Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt

This series has been switching its focus back and forth between Io and the Federation and Darryl and the Nanyang Alliance for a while now.  Each side has been preparing itself for the forthcoming conflict, with the latter coming out ahead more often than not.  The previous volume did an excellent job illustrating what’s at stake for the Federation while adding a little more depth to its cast.  It was a great installment of this series that really got me invested in what was going to come next.

“Next” for this series happens to be the outbreak of direct hostilities between the Federation and the Nanyang Alliance and BOY HOWDY is it one-sided.  While the latter’s military strength has been shown off repeatedly for a while now, it’s magnified here by how complacent and arrogant the Federation is shown to be here.  This would be less of a problem if it wasn’t presented in such a predictable manner.  The Federation is built up in such a formulaic way that seeing the Alliance cut through them like a hot knife through butter feels like a foregone conclusion more than anything else.  Not helping things is the fact that Sojo Levan Fu’s Newtype abilities are shown off in a way that stretches credibility while further giving his side the upper hand.

If mangaka Yasuo Ohtagaki’s intent with this volume was to showcase the Federation being so thoroughly outclassed that the destruction of Anaheim Electronics is a matter of when rather than if – then mission accomplished.  It feels like the conclusion for this series is still a ways off, though, so my guess is that something is going to happen in order to put the conflict back on even footing.  The thing is that Ohtagaki has built up the Alliance so much that it’s going to take a very well thought out deus ex machina in order to do so without coming off like a gigantic narrative cheat.  There’s no precedence for the mangaka pulling off such a twist before, so I’m left feeling that he’s painted himself into a corner and we’re going to have to bear witness to him bashing himself out of it with all the subtlety and finesse of a sledgehammer.