Does Gundam Wing hold up in the modern era? Let’s find out…
Creative Staff
Original Concept: Hajime Yatate and Yoshiyuki Tomino
Story: Katsuyuki Sumizawa
Art: Tomofumi Ogasawara
Translation/Adaptation: Kumar Sivasubramanian
What They Say
One of the biggest anime properties of all time returns with the release of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. Following the actions of five fighters and their mobile suits, Gundam Wing is a heavily political, dramatic action work that is centered around a war between Earth and its surrounding colonies in space. Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz: Glory of the Losers retells the original WING story by incorporating elements of the anime and its recent light novel adaptations.
In the year A.C. (After Colony) 195, humankind had flown its nest, the Earth, to search for new hope while living in space colonies. However, the United Earth Sphere Alliance has used its military might under the guise of “justice and peace” to seize control of some colonies, and those colonies have lost their autonomy and have been forced into silence. But the seeds of resistance have not been entirely crushed. “Operation Meteor” is about to take flight…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I’m trying to figure out why the Gundam creators, back in 2010, decided to suddenly make a new manga adaptation of Wing. Back when the show was originally airing it had only a few short manga created to supplement it. It was never the most popular Gundam series in its homeland, so this manga is something of a mystery. It claims it takes all of the side stories and epilogs and pulls them together to flesh out the story, hence the extremely long title for this new adaptation.
It’s been a long time since I watched Gundam Wing so I’m a bit fuzzy on the details of the conflict. Most people remember the crazy moments from the series, and all of those moments are here intact. From every time one of the boys contemplates blowing themselves up for failing their mission to Heero’s interactions with Relena. The characters match up with the anime art perfectly, the style of which feels a bit dated now. All of the character’s personalities are all spot on, it is the Wing you remember. You even get your ‘It’s a Gundam’ line three pages in!
The manga might get a lot of things right from the dialog to character designs, but for everything, it’s doing right it’s also doing a lot wrong. Events feel even more condensed than the anime, to the point where the excessive amount of jump gets get confusing. Everything seems to be happening too quickly, there’s not a second of time for anything to breathe. I’m familiar with the story and even I was confused, especially with Relena’s introduction. In the span of five pages, the setting jumps back and forth into 3 different time periods, sometimes on the same page, and it’s completely unclear what just happened. There’s a lack of consistency as well, sometimes the manga gives dates and locations for events, other times it doesn’t.
It’s that breakneck pace that leaves no room for breathing that is going to lose any new reader. Granted, this first volume only covers the first three episodes of the anime, but that just shows that the weaknesses of the anime are carrying over to the manga. Juggling so many locations and characters it could have used some added exposition to smooth all of this over. The reader gets the basics of five boys piloting five Gundams on some sort of revolutionary suicide missions against OZ, but the original problems with the plot remain to be picked apart. (These kids are willing to blow up their perfect, expensive, super-rare death mechs on a moments notice.)
The mech battles aren’t depicted especially clearly either. They’re over in seconds and often there simply isn’t enough room to show off the battles effectively. It’s that condensed pace, once again, actively hurting the storytelling.
Vertical is publishing this in their smaller trim size, and while it contains a few opening color pages there are no extras beyond that.
In Summary
This is the Gundam Wing you remember in manga form, for better or worse, but also feels like a readers digest version of the real thing. For all of their claims of inserting the extra backstory to beef up and supplement the original material, they seem to have forgotten to take the time to decompress some moments so they could make more sense. New readers unfamiliar with the Wing storyline are going to feel lost at the crazy pace and nearly exposition-less take on events here. While I’m delighted the art is so spot on to the anime it’s going to feel silly and dated to modern manga readers. At the moment it’s hard for me to recommend this to anyone but Wing fans who want to take a trip down memory lane. However, those fans should be happy with how faithfully the story is being reproduced.
Content Grade: B –
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A –
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Vertical Comics
Release Date: July 18th, 2017
MSRP: $12.95
