Review: MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM WING: BATTLEFIELD OF PACIFISTS

There are LOADS of Gundam manga spinoffs to pick from for this month, and that's doubly true for Gundam Wing manga.

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM WING: BATTLEFIELD OF PACIFISTS (Shin Kido Senki Gundam Wing: Battlefield of Pacifists), based on the franchise by Hajime Yatate and Yoshiyuki Tomino, written by Katsuhiko Chiba, and art by Koichi Tokita.  First published in 1997 and first published in North America in 2002.

PLOT:

In AC 196, the united Earth government are trying to eliminate the last caches of OZ mobile suits.  Helping them are the Gundam pilots, working behind the scenes to investigate reports of new automated Virgo suits and a mysterious mobile suit factory on an asteroid.  The boys will have to split up and work fast, as a former OZ commander and a fanatical pacifist activist are determined to get to it first.

STORY:

So Battlefield of Pacifists is something of a midquel, meant to cover the gap in time between the end of Gundam Wing and the beginning of the events of Endless Waltz.  So how successful is it at that task?  Eh, it's OK I guess.  It certainly tries to cover its bases.  It brings in just about everyone who's still alive by the end of the show for an appearance, however brief.  There's some politicking, some mecha action with the Endless Waltz versions of the Gundams, and it introduces some plot threads that are meant to lead into that OVA.

That being said, it also highlights a lot of the flaws that were present in the latter half of Wing.  You've got the endless Russian doll of evil sub-factions, constantly talking about pacifism and power without really understanding the nature of either concept, the glorification of Heero at the expense of everyone else (including Relena), Wufei being pissy and pointless in equal measure, and so much more.  That's not even including the ones original to this story, such as the new villains being as hollow as they are ridiculous and the mostly pointless cameos from the other surviving cast members.  In particular, it was weird to see Dororthy show up to help Heero considering she spent all of her time previously hanging out with various villains, nursing her murder boner, and trying to turn Relena into a hypocrite.  Guess that's all forgiven now!

Of the Gundam Wing manga I've read thus far, this is probably the one that justifies its existence the most.  It's not a pointless recap nor a bunch of vignettes answering character questions that no one asked.  It's an actual story - just not a particularly good one.

ART:

This is certainly an improvement over the previous Gundam Wing manga that Tokita made, but not by a lot.  The cast certainly look more on-model but are drawn so stiffly that you could easily presume that Tokita just traced the character sheets.  He still can't draw action to save his life, as all the battles consist of a few panels of mobile suits posing and a bunch of talking heads, all of them obscured with speedlines and screentones in the hopes that it'll translate into action.  Of course, Tokyopop didn't do it any favors either.  While this isn't as typo-riddled as the previous one, it's still flipped, copied so crudely that it looks like a Xerox, and uses the same strange bolded Times New Roman-esque font that previous Wing manga did.

PRESENTATION:

There's a few sheets of new character and suit designs, an afterword from the writer, and an full omake comic from Tokita about the (rather stressful) making of this manga.

RATING:

Battlefield of Pacifists is a step above most of the older Gundam Wing manga, but that step isn't high enough to make it any good, much less worth seeking out 20 years later.

This book was published by Tokyopop.  It is currently out of print.