The confrontation between Machu and Nyaan ended up being kind of a nothinburger, and Machu easily succeeded in awakening Lalah. So what did that do? As we discovered later in the episode, something. Maybe the third impact again. We can never have enough of those, I suppose.
Enter Char.
The final confrontation with Kycilia happening on a theatre stage was a forceful, but still pretty good visual symbolism. As they have their talk, the play is crashed by the MCs of the show, who take the wheel in the usual search of Mr. Walking Plot Device, who sheepdogged them back into Lalah's presence. Kycilia gets unceremoniously dispatched as not relevant anymore to the plot, and both Chekov's guns go off, not at who'd you'd expect.
Char getting subconsciously magically dressed into his uniform by Lalah was utterly hilarious and blatantly a "hey guys its me, the guy from the merch" moment.
And while the battle outside rages on, we discover - Mr. Walking Plot Device is... from the UC, and might be, if I interpreted the scene correctly, Amuro Ray - here to destroy the G-Spam timeline.
Queue the late 80s Album Oriented Rock / Synthpop blend, it's Beyond the Time time, and time to bring back the RX-78-2 to the fight for the cool of it. Gonna buy the merch yet?
My cynical commentary aside
Any thoughts on the episode? I liked most of it, beyond the quick dressup scene I mocked and the finale. Lalah as a world ending threat (or is she? that's actually a question that remains unanswered and is interpreted differently by characters!) was probably an inevitable plot development, in a society that knows only the apocalypse and status quo (I'm talking to you liberals), and Char vs Machu vs Nyaan could have been a decent final battle for it.
However, the ending was just awful imo. If that is Amuro in the graffiti man's soul, or inside that Gundam, then any conflicts from the G-Spam universe become completely meaningless.
It all becomes background noise to Amuro vs Char, because Tomino wrote so in 1979 and 1988.
Nuuuuuu you can't just steal my thread from me nuuuuuu
(I'm kidding post away. I've been waiting 24 hrs to make the threads after the show each week since that seemed about when people had watched the ep, but we're getting to the end and if people want to react immediately that's fine too. Also, like it could be WW3 soon so...)
It's a recreation of a scene in the last episode of Zeta Gundam, with the exact same setup of people debating ideology while pointing guns at each other. Just that it's Kycilia instead of Haman this time, I guess.
What's kinda weird/interesting here is that Kycilia is spouting off rhetoric that's almost word-for-word Char's Counterattack Char, to Char, and Char's having none of it. The scene only works as Gundam interrogating itself as meta-text, because it's about the futility of fascist death-cults misinterpreting historical materialism and the dramatic irony of the same people making the same mistakes over and over and over again no matter how many times they get a do over... and then the punchline is this Loony Tunes ass FLCL moment
because as much as the old smothers the new, the new has the energy to bring something new to the table.
Ginga Bishonen Char Aznable
Char saying what y'all have been thinking for the past 6 episodes
Last ep isn't going to (just) be Amuro in Gramps vs. Char's Red Gundam, it's going to be Machu fighting for the right for her timeline to exist, because the point of multiverse stories is that no matter how bad things get, a better world is always possible. After all,
: "In the dark times, should the stars also go out?"
and also as tribute/send-off to U.C., and a creative statement that the new doesn't have to be beholden to the old.
Also as the target audience Beyond the Time is the sickest beat drop ever to give a character who came from "the other side" so I forgive all GQuuuuuuX's many failings and will be buying the merchandise.
(For real I'll leave my real criticisms till next week, provided we're not nuclear dust)
Edit: The title for next episode is a quote from Tomino's autobiography: "That's why I am... on the path to Gundam."
Too slow, old man. Newtype reformation can't wait.
(I had seen the episode, had thoughts and was sure I was going to forget a lot about it by the time your post was up, so I attempted to copy your style and made a post ๐)
Good catch about the Zeta Gundam scene. It's been a while since I watched it, so I don't remember the details.
Kycilia leading herself into an ideological funnel towards CCA Char is one of my favorite ideas of this show.
That picture of Amuro with the basketball goes hard.
It's ok, like Challia I simply long for a world where Newtypes can post as Newtypes
Right?! The show has so many really neat ideas (the writer's subverting things by Chekov's gun going off on Kycilia was just
) that I wouldn't say no to more, although from what I've read in interviews I think the 12 episodes we are getting are more a self-imposed creative limitation Studio Khara decided on rather than something enforced by either executives or the market.
Amuro Rey will never be ballin'
(The basketball is Char's escape pod from the end of CCA lol)