Any leftist messaging Gundam 00 has is 100% accidental.

Watching the first part of the video, I don't necessarily disagree with his Marxist reading of the show, but at the same time I feel like he hasn't taken into consideration a couple important themes that the show throws out there that kinda undercut any such leftist interpretation. Also, I haven't watched it in a while so my memory may be a bit hazy on certain plot points and stuff.

So, the first thing is that Gundam 00 is whole-y a product of the post 9-11 Bush era. However, because this is a Japanese show it doesn't default to the US style jingo-ism of the time (there's a character in the show whose sole purpose is to lampoon American exceptionalism), but instead goes for the somewhat edgy premise of "What if the Terrorists who did 9/11 were justified?" But because this is anime, rather than exploring this idea with the tact and nuance it deserves, the show goes about it in the most ham-handed over-the-top way and is pre-occupied with rule-of-cool/drama over coherent storytelling which results in it's politics being all over the place. (Spoilers it's liberalism.)

See, the big thing is that the heroic terrorist organisation the main characters belong to, Celestial Being, does not have a coherent ideology. We, the audience, know this not because the organisation's goals are presented in a vague and confusing way (they are), but because the show goes out of it's way to introduce characters later on whose sole purpose is the point out that Celestrial Being does not have a coherent ideology, and have those characters be right. Almost all the actions the main characters take to bring about a better world (as vague as that is, but it mostly revolves around mass disarmament through blowing up giant robots- nothing about means of production or anything, in fact now that I think about it the show kinda lets capitalism off the hook) boomerangs back into them with disastrous consequences which are kinda obvious to anyone in-universe who would have thought about it for 5 mins... but for some reason no one ever does. Hell, there are two point-of-view characters who are literally only there to "Both Sides" things, but because they're such colossal libs they end up getting swept up by events ineffectually rather than be active participants.

So our daring terrorists end up mindlessly blundering along from one self-manufactured crisis to another, and the show keeps escalating the stakes until we're at a literal authoritarian police state secretly run by the genetically engineered Illuminati Master Race . If the showrunners had an actual coherent message, maaaaaaybe the show could have been a criticism of Occupy style politics, but I'm pretty certain the writer's didn't have anything that deep in mind. Rather than deal with the actual politics presented the show- about the difficulty of political change for the better in a world where the marginalized are intentionally kept from the levers of power; we get a lot of messy inter-personal drama, a ton of baffling techno-babble and a lot of hand-wringing over the necessity of violence... and then bam, everything gets resolved in the stupidest way possible. The Good Guys don't win because they're more humanistic or moral or just plain right, but by Transhuman-Ex-Machina. Yay.

Like seriously just go watch Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans instead. It's about child soldiers attempting to start a revolution against a neoliberal order. This is the opening theme.

I haven’t watched this video, but Gundam 00 is one of my most liked Gundam series.

I haven't watched this video, but Gundam 00 is one of my least liked Gundam series.

Checked out the first section of the review and yeah I'd say it sounds about right although I don't think the main characters really stood out much to me as being especially good.

Overall, I recall it being pretty entertaining to watch as a (male-oriented) mecha power fantasy despite the typical dumb/cheesy anime plot elements that get thrown in for drama.

deleted by creator

still a shitty franchise