PoJo Is Full Of Crap-o

Editorial by Chris

November 27, 2000

While browsing through the latest anime releases the other day, I happened to come across a new book called PoJo's Unofficial Total Gundam Wing. For those of you unfamiliar with PoJo, it's a monthly kid's magazine that provides rather poor coverage of the latest in animation on TV. Now, they truly have created a piece of crap with their Gundam Wing guide. The first thing that struck me wrong about this book is the cheap cover which features Heero Yuy's famous shot of self detonating his Wing Gundam. Nearby, there's a cheap picture of the Endless Waltz version of the Wing Gundam Zero. The cover also features a silhouette of Zechs and screen of Heavyarms for no apparent reason. Looking inside the book, I quickly discovered that it is a general guide to the entire Gundam saga. Why they would choose to call it a Gundam Wing guide makes no sense.

I began to look at their introduction to the Gundam saga and quickly found many mistakes. Supposedly, the original series now has 52 episodes, but the movie trilogy only covers 42. And if you think you know the names of your series, how about Gundam G instead of G Gundam? Other mistakes include incorrect episode counts for virtually every series except Wing. The book goes on to discuss the Universal Century saga and gets airdates and years wrong. Moving on to the alternate universes, they give good ratings on G and W, but they blast X out of the water. They constantly call it a 'doomed series' and say that it 'proves that just because it has Gundam in the title doesn't mean it's good.' They also say that this doomed series was canceled three quarters of the way into its 52 episode run. This travesty of a book also attempts to give a rundown of model kits. They praise Universal Century designs, but they say that X's designs (from that doomed series) are 'unusual' and 'not for everyone'.

Another advertised feature is their 'Ultimate Gundam Wing Episode Guide', which is indeed Ultimate. Ultimately bad that is. This so-called guide is nothing more than two or three sentences per episode that sound very similar to the teaser descriptions at the end of each episode. If anyone has an ultimate guide, it's not them. My reviews are incomplete, but they cover much more material than PoJo's complete guide. The bottom line is that this book is just crap. It's written by people who are obviously not real anime fans. They always refer to the 'Gundam cartoons' and hardly ever use the word anime. Their general knowledge of the series looks like it could have come from any number of websites like Gundam Project. I'd be willing to bet money that they only series the writers of this guide have seen is Wing. If that's the case, they have no business writing about other series or making claims that a series is good or bad without having seen it. My advice to these PoJo people: take the time to actually WATCH Gundam. If you're going to make a guide to all of the saga, you'd better damn well be sure it's comprehensive and accurate. And you sure as hell don't call it a 'Gundam Wing' guide which only confuses people. It'd also be nice to have some good production values, because this overpriced book is of no better materials than a magazine. PoJo's staff should find out what anime really is before they attempt to write about it.