MS Igloo 2 looks set to deliver tragedies in tidy boxes, continuing in the footsteps of its predecessor. As far as the first OVA went, the most noticeable improvement over the first MS Igloo is in the characters, who used to be cold, pasty, and moved in a stiff fashion not unlike…robots. The CG exceeds even that used in Vexille and the Appleseed’s, so the march of progress continues.
Because MS Igloo loosely chronicled the collapse of Zeon, the new technologies rolled out took a desperate and absurd turn, which left a mixed impression on me. I don’t anticipate the same thing happening this time around, because we’re tracking the winners of the conflict.
What hasn’t changed, it seems, is the depiction of obsolescence of weapons and their users throughout the evolving One Year War. This made for great watching, as test pilots made their own peace with their outdated machines, facing the inevitable as best they could.
This first installment of MS Igloo 2 isn’t compelling from that standpoint. Where making a mistake is highly correlated with death, you could argue that a lot of the MS Igloo pilots did not make any mistakes until the very end. It’s hard to watch a string of screw-ups, so this was a plus.
Discounting the mistake we see in that night air patrol, official mistake number one was the decision to let an unhinged lieutenant lead a grab bag of veterans and recruits in rear-guard action, without armor, artillery, or close-air support. Mistake number two was waxing poetic to convince the lieutenant to do it.
Fortunately, Zeon is not without its share of slightly unhinged people, and this one pilot serves himself up for what should have been a textbook play. But for all the small head scratchers — no wireline communication, no centralized fire control, letting scratchy-voiced recruits do their own thing, lots of choke on battlefield — the one that blows them all away is a deus ex machina.
Literally.
So you mean to tell me that this Zaku has been camping underground this whole time, lets two comrades die, and then jumps out to ambush the Federation platoon, which by this time has only one member left standing. Maybe the pilot’s a glory hog? Maybe the three of them didn’t get along? Locker room tension?
No wonder Zeon lost the war. They let crazy metaphor-rambling infantry commanders beat the stuffing out of them.
Were this some other series, I’d be inclined to stamp the trainwreck seal of approval and call it a day. But for a franchise that, while admittedly small, seems to take great care in all aspects of production, it’s almost upsetting. The next two installments hopefully will be better in the writing department.
If there was one thing that might have salvaged overall opinion on the show, it would be the circle strafe in a jeep. Now usually it takes some practice to do in a 1v1 because you have to keep moving while firing. You’d think that with one person doing the moving, and one person doing the firing, it would have been a piece of cake. I forgot that at least one person has to act all macho, yell some insults, generally not pull the trigger, and then get the both of them ripped apart via shrapnel mines.
6 Comments
Oh yea, whats up with the death god? Is it really necessary?
Gundam series like their imagery, but the death god schtick is taking things a little far.
True. WTF that last zaku doing? His pilot sleeping maybe? And the jeep strafing also make me ” Fuck. Pull the trigger already”
Graphic wise is good and I like the way the zaku pull out his burning hot axe and deliver a punishment to the stupid squad on the tower.
And you forgot to mention about the cave in. You see a zaku weight about how many tonne is that? With all that running that can cause vibration sure the cave in will happened quickly before the pilot manage to get himself into one. Now that pretty stupid rite?
No fancy weapon like undestructable rx 78 or gm (not invented yet). Big ass guided missile that can be carry by one man 0_0. How he do that? Super strenght?
Can’t believe a missile a size of LPG gas tank can destroy a zaku. That zaku have armor. How can it be destroyed by that tiny missile?
Well, I’d be willing to give the sink hole thing the benefit of the doubt. It’s plausible that the weight of a Zaku could do much more damage than the vibration caused by its step.
The AMSR launcher is a two-person carry while loaded (see around 13:14). Barberry pulled a loaded launcher along the ground, so also plausible.
I think the AMSR is a kinetic energy penetrator. It may be kind of thin, but it’s fairly long, and KE weapons rely on length coupled with very dense material and high velocity to defeat armor.
The point of those kinds of missiles is not to destroy the target wholesale, but to rip into critical sections, like the ammo cache to initiate an internal explosion, or the cockpit to kill the operator.
If you recall MS Igloo Hidden One Year War, Episode 2, the first two stolen Zaku’s were defeated by APFSDS, which are KE anti-tank rounds used today to defeat reactive armor.
Having rewatched the battle, I don’t get why squadron 2 did not fire at the second Zaku. Unless there’s a translation error, Barberry intended his squad and squad 2 to deal the finishing blow to the first one, but only a single AMSR was needed.
Squad 2 should have been reloaded in the time that Barberry’s team had reloaded and launched. They should have fired at the second Zaku then retreated, but decided to sit where they were instead, and their annihilation quickly followed.
@introspect: But remember, these are two week recruits we’re dealing with. I don’t know anything about military, but how ready would you be if you started military training now and they said to you you were going to face a Zaku in two weeks?
Squad 4 was the group of recruits who climbed the tower structure. The rest were soldiers who may have been the remnants of other platoons, but they would not have been green.
I think that there was some really questionable leadership. Squad 2 could have acted on their own initiative and opened fire on Zaku 2, but waited for orders instead. On the other hand, squad 4 took the initiative to climb up, and then climbed down when they felt like it. These roles should have been reversed.