SD Gundam Force 1-26 Complete WOC

About

The tapes these were ripped from contained multiple copies of some episodes and some are poor quality, some are runts. All versions present on the tape have been provided. There are 31 files total (5 being duplicates). I recommend the IA x264 recode of this over the mpeg2 files. They are a much smaller, more reasonable file size then the mpeg2 files and 99% of the quality is preserved. I ripped this to mpeg2 because its what my capture card is capable of producing and since it isn't compatible with 3rd party software such as OBS im stuck with mpeg2.

These are bad quality recordings of a bad quality series. I don't think I had availablility to watch this series when it originally aired so these tapes are likely the product of a vcr scheduler or a helpful family member. Had I seen it for myself I probably wouldn't have bothered recording it. Despite this the tapes contained a mostly complete run of the series + a few bad quality duplicates and runts. Most episodes were recorded opening to closing bumper with one or two being slightly short, all in all not a bad job.

This is one of the worst shows Toonami ever aired. Its unlikely many other recordings of this exist so I was pretty happy when I found out it still existed unlike some of my other tapes. If not for my efforts ripping it the tv run of the series would likely be lost media (not that anybody would be complaining)

In the mid 2000's with a decision that made little sense to anybody network executives threw quality to the wind and angered their long time fans by adding this show to the lineup. On one hand you had a less mature, more cartoonish image portrayed by the Tom 3 rebrand. On the other you had this show in the lineup back to back with shows for a mature audiance such as Dragon Ball Z and Yu Yu Hakusho. Who was this train wreck of a show meant to appeal to? Its like they had 0 conception of who the target audiance was for this show or the block as a whole. Loyal fans of the programming block didn't want to watch this. Its no wonder the entire Toonami programming block was canceled all togeather the following year. It seems like they ran out of good quality content to air and were attempting to take the block in a different direction? I would have rather they reduced Toonami's timeslot by 1/2 hour then air this, quality not quantity. This show felt like shovelware, filler meant to capitalize on the Gundam craze. This is the kind of low quality content I would have expected to find on a lesser network like Kids WB or Fox Box, not on Toonami prime time. In short the network sold out.

(As an interesting side note 2003 was one of the best years for Adult Swim with some overlap between the 2 with Yu Yu Hakusho appearing on both. I can't help but wonder if they were trying to bring the Toonami audiance over to Adult Swim and rebrand Toonami as a young childrens programming block?)

At least with other shows on the block in previous years I could say "I am not the intended target audiance for this but it seems like its quality, somebody out there probably enjoys it" but with SD Gundam Force I am left completely befuddled. Is their a human being on earth that actually enjoyed watching this? I genuinely hate the characters, the animation style, and the plot. I can only describe it as a hellish bootleg version of the windwaker set in a different universe. I have utter contempt for this show. It was a painful experience just digitizing it off of VHS. So much for Moltar's old saying that "quality speaks for itself." Reruns might suck, but reruns of shows that were bad to begin with suck even more. Moltar really was the superior host, garbage like this never played over the airwaves under his watch.

No amount of mundane, nauseating, milquetoast writing on the Toonami wiki page about how average the series is can detract from the fact that "SD Gundam Force was the least-watched Gundam title in Japan, having averaged a 2.1% share of the viewing audience throughout its broadcast." a fact that is convinently burried at the bottom of paragraphs of text. The simple fact is that if this show had "initially received respectable ratings" like the wiki claims the 2nd season would have aired in the US, which it never did. The wiki attempts to paint this as a success in the US and only a failure in Japan. Well I can tell you from first hand experience, nobody I knew here in the US liked this show. Everybody I knew seemed to hate it. The claim that it was successful in foreign markets seems to be some kind of poor attempt at damage control. People absolutely hated this show back then and they still hate it now.

This is being provided for the purpose of preservation, review, crutique, and criticsm under fair use so make sure you let them know just how much you hate (or like) it in the review section.

Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Credit

Toonami

Language

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Kids profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed