Gundam Reconguista in G

The Ag-Tech Taboo covers things like spaceship technology and energy production as well as weapons, though. It's not a purely military tech ban, and it certainly isn't meant for such an idealistic reason as preventing wars.

Besides which, the Taboo really doesn't do anything towards ending war: it's the Capital Tower's monopoly on energy production that's keeping war down if anything is. It's made quite clear that Ameria and Gondwana have been having conflicts for quite a while, long before the Taboo was broken.

The Taboo regulates the size and destructiveness of conflicts. There's a big difference between the sort of damage that can be done in, say, our Iraq II and the One Year War.

Remember that the Universal Century ended apocalyptically because the Earth's biosphere basically gave up on us. It takes a certain degree of technology to pull off something like that:

What's precedent ever done for us?

It still bugs me that the implication behind the Taboo is that humanity is incapable of learning from its mistakes and improving.

I get the reasoning behind why the tech ban was introduced, but it seems to me to do more harm than good in the long run.

edited 21st Mar '15 2:09:19 PM by DarkHunter

Which is something the anime is busy exploring, yes. The Ag-Tech Taboo has failed miserably as a regulatory process, so what could possibly keep people from murdering each other with planet-wrecking superweapons? How do you put the genie back in the bottle, or at least get the genie to play nice?

What's precedent ever done for us?

Well, the traditional method is to have planet-wrecking superweapons of your own, and threaten to use them on anyone who uses theirs on you. Apparently that didn't work in Reconguista, though. (Actually, why didn't it work in UC? I doubt Zeon could've stopped the EFSF from nuking Side 3 into a shoal zone... But I digress.)

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The Antarctic Treaty existed for a reason. Both sides used WMDs, even if Zeon was more enthusiastic and creative about it.

Also, Tomino's Japanese. You can see why he'd be a little less than enthusiastic about MAD, even if the reasons why happened before the concept existed in its current form.

edited 21st Mar '15 3:52:39 PM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

So, the final episode aired. Let's just say it's not going to change the "Love It or Hate It" perception of this show.

In an eerie coincidence, Japan unveiled the Izumo the same day that G-Reco's final episode aired.

G-Self and Kabakali fighting in the bombed out ruins of Jaburo... HOLY SHIT. And right after I finished watching "Zeta" for the first time, where the Titans nuked the base in the twelfth episode. I feel like a time traveler.

Wait, Episode 26 is the final episode of Reconguista? It doesn't really feel like a final episode it feels more like there'll be another season for Reconguista. The battle isn't that intense for a final episode, and Chickara died for no real reason whatsoever.

Episode 5 is up on Youtube. Not much to say except "more of the same, but now with the resident Char". Who happens to have the most ridiculous mask since Harry Ord's bug-eye glasses. At least he actually appears to be competent, unlike basically everyone else in the series thus far except Dellensen (Luin also seems to have potential to be not-an-idiot, but he hasn't gotten much screentime). Noredo also proves to be less idiotic than previously thought in this episode, as well — at least she's still thinking about spying on the enemy and escaping back to the Capital, even if Bellri isn't.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

/snrk/ Sorry for laughing but, that is Luin.

edited 27th Mar '15 8:41:12 PM by ComicX6

Wait, what? I actually went back and re-watched his introduction scene to see if I missed something there. Dellensen asks "why is he wearing that mask?" and doesn't give any indication that he knows who it is, and one of the cheerleader girls specifically mentions that they haven't seen Luin recently. What in the goddamn hell is the point of that, then? It's not like Reconguista in Char acts anything like Luin — Butterfly Mask Char is a borderline nutjob who's obviously way too in to fighting, while Luin seemed like a pretty nice kid, if a bit touchy about the whole "being called an-as-of-yet-untranslated-but-presumably-not-complementary-word" thing.

The plotting decisions displayed by this show make no goddamn sense at all.

edited 27th Mar '15 11:51:54 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Yep. Sums up G-Reco in a nutshell.

Yes, in all seriousness if the show is already annoying you, it's not going to get any better. Not one bit. I'll elaborate later after everything's stewed a bit, but while I didn't find Reconguista to be as frustrating a watch as Victory or SEED Destiny, it's a complete storytelling mess.

Also, concerning one little bit about the final episode...having the ruins of Jaburo being a setpiece for the final battle was neat, but uh, I think Tomino forgot that he had the Titans nuke it back in Zeta; there should only be a giant crater there!

edited 28th Mar '15 12:20:51 AM by ComicX6

Jaburo is an enormous cavern system. Nukes are famously bad at dealing with those. Partial destruction and a whole lot of fallout makes decent sense.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Well, that's disappointing. I tried to keep an open mind about the first few episodes while they introduced the characters and the setting — both of which are actually pretty interesting, with the exception of the characters occasionally making utterly nonsensical decisions for the sake of the plot — in the hopes that once things got rolling and the main story arc kicked in, things would settle down into something more coherent.

If it doesn't, though... well, in that case I guess I'm officially watching to see just how bad it gets rather than in the hope that it improves.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

In the world of Gundam, wearing a mask is enough to fool everyone. Luin also has a reason for being aggressive as a Capital Army pilot, which becomes apparent as the series goes on.

I really don't think the plotting in G-Reco is a mess. There's actually a logic to it, and if you rewatch past episodes knowing what you learn about characters and their world later on, you'll find that every character's behavior is more or less consistent with who they are and where they're coming from.

A story that's only internally coherent in hindsight isn't internally coherent. Yeah, it's not necessarily realistic that you understand everyone and their motivations for their actions, but this is a work of fiction. "It's not entertaining because no one makes any sense" is a legitimate criticism, even if they do make sense, but the audience isn't in a position to understand how. That's entirely on the creator — they put the audience in that position, after all. It is possible to make an entertaining work where you don't understand the characters (the main draw of the work in those cases is trying to work out their motivations), but Reco in G hasn't come close to pulling that off.

Note that when I'm talking about understanding someone's motivation, then "obviously they're doing XYZ for a reason, though I don't know what that reason is yet" counts. I don't understand the motivation of the space pirates in opposing the Capital, but that's fine — I can see that they have one, which is enough for now, as it seems likely that it will be explored later. But characters in this show keep doing things that don't mesh with their established characterization. Bellri is a Capital Guard cadet, and seems quite happy to be one, but attacks his own allies in defense of his enemies without complaint (he volunteers for the chance, actually!), and makes no great effort to communicate with them rather than fight them. The space pirates are clearly a professional military unit — mercenaries or an independent paramilitary group at least, if not actual army. But they let Bellri, Noredo, and Raraiya wander around, gathering information about them and generally getting in everyone's way, without so much as a sharp word, much less doing something sensible like confining them to quarters until they sort out what to actually do with them. Hell, neither side seems to care much about letting random folks from the opposing side pilot the G-Self, despite the fact that one might expect you to place a rather high priority on retaining possession of a powerful and mysterious mobile suit — or at least denying it to the enemy.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The Amerians have their shit somewhat more together than the Capital Army, but they're still pretty green at all this. It's not rookies versus veterans, it's rookies versus rookies with a slight head start who think that a couple of border skirmishes and some crudely-assembled UC tech make them king shits of the world. And then the Capital Army starts getting better, more complete UC tech, and everything goes to hell.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Again, I think the problem is that you're misunderstanding things. The show has made it clear that the Capital Guard is not the Capital Army, and that Bellri is not allies with the Capital Army. He actually did try to communicate with Dellensen in the previous episode, but it failed because he couldn't establish a direct link to his Mobile Suit. With no way to make contact with the Capital Guard, and with the Capital Army attacking the Megafauna and putting Noredo and Raraiya in danger, Bellri has no choice but to defend the Megafauna from the CA. On top of that, the Megafauna crew are a nice bunch of people, and Bellri feels bad about killing Cahill.

As for why the Megafauna doesn't put Bellri et al in the brig, there's no reason to. Bellri is actually an asset to them as the G-Self pilot, and Noredo can't escape without Bellri's help. There's also nothing they could tell the Capital Guard that they don't already know.

edited 28th Mar '15 10:02:39 AM by reconguista

It's clear that both sides are rather Mildly Military, but there's a large difference between "inexperienced" and "idiotic", and the behavior shown so far is rather more the latter than the former.

The show has made it clear that the Capital Guard and the Capital Army are different things, certainly, and that Bellri is a cadet of the former rather than the latter. But it's also clear that they both work for the Capital, and the conflict between them should be an Interservice Rivalry at worst. Hell, Dellensen is Capital Guard, but has flown missions with the Capital Army (ditto with Luin, apparently), so it's not like the line between them is especially thick. Saying that Bellri doesn't consider the Army his allies against the space pirates because he's in the Guard is about as stupid as saying that an Air Force pilot wouldn't consider the Navy his allies against a group of insurgents.

Or he could (re)steal the G-Self and use it to take Noredo and Raraiya back to the Capital without involving himself in the battle at all — which is exactly what Noredo suggested in episode 5. Saying "oh, he tried to talk once and it didn't work, so now he has to fight his allies to protect his enemies" is pretty ridiculous. He has plenty of other options, he just doesn't seem particularly interested in trying any of them.

Which is fine, and I'm not saying that he should be all gung-ho about murdering the Megafauna's crew, but if he's sad about having to kill an enemy that was in the midst of trying to kill him, he certainly doesn't display the same level of concern about possibly having to kill anyone from the Capital, who are at least nominally on his side. "I don't want to have to kill anyone" is a time-honored Gundam trope and I have no problems with it, but Bellri doesn't really seem to give a shit. He apologies to Aida for killing the guy because Aida's clearly upset about it, but he doesn't have any My God, What Have I Done? sort of angst, nor does he display any sort of trepidation about going back into battle and possibly being put into a situation where he's forced to kill again. What little he's revealed about his background suggests that he's never even considered the idea that the Capital aren't the good guys in the world, and even if he had thought about it, he's got nothing to suggest that they aren't, and yet he's willing to throw in with them for... no readily apparent reason.

So the Megafauna's idiocy is justified by Bellri's idiocy, I guess? I suppose that's true, but I don't find it at all satisfying, as the Megafauna has no reason to trust Bellri, because Bellri has no reason to be trustworthy. And yet, he is and they do.

That's my problem with the show, really. Characters seem to do things because they're required to by the plot, rather than because it's a reasonable thing for that character to do in that situation.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

And you haven't even gotten to the worst bits of casual treason in the series

The weirdest part is that it seems like this is supposed to be because they're new at this military thing, but historically this sort of surge in militarism tends to be tied to nationalism

I could totally buy people switching sides on a whim if the characters in question were shown to have little in the way of loyalty to "their" side, but Bell does honestly seem to think that the Capital are the good guys who are keeping the world from descending back into the bad old days of the Universal Century. Not to mention that he's grown up in the Capital, his mother is a bigwig muckity-muck in the Capital hierarchy, and he doesn't have anything like the rebellious streak like Kamille did, so there doesn't seem to be any reason for him to be anything but loyal to the Capital, at least until he's given a good reason to be otherwise (which, so far, he hasn't).

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

There's one big, important thing - the Capital is no longer a cohesive entity, and Cumpa's Army doesn't represent the culture and traditions his mother embodies, with its heightened aggression and gleefully hypocritical use of taboo technology. He's neatly split the Capital into two parts - the good Capital represented by his mother, which he remains broadly loyal to the ideals of, and the bad Capital represented by the Army, which is what he files all the Megafauna crew's grumbling about the Capital under and is quite comfortable with opposing.

Yes, Bellri is an inconsistent hypocrite who often thinks with the wrong head. This is deliberate and a plot point. Wait until you get to his interesting philosophy regarding human shields.

What's precedent ever done for us?

That seems reasonable, but I don't think that Bellri knows that. Hell, I'm not sure anyone knows that yet — there's hints of some political infighting, but it doesn't seem to be public knowledge how deep-seated the division within the Capital is. Bellri didn't seem to know much of anything about the Army before he wanted off to hang out with the pirates.

On the other hand, I didn't get the impression that Bellri was following Aida because he was thinking with his dick. Hell, he seems pretty blind to the fact that Noredo obviously has her eye on him — if he wanted some female attention, he'd just have to acknowledge her existence. He did seem to take a shining to the girl delivering supplies in episode 5, though.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

He knows the CA's a problem because he's been fighting them. Pretty much everything they've thrown at him has been taboo tech, and they've got way too much of it - the Elf series are especially alarming. If even the Capital ignores the taboos, they stop being the regulatory body keeping the world from going mad and start being a dictatorship with no legitimate claim on their power.

As for the Aida thing, remember that shot of him standing slack-jawed as her hair whipped past his face? Dude's not exactly made of stone.

edited 28th Mar '15 8:05:53 PM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?