Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Frousties
Gundam Unicorn is the perfect conclusion to the UC timeline, reaching an unbelievable peak after the main continuity was stuck in complete mediocrity for around 20 years, plagued with endless spinoffs that didn't bring anything meaningful to the main story.
The entire show looks absolutely gorgeous, I haven't seen animation this incredibly detailed and dynamic and bombastic in a very very long time, gracing us with 7.5 hours of the best story UC Gundam can provide.
For having around 30 years of lore under its belt, Unicorn manages to masterfully play its cards by expanding on everything that came before to its absolute limit.
The fight scenes are the best they've ever been, and seeing such detailed drawn Gundams is an absolute treat, and they aren't there jsut for show either, as all of t…
Read at the sourceemberreviews
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn is the culmination of the Universal Century; the culmination of a century wracked by war, revenge, and constant power plays to determine the fate of those who have left the weight of Earth behind in search of a brighter future. As such, it is firmly rooted in the nearly 150 episodes of history that came before it, building upon it and what it has meant to those involved in said history with the gravitas it deserves, while also constantly pinging the neurons in my brain that light up when concepts I learned watching ZZ a decade ago are suddenly given new life and reframed to more effectively support the story being told. Yet, in a way, it is also detached from what has come before, sending out new soldiers untainted by the drama of past generations, at least on th…
Read at the sourcek-0da
The hopes for this show were low but the results were still disappointing; the most five out of ten gundam of all time.
Visually speaking, this show is very good looking. The OVA budget gives it a clear advantage over 25 or 50 episode shows, so now the character animation is very smooth and the mecha fights have a lot of oomph. The most interesting shots are present in said fights and only the fights, which is kind of a letdown since gundam can have a lot of good visuals in regards to newtype powers or just characters being sad in the desert. Fight choreo was great. Seeing the mechs move themselves was awesome; in all of the gundam show’s ive watched, I’ve never loved every mech on scene like I have in unicorn. The music is decent; nothing particularly stands out, much like the rest of t…
Read at the sourceWedgedPenguin
It's peak, and introduced me to Gundam.
I stumbled upon this on Netflix a few years back, and I chose to give it a try over Iron-Blooded Orphans, an alternate universe gundam series on Netflix. I didn't know what I was getting into, and it's a well-known thing that Unicorn is one of the more difficult Gundam series due to it's plethora of references and callbacks. I still believe wholeheartedly that this is a fantastic series that is both a love-letter to the UC fans who've seen every series in the timeline, and a intro point for new fans that showcases just how good the series is. While a lot of those references and callbacks won't make sense to a first-time watcher, the intrigue it builds helped me get into the Gundam Universe.
11/10 in my books, and certainly my favourite Gundam seri…
Read at the sourcewhiteflame55
This series simultaneously does a lot right while also hitting the usual pitfalls of Gundam Universal Century entries. To start on the right side, I think the characters are more interesting here. The MC isn't very interesting and hits the usual tropes (idealistic teenager forced to fight as a child soldier who turns out to be a secret Newtype), but many of the people around him are. In particular, it's nice to see a series handle cyber Newtypes in a much more interesting way through Zinnerman and Marida. The series doesn't lean too heavily on familiar faces, crafting a variety of morally gray characters with interesting backstories and motivations. It still has a problem with angsty characters (Angelo, Riddhe), but it doesn't have the cartoonishly villainous leadership, including some act…
Read at the sourceZoranagi
Gundam Unicorn is peak Military focused Gundam. The story has the least dumb moments and shitty romance and if you know gundam you know that gundam is full of shitty romance.
The guy who came up with the english names for the people in this show should be given a raise. I have never laughed as much as i have at the name Full Frontal. It is the greatest name in all of Gundam.
There are more Mobile suits in this show than there are types of ships in the Navy. Holy shit its gonna cost me so much money to buy all the Unicorn Gunpla. Ple Twelve is the best female gundam character in the series by far as most of them have just been foil to the more interesting male characters. I am not ashamed to say that if Ple Twelve was real i would simp for her harder than a twitch mod.
The OST in this s…
Read at the sourceMur-CuoreDiVirgo
Along with Stardust Memory, another Gundam series I truly appreciated in many aspects, including the Gundam models, depicted with attention to many technical details and a clear attempt to make the movements and mechanics somewhat realistic, this time with the use of even better and stunning visual art and high-quality graphic compared to some previous Gundam series.
The soundtrack is on the orchestral side and to me very suitable for every scene. I also found the plot very interesting and intricate enough, which tries to put an end (at least temporarily) to the historical conflict started in the ‘70s with the first Gundam 0079 series, by telling about the need behind the development of such advanced Unicorn Gundam model with psycho frame technology in order to restore peace.
The latte…
Read at the sourceSpirit_Chaser
Wanting more after Char's Counterattack leads to it's sequel: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. This can be difficult to accept as Tomino was not involved with it. It's not so much as an ending to this timeline. Rather, it is a new beginning that leads to a new new beginning, considering what is the Laplace's Box. This could go on as a passion for those that want to carry the torch after Tomino, or who might just want to exploit this for money.
Unicorn was made by a large amount of staff. One can get lost in the amount of animators that were hired here. Consequently, the animation for this series is extraordinary. As someone who has been disappointed by CGI time and time again, at least this series can make good use of it the few times it utilizes it. The battles are brutal and the detail is on…
Read at the sourceThe_Namer
Of all the non-Tomino Gundam series, this one feels the most Tomino-esque. The likes of 0800, 0083 and The Origin lean heavily into the military SF angle, but Unicorn also embraces the spiritual and...well, the depressed nihilist aspects of Tomino's works. There's a classic Univeral Century setup: a boy stumbles upon a Gundam, is able to pilot it immediately because newtype, and finds himself embroiled in an all-out robowar between various factions. Also a longstanding antagonist picks up yet another accidentally sexual pseudonym (Full Frontal? Really?).
In so many ways, Unicorn could have been called UCporn, since it's full of references to earlier entries in that continuity both thematically and in its characters, factions, etc. In fact it pulls so many characters and factions from earl…
Read at the sourceAidanTheGreat
I just want to start by saying, I know for some hardcore Gundam fans, Unicorn is not a 10/10. The second thing I want to say is I have watched Zeta, ZZ, and the original Mobile Suit Gundam in their entirety, along with many OVA's, and some other Gundam series, and I love most of them (aside from Wing and 00 but that's not why I'm here).
In my personal opinion, Unicorn is an excellent treat for any fan who manages to make it that far in the UC timeline. I don't usually review things so I wont go into meticulous detail to paint a picture for you, but for me Unicorn succeeds on all fronts.
It depicts war in the typical Gundam fashion (that being anti-war) and does it well. It succeeds by creating a cast of characters who cannot be seen as simply good or bad, across a handful of different…
Read at the sourceSirLol31
TL;DR
An enjoyable addition to the Universal Century, it can be watched without knowing anything about Gundam and the Universal Century, but its enjoyment grows if you know more about the events of the UC.
Story [7]
The premise of Gundam Unicorn’s story is interesting and its ending is well made, but this OVA is brought down by the fact that its story reuses many of the plot points that are in other Gundam anime, without changing them too much, if at all. Another problem for the OVA’s story is the fact that its very character driven, but the characters in it are far from perfect.
Problems aside, a positive of Gundam Unicorn is that its story can be enjoyed without knowing anything of other Gundam series set in the Universal Century, but the importance given to some people and events wil…
Read at the sourceEmperor_Wolfgang
Having marathoned several Gundam shows, starting with the Gundam 0079 movie trilogy and making my way to Wing, as well as having watched 08th MS Team, other Gundam nerd friends of mine convinced me to watch Unicorn. Going into it, I had an understanding that it was a highly regarded entry in the series, that was well animated and tied deeply into the narratives of the UC shows. You can see from many of the other reviews here that a perfect 10 is a quite common rating.
For myself, though, Unicorn turned out to be an exercise in disappointment and exasperation.
Step one, we'll get the extraneous elements out of the way. Unicorn is indeed well animated, in fact that's the primary redeeming factor of the OVA for me, between the MS fights, loving character animation, colorful palettes, and s…
Read at the sourceBruZZo
I think that Gundam Unicorn is the premier and quintessential contemporary Gundam narrative. Never before, as of recent years, has there been a series that so effectively understands what Gundam is, what Gundam was, what it stands for, what elements are typical and atypical of a Gundam story, and packages all of it with some of the cleanest and most jaw-droppingly gorgeous production I have ever seen.
Story-wise, Gundam Unicorn follows Banagher Links, who finds himself randomly entangled with a runaway Zeon princess and a mysterious white mobile suit known as the Unicorn Gundam. The Zeon princess, Mineva Zabi, disguised as a civilian named Audrey Burne, informs Banagher of the exisence of Laplace's Box; not a literal box or item, but rather a piece of information that, if learned, is rum…
Read at the sourceHaruno19
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn is a series published around 20 years after the release of Char's Counterattack. Although many years have passed, Unicorn inherited its morality and ideology straight from that movie.
"Even the people who posses this warmth can be cruel enough to destroy the Earth! You must undertand that Amuro!"
"I understand! That's why we must show the world the light of the human's hearth!"
From these words, the morality of Gundam Unicorn borns. The perfect series to end the endless, 100 years long ideological war between despair and hope, pessimism and possibility. Unicorn shakes Universal Century's foundations and weights on its back the whole thematical narrative of the timeline, looking towards the future of Mankind.
«Only human posses a God. The power to trascend the…
Read at the sourceElMusha
Thanks to which shows happened to be available on all the different streaming sites in the UK, I made the mistake of trying to get into the Universal Century through Unicorn, something which I strongly suggest people attempt at their own risk. It is possible to follow the basic story beats without knowing about the preceding events of this timeline, but the numerous lore dumps and namedrops in this OVA don't exactly make it easy to do so, and you'll probably be put off by it before even getting to some of the more striking moments. Definitely familiarize yourself with the preceding events before jumping into this one - watch 0079 (or the movie trilogy if you're strapped for time), Zeta, ZZ, Char's Counterattack, get to know the various characters, places and events, or at the very least ha…
Read at the sourcehaipaomutsu
i was never a fan of mech type anime or anything related to mechs, in fact i was a hater but after watching this i was moved and feel like spending thousands on figurines.
it is trulty amazing anime with alot of charecter depth and i really enjoyed the dubbed version.
some parts may have been slightly corny but it made sense with the powers and everything.
its not one of those animes wich hase alot of unessesairy scenes, in fact i think all the scenes in this anime are relevant to the ending.
i havent watched anime in a few years but this one moved me almost as much as bleach moved me.
truly, and i cant streach this enough it is truly a work of art.
thank you Harutoshi Fukui for this amazing masterpiece.
Read at the sourcebruh_egg
Mild spoilers for Gundam Unicorn ahead. I'll try not to be too spoiler-y, but be warned.
Unicorn was one of my first entires into the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise -- and while I feel as if I've enjoyed it as a whole, for all its flashy art and pretty robot battles, it left me feeling a little hollow -- I felt as if the last episode left me feeling "wait, that's it?", and that's really not a good thing when your series is 7 hour-long OVAs.
The elephant in the room must be addressed: Unicorn is heavily built upon the other entries of the Universal Century timeline, mainly Mobile Suit Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam Zeta. And, I'll be perfectly honest -- I haven't, at the time of watching or writing this review, watched those shows in their entirety. However, I had a general knowledge of the…
Read at the sourceDanTheMan2150AD
This series benefits from 3 notable legends of the industry:
1. Kazuhiro Furuhashi - Director of this and the original Hunter x Hunter.
2. Kumiko Takahashi - Key Animator and veteran of the Gundam series having worked on Zeta and Origin III.
AND GOD HIMSELF...!
3. Hiroyuki Sawano
The series itself has crisp visuals and emotional characters, but a warning to the casual observer a large amount of onscreen character death can be too much. The animation is nothing short of incredible and for once in the series, the transformation sequences of the variable types do not rely on parts being able to magically detach and reattach. The music is pure beauty, no-one can compose a drop like Sawano. What he lends to this series later carries over to UC RE:0096, Narrative and Hathaway’s Flash while some…
Read at the sourceMidget_King
“Only mankind has a god. A “God” by the name of “possibility”. A power that allows us to go above and beyond.”
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn is indeed a unique series to the franchise. Aside from the main mobile suit, the characters are iconic as well.
I may have made a mistake as choosing this series as my entry into the timeline of the Universal Century. However, it did not really affect me that much because even though this is a sort of a sequel to the original series, it still tells a different kind of story. I'm not really sure because I don't even know what really happened because I haven't seen the originals yet. I don't even know if I even qualify as a Gundam fan. But I must not let that kind of thing get to me because my passion is real. Anyway...
So how did Mobile Suit Gundam U…
Read at the sourcemouthpiece
There are two different ways for someone to enjoy Unicorn. The first is to expect to watch mecha porn; meaning to see some amazing production values regarding giant robots. And indeed, this anime has the best overall artwork and animation in any other Gundam to date. It just looks plain awesome. The second way is through nostalgia, as we are taken back to the first and best of all timelines, that of the Universal Century. We get to see lots of familiar characters and cameos of areas and older models, so unlike most side stories you are truly made to believe this is a sequel.
Sadly this is as far as the good reasons go, since most of everything else is either a rehash of earlier Gundam shows, or it is a bad addition altogether. I mean I liked how all of a sudden the world federation is pro…
Read at the source
