Mobile Suit Gundam AGE Episode #08 Anime Review

Gundam AGE Episode 8

What They Say:
To take down the UE that have infiltrated Fardain, Flit fights in the Gundam’s new form: Titus. What the Titus loses by abandoning its Dods rifle, unusable in colonies, it more than makes up for in brute force. Meanwhile, doubts remain between Zalam and Euba, and clashes erupt as they come together on the battlefield. As the situation becomes more desperate, Flit fights to unite the clashing Zalam and Euba elements under one banner. A new mobile suit rises on the battlefield. Who pilots its alabaster form?

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While we had some wonky material just in how Flit acts sometimes and the whole aspect of the street fighting between syndicates, Gundam AGE did have some fun material the last time around. It wasn’t terribly in-depth material with how the syndicates work, but we had some nice ties to how Flit was brought in and given a bit of an education at the same time that Grodek is working to get what he needs in order to face the UE. They’re still the bigger threat that a lot of people are oblivious to, hence the stupidity of street fighting syndicate members in mobile suits when they’re both going to be targets by this unknown enemy that’s closing in on their territory. Having them show up at the last minute wasn’t exactly a twist, but at least it refocused events a bit on the larger threat.

Not surprisingly, the first half works through a good bit of action as Flit manages to get back to his Gundam, and through an amusing little montage, evolves it into something different than we’ve seen before. This gives him a hell of a lot more strength, which is what he needs since the beam weapons he has aren’t working against the UE as they stand right now due to their shielding. That has him going all in on the hand to hand combat in a kind of boxing series of moves, which is great to see since it completely throws off the UE opponent, especially with the way there are small but critical changes to how the Gundam is operating against it that are shown on the outside, including a specialized power burst with magnetic energy around the first. It’s a great little moment that even surprises Flit with how well it works in the midst of the battle.

The tide does start to turn as the fight goes on, giving us the majority of the episode focused on it which is a bit of a nice change of pace here from how some shows just give us either a bit at the start or at the end. Working with the syndicate members as it progresses, Flit’s able to obviously make some inroads with them, but it’s also made clear that it’s temporary. But you can tell it’s also a start, which will help as time goes on and more UE attacks could potentially happen. The fun also goes up a few notches when Woolf finally makes his way back after his side trip and he’s upgraded his mobile suit a bit, which confounds the Diva crew a bit since they don’t know what he has, and that adds a new kind of fun uncertainty to the battle against the UE.

In Summary:
Though the show is all about the action side of things in this episode, it’s done in a fun and engaging way. We get to see Flit upgrade his Gundam a good degree to do some different than usual kind of attacks, which expands his range nicely. And we get Woolf returning towards the end in his upgraded mobile suit which brings its own kind of fun to the game. The syndicate side leaves me a little cool once again since it’s so superficial and you just kind of want to smack them around, but at least we’re getting more people exposed to the UE attacks now and that will help slowly start solidifying resistance and awareness against them.

Grade: B

Streamed By: YouTube