Reading Report: 30 June 2024

∀ガンダム

This week I finished ∀Gundam and オーデュボンの祈り and started watching 機動戦士ガンダムＳＥＥＤ (Gundam Seed). Spoilers for all will be below.

オーデュボンの祈り

Glad to be done with this book. I am a fan of 伊坂幸太郎 books but sometimes they can feel a bit padded out, and this one had a few too many moments that were dragging it down for me, particularly the way it cut away to 城山's story, and then none of that ended up really contributing to the final tension or mystery. That said I did like how the resolution of 優午's "murder" mystery explained a bunch of seemingly meaningless mini-mysteries throughout the book. As it turns out 優午 was able to orchestrate the perfect conditions to prevent the hunting of the world's last リョコウバト (passenger pigeon, the ones Audubon documented in America), and 伊藤's random bike illumination during 日比野's "date" the evening 曽根川 died contributed to that.
I enjoyed almost every reading session I had and I think that's largely because 伊坂幸太郎 is just a pleasant writer to read (check out フィッシュストーリー if you'd like my recommendation). The relationship between 伊藤 and 日比野 was really strong. While some of the mysteries were a bit of a let down I really liked 伊藤's personal voice in the narration and I kind of liked that several mystery "solutions" he comes up with during the story were completely wrong. For a guy who references 名探偵 several times in the story, he really was not an investigator at all.

∀ガンダム

I am regretfully reporting that getting through the end of this series took a lot of endurance. I don't want to discuss public opinion on ∀ too much but needless to say my experience was not as positive as the general opinion I'd seen in certain communities. If I can put my thoughts together maybe I'll write a mini-review thing or something to air my grievances.
Anyway the last dozen episodes had the "big reveal" about the 黒歴史 and then moved most of the action back to Earth for the finale. I think the mixed timeline stuff was cute and it was nice to see scenes of better Gundam series. I wasn't really sold on グエン as a turncoat villain and ギンガナム felt pretty unmotivated as well, like right to the end it felt like he was more interested in fighting than actually achieving his goals. The ターンX was neat at least.

機動戦士ガンダムＳＥＥＤ

Out of the painfully experimental and into the painfully derivative Gundam. I'm too early on to have a strong feeling about this show but it's very clear that it was designed to appeal to some very simple "I just want to see Gundams shoot other Gundams" feelings of a particular fanbase (not necessarily a bad thing). So far what I understand is basically that there are two types of people: Naturals and Coordinators; a bit like the difference between "normal" people and Newtypes, so a bit of a Zeta Gundam setting. Kira Yamato is a Coordinator fighting on behalf of the faction mostly made up of Naturals. His old buddy is fighting on the "coordinator side" against him, creating some interesting -- if belaboured -- tension for Kira every time he pilots his Gundam.

Maybe Gundam SEED's Coordinator thing is a metaphor for the kind of show it is. Made in a lab as a genetically engineered Gundam series...