Four Gundam Bishies

Aaand . . . pose!

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Four Gundam Bishies,
Three Empty Paragraphs,
Two Heroes Dueling
And a Bloodstained Euphie.

One of the things remarked upon by many when Gundam 00 began to air was the presence of four young men with sharp looks, long hair and big eyes piloting the series’ four Gundams. Although these designs are hardly unique, comparisons to Gundam Wing were perhaps inevitable, and indeed the similarities between the two are not limited to the attractive young pilots.

There was an uncertain moment as we tried to decide what to make of the Meisters’ looks, before a sigh of relief as normal service was resumed by the presence of the well-endowed female characters. Rather like Code Geass, Gundam 00 appears to have taken the ‘beautiful folks of both genders’ approach.

Behind their (irritating) looks, however, Sunrise are obviously making an effort to give each Meister some flaws, though in my opinion they’re hard to empathise with. ‘Four is death‘ in anime, or at least so they say, and it is true that you’re more likely to find villains than heroes coming in groups of four. So it’s hard to be very optimistic about the prospects for our four beautiful young men.

And one of them seems to have suffered a gender identity crisis in the tenth episode, in a sequence which apparently employs various pieces of hentai imagery. This reminds one of Konata’s comment that Gundam shows could be made in any genre, including, it would seem, pornography. (Given Rule Thirty Four of the Internet, I shouldn’t be surprised.)

In closing, I might ask you to consider for a moment how it would be if your true love really did send you four beautiful young men for Christmas. Unwrapping that parcel would be a decidedly odd experience. (Or would you be more worried by one bloodstained Euphie?)