#interspersed kinda random pictures in here just to break up all this text lol

[journeytojaburo]

Before actually talking about my thoughts on Char's Counterattack, I wanna talk about the trailers that were included on the disc with some really good graphic design 👇

I think the storylines and characters this movie introduced were solid enough, but I also feel like they were stunted by them only having a movie's length to be explored. I feel like Quess's character could be even better than it was if she got TV-length time to grow the seeds that got planted of what her backstory may have been. Maybe her creepy treatment by basically every guy in this movie save Hathaway wouldn't have felt as gratuitous if there was more time to space out those moments. Both Amuro and Chan and Astonaige and Kayra's relationships could have benefited from some extra time to develop as well.

Out of all the returning characters in this movie, I was really surprised by Cameron being included with them. I thought him and Bright's discussion about Mirai was nice. I was satisfied by the amount of returning characters in this movie, but I do wish at least Sayla had shown up again even if she said she never wanted to see Char again at the end of ZZ because her disappearance from Char's life is like half the reason he acts like he does in the present. I guess Char's need to take care of people like they were his parents or younger siblings (see: like all of Zeta and also Lalah somewhat) does come up with his treatment of Quess and his final words, but I feel like those were more things that would've benefited from more time than a movie could give them.

Char and Amuro's inevitable clash of ideals is as dramatic as it should have been, and I thought it was interesting how these fights started feeling more pathetic and desperate as the scale of them got bigger. While they never end up fighting one-on-one in person like Char and Amuro did, Char assuming that his Federation enemy was Bright throughout the spaceship battle parts of the movie was sad considering that's another person he's clinging onto from his past like Amuro when in this context he doesn't really need to.

For some reason the random bits of information I had picked up about this movie beforehand made me believe there was gonna be a lot more Noa/Yashima family drama in this movie than there was. It's not like I was disappointed by what they did with Hathaway though, and there was a lot more Mirai and Chemin in it than I expected. The old guard sclera-less characters getting them (I assume to make the style consistent) was kinda odd, but less so on Hathaway and Cheimin since they don't have as much of an established presence in my mind like Bright and Mirai.

Seeing the advancement of technology, especially the stuff relating to Newtypes, was interesting. It's only shown in the context of combat, but psycommu devices don't seem to put their users in excruciating discomfort or pain anymore. And while I'm on the topic of Newtypes, it's fascinating that Char's plan to turn everyone into Cyber-Newtypes he made an offhand comment about in Zeta seems to have come to fruition if Nanai and Gyunei are anything to go off of. Neo Zeon must've swept all that cloning nonsense under the rug by the time Char came to power, though.

My overall opinion is that I don't think this movie was a blockbuster masterpiece like I've seen a lot of people say, but it still had a lot of awesome moments and cool animation. It was definitely entertaining enough to make its 2 hour run time feel a lot longer than that. Also, the ending theme was really catchy.