As a follow-up to my previous post asking for Gundam recommendations, I figured I’d open up a discussion about the OVA I finished tonight, Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket.

I’ll start by restating that I’m a longtime anime fan but a relative Gundam noob, having only just recently watched (and enjoyed) the original Mobile Suit Gundam (0079) original TV series. As a big fan of Gainax/Khara and Kazuya Tsurumaki (FLCL, Diebuster, Evangelion) I’ve been looking forward to the upcoming GQuuuuuux series, and I’ve been looking forward to checking out a selection of different well-regarded Gundam shows and films before the new one debuts.

That makes Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket is an interesting one for me; not only is it pretty highly regarded by fans, but it also has some solid early Gainax connections, as the screenplay was written by Hiroyuki Yamaga (Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise, Gunbuster) and the character designs were done by Haruhiko Mikimoto (Gunbuster).

Anyway… Having just finished it a few minutes ago, I feel like it was only alright and maybe a little bit overrated.

To start with the positives, I think the OVA mostly looked great. Character designs are peak 80s anime that remind me of Gunbuster in all the right ways, mobile suits look super cool and detailed, the animations were generally pretty great especially during the battle sequences, backgrounds were mostly good. Having just come from MSG 0079, it really felt jarringly impressive how far the craft of Japanese animation had come over the span of a decade. I also liked the overall scenario and concept of the story–growing up as a middle-schooler during the context of the One Year War between the Federation and Zeon. I think the meta narrative about the idealization of weapons of war was also solid and worth exploring.

But here’s where it lost me a bit…

1. Let me get this one out of the way: the soundtrack sucks, both in terms of how unbelievably cheesy the tracks are, as well as how they affect the overall tone of the scenes. This OVA is just packed full of really mediocre and generic 1980s synth (and maybe early rompler) sounds, which alone isn’t that much of a problem (I have nothing against synth or romplers, and I love video game music). But when you combine the super cheesy and oddly upbeat sounding music with what’s happening on screen it massively detracts from the mood of whatever is happening. Throughout the entire thing I found the music to be distractingly out of place and a major step down from the great soundtrack of Mobile Suit Gundam 0079.

2. Despite being a fan of Gainax (or maybe because I’m a fan), I’ve never really liked Hiroyuki Yamaga or his work. This OVA feels a lot like his film, Royal Space Force, in the sense that you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s great because it has some good moments and certainly looks great at times. But a lot of the stuff that happens either makes no fucking sense at all or lacked any emotional resonance (for me, at least).

MAJOR SPOILERS Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket MAJOR SPOILERS

For example, the main character Al, who is supposed to be likable and relatable, is just kind of a shitty little sociopath. I understand that he thinks Zeon and their mobile suits are cool, as he’s viewing the war from a naive and childish point-of-view, but in many of his interactions with other people he just comes across as manipulative and impossible to understand. He gets by far the most screen time, and is really the focus of the whole story, and he comes away affected by the war in the end, but that’s about the extent of his growth.

Bernie, the under cover Zeon pilot and character with the second most screentime, has pretty little agency and dies a pretty pointless death in the end. That could make for a good character, if his time was used as a realistic and cynical counterpoint to Al’s naive idealization of war. But instead of being a role model (who shows Al that war and Zeon are nothing to look up to and that he’s merely a pawn in someone else’s greedy scheme, who ultimately goes out in a blaze of glory trying to do the right thing and save Side 6 from destruction), he just plays into Al’s naivety. Instead of elevating Al to the levels of a worthwhile hero character, it feels more like he lowers himself to Al’s level. (I also don’t understand how him listening to some drunk chick at the bar complaining to her boyfriend ended up as his call to action to save Side 6…)

Finally Chris, the female lead, was barely a factor in this story at all and didn’t have nearly enough screen time or meaningful interaction with he other two main characters. She’s “cool” because she’s a cute girl who secretly pilots a Gundam, and she certainly fucks some shit up. But she felt to me like a missed opportunity to tell a more complex story between these 3 characters and their polar opposite paths. I would have liked to see more of her, and I think her relationship to the other characters would have felt more believable had they spent more time actually telling that part of the story.

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3. This is a minor complaint, but I think the pacing of this OVA is nowhere near as good as the other ones that I’ve mentioned above (Gunbuster, FLCL, and Diebuster). War in the Pocket felt a lot more like a film that was broken into 6 parts than it felt like 6 stand-alone episodes telling a short story. I just feel like the available time could have been used better to tell the story from multiple perspectives. (For example, episode 1 being the setup, episode 2 and 4 focusing on Al/Bernie/Zeon, episode 3 and 5 focusing on Al/Chris/Federation, and then episode 6 being the dramatic conclusion that ties it all together.)

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Overall, I mostly enjoyed it for what it was. Don’t get me wrong!

It was an impressive looking show with an interesting premise relative to the original Gundam 0079 UC series. In so far as I understand the essence of Gundam as a noob–that robots may be cool but war is bad and only hurts people–I think War in the Pocket is a worthwhile story, only held back by sloppy writing and a terribly vibe-killing OST. It’s still a pretty easy recommend to Gundam fans, because of how it looks and how it slots into the UC setting, but the flaws are big enough that it would be hard to recommend as someone’s first Gundam experience.

What do you all think about Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket? Do you like it? Does it live up to the hype, in your view? Am I being overly harsh (granted it was just my first watch, and some things are a lot better during a 2nd or 3rd watch)?