Tomino “Kill ‘Em All” Yoshiyuki strikes back at his own creation after five years of dormancy with this first sequel to Mobile Suit Gundam. You can say that he struck back with one heck of a vengeance. Zeta Gundam is a lot darker, a lot grittier and a whole lot more epic than its predecessor.
The staple of any good Gundam series is, of course, the story and the characters. Alliances, relationships, promises… all these are made and broken. As far as characters, almost every cast member gets his or her time in the spotlight and manages not to waste any of it. They show their strengths, weaknesses, nightmares, dreams, everything; you really get to know these characters. This adds more to the already exciting battle scenes (since everyone is already trying to kill one another). And as mobile suits fights and lives are lost, the background music makes it all seem somewhat beautiful.
Again, this series is a sequel, so one might need to know a few names, places and terms, but they mention them enough to get the relevance across. My only main gripe with this series is that it purposefully leaves itself for the sequel, Double Zeta. Though it’s not a bad way to keep the epic going, I still think that this series could have stood alone without one.
I suggest anyone who wants to get into Gundam, needs an action fix or loves hard-boiled science-fiction and drama to watch this series. And don’t worry, it’s “monotonous-bishounen“-free!
MUSICIAN: ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM Character Name Homage: Senile Old Men FILM: DESPERADO Character Design Influence: Asimov & Katerina Scene Influence: Bar shoot-out FILM: BONNIE & CLYDE Scene Influence: Asimov & Katerina’s last stand
Session #2 – Stray Dog Strut
SONG: STRAY CAT STRUT Title Homage PUPPET SHOW: PUNCH AND JUDY Character Name Homage & Design Influence: Big Shot Hosts Way Of The Dragon FILM: WAY OF THE DRAGON Referenced In Dialogue FILM: GAME OF DEATH Scene Influence: Spike VS Hakim
Session #3 – Honky Tonk Woman
SONG: HONKY TONK WOMAN Title Homage FILM: POKER ALICE Referenced In Dialogue ALBUM: ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS Location Name Homage: Casino is named Spiders From Mars MUSICIAN: CHARLIE PARKER Referenced In Dialogue
Session #5 – Ballad Of Fallen Angels
SONG: FALLEN ANGELS Title Homage LANDMARK: NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL Location Influence FILM: THE KILLER Scene Influence: Church shoot-out FILM: THE CROW Scene Influence: The fall of Spike
Session #6 – Sympathy For The Devil
SONG: SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL Title Homage
Session #7 – Heavy Metal Queen
MYTHOLOGY: TERPSICHORE THE MUSE Character Name Homage: VT (Victoria Terpsichore) ACTOR: WOODY ALLEN Location Name Homage: Woody’s Ice Cream Parlor Character Design Influence: Decker
Session #8 – Waltz For Venus
COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS: HUEY, DEWY AND LOUIE Character Name Homage: Shuttle Hijackers FILM: ENTER THE DRAGON Scene Influence: Spike’s kung-fu lesson
Session #9 – Jamming With Edward
ALBUM: JAMMING WITH EDWARD Title Homage FILM CHARACTER: HAL (FROM 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) Character Design Influence: MPU Celebrity: Uri Gellar Character Name Homage: Uri Kellerman
Session #10 – Ganymede Elegy
TELEVISION CHARACTERS: BAKER AND PONCH (From CHiPs) Character Design Influence: Baker Ponchorero
Session #11 – Toys In The Attic
SONG: TOYS IN THE ATTIC Title Homage MOVIE: ALIEN Plot Influence
Session #14 – Bohemian Rhapsody
SONG: BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY Title Homage
Session #15 – My Funny Valentine
SONG: MY FUNNY VALENTINE Title Homage Referenced In Dialogue USS Enterprise NCC-1701-B FILM: USS ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-B Subtle Homage: A cryo-chamber shares the same number MYTHOLOGY: BACCHUS THE GOD OF WINE Character Name Homage: Doctor Baccus Referenced In Dialogue FAIRY TALE: SLEEPING BEAUTY Referenced In Dialogue Closing Sentence Homage FAIRY TALE: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Closing Line Homage
Session #16 – Black Dog Serenade
FILM: CON AIR Plot Influence
Session #17 – Mushroom Samba
SONG: WATERMELON MAN Character Design Influence: Mellon Man FILM: COFFY Character Name Homage/Design Influence: Coffee FILM: SHAFT Character Name Homage/Design Influence: Shaft FILM: DJANGO Character Design Influence: Shaft, coffin dragging SONG: STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN Referenced In Dialogue
Session #18 – Speak Like A Child
SONG: SPEAK LIKE A CHILD Title Homage FOLKTALE: URASHIMA TARO Referenced In Dialogue FAIRY TALE: THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE Subtle Homage: Carrier company mascots TELEVISION: BEVERLY HILLS 90210 Scene Influence: Video Expert watches a similar show
Session #19 – Wild Horses
SONG: WILD HORSES Title Homage LEGEND: BABE RUTH (GEORGE HERMAN RUTH) Character Name Homage: Starship Pirates ACTOR: JAMES DOOHAN Character Name Homage: Doohan TELEVISION CHARACTER: MILES O’BRIEN (FROM STAR TREK) Character Name Homage: Miles TELEVISION CHARACTER: REG BARCLAY (FROM STAR TREK) Character Name Homage: Reg the parts dealer FILM: STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT Plot Influence SPACE SHUTTLE: COLUMBIA Scene Influence: Used to rescue Spike from Earth’s atmosphere
Session #20 – Pierrot Le Fou
FILM: PIERROT LE FOU Title Homage Character Name Homage: Tongpu (Mad Pierrot) COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS: THE JOKER AND THE PENGUIN Character Design Influence: Tongpu (Mad Pierrot) SONG: ON THE RUN Scene Influence: Tongpu’s origin
Session #21 – Boogie-Woogie Feng-Shui
FILM: THE BLUES BROTHERS Character Design Influence: Blue Snake Mobsters
Session #22 – Cowboy Funk
CRIMINAL: THEODORE “TEDDY” KACZYNSKI (UNABOMBER) Character Design Influence: Ted Bower (Teddy Bomber, TB) PICTURE BOOK: COWBOY ANDY Character Design Influence: Andy Von De Oniyate Referenced In Dialogue LEGEND: MUSASHI MIYAMOTO Character Design Influence: Musashi The Bounty Hunter (Andy) Referenced In Dialogue
Session #23 – Brain Scratch
CRIMINAL: MARSHALL APPLEWHITE Character Design Influence: Doctor Londes CULT: HEAVEN’S GATE Plot Influence VIDEOGAME CHARACTER: LARA CROFT Subtle Homage: Similar-looking standee in toy store
Session #24 – Hard Luck Woman
SONG: HARD LUCK WOMAN Title Homage FILM: COOL HAND LUKE Scene Influence: The eating of the eggs
Session #25 – The Real Folk Blues (Part I)
ALBUM: THE REAL FOLK BLUES Title Homage SHORT STORY: SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO Referenced In Dialogue
Session #26 – The Real Folk Blues (Part II)
FOLKTALE: HYAKUMANKAI IKITA NEKO Referenced In Dialogue FILM: A BETTER TOMORROW II Scene Influence: The storming of the Red Dragon Headquarters SONG: CARRY THAT WEIGHT Closing Line Homage
Session XX – Mish-Mash Blues
SONG: QUE SERA SERA Segment Title Homage SONG: WALK THIS WAY Segment Title Homage SONG: YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT Segment Title Homage MUSICIAN: ARETHA FRANKLIN Segment Title Homages SONG: INSTANT KARMA Segment Title Homage SONG: SUGAR MOUNTAIN Segment Title Homage SONG: IF SIX WAS NINE Segment Title Homage SONG: MY FAVORITE THINGS Segment Title Homage SONG: UNFINISHED SYMPATHY Segment Title Homage SONG: WHOLE LOTTA LOVE Segment Title Homage SONG: DAYDREAM BELIEVER Segment Title Homage FILM: LOOK BACK IN ANGER Segment Title Homage SONG: IT’S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE Segment Title Homage
The Movie – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
SONG: KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR Title Homage VIDEOGAME: RALLY X Subtle Homage: Lee Samson plays a similar game FILM: DIRTY HARRY Character Design Homage: Spike FILM: CAPRICORN ONE Scene Influence: Biplanes rescue mission
Burrard is an underground station on the Expo Line of Metro Vancouver’s SkyTrain rapid transit system. The station is located in Downtown Vancouver on Burrard Street, where Melville and Dunsmuir Streets meet, and is the western terminus of the R5 Hastings St that provides service to Simon Fraser University.
The station serves Vancouver’s financial district and is within walking distance of the Coal Harbour and West End neighbourhoods. The station is accessible via the surface from Art Phillips Park or via the underground shopping centres of the Royal Centre and Bentall Centre skyscraper complexes.
Burrard station opened in 1985 and is named for nearby Burrard Street, which in turn is named for Sir Harry Burrard-Neale. Prior to the opening of the Canada Line in 2009, Burrard station was the northern terminus of the 98 B-Line and was served by a number of bus routes that provided service to Vancouver’s southern suburbs of Delta, Richmond, Surrey, and White Rock. In 2016, bus service to the eastern suburbs of the Tri-Cities was discontinued when the Millennium Line’s Evergreen Extension opened.
In May 2018, preliminary plans were revealed to renovate and expand Burrard station. On July 13, 2021, TransLink announced that it would close the station for two years beginning in early 2022 to allow construction for the rebuild.
The structure housing the surface station entrance was designed to resemble Victorian-era British railway stations, with a peaked glass roof. The station was designed by the Austrian architecture firm Architektengruppe U-Bahn.
When originally opened, the station’s only underground passage was to the Bentall Centre skyscraper complex. A connection to the Royal Centre complex was constructed some years later, while an anticipated underground passage to the Park Place skyscraper across the street was never built. The construction of a new east entrance to the station, at the southeast corner of the intersection of Burrard and Dunsmuir, was considered as part of upgrades to the station included in TransLink’s 10-Year Vision, but the cost of such an addition was higher than expected and TransLink turned to reviewing options to improve the existing entrance.
Like Granville, the station was built inside the Dunsmuir Tunnel and has a distinctive platform design. The inbound track (to Waterfront) is stacked on top of the outbound track (to King George and Production Way–University), with the inbound platform being one level above the outbound platform.
Burrard station is one of four SkyTrain stations on the Expo Line that serve Downtown Vancouver. It has connections with many TransLink bus routes in Metro Vancouver; these buses serve the city of Vancouver, Burnaby, the city and district of North Vancouver, and West Vancouver.
Before the Cincinnati Zoo tragedy involving a little boy and a giant gorilla, there have been other, similar encounters that ended without the primate being shot to death. In 1986, a 5-year-old boy named Levan Merritt fell into a gorilla enclosure and was knocked unconscious. A silverback gorilla named Jambo stroked the boy’s back as if to soothe him. In 1996, a 3-year-old boy tumbled more than 20 feet into the gorilla exhibit. She placed him near the cage’s door and stepped back as zookeepers picked up the child.
Even though we’re in a new era of ”Star Wars,“ it’s always good to look back at where we’ve been in the long history of ”Star Wars“ novels. After Disney bought LucasFilm and got the ball rolling on new “Star Wars” movies, they wiped clean the entire Expanded Universe of narratively connected novels, comics and video games from the official “Star Wars” timeline. Gone, yes, but not forgotten. Among all the novels that were published over three decades, there’s still plenty of gems to be found in the defunct Expanded Universe.
“Tales From Jabba’s Palace” (1996)
The “Star Wars” universe, being massive and full of oddities, was really well served by a series of short story anthologies like this, which also happens to be the best one. It explores a lot of the strange things we saw in Jabba’s palace in “Return of the Jedi,” and it’s never afraid to get real weird — which in this case, at least, is a great thing.
“Outbound Flight” (2006)
Functions as a prequel to Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy, finally detailing the Outbound Flight mission we’d heard mentioned so many times for over a decade — and it turned out to be a lot more involved than we’d thought. “Outbound Flight,” which occurred during the events of the prequel trilogy, involved a group of Jedi Masters and a number of colonists taking an expedition beyond the galaxy in search of extra-galactic Force users — but on their way out they flew through the Unknown Regions of the galaxy, and ran afoul of some of the more unsavory alien civilizations there. And also Thrawn, whose species of blue near-humans hails from that part of space.
“Edge of Victory: Conquest” (2001)
Late in the run of the Expanded Universe came single longform stories published as a series — the longest of these was the “New Jedi Order,” about a race of religious fanatic aliens called the Yuuzhan Vong invading the galaxy. “Conquest” was the eighth in that series, and it was the first, ah, humanizing look at the Yuuzhan Vong society. It turned out that, like any other society, the Yuuzhan Vong has its downtrodden folks who don’t like the murderous establishment, and teenage Anakin (youngest son of Han and Leia) carries out a dangerous mission with one such downtrodden soul.
“Isard’s Revenge” (1999)
This “X-Wing” one-shot novel is essentially the payoff to the entire long history of the elite Rogue Squadron that was told over a number of novels and comic books. Every loose end tied off and many stories, including some not part of the Rogue arc, re-contextualized in a really interesting way. “Isard’s Revenge” is the kind of story that can only happen within a massive universe with a detailed history — it’s the kind of story that makes a lot of old bad storytelling feel like it was worth it.
“Han Solo and the Lost Legacy” (1980)
One of the most fascinating aspects of the “Star Wars” Expanded Universe was how the early authors were kinda making up how everything worked and casually establishing hugely important things. Though, it was obvious nobody knew what they were doing and most of the books were pretty terrible as details were filled in at random. The three “Han Solo Adventures” were released in 1979 and 1980 — and they work because they tell small stories rather than the sort of galaxy-shaking narratives we would see every couple months throughout the ’90s. “Lost Legacy,” the third one, sees Han going after the fabled treasure of Xim the Despot at the edge of the galaxy. It’s a great story, and an early emblem for the flexibility of “Star Wars” as a setting.
“Hand of Thrawn” duology (1997)
Grand Admiral Thrawn has been dead for a decade, and the New Republic is on the verge of an official peace accord with the beaten-down remnants of the Empire. But Thrawn’s legacy, and plans he’d set in motion long before threaten that peace. This is why nerds love Thrawn so much. In the Expanded Universe, he casts a shadow that — though it’s a different kind of shadow — is nearly as long as that of Darth Vader and the Emperor.
“Wedge’s Gamble” (1996)
The second book in the “X-Wing” series recounts the Liberation of Coruscant by the New Republic a few years after “Return of the Jedi.” It’s a seemingly impossible task — the Empire is still extremely well armed, and Corsucant is protected by an impenetrable energy shield. So they clandestinely send in the new Rogue Squadron, which had been rebuilt with squad members had a number of other martial skills beyond being great pilots. The Rogues are tasked with bringing down the planetary shield by whatever means possible, and as they’re on a deadline, this thing gets hairy as hell.
“Dark Force Rising” (1993)
I don’t hold up Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy with the sort of reverence a lot of fans do, but the middle book, “Dark Force Rising,” is really great. Grand Admiral Thrawn has reunited much of the remains of the Empire and is ripping the New Republic a new one. Then a wild card enters the fray: the mythical Katana Fleet, 200 massive droid-controlled dreadnoughts that had disappeared from known space due to a computer error during the Clone Wars decades earlier. By chance it’s been found, and it’s a race to see which side can claim them first — because the Katana fleet would seriously tilt the balance of the war.
“Enemy Lines” duology (2002)
Late in the “New Jedi Order,” famed Rebel hero Wedge Antilles is charged with holding the planet Borleias from the Yuuzhan Vong, and it’s one hell of a thing. Massively outgunned, Wedge pulls a whole lot of seat-of-your-pants gambits out of his ass — and this pair of books, authored by the late Aaron Allston, is full of great and witty dialogue of the sort you just never got from other “Star Wars” authors. I treat “Enemy Lines” as a singular entity because the two sort of function as a single book split in half.
“Cloak of Deception” (2001)
During the years when the prequel trilogy was released, a lot of novels and comics were commissioned more or less just to clean up the many narrative problems with those films. In “The Phantom Menace,” for example, fans complain about all the talk of trade routes and taxes — but the real problem was just that we didn’t understand what any of it meant just from the movie. Enter “Cloak of Deception,” which gave the Trade Federation’s beef with the Republic exactly the context it needed and by extension improving that bad movie in a real way.
“Wraith Squadron” (1998)
The story of the Wraiths is unique among “Star Wars” stories in a lot of ways. It follows famed Rebel pilot Wedge Antilles as he assembles a hybrid starfighter/foot soldier squadron of emotionally unstable washouts — in hopes that such a group might approach apparently normal war scenarios in really unpredictable ways, and that’s exactly what happens. It’s the most human of all the “Star Wars” stories, full of truth.
“Revenge of the Sith” (2005)
In a stroke of brilliance, LucasFilm had one of its best “Star Wars” authors, Matthew Woodring Stover, write the novelization of “Revenge of the Sith.” It’s so good it might trick you into remembering fondly the awful movie on which it’s based. It’s also notable as a film novelization because it leans heavily on the Expanded Universe, with other books being referenced heavily. And that’s why it qualifies for this list — a lot of stuff here isn’t part of the canon anymore.
“Starfighters of Adumar” (1999)
The late Aaron Allston authored many of the best Expanded Universe stories, and “Starfighters of Adumar” is where really got to cut loose. Wedge Antilles and pals Tycho, Hobbie and Janson, are sent as diplomats to a newly discovered planet full of people who pretty don’t give a shit about anyone who isn’t a fighter pilot. It’s incessantly funny and weird — a great little side story that’s as witty as they get in this universe.
“Iron Fist” (1998)
The Wraiths, now a unit with some missions under their belts, go undercover as a mercenary pirate gang in hopes of being hired by the biggest Imperial threat at that time, the Warlord Zsinj. It’s harrowing as hell, and an escalation of the themes established in “Wraith Squadron,” as the group struggles (and often fails) to keep it together mentally.
“Traitor” (2002)
The peak of the “New Jedi Order,” and where the purpose of its overall narrative arc was revealed. In the ’90s, the “Star Wars” Expanded Universe got really moralistic and stuffy, and “Traitor” was a total refutation of that approach. It’s the darkest “Star Wars” story ever written, but it serves a positive agenda in the end: Maybe the Force isn’t black and white and the Jedi don’t need to stand around wondering about the moral implications of every little thing they do. It was a really great change for storytelling in the “Star Wars” universe.
2029 — A female government cyber agent and the Internal Bureau of Investigations are hot on the trail of a “The Puppet Master” — a computer virus capable of invading cybernetic brains and altering its victim’s memory.
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