Gundam Build Fighters Episode 8
What They Say:
Sei, Reiji, and Mao have been chosen to participate in the Gunpla Battle Championship World Tournament. Meanwhile, outside Japan, a series of qualifying tournaments have been underway in other countries to select players for the World Tournament. Among them are Ricardo Fellini of Italy, Luang Dallara of Thailand, and the Renato brothers of Argentina. Fellini’s rival Greco Logan, a World Tournament veteran, is considered the favorite to represent America. But an unexpected ambush awaits him in the final round of the qualifying tournament. When the young prodigy Nils Nielsen, known as the Early Genius, reveals the hidden power of his Gunpla, the Sengoku Astray, it will shake the arena… no, the world!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While we’ve been treated to a lot of game play in the series so far, the show opens in an interesting area here as we see a couple of scientists, a young man and an older one, talking about doing research on the particles that move and manipulate the models. It’s very proprietary by all appearances and the elder scientist simply can’t see it as a worthwhile pursuit to find out what moves models around. But you can see this research as something that can lead to something greater, including potentially bringing real mobile suits into play and a whole host of other options. But that’s all just a tease here at the start because the show wants to move on with the boys by leaping ahead a month and giving us a taste of what’s to come in the next round.
With the younger scientist, Nils, having taken the route of exploring the game by playing it and moving into the tournament, he’s come a fair way in a quick amount of time and made an impression as we see events for the World Tournament happening outside of Japan. That’s an interesting point in and of itself, especially as we see a few adult players talking about his surprise entry and sudden skill, but that falls to the side as we get exposed to more adults in a whole other area that seem to be building and testing mobile suits for people to actually exist in. The idea of it isn’t a surprise when you really look at it, but it creates this feeling of a Last Starfighter kind of approach where the game is designed to draw in players that can handle the real thing and to make the shift for some other mysterious reason. If that is where the show decides to go, it’ll be a great moment to see realized. If not and it sticks to just the virtual game with the models, it’ll be fun but little more than that in the end.
The show spends its second half in giving us a contest in the qualifying section where we get Greco, the powerful American player, going up against Nils for a spot in the World Tournament. With it eing set on the moon, we get a fantastic match between the two where you can definitely see the balance between skill and experience come to the for, making for a very engaging match. Greco has a lot riding on this in general, especially since it’s such a young and new player that he’s up against, but Nils has a lot behind him as well with some parents that make it clear he’s not a normal kid. It’s an interesting match in general, but the big takeaway here is that we see that Nils is able to do something that really surprises Greco in his ability to use all the particles that are part of the game and that allows him to go above and beyond, making for some good surprises as the match rolls on to its expected conclusion.
In Summary:
Is that a whisper of hope that there’s far more to the show than we dared imagine? While Gundam Build Fighters could be a fun show based on what we had so far with the tournament aspect and some grand and varied action sequences, throwing a Last Starfighter aspect onto it is something that makes me perk up in a huge way. There’s a lot to like here with that, scattershot as it is in introducing it, but it’s something that can definitely give this show a new lease on life and cause you to revisit what came before to see what you missed. And huge props to Sunrise for acknowledging G-Savior once again, something that most Gundam fans never thought they’d see surface in any form anymore.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Official Gundam YouTube Channel
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.