I've watched the first season of
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans and I don't care about it. Because it doesn't do anything with itself or anything which it sets up.
So we have a mercenary group of child soldiers looking to make a name for themselves in a gritty world filled with adults. Will we see them take on various kind of oddjobs and ethically questionable missions for the sake of money? Nah, they just spend 25 episodes on a single escort mission. So we have a mercenary group with old equipment in need of repairs and next to no funds as their accountant puts it. Will they prioritize money or their principles? Neither, they just make a deal with the friendly Jovian ?mafia/yakuza? and any question concerning money and supplies is rendered void. Surely there's more groups out there who are in the same boat as our main characters. Will they tragically have to fight eachother for the sake of survival? Nah, as far as the series is concerned there exists only one single pirate group who partially consist of child-slave soldiers, but their slavers are killed off and the kids are integrated in the good guy group (some of their comrades were killed in action, but it's not like anybody dwelled on that for more than one episode). So we have an impoverished planet oppressed by a foreign government, which are the circumstances by which our group of good guys are created and the main reason why everything is set in motion. Will we get to see how this poor society takes matters in its own hands and starts a revolution? Not really, but the series swears the revolution will come after the peace princess is delivered to Earth, but in the meantime there's some off-screen protesting and oppression going on while the good guys accidentally cause a revolution by delivering faulty weapons to the workers, but the revolution succeeds anyways and gets resolved somehow off-screen. So we have things like a Piccolo'd moon, it being normal to marry to little girls, and a mercenary harem group. What's up with that? Well, there was a big nasty war 300 years ago which got resolved by Gundams, but that's as far as we know what happened.
Now, for a Gundam series, IBO's premise sure is interesting. Given that most Gundam shows feature underage boys reluctantly forced into giant death machines by fate to fight some war in space, eventually having child soldiers would be a no-brainer. The child soldier aspect could allow one to play or subvert your traditional Gundam tropes. There are more factions in play than stand-ins for the Federation and Zeon. There's no beamspam. The main Gundam likes to smash things with a chunk of raw steel instead of a beamsaber. The tone is grittier and more serious. Poverty-struck nations and their desire for revolution practically begs for worldbuilding detail. All things considered it may have been a step in the right direction for the franchise and to make itself stand out, the problem is that doesn't do anything with it and the things it does are
boring.
Basically, there are all these interesting story elements and opportunities which IBO briefly sets up only to never use again. Instead, it focuses on themes such as child soldiers and family. The thing is that the former loses weight throughout the duration of the series when the good guy child soldiers don't live in terrible conditions and fight voluntarily, and the latter falls apart because a huge deal is made out of how they're all a part of one another, but when a background character dies nobody cares. But a more important factor for why the theme of family doesn't work out is because the characters who consist of that family are incredibly boring themselves.
The MC might as well not exist. His sole purpose in the plot is to pilot the Gundam and just do what everybody else tells him to. He cares about the family and gets mad when someone threatens it, but that's about it. He neither changes or inspires change--he's a plot device, pure and simple. He's not cool and witty, he just doesn't care, and neither do I. He's only special because he got a forced surgery three times in a row which makes him three times faster with mobile suits. The only thing that motivates him is blindly following his leader who he'd known since childhood. Maybe a case could be made that he's supposed to be an example of how child soldiers should learn to think for themselves, but typically that's not a role suitable for the MC.
This one's iteration of the peace princess was handled in a rather mediocre way. She wasn't constantly getting everyone in trouble because of her naivete, and at least recognized that weakness and sought to work on it. She kind of functioned as the onee-san of the group alongside the haremettes and the loli for the first few episodes in order to at least diversify the doujin output, but after the (at least interesting) slice of life segments ended with her teaching kids how to read and write and the obligatory character death-fueled sudden character development gotten over, she was just discarded to become background character. Alongside all the other side characters who had the privilege of a flashback backstory and any attention at all before being forgotten and/or killed off.
Most of the side characters are so devoid of personality, unique interaction and purpose that you have a better time characterizing them as a group. At least Cartman wasn't, but he got Kircheis'd in the most obviously telegraphed fashion possible.
The bad guys are a peacekeeping organization who end up following the whims of the corrupt aristocratic elite, and some of those guys don't want the peace princess preaching peace and Martian independence, and want her executed. This faction sucks. We don't see much of the grunts and most of its leaders are blatantly evil and corrupt, but also incompetent. And the Graze suits look pretty fucking cool.
That's why this one's Char clone intends to reform it by cleansing all the corruption. Though, this Char clone is a serious fucking chuuni. At some point you'd think after bitterly reminiscing your childhood all the time, having the most forced 'mysterious guy' voice of all time, and wearing a flamboyant wig/mask as a disguise that this guy is played for laughs, but apparently he's 100% serious which makes him even more laughable and out of place. What makes him even more laughable is the subtle implication that he's a lolicon given the amount of time he spends around little girls or wooing them with chocolate, though whether that's unintentional is everyone's best guess.
The Char clone is then aided by his childhood friend, the Garma clone. Yet I found the Garma clone the most relatable guy out of this entire season by virtue of the shit he goes through despite being one of the bad guys. Given the shit they both did for eachother, Garma's friendship with his subordinate evokes stronger feelings than the child soldier's vague bonds of 'family'. And when his death was being blamed at the misfortune of his birth you could at least understood what it's like to be fucked over for twenty years of your life. Heck, while Garma's subordinate is a Jerid clone but less pathetic and less macho and only exists to be transformed in the final boss for the season finale, being constantly fucked over by space rats and having your superiors be killed off or humiliated all the time is still somewhat more relatable despite the fact he's constantly thinking about killing the children responsible. Even a fucking childkiller is more deserving of sympathy than any of the disposable good guys.
IBO also likes to handle politics (with the subtlety of a fucking sledgehammer) even though it's all boring by virtue of all the politicking being performed by boring characters and all of it coming down to power plays and using pawns, yet a disproportionate amount of time was spent on this shit.
Well, at least if plot, characterization and world-building feel, at least a mecha show can fall back on its action, right? Right?
[faint YEEART echoing through space]
The fights themselves are a fucking mess. The choreography made it hard to discern what was actually happening on screen beyond hunks of metal repeatedly clashing at another as the QUALITY animation didn't really help. The Gundam frames are supposed to move erratically and subtly like humans, but this idea is completely lost with bad animation. While the first episodes did try to mix up the idea of two giant robots going at eachother, later on it's just a slugfest over and over. Sometimes there's some tactics or battle plans involved but most of it revolved around sending out the MC. The MC is so good that he's rarely ever in a bind. The final boss of the season provided a real challenge but the MC won through an asspull by allowing his suit to perform even betterer by using 120% of his power somehow?
The season finale was some drek as well. The final boss appeared and cut down the bigger side-characters in their suits like they were nothing, but ALL of them miraculously survived. You don't need people dying to create tension, but if everyone just survives lethal situations like they're nothing then all future situation lose their tension by default because you know nobody (important) is going to die until the end anyways. The episodes prior to the finale set up the good guys to be more hungry for revenge after their big buddy Cartman died which could lead to a Big Boss-esque downfall as is evidenced by the adult characters saying how wrong this situation is, but later on it's all somehow okayed after the leader tells everyone else to just not die and keep living as the adults say everything is all right anyways.
Overall the visuals are decent. The animation is crap, the character designs do enough to stand out even though not really aesthetically pleasing, and the mobile suit designs are very good, but utilized rather poorly because you can't make out their shape or form when they are moving as a result of the poor animation, which is all the time. However, the background art does deserve some praise. The artists must have had some personal experience to really nail the feeling for these impoverished district. The soundtrack is quite decent with energetic guitars setting the tone, though in the later episodes it doesn't become as noticeable.
I wouldn't say IBO S1 is bad. I didn't really hate anything about it until I reflected on the time I spent watching this. It's just not particularly engaging. The plot does move forward at least and for the first 10-15 episodes I was somewhat entertained, but it wore off with the ever-increasing meandering of character relationships I realized would end up being meaningless, boring politicking, and fighting scenes with no luster. It's just wasted potential.
And here i thought it just another .hack clone, that's a very grim dystopia.
