Anime Review for Gundam SEED MSV Astray

"Gundam SEED MSV Astray OVA" is an interesting two-episode short anime set in the Cosmic Era which is the timeline of the Gundam SEED universe. These two brief episodes merely detail a side-story within Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny as one episode focuses on a young boy named Lowe Gear, a man named Gai Murakamo, and another man named Edward Harrelson. These two characters are present in the manga but are not present in either Gundam SEED or Gundam SEED Destiny. In short, these two episodes focus on these three characters and their Gundams. It's unknown if this two-episode series is going to be released to the United States. The chances of it are very unlikely as side-stories are rarely licensed and dubbed before being released to North America.

The first episode sheds a somewhat comical light as Lowe Gule is pretty similar to Bitt Cloud the main protagonist of another popular mecha-themed anime series called "Zoids". The two episodes are labeled "Red" and "Blue". The first short episode is called "Gundam SEED MSV Astray - Red Frame" as it goes into detail of the characters of a new group that is introduced to the Gundam SEED universe called the "Junk Guild" which have a treaty with the Earth Alliance, the Orb Kingdom, and ZAFT. In a sense, these short episodes look to be a means to promote these new model Gundams.

The Red Frame episode revolves around Lowe who is a "Natural" but is a genius with computers and technology that's up to par to "Coordinator" level as he's assisted by an advanced computer AI dubbed as "Sasshi" which means "eight" in Japanese. The episode shows Lowe in action as he pilots the Red Frame dubbed as the MBF-P02 Astray Red Frame which is one of the special Gundam Astray units created by the Orb Kingdom. In the SEED universe, Lowe's Gundam is a very original concept as it wields a mobile-suit katana. In a sense, this is one episode within the Gundam SEED universe where one can watch some samurai sword action.