It's a Gundam thread!

So Gundam Reconguista in G is airing tomorrow. Anyone here going to watch it?

Only once subs are available.

Same here. I suppose I could just watch it raw and try and figure out what the hell's going on my lonesome, but I don't know whether that would be fun, boring, incredible irritating, or a strange mix of all three.

I'd understand about half of it without subs.

Finished Victory, just in time for Reconguista!

• The new Federation leader guy, Mubarak, must be a clone of General Revil. They look exactly the same.
• Episode 42 was just...wat. The culprit was mainly Lupe and her...issues, but when you cap the episode off by having the bad guy's concentration camp mobile armor being anticlimactically destroyed out of nowhere before it can even get out of the hanger there must be some sort of joke being played there somewhere.
• And yet, looked at in a vacuum, I thought that short bit of that one Shrike Team member on the shield after her mech was destroyed was really well storyboarded. If only she wasn't angsting over said shield.
• When Maria was talking about using the Angel Halo to expose the root cause of belligerence in mankind I was expecting to cut to the image of an ape hitting another one with a stick, a la 2001.
• Gundam's hardly the only work of fiction to do this, but when they kept going on about this bizarrely-implemented theme of motherhood and how woman create life and men just destroy, I have to wonder if these people remember that men actually play a minor role in the process that without which would lead to nothing. Unless they want us to believe that conception is always immaculate.
• Ah yes, the infamous "bikini squad". I think by this point Tomino/the directors have no idea what sort of tone they want to go for.
• As much crap as I throw towards Victory for trying to get pathos it hasn't earned, the sacrifice of the Reinforce Jr. and its executive crew was pretty well-done. I didn't expect him to stick around until the end when he first appeared, but I came to like Gomez, even if he was just sort of there as the captain character and never went beyond it.
• Hey, the battles between the Victory 2 and Chronicle's and Katejina's final mobile suits actually look good! It took you until the final episode, but you finally had a well-animated battle Victory! Congratulations!
• So uh, what happened to Tomache? He just disappeared halfway through the final battle and neither he nor his brother showed up in the epilogue.
• For that matter, what happened to Uso's father?! It looks like he just decided to fuck off once clone Revil decided to take the flagship on a suicide run.

So,after watching Victory, I can see why they didn't set another TV series in the Universal Century continuity and advance the timeline for a decade. It was, to put it charitably, a mess. Putting aside this bizarre pro-motherhood vomit (while the show's anything but feminist) and tonal incongruities, the main problem I had was that most of the cast was sorely underdeveloped. The vast majority of the villains seemed to be evil for the sake of being evil, and I don't think we learned a thing about most of the secondary characters. Like, I thought that plot thread towards the beginning where Suzy mistook Fuala for her sister would lead to some plotline that would shed light on how she, Warren, and Odello ended up with the League Militaire or at least provide some backstory for them but nope, nothing came of it. Hell, Odello, for being the Lancer character, didn't get any sort of hint of backstory until literally his last few seconds of screentime. As far as Gundam leads go I guess Uso wasn't bad per say, but a lot of the direction involving him was pretty hamfisted. And another shout out to Chronicle for being the lamest rival since Jerid.

Hopefully with Tomino no longer depressed and with more modern directing techniques his return to the UC universe with Reconguista will fare a lot better. However, if he sticks another one of his designated pacifist characters aboard the good guys' ship, complete with whiny baby/little kid, I swear...

Oh, and I guess I should rank the UC shows now that I'm done with them:

• War in the Pocket
• Zeta
• Unicorn
• ZZ
• 8th MS Team
• Mobile Suit
• F91
• Victory
• Stardust Memories

I'm finally going to start the alternate continuities now. It's time for G Gundam, which from what I've seen should be the perfect tonic for Victory.

You sure you don't wanna do Turn A or Crossbone? They're some of Tomino's best works, IMO, and they're still related to UC.

I'm definitely going to watch Turn-A, but not until I finish a few more series since I hear it's a giant Mythology Gag/homage to them.

Have you watched Gundam X? If not, watch it, it's a good show that needed more love.

Considering he's finished with UC I think from this point on he's going to watch the Gundam series based on order of release date so that would mean X after Wing.

That is precisely my plan, yes.

Well good luck with Wing, some people say it's good but I can't go through it without asking myself "why the fuck is this happening?" every third episode.

@Comic X

I would agree with almost all of that, though I think that in comparing Chronicle and Jerid you might be being unfair to Jerid. Jerid was just a secondary villain, and he was alright at being a secondary villain. Chronicle is one of Victory's main bad guys, and fails to be any sort of threat, or character for that matter.

Honestly, apart from reoccuring he's not really acting much like a villain, or even rival. (he's completely upstaged by Katejina in the stakes department, and mostly he's just... there) even shotacon-woman does more than he does.

Wing's politics make little sense, which is not unusual for such shows but here it's meant to be driving the plot. However to me that's a minor problem. The designs are very super robot, but I feel that's true to what type of show it is.

What I do mind is that the cast is so detestable. The pilots are not just psychopaths, their status as "trained to perfection" is informed. They use no tactics in battle and fail to do what they were sent for. While Relena is an idiot and like a parody of a caricature of teenage girls in love.

Then there's the pacifist message. From a show that revels in the violence. It shows war as an unthreatening spectacle then tells us it's bad.

But my biggest problem is the fighting. It's the most boring part of the show, the politics at least can be entertainingly inane. There's not tension, intelligence or variety because it's all such a one-sided game of blow up the mooks. The battles are all the same thing over and over, and stock footage is not the real culprit.

I think I would quite like Wing for its genuine qualities if they hadn't included the fighting. Be true to the premise and make the pilots into infiltrators who avoid open battles. That would have been interesting to watch.

I feel constrained to point out the time Quatre and Heero took down the entire mobile doll production facility on foot for great hilarity. They're exceptional infiltrators and are several times shown to be as such; but if you want to leave a lasting impression, it's easier to blow things up with a mobile suit that can squash any opposition then spend hours placing charges on foot and dodging patrols.

edited 2nd Oct '14 3:36:21 PM by Night

The Pilots were soldiers. Soldiers do only what they are ordered. They fulfilled all their orders perfectly - including the one they were manipulated into by Treize. After that point, they have no real direction. They are wandering, doing their own things.

I don't see what's wrong with the politics? The Liberals are offed by the Warhawks which means the Warhawks can seize control of things. Most of the people in command were working for OZ so OZ had a coup or coup de'tat or whatever and seized control. Seems simple enough.

Relena drops the obsessing over Heero very early on. 80% of her screentime is about her family's legacy, whether it was her adoptive father or her real one.

Two questions.

First, are Newtype powers hereditary? That is, if a Newtype has a kid, will the kid be a Newtype as well?

Second, what exactly powers the Archangel?

Yes a son of a newtype is supposedly a newtype themselves.

And the archangel is powered by Thermonuclear Pulse Thrusters, it is a big plot hole actually.

I'm on episode 30 of Zeta. Things are looking rather off for the women. They have been perfectly capable so far, but for quite a while each has mostly provided a man with someone to talk to, whether it's exposition or their personal feelings. Then they get some focus and I wish they hadn't.

Fa is given two children out of nowhere to look after and the show basically says she's a better mother than pilot. And someone I can't tell apart sacrifices herself for Jerid. It's as if Tomino introduces these women on par with the men, doesn't know what to do with them, and keeps them in the background until he falls back on some feminine cliché to give them a resolution and make them relevant to the men who matter.

Even leaving aside matters of sex, that death was too protracted and melodramatic. Three people talked between the beam firing and hitting, then she returns as a Newtype ghost. This isn't a brutal combat death, it's contrived drama. The original had much more pathos when an unnamed soldier is reassured by Char as he burns up on entry.

But in all this Reccoa shines. She volunteers for a dangerous spying mission and makes it count despite bungling things. She also seems to have set up a telepathic link with Scirocco. I'm hopeful this will lead to a psychic struggle that she can use for more intelligence from a unique angle.

Also, the Titans have gradually become more sympathetic, despite the attempted gassing. They actually have motivations now.

But in all this Reccoa shines. She volunteers for a dangerous spying mission and makes it count despite bungling things. She also seems to have set up a telepathic link with Scirocco. I'm hopeful this will lead to a psychic struggle that she can use for more intelligence from a unique angle.

...just keep watching.

But now that I think of it, I already forgot much of the plot in zeta. (and much of the others too.)

>_>

<_<

Well... I'm glad you think that.

edited 3rd Oct '14 7:40:02 AM by kkhohoho

It's all about Four and Emma for me.

edited 3rd Oct '14 9:00:29 AM by Nikkolas

@RJ Savoy

Reccoa volunteers for a mission and then fails miserably. That's not what I'd call shining.

At the thing she's suppose to be good at isn't it?