GQuuuuuuX and Worldbuilding Through Mechanical Design

 Worldbuilding is one of the key aspects of any science fiction or fantasy work, and it's something that I feel too many people get too bogged down in. The original Star Wars (the movie itself, not the trilogy as a whole) did an excellent job with it for the most part. We learn how ill-equipped the Rebels are compared to the Empire simply by looking at their respective machines: the Rebels X-Wings and Y-Wings are all dirty and used, while everything used by the Empire is shiny and new. Five seconds in the Mos Eisley Cantina shows that humans are but one species in a highly diverse galaxy, although it does still bother me that all of the Rebels you see in the movie are human--it almost makes it look like the civil war is a solely human dispute. Regardless, while many aspects such as the Clone Wars, the Jedi Knights, and so on were established by dialogue, the bigger picture understood the classic mantra of "show, don't tell".

With a series like GQuuuuuuX, you have something different: you have a twist on a classic series, one that changed one detail in its story that led to a wildly different timeline from what we know, and how it succeeded in showing us this different world with its mecha design, and how it was more successful in that regard than the actual worldbuilding done via dialogue in the series itself. Obviously, this type of worldbuilding wouldn't work in a completely new Gundam timeline or a new mecha series in of itself, and that's fine. That's what's fun about multiverses. I've already spoken about how much I love the gMS-01 Gelgoog and its role in the alternate UC, so I'm going to talk about a few others and how they factor in here.

First, the Rick Dom. The first glimpse I caught of it was during the Beginning movie in the theater, in Challia Bull's colors. It's in the background and in the shadows, so it's hard to see that its colors aren't the standard purple and black but instead two-tone blue, a la Ramba Ral. Most of us just assumed these were the standard mass production colors since its appearance in those colors was very brief in the movie as well, so we thought little of it. After Gaia and Ortega showed up in the series proper, however, background material revealed that like the "Colony Attack" Rick Dom II from Gundam 0080, the "standard" Rick Dom colors in GQuuuuuuX was actually two-tone green.

"Kentucky Dried.": For folks who find the biscuits too juicy, period.

At first, I found this a bit odd, but then I remembered a slightly obscure piece of unspoken lore from the original series that was largely born out of reusing animation models. You see, the Gouf was blue because that was Ramba Ral's personal color, just like Char's was red. The same was true for the Dom, with the Black Tri-Stars using that black and purple color scheme on their mobile suits. While there's plenty of other material that contradicts it, the typical explanation was that these color schemes were retained on the mass-produced versions suits as tribute to the ace pilots who made them famous and fell in battle against the feared Gundam. In an alternate timeline where there was no Federation "White Devil" defeating the likes of Gaia, Ortega, and Mash, there was no need to color the Rick Doms black and purple in tribute to them, especially since they were dishonorably discharged from the Zeon army. It can be deduced that if there's a mass-produced version of the Gouf in the GQuuuuuuX timeline, it would likely not be blue, since we see Ramba Ral alive and well at the end of the series.

They put the "cannon" in cannonfodder!

The Light-Type Guncannon, or simply "Light Cannon" is another great example of simple worldbuilding that requires no additional explanation. With the RX-78-02 captured by Zeon and the RX-78-01 destroyed, the Federation had no choice but to go all-in on the limited data already collected by the 01 Gundam and the already-completed Guncannon for their mass-production mobile suit. Remember, the key to the war wasn't just Amuro's success in piloting the Gundam, it was his plethora of combat data that was used in the mass production GM units that made them so successful. The Light Cannon even has a Core Fighter, something the GM lacked, and it's STILL less effective than the GM because of that missing data. And before anyone brings up the many GM prototypes seen in 08th MS Team or whatever, remember that GQuuuuuuX was working purely with original UC properties from 1979 to 1989--anything later did not count. Seriously, there are way too many obscure Gundam variants in the One Year War now, it makes Amuro's exploits feel kinda pointless by comparison.

Shutter shades if they were cool.

The two "Twelve Olympians" machines, the Hambrabi and Psycho Gundam, also provided a slightly less direct look into the universe. Neither of these machines did too much on-screen worldbuilding, mind you, but their supplementary material offered quite a bit. The model number for the Hambrabi in this timeline is ORX-139, as opposed to RX-139. The "O" in the prefix indicates that it came from either the Augusta or Oakland Newtype labs, much like how the "M" in the Psycho Gundam's model number indicates that it came from the Murasame labs. Both of these machines appear a full two years earlier than their Prime-UC counterparts, with the Psycho Gundam featuring the design and model number of its second iteration. You'll also notice that the Psycho's face eschews the traditional Gundam face design for something closer to that of the Guncannon or 01 Gundam--after all, why would the Federation want their big scary, machine wearing the face of the mobile suit that so humiliated them during the One Year War?

Allegedly, the Hambrabi can transform, just like its prime counterpart, but it's inefficient and time-consuming, unlike the almost instantaneous transformation of said machine. This could be chalked up to one of two explanations: one, the Hambrabi was originally prototyped as early as UC 0085 but was shelved because its transformation was too time consuming, and required further R&D. Two, the genius of the Federation's "man from Jupiter", Paptimus Scirocco, is the one who cracked the nut of said transformation system. This brings up a small problem, however: why does this Federation machine in a timeline where the Federation lost have a Zeon monoeye? In Zeta Gundam, many of the Titans machines had monoeyes for a real-world reason and an in-universe reason. The real-world reason was due to simple shorthand--because of conventions established by the original series, the audience knew to associate monoeyes with bad guy mobile suits, even though some of the suits in Zeta did break this tradition. In-universe, many of the engineers who worked on the machines used by the Titans and Federation as a whole at the time were formerly Zeons. That's why the Hizack exists: it's essentially a Zaku on the outside, but a GM on the inside. This doesn't make much sense in a world where there's no shortage of work for Zeon engineers.

Which brings me to my next point. See, while GQuuuuuuX did a spectacular job explaining the fun little bits of its mecha lore, the stuff weirdos like me (and probably you if you're reading this) love, it did an absolutely TERRIBLE job explaining EVERYTHING ELSE in its new, altered Universal Century.

The show started off well enough, with plenty of mystique and intrigue. We got enough basics laid out for us, and while some folks didn't like the early focus on Clan Battle, I found the idea interesting because it was so wildly different from anything in Prime UC, and it was an excellent way to piece together what the war was like. It only became a problem after episode 7, "Machu's Rebellion", when elements of the new UC and the Zeon Civil War took a front seat and cracks started to form. Ideas would be introduced and quickly forgotten. We'd be left with more questions than answers. 

If I'm remembering things correctly, the show doesn't even tell us that Sayla is Char's long-lost sister.

Remember when Sayla made her awesome debut in her custom Light Cannon in the Gundam's tri-color paint job, and at first, we thought it was Amuro in the pilot seat? Then, we learned it was at the same point Char did! Holy crap, what a moment! A universe where the Federation's legendary "White Devil" isn't Amuro Ray, but Sayla Mass? How did this happen? WHO KNOWS! The show doesn't tell us! At all! All we know is, she survived the war and somehow returned to Zeon and became their new ruler because she's the daughter of Zeon Deikun and she's working with Ramba Ral? Can I see that story? Please? I bet some Zeon citizens have huge issues with her, given that she was a freakin' feddie soldier.

Admitted, one Glemy Toto is one too many...

During episode 8, they mention a rumor about Gihren Zabi having an army of cloned Cyber-Newtypes. This idea is exciting! Immediately, my mind went to the Puru (yes, I'm spelling it that way) clones from the latter episodes of Double Zeta. Could we be seeing her? Perhaps a dive into her origin? Was she genetically engineered from the start? Or, maybe Glemy, a character who was originally intended, and is often implied to be, the illegitimate son of Gihren and a woman with high Newtype potential? Oh, what's that? It isn't mentioned ever again? Oh, okay.

Every Gundam series has some sort of giant mega death weapon thingy, and of course, GQuuuuuuX was no different with the literally Lovecraftian Yomagn'tho: weaponized Newtype hax taken to the extreme. I'm fine with this concept, it's suitably ridiculous. Nyaan powers up this enormous weapon and fires from one side of the Earth to the other and wipes Space Fortress A Baoa Qu off the Earth Sphere in one fell swoop, a cosmic glow lighting up the skies below for all to see. How does the Earth Federation respond? They don't! You would think that even the defeated Earth Federation would go, "Hey, maybe we should send a Magellan-class battleship with a couple mobile suits up to space to uh, see what's going on up there. Might be a good idea, don't you think?" Nope! The only time the Federation even slightly poked their heads up after the war was when we saw the previously mentioned "Twelve Olympians", aka, the "Not Titans", who apparently carried out some kind of poison gas attack... somewhere! Like they did in the main UC timeline! No context as to why, though! That would have been too interesting, I guess. God forbid we see the next-generation Federation mobile suits, too.

And going back to Nyaan, it was pretty obvious from the start that her name was an alias. She's a refugee, sure, but... why did she change her name? She came from Side 2 on a mobile suit, but... when? What kind of mobile suit? Was it Federation, Zeon, or something else? Does she have living family? 

And don't even get me started on Shuji! The heck even was his deal? Was he like, the "Other Side's" Amuro? Was he the one originally fated to pilot the Gundam before Lalah started to muck around with causality? Or was he just some dimension-hopping shmuck who got pulled into all of this? The idea of Lalah losing it and creating the new universes is farfetched, but one I can accept given everything else in the series, but at least plan things out before you write the series. It was very clear, and if I recall, they even admitted as such, that they were making this up as they were going along.

The last episode did one of the cardinal sins of anime tropes: introducing a new, as-of-yet unnamed concept in the eleventh hour that takes its name from mythology or literature. Pop Team Epic famously made fun of. Apparently, the GQuuuuuuX has a trapped Newtype soul inside it, or something, called the Endymion system! Who's the Newtype in question? Uh, it's Amuro from "The Other Side", I guess? When Challia mentioned "Endymion", I immediately got a bad feeling, because I knew where they were going with it. In Greek Mythology, Endymion was shepherd and lover of the moon goddess Selene who was placed into eternal sleep. The name may also sound familiar as Prince Endymion was the Sailor Moon character who was reincarnated into Mamoru Chiba, aka Tuxedo Mask, who was played by Tohru Furuya, the same actor as... Amuro Ray! An actor who famously, in 2024, was caught up in an extremely gross domestic abuse scandal involving him and a fan who's half his age (before you freak out, that still makes her like 30) and seriously, the more you learn about it, the worse it gets. It'll make that scene of the GQuuuuuuX's cockpit "arms" embracing Machu seem... very creepy. They even brought him back, admittedly just for one line, for this scene, which was incredibly jarring considering he's been dropped or recast in all of his other roles.

Look, I think why I'm so frustrated here is because I was so enamored with the concept of GQuuuuuuX. It had and still has so much potential, and yet the series dropped the ball harder than a space colony dropped on Sydney. The excellent work done by Hideaki Anno with the flashback story portions in episodes 2 and 8, and Ikuto Yamashita's masterful industrial mecha designs clash jarringly against Kazuya Tsurumaki and Yoji Enokido's poorly planned overall story. (I may have some of the credits besides Yamashita wrong there, but my point stands.) I wanted GQuuuuuuX to be a new version of the Universal Century for a new generation, a remix of the story and characters we love like a Gihren's Greed campaign gone off the rails, but instead we got a half-baked detour of only 12 episodes that just felt unfinished and unrealized. The most I can hope for is that someone else will take the reins of this universe in the future, be it in the form of a manga or anime spinoff. There are good ideas here, they just needed more time to gestate.