Not gonna lie I expected worse. Spoilers for Gundam 00 Awakening of the Trailblazer So let me get this out of the way. A lot of people seem to believe that this is the only bad installment in the Anno Domini timeline of Gundam as well as the worst by that virtue. I disagree wholeheartedly. Yes this film is insanely dumb with asspull after asspull and it is preachy as hell but the second season had a lot of these same problems and actually as controversial as this may sound that installments even worse. At least this film doesnt ruin any characters given that it redeems some of them instead. Its no preachier or more contradictory than the second season either. Its still a bad anime just not as bad as its predecessor. So what made this film resonate so poorly with the Anno Domini fans? Well lets find out shall we? Let me get the only two positives out of the way: I like that they brought back the ability for machines to turn invisible from season 1 since it was only shown once in season 1 and never again. Narratively that is the only positive I can give it other than maybe continuing its theme though Ill touch on why I cant give it that one in a minute. The other positive is that I like that there is this cheesy action movie retelling of the events of the end of season 1 with a filler ending that didnt actually happen in real life sorta like with a lot of movies based on true stories and how Saju commented on it. That was a nice touch. The concept of random metallic aliens ELS appearing is to put it lightly absurd. There was no foreshadowing to it from the main series and if anything its just a cheap ploy to reinforce the main theme of the Anno Domini era that understanding is key to humanity. That has always been a theme of Gundam to some extent but especially in this timeline. The problem is like in Second Season it becomes incessantly preachy with that message it genuinely cant go 10 minutes without spouting that message and it is genuinely annoying. That is why I cant compliment bringing back that theme like I ordinarily would. Also I never attacked this ideology back in my Second Season review over a year ago but here it goes. This claims that understanding is the key to the end of conflict. The problem is even with understanding people arent always willing to agree and not everyone is willing to listen let alone understand. Its human nature and this entire timeline including this film is nave for thinking otherwise. Another reason it doesnt make sense is that this era also tries to keep in some interesting bits of realism rarely seen notably involving Gforce which comes in for half of the Gundam timelinesduring that one time in season 1 when Graham having trouble with his Flag because of that making it jarring when you see everyone perfectly fine with insanely fast mobile suits far outspeeding anything from the previous seasons. Coming this with pretty much sentient yet not sentient metal alien parasite things coming to this world for understanding via absorbing everything notice that insane contradiction and you have absolute absurdity where it has no place. There are a ton of asspulls aside from that one. First off only Tieria can come back as some kind of AI thing that can use another host body of himself because hes one of many Innovades. How come no one else can? Also Innovades are apparently clones that are meant for information hence why Ribbons Almark and Nena Trinity are clones of people that appear in the movie. Theyre the only only ones we see with clones though and Tieria seems to just clone himself like Ribbons did back in season 1. Apparently there are a ton of people including random citizens that have amazing quantum brain wave potential. They never really explained that well in the series but you mean to tell me that people with no combat experience or lab experiments or whatever can do this? I get it Universal Century did the same thing with Newtypes except they explained things that this was a spaceinduced evolution. Here nothing. Apparently Louise and some other random girl both of whom do nothing in this movie are Innovators like Setsuna and the new character Descartes Shaman who is just here for some reason and we dont know where or how he was discovered to it an Innovator since only Innovators can feel this strange and painful sensation from the ELS and other people with Quantum Brain Waves cant for some reason. 00 QTs Quantum mode is just slapped in there during the final 10 minute mark with no explanation or buildup beyond this Gundam that Setsuna pilots is the key to understanding and other Gundams can do ridiculously crazy things now. Lockon has two Haro units for some reason when he only had one in the series and they dont explain where or how he got the blue one. I can go on like about the inconsistency of how TRANSAM works but now Ill just talk about the ending. They literally end en medias res. No joke. All that talk about understanding all that conflict just to end on Setsuna moving to God knows where in order to talk with the enemy aliens we dont see him engage in dialogue with them we just see him go somewhere and a giant space flower blooms where the ELS Sphere was. I genuinely laughed my ass off at this. I get that this is a connection to Setsunas flower from the second season but this is just cheesy. Still nothing here is resolved. Its like an even worse version of how Chars Counterattack ended except the new characters here arent as bad as the ones there. Speaking of characters for all intents and purposes the main cast is the exact same as before except Lyle Lockon Stratos who for some reason is now much more jovial and laid back. Most of the other old cast are just as bleh as before with three exceptions Ill talk about in a minute. Lets talk about the two new characters: Mina and Descartes. Mina is literally a more annoying Nena Trinity with no emotional baggage who is suddenly introduced as Billys lover for some reason. All she provides is awful comedy and some necessary exposition. Descartes is just some random asshole with hardly explored personal lab baggage and thats about it especially since he dies halfway into the movie not even being there to help in the final act. The 3 main exceptions I wanted to talk about are Billy Graham and Andrei. Billy isnt a pathetic and inconsistent cunt this time around. Instead hes just a dork with exposition. Still a bad character though is what Im getting at. Andrei is just there for some sacrifice in the final act and while I dont think this truly redeems his character its nice to know that they tried and that even this guy can do a good thing. Now Graham he is what he shouldve been in season 2 and not some deadset weeaboo. Here hes still relaxed but cool and powerful be his sacrifice at the end actually means something to the characters. He gets a salute from me for that and for being the only good character in this film. This film has a lot of bombastic flashy action with many sparkly and multicolored particles and the animation is up to snuff for a film. At a glance this film looks gorgeous as youd expect from a big mecha action film. The problem is the insane amount of awful CGI hallways and battleships there are as well as the ELS in most of the second half of the movie. It becomes rather hard to look at sometimes despite the mostly good and flashy animation and action. Again the film overall looks good but the increased and equally bad CGI from the previous installments that wasnt very frequent back then bogged things down. Conversely I found the overall OST by Kenji Kawai here to be better in the original series with a few new and interesting tracks. That said its still not that great. The only track I really remember is Last Mission which was a perfect score to accompany the visually chaotic and overall climatic spectacle of the final battle. The OP Tozasareta Sekai by THE BACK HORN is a pretty good OP especially the full version though some of the other OPs from previous installments mainly the first season are better which proves that if nothing else this timeline has great OPs overall. The ED Qualia by Uverworld is a pretty meh Uverworld theme and one of the absolute weakest Ive heard from them which is disappointing. The dub for the first two seasons was overall sort of decent despite a few weak performances and equipment issues. Here no dice. The dub kinda suck here with Brad Swailes repressed role of Setsuna being the only saving grace. Is it just me or did a lot of characters get a casting change each of which being for the worse since many of these voices dont have good delivery or even feel right with these characters? The worst offenders of this are Tieria and Saji it seems. Regardless this was a pretty weak dub especially for the time where dubs were actually at their peak. Not gonna lie I wasnt very entertained by this film. The action didnt sit right with me the characters were still pretty bad the weird comedy from Mina was insufferable and cringeworthy to me and the plot was a preachy messy disaster. I was almost bored. There were some really stupid moments particularly the ending that made me laugh my ass off but overall I didnt have that good a time with this film and when an action film even a flashy one isnt engaging thats a problem. This movie was the final nail in the coffin for the Anno Domini timeline and embodies pretty much everything wrong with it. The asspulls and inconsistencies the awful characters the insane preachiness everything. Im not gonna go out of my way to call this the worst Gundam timeline nor am I going to call this the worst installment of said timeline but both are pretty bad overall. Even the decent music and flashy visuals cant save it. With all that said I bid you adieu.