A Gundam film that moves like jazz, where every frame is hand-drawn violence and the pacing never lets your chest unstuck. The space battle in a debris field becomes the stage for something genuinely tragic, two pilots who are good at their jobs and nothing else, grinding toward each other with no way out. Animation this precise and relentless doesn't exist to make you look away.

During the One Year War of U.C. 0079, Federation and Zeon forces clash in the Thunderbolt Sector, a shoal zone of shattered colony debris in what used to be Side 4, Moore, named for the electrical discharges crackling off the wreckage. Io Fleming, an ace Federation pilot with a passion for jazz, gets through Zeon's sniper field and is handed the newest Gundam prototype. Opposing him is Daryl Lorenz, a Zeon sniper and amputee who gives up part of his humanity to link directly with an experimental Zaku II. This film version of the Thunderbolt story adds extra scenes to its mecha action and wartime drama.