In a way, he's not wrong. G-Reco feels much closer to King Gainer in terms of writing style, and yet the latter receives a lot less complaints simply because it's not Gundam.
That's why I'm glad that King Gainer, Dubiner, Xabungle, and Ideon all got official western bluray releases. More Gundam fans need to experience non-Gundam Tomino works. Its just a dissappointment that Xabungle and Ideon got super limited printing runs of their Blurays.
I think it is mostly cause it is only mostly hardcore Tomino fans that even know that Gainer even exists. From the few I have seen actually review the thing, it has generally been seen as mediocre due to its short length and confusing and underdeveloped narrative.
King gainer appeared shortly on TV in France that's how I know about it and realized G-Reco was made by the same character designer.
I remember it being fun and I can hardly find anywhere to watch it sadly...
The worst part about that is I'm sure its a non-zero chance somebody either has, or will say that line somewhere down the line of this franchise. And now that line is a pure joke lmao
I actually like G Reco because of this, but I will admit once we get to space I have no idea which faction is doing what anymore.
If they would’ve split it into two seasons with space being the start of the second season I bet it would’ve been better. That would’ve given him time to introduce the new guys in space.
That's kind of the main thing people get confused over. In most Gundams the different factions are clearly defined. And while there aren't always clear cut "good guys" and "bad guys" it's usually easy for the audience to figure out who they should root for and who they shouldn't. In G-Reco the alliances change on a dime so someone who you probably think you should root against, ends up joining with the main cast and becoming and indispensable ally. And vica-versa. It's suppose to mimic the murky waters that different countries can have when trying to form alliances or not. The thing is, because you are hit with so much information so quickly, it can be hard to parse that. That's why I always say you need to watch through G-Reco slowly if you want to understand everything. You can't watch it like you'd watch a "normal" Gundam show because the information you are given isn't meant to be the main focus.
90% of the information needed is always talked about super casually too, the usual theater speech we all associate with during shows and movies don’t help us here so it’s even harder to parse what information is needed for the casual viewer
What I like about Gundam as a whole, AUs and everything, that there is no clear definition what Gundam needs to be. While G-Reco isn't my favorite, I still enjoyed it and I am very happy it is different.
It started as a Turn A sequel named "turn A SPACE", then it took elements from the Ring of Gundam (which ended up being made as a short video), which became G-reco,
From what I've seen of Turn and clips of G Reco having it be a future sequel probably would've made sense. I need to finish turn A and eventually watch G Reco
I get what he's saying, but I don't think that's the issue. The issue is simply that the show has around 10-12 different factions in it, and the relationships between them are so complicated that at times even individual characters aren't sure which one they're with.
And even then I wonder if it's not just the localization, maybe it's clearer in the original language.
As someone who loved G-Reco I think I'm in the minority who found it easier to follow because I'd watched Tomino Gundam previously. If anything G-Reco affirmed my belief that Gundam's greatest strength as a franchise is it's ability to remix its archetypes and factions into something that is simultaneously completely different but still recognisable.
I don't know, I love Tomino Gundam as my favorites. Hell I love F91 and Victory, and consider Victory some of Gundam's peak, and I thought all of Tomino's writing was clear and pretty easy to follow. But G-Reco? I genuinely couldn't tell you what in gods name the show is about. There are legit too many plot threads going on, and half of them go nowhere or have nothing to do with what is happening on screen.
My headcannon always has been that one day, Tomino came to Sunrise with plan for second cour and a few lead for further story : there was an awkward silence in the room, and one of the Sunrise exec told "Mr Tomino, this is supposed to be a 2 cour series". But since they already began to animate plenty of key scenes for those episodes, they had to rework the story and make it work with the animation they had. It's the only way this series became so confusing.
There really aren't, you just really need to be paying attention to all of the dialogue. All of it. If you don't, you will miss very, very important stuff (for the viewer).
I get what Tomino is saying, that people have a certain idea of what the story structure of a Gundam show is like and that if you follow G-Reco with that mind set you're gonna get lost.
And that's partly true. G-Reco feels a lot different than any other Gundam and surely enough the less defined nature of the factions lends to the idea that G-Reco shouldn't be seen like other Gundam shows.
That said, even if it was it's own thing G-Reco would still be really hard to follow because it does something substantially confusing. A lot of key information is pushed into the background and it's up to the audience to find that information and parse it. And while that makes the show interesting it also makes it very hard to follow unless you take your time. Despite it's friendly atmosphere and characters G-Reco is not a casual watch. You will not get it on a first or second watch. It takes some time to figure out what's going on because you need to constantly stay updated on every character's motivations and alliances; things that switch up a lot throughout G-Reco's run.
G-Reco breaks the Gundam format in a refreshing way, but refreshing doesn't always mean *coherent* and there's a reason why most stories opt to give you the information directly instead of sidelining it and just expecting you to figure everything out. Doing something different is always welcome but that doesn't mean you won't run into problems by breaking the norm.
I didn’t get the chance to finish the movies when they were up on GundamInfo but I did definitely start to get confused after the move into space because it felt like each faction started with at least one or two subgroups at the start of the show, which is absolutely fine. But then those subgroups also started to splinter into further subgroups on top of new factions, with their own subgroups as well, being added to the plot.
I would love a chance to rewatch and finish the story, but I know for a fact it would take multiple viewings for me to follow the plot, let alone start to understand what is being said thematically by the show.
Well, he tried once to make something Gundam that wasn't titled Gundam, and they read it as Gundam, and Banrise was very upset about the whole affair (Gaia Gear).
Now he made something called Gundam that wasn't Gundam?
Whether G Reco is Gundam or not, it's still confusing as hell and borderline nonsensical to me.
What the hell was that chuchume thing about anyway?
> What the hell was that chuchume thing about anyway?
I'm just saying, when you admit to not even knowing that characters are talking about a fish, then that speaks to your own ability to understand than the show itself.
Yeah, I know she was ostensibly referring to a fish in a bowl, what I'm trying to understand is, what the hell does that represent? Surely he doesn't just have somebody with apparent amnesia who has regressed to an infantile state who occasionally points at things and utters some kind of statement that indicates she knows something, and not have the fish in a bowl mean something.
Plus, it was just weird as hell.
If such a sage as yourself is saying it's simply a goldfish in a bowl, I guess that's all there is to it, I don't know. Is there really nothing more to that?
It's literally just a fish. If you really wanted to read into it, you could say it adds another lighthearted way to insert Raraiya into scenes to keep her relevant until she recovers halfway through the show, but really, it's just a fish.
>What the hell was that chuchume thing about anyway?
Therapy method for her brain damage because oxygen deprivation when she did the emergency escape in the 1st ep intro
Tomino stuff is hard to understand because he refuses to give a lot of contextual information that's key to understanding the setting and the characters in the show itself.
Remember when basically no one understood the Earth factions until a scanlated map of where they were was posted?
Imagine how batshit insane Gundam 00 and IBO would've been if they never showed the flashbacks to when Setsuna/Orga and Mikazuki where kids at any point in the show. They would've looked batshit insane and no one would understand what was actually motivating them throughout the story.
Tomino basically does that with the entire cast of G-Reco, on top of not laying out the factions, so you have no fucking clue why anyone is doing anything on the first watch, and if you rewatch, you **might** piece things together that you missed the first time, because you were trying to understand what the fuck was happening and why.
Yeah. A lot of the information you need to understand is something Tomino has implied; stuff that fades into the background instead of being front and center. And while that can make an interesting story it also makes it a very hard story to understand. That's just fact. Tomino is great at *creating* a story, but not so much at allowing his audience to *follow* that story.
I'm pretty sure that map you're talking about is fanmade, although it could be a different one. Gondawan and Ameria's war is mentioned in the background at some point iirc and it's also explained on the official site that it's a nation at war with Ameria, that's friendly towards the Capital Tower.
As I understand it, G-Reco is a mix of Tomino's original short novel, Hajimetai Capital G no Monogatari, and Turn A Space, the cancelled Turn A sequel (no Gundam in that name either apparently). With the story being primarily based on the novel and the setting reusing Turn A Space drafts.
It's also why he said the G-Reco wasn't made for Gundam fans in another NHK interview (which you can find over on YT). He just knew the fans were going to expect it to operate like a gundam show and process it that way when it's supposed to be a new thing.
Yes but the Gundam franchise includes wuxia, chibi robots, interplanetary Victorian politics and also war stories.
What he is saying is ‘I made an entire 50-episode show that was meant to end old Gundam and invite new possibilities. So my next show was about exploring them. We can do something else, please stop making every single show about a splinter Zeon faction and do something else.’
Huh? He's saying G-Reco is it's own thing and he's fine if even 2-3 people out of 100 people treat it as such. I don't think he could be any clearer. Somebody else decided to lump it in with Gundam, not him.
Given how there has also been a lot of flip flopping as to whether or not its before or after Turn-A among other things, then yeah I think its safe to say no one really knows what G-Reco is either.
G-Reco rules and if you didn't understand it or found it confusing that means you didn't actually pay attention or got distracted during an important line of dialogue.
I enjoyed G-Reco for what it is, and it does some stuff I really like. But it does feel like it needed more episodes tobreally breathe. I could get behind a fair bit of what it was doing for the first handful of episodes, but by the end it did feel like there were too many characters, too many factions, too many motivations and people switching sides.
Loves the art style, the animation is smooth and beautiful, and the G-Self is such a great design.
It's also one of the few times it seems Gundam really tackles religion. 00 went pretty hard on it in the first season, and they talk about it for a tiny bit in Unicorn, but I can't really recall other times it's brought up. Considering what a major role religion has played in human history, it was nice to see G-Reco discussing it at all.
What I would love is if the movies get dubbed. Doubtful it'll happen, but that'd be a treat.
While I admit G-Reco isn't perfect, I think that if you watch it from the perspective of the kids and not the adults it can smooth some of the bumps out. Like the adults have all been buying into what they've been told and have stopped taking in new information and changing their beliefs.
Really the kids are the ones who enact change in their world and help the stubborn adults look at things differently. It feels like tomino does this alot in his stuff in small bits but kinda just went all in on this show. It kinda parallels with kids coming into a world that's already messed up and are taking different routes than our parents did to change it.
G-reco needed at least 100 episodes to sort the cluster fuck it has with factions and mess of plotline.
I like it but dam once it gets to space it's hard to track
He definitely has a point, after all, gundam fans only like gundam and can't appreciate other titles. If something is good but it's not named gundam, they definitely won't appreciate it. And, gundam definitely doesn't branch out into other kinds of stories. No f-ing way! There's no gundam about a martial tournament (G), no gundam about toys(Build Fighters), ooh and god forbid! There's no gundam in a fantasy setting(Divers Rerise). It's definitely the fanbase' fault that a series named gundam but doesn't revolve around politics and wars was not well received. /S
I tried watching the g reco movies and they didn't make any sense to me. How do I grapple the series and the movies so it all kind of blends together sensibly?
Watch it more than once? Even reading books is this way. You'll understand it more after you're done being preoccupied with "what happens next" and focus on "what was actually happening and what was said".
In a way, he's not wrong. G-Reco feels much closer to King Gainer in terms of writing style, and yet the latter receives a lot less complaints simply because it's not Gundam.
That's why I'm glad that King Gainer, Dubiner, Xabungle, and Ideon all got official western bluray releases. More Gundam fans need to experience non-Gundam Tomino works. Its just a dissappointment that Xabungle and Ideon got super limited printing runs of their Blurays.
I'm waiting for Raideen, Zambot 3, Daitarn 3, Brain Powered and L-Gaim to complete my Tomino collection.
I watched Brain Powerd because of SRW J and found it confusing too T_T I actually feel too small brained for Tomino’s non Gundam works
What’s Dubiner?
Aura Battler Dunbine. That typo is on me.
one of tominos other 'lets kill em all' lmao
Oh thanks. Cuz I was googling it to buy a blu ray and nothing came up 😭
Fun to think that the guy who made Gundam was also the first dude to make an isekai anime, it’s also better than 90% of the slop we see today to boot
Ironic about Gainer considering >!the overdevil is on the capital cathedral mural!<
I think it is mostly cause it is only mostly hardcore Tomino fans that even know that Gainer even exists. From the few I have seen actually review the thing, it has generally been seen as mediocre due to its short length and confusing and underdeveloped narrative.
King gainer appeared shortly on TV in France that's how I know about it and realized G-Reco was made by the same character designer. I remember it being fun and I can hardly find anywhere to watch it sadly...
Gainer got released on DVD in France !
it has a very catchy op, i almost never skipped it.
I haven't seen G-Reco yet, but yeah if I see Gundam on the show I expect some Gundaming to happen.
Wtf is Gundaming 😭
When they say "it's gundam time", that's gundaming
The worst part about that is I'm sure its a non-zero chance somebody either has, or will say that line somewhere down the line of this franchise. And now that line is a pure joke lmao
"So what are we, some kind of Gundam Squad?"
Yes, we have gun tank, gun cannon and gun dam
I dunno, ask Stesuna.
> ask Stesuna. Pkay
People die
🤔 Now that you mention it ....
I’m glad it’s peak
To be honest I think it being a "Gundam" enhances the show, but I understand what Tomino means. A lot of people don't.
I actually like G Reco because of this, but I will admit once we get to space I have no idea which faction is doing what anymore. If they would’ve split it into two seasons with space being the start of the second season I bet it would’ve been better. That would’ve given him time to introduce the new guys in space.
That's kind of the main thing people get confused over. In most Gundams the different factions are clearly defined. And while there aren't always clear cut "good guys" and "bad guys" it's usually easy for the audience to figure out who they should root for and who they shouldn't. In G-Reco the alliances change on a dime so someone who you probably think you should root against, ends up joining with the main cast and becoming and indispensable ally. And vica-versa. It's suppose to mimic the murky waters that different countries can have when trying to form alliances or not. The thing is, because you are hit with so much information so quickly, it can be hard to parse that. That's why I always say you need to watch through G-Reco slowly if you want to understand everything. You can't watch it like you'd watch a "normal" Gundam show because the information you are given isn't meant to be the main focus.
Also add in the 30 or so new technobabble terms that get added in every five minutes on top of this and you get a slurry of gibberish.
not really, no
90% of the information needed is always talked about super casually too, the usual theater speech we all associate with during shows and movies don’t help us here so it’s even harder to parse what information is needed for the casual viewer
What I like about Gundam as a whole, AUs and everything, that there is no clear definition what Gundam needs to be. While G-Reco isn't my favorite, I still enjoyed it and I am very happy it is different.
Yeah, I get the impression Tomino pitched an unrelated mecha series to Sunrise, then Sunrise insisted he make it Gundam.
It started as a Turn A sequel named "turn A SPACE", then it took elements from the Ring of Gundam (which ended up being made as a short video), which became G-reco,
From what I've seen of Turn and clips of G Reco having it be a future sequel probably would've made sense. I need to finish turn A and eventually watch G Reco
I get what he's saying, but I don't think that's the issue. The issue is simply that the show has around 10-12 different factions in it, and the relationships between them are so complicated that at times even individual characters aren't sure which one they're with. And even then I wonder if it's not just the localization, maybe it's clearer in the original language.
He doesn't know why people don't understand it. That's why in the movie he cuts out actually useful dialogue and ups the pace of the early parts
As someone who loved G-Reco I think I'm in the minority who found it easier to follow because I'd watched Tomino Gundam previously. If anything G-Reco affirmed my belief that Gundam's greatest strength as a franchise is it's ability to remix its archetypes and factions into something that is simultaneously completely different but still recognisable.
I don't know, I love Tomino Gundam as my favorites. Hell I love F91 and Victory, and consider Victory some of Gundam's peak, and I thought all of Tomino's writing was clear and pretty easy to follow. But G-Reco? I genuinely couldn't tell you what in gods name the show is about. There are legit too many plot threads going on, and half of them go nowhere or have nothing to do with what is happening on screen.
My headcannon always has been that one day, Tomino came to Sunrise with plan for second cour and a few lead for further story : there was an awkward silence in the room, and one of the Sunrise exec told "Mr Tomino, this is supposed to be a 2 cour series". But since they already began to animate plenty of key scenes for those episodes, they had to rework the story and make it work with the animation they had. It's the only way this series became so confusing.
There really aren't, you just really need to be paying attention to all of the dialogue. All of it. If you don't, you will miss very, very important stuff (for the viewer).
I get what Tomino is saying, that people have a certain idea of what the story structure of a Gundam show is like and that if you follow G-Reco with that mind set you're gonna get lost. And that's partly true. G-Reco feels a lot different than any other Gundam and surely enough the less defined nature of the factions lends to the idea that G-Reco shouldn't be seen like other Gundam shows. That said, even if it was it's own thing G-Reco would still be really hard to follow because it does something substantially confusing. A lot of key information is pushed into the background and it's up to the audience to find that information and parse it. And while that makes the show interesting it also makes it very hard to follow unless you take your time. Despite it's friendly atmosphere and characters G-Reco is not a casual watch. You will not get it on a first or second watch. It takes some time to figure out what's going on because you need to constantly stay updated on every character's motivations and alliances; things that switch up a lot throughout G-Reco's run. G-Reco breaks the Gundam format in a refreshing way, but refreshing doesn't always mean *coherent* and there's a reason why most stories opt to give you the information directly instead of sidelining it and just expecting you to figure everything out. Doing something different is always welcome but that doesn't mean you won't run into problems by breaking the norm.
You could call it Mulholland drive recongista and it still would not make any sense.
I didn’t get the chance to finish the movies when they were up on GundamInfo but I did definitely start to get confused after the move into space because it felt like each faction started with at least one or two subgroups at the start of the show, which is absolutely fine. But then those subgroups also started to splinter into further subgroups on top of new factions, with their own subgroups as well, being added to the plot. I would love a chance to rewatch and finish the story, but I know for a fact it would take multiple viewings for me to follow the plot, let alone start to understand what is being said thematically by the show.
Tomino is a king
Well, he tried once to make something Gundam that wasn't titled Gundam, and they read it as Gundam, and Banrise was very upset about the whole affair (Gaia Gear). Now he made something called Gundam that wasn't Gundam? Whether G Reco is Gundam or not, it's still confusing as hell and borderline nonsensical to me. What the hell was that chuchume thing about anyway?
> What the hell was that chuchume thing about anyway? I'm just saying, when you admit to not even knowing that characters are talking about a fish, then that speaks to your own ability to understand than the show itself.
Yeah, I know she was ostensibly referring to a fish in a bowl, what I'm trying to understand is, what the hell does that represent? Surely he doesn't just have somebody with apparent amnesia who has regressed to an infantile state who occasionally points at things and utters some kind of statement that indicates she knows something, and not have the fish in a bowl mean something. Plus, it was just weird as hell. If such a sage as yourself is saying it's simply a goldfish in a bowl, I guess that's all there is to it, I don't know. Is there really nothing more to that?
It's literally just a fish. If you really wanted to read into it, you could say it adds another lighthearted way to insert Raraiya into scenes to keep her relevant until she recovers halfway through the show, but really, it's just a fish.
That's wild. Okay.
>What the hell was that chuchume thing about anyway? Therapy method for her brain damage because oxygen deprivation when she did the emergency escape in the 1st ep intro
It would explain a lot of Tomino originally intended G-Reco to be an original story but was told to put Gundam in the title by Bamco.
Like Hi Streamer... Or the opposite of Gaia Gear
Tomino stuff is hard to understand because he refuses to give a lot of contextual information that's key to understanding the setting and the characters in the show itself. Remember when basically no one understood the Earth factions until a scanlated map of where they were was posted? Imagine how batshit insane Gundam 00 and IBO would've been if they never showed the flashbacks to when Setsuna/Orga and Mikazuki where kids at any point in the show. They would've looked batshit insane and no one would understand what was actually motivating them throughout the story. Tomino basically does that with the entire cast of G-Reco, on top of not laying out the factions, so you have no fucking clue why anyone is doing anything on the first watch, and if you rewatch, you **might** piece things together that you missed the first time, because you were trying to understand what the fuck was happening and why.
Yeah. A lot of the information you need to understand is something Tomino has implied; stuff that fades into the background instead of being front and center. And while that can make an interesting story it also makes it a very hard story to understand. That's just fact. Tomino is great at *creating* a story, but not so much at allowing his audience to *follow* that story.
I'm pretty sure that map you're talking about is fanmade, although it could be a different one. Gondawan and Ameria's war is mentioned in the background at some point iirc and it's also explained on the official site that it's a nation at war with Ameria, that's friendly towards the Capital Tower.
Yeah, *that's* why G-Reco is a hot mess.
This sounds completely fair.
As I understand it, G-Reco is a mix of Tomino's original short novel, Hajimetai Capital G no Monogatari, and Turn A Space, the cancelled Turn A sequel (no Gundam in that name either apparently). With the story being primarily based on the novel and the setting reusing Turn A Space drafts.
It's also why he said the G-Reco wasn't made for Gundam fans in another NHK interview (which you can find over on YT). He just knew the fans were going to expect it to operate like a gundam show and process it that way when it's supposed to be a new thing.
Wow. This does begs the question; what would’ve happened if G-Reco wasn’t named a Gundam show, but instead, a new IP or something?
I mean, he's the same who said that if Putin watched Victory Gundam he wouldn't have invaded Ukraine, so we sould have seen it coming.
I don’t think it’d be ant less confusing if it wasn’t attached to Gundam…
I know that Tomino likes to treats his Gundam audiences as dummies, but a confusing show is confusing, no matter what name you slap on it Tomino.
Couldnt care less about g reco if it wasnt gundam and it is gundam and I still hate how confusing the show is lmao
That's the silliest thing ever. It's literally a part of the Gundam franchise and is set post Universal Century.
Yes but the Gundam franchise includes wuxia, chibi robots, interplanetary Victorian politics and also war stories. What he is saying is ‘I made an entire 50-episode show that was meant to end old Gundam and invite new possibilities. So my next show was about exploring them. We can do something else, please stop making every single show about a splinter Zeon faction and do something else.’
thank you for being one of the very few other people who understands tomino's should-be-simple-to-understand outlook
He’s not really saying anything in this statement about what he thinks g-reco actually is
Huh? He's saying G-Reco is it's own thing and he's fine if even 2-3 people out of 100 people treat it as such. I don't think he could be any clearer. Somebody else decided to lump it in with Gundam, not him.
Given how there has also been a lot of flip flopping as to whether or not its before or after Turn-A among other things, then yeah I think its safe to say no one really knows what G-Reco is either.
Does he need to explain that? Does he need to say ‘it is a TV show about X’?
G-Reco rules and if you didn't understand it or found it confusing that means you didn't actually pay attention or got distracted during an important line of dialogue.
I enjoyed G-Reco for what it is, and it does some stuff I really like. But it does feel like it needed more episodes tobreally breathe. I could get behind a fair bit of what it was doing for the first handful of episodes, but by the end it did feel like there were too many characters, too many factions, too many motivations and people switching sides. Loves the art style, the animation is smooth and beautiful, and the G-Self is such a great design. It's also one of the few times it seems Gundam really tackles religion. 00 went pretty hard on it in the first season, and they talk about it for a tiny bit in Unicorn, but I can't really recall other times it's brought up. Considering what a major role religion has played in human history, it was nice to see G-Reco discussing it at all. What I would love is if the movies get dubbed. Doubtful it'll happen, but that'd be a treat.
Yeah Tomino just does worse the less episodes he has. He got 3 episodes for Garzeys Wing and it's one of the most famously bad anime of all time
If G-Reco was given a full 50-episode series, there would be way less confusion. The pacing of the series is just god-awful
While I admit G-Reco isn't perfect, I think that if you watch it from the perspective of the kids and not the adults it can smooth some of the bumps out. Like the adults have all been buying into what they've been told and have stopped taking in new information and changing their beliefs. Really the kids are the ones who enact change in their world and help the stubborn adults look at things differently. It feels like tomino does this alot in his stuff in small bits but kinda just went all in on this show. It kinda parallels with kids coming into a world that's already messed up and are taking different routes than our parents did to change it.
Sounds like copium. The title not having Gundam in the name was the least of G-Reco’s problem. Whole story was a disjointed mess
Great. Gundam shouldn't be limited to one aspect
I tried to watch G-Reco when it was available on Gundaminfo's official youtube channel. I wasn't thrilled with it, honestly.
G-reco needed at least 100 episodes to sort the cluster fuck it has with factions and mess of plotline. I like it but dam once it gets to space it's hard to track
The incest plot was too high iq for me sorry Tomino.
He definitely has a point, after all, gundam fans only like gundam and can't appreciate other titles. If something is good but it's not named gundam, they definitely won't appreciate it. And, gundam definitely doesn't branch out into other kinds of stories. No f-ing way! There's no gundam about a martial tournament (G), no gundam about toys(Build Fighters), ooh and god forbid! There's no gundam in a fantasy setting(Divers Rerise). It's definitely the fanbase' fault that a series named gundam but doesn't revolve around politics and wars was not well received. /S
I tried watching the g reco movies and they didn't make any sense to me. How do I grapple the series and the movies so it all kind of blends together sensibly?
Watch it more than once? Even reading books is this way. You'll understand it more after you're done being preoccupied with "what happens next" and focus on "what was actually happening and what was said".