Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn

 Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (機動戦士ガンダムUC) is a 7 episode direct to video adaptation of the novel series of the same name by Fukui Harutoshi.  The OAV's were released between 2010 and 2014.

    Banagher Links learns his absent father is a member of one of humanities most powerful families at the moment of his fathers death.  His father,  Cardeas Vist, is part of the fourth generation of the Vist Foundation, a secretive group that has attained vast wealth and power due to controlling an item called Laplaces Box.  What the box is, is unknown outside of Vist but the Earth Federation understands that if its secrets were revealed it could spell the end of their control of the Earth sphere.  Banagher became involved in a rapidly moving conspiracy to unseal the Box the moment he saved a girl from certain death in the colony he attended school.  The girl, going by the name Aubry Burne, asks him to take her to the Vist Foundation.  In reality she is the final member of the Zabi familly, Mineva, who has secretly come to the Industrial 7 colony in order to prevent another war from breaking out between Earth and Spacenoids.  A group of Neo Zeon known as the Sleeves have come to the colony to attain the Box from Cardeas.  Minevah fears this will lead to another conflict instead of ensuring her peoples true sovereignty.

    As the Sleeves representatives meet with Cardeas, Earth Federations Zeon remnant hunting military faction, Lando Bell, attempts to intercept them before the Box can be given to them.  The intervention leads to battle breaking out inside the colony.  The attack leads to Cardeas being grievously wounded with Banagher arriving to save Minevah/Aubry only for Cardeas to reveal that he is his father as he assigns the foundations secretive new Gundam to his son.  He tells him that the Gundam Unicorn is the key to understanding Laplaces Box and unlocking its secret.  Consumed by rage, fear and grief, Banagher pilots the Gundam, lead by instinct and a growing latent power of a Newtype.  He fends off the Sleeves units only to be overcome by the strain of combat, passing out in the cockpit, with Londo Bell securing the suit, concerned over the appearance of a new Gundam unit.

     Under the control of Londo Bell, Banagher is urged to follow the clues linked to the Box with the Unicorn Gundam.  The Sleeves are in hot pursuit, lead by the mysterious replacement of Char Aznable, Full Frontal.  As Banagher unlocks the first secret in the ruins of the Laplace Colony, the site of a terrorist attack at the dawn of the Universal Century, both sides end up being pulled into Earths gravity well in the fight.  Banagher and his Gundam end up being stranded with one of the Sleeves ships, the Garancieres and made more a compatriot than a prisoner as they struggle to get back into space.  Neo Zeon reaches out to its disparate forces who have been stranded on Earth since the One Year War to run distraction for the downed ship.  These remnant forces mobilize and begin to attack a major Federation city, trying to draw all to attention tot them.  Fearing the consequences of the Box falling into Neo Zeon's hands, Banaghers aunt, Martha, begins to use her families leverage to force the Earth Federation into drastic action.  Instead of fleeing from the war zone, Banagher and the crew of the Garancieres find themselves in the middle of the conflict.  He is confronted by a clone of the cyber-newtype Elpeo Ple named Marida Cruz.  She was captured from the Sleeves and reprogrammed to be subservient to the Vist family.

    Being defeated by Marida, Banagher is once again in the custody of Londo Bell as they head to the final clue for Laplaces Box.   Still the head of the faction, Bright Noa realizes that command, being manipulated by Vist, doesn't exactly have the best interests in mind.  Through a background channel he ends up coordinating a temporary partnership between Londo Bell and the Sleeves, leading to both parties occupying the same ship for the journey back to the beginning, at Industrial 7.  Tensions flare and the Sleeves are forcibly removed from the ship as the chase begins to capture the Box.  Minevah and Banagher find themselves int he company of his great grandfather who unveils the fiercely guarded secret, one his aunt is willing to destroy the entire colony to protect.  Will the truth, revealed to humanity, truly bring down the Federation or will it only stir more continued stagnation and conflict?

 

    This story started out strong, if a few of the details seemed odd...like the existence of a powerful ans secretive world power that holds the fate of everything in their hands...and we never heard anything about them in the 20+ years following the One Year War.  It was great to see the continuation of both Minevah and Brights role within the Universal Century.  But it fell very short of delivering anything meaningful with the inclusion of Full Frontal.  He served very little purpose to the actual plot or tension of the story.  His final appearance was a waste of time with Banaghers real foe being his family and the heir an Earth political family, Riddhe.  AS with every damn Gundam, a broken love triangle appears between Minevah, Banagher and Riddhe, that drives Riddhe to insanity and rashness.  He's the final boss that Banagher has to over come before he can claim victory.

 

    By this point I have watched a lot of Gundam and have been getting tired of a lot of the repetitive themes in the franchise, Unicorn is not immune to any of these complaints.  The back end of it leans hard into the typical Newtype woo-woo garbage that's become a driving force of the narrative of every story.  Building off of the Newtype woo-woo ending of Char's Counterattack, where Amuro and Char turn into energy goo, Unicorn pushes that further in which Banagher almost becomes what is termed a perfect Newtype...merging with the Gundam.  Instead we leaves that concept in place to realize in the follow up, Gundam Narrative.  For all the things I hated in the way it concluded, I still enjoyed this story.  It had many likable characters and fantastic animation.  It leaned too much into posing the mobile suits for my taste, but I understand the real point now is to sell the model kits. 

The series is available in both sub and dub on Hulu.