It's a Gundam thread!

Turn A Gundam is slow, really slow but still be a good and enjoyable anime. My favorite chapter is the first. I liked Loran, Kihel, Dianna, Sochie, Harry...i liked everyone really, aside Teteth and Will Game. Yes, is a good show, The Turn A itself is awesome.

I've been rewatching SEED and having a lot of fun.

How nice, to be fair i found the worst moments of SEED like boring, in the worst. Is better than Zeta anyway.

edited 29th May '15 6:32:36 PM by KazuyaProta

I'm one episode away from one of my favourite moments in the entire franchise: Rau Le Creuset's epic insanity reveal.

That's a personal favourite of mine as well.

I wasn't a huge fan of Rau as a villain, mostly because the Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum (which is basically what he pulls) annoys me as a plot device. He wasn't a bad antagonist, but I feel like building him as the "main villain" doesn't really fit. He couldn't have done what he did except in the context of the ongoing Natural-Coordinator conflict. If anyone fits the bill of main villain in Seed, in my mind it's Patrick Zala — after all, he's the one actually threatening to destroy Earth.

I kinda like Rau but i agree with you. Also, in the Latinoamerican fandom Rau is The Scrappy, because "he ins't so complex like Char of Haman"

I end up having to take more on faith about Rau's Master Plan than I am entirely comfortable with so doing when someone is that nucking futs. Aside from one real exception regarding the N-Jammer-Canceller it's hard to take his chessmastering talk about "I SHALL PRESIDE OVER THE DESTRUCTION OF HUMANITY, ALL ACCORDING TO PLAN" at face value.

In the end, this makes him feel more like Char in that he orchestrated his success via a lucky break and opportunism rather than, you know, actually planning and succeeding at it. I'm just not sure I'm supposed to see things that way.

Luck was Rau's thing. It was dumb luck he survived Mendel as it was, when Mu just happened to have the Launcher Pack because he was AA's cover allowing Rau to easily defeat him, and then Kira was the one who found him, the one guy that wouldn't kill Rau by default.

Not to mention him launching Flay and she just happened to get picked up by the one guy he wanted because Kira had a breakdown and couldn't get to her, and the Dominions captain knew Flay and picked her up when Azrael himself wasn't buying it.

I had the same feeling about Rau. His reveal comes too late and is not fully set out, it came across as "my father didn't care for me". An opportunist who takes advantage of a wider conflict is fine, but I can't really swallow that he pursues a plan taking many years so patiently and rationally whilst having such a crazy goal. Also, wouldn't surviving in war for long enough to be decorated require a strong will to survive?

But I know why he's there. Patrick Zala and Azrael couldn't make good antagonists to the hero because they're already fighting each other. Turning their attention to Kira would feel like lowering the stakes. So in comes a villain who basically wants to achieve both side's aims, to be the opponent to heroes who want both to step back.

Whereas Char in Counterattack I found more believable seeing as the rational part of his plan was already set out by his father and other leader of Axis, and his motivation of "I would rather go down in a fight than rule Axis in peace" would have pushed him all the way without needing to consciously deceive anyone.

Really? Because to me it came off as: "I'm going to start a war so I can defeat and get back at Amuro."

edited 31st May '15 1:19:07 PM by heliosKAISER

Yeah same here.

I do think that Rau did deliberately manipulate things to escalate the conflict. He worked his way into a position where he had direct influence over at least one major player (Patrick Zala), and used his authority as an important ZAFT commander to influence the conflict in other ways (like his decision to abandon the search for Lacus in favor of hunting the Archangel. It didn't work out that way, but it could have easily led to Lacus' death and further deepening the conflict). "Influence" isn't the same thing as "control", of course, but was more about capitalizing on opportunities as they arose than meticulously planning everything anyway.

Rau was the one who leaked the true target of Operation Spitbreak to the Atlantic Federation, giving them time to set up the Cyclops system. He was the one who leaked the N-Jammer Canceller technology to Azrael. Azrael was initially dismissive but when Flay started talking about how she had the 'key that will end this war' as Rau told her, he became curious and had the Druggies recover her capsule. A big part of his philosophy is In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves so directly controlling the events goes against it. He is influencing the events and doing what he can to speed up what he believes is inevitable. He is not directly causing it.

Le Creuset definitely needed the ongoing war to get his plan rolling, but I don't think that hurts his villain cred, because the war, and the emotions that fuel it, are a huge part of his motivation. Le Creuset looks at the war, and the escalating hatred between the Coordinators and Naturals and goes "see, I was right. You all have it coming." And then he sets about making sure that as many people as humanly possible die in the war. He's not the sole reason why it goes the way it does, but he's a part of why it goes there so quickly, and so long as he's whispering in Patrick Zala's ear—and passing data to Azrael—there's no way to end things.

Yes, i feel the same. Is just "look, i'm right".

What animation is this from?

That ain't no mobile suit I recognize.

The artstyle looks like one of the 08 series of OVAs. I'm betting on 0083, given the laboratory environment.

It's supposed to be the V Project in development.

It looks like a proto-GM rather than a direct V-Project descendant.

@ Echoing Silence

A Gihrens Greed game. Also, the mecha in that one is a nod to what Gundam should have been: Starship Troopers-esque Powered Armor, with the show named Freedom Fighter Gunboy. More on that here.

edited 1st Jun '15 9:50:41 PM by HallowHawk

I find myself currently considering the reactions of an actual Federation tank crew to their first encounter with a mockup Guntank due to the story I'm working on.

...there's a lot profanity involved. The Federation mostly dropped the heavy artillery support role after the One Year War (I've commented before on how more common Guncannons or similar would have made the later Mobile Armor Madness editions of Zeon less effective), but I have to wonder if that wasn't on some level because their initial designs weren't just terrible. The Guntank has all the weaknesses of both a tank and a mobile suit, and neither's strengths.

Hayato for secretly best pilot of the White Base crew?

Well he never pushed his weapon so hard it required a upgrade just to keep up with him.

And Kai was pretty good.

A army of Guncannons woulda made a whole lotta nonsense a lot different.

You are now imagining a world where Amuro climbed into the prototype Guncannon and the entire mobile armor concept did not survive the One Year War?