Anime News Network Editorial

Mobile Suit Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino's recent announcement that his years in the industry were coming to a close was met with an abundance of soul-searching from fans of the mecha subgenre. Having revolutionized anime with the original Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979, Tomino always seemed committed to his upstart attitude and confrontational creative ethos even in his old age, making his announcement come as a surprise to many. This is, after all, the man who vowed to crush both Evangelion and Demon Slayer earlier in the year. His relentless criticism of popular titles in the industry as well as his own works cast the image of an artist forever striving towards some kind of magnum opus, some final project that we could point to as an encapsulation of his decades-spanning career.

However, if Tomino is serious about taking a bow within the first half of the decade, then it's likely that his directorial swan song will be the endlessly embattled Gundam: Reconguista in G, more commonly known as G-Reco by fans. While a vanguard of dedicated Tomino zealots has never wavered in the show's defense, the title has been broadly written off by anime audiences at large, being by far the lowest-rated mainline Gundam entry on MyAnimeList. Detractors argued that breakneck pacing left little room for characters to grow, and scarce exposition baffled audiences when it came to the nature of the show's setting.

Indeed, it's always seemed like Tomino has had more faith in G-Reco than fans at large do, foreseeing that in 50 years he will be vindicated, somehow and somewhere, despite the show's flaws. So abundant is his confidence that Sunrise greenlit a whopping five compilation films for G-Reco – that's two more films than even longer Gundam entries like Zeta received, for context. At the same time, Tomino, oftentimes his own harshest critic, has been transparent about his ambition to use these films as a project to fix the errors made during the production of the original anime. If this ambitious commitment to his original vision for G-Reco ends up being his final directorial effort, how should we evaluate its position within his larger body of work? What added significance does the project take on if it ends up being the capstone to Tomino's career? We'll take a look at his shifting attitudes towards his career since 1999, as well as his commentaries on G-Reco itself to find out.

From the outset, it's clear that Tomino intended for G-Reco to be enjoyed by younger audiences outside of the “core” Gundam demographic of aging nerds who won't shut up about the thrust output of the verniers on an imaginary robot. “Animation is meant for young people” he's said, stressing that G-Reco's cheerful tone was deliberately designed to attract younger audiences. That might seem like an odd thing for Yoshiyuki “Kill 'Em All” Tomino to say, as he spent a good chunk of his early career making robot shows decidedly less kid-friendly. This is the guy who, under the auspices of the child-friendly super robot show Zambot 3, included scenes of civilians screaming for their families before being forcibly detonated as living suicide weapons, as well as the deaths of nearly every main character (including the dog) in the final episodes. Because, you know, it's for kids! From the apocalypticism of Space Runaway Ideon, to the unflinching look at industrialized warfare's toll on the human psyche in Mobile Suit Gundam and its sequels, it's easy to see why Tomino has a reputation for doom and gloom.

However, fans of his work will be familiar with the “Happy Tomino” undercurrent that can be found throughout his filmography. Titles like Xabungle, Gundam ZZ, and perhaps most importantly Turn A Gundam can be found interspersed throughout his more depressing projects. Although Tomino has always stressed the importance of not being pinned down as a creator, one of the most significant shifts in his career can be seen from Turn A Gundam onwards, beginning a period where it seems like “Happy Tomino” has started to win out. If Tomino's filmography does indeed end with the G-Reco films, it's likely that anime fans will look back on the span from Turn A to G-Reco as a unique, interesting, and conclusive period in the director's career.

Why is it, then, that shows like Turn A, Overman King Gainer, and Gundam ZZ have been widely enjoyed while G-Reco remained the proverbial black sheep of the movement? There are, of course, an abundance of surface-level critiques that can be made with regards to G-Reco – critiques that Tomino himself seems acutely aware of. The show's pacing appears to be broken on a fundamental level, blasting through its myriad conflicts at a blinding speed. The audience is plunged abruptly into the setting and, characteristically of Tomino's work, it feels like the screenplay expects us to have a pre-existing understanding of the anime's world and characters. What's that, you don't know what a Kuntala is? You have no idea why these people seem to worship elevators? Too bad; there are no brakes on this train! This is to say nothing of what can be charitably called Tomino's “colorful” approach to character writing, featuring constantly shifting allegiances and frequently baffling dialogue (“The world is not square!” one character exclaims). A cursory glance of the show's MAL page reveals the effects of this approach: reviews illustrate a desperately confused audience, with many a baffled viewer complaining about having no functional understanding of what was even supposed to be happening on screen. With largely negative reviews and middling BD sales souring the public on the project, Tomino himself appeared to put the final nail in G-Reco's coffin – “Frankly, I didn't think it would be this horrible”, he lamented in a 2015 interview.

G-Reco never quite went away, though, and Tomino's vision for the project hasn't wavered. If we want to be successful in identifying what that vision is, it's helpful to draw comparisons between it and the two compilation films that have been made available thus far – namely regarding what doesn't change between the two versions of the story. The pacing feels more reserved in the films, to be sure, but the absurdist atmosphere, odd dialogue, and constantly shifting factional loyalties are the same. It's still difficult to ascertain exactly why certain characters do what they do, and the objectives of the show's competing interest groups are often obscure. Tomino was critical of the way the original anime turned out, as he often is, but comparing the two available versions of G-Reco leaves us with no choice but to conclude that the things that left Tomino dissatisfied with the original anime are not necessarily the things that dissatisfied audiences. Befuddled viewers knew that Gundam is a very serious war anime, so why do the actions undertaken by G-Reco's characters and organizations not make any sense? If “Kill 'em All” Tomino is trying to teach us that war is bad through grisly drama and tragedy, then why do characters keep defecating in their mobile suit's built-in toilet?

I'm here to argue that G-Reco's absurdity is a feature, not a bug. To go further, it's that absurdity that allows it to be one of the most purely effective expressions of Tomino's anti-war views, and therefore a fitting finale to the legendary director's career. Allow me to explain.

G-Reco, like its predecessor in Turn A, is a show that is sharply critical not just of the practice of warfare, but also of militarism and militaries themselves. It might sound like that's the same theme, but there's an important nuance between the two that highlights the shift in Tomino's attitudes in the post-Turn A period, and it's this broader critique that constitutes the biggest thematic difference between “Happy Tomino” and “Sad Tomino” works. Consider the broadly true adage that Mobile Suit Gundam is an anti-war anime. It's anti-war because it shows us the magnitude of the tragedy war inflicts on its participants, yet Amuro must still fight, or he won't survive. War is indeed bad, but someone's got to take out Char before he drops another asteroid on the Earth, and the Titans cannot be allowed to continue marauding through the colonies.

There's a sharp point of divergence here between the original Gundam saga and Turn A (and G-Reco), a show which isn't about winning or surviving a conflict so much as it is about preventing one from taking place. Where the original Mobile Suit Gundam posits the Zabi family as a malevolent force that needs to be vanquished before the show's tragic war can come to an end, Turn A's villains are those who would see the conflict between the Earth and the Moon erupt into a shooting war. Rather than being members of the enemy faction that must be defeated, the antagonists of Turn A are anyone and everyone who beats the drums of war, no matter what side they're on.

Tomino's criticism of militarism has only become more vocal in the years since Turn A. “There's nothing cool about [the military]” he said in a 2020 interview, elaborating on his own anti-war views by criticizing anime like Girls und Panzer that glorify war and its instruments, and stating with little ambiguity that “war must not happen”. This line of thinking is readily apparent in Turn A, an anime that deliberately lacks the sci-fi action thrills of the franchise at large. In Turn A there is no right or wrong side in the conflict; the conflict itself is the enemy. G-Reco offers audiences this same thesis but not exactly in the way that people were expecting. Where Turn A sees militarism as tragedy, G-Reco sees it as farce.

When the anime first aired there was abundant confusion about what the show's factions and characters stood for. It was thought that, this being a Gundam anime, there ought to be grandiose clashes of ideals that give rise to tragic, yet thrilling battles. Instead, audiences were greeted with a religion that worships an elevator (SU-Cordism), pilots and officers that seem fundamentally incompetent, and military organizations that don't appear to stand for much at all outside of senseless violence. Viewers found themselves searching for that something, the purpose of each character and faction, the thing that would allow them to make sense of the setting's central conflict. What do these people believe in? The issue with this approach is, of course, that the conflict isn't supposed to make sense. Tomino sees militarism as a fundamentally incoherent ideology, and its outcome, war, is similarly absurd.

While critics might attribute the show's lack of coherence to Tomino's dialogue or the whiplash-inducing pacing, a closer reading of the text reveals that the absurd nature of the show's conflict was a deliberate choice on the director's part. Tomino illustrates this by refusing to explain or sympathize with the ideologies of G-Reco's militarists, and by highlighting just how misguided the show's characters are. A particularly telling scene happens early in the first movie, where Aida (a mysterious pilot) explains to Belliri (our protagonist) that using space elevators for energy distribution is stupid, and that the planet ought to be covered with solar panels instead. Belliri begins to retort, but Tomino doesn't permit us to hear him out – the camera cuts away just as he begins to explain why his religion's monopoly on energy distribution is justified, cutting back to him only once his monologue has ended. The audience doesn't hear any of it. Aida doesn't bother to reply, choosing instead to simply smack him in the face. Somewhat understandably, this confused many viewers – shouldn't we hear an explanation as to how SU-Cordists justify their monopoly? Wouldn't that help us make sense of why there's all this fighting going on? Tomino couldn't be less interested, though, because for him any ideology that leads its adherents towards militarism is fundamentally hollow.

We later learn, through the incoherent, fanatical militarism of the Capitol Army, that nobody really cares that much about protecting SU-Cordist taboo anyway. In a scene where new mobile suits are being unveiled, a politician orates meekly about how the new weapons will allow the Capitol to safeguard its photon batteries. He's quickly cut off by an Army officer who seizes the mic to thunder about how these new suits will give the Army the power to annihilate its enemies. Belliri's mother, one of the few true believers in the taboo in a position of authority, is rapidly sidelined by the warmongers. On the other side of conflict, Aida Surugan, who spoke so nobly about equitable solar panel distribution, hails from a country that isn't much better. We learn from the president of America, her homeland, that destroying the Capitol's energy monopoly has nothing to do with covering the world in solar panels and everything to do with securing American military hegemony. The ideologies that lead factions to war in G-Reco are little more than pretense; excuses to create a military confrontation. Perhaps this is why there was so much confusion surrounding the show when it originally aired. The Gundam franchise has conditioned us to expect conflicts that stem from grand ideological clashes, but G-Reco is radically critical of this notion. There are no noble causes twisted towards violent ends to be found here, only hollow justifications for a conflict that was already a foregone conclusion. Searching for some sort of sympathetic ideal behind G-Reco's warring factions is folly because G-Reco's war starts simply because there must be a war. Tomino himself has mused that our species will never be rid of war on account of “the delusions of those who yearn for it”, and delusion is the appropriate term for G-Reco's militarists – this is a conflict without logic, higher cause, or purpose. It's war for war's sake.

G-Reco's war is absurd in practice as well as justification. There are few heroic sacrifices or feats of military heroism to be found, and the most dramatic character deaths in the first two films happen for no good reason at all. For example, Belliri accidentally kills his former instructor, who, despite being on a mission to rescue Belliri, mistakenly attacks him instead. Each was confused about who was piloting the other's mobile suit, and Belliri didn't even want rescuing in the first place, suggesting that even the show's characters can't quite keep up with who's on what side.

Later, the self-proclaimed genius, Klim Nick, erratically tries to order his ship to fire on a capsule containing Aida's adoptive father, as though it's his reflexive reaction. The ship's captain denies the order, not because it doesn't seem like a good idea, but because the ship can't rotate to the proper angle in time. In a similar scene featuring characters trying to destroy unidentified civilian vehicles for no reason, Aida nearly vaporizes Belliri's mother, with Belliri frantically having to stop her from accidentally blowing his mom out of the sky. It's unclear why either of these characters thought it would be a good idea to fire on random, unidentified objects in the first place. They don't seem to need much of a reason to shoot at something.

In a farcical war run by incompetent clowns, it makes perfect sense that you can poop in the robots. During the show's original run, seeing Belliri defecate in his splendorous, marketable, model-kit selling mobile suit made an impact on viewers. They were stunned at the audacity it must have required to include such a thing – why, Tomino, did you feel it was important to reveal that mobile suits have built-in toilets? The director answers this question by extending the scene where Belliri uses the toilet in the compilation film with brand new animation to boot. It seems that Tomino, with a smirk, is suggesting that this awesome engine of destruction is, in fact, little more than a weaponized toilet with legs. One can scarcely imagine something less cool, but remember – there's nothing cool about the military.

Tomino has stated that the anime is structured so as to show “the people who came up with the foolish idea of a space elevator … the extent of their foolishness”. To him, the idea of a space elevator is self-evidently absurd, so it's natural that the conflict extending from it would be absurd as well. Elaborating on this point in an 2017 interview, Tomino explained that although G-Reco was aimed at young viewers, he still wanted to give them important ideas to chew on. The Capital Tower is in the anime so “the younger viewers would wonder if it was really possible to make”, as well as presenting them with comically misguided factions and characters so that they might “raise questions toward the adults”. In this, we see the crystallization of Tomino's views on war – it's bad and tragic, but above all it's stupid, and so are the people who would see it waged.

This is what makes G-Reco an essential entry in the franchise, particularly where young audiences are concerned. Perhaps the most effective way to convey an anti-war message to young viewers is to decline to valorize war in the first place, to show them an empty conflict perpetrated and sustained by misguided adults, and to invite them to ask questions of said adults by laying bare their foolishness. Ironically, and perhaps appropriately, it seems that G-Reco's tumultuous reputation is the product of we, the very same misguided adults, looking for the show's meaning in the wrong places.