Welcome to The 08th
MS Team rewatch! The rewatch has successfully confirmed that this is a good
Gundam show but this episode might
ruin everything. I remember it being bad. Really bad. Will it redeem itself
after years of being aired? Probably not.
Summary: Episode 12 “Last Resort”:
Original Airdate: July 25, 1999
English Airdate: Never aired
December 24, UC 0079. The One Year War has ended. On
Earth, Michel is on a board and he’s thinking about the end of the war and the
giant machines left behind on old battlefields. We learn that the members
leftover from the 08th MS Team where shipped around the globe as part of the
post-war reorganization. Michel received a discharge and he now spends his time
looking for Shiro who he believes is still alive. He does this with the help of
Kiki. They find a Zeon spaceship that crashed into the jungle. They investigate
and find out that someone is living in the jungle. They spend the night in the
ship.
When they wake up the next day, Kiki and Michel find
themselves tied up on a raft piloted by the children from the Zeon ship. They
float through a village that has been flooded during the war. The children are
taking them to their leader and on the way there, they pass a few graves in a
field. Upon arrival they are ask to provide their names and rank. They’re very
hostile towards them. The kids were drafted during the war and now that it’s
over, they’re just trying to lead a peaceful existence in an abandoned village
in the jungle.
Michel is speculating as to why they don’t come out of
hiding and surrender themselves to the Earth Federation. He thinks they crash
landed their ship on purpose to escape from the war. Thanks to Kiki’s quick
thinking, they escape. The find the kids digging yet another grave in the
field. They bury a girl with blue hair. She’s bandaged and we can’t see her
face. Kiki interrupts them, taken aback by their lack of respect for their dead
friend. Kiki puts numerous flowers into the grave and conducts a makeshift
funeral. Kiki doesn’t understand how strangely the kids are behaving and she
gets them to talk about the woman and how they knew her. One of the kids says
her name was Aina. Kiki and Michel are surprised. She shows them a picture of
Shiro asking them if they recognize him. The oldest of the children tells them
Shiro is dead.
Later, Kiki confronts the leader and asks him who that
girl really was. She says Aina wasn’t that young. She thinks the children are
hiding things and she wants to know what it is. The next night Kiki and Michel
go grave digging. They feel bad about it but finding out the truth is that
important for them. The kids, without the leader, arrives and tells them the
graves they’re digging up are empty. The children share their story. A man
named Dr. Flanagan was conducting tests on them. After their ship crashed the
man died and the children were eventually found by Shiro and who taught them
how to survive. They gave all the kids some names (the names of the members of
the 08th team and their friends). That’s what the leader of the group is scared
of losing. He worries that Kiki and Michel will take away his name and his
identity. Kiki calms him down by telling him that she, no anyone else, can ever
take away his name.
Later, it begins to snow. They use the wreck of a Zeon
mobile suit and they use it to warm up the water in the river and they swim
around. It’s a trick Shiro showed them. The leader tells them where Shiro and Aina
went. They’ve travelled North in the hopes of finding a new world to live in. When
Kiki wakes up the next morning, she finds that the kids have disappeared and
they haven’t even left a single footprint in the snow. She and Michel start to
think maybe they never met them. Michel is thinking either an illusion or
ghosts but Kiki just thinks they left in search of a new world, like Shiro and
Aina.
That’s basically what Kiki and Michel have been looking
for. A new life. That’s why they’re searching for Shiro and Aina. The episode
ends with them finding the pair. Aina is pregnant. D’aaawwww.
Commentary:
While “The Shuddering Mountain, part 2” was a bland
ending for a series, in part because of its lack of denouement following the
show’s climax, “Last Resort” is no better. Actually, it’s worse. It doesn’t
give us much of anything to enjoy. The story with the kids is forced and filled
with clichés. More importantly, they don’t matter at all. They’re just an aside
to the main story of Kiki and Michel’s search for Aina and Shiro. With such
vague directions as simply travelling North, it’s difficult to believe that
they even find them in the end. Why Michel and Kiki? They’ve both lost someone
important to them and I guess Shiro is now the most important person in their
lives which isn’t all that hard to believe because he has that endearing
naiveté and strong personality which makes for a memorable friend.
Attempts at character development are made. Michel
carries around a picture of B. B., the woman he wrote to during the entire
length of the series. In the picture she is seen wearing a wedding dress and
accompanied by a man (who’s face has been scribbled over) and holding a baby. That’s
kind of rough for Michel, especially when you consider that her letter earlier
in the series in which she said she can’t deal with the uncertainty of whether
or not Michel will survive the war was probably bullshit. She just found
another guy.
The sad thing about this episode is that it doesn’t offer
the viewer anything interesting. It doesn’t even work wells as a story about
what soldiers (enlisted and guerrillas) do after a war is ended. Again, it’s
all clichés. Michel becomes a lazy drunk with no ambition and Kiki becomes
obsessed with finding a man who once rejected her love for him. What is she
going to do when she meets Shiro? Does she plan on living with him and Aina and
butting in our the life they’re making together? It just seems odd as I would
have picture her living the rest of her life in her village, surrounded by
friends. I also don’t know why Michel stayed on Earth. I guess he’s still
heartbroken by B. B.’s decision to marry another man and start a family of her
own? Since I’m asking questions, can anyone tell me why is the episode called
“Last Resort”?
This episode is the fucking worst. I’m done rewatching Gundam: The 08th MS Team OVA but there
are still two posts left. Next up is “Miller’s Report”.
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