We are going back a ways tonight. I remember watching this show way back when it first ran on Cartoon Network way way back in the year of 2000. Then they put on this bad boy - which I distinctly feel like I remember being a movie version - about a year later. Fast forward to now, I’ve just finished re-watching the show with a pal of mine, and for tonight’s movie we found a copy to watch. Get in touch with your inner giant robot piloting teenager, tonight we are going to watch Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz.

Peace has finally been brought to the human sphere - space and earth getting along and disarming their weapons of war so they can start an unbridled time of getting along. The Gundam pilots who helped cause this set their suits on a collision course for the sun (with the exception of the one pilot most likely to be a problem at some point) and everything is grand as Christmas starts rolling in around the corner. And then, as it do, it all goes wrong. Some upstarts on a colony decide they should be the ones to rule literally everything, and with a dastardly plan and a wicked collection of giant war machines that people somehow never noticed they go about business. They kidnap the peace loving delegate from space, and send a huge attack force to take over earth - and that’s all without even breaking into their secret weapon. Looks like the Gundam pilots aren’t going to have much of a vacation after all, with or without their giant robot suits.

We started with a subbed copy of this, but I’m going to be honest - I’m too set in my ways at this point. If it were a new show, maybe I’d have stuck with it, but the voices I remember are the english dubbed ones - and at this point anything besides that just feels weird to me. The actors do a decent enough job here. It’s not quite as crazy good as I’ve seen from the best voice acting jobs, but it’s all pretty well suitable and even for the release time frame could have been done way worse. I feel most of the complaints that could pop up would be more because of the english localization and trying to squish that into the mouth movements more so than anyone really feeling like they are doing a bad job. You get the feel for moods, they have some fun banter back and forth, and you don’t get the classically appalled one character whose voice makes you want to stab someone - all good things I can appreciate.

Characters here don’t necessarily get a ton of room to do much with - I mean, you got to remember that it’s effectively three twenty minute episodes combined into a movie that take’s place after a 49 episode show. Most character development happened in the show, so what you get here is largely more of a sending off then it is any new arcs. That said, we do get some extra backstory for at least one of our pilots, and another of the pilots gets to once again go through a super short arc of not just being the guy whose too stupid to do anything besides just pick fights for the sake of picking fights. We do even technically get a little bit to help throw some level of emotion to a character who spent mostly the entire rest of his screen existence being and emotionless war machine, so there is some stuff here. That said, if you expect nothing you’ll get more out of it from the character front.

Animation is good. I mean, yeah sure 1080 quality only goes so far when your watching it in a large 4k device. That said, especially the stills end up looking remarkably good anyways. Where most of it might fall apart is largely the more in-motion parts, like during the actual mech fights where the suits are zipping back and forth and blasting away. Animation wise it’s pretty nice and detailed enough in my opinion, just expect some of it to get a little fuzzy at time if your watching it on super modern stuff. I’d love to see this thing get a real nice 4k up-rez, and funnily enough it sounds like supposedly it might be getting one in March of this year (2026). Perhaps I’ll have to pick that up for good old nostalgia sake?

Details are nice when they want to be. It very much feels like a continuation of the series - although oddly pretty much all of the main Gundams get reworked designs. Don’t get me wrong, they are probably the coolest the Wing mechs have gotten and done so they could sell more model kits, but as far as in-universe goes there’s no real reason why they spruced them all up just to send them into the sun to be destroyed that I caught. The action is pretty upbeat and exciting, with plenty of loosing battles feeling where even when things are going right there’s something going wrong or about to go wrong. Considering the length, there’s also a lot less reused footage like you would constantly get in the main show - so even that is a little bit of a nice touch.

Audio is fine, and things are pretty balanced. The music isn’t exactly sticking with me from the movie (although the movie does have a scene that immediately prompts Killswitch Engage to play in my head because of my association of it with an old anime music video from back in the day). The thinking types have pretty much the same old stuff to think about from the rest of the show - the cyclic nature of war, how being a soldier and war can effect a person, the nature of power and weapons, that sort of thing. I do think some of the stuff the do with the story works well (like what they do with the Trowa character), and other parts largely feel a lot less great (like the “suddenly X character has a kid” angle). For cool mech designs and some nice action with character plenty of folks would have already been attached to though, it could do worse.

It’s short enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s wasting your time, but to some extent I feel it’s a double edged beam saber in this case. On the one hand, it keeps things going and doesn’t draw things out too much, but on the other it can feel a bit rushed or “character doing something for the sake of doing it” at times that probably could have been handled nice with more time to stretch it out in. It’s overall still a good time, and I imagine the upcoming up-rez will fix any of my complaints or things i noticed with the animation quality. Probably the worst part about the entire thing is trying to watch it - unless you have Crunchy roll where it supposedly resides at the moment. In a world of digital streaming convenience, that’s harsh. Like, toddler dictator harsh.

@IMDB

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz (1997)