Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz Review

Synopsis:
A direct sequel to the original series, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz picks up one year after the end of the war between the Earth Sphere Alliance and its rebelling space colonies. As the veterans on both sides of the conflict settle into peacetime, a new threat suddenly reveals itself in the form of Mariemaia, the previously unknown illegitimate daughter of the late Treize Khushrenada, who seeks to carry on a misguided version of her father's will, plunging the newly formed Earth Sphere Unified Nation into war once more and forcing the retired Gundam pilots onto the battlefield again.

Originally released as three OVAs, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz was compiled and re-released the following year as a feature film, with a bit of new footage and some tweaks to existing scenes. 

Release Date:
1997 (OVAs)
1998 (Film)

Episodes:
3 (OVAs)
1 (Film)

Timeline:
AC 196-197

My Grade:
C+

Following the disappointingly mediocre Mobile Suit Gundam Wing series, I was interested to see if the subsequent film release, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, would offer any saving graces to uplift the overall Wing story. While Endless Waltz is a huge upgrade visually, the nagging issues of bizarre, inhuman characters and nonsensical plot details remain, leading to a film containing some very nice eye candy which comes at the cost of many head-scratching moments in between. 

One of Wing's biggest problems is that the world in which it takes place feels as if there's nobody living in it. All of the battles, political machinations, and character moments are removed from the lives of ordinary people, and thus the stakes only seem to affect the handful of eccentric main characters. Endless Waltz mostly suffers from this same issue, though it at least offers a few glimpses of normal humans responding to the prospect of war in affected locations. Notably, a crowd of civilian and ex-military onlookers is spurred into action in one of the film's later scenes, though this sequence feels too little / too late to have any weight (and is only present in the film version of Endless Waltz, not the original OVAs), so I can't give it too much credit. 

The characters are the same mixed bunch of brooding clichés, with only a few that act like real humans (mainly Duo and Quatre). While we do briefly see a lighter side to Heero, this abrupt glimpse doesn't do a whole lot to reduce the feeling that his dominant personality trait is a complete lack of emotion. Wu Fei remains an unstable psychopath whose behavior and motivations are completely unbelievable. Meanwhile, Zechs, who previously led a genocidal army bent on killing billions of earthlings, has now flipped back to being one of the good guys, without any consequences or even acknowledgement of his prior actions. 

The new villain, Mariemaia, is the seven-year-old product of a previously unmentioned affair between Treize and the unseen sister of the real Trowa Barton. That's right, the real Trowa Barton - apparently the character we've known as Trowa for the entirety of this story was just a nameless soldier who took the real Trowa's place when he was killed. Was this part of a calculated plot like when Casval Daikun stole the identity of Char Aznable back in Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin? No...apparently our nameless cool guy just had nothing better to do. Unbelievable. Back to Mariemaia - she's silly and unremarkable, as is the idea of a military conqueror who should be in first grade, and there's no good explanation as to why she thinks that starting a new war is what her late father would have wanted. As with many characters in Wing, her mind is eventually changed by one sentence of strained philosophy spoken by another character, making you wonder how such a dumb kid could rise to lead an army. 

Despite the shortcomings both new and carried over from the original series, Endless Waltz shines in the visual department. The animation is (mostly) gorgeous, with fast-paced, kinetic mobile suit battles. Famously, Gundam design guru Hajime Katoki did a from-scratch redesign of the five main Gundams. The new models, particularly the Wing Zero, are a bit over the top, but very cool and a welcome visual refresh. It is quite thrilling seeing the G-Team line up and fly into battle when the moment comes. 

If there's a problem with the action itself, it's that almost all the mobile suit fights involve the Gundams mowing down endless waves of generic enemy mobile suits. There's only one Gundam vs Gundam dual (which has a silly story premise to begin with) in the entire film, so, as with much of the main Wing series, the Gundams basically just use their varied attacks to do the exact same repetitive thing: make the rank and file enemy suits blow up instantly. 

If you're a fan of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, you'll very likely enjoy Endless Waltz as well. It carries forward all the sappy, melodramatic, convoluted baggage of the main series and rewraps it all in an admittedly gorgeous new package. At only 90 minutes, it's certainly worth a watch - just don't expect a particularly strong story.