機動戦士ガンダム /Kido Senshi Gundam episode 23
Mobile Suit Gundam – 23

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

The crew of White Base attempt to make repairs but to no avail as the don’t have enough parts and supplies.  General Revil needs White Base to attack M’quve from the rear and sends Matilda and a squadron of Medea transports to resupply White Base even though General Elran objects to White Base being used since its crew are not regular military.  Revil sends a coded message to White Base to inform them as M’quve receives word of Matidla’s mission from a report by Elran but not the Gundam parts being sent.  M’quve sends three Dodai YS planes to ferry three Gouf units to attack Matilda, escorted by Dopp fighters.

Less than 200KM from White Base, Matilda’s squadron spots the incoming Zeon planes and takes up defensive positions while sending out an SOS.  White Base receives Matilda’s SOS and Mirai decides to send support but then counters herself out of fear of leaving White Base unprotected.  Sayla follows Mirai’s first order and dispatches Amuro in a Core Fighter along with Guncannon and Gunperry but then suggests Mirai take the Captain’s spot, something Mirai doesn’t want to do.  Amuro’s Core Fighter provides some much needed support as he’s able to destroy both a Dodai YS plane, some Dopps, and even a Gouf but at the cost of most of his ammunition.

Seeing Gunperry and realizing it carries Gundam, the Zeons abandon their attack on the Medea to go after Gunperry.  Matilda has her planes land since #4 with the Gundam upgrades has crashed.  Kai shows up in Guncannon and provides support allowing Amuro to perform a mid-air conversion.  The Zeons are stunned that the Core Fighter is part of the mobile suit as Gundam enters the battle.  Matilda has the G-parts unloaded and Hayato pilot the G-Fighter as Amuro destroys a Gouf but takes heavy damage on Gundam.  Using the G-fighter as a platform, Amuro battles the remaining Gouf on its Dodai YS and manages to destroy it, leading Matilda to praise him, Hayato, and Kai.

Thoughts/Review:

This episode was a little frustrating in terms of purposeful bad writing.  For starters, after Amuro is fighting in the Core Fighter, he wants support badly because he’s out of ammunition before the eye catch mid-point (or at least, that’s how I heard it).  However, once the eye catch is over, suddenly Amuro has one more missile and one final burst of machine gun fire.  The second happened when Gundam fought the second Gouf and took heavy damage.  Amuro complains that Gundam can’t move because of damaged circuitry but then suddenly, Gundam is able to move with no problems to get on the G-fighter.  *_*  That’s just bad stuff in my opinion.

Getting past that, things were rather interesting.  We finally got to see General Revil after hearing his name mentioned so many times.  Once seen, he became rather chatty with two messages to White Base in addition to the meeting with Elran and Matilda.

Speaking of Elran, I’d heard M’quve mention him earlier but didn’t realize M’quve has such a high-ranking mole within the Federation.  It seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to sniff him out since I think Matilda would be the one to do that.

It was interesting seeing Sayla and Mirai work together.  With Mirai still struggling with the burdens of command, Sayla did end up upstaging Mirai and not obeying her counter-orders.  However, it is clear that Sayla has no interest in taking over the operations of White Base and went out of her way to try to build Mirai up — well, other than the one incident.  Even there, I felt that Sayla was trying to point out that Mirai’s first instinct on what to do when the distress call came in was the proper one and indeed, Mirai ended up figuratively standing on her own two feet at the end when she gave the order for work crews to return to their repairs.

Going back to Gundam, I guess the writers wanted some sort of mounted warrior fights with the Zeons having Gouf units “riding” (howbeit standing up) Dodai YS planes.  So naturally, the Federation has to have a new G-Fighter for Gundam to “ride” for those classic cavalry moments.  It seems rather excessive if you ask me.  Having planes designed to ferry mobile suits into battle is one thing but having them be used so that mobile suits can engage in some sort of pseudo aerial combat just seems wrong.

Still, despite some misgivings, there was still good stuff here and it was certainly entertaining.  ^_^