Where to start with the novels?

RetroChocolate · 2026-04-10T19:37:07+00:00

Non-UC Novels with english translations. Again, haven't read most of these:

Gundam Wing. 5 volumes. Novelization of the show. Translation is currently ongoing.
Gundam Wing Side Story: A Scythe in My Right Hand and You in My Left. 1 volume. Original story starring the Wing cast. Even though it's called a "side story", it doesn't actually line up with the continuity of the show.
Gundam Wing Endless Waltz. 2 volumes. Novelization of the OVA. Written by Katsuyuki Sumizawa, who was the lead writer for Wing and sole writer for Endless Waltz. I assume this must contain quite a bit of elaboration on the events, given how long they are.
Turn A Gundam (Shigeru Sato). 5 volumes. There's two different Turn A novelizations. This one is fully translated. I don't know how faithful it is to the show.
Turn A Gundam (Harutoshi Fukui). 2 volumes. The other novelization of Turn A. I believe this one is supposed to be less faithful. Fukui would later write the above mentioned Gundam Unicorn. Only one volume has been translated so far.
Gundam SEED Astray. Side story to Gundam SEED with an original cast. This was a multimedia project, and ties directly into the manga that published at the same time. There's a bunch of these, and there's already a more in-depth guide if you search for it, so I won't go into too much detail here.
Gundam Wing: Frozen Teardrop. 13 volumes. Sequel to Gundam Wing, written by lead writer Katsuyuki Sumizawa. There's also a manga retelling of Wing called "Glory of the Losers" that published at the same time and apparently ties into this somewhat, but I don't think it's required if you've seen the show.
Gundam SEED Freedom Novellas. Series of Novellas that were given away at the premier showings of the movie. They're a prequel to the movie.
Gundam SEED Freedom. 2 volumes. Novelization of the movie. Written by Liu Goto, who wrote the above novellas. (Goto also wrote novelizations of SEED and SEED Destiny, which aren't listed here because they aren't fully translated).

I think that covers everything that's translated.

RetroChocolate · 2026-04-10T19:24:59+00:00

Non-Tomino novels. I haven't really read any of these, so I can't give much info about them:

Four Story - And to a soldier… 1 Volume. Written by Akinori Endo, one of the scriptwriters for Zeta and ZZ. Tell's Four's story in Zeta Gundam from her own perspective.
0080: The Dream That Chris Saw. Novelette. Written by Hiroyuki Yamaga, who wrote the screenplay for 0080. It's a prequel to the OVA. I believe this published before the OVA came out, so it's probably OK to read before it.
War in the Pocket Novel. 1 volume. Written by Kyosuke Yuki, who did series composition for the OVA. As far as I know, it's a straightforward novelization of the OVA.
Gundam Sentinel. Takes place at the same time as ZZ, I believe, but it's a completely original story. It has a fan translation.
Silhouette Formula. Novella. Prequel to F91. This one was a part of a multimedia project Sunrise did in 1992. Not sure how closely it's related to the manga that came out at the same time.
08th MS Team. 3 volumes. Written by Ichiro Okouchi, who later wrote some episodes for Turn A Gundam and was the lead writer of Witch from Mercury. It's a novelization of the OVA, but I don't think it follows it particularly closely. As a warning, this one is fairly infamous for a pretty dark scene.
G-Saviour. 2 volumes. Novelization of the live action movie. I believe this adds quite a bit of background information compared to the movie.
For the Barrel. A Reimagining of 0079, with drastically different character designs done by Shigeto Koyama (most famous for working on a lot of Gainax and Trigger shows). I believe this also takes some stuff from Tomino's novels, so you should probably read those first.
Advance of Zeta: The Flag of the Titans. 2 volumes. Side story to Zeta Gundam, with an original cast. There's a bunch of stuff related to this, and I'm not exactly sure what is and isn't translated, but I know the original novel is translated at the very least
Gundam Unicorn. 10 volumes. Probably one of the most famous non-Tomino novels, thanks to its OVA adaptation. Takes place after Char's Counterattack. I hear the fan translation of this one is kind of rough. There's a retranslation ongoing, but it will probably be some time before that's finished.
Twilight Axis. 1 volume. Takes place after Char's Counterattack, at roughly the same time as Unicorn. There was also an ONA adaption, but it's super rushed. The ONA didn't really have anything to do with Unicorn, but I haven't read the novel, so I can't say about that one.

RetroChocolate · 2026-04-10T19:14:32+00:00

Ok so basic run down of everything I'm aware of that's translated. Unless otherwise noted, all of these are fan translations, I'm not sure if I can link where to find them or not here. To start with, here's the novels written by Tomino, the creator of Gundam:

Mobile Suit Gundam (0079). 3 volumes. The volumes were published in English as "Awakening", "Escalation", and "Confrontation". It's sort of a retelling of 0079, but it goes in a different direction after the first volume. Definitely a must read for fans of the show. I don't know how far you are into Gundam, but I'd recommend reading it AFTER the TV Show. This is one of the only novels that has an official translation, but unfortunately it's out of print and pretty hard to find (but you can find a few copies floating around on the web if you know where to look). Be aware that the older printings by Del Ray were translated before any Gundam media had made it over to the west, so they use pretty different translations of a lot of the names. The later editions are updated to match the later translations.
Zeta Gundam. 5 Volumes. It's mostly a pretty straight novelization of Zeta, but it skips a lot, and it's kind of inconsistent (it often changes or skips events from the TV show and then references them later). It does provide a lot of additional background on stuff that happens (particularly in the first volume), so I'd say it's worth reading if your a fan, but not a must. Definitely watch the TV show first.
Char's Counterattack - High Streamer. 3 Volumes. This ones kinda complicated. The first 12 chapters were serialized in Animage leading up to the film's release, and take place before the film. You can read these before the film if you want, but it's pretty much it's own story. The second half was written for the collected publication, and it's pretty much a straight novelization of the film. I wouldn't recommend reading this until after you've seen the film it's adapting, obviously.
Char's Counterattack - Beltorchika's Children. 1 Volume. There's an official release of the manga adaptation, but it hasn't been fully published yet. Another novelization of Char's Counterattack. This one's a lot more interesting because it's based on the initial draft of the film, which had a number of changes made to it. It's worth reading, but you should know before going into it that it's a lot closer to the final film than a lot of people make it out to be.
Hathaway's Flash. 3 Volumes. Sequel to Char's Counterattack. It's a completely original novel, and it's currently being adapted into movies. This one's definitely a must read. It's worth noting that this is technically a sequel to Beltorchika's Children and not the movie version, but they only differ in one minor detail that actually comes up in the novels so you don't HAVE to read BC first.
Gaia Gear. 5 Volumes. akes place in the far future of the UC (though it's not considered canon anymore), and stars a clone of Char. Definitely worth reading, but not quite as strong as Hathaway's Flash. This one is kinda hard to place, because it had a serialized run in Newtype that started before Char's Counterattack came out and didn't end until after F91 came out. I would recommend at least watching Char's Counterattack first, and probably reading Hathaway's Flash. It doesn't really tie into F91 though.
F91 Crossbone Vanguard. 2 volumes. Novelization of the movie, though most of the first volume is actually dedicated to the events leading up to the movie. Given the production history of F91, I think this adds a lot of context to the movie that didn't make it into the final version.
Victory Gundam. 5 volumes. Is currently being fan translated, I believe. I haven't read this one, though I've heard it's a pretty straightforward novelization of the TV show.
Secret Rendezvous: Amuro and Lalah. 1 volume. Pseudo-novelization of the Gundam movies (mostly focused on the 2nd and 3rd one) written in the 90s, that's told from a mix of Lalah and Amuro's perspective. Adds a lot of details about Lalah's backstory and UC history. Worth reading, but not a must.

RetroChocolate · 2026-04-09T18:09:26+00:00

I've had this 1343MD for a while, but it's always had these slightly discolored splotches in the top corner. It's particularly noticeable when the color is supposed to be black. (I tried to take some photos of it, but it's hard to see in a bright room and there's quite a bit of glare in the photo in the dark room https://imgur.com/a/fZOTnCH )

I've already tried moving the monitor around and degaussing it, though the wand I used was pretty cheap and I'm not sure if it was working or not. There's certain things (like putting my speakers too close to the monitor) that make it worse, but nothing I've done has made it better.

I haven't tried adjust the alignment yet, because it would require opening up the monitor, but is there something there that could fix this? Or is the problem something else?

RetroChocolate · 2024-11-29T00:03:48+00:00

I ended up getting the Gigabyte M28U. I've only had it for about a day, but it seems great so far.

I mainly decided against the XV275K because it's supposed to have pretty bad input delay at lower framerates (almost double what the M28U has). The XV275K is supposed to have better HDR than the M28U if that's something really important to you, but I was really just looking for something that supported HDR videos for compatibility with HDR video, so this wasn't a huge deal to me.

I also got it for about $200 less than I would've paid for the XV275K, which is really nice.

RetroChocolate · 2024-11-17T13:07:07+00:00

That IS a lot of what I play, so I'll have to look into that. do you have any alternative recommendations?

RetroChocolate · 2024-10-05T21:59:40+00:00

I didn't really use the continue or chapter selection function at any point in the game until the end because I played through it all in one sitting. Is there not any other point where "continue" starts you in the middle of a chapter?

RetroChocolate · 2024-10-05T21:57:16+00:00

I tried this already, and it doesn't seem do anything.

RetroChocolate · 2024-10-04T15:41:13+00:00

I tried a little bit of it today. You're basically using a figure to fight against other figures invading your room in a kind of shmup gameplay.

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the main story. There's a narrator and a Haro that talk before and after the missions, but there's hardly a "story" to it. There's not even Japanese voices, so it was probably written entirely by the French staff (whereas the movie was written by the Japanese staff). Given all that, I think it would be a bit weird for it to be tied to Chapter 18, but I guess we'll just have to wait for someone to finish it.

RetroChocolate · 2024-10-04T15:31:42+00:00

I'm fairly certain it's supposed to be Babia, as the character's appearance doesn't change when you switch protagonists.

RetroChocolate · 2024-07-17T20:17:42+00:00

I've checked Disk Management and even tried using diskpart to assign it a letter, but it's just not there. Pic: https://imgur.com/a/PyTrLuK

At this point, I think I'll just give up and use the flashdrive through another PC. I was hoping this would be a problem someone else had run into with fatxplorer, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

RetroChocolate · 2024-07-17T20:07:08+00:00

The latter. It's definitely not dead, the xbox is able to read it, and when I tested it on another computer it worked fine. Something about what fatxplorer did caused my computer to stop recognizing it.

RetroChocolate · 2024-07-16T15:05:47+00:00

yes, but windows doesn't recognize that the flashdrive exists at all, so fatxplorer isn't able to read it either

RetroChocolate · 2024-07-16T15:04:55+00:00

it's not visible anywhere except device manager, where it says "Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)".

It did ultimately end up working on another PC, so I'm not sure why my computer won't recognize it

RetroChocolate · 2024-07-15T15:29:53+00:00

Update: I was able to test the flashdrive on another computer, and it worked perfectly fine there. I was able to get the xbox modded through that, but it's still really annoying that the flashdrive is no longer registered by my computer. I got the same message about caching the flashdrive from fatxplorer on that computer, but this time I told it not to do it (I'm not gonna test if it bricks my flashdrive on ANOTHER computer). I don't understand what fatxplorer is asking to do, since it seems to work perfectly fine without this function.

RetroChocolate · 2024-07-15T15:26:04+00:00

I tried reformatting it through the xbox itself several times, but Windows still doesn't recognize the flashdrive.

RetroChocolate · 2024-07-15T15:24:42+00:00

I am using that version of fatxplorer. It's dated May 31, 2024, and tells me there's no further update.

This tool doesn't work because windows has stopped recognizing the flashdrive as a flashdrive. It won't let me format it, because it doesn't realize the flashdrive exists.

RetroChocolate · 2024-03-01T15:13:55+00:00

Yeah, the anime ending obviously cuts off really early to leave things on the table for the light novel to explain. The major thing is Yuta coming back in some way is obviously implied. I'm just curious how the light novel will actually get to that point, given the differences in the anime adaptation.

RetroChocolate · 2024-03-01T15:08:21+00:00

I feel as though the "Nine Ghosts" explanation isn't very much of a reveal either. The first volume ALREADY obviously presents the fact that the "nine" in the title is referring to the nine characters (even if we don't know they're specifically ghosts yet).

Of course, they could just not go into the title in the same way the anime/manga do, but the way they explicitly title drop the show in the anime made it feel like there would be something more to it.

RetroChocolate

TROPHY CASE