The Specter Hanging Over the Nostalgic Climax of ‘Gundam GQuuuuuuX’

The final episode of Gundam GQuuuuuuX asks its characters, new generations and remixes of acquainted faces alike, to think about new potentialities and futures for themselves free from the established concepts and histories of the Gundam exhibits that got here earlier than them. However whereas doing so, one nostalgic allowance exposes that GQuuuuuuX itself was unable to let go of that previous in a singularly damning means.

The twelfth and last episode of Gundam GQuuuuuuX is essentially constructed on the revelation that its whole setting, a re-imagined imaginative and prescient of Gundam‘s Common Century setting, has been made by a model of the Newtype Lalah Sune from a actuality the place she was saved from demise in battle in opposition to the Gundam by the sacrifice of her version of Char Aznable, sending her right into a despair that shattered actuality, as she mentally looked for, and created, timelines that attempted to think about a risk the place Char survived.

Already itself an alternate imagining of comparable occasions within the unique 1979 anime, the place Lalah perishes on the Gundam and its pilot Amuro Ray’s arms, this data is relayed to the viewers and GQuuuuuuX‘s younger protagonist Machu alike by a psionic flashback within the type of a contemporary but retro recreation of scenes from the forty first episode of the unique present, “A Cosmic Glow.” Because the recreation of Char, Amuro, and Lalah’s battle performs out, acquainted voices fill of their roles: Char and Lalah are as soon as once more voiced by their unique actors from Cellular Go well with Gundam, Shuichi Ikeda and Keiko Han, respectively, however Amuro is left oddly silent. (In a enjoyable twist for the English-language dub, Keith Silverstein and Lipica Shah, who voiced Char and Lalah within the adaptation of Gundam: The Origin, briefly reprise their roles for this sequence.)

That’s, till in a while within the climax of the episode, the place Tōru Furuya—who has performed Amuro throughout anime, movies, video games, and extra for 46 years—reprised his position as soon as extra. It’s for a singular line of dialogue, performing because the religious voice of the titular Gundam GQuuuuuuX to precise its want to not see Lalah endure any additional. However regardless, it’s new materials from the unique voice of Amuro Ray. At one level, that may have been a triumphant huzzah, however in 2025, listening to Furuya having recorded new materials strikes a way more difficult tone for Gundam followers.

In Could 2024, in an interview with the Japanese tabloid Shūkan Bunshun, Furuya (who was 70 on the time) revealed that he had engaged in an extramarital affair for 4 and a half years with a girl virtually 40 years his junior. In the identical interview, he additionally admitted getting right into a bodily altercation with the girl, in addition to pressuring her into terminating a being pregnant in the course of the course of their relationship.

The response to the scandal in Japan was rapid. Furuya is maybe probably the most well-known voice actors within the nation, recognized for his position not simply as Amuro, but in addition as Sailor Moon‘s Tuxedo Masks, Dragon Ball‘s Yamcha, Sabo in One Piece, Pegasus Seiya in Saint Seiya, Rei Furuya in Detective Conan, and plenty of extra roles in a profession that spanned virtually six a long time of labor. Inside a month of the discharge of the interview and Furuya’s public apology on Twitter (which has since been locked), the actor had been dropped from a task within the then-upcoming Atlus RPG Metaphor Re:Fantazio, and Furuya announced that he would step down from his roles in One Piece and Detective Conan. Later that very same yr, Toei introduced that Ryōta Suzuki would exchange Furuya as Yamcha in Dragon Ball: Daima.

However Bandai Namco, the proprietor of Gundam studio Dawn, stayed quiet over whether or not or not Furuya would proceed to voice Amuro Ray, as he had throughout dozens of Gundam works. In June 2024, the corporate despatched an announcement to Yahoo Japan’s Meikou Kawamura stating that the corporate was present process “a cautious consideration to cope with [the situation around Furuya],” declining to remark additional. In October that yr, Bandai announced that Furuya would reprise his position as Amuro alongside Ikeda’s Char as soon as extra in Gundam ALC Encounter, a brief movie to be broadcast as a particular wall projection by the life-sized statue of the Nu Gundam in Fukuoka.

GQuuuuuuX had been in improvement for a number of years earlier than Furuya’s scandal had emerged—planning on the collection, in collaboration with Evangelion studio Khara, started as early as 2018, probably even earlier than Furuya’s affair had even begun. It’s likewise tough to know if any a part of the collection was rewritten to maneuver focus away from Amuro showing in any capability: the character is explicitly absent from GQuuuuuuX‘s remix of the occasions of the unique Gundam and by no means really named when allusions are made to the character, solely referred to in passing because the pilot of the Federation’s white Cellular Go well with, whereas GQuuuuuuX focuses as an alternative on Char and Lalah as its major legacy characters. And once more, even when Amuro would’ve naturally had dialogue within the finale’s recreation of the occasions of “A Cosmic Glow” alongside Ikeda and Han’s return as Char and Lalah, the character is silent. However from what’s publicly recognized in regards to the improvement of the collection at this level, we are able to’t definitively say if these have been intentional artistic decisions or requirements born out of trying to distance from Furuya.

But when they even have been the latter, it might make little sense to then deliver Furuya again to offer a single line of dialogue anyway. The brand new variations of Char and Lalah in GQuuuuuuX recast new actors instead of Ikeda and Han, and, with Furuya’s scandal breaking months earlier than GQuuuuuuX had been publicly announced, there was loads of time between it and the ultimate episode’s broadcast to forged a alternative actor, even when it wanted to be a soundalike to nonetheless talk to audiences the connection to Amuro and the unique Gundam. Was that connection so very important that there was no different alternative?

It appears merely as an alternative that, not like different studios, Bandai was merely unwilling to let go of Furuya’s hyperlink to the legacy of Gundam but—despite GQuuuuuuX‘s personal thematic messages about the necessity to transfer on and picture new potentialities for the collection’ previous and future, leaving a conflicting mark on an in any other case forward-looking finish to the collection.

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