Al performs poorly at school and is dangerously resentful and hostile at home, but as a spy he outshines Bernie, making it possible for the team to infiltrate the community and locate the weapon they're seeking. Stardust Memory , deals with a critical point in the complex Gundam history, but does so from a distance. And even the pocket war is less important than the various characters' perceptions of war, which are revealed gradually and carefully through plot twists that lead in a surprising number of directions and provoke a surprising range of sympathies. The moral complexity of the story gives it some authority, as does the astute characterization, which makes even a drunk woman sobbing into a phone at a bar an interesting and sympathetic individual. Only the overly restrained animation and a rather conventional opening mar what eventually shapes up as a first-rate story.
Pocket shows, all too painfully, how war alters reality and casually destroys lives.
And it does it with compelling simplicity, through the point of view of an avid young war buff who thinks combat is a game. Compared to Federation functionaries and Zeon fanatics, Al makes an odd and uncomfortably sprightly little protagonist, despite his occasional sociopathic moments. Briefly, his inclusion threatens to turn Pocket into a cute, wholesome, Norman Rockwell version of war, or perhaps another anime wish-fulfillment fantasy about young boys with big toys getting to fight alongside their older, tougher counterparts. But the series' ultimate ends are considerably more subversive, and Al's awakening is decidedly unconventional. Where Stardust Memory turns war into galaxy-wide pageantry, Pocket makes it ragged, hurtful and empty.