Customer Reviews

Mobile Suit Gundam Zeta (Limited 50 Episode Boxed Set)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've seen several science fiction series in my time. All of which boast to be the greatest. "Star Trek," "Buck Rogers," "Battlesar Galactica," "Far Scape," "Stargate S-G1." Fine shows in their own right and I have no problem against them. But there has always been a place for "Mobile Suit Gundam." A 25 year-old franchise that has becomes Japan's most popular science fiction series. Many American fans are familiar with such (lackluster) titles as "Gundam Wing" and "Gundam Seed," but none of those series hold a candle to this addition to the "Gundam Universe," which is quite possibly the best entry into the stories..."Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam."

Produced back in 1985, written and directed by the "Father of Gundam" Yoshiyuki Tomino, "Zeta Gundam" has been hailed by anime nuts as the pinnacle "Gundam" series.

The story takes place in Universal Century 0087 (between "Mobile Suit Gundam 0083" and "Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ"). It has been seven years since the end of the One Year War, and the Principality of Zeon is long dead. In order to prevent another war from occuring, the Federation creates the Titans; a sort of interstellar S.S. that watches over the colonies. Of course, the Titans turn out to be crueler than expected, and resort to tyranny in order to control the colonies. In response, the A.E.U.G. (Anti Earth Union Group) is formed, made up mostly of former Federation and Zeon soldiers, they strive to oust the Titans. Enter Kamille Bidan, a young Newtype who witnesses the cruelty of the Titans. During a skirmish on his home colony, Kamille ends up in the cockpit of his father's Mark 2 Gundam. In the heat of battle he winds up on the side of the A.E.U.G. and from that moment on...his life is changed forever.

The show is darker and grittier than anything that has been shown on "Gundam Wing" or "Seed." Here, the mobile suits are not invincible and the cost of war is high. Lives are lost, love is crushed, and relationships are pushed closer to the fire. This is classic Tomino and it is rare to find another anime that's as raw and as powerful as this.

The series does show its age (it's almost 20 years old by this point), but I do not see how that can hinder any TRUE anime fan.

The battle sequences are well-thought out and there is always an element of danger in each episode. The outcome of the battles are never easily predicted, and the body count climbs to staggering heights as the series progresses.

Those familiar with Tomino's works (aside from "Gundam" he has also directed series such as "Dunbine," "Brain Powered" and "Overman King Gainer") will know that the man loves stories about human beings. And essentially, that's what the characters of "Zeta Gundam" are; humans. Complete with problems and faults very much like our own. It's very easy to connect with these characters and you learn to feel for them as time goes on.

Adding to this is the epic-scale music. A nice misture between "Star Blazers"-style orchestra and "Nausicaa"-type synthesizers. The effect isn't as cheesy as it sounds (pun not intended) and works well with the images on-screen.

Moving onto the DVD specs...well, I'm not kidding when I say this is quite possibly the best anime box set to date.

Not only does one get all 50 episodes, included is a poster, a 48 page encyclopedia, and 9 pencil sharpeners/mobile suit figurines. All this in a box drawn by Tsukasa Kotobuki of "Saber Marionette J" and "Godannar" fame.

Again, this is a LIMITED release. So grab yours while you can.

"Zeta Gundam" is a marvel of tale that belongs up there with the greats of sci-fi stories. Even if you're not a fan of science fiction or giant robots in particular, this anime will have something for everyone. After all, who doesn't love a great story?

-RW

Mobile Suit Gundam Zeta (or Zeta Gundam, as us old anime fogies are more used to calling it) is, without a doubt, one of the best Anime series ever produced. It is certainly one of the best Gundam series ever made, and some (including me) would even argue that it is the _best_ Gundam series ever made.

The series picks up five or six years after the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Most of the main characters from the original series are here, but primarily in supporting roles (including Amuro Ray, MS Gundam's main character) -- except for Char Aznable, who shows up not as a villain but as one of the series' principal heroes. The main character of this series is Camille Bidan, a troubled, headstrong young man who early on steals a Gundam mobile suit and joins AEUG, a pseudo-rebel movement opposing the increasingly heavy-handed and oppressive Earth government. Arrayed against AEUG are an elite force of Earth military mobile suit pilots known as The Titans, who are swiftly becoming a law unto themselves and who increasingly view Earth's treatment of her colonies as way too soft. What follows is a long and sometimes painful coming of age story for Camille, as the young man becomes caught up in the ensuing AEUG-Titans war and the prices to be paid for victory becoming increasingly higher.

This is not "Backstreet Boys Gundam" by any stretch. The lines between good and evil are blurred here, with some characters who were once considered villians fighting alongside our heroes, while some heroes find themselves on the "bad guys" side. There is much drama here, with many twists and turns in the plot, all leading up to one of the best edge-of-your-seat series climaxes ever put together for an anime series.

For those who are used to the more current crop of anime out there, the animation will probably come across as a little choppy, but acceptable. But don't let the animation quality be a deterrent; the series more than makes up for it in the writing and direction. Unlike many anime shows in an SF setting, this series makes full use of it's space setting to paint an incredibly rich, detailed and imagined future. This series is great SF story telling, and deserves its place as one of the best ever produced.

One complaint, however, about Bandai/Sunrise's english edition: they've cut out the original theme songs and replaced them with a piece of semi-stirring background music from the series. Now, I can understand (sort of) why thy did this, because the original theme songs would probably be considered somewhat hokey today. But dang it, I _liked_ "Believe in the Sign of Zeta", and the second theme was kind of nice in a melancholy way. Why they didn't include the original opening themes as an "extra", I have no idea. It can't possibly have taken that much more room on the discs. Grrrrr. (As for the ending theme song, it is there as the background music that is played at the DVD disc menu).

Anyway, for fans of anime and the various Gundam saga in particular, this is a must have set.

Getting an accurate read on a show like Zeta can be hard due to all the hype that surrounds it. It has been alternately called the best Gundam series ever and the best anime series ever. I went into this with extremely high expectations due to all the things I had heard and ended up being a little underwhelmed. Having now watched it a second time (something I rarely do so quickly after the first viewing, but found I wanted to with this one because I enjoyed it more than I even realized), I came to a few conclusions. This is not a series that packs in a lot of eye-candy or visual "wow-factor", and, unlike some of the more recent Gundam entries, it doesn't fall back on the "cool-factor" of numerous uber-Gundams to make up for poorly choreographed battle sequences. It is not a show that blows you away from minute one or which will feed an addiction to action. It is, however, a deep, quality piece of work, a stand-out in an already stand-out crowd.

The plot is at once straight-forward and deceptively complex. The Earth Federation, Earth's monolithic world-government, forms an elite military police force known as the Titans to suppress anti-Earth sentiment in the orbiting space colonies. The Titans, however, drunk with power and controlled by ambitious and amoral warlords, run amok in the colonies while the Federation's civilian authorities sit on their hands, ignorant of the situation. Eventually, a group of Federation Forces officers, along with civilian volunteers, forms the Anti-Earth Union Group, an organization intent on making the Federation government aware of the Titans' activities, and civil war soon ensues. It's a welcome break from the standard Earth-vs-space colonies formula that forms the basis for almost every other Gundam series, and is, in my opinion, probably the best story line of any Gundam to date. It's a dramatic departure from the more straight-forward approach of its immediate predecessor, Mobile Suit Gundam, packing a lot more action and story into its run, and it pulls off its entire 50-episode run without a single "recap" or "clip" episode, making me feel like I was getting a little more bang for my buck, so to speak.

Zeta's much-ballyhooed characters are something of a mixed-bag, in my opinion, though. Depending on what you're looking for, they could be the franchise's best or its worst. Zeta's characters are, for the most part, complex, subtle people, often with conflicting desires and motivations. These are not the straight-forward, cookie cutter characters who so often inhabit stories like this. They are unique individuals with their own quirks and strange idiosyncrasies, like any real people would have. They are probably some of the franchise's deepest characters, and a group of fans could easily spend hours exploring and debating their actions and motives. I think that this is where Zeta is at its most artistic, displaying a level of thought and planning one doesn't normally find in this type of story. That said, however, I also found them to be possibly the franchise's least likable cast. Most of them come across as cold and unapproachable for much of the series, which I found to be rather odd. Why Mr. Tomino chose to handle his characters this way, I'm not positive. I found that Bright and Lt. Quattro (Mobile Suit Gundam's masked antagonist Char Aznable in a new alias) really carried the show for me in terms of engaging characterization. Although I found that the characters appealed to me far more on a second viewing, my first impressions of them were not generally positive. This is a rather superficial complaint, however, as the characters really are some of the franchise's best once one breaches the surface. It also has two very memorable villains (two of Gundam's best, in my opinion), in Paptimus Scirocco and Haman Khan. It's almost worth buying the whole show just to see the normally composed Char yelling, "Haman Khan!" and flying into a wild rage.

There are many other things to be said for the show. The animation, though dated, holds up surprisingly well, and despite what another reviewer stated, is far superior to other animation of the time, particularly Robotech's, based on what I have seen of it. The character designs present a more down-to-Earth look for the cast than one finds in the newer Gundam series, eschewing the glossy, "pretty-boy" look of the main characters for something more average and approachable. Of course, one can't escape the toy-commercial elements of the mecha-genre, yet Mr. Tomino handles this with his usual deftness. His story produces hordes of elaborate designs to appease the toy company sponsors (and unfortunately inherits the transformable mech craze started by Macross - if I wanted to watch Transformers, I would), intoducing new designs quite frequently but then quickly and quietly shuffling them into the background to make room for the characters, with little of the pomp and fuss one finds in most other mecha series. Zeta Gundam never feels like it's screaming "BUY THIS NOW!" at its audience, much to the credit of its director.

The reason I give this series four stars, and why it is not my favorite entry in the franchise, despite my high opinion of its quality, is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Mr. Tomino is almost too Tomino here, I felt. He is not a director who likes to spend a lot of time on exposition. He demands a high level of attention and critical analysis on the part of his audience, more than one might normally devote to this type of show, and normally, I enjoy this very much. I find it to be a welcome relief from the "connect-the-dots" style of some other directors, who seem to think their audience is either so mindless or paying so little attention that every little plot point and implication needs to be explained incessantly in order to be understood. Gundam SEED, in particular, suffers heavily from this. In this case, however, I think Mr. Tomino may have gone to a bit of an extreme with this approach. There are certain elements of the plot, such as the Titans' relationship to the Federation's civilian government, their invasion of Von Braun, the civil war nature of the Gryps Conflict, and the role of the Republic of Zeon, that I would have liked to see given more attention. I will also admit that some of the characters' motivations are a bit obscure. It's not that these things are impossible to understand given the show's presentation. Not at all. In fact, they're rather obvious if one pays even a modicum of attention to the story. It's just that I felt that some of these elements were either too important or just too interesting to be left to reading between the lines.

Those complaints, however, do little to detract from the overall quality of the show. Zeta Gundam is an intelligent, thought-provoking series, and one of the better sci-fi sagas to come around in recent memory. Like any good classic, it isn't a story to be watched and forgotten, but one to be experienced again and again and thought about for a good long time.


Finally, a note on the extras: There are sparingly few extras on the discs themselves, not even Bandai previews. However, this set does come with a handy booklet by Mark Simmons, possibly the most famous Gundam fan/expert in North America, which details the various factions, characters, and mobile suits of the show. There's also a nice poster and some pencil sharpeners, of all things. It should be noted that even if you're not interested in these things, the upcoming individual volume releases of the show are identical to this set in terms of the content of the discs themselves. In other words, you don't get any new stuff on those discs and you miss the pack-ins of the box set if you opt for that release over this one.

I got his box for a Christmas gift and was amazed. It came with the ten complete dvds and a guide(though not really that helpful) introducing new faces(Camille Bidan,Fa Yuiry,Emma Sheen,Four Murasame,Jerid Messa and Paptimus Scirocco.) and old classics(Amuro Ray,Char"Quattro Bajeena" Aznable,Kai,Hyato,and Katz.). The box art was really nice so I felt like putting it on my wall! It also comes with mini figures of the Zeta Gundam,Gundam mkII,The O,Nemo,Hyaku Shiki,Asshimar,Gabthley,Messala,Palace Athene,Hizack and more. And for a good finisher, it comes with a poster of the major Zeta gundam mobile suits. If you like Newtypes,Cyber-Newtypes,Giant robo,and one gerat piece of Gundam history,get this set!

Yep, that's right. ONE OF THE VERY BEST ANIME DVD BOX SETS EVER!

This dvd box set is worth every penny. The dvd box illustration is great, the ultra slim dvd cases are absolutely cool, the mobile suit pencil sharpeners are adorable, and the whole package is just wonderful. However, the (outer) box that holds everything, is quite flimsy so for those who are not careful when it comes to handling their stuff, beware.

Not only that, Zeta Gundam is probably the best and highest rated Gundam TV series. Zeta Gundam is all about grit, realism, dark drama, meandering and twisting plots, emotion, as well as entertainment. Unlike newer Gundam series e.g. SEED, Zeta Gundam has no impractical mechas or bishounen (pretty boy) casts. Zeta Gundam does not dumb itself down with mainstreamism, neither does it shallow itself to appeal to the masses.

Essentially, Zeta Gundam is a NO NON-SENSE mecha show at its finest!

Can't wait for the dvd release of the movies, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation I - Heir To The Stars and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation II - Lovers.

For starters, Zeta Gundam is the sequel to the original Mobile Suit Gundam. That being said, it had high expectations...and it met them ALL. Higher animation (though it is still very old...but MUCH improved), new music, very interesting, multi layered characters...it had it all. While the music in Gundam had never been "amazing", or very memorable, it's not horrible music. While on the music subject...I didn't really care about the OP / Ending theme song problems Bandai had. I didn't care. I watched the OP theme song 2x, the first episode and when it changed after they got the Zeta Gundam. I never bothered with the ending. This little thing might irk alot of people...but I mean...come on people, theme songs? They aren't the only reason you buy a series...buy the Japanese Gundam Singles History CD's, they have the songs...but anyways...
The characters are the most fascinating part of Zeta. the hero, Kamille...your typical brat at first. He's arrogant, annoying, and moody. He eventually, though, becomes a much more emphatic and spiritual person. Char Aznable, the arch enemy from the original series...is Zeta's second main hero!! People change sides...and sometimes it's hard to tell who is really good or bad. People switch allegiances throughout the series. People also die as you get to know them...it's a gloomy series with a gloomy ending. This isn't light hearted...it's pretty series.
At 50 episodes long...it can get overwhelming just trying to remember who everyone is. people disappear for so many episodes only to reappear a dozen later. The extras are a nice addition...not really needed, but if you end up loving the series, you'll appreciate them alot.
All in all...this is an amazing series. It is old, it's dated...it's not really flashy and stuff...but it has the core of what anime should be...gripping plot lines, moving characters we can connect to, and a story we'll love. This is an amazing series, highly recommended!!

It's just this simple--ZETA GUNDAM is not only the best GUNDAM series ever, but it is one of the best SF shows I've ever seen. It can certainly stand shoulder to shoulder with STAR TREK, FARSCAPE, FIREFLY, and the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA in terms of the best "space based" science fiction.
ZETA takes place seven years after the events of MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM and four years after GUNDAM 0083. Old heroes and new ones join forces to fight the vicious Titans, an offshoot of the Earth Federation that make the SS look like a bunch of amatuers.
ZETA is similar to the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (or is it the other way around?) in that it is a character-driven science fiction adventure. Creator/director Yoshiyuki Tomino puts the emphasis on characters with very human frailties. No one is perfect, and it is difficult to pigeonhole everyone as simply "good or evil". There are loads of space battles, mobile suits, and action both on earth and in space, but, like GALACTICA, there is a sense of realism and believability. True, the animation is over 20 years old, but it is the STORY that matters. It draws the viewer in and never lets go.
The limited edition box set is hard to find, but it is worth the cost. Fans of good science ficiton television, whether you are an anime fan or not, should watch this series. Action, adventure, three-dimensional characters--it's all here. What are you waiting for?

While Mobile Suite Zeta Gundam is not my favorite of the Gundam series it is classic that despite being twenty years old is worth it to own. The good; practically everything great animation good story funny yet serious characters(my favorite is Jerid he tries and tries yet he can never win) , and it has awsome mecha. The only thing I had a problem with were the opening and ending songs, they changed the original songs that were pretty catchy and upbeat. But this series is still worth the price, as I said before it is not my favorite( my personal favorites are Victory gundam , and Turn A Gundam), and I don't recommend this series for people who like Gundam Wing( there would not know a good gundam series if it slapped them). I recommend this series for people who liked the original Gundam and the Universal Century Time line.

Zeta Gundam! A true jewel! This is the direct sequel to Mobile Suit Gundam and its three movies. The animation is dark and gloomy, yet spectacular. The story line pulls you in, but you must have a fairly good amount of knowledge of the original Gundam to fully get the story.

I have to say that overall I'm very happy to have this series on DVD format at long last! I will warn you that the open and closing themes have been replaced by the incidental soundtrack music during the opening/closing animation sequences. From what I gather on the fan circuit, Bandai was unable to obtain the rights to include the original songs, but don't quote me. Yes, it urks me too and I'm somewhat miffed at Bandai's omission, but this is not the time to badmouth Bandai. On the bright side, there is one VERY positive aspect to owning this series on DVD: The video quality is just what you expect for DVD and for an anime series that is nearing it's 20th birthday, and most of all the episodes are UNCUT, UNEDITED (with the exception of the OP/ED music replacement), the original Japanese episodes language track is untouched, unaltered by any stereo enhancement so you can listen to the soundtrack as you remember it when you owned your own raw copies and fansubs on VHS, THE WAY GOD HAD INTENDED! The English dub track however, was tweaked with stereo enhancement and DOLBY DIGITAL, I have to confess it's very nice coming in through my surround system! The dubbing and English voice casting is pretty good so far, I have to say I'm both impressed and relieved that they managed to so far maintain the emotion and impact of one of my favorite anime series of all time. The voices for Camille and Char (Quattro) are pretty darned impressive which makes the English track actually enjoyable to listen to! I've enjoyed the English voice casting and direction for Gundam Wing, First Gundam, Char's Counterattack, F91 and Gundam Seed; Zeta is no exception!! The poster and Pencil Sharpeners are a nice touch, I can see it was one of Bandai's marketing schemes yet still nice for treating oneself this holiday season! Who knows, maybe Bandai will get it together and release another edition down the road with the original songs to accompany the OP/ED title sequences, and I'll buy it all over again when that happens. For now, I want to go on record as saying YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED BY THIS BEAUTIFUL BOXSET! Zeta Gundam will always be the "Holy Grail" of the Gundam phenomena that has entertained me and mesmorized me since discovering the first movie compilation of "First Gundam" back in the summer of '82!! Enjoy!!