It's a Gundam thread!

The Cost of Freedom:

So for the last movie the main character is suddenly Shinn instead of Athrun. Despite the fact that A) the narrative clearly considers him to be in the wrong and B) he loses rather badly

The Destiny Plan doesn't get much explanation beyond "space communism", but we're supposed to think it's evil. This'd be one thing if we were offered an alternative beyond "we'll figure something out", but we're not. And this is in a timeline that's been doing it's best to wipe itself out

The big issue is the heavy narrative bias. Particularly with all the focus the "bad" characters get

There's a lot of paranormal shit, but nothing is done with it. We're clearly at the start of a newtype awakening, but this isn't even acknowledged. SEED Factor is acknowledged to exist, but what this means is never explained. Aggravating

Notes:

• Battles in this series (and SEED) are incredibly destructive. It's kind of horrifying
• Why are the Black Tri-Stars back?
• Luna is a horrible shot
• Lots of repeated footage. The Impulse assembling was old the second time
• I'm not sure where "Jesus Yamato" comes from. It's clearly Lacus that we're expected to worship
• Everyone gets paired off, regardless of how much sense it makes
• Kira, Athrun, and Mu perfecting the final battle was annoying
• It's still a rehash of SEED, Durandal is just Lawful instead of Chaotic

Yeah, this is not a good one. The anime side of things are better than in SEED, but the plot is a decided downgrade, and I wasn't all that impressed with SEED to begin with

edited 22nd Jan '16 4:53:53 AM by Hylarn

I haven't watched the movies so I don't know how much depth it goes into, but in the show proper it's essentially "genetically-determined caste-based communism — oh, and Big Brother Durandal controls the algorithm that analyzes your DNA to assign you your lot in life." It's not explicit that Durandal's going to be dishonest in his assignments, but the man has certainly never shown any shyness in manipulating anything and everything else in order to reach his goals.

As far as alternatives, the choices that Durandal is offering are "join or die", so I don't really see a lack of other plans for world peace as a reasonable criticism. Especially since the only reason the world is at war in the first place is because Durandal wanted to implement the Destiny Plan.

I do share your frustration with other factions lacking any intelligent response to world events, though. Basically it pisses me off that the Earth Alliance is secretly (or at least "secretly") dominated by Blue Cosmos and Logos and seems unable to purge its ranks of genocidal psychopaths using them to advance their xenophobic agenda even at the cost of undermining the organization's actual goals (ie, defense of their home territory). You'd think that people would get pissed that being led around by the nose courtesy of Blue Cosmos has gotten them subjected to mass murder, invasion of the planet, and gotten God only knows how many of their soldiers killed, and very nearly got all life on Earth wiped out, but nope. Come Destiny, they're even more firmly in control of OMNI than they ever have been, with Phantom Pain acting as their own personal military unit, outside the normal chain of command. Bleh.

I'm not sure exactly how you mean that. You mean that things come off strangely because Shinn & co get the Sympathetic P.O.V., but are still supposed to be in the wrong, or it's weird because Shinn & co are the POV characters but Kira & co are supposedly in the right the whole time?

Personally, I thought that having Shinn & co as sort of a Villain Protagonist (or Anti-Villain protagonist, at least) was interesting, but they kind of wussed out by switching things to Kira later on. Using the standard Heroic Mecha Protagonist tropes for a guy fighting for the bad guys would definitely have been an interesting subversion, but Destiny couldn't quite figure out if it wanted Shinn to be straight-up villainous, or a victim of Durandal's manipulation along with anyone else, or what, exactly.

Yeah, CE does that very well. I think that Iron-Blooded Orphans has been better at showing small-scale combat, but CE did the best job of showing the large-scale costs. Other Gundam shows have been curiously sanitized, even when we're talking about body counts in the billions. MSG had a good amount of Scenery Gorn, but nary a body in sight. 08th MS Team has Shiro's Flashback Nightmare to the colony gassing and Zeta had some desiccated corpses as a result of the Titans gassing a colony, but CE us the only one that really throws the visceral horror of death in your face, from the debris field of Junius 7 early on in Seed to people bursting like popcorn when they're hit with GENESIS near the end. Destiny didn't do it as much to my recollection (even the Junius 7 drop focuses more on Monumental Damage than showing the human cost), but Stargazer more than makes up for it.

Actually, that reminds me. You should watch Stargazer now that you've seen Seed and Destiny. It's just three 15 minute episodes, but it's really good.

For the same reason the Zaku, the Gouf, and the Dom are back. "You guys like UC stuff, right? Here, have some UC stuff! It'll be great, you'll love it!"

There's a Fan Wank theory that Luna's less-than-stellar combat performance in Destiny despite the fact that she's a redcoat (meaning that she was one of the top pilots in her training class, if they didn't cover that in the movies) is because her strength is in melee combat but she keeps being forced to take a long-ranged role. This is backed up by at least one game (I think it was Super Robot Wars, though I can't remember which one) that gives her a great melee stat but a mediocre ranged stat.

edited 22nd Jan '16 8:16:30 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 and Reborn do it.

But really she was just as horrible of a shot as Char was in that exact same situation in Zeta. The plot required it.

edited 22nd Jan '16 8:46:30 AM by Memers

Char also had the excuse of Four doing weird Newtype shit which interfered with his aiming.

Of course, Four was able to do that weird Newtype shit because Tomino didn't want to kill of Jamitov at that point.

Primarily following characters that the atory didn't seem to have much respect for felt weird. Though this was just part of a larger problem, where it felt like the story was trying to tell me who I should like, what I should be thinking, etc.

That scene could easily have been changed to make missing the shot reasonable, though

So Stargazer was fairly good. Animation budget isn't what it might have been, needed a bit more time, and was kind of disconnected, but it had solid direction and interesting ideas. Certainly better than anything else in CE

Lord knows I can't disagree with that. CE is not at all subtle in its writing. That's not necessarily a bad thing (sometimes a sledgehammer is a better tool for the job than a chisel, after all), but it you're looking for nuance, CE is not going to be your cup of tea, no question.

I have a generally positive opinion of CE (I though Seed was good in general and found Destiny undeniably flawed but still enjoyable), but the lack of subtlety does sometimes irritate me, especially how morality is handled. Ironically, for all that UC fans like to claim that the Federation/Zeon conflict is a shining beacon of Gray-and-Grey Morality, the fact of the matter is that it's fairly black and white on the large scale. The despotic, authoritarian leaders of Zeon attacks the Federation in a blatant war of aggression. You can argue about the competence of the Federation all you like, but there's no question that every conflict they end up in is a defensive one, defending themselves from attack by an outside (or inside, in Zeta's case) party.

CE is far more grey than that. Both sides of the OMNI/ZAFT conflict have honest, legitimate reasons for their position. The conflict is a combination of extremists on both sides pushing for increasing the hostilities while moderates try to hold them back. The ultimate outbreak of war is the result of years of gradually increasing tensions, rather than Zeon's "you know what? Let's suddenly kill everyone". Seed does a pretty good job of displaying this, and the moderates on both sides finally losing all control and the conflict spiraling out into pure genocidal insanity.

Aaaaaand Destiny drops all of this in favor of portraying the Earth Alliance as run by incompetent and mustachio-twirlingly evil assholes and staffed by completely clueless and equally incompetent morons who accept what they're told unquestioningly and thus allow themselves to be tools of psychotic evil assholes. It manages to portray the side that does little but attempt (and fail!) to defend itself from invasion for the entire war as the bad guys. Urgh.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The Federation was pretty much helping Neo-Zeon take over in ZZ :/

While the Feds were generally the lesser of two evils, I think there's a decent argument that Zeon would be better rulers after Gihren inevitably gets himself killed

Umm... maybe because most of reasonable guys in EA faction actually get fried during 1st war, with what's left get bullied by Blue Cosmos sympathizers (and LOGOS) into running the show their way? Then again, in meta-sense, all the crap both sides get through seems to be awfully convenient.... (looking for tinfoil hat)

Zeon and the later Federation are very much two sides of the same coin. The various leaders of Neo Zeon embody excessive, violent action - they're trying to govern, but in horrifying and often insane ways that more often than not involve dropping large objects from space on people. The Federation, on the other hand, is defined by supine inaction - it's completely abandoned its duty to the people of the Earth Sphere, ignoring their need for safety and a decent standard of living in favour of making a quick buck for itself, to the point where it becomes a straight-up enabler for Zeon in ZZ and CCA. The heroes of the UC from Zeta onwards tend to be stuck in between the two, trying to do what the Federation won't and not do what Zeon will.

What makes this come across as greyer than CE is the relative cynicism of the setting. There's still one good faction stuck between two bad factions, but the good guys aren't all-powerful, don't have all the answers, and have to wrestle with the fact that at least one bunch of bad guys is going to win in the end. Judau ends up fleeing the Earth Sphere in disgust after accepting that the villain was pretty much right, and Amuro sacrifices himself knowing that he's handing control of the solar system back over to people who'll barter it away to the next maniac willing to hand them a suitcase full of gold, but hoping desperately that in time, things might change. Not every bad guy can be exploded, and not every political problem can be solved by an omniscient, benevolent idol-singer, so people have to learn to live in their corrupt, imperfect world. Destiny makes nods to that ('Freedom' versus 'Destiny' is pretty blunt), but it shows too much faith in the Three Ships Alliance to seriously walk the walk.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Even then, I personally wouldn't call the Federation truly evil or malevolent- just really really bad at its job.

Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things that's pretty much just as bad sometimes. They're not enemies to fight, but they're just as much of an obstacle to overcome as if they were.

but HOW?

They put effort into killing their own citizens in ZZ (covering up the colony drop). Not much effort, but that's definitely crossing into outright malevolence

edited 22nd Jan '16 6:50:23 PM by Hylarn

That is something I was not aware of, having not gotten around to ZZ yet. I still haven't finished Zeta- I stopped a few minutes into Forever Four for reasons I don't quite recall and ended up never getting around to finishing.

but HOW?

That was a handful of officers stuck in occupied territory. Condemning the entire Federation because of them is sort of like condemning all of France because of the actions of the Vichy government.

Discounting the actions of rebels, collaborators, and traitors (including the Titans and folks like the aforementioned Neo Zeon sympathizers), when has the Federation done anything that's evil? Like I said, I won't argue for their competence (they certainly drop the ball enough times), but they never do anything you could call evil. They don't start wars, they merely fight back when they're attacked. They don't use WMDs against civilian targets (unlike basically everyone they fight), mistreat POWs, or otherwise commit war crimes. Hell, they don't even invade or occupy enemy territory (which isn't evil and of itself, but leads to the strong possibility of mistreatment of locals by occupying forces). Admittedly I'm ignoring Unicorn in that, but a big part of the reason why I ignore Unicorn is that it actively Retcons the fact that the Federation never occupied Zeon just so it can make them evil.

The problem is that OMNI's position at the beginning of Destiny only makes sense if you assume that Logos (and by extension, Blue Cosmos) has complete control over the Earth Alliance. Yeah, the moderates of both factions got killed off during the events of Seed (notably OMNI's Admiral Halburton, who died from having the bad luck of having to fight his own Gundams turned back against him, and ZAFT's Siegel Clyne, who was assassinated), but while ZAFT was horrified at what its leaders almost did, and immediate elect a moderate candidate (well, one they thought was moderate, anyway — Durandal turns out to be anything but), the Earth Alliance only goes further off the deep end, not only Logos staying in charge, but actually taking direct command of military resources, rather than working through friendly intermediaries in the military as they did before.

Remember that OMNI during the first Bloody Valentine War backstabbed its own troops (self-destructing its base at Alaska), screwed over the civilian masses (putting all the n-jammer cancellers it built to military use, rather than using them to relieve the crippling energy crisis that was still affecting the planet), and failed to prevent ZAFT from nearly killing them all (it was the Three Ship Alliance that destroyed GENESIS, not OMNI), and generally lost the war (they were fighting to prevent ZAFT from stealing the PLANTs; by the end of the war, ZAFT is a de facto independent state in full control of the PLANTs). There is no sane reason for the Earth Alliance public to have any tolerance left for Blue Cosmos. Certainly the hardcore anti-Coordinator supporters would only double down, but unless the majority of the Earth Alliance are genocidal racists, they should have gone on a witch hunt to purge Blue Cosmos sympathizers from their ranks. In reality, this completely and utterly fails to happen.

That's what I meant by saying that I won't argue for their competence. It's not that they don't want to do the right thing, they just have a really bad habit of underestimating the threat against them. From a narrative perspective, I tend to write this off as necessary to allow for angsty teenage protagonists to end up saving the day with their crack Gundam piloting skills and a generous helping of psychic powers. If the Federation was allowed to be competent in beating the bad guys, there'd be no need for Amuro, Kamille, or Judau to save the day.

Cynicism is a separate thing from morality, though. The choice in UC Gundam isn't between evil and less evil, it's between evil and incompetent. The protagonists universally choose to fight evil and provide the competence that the Federation lacks. The fact that the authorities can't find their own ass with both hands and so keep getting sucker punched by rebel factions that they should be able to crush with their overwhelming military superiority is certainly cynical, but it just means that Militaries Are Useless, not that it's Grey-and-Gray Morality with the Federation as A Lighter Shade of Grey.

I wouldn't say that Judau actually agreed that Haman was right; their final battle/philosophy debate is essentially Judau convincing Haman that she's wrong, and Haman being Driven to Suicide by the Heel Realization, essentially pulling a Heel–Face Door-Slam on herself. Judau deciding to leave the Earth Sphere was pure But Now I Must Go so Tomino could get him out of the way for CCA; it made no damn sense from a characterization perspective. And Amuro is way more optimistic about the Federation and humanity in general than you give him credit for. His whole argument with Char is basically Char saying that humanity won't learn unless they're forced to, violently, and Amuro saying that people will learn on their own if you give them time, and trying to force them with violence only fosters fear and hatred, which delays the process rather than speed it up. Given how Amuro utterly trounces Char in combat and then makes Heroic Sacrifice to literally save the world, it's pretty obvious who we're supposed to agree with.

edited 22nd Jan '16 10:47:14 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

...While your views on the Federation don't particularly contradict established facts, you do realize that that's not how the story was trying to portray it, right?

OMNI basically collapsed when LOGOS was exposed, the more moderate country governments left the alliance and actually joined ZAFT in their campaign vs LOGOS.

After its collapse you see countries start appearing again and even scenes in the White House.

In EA, post 1st war, the ones who basically survives with some big guns, means to built so and motivatio to use it are the Atlantic Federation, which is the main source of Coordinator-Hate in EA in general. Like you said, OMNI is full of backstabbers, but most backstabbing is done by Atlantic Fed on expense of more moderate/ sane-ish factions.

And no, hatred is pretty much not easy to erase overnight, as much as we want to.

The 'rebels, collaborators and traitors' you're no-true-scotsmanning are all we ever see of the Federation leadership from ZZ onwards. Dakar is the Federation capital, not some border outpost where the local aristocracy has decided to rebel, and their surrender to Neo Zeon is backed in Dublin (where Bright gets arrested for daring to oppose the new regime) and by every single senior Federation member we see in CCA, who are far more interested in making a quick buck and keeping themselves safe than in doing the right thing and not using Neo Zeon atrocities to help along their own ethnic-cleansing program. There is no secret cabal of benevolent idealists running the show, just the AEUG and Karaba, a specifically independent group who get cynically used to remove threats to the Earth Sphere (that the Federation has either generated or actively aided) without bloodying the Federation's hands until they all either die messily or get incorporated into the Titans 2.0, who have to mutiny if they ever want to do the right thing.

What's precedent ever done for us?

I disagree. The protagonists are always firmly on the side of the Federation, even if they're frustrated with the Federation's incompetence. None of them actually believe that they should allow the Federation to be destroyed. The Federation is always portrayed as the only legitimate alternative to the villain du jour, and the protagonists are always fighting in its defense. I don't recall anyone (or any of the good guys, anyway) actually suggesting that the Earth Sphere would be better off without the Federation.

Yeah, but that didn't happen until the tail end of Destiny, and it was stupid for its own reasons. The average Earth Alliance citizen has absolutely no reason to trust Durandal — who is (as far as they know) the guy who dropped Junius 7 on them and then started invading their territory.

You think it's pulling a No True Scotsman to distinguish between Les Collaborateurs and La Résistance? You really think that people like the Titans — who are actively working to overthrow the Federation and put themselves in its place — should be considered part of the Federation? Ditto people who have found themselves in occupied territory and decided to throw in with the invaders? It's not a No True Scotsman to say that people who have betrayed the Federation aren't representative of people loyal to the Federation.

Anyway, you're wrong about no one else showing up, either. The end of ZZ has a swarm of GM IIIs showing up as The Cavalry. CCA's primary Federation representative (Quess's dad) is a well-meaning bureaucrat who's trying to do right by the Federation (by keeping Char from dropping any more asteroids on Earth and helping to fill the Federation's badly-depleted treasury at the same time) whose only fault is not realizing that Char's undergone a major shift in policy (from "we should leave the Earth alone to heal the wounds to its environment" to "Colony Drop 'em all and let Newtypes sort 'em out"), and the other Federation official we see (Cameron, Mirai's old flame from MSG) goes Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! to help out Londo Bell. There's also a General Revil expy that shows up as a Reasonable Authority Figure in Victory, IIRC.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

He presented visual evidence of the atrocities committed by Druggies 2.0, Shinn disobeying orders to go all good guy to help civvies, and a bunch of other Clipshow stuff from the Minerva as well as consistently pushed himself as the good guy on the world stage.

It was a good chance for the moderates to grab power and attempt to make peace and discredit the war mongerers that were called out on planetary television.

Let's say that Russia nuked the US, blamed it on rogue extremists in their military, landed troops on US soil ostensibly to provide humanitarian aid, effortlessly defeated the US's attempt at a return strike, declared themselves victims of American aggression due to the counterattack and began annexing territory, decisively defeated the US military to the point where it was clear that the US was unable to defend themselves against them, much less defeat them in their own territory — then Russia suddenly announces that the US is controlled by the Illuminati and they must be conquered in order to prevent the Illuminati from continuing to influence events on the world stage, successfully captures or kills all of the people it declared to be the top ranking Illuminati members, then declares that in order to ensure world peace in the future, the world must form a world government, with Russia at its head, and anyone who disagrees with this decision is an enemy of humanity and probably a secret Illuminati supporter to boot, and thus will be dealt with militarily.

Do you really think people would give Russia the benefit of the doubt in that sort of situation?

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I specified ZZ onwards because Zeta is the last gasp of an ethical Federation until its obliteration and rebirth in the Zanscare War. The fleet that shows up at the end of ZZ is a really bad example of the Federation leadership being well-intentioned. Judau specifically calls them out for doing nothing to prevent Neo Zeon's atrocities until it and the AEUG had obliterated each other, making their move at the end of the show nothing more than a power-grab after the government they'd surrendered to collapsed.

Your take on Adenauer Paraya is also ludicrously overgenerous. The very first two times we see him, he's abusing his position - first to use the local police as his private thug squad to pick up his daughter (and beat up her friends), and second to jump the queue for an evacuation shuttle (bringing Hathaway along so another Federation politician will owe him a favour). His deal with Neo Zeon also gets way more suspect when you look at the context (as if the literal briefcases full of gold weren't shady enough). First off, it's actually one of a string of deals - Amuro mentions during the Fifth Luna drop that the engines fitted to it were also provided by the Federation. Second, consider the context we first see him in, with a huge, fancy house, a huge, fancy car, and a glamorous mistress... in the middle of an impoverished wasteland where the brutal, corrupt authorities are in his pocket. It's pretty obvious what he actually means by 'welfare payments on Earth'. Yes, he does appear to sincerely believe that the deal will bring about peace and stop Neo Zeon's yapping, but it's obvious that he doesn't actually care that much. He's not in it for some greater humanitarian purpose, he's in it because war criminal gold is the best gold and he wants to go back to his mansion and start spending it. Check out how he casually suggests that the Federation military should start working as rubbish-pickers for the Earth aristocracy before Char betrays him and attacks Luna II.

As for Cameron, he candidly states that if the Federation leadership knew he was leaking their deal with Char, he'd get life imprisonment. Not really a great example of the Federation's benevolence.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Considering the Federation fleet at the end of ZZ to be nothing but a power grab seems rather silly to me. The Federation doesn't do much in ZZ because it can't — it just finished fighting a civil war, and had next to no military force it could bring to bear until it built the GM III fleet we see at the end. What you see as callous self-interest, I see as an unfortunate necessity. Had the Federation gone up against Neo Zeon directly, they would've gotten killed, so they were forced to wait until the Enemy Civil War played out and then send in what they had to clean up the mess afterward.

The fact that Quess's dad is a rich jerk doesn't mean that he's evil. There's nothing to indicate that he's planning to steal the gold and I never interpreted that scene as implying that. Other than that, your argument boils down to "I don't like his attitude". Does it matter if he does what he does out of an enduring love for all of humanity or just because it's his job? The point is, he's not screwing other people over in order to benefit himself — even you agree that he genuinely thinks that his actions will result in a peaceful resolution to the situation. I certainly won't argue against the idea that he's a jerk, but he's hardly evil.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

You appear to be forgetting that this is a created artwork, not an objective history, which means that the details a work chooses to emphasise tell us how to feel about the things it shows happening in it. The Federation fleet in ZZ shows up and does nothing after a whole series of the Federation leadership being shown as craven quislings, and when they do, our protagonist yells at them for only showing up after everyone else is done bleeding and suffering to save the Earth Sphere. He then punches out his mentor in frustration as he realises that everything he did was for nothing. That kind of implies that the Federation showing up isn't meant as a last-minute redemption, whereas a Big Damn Heroes moment where they put their lives on the line to save our protagonists from actual peril would. It's irrelevant that you can think up unexplained-in-show reasons why this might have been the only rational decision - within the show itself, it's framed as a cynical power-grab by cynical people.

Similarly, Adenauer's attitude and behaviour is important because it gives us insight into how to interpret his decisions. The casually corrupt feudal overlord with a pattern of undercutting his altruistic statements with self-serving behaviour is probably not going to use that gold for the common good (which is important, because the Federation's neglect of its people in the movie is shown as the reason why so many people are signing up to Char's genocidal plans - the Sweetwater scenes exist for a reason), and he's already shown a wilful disregard for public safety by continuing to take money from Neo Zeon after they flattened Lhasa with an asteroid propelled by Federation-bought engines.

C'mon, man, this is pretty basic narrative pattern recognition.

What's precedent ever done for us?

What about the idea that Char could've used Axis for his own independent colony with the power to fuck off to elsewhere if he wanted.