Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans

It's true that the show hasn't told us specifically what form McGillis's Gjallarhorn would take, but he's said that he wants to create a world where people rise or fall by their own merit rather than due to family status and political patronage, and we have no reason not to believe him. It's possible that his vision of Gjallarhorn could end badly for the world just as the status quo does (the obvious way would be to have the strong continue to oppress the weak, just with "strong" meaning personal strength of arms rather than aristocratic political power), but it's also possible that it wouldn't, and McGillis is the only one even trying to fix the system.

This is the sentiment expressed by Rustal, who has also said things like Tekkadan are dogs to be trained into obedience or put down like rabid animals, and human debris are space rats whose lives are meaningless. He's also the guy who flagrantly and unrepentantly breaks the laws he claims to be fighting to uphold if it gives him an advantage to do so, and commits atrocities like the mass slaughter of civilians and deliberately provoking wars if that furthers his aims.

Rustal is an evil, petty man who represents the absolute worst of the status quo and is the embodiment of the corruption in Gjallarhorn that McGillis fought against. We're not supposed to agree with him.

I have no idea where this idea that McGillis only values personal, individual power comes from. He gathered power to himself because he needed it to force Gjallarhorn to change, but he never eschews power in political rather than personal form (he let Carta get herself killed so that he would control her family's political power, for example) or because it came from others willing to help him rather than adding to his own personal strength (he happily works with Tekkadan when they're willing to work with him, and he sees Mika — the most individually powerful person in the show — as a kindred spirit rather than a rival or a threat). He seizes the Bael as much for its symbolic and legal power as the mobile suit used by the leader of Gjallarhorn as he does for its combat power as a Gundam. He does value personal power, yes, and you could make the argument that he values it more than other forms because it can't be taken away from you, but that doesn't mean he ignores or disdains other forms of power. He's not Treize, who thinks that all forms of power other than personal strength at arms as expressed in the form of gentlemanly duels are gauche and cowardly, to be shunned by men of honor.

I don't disagree that that seems to be what IBO was going for, but I think they flubbed the attempt. The mark of a classic tragedy is that the focus character — the Tragic Hero — is someone whose Fatal Flaw is a virtue taken to harmful extremes. This doesn't really apply to any of IBO's characters. Not Tekkadan, not Kudelia, not McGillis — all of them have laudable goals and take reasonable steps in pursuit of them. Each of them have at least one character trait that could have been taken in that direction (Tekkadan boldness, McGillis's ambition, Kudelia's charity), but none of them actually were. As with so many things in IBO, the potential was there, but never really panned out.

I agree that IBO has tons of wasted potential, but disagree that the problem was not enough screen time. The problem was that they wasted screen time on things that never went anywhere, mostly in the second season. The mobile armor arc in particular stands out as a significant investment in air time that ended up being basically pointless. it devoted a bunch of episodes to introducing a bunch of concepts (AI-controlled autonomous self-directed, self-repairing weapon platforms, the Pluma drone subunits, beam weapons as terror weapons that are nigh-useless in military contexts, the Gundam anti-mobile armor overclocking mode, etc) that never came up again, so made the whole thing basically a giant waste of time. The only actual plot events that happen in that entire arc are 1) the recovery of the Flauros, 2) McGillis learning that Gaelio survived, and 3) Mika sacrificing another couple limbs to Barbatos. They didn't need to dedicate four entire episodes to that.

Season two was just poorly plotted in general.

He didn't ditch them, they ditched him. They threw in the towel and abandoned the idea of helping McGillis become leader of Gjallarhorn and being made Kings of Mars as a reward, and focused solely on escaping and surviving over fighting and winning. If you want to criticize anyone for that decision, criticize Tekkadan, because it was their decision, not McGillis's. Of course, you were always one of the people criticizing Tekkadan for choosing the high risk/high reward path, so it would seem odd that you would change your mind about that now.

His choices were boring. "Use this newly upgraded Gundam with a plot device make-you-a-bigger-badass-with-no-drawbacks interface to kill the guy who beat the pants off you at the end of last season, who you've spent the entire season lording your moral superiority over because you refuse to admit that you're on the wrong side of history" is a dull and unsatisfying story arc. Gaelio in season two is an uninteresting character who loses the only thing that made him stand out in season one — that he was a high-ranking Seven Stars member who still believed that Gjallarhorn was going down the wrong path and seemed willing to work within the system to curb its excesses. He could have made an interesting counterpart to both Rustal (who wants to maintain the status quo as-is because he doesn't care that Gjallarhorn is the cause of immeasurable amounts of human suffering as long as he's on the top of the heap) and McGillis (who thinks that the Seven Stars are irredeemable and seeks to destroy them entirely, or at least remove them from power as much as possible) by taking the middle ground and seeking to lead Gjallarhorn into being the servants of humanity rather than their overlords.

Instead he's a revenge-obsessed maniac who is guilty of everything he accuses McGillis of, and neither develops as a character nor appreciably advances the plot with his actions (other than the mere fact of his survival forcing McGillis to make his coup attempt early) until the final arc, where he kills McGillis and turns the entire series into a giant Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story. But it's okay, because he's sad about killing McGillis after the fact, and aw look they really were friends the entire time. 10/10, fantastic writing, not at all a complete waste of two characters.

Hell, it would have been right in step with grand Gundam tradition for them to be friends even while they fought each other, with each trying to convince the other to see things their way and join their side. Gaelio and McGillis debating each other over the best way to reform Gjallarhorn, with Gaelio arguing that McGillis is going too far and McGillis throwing Gaelio's apparent abandoning of his ideals (working under Rustal, getting Alaya-Vijnana implants, using the Ein system) back in his face could have been fantastic. Pity nothing even remotely like that ever happened.

Gonna have to call [citation needed] on that one. Other than the Ein system, Kimaris and Bael seem to be pretty much equal. Kimaris has more bells and whistles in terms of weaponry and the like, but Bael has the advantage of being Simple, yet Awesome. The three basic pillars of any combat unit are armor, mobility, and firepower — and Kimaris and Bael match in all three categories. They're both twin-reactor Gundams, which makes their available power for nanolaminate armor and mobility via thrusters essentially identical, as well as the raw physical strength they can put into their strikes. The only appreciable difference between them is their weaponry, and Bael's dual swords essentially match the Kimaris's lance, sword, knee-drills, etc because Kimaris can only use one of them at a time anyway, so the comparison isn't "lance + sword + drill vs swords" it's "lance vs swords + sword vs swords + drill vs swords", all of which are fairly even, with neither side having a decisive advantage.

Remember that Gundams are basically Lost Technology in IBO, so "upgrades" to Gundams aren't really improving their performance specs by incorporating new technological advances (since Gundams are more advanced than anything that can be currently produced already), it's just tailoring the machine to the pilot's preferences or the environment. There's the occasional exception that adds new capabilities (like Barbatos Lupus Rex adding the "tail blade"), but that wasn't true of either Bael or Kimaris. Bael was already outfitted in line with McGillis's style (it's essentially the same equipment as the Grimgerde from the season one finale), meaning he didn't really need to retrofit it, so I don't think the logical that "Kimaris got more upgrades, so it's higher performance than Bael" follows.

Answer me this: was he wrong? Was destroying the social system that hurt him and continues to hurt countless others a bad idea? Did he not need power to even attempt to change the system for the better? You talk as if it's self-evident that McGillis was in the wrong, but I'll repeat it yet again: he was doing the right thing (trying to take out a hopelessly corrupt system that caused unimaginable amounts of suffering) and nearly succeeded (had Gaelio not survived, he almost certainly would have — and he still came within a hairsbreadth of winning by taking out Rustal and Iok with Flauros's dainsleif shot).

I'm not saying that he was unaffected by his experiences as a child — of course he was — I'm just saying that it doesn't make him an evil crazy person with delusions of grandeur. He had a reasonable goal (overthrow the Seven Stars to end the corrupt, evil system keeping them in power), a reasonable plan to achieve it (various political machinations to build up his store of power and allies, then claim the Bael and declare himself leader of Gjallarhorn, use his amassed power and support defeat the people that would inevitably oppose his claim, then set about reforming Gjallarhorn), and a reasonable execution of that plan as adjusted for events as they occurred.

The plan only failed because:

1) Gaelio survived his defeat during the season one finale without anyone realizing, despite the fact that a) the cockpit being intact was obvious, b) the disabled Kimaris was in the middle of the Tekkadan lines, and c) even if neither McGillis nor Tekkadan decided to check (McGillis to make sure Gaelio was actually dead despite his intact cockpit, which was absolutely required by his plan; Tekkadan to add a valuable Gundam frame to their collection) the nearby Gjallarhorn troops should have been McGillis's men, as he controlled the Earth forces. Instead they apparently reported Gaelio's survive on the DL to Rustal, whose Arianrhod Fleet was nowhere near the battlefield.

2) Shino missed the decapitation shot with Flauros's dainsleif round. This was due to interference by Julieta, who Mika — having the advantage of both an Alaya-Vijnana system and a Gundam while Juleita lacked both — should have crushed easily, but instead was drawn into an extended time-wasting duel that just happened to give Julieta an opening to turn her attention to Shino instead of Mika at the crucial point without getting immediately destroyed by Mika for letting her attention waver from their duel. Not to mention that modern targeting systems are smart enough to detect if their weapon is out of alignment and not fire if they are, even when the trigger is pulled (but that might be expecting too much of a Gundam show).

3) Gaelio defeated McGillis in a one-on-one duel. We've already discussed extensively why I have a problem with this.

If 1) or 2) hadn't happened, then it's a clean win for McGillis. He's acknowledged as leader of Gjallarhorn and is able to clean house as he sees fit. If 3) hadn't happened, then at minimum Rustal dies and the opposition forces are thrown into disarray. It's possible that McGillis might not have been able to pull out a win from that, given that his forces had already been decimated, his allies abandoned him, and his position as a member of the Seven Stars stripped by Gjallarhorn. But with Gaelio and Rustal both dead, the only opposition leader left would be Iok, whose terminal incompetence certainly would have given McGillis a solid shot at victory. It depends mostly on how badly Bael was damaged fighting Kimaris, and whether he was able to fight his way free of the immediate aftermath of the battle, or if the Bael was too trashed to keep fighting effectively.

So yeah, I think it's fair to say that McGillis's attempt wasn't doomed from the start or sunk by his own bad choices, but rather failed due to a handful of random events outside his control. Were it real life, we'd call this the vagaries of fate or simple bad luck — but since it's fiction, I put the blame squarely on the writers.

edited 29th Mar '17 8:37:42 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Macky throwing those dumb ideals into Gaelio's face would have been dumb, because he has committed many corrupt acts on his way to the top to get the power he seeks, including the turning of Ein into a weapon to pin the blame on Iznario or whatever the fuck the pedo's name is. It would have been a pot calling kettle black.

The fact you think Gaelio is in anyway a maniac shows how deluded you are, because he had every reason to see Macky as a bad guy and he never gave him any reason otherwise and despite it he still cared for him. All Macky needed to do was actually talk with his friend to avoid all this, but he didn't and decided killing him for power was better, so he fucked himself over with his insane plan.

You forgot the part where his pedo adoptive father revealed he isn't blood related, destroying his legitimacy and the fleet he took over after Carta's death joined Rustal as a result, because most of his men aren't loyal to him because of his power or suit but position, showing just how much he relies on the corrupt system to legitimize his coup. The only reason the Mars branch guy even allowed him to land and not die in space is on the off chance Macky could succeed despite the situation.

And he knew Gaelio was alive as Vidar from their first meeting during the events of Hashmal's rampage but went with his dumb plan anyways.

edited 29th Mar '17 8:42:18 AM by OmegaRadiance

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.

Destroying social order is all well and good, if you can replace with something better, which McGillis wasn't gonna. He explicitly wanted to create a world ruled by strength, which is obviously a terrible idea. In a world where strength is the only law, what happens to the weak?

All that his victory would achieve is replacing one hegemony with a bunch of warring factions and warlords, who would be worse than Gjallarhorn could dream of being.

There would be a period of total chaos followed by a raise of new order as the strongest faction would take over and people would accept them because they would accept anyone who could bring order back. In the end McGillis vision would bring nothing but misery to the people. But of course he didn't actually care about that - after all for him they were just "cowering animals who don't know how to use their fangs." McGillis was always in it for McGillis.

Also, acting like strength is a mere means to an end for McGillis when it's clearly not is pretty disingenuous. When I use the word "obsession" to describe it, I'm not doing it lightly.

edited 29th Mar '17 9:08:42 AM by Shlugo_the_great

On the Kimaris Vidar, its choreography in all of its fights shows what makes it dangerous. Put simply, your assertion that a suit can only use one weapon at once doesn't apply to it. Thanks to the A-V Type E, Gaelio can simultaneously mount an impenetrable defence with the two shield-arms and keep attacking you with the lance, the sword, and the drill-knees all at once - and three out of four of those weapons are powerful enough to land a One-Hit Kill if you don't block them. In the actual show, we repeatedly see him tying up his foes' defences with the lance, shields, or sword (or some combination of the above) before going in with a knee killshot that they no longer have a way to respond to. The Bael, on the other hand, has only two genuinely lethal weapons, which are also its only defences against incoming melee attacks, and aren't nearly as devastating as the KV's loadout (the Kimaris Vidar's least powerful weapon is the exact same kind of Absurdly Sharp Blade the Bael uses, but longer).

This is true for most of the more advanced suits in the show that take true advantage of the A-V System - since their suit is an extension of their body, they can adopt the most inhuman of fighting styles, wielding multiple devastating weapons with equal skill and overwhelming the enemy with a storm of attacks. The Full City has its four super-strong arms, while the Lupus Rex is loaded with enough weaponry to ensure that any strike with any part of its body will be lethal. Mc Gillis didn't take advantage of that, sticking only with his hero's minimalist fighting style as a display of his own skill, and paid the price.

What's precedent ever done for us?

If you honestly think that preferring a meritocracy to a corrupt, oppressive aristocracy is a "dumb ideal", then I really don't know what to tell you.

He committed corrupt acts by Gjallarhorn's standards (namely "getting Seven Stars members killed" and "revealing Gjallarhorn's hypocrisy to the public"), but not the standards of common human decency. The only questionable thing he did was fight his buddy Gaelio — and he did that up front and in the open as a clearly declared enemy, he didn't stab Gaelio in the back by exploiting their friendship (like, say, Char did to Garma).

And like I said earlier, everyone in IBO has done unpleasant things to accomplish their goals. Why single out McGillis for it, when other people are as bad or worse?

I didn't call Gaelio a maniac because he opposed McGillis, I called him a maniac because he dropped literally everything else to throw himself into some sort of bizarre honor feud with McGillis. If Gaelio wanted McGillis's plans sunk, all he had to do was reveal that he survived and let the world know that it was McGillis who had tried to kill him. Bam, McGillis is accused of attempted murder of a member of the Seven Stars, he's arrested and tried, problem solved.

Instead he stayed in hiding, letting his father and sister believe he was dead, willingly served the guy whose methods he once disdained, allowed himself to get the cybernetics he was once disgusted by, and subjected his cherished friend to further indignity by using him as a glorified computer interface, in order to get revenge on McGillis personally, by defeating him in combat.

That's why I called him a maniac. Not because he opposed McGillis, but because he cast away everything he once cared about (his family, his honor, his humanity, his friend Ein) not to be the cause of McGillis's downfall, but in order to be the guy who killed him, personally. That is incredibly messed up.

No I didn't? I specifically mentioned that Gjallarhorn stripped McGillis of his position after his forces lost to Rustal. But it didn't have anything to do with blood relation (McGillis was already known to be adopted, it was just commonly assumed that he was Iznario's bastard child — but that had no bearing on the legality of his adoption), it was because the neutral Seven Stars basically said "we'll support whoever wins the next fight", and then Rustal won that fight.

Once more: his "dumb plan" almost succeeded. His claiming Bael got him more support than he would have otherwise had. Once he knew Gaelio was alive, his choices were "launch the coup immediately and use the legitimacy conferred by being Bael's pilot to counter the accusations levelled by Gaelio" or "wait for Gaelio to make his accusations at his preferred hour, and be left with no response because he is, in fact, guilty of trying to kill Gaelio". Seizing the Bael immediately was his best option.

You can repeat "dumb plan" and "but muh Bael" all you want, but you aren't actually addressing my points as to why it wasn't a dumb plan and it isn't just muh Bael.

That's possible, but I don't think it's particularly likely. He wants to prevent what happened to him from happening to anyone else — and as a victimized child, he was undoubtedly weak. If his logic was running on hardcore Social Darwinism, then he would have been proud of himself for rising from nothing to become one of most powerful people alive — he would have taken this as proof that the system worked as-is, since he (a strong person) rose from nothing to claim his "rightful" place at the top of society. Anyone who complains about the system just isn't strong enough, so doesn't deserve anything.

Along that same line, if he only valued strength, then why would he give a damn about Almiria? She's weak in basically every since of the word. Yet he genuinely seems to care about her — presumably because she, a weak person surrounded by the strong, reminds him of his own childhood. Rather than showing her sympathy, if strength was all that mattered to him, he should have held her in contempt for not fighting to become strong like he did.

It seems to me that he values strength because it's useful. You need strength in order to accomplish anything. For McGillis, strength is a means, not an end unto itself. He wants strength to destroy the Seven Stars, not just to be strong.

In terms of what he plans to do with that strength, all we have are his own words and those of his loyal minion Isurugi: that he wanted to create a world where people were could rise based on their merit, rather than the only way to a better life being political patronage.

If that's the case, why kill his friends when he clearly didn't want to, if not for what he saw as a higher cause? Hell, why stage his coup at all, when he was already one of the most powerful people alive, and had literally everything he could ever want? He's never spoken about wanting to rule over others or wanting to prove his strength to the world. Whenever he's talking about his motivations, he's talking about ridding Gjallarhorn of corruption and making the world a place where people can rise and fall on their own merit — goals that are about improving things for other people, not McGillis personally — not gaining ever-more strength or being the strongest ever.

Alternatively, different people can have different opinions, and what's "clear" to you is just how you see it, not an objective fact. Please don't accuse me of being disingenuous for having the temerity to disagree with you.

In theory, maybe, but we never actually see that happen. I just rewatched the fight. Kimaris uses the lance exclusively (plus punching Bael with his free hand once) until he loses it, then he uses the sword (plus a kick) until he loses that, then he uses the drill-knees, which doesn't work (because McGillis has seen that trick already), so he pulls the drill bit out and uses it like a dagger. At no point does he actually use multiple weapons simultaneously, unless you count punching/kicking/ramming, which doesn't actually involve his armament at all.

edited 29th Mar '17 10:01:10 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

He kills his friends because to him having connections with others makes you weak.

Bael didn't get him more support. That's a lie. The only support he had were his followers of the coup and the men already working under him, and Tekkadan. In fact the fact it didn't him get the forces he needed to best Rustal is part of why his plan was falling apart. They chose to be Neutral instead and then sided with Rustal when he proved the victor.

They showed Iznario testifying to Macky not being his son as well, it's why they briefly showed him, which is why he lost the support that followed him only because of his blood.

edited 29th Mar '17 10:13:19 AM by OmegaRadiance

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.

I was thinking mainly of the fights during the fleet engagement, where that was mostly how he used his drill-knees. They were a surprise attack to murder an enemy once he'd tied them up. We do actually see him do it a couple of times in the final battle with Bael - there's an unsuccessful grapple where he tries to pin McGillis and then stab him with the drill-knee, and then rakes him with his drill's guns when he breaks away, and then there's the one-two-three combo he wins the fight with - a high feint to take the Bael's remaining sword out of the picture (that's another advantage of having lots of weapons - you have extra options when one of them breaks), a hit with the drill-knee, and finally a downward stab with a broken drill-bit held in the KV's remaining hand. His shields also saw use all the way through, guarding his flanks and preventing McGillis from scoring a mobility-kill.

Gaelio may not launch many truly simultaneous attacks, but he does like to land a rapid succession of hits from a range of angles that it's impossible for an enemy to entirely defend from.

edited 29th Mar '17 10:24:54 AM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

No, he kills his friends because they're Seven Stars and his whole purpose is to overthrow the Seven Stars. He doesn't think that associating with others makes you weak, he said that his personal friendship with Carta and Gaelio almost caused him to abandon his goal of overthrowing the Seven Stars because he knew doing so entailed killing his friends. His friendship weakened his resolve to achieve his goals because the goals and the friendships were at odds, not because "friendship makes you weak".

There are seven families in the Seven Stars. Two of them supported McGillis — the Fareed and Issue families, which he controlled. Two of them opposed him — the Elion and Kujan families, controlled by Rustal and Iok respectively. The other three families declared neutrality, because they didn't want to oppose the pilot of Bael (McGillis) but didn't want to support the man accused of murdering Seven Stars members (also McGillis). If he hadn't been accused of murder, they would have supported him. If he hadn't been pilot of Bael, they would have opposed him. Since he was both, they did neither. So yes, the fact that he had Bael gave him more influence than he would have had without Bael.

McGillis was Iznario's son — by adoption. That's true regardless of whether he's Iznario's biological son or not. That's literally what adoption means — "this person isn't actually my biological child, but for all intents and purposes, they can be treated as if they were from now on". There were two groups of people who supported McGillis — the Fareed and Issue family forces (who he was the rightful, legal commander of) and the group of rebels under Liza Whatshisname who followed him for ideological reasons. As far as I'm aware, none of them actually abandoned him — they were simply mostly killed during the battle with Rustal, and the remainder fled to Mars alongside him and Tekkadan.

Why, when that's not the fight we were talking about?

Again, that's nice in theory, but it doesn't actually happen. Even the final combo that you're talking about^note which doesn't actually end the fight — they proceed to grappling and bounce around the ship's hangar while wrestling, and we don't actually see what happens between that point and a mortally-wounded McGillis staggering through the ship's halls doesn't fit that description. Kimaris attacks high with his sword, Bael parries, they both lose their weapons. Kimaris rips off his own shield and throws it at Bael, again high, Bael dodges. Kimaris uses the knee drill (low, as the knee drills necessitate), Bael blocks it with his leg. Kimaris pulls the bit free and attacks high, Bael sits there and watches while Kimaris stabs him despite the fact that Kimaris left itself wide open while going for the high stab and Bael still had half a sword in his hand.

The idea that Kimaris uses its multiple weapons in conjunction to launch rapid-fire strikes from multiple angles so that its target can't defend against all of them in time simply isn't true, at least not in the final Kimaris vs Bael fight.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Again, he did think it made him weak. It made him hesitate and that would weaken his resolve and desire for power, so he dehumanized them to remove them for his power play. It really is based around his obsession with strength and how connections are a weakness, just like he thought Tekkadan was like him only to find out they care about each other.

The Issue family didn't obey him by choice. Nor did Gaelio's family. It was his connections, using his position as taking over Issue's fleet same for Gaelio's family, and holding Gaelio's dad at fucking gunpoint to obey. Rustal himself points out to his men to only kill the ones actually on Macky's side because they believe in him, while the rest don't and are simply following orders, and when his position of being related to Iznario is revealed to be a farce because people only speculated it and it was never confirmed, he lost all backing from them. Leaving only those willingly taking part in his Coup.

All he had was a small number of coup members who were following him out of actual loyalty, and even with the numbers from the fleets of the families that did side with him weren't even close to enough to actually beat Rustal, a fact Macky himself points out and why he was surprised when the remaining families didn't join him. Tekkadan were the ones who came up with the clever plan to beat Rustal, even if it failed.

edited 29th Mar '17 11:54:57 AM by OmegaRadiance

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.

You're rather missing the forest for the trees there. What you're describing is, indeed, a rapid-fire series of attacks from multiple angles made possible by having a variety of weapons, which the enemy eventually ran out of counters for (not least because one of McGillis's swords had been destroyed before that final sequence after using it to parry Gaelio's huge, heavy weapons one too many times - remember, kids, in PD, Bigger Is Better, and bring spares).

For the record, I'm calling it the final sequence because it's where McGillis takes his fatal injury, and the rest of the fight is him trying to get away from Gaelio.

edited 29th Mar '17 12:23:19 PM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

Yes, it weakened his resolve, because "being friends with Seven Stars members" and "overthrowing the Seven Stars" are mutually exclusive goals. Not because "having connections with others makes you weak" like you originally claimed. I already said that in my last post.

The Issue family obeyed him because after Carta's death and Iznario's exile, he was their legal commander. The Bauduin family (Gaelio's family) didn't obey him at all — it was one of the three that stayed neutral.

Then your definition of "rapid fire" is incredibly broad. It wasn't sword-shield-drill-stab all as one smooth continuous combo. He lost his sword in the same exchange as McGillis did, paused for a second to rip his shield off, threw that as a separate attack, followed up with the drill knee, paused again to pull the drill bit out of Bael's leg where it was lodged (while Bael waited quietly because it was off-screen at the time, one supposes), then stabbed with the drill bit as another separate attack.

In any case, your original claim was that Kimaris used its multiple melee weapons in conjunction. It does not. It doesn't use the sword until it loses the lance, and it doesn't use the drill knees until it loses the sword. "Kimaris has better staying power because it has more melee weapons to use as backups" might be a defensible claim (though it might not — at the end, it's Bael with half a sword vs Kimaris with a drill bit used as an improvised dagger, so that honestly seems like a wash to me), but that wasn't your argument.

My point is that Kimaris's weapons loadout is not a decisive advantage over Bael's simpler equipment. The fact that the fight ended with both Gundams reduced to broken and improvised weapons seems to bear this out.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

... or it could have something to do with McGillis being a gifted enough pilot to almost overcome a severe equipment disadvantage. Again, Gaelio tried a rushdown on him, hammering him with his full arsenal of weaponry, and Mc Gillis kept successfully dodging and blocking until his suit was too wrecked to do it any more (which wasn't due to a lack of mobility on the KV's part, because we saw it pull off several impressive feats of agility, but apparently pure pilot skill). The grapple-drill-autocannon sequence was a good example - Mc Gillis wormed his way away from what should have been certain death, and Gaelio just switched to another weapon and gave him a little more chip damage to slow him down.

What's precedent ever done for us?

McGillis doesn't care that society is stratified, he just believes that the way of deciding who's on top is wrong. Instead of birthright and social standing he wants it to be decided by personal power. In this very episode he kept rambling on about releasing the "cowering animals" into "the wilderness". McGillis wanted to turn the society into a free for all and either didn't care or was to wrapped to realize how it would affect the weak.

Saying that McGillis views power as the means to and end is silly, because for him power is the end. Again McGillis is obsessed with power, something that the show reiterates again and again.

McGillis killed his friends because his connection with them made him waver in his resolve- a weakness as far as McGillis saw such things. He said it "solitude is freedom". Freedom from what? Human bonds that might make him waver. Basically he wanted to become The Unfettered and they were holding him back.

Also he has no real grudge against the seven stars. He hated Iznario and that was pretty much it for the members of the Seven Star. He wanted to reform everything to based on power and was planning on using the power of the seven stars to do so. He viewed the Seven Stars council as weak and inefficient. (Something he directly states.) So he want to consolidate all their power under a single leader. (Himself)

Gaelio and Carta would have supported his goals of reform. But him viewing them as making him weaker and inability to trust them despite everything caused him to instead decide to do away with them, even though it did not help his goals.

He also was completely broken and did not even understand happiness. Despite claiming he wanted to make Almira happy as Gaelio pointed out to him, nothing he was doing was going to make her happy.

Mc Gillis ultimately was brought down by his delusion and paranoia.

edited 29th Mar '17 5:02:48 PM by Envyus

re: Iaculus — I'm just going to drop this particular line of discussion because it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Suffice to say that I don't think Kimaris's weapons loadout is substantially superior to Bael's, and the theoretical advantage you posit about using multiple weapons simultaneously doesn't actually happen in the animation. On that latter point, especially, we're just arguing over facts rather than interpretation, so there doesn't seem to be any room for productive conversation there.

re: Shlugo — You're not even making an argument, you're just stating your opinion as fact. Like I said last time, if all McGillis cares about is power, then why does he care about Almiria, who is literally the most powerless character in the show? If he just wants power for power's sake, then why are all his soliloquies regarding his motivation about ridding Gjallarhorn of corruption, rather than about becoming the strongest ever, or proving his strength to the world? Yeah, the guy's obsessed with power, but that's because he wants to change the world and knows that you need power to do that.

re: Envyus — He has no grudge against the Seven Stars? Really? It was the Seven Stars that sat in their ivory towers while he lived on the streets as a child. It was the Seven Stars that turned a blind eye while his adoptive father raped him. It was the Seven Stars that took Gjallarhorn, the proud organization founded by his hero Agnika Kaieru for the purpose of saving humanity during its darkest hour, and turned it into a jackboot standing on humanity's collective neck. He hates the Seven Stars — not personally, but what they stand for. That's why he killed his friends rather than simply recruit them into his reform effort — because his reform effort meant kicking them out of power, which he knew they wouldn't agree with.

The alternative is that he just wanted to be Supreme Mugwump of Gjallarhorn and rule solo instead as part of the Seven Stars council, and he murdered his friends who likely would have aided him in that effort because he's an idiot. Given the way he's portrayed otherwise, I don't think the "he's an idiot" interpretation is a reasonable one.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

If it was earlier in the show I would agree.

The first sign we saw about him being obsessed with power is Hashmal.

I don't see it being mutually exclusive that he lusts for POWAH and that Gjallorhorn needed to genuinely change. It's more paternalism than pure altruism, but in the shit world of IBO, I'll take what I can get.

I doubt the rebels want the Gjallorhorn to even exist after this over with...

Mileena Madness

I feel like everyone responding to Jovian is just stating things without examples. Not that I 100% agree with him, but at least he is bringing up specific moments and not saying "the show clearly says _____" and leaving it solely to your interpretations.

Because we've gone over this numerous times and it's pretty tiring having to bring up examples every single time in every single post. Plus we've all brought up examples, just different ones at different times.

Hell we went over how power meant everything to him from the moment we see his backstory and that he was obsessed with power, and learning from reading books as he was a candidate to be Iznario's child/victim that taught him other ways to increase his power. He even wanted Bael as a symbol of ultimate power that would make everyone obey him, which the show has already proven was hilariously delusional.

edited 29th Mar '17 9:46:32 PM by OmegaRadiance

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.

Uh this is exactly how he was portrayed. Like this is dead on.

No it wasn't...?

He had no plan beyond "I have Bael you must obey!" and it hilariously flopped. The guy can be cunning, but when it comes to childish obsession with strength or Agnika Kaieru he's hilariously stupid. It's not like he didn't know Vidar was Gaelio before he went to get it either, as Vidar's words during Hashmal attack about piloting the same suit Carta did is what tipped him off, but he still went through with it.

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.

Pretty much this. Even more pathetic that there was nothing special about the gundam anyway. It was the original pilot that was the true power of bael.

Warrior to the very end! My tumblr, dood!

Except he did have a better plan. This is pointless though if y'all want to see Macky as some one dimensional darwinistic villian despite the show portraying otherwise, that is your right.

What better plan. He had no backup and got slaughtered because of it.