From Publishers Weekly
The latest installment in the long running Gundam saga begins after the war between Earth and the Plant has been halted by a cease fire. The war was fought with space battleships and Gundams—enormous mechanized exoskeletons that can double as single-person massively-armed spaceships. The result hasn't been real peace, though. There's too much tempting, deadly technology available, so eager military research and development people start building more and more advanced Gundams, while fanatics plot to reignite the war. Series creator Tomino has been spinning increasingly elaborate plot webs since 1979, which shows how fascinating the basic concept has proved, but it also means that a new reader picking up a book like this is apt to feel a bit like a new viewer trying to appreciate the intricacies of a well-established soap opera. What may hold newbies' attention, though, is the continuing attraction of the Gundams themselves, all captured by the intricate art: it would be wonderful to shrug off the frustrating complications of our daily lives, climb inside a fantastically powerful machine and go out to fight for peace.
(June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8–Prototype warsuits are stolen from supposedly neutral territory, igniting the fires of a galactic civil war only a year after a hard-fought peace treaty had been established. Choppy and undertold, this re-creation of the popular cartoon series
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is confusing and unaffecting. Key characters are almost impossible to distinguish without color, and dialogue is jumbled and limited. The continual inclusion of a series of wordless, punctuation-based exclamations fails to convey anything near the effect they desire. Most disappointing, however, is the artwork. Scene-to-scene transitions are almost nonexistent, and characters are rendered in tight close-ups, providing a limited sense of place, atmosphere, and action. This wouldnt be so bad if the characters faces conveyed a convincing range of emotions, but figures are stiff and repetitious, looking as though they had been rendered from a model sheet without reference to the circumstance. Two scenes of weeping are especially poorly presented; they are unintentionally comic and depict all the deep despair of an
I Love Lucy episode.
–Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, MA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.