Full spoilers for Mobile Suit Gundam Wing and Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz follow.
“Die Hard is my favorite Christmas film.”
You have heard this trite opinion a thousand times before. Just because a movie is set during Christmas does not mean that it thematically has anything to do with the holiday season. Cowards who proclaim Die Hard a Christmas movie—yet alone the best one—are merely afraid of being honest and saying something like How the Grinch Stole Christmas or A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Picking an action movie instead is a failed attempt at postmodern irony in order to come across as more interesting than you actually are. Being earnest is frightening. As David Foster Wallace writes in Infinite Jest:
Hal, who’s empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he’s really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.
Remember those words the next time someone advocates for Die Hard to wear the crown. Besides, the best Christmas movie is Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz.
Endless Waltz opens exactly one year after the end of the main series on Christmas Eve AC 196. Peace has reigned on Earth and the colonies since the final duel between the Wing Zero and the Epyon.
Due to the peaceful times they have ushered in, the Gundam pilots minus Wufei pack their mobile suits onto a ship hurtling towards the sun. Since this is an anime mech film, the giant robots will undoubtedly be recovered after the conflict starts.
And that conflict comes in the form of a seven-year-old Mariemaia Khushrenada, the illegitimate daughter of Treize. Since children tend not to be good at logistics and warfare, the true mastermind though is her grandfather Dekim Barton. With their private army, they declare colony X-18999’s independence, capture Relina, and declare war on the Earth Sphere Unified Nation. Dekim’s plan is to reimplement the true Operation Meteor by dropping X-18999 on the Earth. The plan is narrowly stopped by the Gundam-less Heero, Duo, and Trowa. Meanwhile, Quatre goes to retrieve the Gundams whose destruction he planned himself. Though set back by Operation Meteor’s (second) failure, Dekim is still able to easily seize control of the pacifist ESUN. In addition to their ordinary mobile suits, Mariemaia’s army is bolstered by Wufei and his Altron Gundam.
The two main antagonists do a solid job motivating and maintaining the film’s conflict. Mariemaia is a selfish, annoying brat with little philosophical depth, but that works well since she actually is a privileged seven-year-old. Most kids are psychopaths at that age; the ones with armies behind them would certainly be even worse.
Dekim, on the other hand, comes across as a bit underwritten. Ostensibly, he was close to the original politician Heero Yuy and wants to take revenge against the Earth for his idol’s assassination. However, that relationship between Dekim and Heero Yuy is never fleshed out in the context of the film. Because of this, Dekim acts merely as a generic bad guy hell bent on world domination.
Nonetheless, this basic characterization of the central antagonist does not hold Endless Waltz back because the true conflict lies with the Gundam pilots—between each other, internally, and with the world around them.
The flashbacks throughout the film give context to the four Gundam pilots who are ready to move on. For Duo and Quatre—the most jovial of the bunch—their respective scenes show two young men who have always followed their hearts. For Trowa, we see how he subsumed his own identity with another’s and is now ready to put that fake persona to rest. And with Heero, we see a soldier haunted by his past and understand that this has to be his final mission.
The exception to this in the group is Wufei. His flashback only proves he is still a warrior at heart and needs battle to give his life meaning. While the other Gundam pilots look to the future, Chang Wufei is trapped in the past.
One pilot though stands away from the original five. Zechs Marquise is looking to neither the past nor the future; he is living in the present. One could argue that Zechs has no character development in Endless Waltz, and his only purpose is to show up and look cool while piloting the Tallgeese III. But that is the point. His story ended after his last battle with Heero. Now he acts as a guiding light for the other Gundam pilots—a man who is happy with who he has become.
The battle between the past and future crystallizes with the showdown between Heero and Wufei. Their philosophies and backstories are clearly on display as the two mobile suits fight. The animation here is stunning and is augmented by the Endless Waltz version of the Wing Zero being one of the most beautifully designed Gundams in the franchise1.
Wufei fights because he believes soldiers require battle to give their lives meaning. Heero sees that soldiers can put away their weapons and move on. The action is great, but their clash is not settled by any shot or slash. Heero gives up and in doing so validates his viewpoint. Wufei falls to the memory of his colony being destroyed and the fear that an event like that could happen again. The pilot of the Wing Zero surrenders but emerges victorious.
Interestingly, Wing Zero versus Altron is the only fight between Gundams in Endless Waltz. The film does not end with Dekim or Mariemaia piloting a Gundam. Instead the Gundam pilots face off against a large number of ordinary mobile suits. The film does its best to try to raise the stakes here through dialogue, atmosphere, and tense music. Nonetheless, the Gundams mow through these mobile suits but let us accept that this is the insurmountable task the story requires.
All this leads to the best shot of the film where the Wing Zero busts open the bunker with its rifle. Throughout the series, we see Heero doubt himself and his purpose multiple times2. Here though, a simple “Roger that” confirms Heero’s full confidence in both the power of the Wing Zero and his own beliefs. Once he breaks into the bunker, he spares Mariemaia and completes his final mission, forgiving both the seven-year-old girl in front of him and himself.
The Wing Zero is destroyed, and the four other Gundam pilots elect to self-destruct their mobile suits. Despite the events of the film, nothing causes the Gundam pilots to change their beliefs that now is a time for peace. Even if your plans, aspirations, or New Year’s resolutions failed before, you can always pick them up again. You are not your failures.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the prototypical holiday story. The novella is beloved not just because it is less wordy than Great Expectations but because its themes are quintessentially Christmas: change, forgiveness, and peace on Earth. Ebenezer Scrooge transforms into a better man who comes to help the world around him despite the mistakes he made. These themes are mirrored in Endless Waltz.
Each work features the collision of past, present, and future, but Endless Waltz does it with both Gundam pilots and ghosts even if no actual spectres appear. Heero, Wufei, and the other pilots stop being soldiers and are able to live peacefully in the world they helped create. Those they have killed (such as the girl and her dog) are laid to rest in their minds; the sins of the past no longer haunt their minds. Sometimes the hardest person to love and forgive is yourself, but the pilots learn to do just that. And every love story is a ghost story.
- Looking back, all the mobile suit designs in Gundam Wing are aided by the fact that the next series to be released in the West, Gundam SEED, is so visually dull. The switch to computer animation was a boring, rough journey. ↩︎
- I lost count of how often Heero tries to kill himself in the main series. ↩︎
