Lalah is indeed a Newtype—regaling staff and Machu alike of the visions she sees in her dreams—she is not the Rose of Sharon that Machu was seeking in her hopes to be reunited with Shuji. Instead, this Lalah is almost haunted by what has come to pass, her Newtypism not really granting her a vision of the future, but what was, as GQuuuuuuX offers yet another spin on a classic scene from the 1979 anime. Floating in the cosmic glow that represents the connection forged between Newtypes, Lalah flatly explains that the future she sees is her own: the future of another Lalah, a young woman who meets a young Zeon officer in red who whisks her to the stars… a Lalah who falls in love with that man, and also his rival, as she dies in battle saving the former from the latter. What the Lalah of GQuuuuuuX sees beyond time, as she says to Machu, is the original story of Mobile Suit Gundam. The implication then that GQuuuuuuX's remixed timeline of the Universal Century co-exists alongside Gundam's original one, in some capacity, already raises a bunch of fascinating questions, but things only get more interesting in the episode's climactic moments, when we and Machu alike discover that the Lalah was right when she told them that she is not the rose neither she, nor Shuji, nor everyone else has been looking for after it went missing… Because another Lalah Sune is. The Lalah Sune, if you will. Hidden for years at the bottom of the ocean until Machu and the GQuuuuuuX find it, Lalah's mobile armor the Elmeth, locked in time from the moment of her death in the 1979 anime, has some how become an almighty object of vast psionic power, a Newtype beacon that has transitioned across this divergent timeline, calling out to the generation of Newtypes that forged it in the first place in characters like Char and Lalah, but also the generation that has grown beyond them in this new timeline, like Machu, Nyaan, and Shuji. Of course, Gundam is no stranger to the alternate reality trend that has become du jour in contemporary pop culture. It's been on it for decades at this point, when Mobile Fighter G Gundam created the first alternate Gundam universe to exist on TV outside of the stories that had been told in the Universal Century setting. Ever since we've had a bunch of other alternate realities to provide the setting to new Gundam series, we've had realities that, like GQuuuuuuX, has mirrored and riffed on the Universal Century stories to create their own echoes of its ideas. Hell, Turn A Gundam presented a vision where its setting was a far-flung future after a 'Dark History' that eradicated humanity back to a technological reset—one that touched upon every corner of Gundam continuity up to that point in some way, a comment on the cyclical nature of historical trends, while also symbolically honoring the entire metatext of the franchise up to that point, regardless of continuity. Suffice to say, the coexistence of a GQuuuuuuX timeline, with all its changes, and that potential of the original timeline alongside it, is not exactly unfamiliar territory that Gundam is wading into as it explores all this. With GQuuuuuuX having just a few more episodes to lay out what exactly it wants to say in all this remixing and meta-commentary, time will tell if all these self-referential reveals will result in the series creating something additive to that vast canon—or if its wild evocations are simply designed to spin the heads of diehard fans.
Gizmodo
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
GQuuuuuuX Is a Celebration of Gundam Blorbos
The latest Gundam show is clearly made by people who love the 1979 classic—but that love isn't getting in the way of the story it wants to tell. Now that it's almost halfway through, Gundam GQuuuuuuX is setting the stage for a fascinating story between its young trio of protagonists and the forces at play beyond them in the show's vision of an alternative version of Gundam's beloved original continuity. But something has become clear about the series with every episode: this is a series that is made by creatives who are absolute sickos for the original Gundam. Set in an alt-future re-imagining of what Gundam could look like if the Earth Federation lost the One Year War depicted throughout the original 1979 anime, by its very nature GQuuuuuuX has had plenty of opportunity to include tons of familiar characters. It's pulled out some big guns: Char Aznable, arguably one of the most famous Gundam characters of all time, if not the most, has both appeared and left an indelible shadow over the series' whole narrative even as he has become largely absent from it. You might have expected, in some ways, for the series' cast to be peppered with oodles of other prominent characters from the original show, from series protagonist Amuro Ray, to Char's sister Sayla, to Bright Noa, or other members of the White Base crew that could've been, if Zeon hadn't won the war. But GQuuuuuuX's primary cast is both blessedly largely original, and filled with 1979 throwbacks… just the wildest, weirdest choices imaginable. Challia Bull, an important yet one-off character from the 1979 show—paradoxically both fundamentally vital to that series' early explorations of one of the franchise's most fascinating concepts, Newtypes, and also unimportant enough that he was killed off in his debut appearance, and even left on the cutting room floor of the original show's movie compilation trilogy—is a major figure and potential antagonistic force in GQuuuuuuX, radically re-imagined as an incredibly close partner of Char now in search of his missing friend and the Red Gundam he piloted. But he's a major character in a sea of what the internet would otherwise affectionally call 'blorbos' (or Glup Shittos, if you take your fandom parlance from Star Wars): incredibly minor one-hit wonders whose invocation is for the most diehard of fans. We've had Cameron Bloom, a minor bureaucrat from the original show who mostly existed to get in the way of Mirai's burgeoning relationship with Bright and be subject to one of the funniest punches in Gundam history, in one of several weekly appearances of a random minor character in GQuuuuuuX's narrative. That's a list that has included Mosk Han, a Federation scientist who appears in a single late episode of the original to upgrade the Gundam's response time; and Dren and Denim, Char's stooges (and most hilariously by absence Gene, a Zaku pilot who's presence on the mission to scout out the Gundam is apparently the decisive turning point of GQuuuuuuX's entire timeline). This week we got Gaia and Ortega, two-thirds of the Black Tri-Stars, a trio of Zeon ace pilots best known for one extremely cool attack maneuver that they then proceed to immediately whiff when they try to use it on Amuro more than once. Next week, we're getting Kycilia Zabi, a member of the fascistic ruling family of Zeon whose main plots in the original show were executing her Nazi-loving brother and then getting gruesomely blown up by a Char bazooka headshot in the series' closing episode. The vast majority of these characters are not ones you would expect an alternative retelling of Gundam's primary 'Universal Century' timeline to even mention, let alone give prominent plotlines to. And yet, for as incredibly referential and reverential of the original Mobile Suit Gundam as GQuuuuuuX is, its story is not beholden to a cameo fest. GQuuuuuuX never slams the breaks on its narrative to grab its audience by the shoulders and scream 'look! a reference!', or make awareness of the original Gundam vital knowledge to that narrative's logic. Anyone watching the series without prior knowledge of a 46 year old anime is still getting a compelling story, one built largely on entirely new characters (or characters like Challia, so drastically re-imagined that they might as well be new). Anyone who does know? Well, they get to delight in whatever Little Guy of the Week will show up next. It makes the fanservice not the point of the series, but a shared language between the creative team and diehard audiences that reminds the latter, every week, that the former adores all this weird stuff as much as you do. There's a kind of absurd sincerity to GQuuuuuuX in that sense, that invites trust: come along this wild ride with us, the show asks, wherever it takes this remixing of Gundam's fundamental world. And you kind of want to, because you can tell just bursting from every seam is a creative team that understands all the flavor and minutiae that made that world so compelling in the first place.
Forbes
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Upcoming Char Aznable Action Figure Came Here To Laugh At You
The upcoming Char Aznable action figure from Bandai Spirits. In a curious move, Bandai Spirits has announced a new upcoming Char Aznable action figure from Mobile Suit Gundam. The reason why this is curious is that while shows like Kamen Rider and Ultraman get loads of action figures, characters from mecha anime tend not to get the same treatment. I learned years ago from a representative at Bandai Spirits that when it came to mecha shows, people didn't tend to want figures of characters but more of the mecha themselves. The reason for this is that the mecha in these shows act as cyphers for the characters, so buying a toy of the mecha they pilot is the equivalent of also buying an action figure of the character. However, the big change now is that series like Mobile Suit Gundam have a much larger international market share compared to a decade ago. As with other releases, this figure will have a very wide range of articulation. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder My guess is that this Char Aznable figure is meant more for the international market to see if character action figures from mecha anime can have more traction abroad. Naturally, this Char Aznable action figure also ties neatly into the currently airing Gundam GQuuuuuuX anime, where he is featured as part of the backstory for the series. Char Aznable is also arguably one of the most iconic characters from the Gundam saga, so it makes sense that Bandai Spirits would start here. Admittedly, this is by no means the first mecha anime-related character action figure, but they are a rarity due to the reasons specified above, so this does stand out as a more strategic release from an international standpoint. As with other releases, the figure comes with all manner of gimmicks, from different facial expressions to the Newtype 'flash' effect. This Char Aznable action figure will be released this October and cost 9,900 yen (or around $71 at the current exchange rate). As for the whole Char meme, admittedly, that is from Zeta Gundam, when Char called himself Quattro, but it still feels appropriate considering how snarky Char can be across the Gundam franchise. Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently featured in the Giant Robots exhibition currently touring Japan.
