機動戦士ガンダム /Kido Senshi Gundam episode 24
Mobile Suit Gundam – 24

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
 
Kycilia dresses down her military commanders for their failures, especially in light of M’quve’s work to provide Zeon with much needed resources.  After ordering that Char receive a new mobile suit before he joins up with the Mad Angler squadron, Kycilia makes sure the elite Black Tri-Stars are equipped with Dom units before the group is sent to M’quve to reinforce him.  Meanwhile on White Base, the males are all gooey over Lt. Matilda, especially Amuro and Kai.  Elsewhere, General Revil is frustrated with the slow pace of getting Operation Odessa together and orders Elran to get mobilization going now.  Revil receives intel on a Zanzibar battleship landing with the Black Tri-Stars, a group he has personal experience with. Because of this, Revil wants Odessa to begin as soon as possible. With this news, Elran orders his aide Judock to inform M’quve of this.

M’quve is not impressed with the three members of the Black Tri-Stars and they take their new Dom mobile suits to hunt for White Base.  A remote sensor alerts the Federation ship of the Dom’s approach before the Dom’s detect White Base.  Guncannon and Guntank are launched to meet this rapidly approaching threat while Engineering Captain Seki orders Sayla down to pilot the G-Fighter.  Mirai has Frau Bow take Sayla’s spot on the bridge but when Sayla arrives in the hanger, she’s not piloting G-Fighter but G-Armor.  As she attempts to quickly get familiar with the controls, Mirai is informed that White Base cannot take off due to continued engine problems. When Matilda arrives on the bridge, Mirai informs her of this and on Matilda’s advice, orders the G-Armor be launched immediately.

With Sayla at the controls and Amuro manning the weapons, G-Armor enters combat but despite Amuro’s coaching, Sayla can’t make the tight turns of the Core Fighter.  So, Amuro devises a new strategy to be able to use G-Armors beam cannons which are 3-times more powerful than Gundam’s.  Despite this, the G-Armor battle with the Dom is a stalemate and Guncannon and Guntank are outclassed.  As such, Amuro decides to deploy Gundam, which is a component of G-Armor.  Once done, Sayla is able to combine the two halves of the craft together to make G-Fighter as Amuro races to defend White Base, which is now under heavy attack.

Matilda deploys in her Maeda to provide cover as White Base opens fire. The Black Tri-Stars attempt to use their jetstream attack but it doesn’t work.  A second attempt proves fatal as Amuro takes out a Dom with Matilda’s help, forcing the other two Doms to retreat and come up with a new strategy.  However, while Matilda’s assistance bought time for White Base and gave Amuro the boost he needed to defeat a Dom, it cost her life as her Maeda was heavily damaged and crashed.  As such, a returned Bright orders passing honors be given as White Base passes the crater of the crash.  With the crew on deck, passing honors are given with the crew saluting Matilda and her troops, but Matilda’s death causes Amuro great grief.

Thoughts/Review:

One of the frustrating parts of watching Mobile Suit Gundam is the never ending introduction of new military units for either the Zeons or the Federation.  This week, the Zeons brought in the next version of mobile suit in the form of the Dom.  On the Federation side, the G-Fighter is apparently already G-Powered for G-Wonderfulness.  Just have the G-Fighter separate into two halves, insert Gundam, close the two halves, add two Gundam shields on either side and voilà, the trick is done and we gots us a G-Armor, y’all! Based on the episode, I guess having a Gundam inserted into a G-Fighter somehow makes it more powerful than a Gundam alone.  Well, wouldn’t that be true of anything?  Still, that’s a toy company’s influence for ya.  ^_^;;;

Onto the story aspects of the episode, I didn’t expect Matilda to buy the farm, even when she crashed into the Dom and went down in flames.  She’d been in hot spots before and survived so I thought she’d do so again. The loss of characters something I’m going to have to start expecting because the writers clearly have zero qualms about killing off characters who aren’t just “red shirts.”  In that regard, Gundam has a very realistic tone to it.  In war, people die — family, friends, or even the irritating bastard who might share a bunk with you but sacrificed themselves to save you.  That infusion of dark, cold realism certainly offsets the unrealistic elements like mid-air conversions of the various Gundam parts.

Bright makes his return at the end of the episode.  I liked how he had the crew render man the rails and render a sort of passing honors as White Base flew over the crater where the Dom exploded and her Maeda crashed.  Thankfully, we didn’t have a repeat of what happened when Ryu died. ^_^;  Anyway, I hope Bright and Mirai will be better leaders in future.

Speaking of leaders, I guess my thoughts of Matilda sniffing out Elran are out.  So, General Revil has a traitor in his midst and Operation Odessa about to start.  I’m not sure how Elran gets uncovered, if at all but that will be interesting to watch and see what he does.

I liked the scene of Kycilia laying the smack down for her commanding officers. Clearly, things haven’t been going so good for the Zeons and she’s determined to turn that around and preserve M’quve’s mining operations.

Char gets a mention here, so I’m thinking he is about to return to the battlefield.  His lengthy absence has actually been quite good for the series IMO and so when he finally does return, it will make the inevitable conflict between him and Amuro more interesting.

So, a rather good episode here with a death that is handled better than Ryu’s.

Note: I threw this together in a hurry so hopefully, it isn’t full of stupid errors. ^_^;