Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz | The Gundam Retrospective 

Them getting Optimus Prime to narrate the openings was classic and timeless.

"And the death scythe looks stupid" this is why we can't be friends.

My favorite line in all these retrospectives is definitely "the Gundam pilots partake in their favorite activity, detonating their mobile suits" lol.

The "Who was begging for Dorothy crazy-brows to get more screentime" guy was me. I love Dorothy, she's completely absurd in a fun way (especially for a show as weirdly self-serious as Wing). Doing stuff like rolling up with a *solid gold truck* and yelling at random civilians to get their shit together is great.

Endless Waltz is how you do fan service. Honestly a love letter to the fans

great to see your take on this. Honestly Endless Waltz has become another Unofficial christmas movie for me along with Diehard

"What did Duo have in his hair!?" Some kind of plastique or thermite that he used to melt the hinges on the door before kicking it down.

The redesign of Wing Zero and the scene of Heero retrieving it in space are pretty amazing, even though the idea of it using big flapping wings to fly in space is absolutely ridiculous! lol.

“I’ll never have to kill anyone ever again” *Frozen Teardrop enters the chat

Endless Waltz is so good, it’s like the opposite of Seed Destiny. Instead of making Wing worse by association, it actually makes it way better

Even though Duo ends up being the punching bag of the show, I think his character design and his gundam design were the best.

Gundam wing was the political mecha series that left my imagination in overdrive. It was always on late tv when I got home from the club. It taught me that big massive fighting robots quite often have complex reasons for laser blasting a whole space platoon.

Mission Accepted.

This has been my "die hard" Christmas movie every year since it aired for the first time on toonami. Haven't missed a year yet.

This is my Gundam. This is the show and movie that got me into the Gundam series' as a whole. So much so that if I play the white reflection song it's one of those songs that I have such a connect to I cannot stop myself from shedding a tear. What an amazing movie I think I can say I enjoyed it more than the show. Great retrospective overall!

The Tallgeese III is the best design in this movie.

Koh Otani is a musical genius. Easily one of my favorite composers.

Fun fact, the area where Heero finds the girls dog after blowing up the Leo is the same area where Relena finds a teddy bear in the rubble during the opening credits of the anime. Also, with the issues you have with the anime, I recommend reading the manga retelling Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz Glory of the Losers. The pacing is great, we get the back stories for the Wing boys, and character development.

This brings back a lot of memories. I have to say, the art direction and production values for EW were insane. Everything looked so smooth and fluid.

Honestly Endless Waltz's Appeal to me was really the Redesign of the Gundams specifically the Wing Gundam, the redesign really shows how Katoki Hajime has progressed as a designer, also the Wing Zero EW Ver Ka getting a Neo Bird Mode wasn't necessary but he did it anyways

Great video! in the dub at least IIRC heero asks Wufei how many times does he have to kill that little girl. giving a nice wrap-up when he doesn't have to kill M.

4:16 Yeah, they probably don’t want some crazy person deciding to recreate another gundam using the parts that would be left behind from the self detonation, which was what happened with the Wing Gundam

I really hate that the Episode Zero manga was not made into the series due to director changes between halves because I genuinely think it would have added much needed context into the minds of our child soldiers

And then the story did not end from there; there was a continuation in the form of a light novel series called Frozen Teardrop which is set on Mars Century...

"I never saw Wing as a kid, I was a G Gundam guy honestly." Yeah, I can actually relate with that, after I watched Wing on Toonami, G Gundam came right out, and punched it in the face.

I've always liked it since I was a kid seeing it taped on VHS as well as the actual VHS of the show. And when me and my brothers finally got the DVD of the special edition we'd watch the trailers for other anime it's nostalgic to see the old trailers now. I personally like the old UC Gundams the best especially stardust Memory and 0080 but without Gundam Wing I'd never have gotten into them.

G Gundam and Zoids were my first anime as a kid. Im now 26 and I just finally watched Wing and EW in the last 2 years. I tried watching it 4 times in high school and never made it past ep 8 or so.

Hero switching from bike shorts to 80s rocker jeans, solid upgrade.

EW was great. Loved the new designs for all the mechs too.

I'm a fan of wing, seed, 00, unicorn and orphan but honestly I like all of them from the first one now waiting for witch of mercury to come out

honestly the amount of time the gundams self destruct will make you think that their original purpose was to be bombs on legs

One of my favorite series and your critique is spot on, I’ll admit I was 100% on the nostalgia train until the first time I showed the series to a friend, and that the story is disjointed and shallow unless you include the manga, and there is sooo much detail and backstory that explains why the gundams were on the mining colony and upgraded to customs and their personal backstories. It’s seems like they came up with all the best ideas then never got green-lit to actually animate them.

I absolutely love these recaps - since finding your channel I’ve watched every single one. Your scripts are concise and effective, and you’ve got a great way of summarizing things with just the right amount of editorial opinions and insights. You’ve got my subscription, 100%. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll keep watching!

Gundam Wing is such a banger! Infinite rewatch power!

Gundam wing,dbz and Inuyasha =my childhood

I read a comment somewhere a long, LONG, time ago that sending the Gundams into the sun was like a MS form of a Viking funeral. A show of respect to their machines they were close to, despite constantly blowing them up.

This was a great video that covered a great movie really well. Thank you for sharing your ideas and views with us.

I have prequel comic to EW, where it "explains" why Wing zero has the wings. trowa quatre and duo track down/chase Heero, who was gathering parts and equipment, thinking he was planing something bad. Que my favorite part of the comic . Quatre ask why was doing it. Heero replys that he had a design idea for zero he wanted to try doing before getting rid of it. Duo yelling at him that the gundam is not a sports car. meanwhile Trowas is laugh his ass off at this.

For that blissful nineties sweet summer child bursting with affection for Wing going into the 00's, Endless Waltz was the ideal follow-up. It knew what the strengths of Wing were and played to them as best it could. The mech battles are appropriately stylish, they compensate for the overpowered-Super Robot feeling of the Gundams that's the hallmark of Wing by restraining the pilots in a way that didn't feel too contrived. The roles it give its characters are fitting and each has time enough to be memorable. While the conflict itself is appropriately scaled to fit the runtime. Its major issues are more those endemic to Wing itself, which really couldn't be helped at that point and obviously child-me didn't notice. Anyways, looking forward to 08th MS Team. Like Endless Waltz it's another good argument that having a tighter runtime can curb Gundam's tendency towards... flabby pacing

Man I keep forgetting how good endless walls looks until I see stuff like this. This has no reason to look this gorgeous especially under RU-vid compression. Man the Blu-ray must be amazing

This, Die Hard and Batman Returns are my only yearly Xmas movies.

Love these Gundam videos. Was really surprised to see this is small/newer channel. Solid content! Keep it up! Looking forward to the rest of your Gundam Stuff! Also I enjoyed the Trigun vid as well.

So glad this video came out! I love endless waltz. The manga glory to the losers takes the backstories from EW and reworks some issues with Wing and makes things less convoluted, and retells the story where Duo is more the main character while heero is a side character and relina is hardly shown its worth a read

How dare you sir, I love those little spiked booties on deathscythe! Probably for the wrong reason because they remind me of the iron sheik's boots when he was wrestling. None the less, loved that build! It's the best version of any of the xxx gundams

12:46 - its actually a small bomb, if you listen closely before kicking the door, there was a feint explosion sound being heard, also Duo si fond of Explosive, it just happen that they dont like to cooperate with him that much

Mariemaia: See for yourself just how powerless you are! Heero: Roger that... Can someone explain how Heero was able to fall from the sky from 20,000 feet with NO parachute without breaking a bone?

Random thought, is mariemaia supposed to be a reference to say mineba zabi in the zeta timeline? Both manipulated by their underlings

This was quite the review, I enjoyed it! Wing, will always be my favorite Gundam series; flaws and all! Also, I always thought what Duo used to open the door was something like a mini C-4 😅

Great content my friend! My now wife and I were obsessed with Gundam Wing when we were in High School. I'll admit going back to it now is hard, the story beats, the dialog, ya. Gotta agree with ya man. But EW was so amazing! Will you be doing other classic Anime shows? Tenchi Muyo? Outlaw Star? I imagine you'll get to Gundam SEED at some point (I hope, it's my absolute favorite! ) Would love to hear your take, great work! SUBBED!

Great video man! I loved this show as a kid.

I'm so glad you're going through this series... this was such a huge part of my childhood. Badass robots with cool (I was very young) pilots being treated seriously!? (Again, I was very young) I used to wish so bad that by the time I turned 18 the Army would have goddamn Gundams already so I could sign right up. "It's a GUNDAM!!!!" I get goosebumps remembering how it used to make me feel. Ofc I tried to rewatch it now and oh boy...so many reused animations, so much nonsense talk pretending to be deep. But this show will always have a special place in my heart when I would stay up late and felt like a rebel bc my cartoon show had swear words cuz it's so mature. Long way of saying; a giant and very sincere thank you for this trip down memory road.

On Wufei's insufferableness: The fact we don't go into Wufei's dead wife Meilan Long is a crime. You're not gonna read, or go through it (don't blame you, its a lot of reading) so I'll skip to the good stuff immediately to save you time: She stole the *original* Tallgeese prototype (not kidding) and sacrificed herself to save him is a crime. The name she used to refer to herself was Nataku, a Chinese protection diety and Wufei did not want her to call herself this and he hated her sense of justice, the very idea of justice he became obsessed with. Think about that for a moment. He's not talking to his Gundam, he's talking to her. He reads as an incel from the outside and once you get to know him and it turns out he's grieving and emotionally scarred and because he hates enemies he cannot fight, and he never wants to give another the pain he felt. He doesn't hate women, he hates woman combatants because he thinks of them as selfish. His entire arc was meant to be recognizing that men do the exact same thing to women through the story of Sally Poe's late husband and that it isn't one sided and that he's the one being selfish -- and that while he wants to think of everybody on the battlefield as warriors, they're ultimately soldiers. He was supposed to be instrumental in Treize's entire "oh shit" moment when he goes back on his ideology. There was meant to be three direct duels between Wufei and Treize: One where they meet and respect one another, one after Wufei learns this from Sally, and one where Treize concedes to Wufei after having thought about their words, deciding he deserves the victory and that there is nobody better for him to lose to in a historical sense. Wufei's second arc was meant to be him coming to terms with this, because he had things he wanted to say to Treize that he never got a chance to -- having gone into the same fight hoping to lose so he could be with her in death. There was also a twist planned to reveal he was something approaching a newtype, that he was supposed to be able to devine whether his opponents were good or evil in much the same way Quatre is later shown to. I have no idea how that was going to work -- and likewise, I doubt they could work it in which is why it was dropped. Huh.

Wait a minute did you forget just how brokenly strong the Gundam pilots are in this show. Even though he's not as strong as a hero Duo is basically super humanly strong by default anyway. They've had a little pocket beam saver or a good laser cutter I highly doubt he'd have a hard time kicking down the door without the hinges and place.

Omg the f’ing Toonami intro to everything it did was epic. Thank you for using it in your opening!

I'm in total agreement with you about Sandrock. It went from being my least favorite Gundam in the series to my favorite in Endless Waltz. That damn desert cloak, the upsized sickles, and the much better color scheme do wonders for the concept.

i think one of the biggest misconceptions of Wing is the philosophy isnt "passifism good." It's Passifism good but thats not the world we live in. The pilots fight to strive for a world where passifism is possible, but the show constantly takes jabs at it. And shows why psycopaths like heero,duo,and troa will always be needed. But also, even they can strive for better things and have valid reasons to fight. And then on the metric other end is the whole idea of endless war and the purpose of soilders. And ended up even having really clever commentary on drone warfare and the affect it would have on war. But ultimately I think the show does show relenas goal as childish but also something nice that even someone like heero could strive for.

Thanks for the great video man.. this was one of my favorite anime movies when I was younger. Fun game: take a shot every time anybody says the word 'Retaliate'

What a wonderful sub Christmas spectacle EW is from the amazing ova "Frozen Teardrop" to the amazing upgraded mecha mobile suit design including my favorite mobile suit that isn't a gundam Tallgeese III (which is like a mix of the previous Tallgeese suits and Gundam Epyon) and EW version Wing Zero that appears to have descended from heaven

Endless Waltz is where they learn the difference between peaceful and harmless. Peaceful means you have the capacity for violence, and choose not to use it. Harmless means you are incapable of violence.

I have mixed feelings regarding the Altron redesign. The use of green and white is neat, but the loss of the dragon heads and wings not so much. On another topic, Endless Watch is also a Christmas / Hollidays movie. So congratulations Gundam fans, there is not only the depression-but-beatiful festival that is War in the Pocket to enjoy in December!

New favourite channel. 🤩

Watching Gundam Wing during its original Toonami run during the VHS age was unspeakably epic

What held true after all these years is that the waltz is endless.

The only reasons for watching Endless Waltz is to see the incredible movie budget animation and the cool new mech designs. Other than that, it suffers from a lot of the same problems as the regular series. I watched it again recently and I was excited to see it for the first time in years. However, without the nostalgia goggles of my childhood memories its a lot easier to feel displeased with this movie.

AC Gundam is indestructible teen boys blowing up a Char cosplayers Amazon Prime drones

"I don't know who was asking for Dorothy Crazy Brows to show back up." Me. I was asking. That chick is crazy, but she's my kinda crazy.

BRO, 9:48 when that Gundam Battle Assault 2 music kicked in I was B L A S T E D back to the most nostalgic times. And THEN the Broken Promise song from Toonami?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! MY CHILDHOOD! Great addition.

I have a death scythe tattoo that reads “I will not self destruct;”

It was interesting to see just what was the original plan with Operation Meteor, and it's surprising just how everyone was pretty much able to circumvent the entire Barton Foundation.

Looking forward to 08th MS team next up and the legend that is Norris.

It was me. I was the one begging for Dorothy, she was honestly one of my favorites

15:42 to quote sarge: “can’t spell pacifist without fist, which you need to to throw a punch. That always leads to fighting, which is the precursor to a full out battle.”

The first time I watched Endless Waltz, I wrote it off as it seemed like this was really what Wing needed in the first place to draw my attention. I've come around to liking most aspects for doing things the TV series never did, like giving the backstory to most of the characters and having believable ideological conflicts. The re-designs might be a bit too stylized for me, but they are memorable. Doesn't completely swing Wing around for me, but rather decent to see if Wing left you wanting.

This is the best Christmas movie.

08th MS Team is my favorite too. Looking forward to the next vid.

I was at Anime Weekend Atlanta 6 back in October 2000. Cartoon network aired the dub there a month or 2 before it made its debut on cartoon network. Id saw a sub of it about a year before on VCD. Cartoon network did the debut at the end of the night after the famous Anime Hell block. People went to leave . I yelled they were debuting endless waltz and people came back in lol

so excited for 8th MS team!

You forgot to mention with the G-Gundam retrospective, that G Gundam basically killed the Gundam merch market in the US, due to its many Gundams. The Wing Zero & Deathscythe from EW were my first 1/100 scale gundam models. The Wing Zero was cool looking with its angel wings, and the Deathscythe Hell had bigasss bat wings, something Batman would have if he had his own Gundam.

I’ve been waiting for this one 😂😂

“…deciding to just wing it” HEYOOO!

Excited for the next one. 8th MS team is my favorite gundam.

Nice video, I LOVE the design for Heavy Arms in this movie. I'd totally watch a similar video about Code Geass if it seemed interesting to you.

I love Optimus doing the VO for the intro for EW

I was thinking about this movie earlier today. Long live Toonami year 2000!!!

12:37 A pin, to pick the lock on his cuffs

I just want to point out that I enjoy the toonami music and absolutely love the gundam battle assault 2 music you use in these videos. Masterful work you have done.

I remember my mom watching me watch Gundam Wing. She said it's the dumbest, sappiest and whinniest thing had ever seen. In retrospect she was right.

Even though I’m not so far in the Gundam timeline (currently watching ZZ) I still leave a comment for the algorithm. The first Gundam videos were entertaining and will watch the next ones when I’m dine

After watching the other Gundam series and growing up I can honestly say wing and especially endless waltz have not aged well. I'm much more inclined to the Universal Century storyline and films / series and Gundam 00 was a much better reboot / remake of wing ultimately.

The reason they were trying to send the gundams into sun is because as you said, it was an era of peace not war. They retrieved back the suits back because that peace was disrupted by Mariemaia's people trying to conquer Earth.

I remember seeing this the first time it aired way back. I also remember saying, "Optimus?" when the commercial voiceover started.

i like the implication that Wufei just knew where everything was, like he never received missions or anything he just acted on instincts, an interesting fact about Wufei is that he was originally going to be newtype but this was changed but his actions still somewhat reflect this throughout the show

Relena keeping her Bright hand strong.

I really hope you do 8th MS team. I find it had the kind of hard sci fi take that 0083 tried to go for but really pushed for more of a take on vietnam era ideals of anti war sentiment drawing more parallels from that than 0083's 80s action movies. The threats never reach the same level as many of the other series with colonies coming down or great space lazers, with the greatest weapon being more akin to a prototype eventual production wunderwaffe. It blends alot of the ideals of 'boots on the ground' from ww2 tankers to vietnam squads as well as making all the 'grunt' mechas feel like true weapons of war rather than have that much of a tactical disparity between them. Even the gundams used in the series, while derived from parts of the initial gundam production run, are all 'spec limited' as to keep them in functioning order as their kit-bashed nature means they all have wild performance disparities forcing them to be pulled back in output almost to the level where typical federation Gm's are. It really makes it feel like the Zeon suits are on par with them rather than the superweapon nature gundams usually get.

When Optimus Prime tells you to "suit up, again" best just follow directions xD.

Oddly enough my first real experience with wing and the gundam franchise as a whole was with the manga of endless walts. Yeah I had seen a few episodes of wing on TV but that manga is what actually got me into the franchise.

It'd basically a retelling of zeta. Where Meneva zabi is replaced by Mari-Marou

Having been a Gundam Wing First™ kid, I've always been nostalgia blinded as far as anything Gundam Wing related. That being said, it's great to see more objective analysis of things like this :D

love the gundam battle assault/master bg music, here's a follow Also great take on this topic!

My thoughts at shooting the gundam into the sun is a symbolic gesture to the people