The last of the three episodes brings us in line with the Gundam GQuuuuuuX movie, and featured a clan battle.
The latter is something that is very similar to the high-school mobile suit matches we saw in Witch from Mercury, where two sides battle out in mobile suits to determine a winner.
The difference here, apart from the two-on-two setup, is that the background makes the battles more mysterious and engaging.
In that, GQuuuuuuX finally explains what a MAV is, without clarifying what the acronym actually stands for.
In this version of the timeline, when Minovsky Particles are at battle density, whichever mobile suit attacks first reveals their position and puts themselves at a disadvantage.
This is where the wingman MAV setup comes in, because it allows either party to cover the other and level the playing field.
It is a neat and tidy update to the way battle tactics operate when Minovsky Particles render your radar and other sensors useless.
This is especially interesting considering that Yoshiyuki Tomino originally asked for Minovsky Particles from his planning team to force the mobile suits to fight closer together.
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This was because Tomino thought long-distance sniping battles wouldn’t be very interesting to watch, but in this instance, the team behind GQuuuuuuX has actually evolved the concept, and I think that’s rather great.
We also get a bit of backstory that Challia Bull and Char Aznable originally created the MAV setup, which is cool.
The other bit of nerdy timeline lore is that we see the appearance of Cameron Bloom. This was a minor character in the original series and Char’s Counterattack, who was Mirai Yashima’s rejected fiancé.
In this version, it’s clear that Cameron is already familiar with Challia and even respects him, almost in the same way Cameron respected Bright Noa in the original timeline.
The good news in all this is that we’ve come to the end of the footage from the Beginning movie, and from the next episode onwards, it’s all new.
While the mecha designs have yet to grow on me, I am cautiously hopeful that the remaining episodes of GQuuuuuuX could end up being rather interesting.
Gundam GQuuuuuuX is now streaming worldwide via Amazon Prime Video.
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