User Reviews

Gundam NT takes place a year after the ending of Gundam Unicorn. And let me remind you that Unicorn was a very perplexed and heavy story, with a tone of references and fan service to Universal Century stories. It had great fights, interesting mecha designs and decent to shallow characters.

In Gundam NT we have a tone of references, a lot of fan service to UC, some great fights, ridiculous overpowered mechas (although I loved "Phoenix") and decent to shallow characters, in a story incredibly thin.

It can be watched alone, too, but the best way to watch it, is as an aftermath movie to Unicorn. And then forget both of them and move on.

This movie retains its core of the Universal Century as it continues to explore war and politics. While the war continues, it tells the story of friendship and the emphasis of betrayal and the focus on psycho-frame technologies as its main plot line.

The narrative overall feels zen as its complex and confusing beginning makes it hard to make out the ending, and straightforward and easy to understand at the end makes it simple to line out the sequence of events that lead to the ending.

What the story lacks is the character building itself as they easily ward off the protagonist as a "normal" who just has most of his live being coiled to the plot of the series. It make me feel disconnected to their friendship and the story ending.

I hope you like being let down because if you're coming off of Unicorn expecting a movie with a good story and exemplary visuals, you're gonna be sorely dissatisfied. Narrative's story is a continuation of Unicorn's.

The plot:

Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative follows the story of 3 main characters. 3 characters who have the complexity of a box of saltines. You have Jona the protagonist, Rita the airheaded macguffin plot armor, and Michele. The three of them were the subjects of some cyber newtype experimentation. A large sum of children who were all experimented on to bring forth a perfected newtype. Jona, Rita, and Michele were special, however. The three of them were labeled "the miracle children" after Rita showed them visions of the colony drop. Rita is taken away while Jona and Michele are released from captivity because Michele struck a deal with (them), selling Rita out as the one who predicted the colony drop in the first place. Jona was unaware of this arrangement at the time but as time goes on he starts to realize what Michele had done. Fast forward to the present, Jona and Michele are now part of Luio & Co. with Jona piloting the Narrative Gundam. Their goal? Capture the RX-0-3 Phenex Gundam (aka, Rita) who holds the key to essentially immortality with a fake Char/Full Frontal looking like he just stepped out of a Hot Topic, leading Neo Zeon and chasing after it as well.

It is really such a shame. After Unicorn, the bar was set unfathomably high. As expected, Narrative doesn't live up to the Unicorn hype. The story, starts out slow and contrived. By the midpoint you pray and beg God that this movie gets better but then you remember you're at the midpoint. The story is just terrible. The plot movers (characters but I'm calling them plot movers because they don't deserve to be called characters) are unlikeable and have no depth. Especially Jona. You know it's bad when you can take the main character out of the story and don't have to worry about it affecting the plot aside from the ending.

The animation is flat, lifeless, and choppy. There are points in this movie where I end up asking myself if this is the same studio that animated Unicorn because of how underwhelmed I am. Especially when you compare Narrative's animation to that of Unicorn's. A series that preceded Narrative by a decade. Even the final battle with the Neo Zeong left me feeling tired and bored. Yes I'm serious, the final climax of the movie left me feeling tired and bored. Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I went back to watch random scenes from Unicorn and compared still frames with Narrative. Narrative's slightly above TV anime animation looked terrible on the big screen then and still looks terrible today on my TV.

Overall I wouldn't give this movie the time of day. I really am hoping and praying that studio Sunrise does Hathaway's Flash justice.