The core of this movie is about setting up the pieces for the fight that’s building. The politics of humanity has fractured and the Titans are making a serious play to take control of everything through the use of force. Their manipulation of events and swaying the tide of public opinion has worked in their favor and now they want to finish it all off by taking over control of the Earth Federation and all of the military. Which is pretty ambitious considering the Titans were essentially the offshoot of the Earth Federation military that dealt with certain issues. But people like Bask have used every tool at their disposal to make this happen and make that grab for power. Because of it, and the way the Titans come from so many walks of life, they take on the role of the bad guys but there’s an indefinable quality about them that makes them stand out.
With the Titans making their play, they have something interesting in the works as they basically intend, at least going by what various operatives have found out, to drop a colony on Earth where the majority of the politicians and the like are at. Such a plan will kill millions and the politicians won’t go into space once they learn of the plan since they fear space sickness over death. The plot doesn’t sit well with some in the Titans though and the Cyber-Newtype Sarah makes a move to head over to the AEUG where she’s interrogated by Quattro and Kamille to give over that information though she doesn’t want to stay with them. She’s still very much tied to the Titans and believes in them overall because of her adoration for her commanding officer. The colony drop plan is pretty audacious and one that is pushing a lot of people in the Federation in a direction they don’t want to go.
The relationship side of the series is somewhat the other focus of it, which is why the film is aptly titled as Lovers. The lovers aspect was stilted enough in the original series because of the time in which it was made but it’s even worse here because of the shortened aspect. There’s a budding relationship when one of the created Newtypes from the Murasame lab shows up, a beautiful woman named Four who controls a massively powerful mobile suit platform weapon. She’s not experienced real life much and she falls in with Kamille easily who also finds that he can share with her incredibly easily. Other relationships are awkward as well, as Kamille still has some odd feelings for Fa yet it feels kind of silly when they’re together. And Henken has it really bad for Emma Sheen, enough so that he pulls a few favors in order to get her assigned to the Radish for the mission that they go off on.
The second Zeta film is all about the setup as it moves around a few different areas, introduces more characters and builds up what will be happening with the Titans as they work to gain control of the Earth Federation. There’s a lot of battles, a lot of characters running around and the introduction at the end to the Axis, the true remnants of the Zeon who have been keeping to themselves. Zeta in its original form is one of my favorite Gundam stories but I don’t know how I feel about this other than it’s simply awkward at best. This film has, according to others, about seventy percent new footage compared to about thirty percent in the first movie. It’s even more jarring in this film since it goes back and forth and there seems to be no real rhyme or reason why they left certain scenes using the original TV footage. Why animate 70% of it new and leave 30% from the mid-80’s? When we get the new material, it’s great and I’d love to see it all done that way, but when it hits the original stuff, it’s so jarring that it takes me out of the scene. When it happens a few times within a few minutes, it’s at its worst. A New Translation continues to be a strange experiment that’s not working all that well.
