Anime: Kidou Senshi Gundam MS Igloo: 1-nen Sensou Hiroku

When I first hear about the release of the IgLoo 3D Gundam production, I was quite sceptical on how good it will be as Bandai has previously stuffed up their live action 3D Gundam movie G Saviour. But since I am such a big Gundam Fan, I decided to watch it, and surprise surprise, it turn out to be better then I expected!

Animation:

The animation is of very high standard. I am never a big fan of 3D computer graphic animation, mainly because the people in those films always look extremely bad and fake. But IgLoo seems to presented me with a fresher view in this aspect. The characters are well generated, and the amount of details on each person, from wrinkles to facial expressions, were shown clearly. Also, the characters’ movements are quite smooth, and the postures are of correct form, so the people in here actually looked quite real and believable. Moving to the mecha, the amount of details on the Zaku and the Salamis cruisers are superb. I never seen any 3D animations or films has gone to this much trouble to generate every slots and part lines all units. So they really deserve a major credit for achieve such a high level of 3D computer graphic animation. However, I cannot say so for the backgrounds though. The backgrounds are often plain and boring, this is especially true in episode 2 during the sand battle, for some reason, the background just seems foggy (I think they used too much white filter here) and unrealistic, so when the mechas are fighting in the scene, it just look really bad.

Music:

Since this is a short OVA production, there isn’t much OST music, but I thoroughly enjoyed the OP, the melody is quite sad and bitter, which represented the desperateness of Zeon really well. The voices used in the show were quite good as well, it suited the characters, and their actions, so I have nothing to complain about.

Story:

In general, I don’t think there are much of a story to this OVA, I think this OVA is a technology demonstrator which might lead to other 3D series, also, there are only 3 episodes, and you will really need previous Gundam knowledge before you can watch this. To give an account of the story, I will have to compare it against the original Gundam series

The story is to present some new weapons that weren’t showed in the original Gundam series, and it work at great effect. Because during in the original story, many experimental mobile suits and weapons were fielded by Zeon to desperately trying to turn the tide, but to no avail. Also, the backstabbing and politic twists and turn were briefly presented throughout the OVA, which is very alike to the original story. Other than that, it is hard to present any idea story, it is just a 3D extension to the original series with not much of a plot line.

Character:

The character development is probably the “main story” of this OVA, it is to present Oliver May’s viewpoint and emotional changes. As each episode progress, he must be feeling more and more depress with how the war is going against them and how he sees Zeon's political make up is different from his own ideology. I found the most interesting character is to be Monique Cadillac, the female captain of the unit. Her character might seems to be a bit bitchy (sorry for the language), but I think she will have to be quite talented, yet manipulative and also understand how Zeon’s political makeup pretty well in order to rise to such a position, even though she annoy everyone, but she still uphold her believe and at the last episode she actually joined the fight. So her character is the most dynamic in the entire show. For other character however, I found them to be quite plain and predictable, probably because there are only 3 episodes, so there is no chance for much development for every character.

Enjoyment and value:

I quite enjoy this short OVA, not only because on the excellent 3D work on the mecha and characters, but also on its character development and to some extend, the story as well. It is lucky that Bandai has set the series to 3 episodes OVA (3 in this set and there will be another 3 in the coming month under different title), if there are anymore episodes, the show might ended up to be quite boring because showing hidden weapons can only stretch so far, and the fact that they can only repeat so much of the original Gundam plot before it get too tedious to watchmeans that there is a limit to the amount of episodes shown. This show is definitely deserve to be seen, I seriously think that this show will set a benchmark for later development in terms of the character graphic works, so I am giving it an 8 here.