So today’s post is about gundam war in the pocket.  Currently this is probably my 2nd favorite gundam anime after 79.  I watched this several months ago so it’s not totally fresh in my memory, so I’m not gonna go in depth, but I will talk about all the major things I wanted to say.

Length

So remember when I was complaining that for gundam GQuuuuuuX that 12 episodes just wasn’t enough time for a gundam story, so the GQuuuuuuX story ended up being pretty mid?  I’ll change that to being it wasn’t enough time for the GQuuuuuuX story specifically.  War in the pocket is the perfect example of a gundam story being done in a short lenght, just 6 30 minute episodes, so a total of 3 hours, 1 hour less than GQuuuuuuX.

Setting

War in the pocket takes place in the same universe during the 1 year war, so it’s taking place in a familiar setting with context that the viewer should already know about.  This removes the need to spend much time familiarizing the viewers with the setting, helping allow war in the pocket to be as short as it is.  That’s about all the connection there is to the rest of the universe though, it doesn’t share any characters from any other gundam anime.  This is something I felt was really important, because gundam UC is a really big universe and it doesn’t just revolve around a single main character, that’s why we have a different MC for each gundam.  This helps make gundam feel more realistic because in real war, you’re gonna hear stories of many different people’s experiences, not just a single person’s.

Art and music

I absolutely love the art style of this series.  This around the time that you start seeing more dull, realistic, and more detailed mobile suits.  The original rx-78-2 gundam was originally supposed to be dull with colors (rx-78-2 real type shown in the pic below), but had to be changed to red, blue, yellow, and white to be more child-friendly for marketing.  The creator of gundam wasn’t really happy about that lmao.  By the time we get to war in the pocket, the gundam franchise is more established already giving the creators more freedom, so war in the pocket has more dull and less flashy of a look to it than some previous gundam anime, though the gundam itself is still the same colors since that’s what people know now.

Additionally, since this was made in 1989, the quality of animation has been improved greatly since the original 1979 gundam.  There’s been a full decade of improvement and refinement, and also a bigger team of animators to work on it, so naturally the art looks so much better and more detailed than it did in the 1979.

As for the music, I absolutely love it.  The OP, Itsuka Sora ni Todoite, is just such a beautiful song, and sometimes I just randomly hear “can’t you see, that you are sweet, oh let me love you so” and then the instrumental following in my mind lmao.  I did also mention that during my favorite anime of each year post.  The ED, Tooi Kioku, is also just so good.  Both songs perfectly fit the vibes of the anime so well.  As for the osts, they remind of me old 90s VNs and dating sim games lmao, I love it.  And the osts also perfectly fit the vibes of this show, it’s just so good.  Speaking of vibes, I love the vibes of this anime so much, I think it’s because it takes place around christmas, which imo has the best vibes of the year.  I’ve heard some people even make it a tradition to watch war in the pocket each christmas, which honestly doesn’t sound that bad of an idea.

Story

Alright, so like I said earlier, they only had about 3 hours to really make this story work, and they did it perfectly.  It wasn’t rushed or anything, it fit like a glove.  But what really impresses me is how in depth this story is despite being a short side story.  Having an 11 year old child has the MC was just perfect.  It allowed the viewers to understand how war looks like to an child that still has their innocence, but then conflict arrives at his home town leading to his innocence being lost.  The loss of childhood innocence is such an interesting theme imo because it’s something everyone experiences, and some great stories like To Kill a Mocking Bird and The Kite Runner have that as a major theme.

Another big thing that you see with this is something that gundam 79 did really well too, and that’s showing that there is no good and bad side.  Zeon is supposed to be the bad guys, but in reality it’s not that simple.  Zeon has evil leaders and some evil people, but war in the pocket is the perfect example of having people on the “bad” side who are great people.  Bernie is a Zeon soldier and follows his superiors orders to use Al for their plans, but Bernie can’t help but protect and care for Al.  Al is just a child and Bernie understands that, and as an adult he feels its his natural responsibility to protect Bernie from harm.  It also gets complicated though when you look at the other sider, the federation.  Christina is a federation pilot and the enemy of Burnie, but she’s also a close friend of Al’s.  This is where you see the separation between the adult world and the child world, and where Al starts to transition over that separation.  The adult world is that Christina and Bernie are enemies that need to fight each other, but Al is friends with both of them (child world) but is forced to have to pick a side basically (adult world).  They really did an amazing job conveying this.  Also gotta point out that “War in the Pocket” is such a perfect name for this anime, bc that really is what it is.

Conclusion

So yeah, that was the major points I wanted to bring up.  There is more than I could say, but I’d have to rewatch to refresh my memory in order to go more in depth.  In all this is just an amazing gundam anime and an amazing story in general.