Final week, I stated that Cellular Swimsuit Gundam GQuuuuuuX‘s remixing of the unique Gundam continuity was letting a number of of the unique collection’ 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 probably the most half about Lalah Sune making her approach into the collection’ narrative, as Machu manages to flee confinement with the GQuuuuuuX and head to Earth, the place she finds Lalah pressured 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 goals—she just isn’t the Rose of Sharon that Machu was in search of in her hopes to be reunited with Shuji.
As an alternative, this Lalah is sort of haunted by what has come to move, her Newtypism not likely granting her a imaginative and prescient of the long run, however what was, as GQuuuuuuX gives one more spin on a basic scene from the 1979 anime. Floating within the cosmic glow that represents the connection cast between Newtypes, Lalah flatly explains that the long run she sees is her personal: the way forward for one other Lalah, a younger girl who meets a younger Zeon officer in crimson who whisks her to the celebs… a Lalah who falls in love with that man, and likewise 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 Cellular Swimsuit Gundam.
The implication then that GQuuuuuuX‘s remixed timeline of the Common Century co-exists alongside Gundam‘s unique one, in some capability, already raises a bunch of fascinating questions, however issues solely get extra fascinating within the episode’s climactic moments, once we and Machu alike uncover that the Lalah was proper when she informed them that she just isn’t the rose neither she, nor Shuji, nor everybody else has been searching 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 out to be an almighty object of huge psionic energy, a Newtype beacon that has transitioned throughout this divergent timeline, calling out to the era of Newtypes that cast it within the first place in characters like Char and Lalah, but in addition the era that has grown past them on this new timeline, like Machu, Nyaan, and Shuji.
In fact, Gundam isn’t any stranger to the alternate actuality pattern that has turn out to be 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 outdoors of the tales that had been informed within the Common Century setting. Ever since we’ve had a bunch of different alternate realities to supply the setting to new Gundam collection, we’ve had realities that, like GQuuuuuuX, has mirrored and riffed on the Common Century tales to create their very 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 traits, whereas additionally symbolically honoring all the metatext of the franchise as much as that time, no matter continuity.
Suffice to say, the coexistence of a GQuuuuuuX timeline, with all its adjustments, and that potential of the unique timeline alongside it, just isn’t precisely unfamiliar territory that Gundam is wading into because it explores all this. With GQuuuuuuX having only a few extra episodes to put out what precisely it desires to say in all this remixing and meta-commentary, time will inform if all these self-referential reveals will consequence within the collection 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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