Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Frousties
F91 is not only a bad movie, but also a complete travesty that is in part responsible for the dreadful current state of the UC timeline.
First of, this isn't a real movie, this is the result of a full, scrapped TV show (probably 50+ episodes) condensed into a 2h soup of rushed and nonsensical plot and character writing. It's hard to know what's going on at any given minute as the plot switches gears on a fucking dime and characters will just change allegiance like they just decided to be quirky that day.
The plot had some decent ideas, but what's there also feels so similar to shows previously seen it's hard to imagine them succeed even if it were given room to breathe.
The art is mostly good, but varries in quality quite a lot and some very obvious animations errors can be noticed. As…
Read at the sourceKaijuBattle
I really wish this was made into a series. Lots of good action and characters but the film cuts out lots of the story. In the middle and the end it seems like they just took scenes from what would be 40 episodes and put it together. I really wish they rewrote the story into a film that felt like it was meant to be a film or just told half of the story and then tried to make a sequel. The art is great and the action is some of the best. There are lots of cool new weapons and some cool characters that are only in the movie for one scene.
Read at the sourceDanteDemonZ
F91 is a unique and perplexing entry in the Universal Century, and its placement in the timeline presents some challenges. Following something like Hathaway, which attempts to engage with politics and ideology, this feels like a step back, coming across as rushed and at times unintentionally comedic. The film’s production issues are apparent early on. What was clearly intended as a full series is compressed into a single movie, leaving little room for development or emotional depth. Characters appear, make significant decisions, and move on before the audience has much reason to connect with them.
The writing does little to help. The central antagonist, Carozzo Ronah, is a perfect example of where things fall apart. He wears a mask to hide his shame after his wife leaves him for another m…
Read at the sourcetheo1763
Mobile Suit Gundam F91 is one of those movies that has the potential in the universe but never quite gets there. It was supposed to kick off a new Gundam franchise, but what ended up happening is that it got cut up into a two-hour movie, and you can definitely see why. The tempo of the story is progressing much too rapidly, bringing new characters and storylines into play before you have had time to establish any interest in them. You meet Seabook and his crew for one moment, and then the next thing you know, the whole colony is under attack and civilians are being slaughtered in some of the most extreme violence of the Universal Century. The concept is interesting in and of itself, with the Crossbone Vanguard trying to build their noble empire, but the implementation is all over the place…
Read at the sourceNashDGreat
A slog to get through.
The plot is good at the start. The middle and ending changes that. Upon further research, it turns out that this was suppposed to be a TV show with 50 episodes which explains the rapid pace after the first act.
The mechs are honestly forgettable, not much to say about that. The F91 Gundam isn't really unique looking. The enemies' are no better, ace pilots having grunt looking mechs. Yuck.
The characters... see, when you rush a suppposed 50-episode story to fit into a 2-hour movie, they won't be as developed as you'd expect. I didn't care which is my biggest problem with this film. I think an episodic format would have done well with fleshing out the characters at least, but as it stands, it's a nothing burger.
Overall, this movie is forgettable. The starting act…
Read at the sourceNoahboy
Better than I expected, but it's still a compromised film. The animation is absolutely gorgeous and all the battles are intense and exciting. There are some really brutal scenes in this that add a lot to the intensity. The pacing is extremely fast and wastes no time in pushing the plot forwards. So much story is covered and there are so many things glossed over quickly as a result. I had few problems following the plot in spite of everything moving super fast, but one character's change just hit me out of nowhere and made no sense to me. This problem might be due to one of the 2 skips I had on my DVD copy, making me miss two short segments. I liked the characters that got some development, but I really wish there was some more development for the cast, some characters just exist and feel l…
Read at the sourceYoMuMu
It was okay, but as a Gundam fan I liked it a lot.
I loved the mech designs and the atmosphere of the movie, but it still felt like a compilation movie of a series that doesn't exist.
They were lucky they didn't get sued for blatantly plagiarizing John Williams' soundtrack for "The Empire Strikes Back" at some points.
Still the soundtrack is pretty decent, especially the lead vocal track "Eternal Wind", which is pure 90s J-pop genius.
I hope we get to see a Crossbone Gundam movie or anime series soon and see what happened to Seabook and Cecily after this.
Read at the sourcealgoPotaku
Very good film, unfortunately the series or the rest of the films could not be made, but the story had a lot of potential, and the designs were very unique and good, the plot and the characters looked very good, but as the film is so cut there are times when they don't feel very human about characters. In some moments it feels very forced but knowing how gundam is, you realize that they always do the same. But that's not why it becomes a bad movie, it is good entertaining and tries to summarize a story in 2 hours so I recommend it.
En español:
Muy buena película, lamentablemente no se pudo hacer la serie o el resto de películas, pero la historia tenia mucho potencial, y los diseños eran muy únicos y buenos, la trama y los personajes tenían muy buena pinta, pero como esta tan cortada la…
Read at the sourceManthors
Gundam F91 is a decent movie. Chronologically, it is far into the future of MS Gundam, of the UC lore. I think its a mature addition to the series, and fairly enjoyable in terms of mecha action. More bellow.
Story: the best part of the story is that it is set in the future, where all we know (MS Gunda, Zeta Gundam, etc) is old history, even the Newtypes are sort of a legend sometimes. This gets your attention right away. Another important aspect of the story is how mature it is. It is extremely centered on family struggles, relationships, and some war tragedy, it even has some strong scenes. The political aspects, however, are overall lame. They are another "we defeated the empire, but someone is trying to do the same". Star Wars send its regards. Thus, you will be more rooked about the c…
Read at the sourceedarel-triparte
TL;DR: It's a better movie than Char's Counterattack. ...That's not saying much. Just watch the first 15-20 minutes.
Ok, I'm gonna skip the obvious parts that you've probably already read in other reviews. This was meant to be a longer TV Show, we know.
Actually, considering the facts this could've turned out way worse. That doesn't mean is that good.
I'll start with the negatives, and then I'll try to end on a more positive note.
The story is very messy. Motivations are not clear and the villains are very cliché. Just your average "hurr durr imma baddie i'll kill everyone". Pacing is also an issue. This suffers the same problem as CCA, where Tomino probably thought we would get bored if we didn't get a mech battle every 20 minutes or so. This obviously doesn't help in the structure. Inste…
Read at the sourceThedude3445
Anyone in the Gundam fandom knows the infamous history of F91; it was a new series project by Tomino to be released in the early 90s, set a full thirty years after Char's Counterattack with a brand-new storyline and conflict, but due to production difficulties (it DID come out right after the Japanese economic crash) they had to scrap it all and put fifty episodes of content into two hours. So what did they do to turn it into a film? Cut the unimportant storylines and leave only the essentials? Reduce the character count and leave the focus on the dual protagonists Seabook and Cecily? Or (the option they chose) just compress everything into such a rapid, non-stop pace that never stops for a breather just so it can fit everything into two hours?
I had my complaints with Char's Counterattac…
Read at the sourceCodeBlazeFate
*Spoilers for Gundam F91*
Potential is something that can be rather frustrating or even tragic when unfulfilled, depending on the circumstances. If nothing went wrong in terms of production and the product simply wastes its potential thanks to bad writing, it can be rather irritating. For better or for worse, Gundam F91, Yoshiyuki Tomino’s attempt at creating a new UC Gundam saga, is certainly the latter. It's like a rising college football player dying of CTE, with the victim being unable to tap into its potential for reasons far beyond its control. What was planned as a full 52 episode series reduced to a mere 13, and those 13 being gutted to create a film that was clearly not meant to be one. It's ultimately not the movie's fault that it's bad, it was never meant to be one in the first…
Read at the sourceFAKEANIMEGIRL
(Check out my profile for a link to my site containing more up-to-date reviews and bonus media!)
Oh boy, the weird one. Mobile Suit Gundam F91's production background is probably more well-known than the actual contents of the movie. Originally planned for a full-length series, vague reasons that were never really elaborated on halted Gundam F91's production after screenplays were written for a mere 13 episodes. Probably wanting to keep the Gundam brand strong, the decision was ultimately made to make what existed of the planned series into a single theatrical film. What resulted was the most universal reception of a Gundam series ever: that the movie was a very apparent hackjob of a story and ultimately not very satisfying. It's universal to the point I have to agree on both of those acc…
Read at the sourceStirStir
This is a weird movie - because it was originally designed and partially produced as a 50 episode series. For what it is, I do think the movie stands fine, because it has problems while still being exceptional about certain things.
For me, an important aspect for the mecha genre are the action sequences, and F91 has gorgeous animation with very unique and interesting mech designs. The fighting is fun to watch and doesn't clash with the non-action scenes visually. There aren't many, if any, scenes I recall looking off or grotesque due to little time spent on it.
It stands pretty alone in the Universal Century, the most expansive era in Gundam, so you can watch it without needing to know much of anything about the franchise. That said, it follows the most generic outline for a Gundam stor…
Read at the sourceZer010
Don't get me wrong it has its moments where you can tell a cut was made. Overall though this was an enjoyable experience I can recall later on the journey to completion-ism.
Read at the sourceMS06FZ
At the end of Gundam F91, it implies there will be a follow-up series.
Unfortunately this never materialised. Which is a shame, because it's a good movie and would have made a good series.
Because of these cuts, the movie is somewhat disjointed and incoherent, and certainly shouldn't be watched for an awesome plot. What it does do, however, is show off some nice mech designs, have a cool villain with a silly plan, and have awesome animation and art.
The plot is fairly standard Gundam, with people from space, people from Earth and some other people from another patch of space fighting. Also Newtypes, who as fans of the franchise know are sort of halfway between Bene Gesserit, Jedi and idiot-savants. The main antagonist is Iron Mask, who is unsurprisingly a man in a mask and whose plan do…
Read at the sourceChag
Ever wonder what happens when a fifty-episode series gets condensed to under two hours? The answer to that lies within Mobile Suit Gundam F91 -- a textbook example of wasted potential. Though F91's core story is a solid idea that draws plenty of inspiration from its predecessors, without any flesh on its narrative bones, F91 is reduced to an inconsistent and and very much rushed tale. However, boasting its nostalgic story along with great animation, F91 is still worth a look by fans of the gundam franchise.
Due to disputes amongst the original production staff, this ill-fated chapter of the universal century gundam saga was cut down in size in a rather extreme extent. F91 tells the tale of Seabook Arno and the crew of the Space Arc, a spaceship of civilians trying to escape the conflict b…
Read at the sourceBeatnik
Nobody does an attack on a civilian population better than the Gundam franchise.
The opening to this movie blew me away. When a gigantic bullet casing, falling from a mecha's weapon, bounced off a lady's head on a street far below, causing her to fall over and die, I instantly gave this a 10.
This is the kind of movie I was hoping Char's Counterattack would be. A coherent and compelling movie charting everything we love about the Gundam franchise. The horror and tragedy of war, the visceral action and drama, the complexity and ambiguities of ideologies, mecha blowing shit up.
Char’s Counterattack had all that, but to me felt like you were tuning into a movie midway through; you were thrown into a situation that you weren't introduced to properly. It had too much plot machinations and no…
Read at the sourceFirebomber
Gundam F91 had its episode reduced from 53 to an OVA standard episodes because BANDAI at that time are low on budget and some of the staff are dying. And so, the release was delayed from 1989 to 1990's. But overall it has a great story and a nice music.
Read at the sourceStormy_77
Story and Characters
A new group, the Crossbones Vanguard conquer the Frontier IV colony in a surprise attack after years of peace. Caught in the crossfire is college student Seabook Arno, who sees many of his friends killed during the skirmish and discovers that his girlfriend Cecily Fairchild is actually Berah Ronah - heir to the Ronah family clan and the Crossones Vanguard. He then finds out that his mother is alive and has been working on a new mobile suit codenamed "Gundam Formula-91". Seabook reluctantly pilots the Gundam at first, but slowly discovers the Newtype abilities within him and uses them and the Gundam to turn the tide of the war.
To be fair this was a lot of character development to try to squeeze into a movie and it isn't very well executed. Plot holes with Cecily's f…
Read at the source