機動戦士ガンダム /Kido Senshi Gundam episode 22
Mobile Suit Gundam – 22

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

White Base continues to work through M’quve’s territory, destroying mining operation bases as they go.  Bright passes out after the most recent attack due to exhaustion and is taken to sick bay.  After the battle, Hayato and Amuro begin work on Guntank and Gundam to make repairs.  Meanwhile, M’quve receives word on White Base‘s activities and wants something done about this.  A team of Zeon troops are deployed to wait in White Base‘s path and as the ship passes overhead, they fly up in rocket packs with bombs, destroying White Base‘s Minovsky particle emitter and the ECM transmitter but not their radar.  With that, White Base is easily visible to the Zeons, who launch an attack with 20 Dopp units.

Mirai orders Hayato and Amuro to provide cover in their Core Fighters but they are hopelessly outmanned despite taking a few enemy down.  Mirai orders Hayato back to White Base to convert to Guncannon while Amuro is to perform a mid-air combat conversion.  Despite taking out a few attacking Gouf mobile suits, it is clear that Gundam and Guncannon are outgunned and both soon run out of ammunition.  They return to the ship and Mirai orders a retreat, not knowing that she is falling further into M’quve’s trap.  White Base soon comes into range of a beam cannon with a massive punch which seriously damages White Base.  Amuro manages to take out the weapon in a resupplied Gundam but the damage to White Base causes the ship to crash.  To fool the enemy, smoke bombs are set off and the Zeon Dopp formation flies past.

Thoughts/Review:

After 20 episodes of White Base pretty much coming through without too much damage, the last two episodes have seen the ship take a serious beating.  To be honest, this was rather overdue since White Base and its crew have been rather lucky plus Zeon forces obviously continued to underestimate the Federation ship and its rookie crew.

Still, if the purpose of White Base is to keep the Zeon forces distracted for Operation Odessa, then it is mostly doing its job though how they survive Zeon forces coming to make sure the ship is destroyed for good remains to be seen.

I wasn’t surprised to see Bright fall apart from exhaustion.  Commanding a major warship in a time of war is a daunting task for anyone to undertake, much more so for someone who hasn’t been trained for it.  Normally, someone commanding such a warship would have years of command experience and at minimum, training to deal with combat situations.  Bright has done pretty well so far but the combination of Amuro’s challenging his authority as well as the death of many crew members including Ryu just sent him over the edge I suppose.  I know he’ll recover based on some comments made that indicate Bright is in lots of Gundam series so it will be interesting to see how this is accomplished.

While I’m not surprised that Mirai fell apart when command came to her, I have to say I was disappointed.  I’ve been saying that Mirai would make a good Executive Officer (XO) and to date, she had been doing a pretty good job.  However, in the heat of combat when she needed to be strong, she collapsed.  Again, I understand this completely but I was hoping that maybe she would have held up better under these conditions.  I guess not having Bright there caused her to not have confidence in herself. Interesting how Sayla kept her wits about her and helped the situation without undermining Mirai.  Mirai seemed to regain her composure once the attack was over so it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Still, was Ryu all that to have your top two commanding officers lose it?

Don’t get me wrong, Ryu was a valuable member of the crew with his ability to pilot a Core Fighter and thus a mobile suit.  There’s no doubt that the loss of Ryu has an impact on the fighting ability of White Base.  That said, the way both Bright and Mirai kept calling his name as they succumbed to pressures of command, one would think that Ryu did a lot more than I’d seen him do.  Maybe there are cut scenes where Ryu made up battle plans, drew up the duty roster, and made an ultra-tasty chocolate cheese pie.  ^_~

On the Zeon front, M’quve I guess could be said to be good once he got off his butt and did something.  I take it he mainly liked being a behind the scenes commander but the loss of some mines and the destruction of Ramba’s platoon meant that he had to take charge.  Question is, will he assume White Base has been destroyed or will he want proof?

Interesting that M’quve uses Western honorifics such as “Mister Judock,” Now I’m trying to remember if he addressed Kycilia as “Kycilia-sama.”  I think he does.

Finally, I had previously mentioned the fanservicing of young Kikka and as well as Frau Bow.  I guess in Japan at the time, this fanservice went over quite well because it was taken to the next level in this episode with Frau Bow giving us a GOOD look at the goods as well as Kikka and the boys.  One wonders if Mobile Suit Gundam would be acceptable in Tokyo today with the Youth Healthy Development Ordinance ordinance.

So, aside from the pointless fanservice, this was a fairly interesting episode where our heroes are in some real jeopardy and the top two commanding officers have lost it.