‘GQuuuuuuX’ Is Taking Its ‘Gundam’ Remix to a Entire Different Degree

Last week, I mentioned that Cellular Go well with Gundam GQuuuuuuX‘s remixing of the unique Gundam continuity was letting a number of of the unique sequence’ largest characters hang-out the narrative, from the absent Amuro Ray, to the barely much less absent Char Aznable, after which the one determine who’s actually been skirting across the edges of GQuuuuuuX‘s periphery in earnest, the mysterious Lalah Sune. This week, Lalah stopped skirting… after which some.

To the shock of nobody after final week’s setup, episode 9 of GQuuuuuuX, “The Rose of Sharon,” is certainly for essentially the most half about Lalah Sune making her manner into the sequence’ narrative, as Machu manages to flee confinement with the GQuuuuuuX and head to Earth, the place she finds Lalah compelled to work at a lavish brothel. However whereas this Lalah is certainly a Newtype—regaling workers and Machu alike of the visions she sees in her desires—she isn’t the Rose of Sharon that Machu was searching for in her hopes to be reunited with Shuji.

As an alternative, this Lalah is nearly haunted by what has come to go, her Newtypism probably not granting her a imaginative and prescient of the longer term, however what was, as GQuuuuuuX presents yet one more spin on a traditional scene from the 1979 anime. Floating within the cosmic glow that represents the connection solid between Newtypes, Lalah flatly explains that the longer term she sees is her personal: the way forward for one other Lalah, a younger lady who meets a younger Zeon officer in crimson who whisks her to the celebs… a Lalah who falls in love with that man, and in addition his rival, as she dies in battle saving the previous from the latter. What the Lalah of GQuuuuuuX sees past time, as she says to Machu, is the unique story of Mobile Suit Gundam.

The implication then that GQuuuuuuX‘s remixed timeline of the Common Century co-exists alongside Gundam‘s authentic one, in some capability, already raises a bunch of fascinating questions, however issues solely get extra attention-grabbing within the episode’s climactic moments, once we and Machu alike uncover that the Lalah was proper when she informed them that she isn’t the rose neither she, nor Shuji, nor everybody else has been on the lookout for after it went lacking…

As a result of one other Lalah Sune is. The Lalah Sune, if you’ll. Hidden for years on the backside of the ocean till Machu and the GQuuuuuuX discover it, Lalah’s cell armor the Elmeth, locked in time from the second of her demise within the 1979 anime, has some how turn into an almighty object of huge psionic energy, a Newtype beacon that has transitioned throughout this divergent timeline, calling out to the technology of Newtypes that solid it within the first place in characters like Char and Lalah, but additionally the technology that has grown past them on this new timeline, like Machu, Nyaan, and Shuji.

After all, Gundam isn’t any stranger to the alternate actuality development that has turn into du jour in modern popular culture. It’s been on it for many years at this level, when Cellular Fighter G Gundam created the primary alternate Gundam universe to exist on TV exterior of the tales that had been informed within the Common Century setting. Ever since we’ve had a bunch of different alternate realities to offer the setting to new Gundam sequence, we’ve had realities that, like GQuuuuuuX, has mirrored and riffed on the Common Century tales to create their own echoes of its concepts. Hell, Flip A Gundam introduced a imaginative and prescient the place its setting was a far-flung future after a “Darkish Historical past” that eradicated humanity again to a technological reset—one which touched upon each nook of Gundam continuity as much as that time in a roundabout way, a touch upon the cyclical nature of historic tendencies, whereas additionally symbolically honoring your complete metatext of the franchise as much as that time, no matter continuity.

Suffice to say, the coexistence of a GQuuuuuuX timeline, with all its modifications, and that potential of the unique timeline alongside it, isn’t precisely unfamiliar territory that Gundam is wading into because it explores all this. With GQuuuuuuX having just some extra episodes to put out what precisely it needs to say in all this remixing and meta-commentary, time will inform if all these self-referential reveals will consequence within the sequence creating one thing additive to that huge canon—or if its wild evocations are merely designed to spin the heads of diehard followers.

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