"The year is after colony (ac) 195 and..."

Out of my top three favorite Animes, Gundam Wing is probably the best known to the general populous at the moment. It had a nice long run on the Cartoon Network and is currently coming out on Video here in the US. Unfortunately it had to contend with Dragon Ball Z which was already coming out and probably kept it from reaching it's true potential.

Not to offend the DBZ people out there and I know there are a lot of you, but I still haven't quite figured out what the major draw is. I watched almost the whole series myself and it's okay but I didn't think it was that great. Oh well, ~sigh~ maybe I've finally reached that age where certain animes don't reach the child in me or something anymore. ~shrug~

Anywhooooo

Gundam Wing in a nutshell is about 5 young men who are sent to Earth by 5 different Scientist's. Each one equiped with a techinically advanced mobile fighting suit called a Gundam. Their mission: to defeat OZ and the Earth Sphere Alliance and to bring peace and freedom to the people of outerspace.

A little more in depth.

Called Operation Meteor or Operation M it was supposed to be top secret and the pilots were supposed to sneak into Earth's atmosphere passing themselves off as meteors. Unfortunately there must have been a traitor somewhere, though we never find out one way or another, because OZ and the Alliance already seem to know they are coming.

Though four of these young pilots are able to pass through unhindered. One, Heero Yuy, our hero is pursued by one of OZ's top Officers, Zechs Merquise (also called The Lightening Count/Baron). Zechs uses one of OZ's new Mobile suits (the leo) to try and take the enemy Gundam and it's pilot down. He does this by literally just wrapping his mobile suit around Heero's then bailing out. Both suits and Heero crash into the sea and are dragged under.

Heero is somehow able to escape and washes up on the beach. He is found there by Miss Relena Darlian (can we all go eeeewww!) who is walking home, after having just returned with her father from outerspace. She was on the shuttle that Heero almost shot down because it was in his way. Heero awakes and asks her "Did you see?" then tries to kill himself with a self destruct device in his flight suit but the salt water must have damaged it and he fails. Heero still manages to get away but not before stirring Relena's interest and curiosity.

Over a period of time and please don't ask how long. The one thing that this series handled badly was time framing. Over a period of time OZ tracks and at least gets the basic information on the other 4 Gundams, while we get to see the Pilots.

Trowa Barton joins a circus as a clown and accrobat, here he meets Cathy Bloom. (In het situations he is almost always paired with her but I'm sorry she always treated him more like she was his big sister.) Wufei Chang is in the Asian zone gathering armaments and information for a large strike on the Victoria Military Base, one of the main bases where mobile suit pilots are trained and suits are manufactured and stored.

Quatre, along with his personal body guards and military strike force the Macquanaut Corp are hunkered down in relative comfort in one of his family's many Earth bound homes. They are wreaking some general havoc and waiting for the call for a true mission.

In the mean time Heero has gotten himself together, recovered from his swim in the sea and his botched suicide attempt and shows up at the same boarding school where Relena is. Good idea, an easy way to hide in plain sight. Of course this only makes her even more curious and determined to learn his secret. In a minor confrontation after classes where she tries to invite him to her birthday party, Heero tells her he will 'destroy' her. Though honestly it seemed like less a threat than simply a warning for her own safty.

About the most we know about Duo during that first bit is that he is out there doing what he loves best. Causing OZ all the trouble he can and being the great destroyer. He also notices that OZ and the Alliance are doing an awful lot of searching for something at the bottom of the ocean and that brings him to the same area where Heero is.

Our favorite pairing meets for the first time at this point. Duo has located Heero's Gundam and is trying to bring it up remotely using his own. He figures heck it's a Gundam he can at least salvage it for the parts when he needs to make repairs to his own. Unknown to him Heero is very close and preparing to destroy his suit to keep it out of enemy hands. Heero might have succeeded if Relena hadn't showed up and interrupted him.

Heero turns on her with a gun and gets shot by Duo who arrives on the scene and mistakenly takes him for the bad guy of the situation. But he's thwarted by Relena who proceeds to stupify him by protecting the boy who'd just been holding a gun on her. Distracted when Deathscythe and the Winged Gundam surface earlier than he expected and trying to keep Relena from seeing the emerging Gundams so that 'he' won't have to shoot 'her'. Duo loses Heero who makes a break for the missiles he's stolen and prepared for destroying his mobile suit.

Heero smashes the controls on the bundle of large missiles, which causes their engines to ignite rocketing themselves and Heero (in yet another suicide attempt) towards the rising Gundams. Once he is certain that his mission is complete, he throws himself towards the ocean and is knocked unconcious by the impact of hitting the water at such a high speed, but not killed as he intended.

Duo in the meantime is watching in shocked horror as the missiles hit both his Gundam and Heero's, crying out in despair as he watches the explosion. (Duo, Quatre and Wufei all seem to have a very strong attachment to their Gundams and honestly vice versa. Heero, later becomes attached to a even more advanced suit called Wing Zero. Trowa never appears to be attached to any of the Gundams he pilots.) It's at this point that Duo realizes that Heero had to have been the Pilot of the mobile suit he was trying to retrieve.

Heero is pulled from the water apparently by Relena (probably aided a little by Duo and her chauffer/companion, Pagan.) and ends up in an Alliance Military hospital strapped to an exam table. I'm still trying to figure out how looking at that straight white room with almost no markings, Heero is literally able to pinpoint his location right down to what room on what floor in what building. Anyway, Duo must have kept track of where Heero was taken and followed him there. Duo rescues Heero by blowing a wall out of the side of the building and the two of them leap from the fiftieth floor.

Duo has some kind of a personal propeller on the end of a cane, that reminds me of an umbrella everytime I see it, that glides him safely to the ground. Heero has a parachute but he doesn't open it until it's almost too late. I don't know if this was yet another possible attempt at suicide or if he was actually injured or dopey enough that he just didn't think about it until he heard Relena scream. How he survived I'll never know. It was a fifty story drop to the side of a rock and sand cliff and then head over heals down that to the beach where he gets up on his own. Duo helps him with a shoulder to lean on and then they're off to safty. Duo is pretty cute in that he never stops talking, and all the way down to the ground he's muttering and fuming about nightmares and suicidal pilots and that's gratitude for you. LOL

God can you believe that is only about the first four episodes a total of about eighty or so minutes of tv time and I was majorly paraphrasing????? ~LOL~ I'm going to stop there until I see what everyone thinks and whether they want more of the story. If they do then the next section will introduce my favorite pairing. Quatre and Trowa. If this pair wasn't in love from the first time they laid eyes on each other and meant to be so, then someone somewhere really messed up. These two were so obvious, especially later, that it was just beautiful to watch.

Click the pic of the Pilots to find out a little bit more about them.