Every story needs a beginning a middle and an ending. For MS Igloo 2 this is that ending
You know how the new episode of Haruhi was like an angel descending from on high to bless Haruhiist’s with a feeling of total bliss? Well now it’s my turn. It has been nearly 2 months since the last episode of Gundam 00 aired and almost 4 months since the last episode of MS Igloo 2. I needed this like you could not possibly believe. Our hero this time is Arleen Nazon, a female Guntank pilot who is out for revenge against….something. Here’s the score on this episode that I can derive at the moment:
- Introspective opening much?
Meet our....heroine? Arleen Nazon
- Before we doing anything else let’s blow up some Zaku’s
- The Zaku’s sure go down easy in November U.C 0079. No longer the death god they once were
- Here come the GM’s
- And so Zeon’s territory is finally being pushed back by the push of Project V and the Federation is close to victory on Earth
- All that is left is their Odessa base…..and we now approach that fateful day that will eventually become known as Odessa Day…the day the tide of the One Year War turned definitively in favour of the Earth Federation
- Thrill as even the might Zeon Gaw carriers start getting cut up by……Core Fighters? That must mean……nope sorry folks….
- And down goes the carrier Garma Zabi style…..well almost….
- Go Jee Emuuu Go Jee Emuuu Go Jee Go Jee Emuu Jee Emuuuu!
Even now they've still got boots on the ground......this might be the first ever case of infantry fighting in a Gundam series
Ouch! What hit them?
GM's and Type 61's forming the line
Guuuuoohhhhh
Looks like now it's Zeon who isn't going to be giving up without a fight
And here's our favourite douchy Feddy commander Corematta. Somebody's not to happy about not gaining any ground today
Behold the trump card this battle. The RTX-440 Ground Assault Type Guntank Squad led by.....
Quite possibly one of the most hot blooded women you will ever see in a Gundam Series
Corremata is not impressed it seems.
I like how this one GM just randomly falls over. Somebody hasn't been doing their maintenance work properly. What I also like though is this whole dusk atmosphere, as if to say that the Gravity Front is in it's final hours
A lost boyfriend of Nazon's perhaps? Or is there more to the story?
Time for a sleep in the cockpit before the fina......hey whoa what the?!
Oh right of course
Well just under 10 minutes in and Nazon is already dead.....anyone up for Odessa day now?
LET'S DO THIS THEN! HOORAH!
And so the battle that will decide the fate of the ground theatre of the One Year War begins. It's hard to tell who really needs this victory more
Eat your heart out Nono
And here's our Big Tray Class Command Vehicle to give the official order to attack
FIRE!
Somebodies a little more confident now.....perhaps too confident
Is he even allowed to do the Bright point?
Ham it up Corremata, Ham it up......
Casualty one
Here come the Zakus
Counterattack......
Into a ditch
Ahhh the advantages of planning for the defensive side
Kaaaaaaaaboom
Most detailed shot of the episode I think....but wait what are those hover cars.....
Oh there not even going to....
This reminds me of that one episode of the original series.....only less stupid
Alright no more losing Feddy, charge forward with....
Your transformable Guntank of DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
That ditch is nothing
Turn off your targetting computer and use the force Arleen
One of the shots from these babies can blow a Zaku clear in half.....Damn.....
And they've even got machine guns like the RX-75
......You know the line already
Even the mighty No Zaku is No Match for the Guntank
Decapitation is not a healthy way of combat
And now for a flashback to a tribunal where by my best guess Arleen is being accused of treason
It's the bloody Skygrasper!
More flashbacks and I think how Arleen became a Guntank pilot
FIRE ZE CIGARETTE
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii........
Pure Pwnage!
Zeon: "They're on our base now, what do we do?!
......RUN!
Some stay to fight though like men of honour but ummmmm....
Look Feddy I know you want this one but Mobile Suit sized flamethrower on infantry? I think this is one of the bigger overkills in Gundam history
.....I'm just going to stop describing the carnage.....
Okay I lied. Those were proximity mines that the Guntank dropped and the Zaku isn't falling into that trap....
Okay I lied again, those were timed mines and it is failing into that trap
Finally the first Guntank goes down under a hail of concentrated gunfire from one of the many Dabude's
And of course it's the newly eyeless black dude
But if he's going down he's taking someone with him. Sunrise has really improved their English to the point where I'm confident we won't have any more Dangar or gibberish speak.....well we'll see in the future
A Ground Guntank for a Zaku I......I'm not sure that's a good tradeoff there....
Oh well.....too late
REVENGE!
Take down that Dabude and this will all be over
Target in the centre pull the switch
I like how white guy lacks confidence in his ability to strafe so he just ends up ramming the damn thing. This is why Feddy's are stupid
It worked I guess
Insert scary music
Death Goddess: "Guess what....you're next"
Missile barrage time again
Looks like even without their command ship Zeon is going to be fighting to the last man
Magella's sure do suck eh?
Just.....hahaha I like this
Alright here comes the real last blitz of Zeon...it's a Jet Stream Attack
And what do you know it actually kind of worked
Finish her?
Not just yet
Do a barrel roll
I think I finally get it, when touched by the Goddess of death and faced with their own mortality, all of these Feddy pilots just go crazy from the madness of it all
I'M TAKING THIS LAST DABUDE DOWN WITH ME! AHAHAHAHAHA
boom
Wise Fwom Yo Gwave
Before anybody is even conceivably tempted to go "OMG SUNRISED!" nope, it's a metaphor for the soul leaving the body. She's still very much dead
See
Not only that but she's been metaphorically dead since the day she was imprisoned
Chosen by the goddess of death to fight one last battle
Creepiest shot of her ever
And as the remnants of Zeon blast off into space to be picked up by Oliver May's crew from MS Igloo 1 our story draws to a close. Depressing much? Well it should keep the people who wanted one of these endings happy at least
Thoughts: Predictable but awesome. Obviously we knew Arleen was dead before we even met her, but it hardly matters because it’s the journey, the imagery and the great action that makes MS Igloo 2: Gravity Battlefront. The story takes us through the earliest days of the One Year War with the Earth Federation getting annihilated on the ground and lacking anything but a crack team of Anti-MS troops lead by Ben Barberry, through the the middle of the conflict with the Type-61 and Hermann Yandel helping to even the ground of the conflict, right through to the end of the ground war at Odessa with Arleen Nazon giving it her all in the Ground Guntank to help mop up what is left of the Zeon Resistance. All the while the atmosphere is dank and depressing, with that Shinigami watching over it all as if to mock the plight of the living. These are not good times to be alive and this series pulls few punches in showing the true face of the conflict. You will find no White Base mascots and angsty Newtype pilots in MS Igloo 2. You will only find combat in perhaps it’s rawest form ever portrayed in a Gundam series.
With this now over for me it feels like the summer can truly begin. It’s going to be a long long wait for Gundam Unicorn and the Gundam 00 movie, and now it feels like a part of me has gone away for a while. It shall return though in this the 30th year of the Gundam franchise, and you can bet that I’ll be there when the time is right. This is Kaioshin Sama thanking you for enjoying my write ups and looks at MS Igloo 2 and I hope you enjoyed this little gem of an OVA. See you next mission!
All that’s left now is to play the new ending. Enjoy
Nice finish to a great OVA, although it is depressing that at the end of every episode the character that is the main focus of each episode dies, oh well it is the reality of war after all; anyone can die and no one is an exception.
@Zetatrain: Well one MS Igloo character did make it as a pilot. Oliver May.
Well, it ended, and that was a good experience. Thank to this I was actually doing some researching about the one year war myself, which I have absolute no interest in it before.
I’m kinda curious about how MS Igloo series did in Japan.
Hey Kaioshin did you watch the raw of subbed version of it? I’ve heard that lots of people are waiting for the subbed version of it (even now), and gg-sub has apparently dropped this series (i.e. the last episode) for reasons unknown to me. As a result, I’ve heard very little discussion on this in the English community.
I’ve watched the Chinese sub, and even with that it took me a little while to get the point of this episode – it’s about how this Ground Assault type Guntank (simply referred as Guntank) was a cancelled development after a spy close to Arleen (who was apprently involved with this Guntank’s development) has leaked it to Zeon and escaped. Arleen was supposed to be imprisoned for life, feeling that her life was doomed just like the fate of the Guntank, until one day she was called forth to participate in Odessa with the 3 only Guntank produced before the halt in development. Knowing that the spy will be somewhere in Odessa (i.e. in a Dabude), she wants to end this once and for all.
Recon aircraft has located the position of the Dabude that was causing the trouble for days. The Guntank team took the effort to destroy it. Despite it being destroyed, more artillrey shells pounded on the Feddies. Corematta thought it was a misfire from the Big Trays and Heavy Fork, but Arleen recognised that there’s another Dabude nearby (there’s also speculation that Elran from the original Gundam series was behind the misfire as well). She was confused whether the spy was in the first destroyed Dabude or in the second one, and Corematta ordered her not to attack the second one – which happens to be from an order from a higher command. Arleen gets even more confused, but the Shinigami guided her and told her that he’s there, and she went to face it. When her ruined Guntank ends up right in front of the second Dabude, the spy recognises the Guntank and guessed it right that the pilot was Arleen. He was glad that she didn’t die (executed) and was sorry to have to do this, but Arleen could not forgive him and wants to end this vengence once and for all. Right when she was about to activate the self destruction system, the Shinigami asks her whether she really wants to do it, and she went ahead, destroying both the Guntank and the second Dabude.
It was only until Arleen was dead when the Shinigami told her that the spy is actually a double agent – in order to get into Zeon’s command he had to sacrifice the Guntank’s project in order to gain trust with the Zeeks. Knowing that she’s killed someone she wasn’t supposed to kill, she cried as her vengence was all for nought.
Phew. That was a long one. I think that the Guntanks there are pretty crazily armed with all sorts of weapons – it could even match the number of armaments with Kampfer. Vengeance is quite a theme with this series, and it surely did not end in any way positive unlike its predecessor. Now I wonder whether there will be another series after that…
Btw no score for this episode? I personally would still prefer the first episode, and wished Barberry to have lived much longer like a military mini-series, but I dream too much there already.
@Duo Maxwell: I know I saw the first episode on one the Japanese DVD rankings so I’m going to guess it did well, but it wasn’t consistently a top debuting DVD like 00’s were obviously.
@Q: gg says they are dropping every series at least once during it’s run. It’s one of their trolling gimmicks and definitely the most overused one.
Anyway I am amazed that I actually picked up that story you described watching it raw, sans the part about the Guntank plans being leaked. As for scores….don’t really give em’ anymore.
does anyone know where i can find the subs for this ova?
i’ve downloade the raw recently from bitorrent.
thanks