What They Say:
“The Boy Who Calls The Wind”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Same old Gundam, same old gunpla. We’re back into the Gundam Build Fighters universe—this time seven years later—with an all new cast of characters. Well…almost all new. Ramba Ral is still around and we’re all thankful for that.
A prodigy gunpla builder, Yuuma Kousaka, and his buddy Fumina Hoshino (the only remaining member of the Gunpla Battle Club) love gunpla, but one loves battles and the other loves building. It’s the same old dynamic that Sei and Reiji had, but it’s gone about in a different way. Kousaka (yes, somehow related to China) likes building, but has a much more serious demeanor than Sei. We haven’t seen much of him, but he might be in it more for the display than anything else. Hoshino loves battles. She loves the thrill and, more than anything, she loves gunpla. She’ll dive to save one if it’s falling to the ground.
The new kid in town, Sekai Kamiki (voiced by Kazumi Togashi and sounding strikingly similar to Reiji) is some sort of combination of the prodigy within Reiji and the train-in-woods-with-master of Kyo. I love him. His scrappy-ness gives the show something to really root for and his style of fighting—hand-to-hand martial arts—diverts from anything I’ve seen in Gundam before.
The draw of Gundam Build Fighters is 1. The love for gunpla and building gunpla and 2. The fights themselves. Hoshino, Kousaka, and Daiki Miyagi (the president of the Plastic Model Club) all love gunpla in their own way. The fight between Sekai and Miyagi was wonderful to watch and I can only sit in eager anticipation for what’s next.
In Summary:
Now, I haven’t watched much Gundam prior to this. I watched Gundam Wing and G Gundam when they were on Toonami, I revisited G Gundam as a high schooler getting back into anime, I watched the Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy + Char’s Counterattack, and I’ve seen Gundam Build Fighters. I also love building gunpla thanks to, you guessed it, Gundam Build Fighters (and also Lauren Orsini, who has a really cool gunpla website). So my knowledge of Gundam is limited, but that doesn’t stop me from loving Build Fighters. That’s the beauty of its first season. It allows the veteran fans to love the references its putting down, but it doesn’t make it so inaccessible that no one will like it as a result.
Season two starts out the same way. No prior knowledge of Gundam is necessary (though they’ll probably be dropping season one references heavily, so at least that should be watched probably) and you can love the series for what it is: Fun!
Grade: B+
Streamed By: YouTube
Equipment: PS3, LG 47LB5800 47” 1080p LED TV, LG NB3530A Sound Bar
