What a thing this is to write up, seriously. There are many interesting elements to this premiere for me. Unfortunately though, the episode itself is the least interesting. I kind of expected that going in, so maybe I’ll be accused of writing a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I’ll stand by my take – the modus operandi of Gundam at this point is “sell the sizzle, not the steak”. And it’s pretty obvious what the money behind the franchise considers to be the sizzle these days.

I’ll cop to not being a huge Gundam fan up front, as anyone who’s followed the site knows. As I said in the preview, I’ve never found Tomino’s heavy-handed moralizing and teen death porn to be especially arresting. But I’d still take that over what Gundam has become, which is incredibly calculated and hollow. Looking at GQuuuuuuX (even the name annoys me for all its smarmy cleverness), they didn’t even bother to make the girls look that different from the Witch From Mercury pair. The yuri bait is all that matters at this point – everything else is just window dressing to fill out the 22 minutes.

I have no doubt GQuuuuuuX is going to be a huge hit. Witch From Mercury was, and it didn’t look like this show does or have the titans working behind it as is the case here. But that just irritates me even more, because the level of talent behind GQuuuuuuX is crazy. Anno planning, Tsurumaki directing, Enokido writing – come on. As a long-standing anime fan the mere idea of a Gundam series coming from Gainax (and Trigger notwithstanding, Khara is obviously the extant equivalent) is as close as you can get to a “crossing the streams” scenario. Gundam is Sunrise, period – or their progeny at the very most. But Gainax? The Eva guys? No fucking way.

I hate to see all that talent wasted on a product so plastic, so utterly lacking in sincerity. And all that sakuga. My God, it’s full of stars. There are stoopid moments (like a freighter honking its horn in the vacuum of space), but for the most part this is a visual feast. The Gainax explosions are a nice addition to the usual Gundam visual motif, which Khara does a good job of weaving into the post-Gainax visual aesthetic. That adds to the sizzle, no question about it – it’s street cred to the disc-buying audience.

That’s about as much as GQuuuuuuX has to offer in terms of genuine interest, however. Remarkably the incarnations of the franchise that literally exist to get little boys to buy model kits come off as more honest and less cynical. Every “t” is crossed, every “i” is dotted. To get the likes of Anno hooked into the idea of working on a TV series it’s a safe bet that pretty massive amounts of money are expected to be generated here, and I have no doubt they will be.

Pure fanservice anime are certainly not that rare, but what sets GQuuuuuuX apart is, again, the money and level of talent behind it. I can’t totally ignore it, because a mecha anime that has this level of budget and visual flair is rare, as good as a unicorn. With Enokido writing some part of me will hope that something genuine might be forthcoming once the audience is hooked in with the bait traps, though I consider that a real longshot. I have no idea if the big guys behind this show are actually Gundam fans, though I’d like to think so, even if I’m not. It would at least impact some small crystal of sincerity in the avalanche of cynicism, and might lead to some interesting developments down the road.