Contrasting Gundam/Zeta Gundam to Seed/Seed Destiny

That's not quite right. The Earth Alliance built the PLANTs by themselves, without the help of Coordinators as a distinct group (though George Glenn was the one who designed them in the first place). After they were built, Coordinators started moving there en masse to get around the fact that the Coordinatorization process was illegal on Earth. Once it was clear that the PLANTs were being co-opted as the Coordinator homeland, the Earth Alliance put restrictions on them to make it more difficult for them to break away. They flouted those restrictions, and when the Earth Alliance attempted to enforce them, that's what started the Bloody Valentine War.

So, yes, it's true to an extent that Coordinators moved to the PLANTs to escape conditions on Earth, it's definitely not true that the PLANTs owe their existence to Coordinators as a distinct demographic.

But their culture is a byproduct of the Coordinator Exodus from Earth. The reason they wanted to break away was because of Blue Cosmos prejudice, which dictated EA policy (albeit not as blatantly as it would by the end of SEED, but it was definitely still there).

I don't doubt that all of that information is true in the backstory. However, the conflict as shown in-series is ideological and racial. It's the same thing with MSG: yes there are reasons why Zeon wanted to break away from the Federation present in the backstory, but the conflict as presented in-show has Zeon wanting to rule the world and the Federation resisting.

I'm not sure comparing Orb and the Sanc Kingdom is totally legit. The Sanc Kingdom was portrayed as an ideal state; Orb in contrast is played as preferable to ZAFT and the EA, but hardly perfect.

edited 6th Apr '12 4:48:17 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

There are some flaws shown, but the show basically says that Orb's cause is so just in comparison to the other sides that if you are a good person and are given the option to you should choose to fight for Orb.

Zeon does have internal justifications to its people as to why they attacked the Earth Federation, so it isn't completely random.

Comparing it to Sanc Kingdom is kinda unfair, but only because Sanc was sooooo cloyingly Mary Sue. I still do think Orb is pretty Mary Sue-ish though.

edited 1st Apr '12 2:23:03 PM by Scherzo09

Yes, but didn't Sanc fail, while Orb triumphed and recovered against all odds? How did Orb manage to recover from the massive loses of the FBVW?

edited 1st Apr '12 2:32:35 PM by GrandPrincePaulII

The Sanc Kingdom was conquered and dismembered decades ago. The Sanc Kingdom we see in-show is a puppet state that OZ allows to exist as long as it is useful. Orb, while horribly damaged, was not occupied for that length of time.

The difference in portrayal is pretty much this—The Sanc Kingdom is portrayed as having perfect ideals and being the best place in the world to live; only outside influences can screw it up. Orb is portrayed as the best possible place to live, given the way the outside world works. It certainly has its share of bad people, including the leaders of Morgenrate, and of course, Yuna Roma Seiran.

I'm not denying that. Within the show though, there's never any doubt that Zeon is overall bad and the Federation is overall good. Zeta's even worse in that regard; the Titans are made up entirely of evil bastards (it says a lot that Jerid is the most sympathetic of them) and the AEUG are good people with perfect ideals.

^There was a Titans Offficer Emma or Beltorhika talked to on the way to the federatyion assembly (he didnt know she was an AEUG member) and he was pretty cool.

ORB is more comparable to the rebels from Code Geass complete with the japanese nationalist message. Only difference is Code Geass twists the United Kingdom to be cortoonish lol-evil rather than America.

edited 1st Apr '12 3:06:05 PM by Clawshrimpy

There's also Jerid's Disposable Girlfriends.

Yeah, that really came to mind too. I actually honestly sincerely liked Code Geass's worldbuilding until I watched UC Gundam.

He's just there to be all "Whaaaaat? The Titans are baaaaad?"

edited 1st Apr '12 3:05:56 PM by Scherzo09

Of Jerid's girlfriends, only one is a Titan's officer, and even she's willing to go through with the gassing of an entire colony.

Fact is neither the UC verse nor the CE verse goes in for full on Grey-and-Gray Morality. The UC verse presents essentially black and white conflicts, with a few shades of grey to add some variety. The CE verse presents what appears to be a grey and gray conflict (and was in fact, prior to the election of Patrick Zala, and Azrael and Sutherland's assumption of total command over the EA), which eventually becomes black and black as both sides radicalise.

Code Geass looks promising at the start, but ultimately it does not know what it wants to be, starts out with KM Fs being like Scopedog-level tech, then violently shifts into backpacks and Gundam-levels of power. and it terms of story it really had mood swings when R2 came around.

Ultimately, it wound up as a higher budget, more over the top and silly version of SEED. Suzaku and Lelouche's rivalry is pretty much a mirror of Kira and Athrun's, the show was full of chess motifs, just like how Durandal favored those etc

edited 1st Apr '12 3:20:00 PM by Clawshrimpy

I guess it's just in general I don't believe in 'Good Wars'. I believe you can't escape the realpolitical dimensions for why conflicts are fought. Like for example there were plenty of reasons to fight for Nazi Germany if you were citizen besides belief in racial supremacy; the feeling of being humiliated and forced to suffer by the west, and there were tangiable improvements to their everyday life due to the Nazi reforms. Plus while we never committed mass genocide, we did practice things such as Eugenics, though not on the scale of the Nazis (The french on the other hand had a much larger program). Its true that these minor compared to the extermination of six million people, but to say that the war lacked any imperial ambition on the part of the allies would be wrong, imo.

edited 1st Apr '12 3:20:56 PM by Scherzo09

"After they were built, Coordinators started moving there en masse to get around the fact that the Coordinatorization process was illegal on Earth."

I recall from extra material that Coordinators did have a big hand it getting the PLAN Ts started and it was only after discrimination on Earth became so unbearable that they started moving en masse to the PLAN Ts.

Maybe so, but those ambitions were pretty small compared to the desire to just stay the hell alive. And once again, I could level those same sorts of complaints at the UC universe. Regardless of what side materials say, what we see in show boils down to Zeon being imperialistic and evil, and the Federation resisting, the Titans being militaristic and evil and the AEUG resisting, etc.

That is true; but I like that as evil as Gihren's intentions and methods are, that there are still a lot of good decent Zeke soldiers who are fighting for what they believe in. They just have the misfortune of being diametrically opposed with the side that is much more in the right, as well as having a material advantage.

When i think about it, I really do prefer Wing over both CE and UC. I don't know what it is about it that made Wing so special, it could just be Nostalgia Filter. But compared to both CE and UC, the vilains were fairly competent, had some real depth to them (I attest that Zechs/Milardo was a better Char than Char himself.) It actively averted the sexism often on display in most Gundam works (Noin and Lady Une were highly competent characters and not like the seemingly useless female casts of CE, or the borderline offensive female casts of stuff like Zeta.) and while the Wing Gundam team were "powerful" they weren't untouchable, like with SEED and 00. (and arguably Zeta post-Bio Sensor) add in interesting pragmatic characters like Trieze and Relena (I still don't get the hate for Relena, she was a great character and nation leader, and is nowhere near the disgusting sue that Lacus was.)

00 TRIED to capture the magic of Wing.... and ended up falling short.

SEED is just... silly and stupid to me, whereas I can take UC (The parts I like at least) seriously.

the OYW stuff is good and everything, it's just when people usually talk about UC, their minds usually jump to Zeta. It doesn't help a lot of the "late-UC" works like Victory, Unicorn and such, are a lot closer to Zeta than 0079. for better and for worse. But that's I'm guessing because 0079 had bad ratings and Zeta and ZZ were runaway hits in japan.

edited 1st Apr '12 5:40:03 PM by Clawshrimpy

I think anything that trips over itself about Newtypism is meh. CCA was halfway to being really good, but the stuff with Hathaway and Quess held it down. It's pretty obvious that Tomino had stopped giving a damn with Victory. F91 seems like it would've been kinda interesting, but they fucked it up by making it an unwatchable compression of like 13 episodes worth of scripts. Unicorn, despite some misgivings, seems to be more about Spacenoid Nationalism than Newtypism, which is a lot more reasonable imo. Still, I'd like to see another straight up war story in UC without all that Newtype shenanigans.

True.

I just still kind of preferred how Wing set up the colony/earth conflict. mostly because Wing was suprisingly non-preachy for a Gundam show. All of the major players in Wing felt like leaders and not just powerful people with soapboxes to enact vendettas or grudges, or just to say "War is bad! Stop Fighting!"

One could say the actual pilots in Wing didn't really have much of character and weren't outspoken like Amuro or Kira, but I think that's a good thing. I really liked that it was the scientists who built the Gundams who were the real brains behind the operation, the actual pilots were, well, just soldiers. It really came down to people like Relena to really hash out the diplomatics.

edited 1st Apr '12 5:58:46 PM by Clawshrimpy

Wing, not preachy? I think your Nostalgia Filter is indeed cranked up. The constant "absolute pacifism" stuff that Relena was pushing? The "roboticised warfare is evil" message? That show was very, very pretentious. I can't even tell you what the conflict was about, the characters changed sides constantly, Dermail and his cronies were utterly one-dimensional, and I still don't know what in god's name Treize and Zechs were trying to pull.

Honestly, Zechs was one of the worst Char Clones. He's trying so hard to relive Char's entire life (and do it in 49 episodes) that his characterisation makes no sense. Dermail's a moron (he's like Djibril without the Complete Monster), Quinze is barely onscreen, and Dekim is a depthless idiot. Treize and Une were the only villains who really stood out and they simply couldn't carry the entire show.

If SEED is guilty of having overpowered characters (and I'm not saying that it is) Wing is guilty of the opposite. The Gundam pilots descend to Earth, kill a lot of people, and achieve nothing. They spend the whole show getting jerked around by the scientists, Treize, and everyone else in a position of authority. If the show had been trying to deconstruct the usual Gundam tropes that might have been interesting, but it wasn't. We're left with the message that the show's ending was a good thing, and that everything has worked out for the best, despite our heroes having done nothing at all.

I'll also note that both Noin and Une were motivated entirely by their crushes on other character. Noin achieves little in her time on the show, and Une is so screwed up by being in love with Treize that she develops a Split Personality to cope with it. With the sole exception of Relena, every female character in Wing does what she does because of a male. That's not true of Sayla or Emma in MSG and Zeta (or Audrey in Unicorn for that matter) or Ramius, Cagali, and Lacus in SEED. I get that you don't like Lacus, but you can't say the girl doesn't move the plot.

I liked Wing. I enjoyed it for what it was. Heck, I'm the guy who put Treize up as one of The Greats when I drafted the "How to Write a Magnificent Bastard" page. But its politics and plotting are a mess, all of the Gundam pilots save Heero are utterly one dimensional, and the ending makes no sense.

PS-I know there are sidematerials that explain a lot. But I shouldn't have to read sidematerials to understand a show. I didn't have to read side materials to get the gist of MSG, SEED, SEED Destiny, or even 00 and Zeta. For Wing you pretty much have to in order to get what was going on.

edited 1st Apr '12 6:34:38 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Why are you exempting Relena? At least for the beginning she was totally smitten by a Psychopathic Child Soldier who had threatened to kill her, to the point where she called out to him to come back so he can kill her. That... doesn't strike me as stable.

And I was meeeeh on Trieze; just spouted... I dunno even how to describe his philosophy, while doing... I dunno, fighting for a Noble Peace; his motives were so confusing, as were everyone's. I don't really mean to single him out since all I really remember him for is being an aristocrat and spouting nonsensical philosophy.

I probably only like W Ing as much as I do, as, Superweapons aside, it's the closest Gundam has ever had to a VOTOMS-ish plot due to soldiers being soldiers and disconnected from the politics. one could in fact argue that Chirico was the inspiration for Heero. I could even say that Zechs felt more pragmatic and interesting than either Rau la Crueset or Mr. Bushido (or Zeheart, for that matter.) Especially once he throws away his fake name and embraces who he really is.

OZ and White Fang were also incredibly interesting villains as well. They were not as boned against the Gundams since the Tallgeese, Epyon, Mercurion, and Vayete were devolped before it was too late, meaning the Gundams have some challenging opponents. everything just feels better.

I'd say MSG is closer to that; Amuro doesn't really give a damn about Newtypism, or even the Feddies at all at first, but later internalizes fighting for them because he wants this war to end, with probably the least shitty side as the victor.

edited 1st Apr '12 7:46:23 PM by Scherzo09