Customer Reviews

Mobile Suit Gundam: Blue Destiny

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off, i want to tell all of you that Gundam has had many different series each with differet story lines and different charachtars. Most long time anime and Manga fans know this. So if you are intrested in this book for the Cartoon Network version, You will find nothing fimilar to you. Yet if you like Wing than this is a great oen to get. I thought that this book was great as long as you are open to many different types of Manga. And a comment on the other reveiw, Most people alredy know this but a Graphic novel is a comic book that is in a book format. So if you arent into comics, then dont buy it, but on the other hand if you love anime and Manga this is a great book to buy.

Great book for begginers and experts alike at manga or the gundam series. I have seen a good amount of manga and anime, yet even though never read and Mobile Suit Gundam, I found this book hard to put down and i just read it over and over. Buy it today if you are just browsing or looking for another gundam masterpiece.

I found this book good...It was kind of hard to catch on, and the ending felt unfinished but the pictures and scripts were action packed and I loved the illustrations. I read it after seeing the Gundam Wing saga on Cartoon Network but did not hear of any familiar charachters, not even the original Hero Yui (sp?). Still, a v. good manga.

For those who don't know, the Blue Destiny story is based off of a Japanese exclusive Sega Saturn game which is in turn a side story in the One Year War timeline of the original Gundam series. The story itself is quite good, and makes for a good read.
Now, for all you manga fans out there, you should know that this is a flipped manga. The pictures on the page are reversed to allow for non-manga readers to follow the pictures and speech in western comic book order, leaving right-handed characters to be left-handed, and vice-versa. If you can ignore that one flaw, the book is still very good and worth getting.

I've been a fan of Anime and Manga for a long time. I was attracted by the original story and technology concepts present in the original Gundam UC world (not GWing). I've always wanted to have a Gundam manga, so when I had the chance, I bought this one, and after a quite detailed inspection, I found the following topics very useful for the people interested in it:
As a manga, the artwork is good, but of course is at a lower level compared to, for example, the Clamp / Satoshi Urushihara works. But the consistency of the story is really good and the fact that the story fills only 1 volume makes it a best-buy.

And for the Gundam fans (minor spoilers), there are so many concepts developed here, that surely makes it interesting. For example to see the early experimentation of the Zion army on Newtypes, at a time when they weren't implemented for combat purposes yet. The setting of the story is in the early days of the war with the Zion, which makes everything much more interesting, and it's fun to see how all the combat units were "malfunctioning" GM's (don't expect to see a RX type here, they didn't exist at the time of this story).

So... my advice is... get it now, if you are a Gundam fan, because it provides some background information about the series. If you are a Manga fan, it could be nice for you, but there are more options, even based in the Gundam world.

If you are a huge gundam fan you will love this comic. If you arent a big fan then you might not understand all of the lingo, but it is still a MUST BUY!

Blue destiny is the story of a young MS pilot and his platoon. I really enjoyed this books style and the flow it used. There is probably some other stuff you should know about the Gundam universe that would make this a more wide appealing story, but it isn't absolutely necessary. All in all, a fine story that is well drawn.

Adapted from a three-part 90's video game for the Sega Saturn system, Blue Destiny is written and drawn by Mizuho Takayama (Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yadate are only credited for the Gundam concept) and translated by Mixx Manga (now TOKYOPOP). Set in the Universal Century's overused One Year War timeline, the story follows mecha test-pilot Yu Kajima as he and his comrades gear up for the Earth Federation's full-scale operation against the Duchy of Zeon. Meanwhile a new weapon lies in wait, a force so volatile it destroys everything in its path.

Meant to follow the storyline in the game, the comic's original publisher folded before the story was finished. So this only covers the first 2 games. Despite feeling somewhat incomplete, Blue Destiny is a straightforward action-adventure with a diverse cast and gritty giant robot combat reminiscent of Gundam: The 8th MS Team. But since this release is currently out of print, I recommend picking it up only if you can't get enough of the One Year War.

This comic is unrated: Violence, Brief Nudity, Adult Language.

i was first introduce to Blue Destiny through Gundam Journey To Jaburo when you unlock the mobile suit Blue Destiny unit 1 and again in Gundam Encounters In Space. The Manga tells the story of Yu Kajima a young ms test pilot and his friends. although the manga is good it is cut in half because they were going to make more but it got cancel so if you want to get the real ending you have to buy Gundam Encounters In Space to see the real ending but for true gundam fan its a most have although it doesn't have the whole story in in.

I think it's hard for any artist to cram a solid plot and good art into several volumes of manga, let alone one. Averaging around 200 pages per volume, manga usually requires 10+ volumes to get the reader really involved and get to the point of the story. Blue Destiny has done this in a single volume. I felt a certain connection to the characters through the rivalry between the main protagonist, Yu, and another protagonist character, his teammate Philip. The more or less unspoken (and only briefly touched-upon) history between Yu and the Odessa Eagle was interesting because I was forced to take that story into my own hands and make what I could out of the images and text provided. Finally, the relationship explored between Yu and the blue mobile suit was very interesting, to say the least. Although this manga is essentially a tiny side adventure in the Universal Century, there was a little bit of everything within it that Gundam fans have come to know and love from the more fleshed out side story arcs like 0080 and 0083; politics, Zeon rebellion, top-secret projects, crazy scientists, and intense "real robot" fight scenes.

The artwork of this manga is very talented, and tells the most amount of story in the least number of frames, adding real meaning to each scene. Ms. Takayama is a talented artist, indeed.

My only complaint (and the only reason for my 4 out of 5 stars) is that the characters, while identifiable to all, could have been a bit more personal and believable if this manga was a bit longer. However, being a side story and being published over ten years ago, I suspect that we cannot hope for a second volume to do that for us. At 220 pages, this was a short read, but solid nonetheless.