After dabbling my fingers in the pot of boiling water that is Evangelion, I decided to enter the 3000 degree kiln that is Gundam Wing. Will I ever learn? Probably not. But I might get lots of hate mail.

Anyway, a bit of background for those who are Gundam impaired. See, Gundam first appeared during 79. It was pretty revolusionary, in that it took giant robots out of the hands of a select few (a la Evangelion) and made them into standard tools of war used by pretty much everyone (a la Escaflowne. Gee, what great comparisons I can get out of those two series!). Of course, they still had a small number of "prototype" mechs, which were, of course, more powerful and used by the protagonist. Since then, Gundam has blossomed, or maybe ballooned, into "the series that just won't die." There's probably about 20 different TV series, each about 50 episodes, and that's not counting the books. If you want more info, head to Gundam Project, but this review is fast-fowarding through those series to focus on Wing.

There have been a lot of complaints about Wing. The ridiculously invulnerable Gundams, rather hackneyed plot, and of course the epic coincidences. And when I say epic, I mean EPIC.

A single episode of Wing is rumored to contain more coincidences than most other shows have in entire seasons. That's not entirely wrong, either. Just for starters, five scientists just HAPPEN to send a Gundam to earth on the same day, same time, and under the same codename, without even having talked to or seen each other in 15 years. I'm serious. And later on, Relena gets captured by rebels, who just HAPPEN to be the same ones who sent Heero to earth. Uh huh. And she just HAPPENS to say his name so they know she knows him. Well, I guess that last one's not really a coincidence. I don't think there's a single scene of Relena where she doesn't fixate on Heero in some way. Except maybe at the end, where she ends up fixating on Zechs instead. You'd think she could get a life of her own or something.

And that's not even COUNTING her survival instincts. For some reason, the most attractive thing in the world for Relena is a guy trying to kill her. All Heero does is try to shoot her, and she keeps trying to find him so he can. And all this time, I've been trying to pick up girls by being nice to them, when it would have been so much easier and more effective to just point a gun at them. I've heard of people falling in love with their kidnappers, but this is just ridiculous.

And, of course, the show isn't helped by the rather lackluster voice acting and horrible dialogue. I like to give the voice actors the benefit of the doubt and say it was the fault of the script, and it was. I was often caught leaning back in my chair and asking myself, "Are these guys for real? This is the biggest crock of bullsh-" Er, anyway, you get the idea. None of the acting is really bad, but it's usually done without very much emotion. The thing is, I'm not sure if it was because the actors sucked, or because of the horrible translators. Still, I give them points for how Heero does the Zero/Epyon stuff. Very nice.

It's too bad the plot's so lackluster. None of it's very original, and there are often huge gaps between what people do and any rational explanation for WHY they're doing it. Why did Zechs rebuild Wing Gundam? Why did he drop Libra at the end? What the hell is Dorothy doing? What's with the suicidal Gundam Scientists? Why does Treize do ANYTHING? What the hell is with the speaches? "Beautiful battlefield?" WHAT THE HELL?

Ahem. Anyway, a review wouldn't be complete without a review of the characters. So here we go!

Heero: Emotionless and fixated on his mission. Trained his entire life for this one mission. Can set a broken leg without a single cry of pain. His own leg, mind you. By himself. While rolling around on the ground. This guy's a freaking animal.

Duo: The coolest pilot, since he actually has a personality. He's even developed a sort of sense of humor about the whole "killing everyone around me" thing that they all go through. Plus, he calls himself the God of Death. The only one of the five that's actually likable.

Trowa: His disguise is as a clown in a circus. And he gets along well with animals. And he can do impossible feats of agility (jumping off a motorcycle going at 60 mph and landing, upright, without even a wobble, on a CLOTHESLINE! You've gotta be kidding me!). Oh yeah, and he's also emotionless.

Quatre: He wants peace. And his father's a dedicated pacifist. And yes, he's a Gundam pilot. Which means he kills a lot of people. Needless to say, his dad's not exactly "down" with the idea. He's a bleeding heart, which means that instead of how the others wontonly kill people, Quatre wontonly kills people and feels sad about it afterwards. Which I'm sure is a great comfort to the people he just killed.

Wufei: He's got some sort of Chinese honor thing going, and since it's pretty screwed up, it shows what the Japanese think of the Chinese: not a lot. For the first 25 episodes he fixates on himself being stronger and everyone else being weaker, and for the last 25 episodes he fixates on his integrity. And he's every bit as dumb as he sounds.

While Wing isn't great, it's about average. Not the kind of thing I would spend a lot of money for, but since it's free (on Cartoon Network, 5:30 weakdays, Eastern), it's a pretty good deal.
SCORE: 6.5

NOTE: Turns out CN has dropped Wing. It'll be back though, don't worry. Just wait a while.