Finally the rumors about a new Gundam anime has being cleared, and it's not going to be a sequel to SEED Destiny anymore. The new series is Gundam 00, and this time, not only are we getting new Gundams, characters, and storyline, even the timeline is brand new. Set in AD (Anno Domini) 2307, that's exactly 300 years from now. The main Gundam seems to be Gundam Excia (see picture), which in my opinion, resembles quite a bit of Wing Gundam.
Anyway, the story is about an organization called Celestial Being trying to eradicate war and conflict of the world spearheaded by Gundam Excia, piloted by Setsuna F. Seiei. Again, it sounded very Wing-like, since Wing is about five Gundams fighting against the world which is controlled by Oz. Abandoning the huge scale battle of two opposing forces like OMNI versus ZAFT as seen in SEED and SEED Destiny may be a wise move by the production team, as guerrilla warfare of Gundams may be a new selling point from the anime, plus there's more time for character development as well.
At this moment, there's no way of telling whether the story is targeted at kids (simple storyline, plenty of Gundams with super-duper cool effects which can be illogical and annoying), or young adults (simple storyline a lot of plots and story twists, the-bad-guys-are-not-so-dumb-and-weak type of combat sequences, and not every main character's MS has a vin fin on their head). Personally I would opt for the later, since I'm so hoping that the bad storyline halfway through SEED Destiny would never be repeated again.
All hopes on Gundam 00 then. I'm looking forward for its appearance in October.
For previous news and updates, please visit Gunota Headlines, Danny Choo's blog and Gundamaniac. The most updates however, can be found on Winterheim HDD, with lots of screenshots from the streaming promo video and information of the production crew.
