Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-

Amate Yuzuriha is a high school student living in a space colony. Her life runs ordinarily until she meets a war refugee named Nyaan and is drawn into something illegal: the underground mobile suit duels known as Clan Battle. She enters them and finds she is good at it. Kazuya Tsurumaki directs. The film is a cinema recut of the first episodes of the television series of the same name. What stands out is who is behind it. The studio that owns the Gundam series worked on this with the studio that produces Evangelion, and Tsurumaki comes from the Evangelion side and directed FLCL. The result stands away from the usual Gundam manner. The narrative alters the known history of the series. It takes place on a timeline where the One Year War ended differently, and for long term viewers that is the film's real subject. All three principal characters are young women, and the narrative gives war not as a story of the front but as growing up in a world left over from it. Being a compilation, the pacing is compressed and the joins between television episodes are felt. Who it is for: Gundam viewers and anyone who likes Japanese science fiction animation. Who it is not for: the terminology is dense for a newcomer, some transitions are abrupt because of the compiled structure, and the film does not complete itself.