Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz is a three part OVA following to the events that happened to the original series a year later. Aside from being the continuation of the TV series, it also revealed details regarding the past of the Gundam pilots and the true objective behind Operation Meteor.
After Colony 196, a year after the battle between the colonies and Earth, now called, the Eve Wars (due to the fact that it happened in December), the colonies and Earth created an organization called, Earth Sphere Unified Nation (ESUN) and the one protecting the peace is an organization called, Preventers led by Lady Une. Seeing that the Gundams have no use, they decided to destroy it less Altron.
But this peace would be slightly halted thanks to colony L3 X-18999, led by Mariemaia Krushienada, Trieze’s daughter who stages a rebellion against ESUN and kidnaps its Vice Foreign Minister, Relena Darlian who is on a diplomatic mission on the said colony. Because of this, the Gundam pilots investigates and learns that her grandfather, Dekim Barton is behind all of this and plans to go with the original Operation Meteor, in which they will drop one colony to Earth and let the Gundams run wild with the ensuing chaos.
Can the Gundam pilots stop Dekim considering that Wufei is now against them? That is for us to find out.
On to the review, if you watched the original series prior to watching this OVA, one of the obvious changes you see is the redesigns on the five main Gundams. To be honest, I find it confusing at first since it doesn’t make sense in the first place. I mean, you decided to upgrade your MS just for the sake of destroying it? It turns out they have thought of it, decided to retcon these designs (via each character flashback), and made it so yeah, problem solved.
Now to the redesigns, I really love most of it. Deathscythe Hell’s design is more demonic and reminisced Batman’s character design when jumping on the dark. Sandrock’s cloak added the “dessert-feel” in it. Altron’s redesign made it a bit more dragonic and as for Wing ZERO, it made it more angelic. The only redesign that I dislike is HeavyArms due to the bad coloring of the suit. But hey, the half-clown mask is a really good touch.
As for the story, it reminded me a lot of the last arc of the anime in which involves Millardo becoming the new symbol of the colonies in which they decided to invade Earth with him leading the group and the Gundam pilots and their allies will stop him. In this OVA, we have two Millardo’s, in the form of Wufei and Mariemaia.
Wufei here is the “Millardo” in this OVA in terms of his beliefs. Both of them have somewhat lost faith with the people of Earth and decided to fight them. As for Mariemaia, she is the Millardo in terms of being a puppet to one guy. This aspect of the OVA that bored me since that the last part of the original series is for me, one of the bad parts of the entire series. Just like the last part of the original series, the fights make up for it.
Heck, the best part of the series is the fight between Wing Gundam ZERO Custom and Altron Gundam Custom! It was intense, the tension build in the earlier episodes made this fight really fun to watch, that is why it is so good. As for the other fights, it was good, especially the last fight at the end of the OVA, especially when Zechs and Noin are back again and fought side by side with the Gundam pilots which cause the author to gush a bit.
The flashback scenes of each Gundam pilots add up to the character development of each pilot. Each flashback defines each character and why they acted like that in the main series. No wonder Heero is a bit cold towards Relena in the earlier episodes and no wonder Trowa is quite a shut in, in the earlier episodes prior to his amnesia!
Overall, the OVA is quite a good treat to Gundam Wing fans due to the redesigned Gundams (especially Wing ZERO), the fights and the trademarked strong political struggle that the series is known for. Like I said earlier, my only disappointment in this OVA is the plot itself since it felt like recycled from the last story arc with a few minor changes to make it different from the said arc.