Three years after Mobile Suit Gundam's war between the Earth Federation and the principality of Zeon ended a rogue fleet, carrying the name and ideals of Zeon and led by ace pilot Anavel Gato, steals a Gundam equipped with nuclear capacities from a remote Australian base. I suppose by the time of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 it had been almost thirty years since Dr. Strangelove was produced, and so maybe the creative copyright on seizing control of illegal nuclear warheads for the ultimate purpose of destroying the earth had run out, but I wish they had stolen the rest of the movie too. Gato’s far-fetched invasion of a highly controversial piece of vital weaponry aside, the story follows Kou Uraki, a pilot working at the Australian base who also manages to hijack a Gundam for the purposes of stopping Gato’s heist. While the show is ostensibly devoted to his efforts to save the Earth from Gato’s machinations, Uraki’s confusingly extreme and nonsensical emotions ultimately hijack the screen, and all other technical aspects are neglected for the sake of building up his unrelatable character. By a few episodes in I was rooting for Gato.
Kou starts as a complete amateur, but by the tough love of the experienced pilot Bernard Monsha, as well as his friendship with the laid-back rookie Chuck Keith, he soon becomes the ace of the battleship Avalon, all of which equates to Monsha and Keith evaporating from the screen as Kou effectively becomes the only relevant fighter on board. He shares a touching relationship with his mentor South Burning, who ultimately serves as both a meaningless plot device to build tension before the final confrontation and a contrived source of drama as his age forces him to pass on the torch to Kou. Likewise with the retired Zeon mechanic he meets on the moon, who dreams of returning to his glory days as a pilot and confronts Kou for a chance to join the Zeon fleet in what would have been a poignant statement on the warrior spirit were it not for Kou stepping over his dead body to ask a girl out without a single look back.
That girl, whose emotions are no less restrained, logical, or dominating of the camera than Kou’s, is the lead technician of the Gundams, Nina Purpleton. She is highly competent and intelligent and feels strongly for both the Gundam Kou pilots and the one Gato has stolen, which creates an empathetic and believable engineer character. Unfortunately she is also quickly shoehorned into the role of Kou’s love interest, even though it is clear from the outset that they have no chemistry and no reason to be interested in one another. She spends most of her time on screen acting hysterical and nonsensically with no explanation or hinting that she may have any sort of turbulent past; in a three-line monologue by her friend we learn where the source of her anguish lies, and without spoiling anything I can assure you that it is a contrivance of galactic proportions. She is a foil to Kou; nothing more, nothing less.
Speaking of contrivances, as we near the end of the show a quick succession of events come from nowhere to set up the final confrontation, with no explanation and a giant red flag warning of their relevance to come. A naval review forces the entire Federation fleet to convene in an area called the Solomon Sea, when Gato is coincidentally known for having terrorized the Earth forces there during the war three years prior. We see two abandoned colonies being transported nearby. No less than three different Federation-affiliated forces are shown to be assisting Gato’s forces, as if hiding for three years had given them the funds to bribe some of the most affluent figures in the Gundam universe. I invite you to count the number of times a group switches sides during the final confrontation, then double check to make sure they only do so to heighten the drama of the battle.
And then of course, there’s the nuclear warhead, the starting point for the whole series, the ultimate Chekhov’s Gun. Once again I am loathe to spoil, but to adequately criticize Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 as a mess of a show, built on the tropes of its predecessors but ultimately lacking in any substance or technical proficiency, this must be said: it serves no purpose. Kou and the Avalon fleet pursue Gato around the globe and across space to recapture the weapon that ultimately just blows up in the middle of nowhere, even with all the tension leading up to its launch. The principle behind Chekhov’s Gun is that a gun is brought onstage in the first act, and you can know it will shoot someone in the third. This time they waved the gun in everyone’s face at the beginning and then proceeded to shoot the wall at the end, only to stab someone with a knife while everyone is looking at the bullet hole in the wall. It wasn’t subversive, or multilayered, or clever or tense or perplexing. It was anticlimactic. It was disengaging. It is a slap in the face to us as viewers, reminding us that their poor excuse for a character drama should be all we need to stay entertained; plot and consistency be damned.