Over the weekend, the first episode of this year for the Pokémon Sun and Moon anime had a really great reference to the classic 90s mecha anime, Mobile Fighter G Gundam.
Specifically, episode 103 of Pokémon Sun and Moon featured Team Rocket and Meowth piloting their own version of the Devil Gundam. What’s more, Olivia and Brock performed a heart-shaped Continental Crush Z-Move that was very similar to the Erupting Burning Finger Sekiha Love-Love Tenkyoken performed by Domon and Rain from G Gundam.
G Gundam has also been partly referenced before in Pokémon Sun and Moon, as Meowth piloted a mecha that featured a similar cockpit setup to one in G Gundam, though the reference was far more subdued than this.
For fans of Pokémon that aren’t really familiar with the Gundam saga, G Gundam was a spin-off alternate timeline series that started back in 1994. A big departure from the earlier dramatic series based around a civil war in space, G Gundam was hinged around the Gundam Fight. Where colonies in orbit submitted their own Gundam to fight in a competition, with whoever winning having the ability to rule space for the next four years.
On the surface, G Gundam was more of a super robot show but what has allowed it to endure is arguably down to Yasuhiro Imagawa’s pathos-driven direction. Not to mention the fact that G Gundam had some serious production values behind it in terms of the animation.
The premise of G Gundam also overlaps a little with Pokémon, as Pokémon trainers battle each other to see who can win. So having Brock and Olivia team up in the same way as Domon and Rain is a nice touch I think.
If you are at all curious about Mobile Fighter G Gundam, it was recently released on Blu-ray and DVD by Right Stuf Anime and you can pick up both sets here and here.
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