Published in the west by Tokyopop
Price - $12.99 (US) - Find it on www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk

Technical Manuals Overview

These are small pocket sized books released in the west by Tokyopop. They are translated versions of books from the Data Collections series in Japan, which were rehashings of the superior Entertainment Bibles. Each technical manual comes in standard English format, left to right and front to back, with roughly half of it devoted to a colour section for lineart and half in black & white, mainly text with illustrations and extra lineart. Several of the books have a few mislabelled illustrations in the black and white section and some mistranslated text (usually quite obvious if you know the subject matter).

What's in the book

The first translated technical manual covered the Gundam Wing TV series (note that it does not cover Endless Waltz). The colour lineart section is printed very badly. The size of the book means that the pictures are never going to be very large at the best of times so printing them in a bitty and vague fashion (a standard inkjet printer could do better) is of no help. The sizing looses the integrity of many of the actual lines so the lineart looks really quite bad. The information in the colour section is nothing more than you can find on MAHQ, those trading card-style speed, armour and strength values abound (still no proper specs bar weight & height). There are some benefits to the lineart section - you get a few more angles on mobile suits and weaponry than you are likely to find online. Of course it's unlikely to be a very clear picture. In-between each section of mobile suits is a brief rundown of some of the major events from the AC timeline.

The black and white section is where you might facefault as there is actual explanatory material on the technology of Wing. Avoiding the mistake made by later technical manuals, the Wing one prints this half of the book as black on white background. The first section gives a brief two page history of mobile suits in the AC universe. It adds a little to what you will have learnt from the show by covering the first suits in AC, pre-Tallgeese (no pictures though). The next two sections attempt to flesh out some vague background for the weaponry and armour of the Gundams. There is a very vague (yet more than you'd gather from the show) explanation of the beam and buster ballistic weapons. Whilst this doesn't explain it overly well, it is a good place to start from if you wanted to theorise their workings yourself.

The ever mysterious Gundanium is given a whole two pages of backstory here which gives some fuzzy explanations of how the alloy is formed and its history in the AC universe. The next two sections cover the other technological grey areas of mobile dolls and the zero system. Mobile dolls are given a fair description as well as history but the Zero system gets what seems to be even less said about it than in the show.

The final textual sections of the book go over colony history (the early rebellion and the original Heero Yuy), UESA (United Earth Sphere Alliance), OZ, White Fang and Earth Sphere United Nations (ESUN). These basically flesh out the backstory for the major bodies of power in the show and their chops and changes during the Wing TV series itself (so most of it will be familiar but it is nice to have it all collected together). There are a few little things in there that you may have not been aware of, such as Quinze's early slot in life as a Heero Yuy supporter and White Fang's existence for 55 years. There is also a timeline in there, albeit brief, under the rather interesting complete colony history. The book finishes with some pointless comparison tables of the Gundams and mobile suits (and their silly values) and lineart of the vehicles not already covered and characters (a section not usually worth much).

Opinion

On a later and more careful read of this book I found it better than my initial impressions so many months before. The text is interesting in parts, to varying degrees. However the lineart section is quite horrible and provides little extra or of use to anyone. So really it's a question of whether the text section interests you enough to pay for the rest. I'd have thought most Wing fans would know most of it anyway (with the exception of the welcome and yet vague technical explanations) so it would be rather redundant for them. If you're not a Wing fanatic then don't bother. If you really love Wing then make sure you really want all this information you probably know most of.

Written to Rage Against The Machine - Settle For Nothing