By The Mayfly of Space
On the Lili Marleen, Cima Garahau wakes up from a nightmare about gassing a colony. In the nightmare, Cima and her men float over one of the colony windows and react with horror to what they’ve done. A battle alert is sounded, and the external catapult opens to launch Cima’s custom Gelgoog Marine. She turns on her monitor and watches Aiguille Delaz blast the Earth Federation in a televised speech. Cima takes off and heads for battle.
The Mayfly of Space 2
At the end of the One Year War, the Delaz Fleet retreated from the battlefield of the space fortress A Baoa Qu. Meanwhile, Cima’s Gelgoog Marine squad engages the EFF, and her unit takes damage while she converses with wingman Geil Hunt. On October 23, UC 0083, Anavel Gato returned to space with the stolen Gundam GP02A Physalis as part of Operation Stardust. Gato emerges from his HLV and uses his rifle against EFF units before engaging with his beam saber. Cima then arrives in her unit, and Gato recalls an earlier confrontation where she was enraged at an officer named Asakura, who demanded that she hand her ship over to the EFF. She sortied to attack his ship, but Gato blocked her path with his Prototype Rick Dom Zwei. He implored her to act like a soldier and not be hasty, but she countered that she didn’t want to hear his lectures. Gato said they must prepare to rise again, so she asked what that had to do with her. Several Dra-C Customs arrive as Cima fights with Gato. Later, Cima sits in a bar on the Moon and hears on the news that Geil turned himself in to the EFF and will be executed for war crimes. After returning to space, Gato attacked the naval review at Confeito Island with the nuclear warhead, inflicting major damage. At the same time, Zeon forces seize control of two space colonies in transit and cause them to collide and put one on a trajectory for Earth. Cima conducts a secret meeting with EFF officer Bask Om and gives him all the details of Operation Stardust. Elsewhere, Anaheim Electronics fires a laser beam at one of the colonies to activate its engines. Kou Uraki’s Gundam GP03 Dendrobium deploys as Cima receives her new mobile suit, the Gerbera-Tetra. Cima engages Kou after he destroys the Lili Marleen, and he impales her one the Gundam GP03’s long cannon when she closes in. He then fires the cannon to destroy her suit. The space colony enters the atmosphere and misses its target of Jaburo. Earlier, Cima insults Gato by causing her ship to nearly collide with his.
Produced a quarter century apart, the two Mayfly of Space shorts have one thing in common – they both focus on Cima Garahau. The first short animates a short scene that illustrates her shock at finding out that she’d been tricked into gassing a space colony during Operation British. It does nothing more than show what she was up to right before her official introduction in episode 5. The second short, released in 2016 with the Japanese Blu-ray set, mixes footage from the OVA and the first short, but it also features newly created stills and some limited animation. The new footage jumps back and forth, showing Cima at A Baoa Qu, a post-war confrontation with Gato, a duel with Gato and dirty dealings with Bask Om. The new short doesn’t really do much but create more mobile suit variations in designs and color schemes. Given its 11-minute running time, I would’ve much preferred if it was just a full picture drama that shed more light on Cima’s character rather than recycle old footage I’ve already seen. If you’re a big Cima fan, these shorts are for you, but otherwise they add little to the OVA’s story.
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