Mobile Suit Gundam F91

Writer: Yoshyuki Tomino
Director: Yoshiyuki Tomino
Production House: Sunrise
Review Type: Anime Feature Film
Status: Completed
Genre: Mecha

Synopsis

U.C. 0123 - thirty years of peace across Earth and the space colonies is shattered by the emergence of a new faction called the Crossbone Vanguard. The weak Earth Federation is caught off-guard by the attacks due to their complacency. As a result, the Crossbone Vanguard conquer the Frontier IV colony almost immediately. Caught in the crossfire is college student Seabook Arno, who sees many of his friends killed during the skirmish and discovers that his girlfriend Cecily Fairchild is actually Berah Ronah - heir to the Ronah family clan and the Crossbone Vanguard. He then finds out that his mother is alive and has been working on a new mobile suit codenamed 'Gundam Formula-91'. Seabook reluctantly pilots the Gundam at first, but slowly discovers the Newtype abilities within him and uses them and the Gundam to turn the tide of the war.

The movie follows the actions of the Crossbone Vanguard, with its attempt to gain complete control of the Frontier Sides, with the introduction to the movie opening with one of the most awesome battle scenes in the Gundam series. Our hero Seebook's home station is attacked, and we are treated to a bird's eye view of the destruction and carnage caused by a Mobile Suit battle, via civillian's perspective. The huge extent of devastation the attack inflicts on the colony's populace that even a spent shell casing would be a lethal piece of debris for an unsuspecting bystander.

Seebook and his friends try desperately to find any form of transportation to escape the battle. Their group had grown along the way due to them saving children and other civilians, and eventually stumbled upon an appropriate ship to escape. Upon leaving, their friend Cecily was taken hostage by the leaders of the Crossbone Vanguard, who are also claiming that she was the daughter of their organization's leader. Like another family-oriented organization we've seen in previous installments (c'mon do I even need to spell this one out for you?) , the Crossbone Vanguard is an organization centered on the ideals of nobility and heritage, prioritizing leadership by the exceptional over freedom and democracy.


Upon escaping, the refugees heads towards the Earth, ending up in Habitat 1, a natural resource asteroid. They eventually ended up meeting with a test-bed carrier missing most of its command staff, who were carrying a new Federation Mobile Suit, named the Formula-91 or F91. After taking a closer look at the F91's cockpit, it turns out that the computer system was created by Seebook's mother. With Seebook's innate piloting ability, he helps to activate the suit and was subsequently chosen to be the primary pilot for the F91.

Back on Frontier 4, the Crossbone Vanguard wasted no time to accomodate Cecily into their ranks, and she even agrees to become a Mobile Suit pilot for their forces. Since Cecily is the daughter of the Crossbone Vanguard's leader, she had been made a commanding officer and also a member of their special forces division. Cecily's first mission (or sortie for the Gundam faithful) is to help a beachhead of the Vanguard's forces onto Habitat 1. This mission however, was a pretext to the actual motive of the mission, which was to test a powerful new weapon on the station. Codenamed 'Bug', this new weapon is designed to be the perfect anti-personell weapon, which is a swarm of killing machines that relentlessly attacks all humans, including civilians.

This sets the mood for the final battle in the space above Frontier 1, and an ensuing confrontation with Seebook and Cecily, and also the results of the 'Bug' units being tested on civilians, and to top it all off, Seebook's confrontation with the leader of the Crossbone Vanguard.


Chibi's Seebooking Comments

Sigh.....it still makes me feel disappointed thinking about it. Here's the deal why F91 was made into a movie and not an anime or OVA series like the previous Gundam sagas we all know and love. This particular installment in the franchise was to mark Tomino-sensei's BIG COMEBACK into the Gundam universe, but due to certain staff disputes and creative differences, what was SUPPOSED to be a 50-episode epic comeback series by the franchise's creator was scrapped, and the project was stopped after only 13 episodes were written. This was later decided by Sunrise and Tomino-sensei probably to salvage all the time and thought put into this project to make a movie out of it. This was actually a very brave decision as condensing an entire 50 episode storyline into one 2-hour movie is by no means an easy task. When a great storyteller is expected to deliver even under time constraints and sponsorship obligations, it is amazing what they are able to come up with, as Tomino-sensei's proven time and again with his conjuring of an amazing ending to his Gundam series even when cut ten episodes short. He proves it again with the creation of the epic but lesser-known Aura Battler Dunbine. The test of time has demonstrated exactly what wonders Tomino-sensei can pull out of his hat. However, F91 proves that even the greatest have their limits.

With only two hours of screen-time, F91 is forced to tell an entire, 50 episode story, develop its characters, captivate the viewers, and still have time to be socially and morally relevant. Unfortunately, only half of these is really achieved. Most of the characters have pretty stagnant personalities, probably due to the little time they have to be developed, and made considerably worse by the large cast. It’s a real shame considering how interesting many of the characters are, especially the sadistic and emotionless Iron Mask.

Due to the uninteresting characters, most story elements suffer, including the underlying plot. I could only speculate what the Crossbone Vanguard's plans for the future will be as information is so fragmented it's virtually impossible to get the big picture. F91's lack of screen-time is made even more evident in it's pacing of the plot, where certain events just happens off screen and aren't even elaborated deeper, such as certain battles taking place, certain deaths of key characters, we are never thoroughly explained on how and why these things come to pass.


Don’t get me wrong. This is in no way a bad movie. F91 still retains the strong plot based roller coaster that we all came to love about the franchise. We are treated to some of the best animated space-battles seen, even with only 2-dimensional art the movie was able to project a 3-dimensional feel to the battles, and does an amazing job of showing the audience how terrible the tragedy of war can be. That said and done, I still could not help but think how much potential the characters and plot had, and it should have been stretched out into a 50 episode anime instead of squeezed into a 2 hour feature. Seebook himself would have been an amazing character given enough time to develop, and also reminded me so much of how Amuro Ray was in Tomino-sensei's first Gundam series. A great movie to watch for both Gundam fans and casual viewers, provided they didn't know the details. Sadly, I did.

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 was written and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, and was released in 1991 by Sunrise, running about 120 minutes long.



Chibi's Review


Storyline: 2/5 (because of the condensed storyline, would have scored at least a 4)
Character Development: 3/5 (again, see above)
Art: 5/5
Originality: 4/5