Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans

I was referring to the use of Human debris and child soldiers. The kids are so malnourished it's a wonder they didn't pass out in battle just from low blood sugar.

More details on S2 have now been released, and we now know what McGillis's new ride will be.

He's flying Carta's old Graze Ritter to 'honour her memory' as the new commander of the Outer Earth Regulatory Joint Fleet. Hot damn.

edited 6th Sep '16 1:18:49 AM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

Christ, it's almost as if he wants karma to punch him in the dick.

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They

Like, fucking hell, there's being a dick and then there... this.

Seriously McGillis, what the fuck?

edited 6th Sep '16 4:41:59 AM by Shlugo_the_great

He really is a fucking asshole.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

God damn. I may not have liked Carta but just damn Chocolate Man. He's not tempting Karna, he's practically mooning it.

I have a really hard time feeling bad for Carta. She made her bed, she had to lie in it. McGillis didn't do anything except allow her to get killed through her own stupidity.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't think Carta was a bad person who deserved to die or anything. But she was an idiot and all McGillis did was enable her. It wasn't like he pulled an Uriah Gambit by sending her on a suicide mission or anything. She did that on her own, he just didn't stop her.

I will say that I really hope they keep McGillis as an Anti-Hero instead of turning him into a full-out villain. That's probably my biggest fear for season two. I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but as things stand, I'm pretty sympathetic to McGillis. He's utterly ruthless in pursuit of his goal, but his goal seems to be a noble one, and I can respect a guy who is willing to apply the same moral weight to his loved ones as he is to strangers or enemies (ie, "you're in the way, so I have to remove you; sorry, nothing personal"). But I could see season two screwing that up pretty easily.

Best case scenario, we get a Zechs-style thing, where he's not really on the protagonists' side, but he's not exactly their enemy, either. Worst case, he ends up Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and goes into full-on supervillainy.

edited 6th Sep '16 6:21:26 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I'm hoping for the same as well. Doesn't mean that after everything he's done he won't have some sort of Karmic turnabout. I'm hoping for a minor one at the very least.

Or maybe him showing at least some emotion over everything he's done, like at least some visible regret or remorse because selling out those close to you does take a emotional toll to pay.

edited 6th Sep '16 6:26:47 AM by EchoingSilence

Oh please, anything but that. The last thing Season 2 needs is trying to incite some sympathy for McGillis for treating people who love him as pawns to be sacrificed at his convenience. After he gone that far, the least he can do is own up to what he is. I don't want to hear no whining from that bastard.

What happened to his old ride, anyway? He took next to no damage in the S1 finale, why ditch it?

I didn't mean that Season 2 should do it. But if we are to believe he is a anti-hero who is making the hard choices, we should at least have reason to believe these are hard choices for him.

Well considering he used that Grimgerde against Gjallerhorn on at least two occasions, I imagine everyone would have alot of questions for him if he continued using it.

Fate Grand Order players will know me as Ryusei-Go.

He's already done that, though. He has a couple monologues toward the end of season one that make it clear that he regrets the necessity — but will do it anyway because he does see it as a necessity. McGillis believes he has to Shoot the Dog and is willing to go through with it even when "the dog" in this case are his childhood friends — quite possibly his only friends. That doesn't mean he likes it, but he'll do it because he sees no other way. It's not like Char and Garma, where Char pretended to be his friend while secretly waiting for an opportunity to kill him the entire time. If McGillis was actually friends with them, and if he could have avoided getting them killed, he would have. But there was no way to accomplish his plan without their deaths, so he did it, despite sincerely caring for them.

There's nothing to suggest that it's for "his convenience" — quite the opposite. Everything we've seen points to the idea that he's doing it for what he sees as the greater good, not for his own personal benefit. We don't know what form that greater good takes in his vision yet, but we do know that he genuinely loathes the corruption that's become endemic in Gjallarhorn and honestly wants to reform it from within. Whether those reforms will take the form of returning it to its Calamity War-era "knights in shining mecha fighting for the good of all humanity" state, or deliberately destroying it in order to rid humanity from its no-longer-necessary influence is as-of-yet unclear.

He's only used it as Montag, never as McGillis. Presumably he has it stashed somewhere so he can pull it out if he needs to do some off-the-record asskicking again, but he still needs a day-to-day ride in his McGillis persona.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Mc Gillis will almost certainly end up as an enemy of Tekkadan. His goals may be noble, but his means and the ruthlessness with which he pursues them will pretty much inevitably destroy him. Remember that Tekkadan are amongst the only people who know the truth of his rise to power, and unlike Todo, they're not wholly under his control. They're a big ol' loose end that he's going to have to tie up at some point.

On him sincerely caring for his friends, though, one issue is the flatness of his delivery when he says it. Gaelio and Carta may have been the closest things he had to friends, but that in and of itself seemed to be of very little significance to him. His feelings for them are just too shallow compared to the hatred driving him. There's certainly no evidence that he put much effort into finding a better way.

edited 6th Sep '16 7:52:13 AM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

While that's true, McGillis doesn't seem to be a very emotive person in general. We don't see him lose his cool over anything, really. You can take that as evidence that he doesn't care about anything, but I would disagree. I think he cares, he just doesn't show it outwardly much. If he didn't care, then why bother monologuing about how he promised to make their (unwitting) sacrifices worth the cost? Granted, "he's just an emotionless bastard" is a valid interpretation, I just don't think it's correct.

As far as becoming enemies with Tekkadan, I'm not so sure. If he considered them a liability, he has little reason to have let them live at Edmonton. Once Kudelia and the prime minister reached the parliament building, he had no more use for Tekkadan. They'd accomplished what he needed them to. He was in a pristine near-Gundam, and the only opposition left on the field was two damaged Gundams and a bunch of mobile workers, all of which were separated from each other and thought he was their ally. He almost certainly could have killed them all without much of a fight, but he chooses not to. That means he either doesn't consider them a threat, or he has plans for them farther down the road. Without knowing more about his endgame, it's impossible to say which.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I assume he believed Edmonton and all that led to it was a solid enough quid-pro-quo to keep them in line. However, if Teiwaz goes hostile (and remember that McMurdo is in contact with Nobliss, who wants bloody revolution and won't settle for peaceful reform), then they suddenly have an incredibly powerful weapon against him, and I can't see Macky stopping until they or he are dead. Remember, he didn't have to kill Gaelio to reform Gjallarhorn. He had him on-side as a powerful ally already. He had to kill him to make sure he would be in charge of reforming Gjallarhorn. The guy's got a taste for power and control, and that doesn't sit easily with others having dirt on him.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Macky might style himself as some kind of noble reformer, forced to make hard choices in service of greater good, but he's just a cynical manipulator who treats people like pawns and is just venting his anger. I doubt he care how many people will have to suffer and die for the sake of his plans, he's not a type who will back down because of ethical concerns.

My personal WMG is that Gaelio isn't actually dead, but rather captured and in McGillis' custody, but that's neither here nor there. Why he felt that he needed to deal with Gaelio violently rather than bring him in on his plans and use him as an ally is currently up in the air — it might be because he knows his endgame is something Gaelio would oppose, or it might be because he couldn't trust Gaelio to actually go along with him. In the absence of other evidence, I'm inclined to go with "a little of both" as my best guess. Gaelio is a decent enough guy who does want to see Gjallarhorn reformed, but he's also very much a product of Gjallarhorn society — he never questions that the Seven Stars deserve to rule, and he uncritically accepts some Gjallarhorn prejudices (like their distaste for cybernetics). If McGillis' ultimate plan involves radical change (such as removing the Seven Stars from power, or destroying Gjallarhorn entirely) then it's unlikely that Gaelio would go along with it. Gaelio would also never have agreed with removing Carta, and Carta buys into Gjallarhorn's honor culture way more than Gaelio does, so she's be a harder sell to get on their side and more likely to cause trouble regarding McGillis goals and/or methods if she did.

That doesn't really seem to be supported by what we see on-screen. While he certainly doesn't get along with his father and he's generally disgusted with the corruption in Gjallarhorn, he doesn't really seem to be driven by anger. it seems like if he was secretly driven by some all-consuming emotion like anger or hatred, we'd see that come out at some point, but we never do.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

He literally tells Galileo that love and friendship can't reach him because he lived his life in anger. I don't think he could make it any clearer that he indeed is full of anger.

I took that to mean the "righteous fury" sort of anger, the "you're evil people running an evil system and I'm going to stop you" sort of anger, not the "I'm going to get my friends killed on a whim because I'm not thinking clearly" sort of anger, which is what I thought you were referring to.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Oh no, I believe he's thinking quite clearly, I just don't think there's anything righteous about his fury. I don't for a second believe that Macky has the good of mankind at heart. At best it's some kind of personal crusade that he's willing to drag the whole solar system into and doesn't care how many people will get caught in the crossfire.

I guess we'll find out as things move forward.

Yeah, that's really the only way to get a definitive answer.

What are the chances Mc Gillis might find his own Gundam?

edited 6th Sep '16 2:53:47 PM by slimcoder

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Better than even, I'd say, though I'd sort of prefer it if he didn't. Bringing in too many Gundams when they've already been established as stupidly rare would feel kind of cheap. I'd rather have him demonstrate that a Gundam is handy, but you can get along just fine without one.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.