It's a Gundam thread!

You keep assuming that Lawful Evil means having a redeeming feature or genuinely believing in what you are doing. It doesn't. It means only that you act through the law and have a drive for control. A state that strips the rights from people solely for the sake of stripping the rights from people is still Lawful Evil. Gihren works through state apparatus in its entirety, and we never see him step outside of it. He's somewhere between Type 1 and Type 4 Lawful Evil—well within the parameters of that alignment.

As for where Palpatine falls...not really a topic for this thread.

edited 27th Jul '16 12:52:55 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

re Nikkolas — the problem with the idea that Char was genuinely turning over a new leaf until everything went sideways and his budding optimism was brutally crushed under the weight of a harsh unforgiving reality is that we never actually see anything like that. Char never expresses any optimism — indeed, one of the major conversations he has about it (drinking with Amuro), his attitude is mostly that he resents that people expect him to make sacrifices for The Cause, which fits with the idea that he hates the fact that he's been pushed into a leadership role against his will. He never shows any desire to be in charge of anything. While we, the viewers, can see the good that he does as the AEUG's leader, he seems to view it as an intolerable burden rather than the culmination of his life up until that point.

Besides, if he actually cared, then why did he run away? He has a history of up and vanishing when things don't go his way, and the AEUG is merely the last of a long string of such incidents. I see no reason to believe why that time was different when nothing he says or does suggests that it was.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

What was he gonna do if he stayed? Everyone was dead and the person he was most attached to in the organization might as well have been dead. The only winner at the end of Zeta was Haman.

Do we even know where Char went immediately after Zeta? I know a video game claims he took Mineva to safety but I don't think that happened. I don't know if we know exactly what happened to him following the conflict.

I've always noticed you,for some reason, think Char's unwillingness to lead is a negative trait of his, on par with his indecisiveness or willingness to murder people. I don't get that. Char is entitled to want to live his life however he wants, whether it's as a soldier or a politician. Choosing the life of a soldier is not one of his many actual flaws or sins.

edited 27th Jul '16 5:07:19 PM by Nikkolas

It's him looking out for Kamille, stepping up to the plate as leader of the AEUG, and having the stones to pull Dakar Day and then lead his comrades into the no-win madness of the Battle of Gryps and fight his twisted little heart out that shows he cares. He fails so, so many times, from antagonising Axis through dragging his feet over the AEUG leadership to ignoring Reccoa when she's having her brain eaten by Scirocco, but he manages to muscle past his worst impulses and actually do some major good.

It's also important to remember why the break with Axis happened. It wasn't the usual Char problem of him caring too little. He cared too much - for the daughter of his mortal enemies, no less - and lashed out from misdirected rage. It's yet another manifestation of his responsibility issues - he blames Haman, the girl he abandoned, for failing to raise Mineva properly - but it's striking how differently it makes him react. Dude is genuinely mad that a little girl is being used as a puppet, and he blows up a vital negotiation because of it. He's not a great space dad, but as is so often the case in Zeta, he wants to be more.

The key thing isn't that he ran in the end. The key thing is that he stayed as long, achieved as much, and fought as hard as he did. Seriously, the Haman fight isn't a man giving up. It's a man battling tooth and nail to do right by a cause he believes in, even if he hasn't always been its best champion, and only losing faith after he's given everything of himself.

What's precedent ever done for us?

"This isn't fun anymore so I'm leaving" is precisely the attitude I'm talking about. The Argama was still intact. Most of the AEUG's high-powered mecha were still intact, or at least repairable. Kamille was still alive, and maybe another newtype like Char could have helped him recover from Scirocco's mental whammy faster. Karaba was still around off-screen somewhere; Char could have helped the two groups merge and continue the fight against Haman. He could have used his name recognition and personal charisma to rally new support for the AEUG. He could have approached Side 3 (who had no love for the Axis forces in general or Haman in particular) and tried to make an alliance with them. There's a ton of things Char could have done if he had stuck around. It wouldn't have been easy, but he could have done it.

The fact that he bailed on his friends and allies when they needed him most is exactly what makes him an asshole.

Not to my knowledge, no. I know that originally he was supposed to resurface in the latter half of ZZ and lead the Enemy Civil War against Haman, but when CCA got a green light that plan was scrapped and they used Glemmy Toto for that role instead. Presumably he was keeping his head down until the whole thing blew over, and then once Haman had been put down he started collecting support for his own Neo Zeon movement.

Char's unwillingness to lead isn't a negative as such — you're absolutely right, there's nothing wrong with just wanting to be a soldier and nothing more. Char's problem is that he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He has big ideals that he wants to see implemented. He wants to make his father's dream of a spacenoid newtype utopia a reality. But he doesn't want to work for it. The guy is the son of Zeon Deikun. He could show up in the Republic of Zeon, reveal his identity, and be running the joint as soon as the next election took place. He could go a long, long way toward making his dream a reality. But he refuses to step up and do it.

That's the problem. Not that he doesn't want to be in the spotlight, but that he's all talk and no action. For all his preaching about souls weighed down by gravity, what does he actually do toward enacting his father's ideas? He tries to blow up Earth, which may or may not have ultimately been an elaborate excuse just to fight Amuro again? You can't say "everyone should do X, for the good of all!" and then refuse to do X yourself. You need to put up or shut up, and Char does neither.

He abandons Kamille when the kid needs him most, didn't step up as leader of the AEUG so much as got dragged into the job kicking and screaming, and led his fellow pilots into the Battle of Gryps but refused to lead them out of it. I'm not saying that Char is a completely heartless monster with no conscience whatsoever. I'm saying that he's ultimately selfish, and puts himself before others. When Char is faced with a choice of whether to do what his friends need him to do or do what he wants to do, over and over again he picks himself.

The hell it's not. Char is a fair-weather friend. When the going gets tough, Char nopes right on out of there. Char's an asshole.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Remember how the Haman fight ended. Cher basically blew up his own machine to drive off the unstoppable monster that was the Qubeley, leaving him injured and alone in a normal suit in an area thick with Minovsky particles with a demonic hellbeast piloted by the worst ever stalker fangirl somewhere out there looking for him. He was completely out of the Gryps conflict - literally all he could do was sneak away as the rest of the AEUG lit up the lunar skies with their deaths.

I suspect that that, above all else, was what broke him.

What's precedent ever done for us?

On the subject of Zeta!Char, I'm with Iaculus and Nikkolas.

I don't really see "he got his ass kicked" as a valid reason for abandoning the AEUG. You guys seem to want to paint Char as some sort of tragic hero whose spirit is broken by the fact that the world is unwilling to accept his pure, idealistic vision for the future. The problem is that I don't see any evidence that Char is actually dedicated to his professed ideals. He talks a big game, but he never does anything about it — that's ultimately my beef with Char. He plays the role of the misunderstood visionary, but he never actually tries to make his vision real. (Plus, you know, the whole okay-with-mass-murder thing isn't a point in his favor.)

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Again, Dakar Day. It's the first pure, unsullied manifestation of Zeon Zum Deikun's ideals in twenty years, broadcast to a global audience and used to destroy the single most powerful organisation in the Earth Sphere. It's pretty much the best that a Deikunist group like the AEUG (and it is very Deikunist, as we see from his mentoring of the Argama kids) can hope to accomplish, in terms of getting their message across.

Seriously, it seems very odd to talk about Char's Zeta characterisation while discounting his single most important contribution in the show.

What's precedent ever done for us?

One shining moment of glory doesn't make up for a lifetime of half-assed mediocrity, especially when he has to be bullied into that moment in the first place. More to the point, though, making a speech is easy. When does Char ever show any willingness to sacrifice anything for his cause? His entire story is running from responsibility and avoiding consequences for his actions.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

It's not just saying a few words. It's waltzing into the capital of the hostile government of the solar system unarmed and unarmoured with only a small mobile suit force backing you up, and then delivering a speech in which you explain to all these incredibly powerful people just how badly they've fucked up in order to draw down the full might of their rogue military and discredit them by having them attack you. Char may not have been outside carving up Asshimars with a beam sabre, but what he planned and executed took phenomenal personal courage.

Then, to follow it up, he leads his scrappy little resistance movement into an insane plan to destroy most of the solar system government's rogue military, and personally goes out in his crappy prototype that uses paint for armour and takes on both of the deadliest people alive in their ludicrously powerful custom death-machines before being brought down. His final act in Zeta is a sacrifice - he takes out Haman, the most lethal person on the battlefield, by luring her into a trap and triggering it with himself inside.

The other problem, of course, with the 'it's just words' argument is that that's precisely what the final conflict of the war is about. Axis and the Titans want to turn people into Newtypes by forcing them into space. The AEUG under Char's guidance want to turn people into Newtypes by persuading them into space. As in, talking to them. Char first makes the case for Newtypeism on the biggest stage imaginable, and then destroys the more powerful of the two factions trying to force human ascension (and almost decapitates the second). He doesn't manage to finish the job, but it's hard to say he doesn't give it a hell of a go before giving up.

Char isn't one of life's natural heroes. He's distant, emotionally stunted, terrified of responsibility, and terrible at dealing with the half of humanity without a Y-chromosome. In many ways, though, that's what makes the good he does accomplish far more impressive, and his eventual fall despite genuinely trying the best that he (not an abstract 'he', but the scarred, flawed man once called Casval Rem Deikun) could far more tragic.

edited 28th Jul '16 3:45:30 PM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

I've never claimed that Char wasn't brave, at least in the physical risking-his-life sense. He goes out and puts his life on the line in combat, there's no denying that. But that has nothing to do with anything I've said.

Char's problem is moral cowardice. He's not willing to make hard decisions and live with the consequences. Whenever things get hard — at the end of the One Year War, when Haman began relying on him at Axis, at the end of the Gryps Conflict — he cuts and runs. This is a consistent facet of his characterization across all his appearances. In MSG he refuses to prioritize any of his various goals over the other and bungles all of them as a result. He spends most of Zeta pretending to be Quattro so he wouldn't have to face the responsibility of being Char. A major plot point of CCA is Char deliberately enabling Amuro to defeat him, because he doesn't want to be responsible for destroying Earth.

Zeta's not an exception to the pattern. The only difference is that he's surrounded by people who manage to — however briefly, after a determined effort from multiple people — guilt him into doing the right thing instead of the easy thing. People who he then abandons as soon as convenience outweighs guilt.

I'd also disagree with both the idea either the AEUG or the Titans (or Axis, for that matter) give a damn about spacenoids or newtypes or Deikun's theory. The only one who even talks about it is Char, and he's mostly ignored. The Titans and Axis are both simply out to conquer the Earth Sphere because their leaders want to rule the world (well, Haman's a little more complicated, but that's the upshot), while the AEUG is a reactionary movement out to stop the other two groups and, ultimately, return the Federation to power. But that's a separate issue from the question of Char.

edited 28th Jul '16 4:59:46 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I kinda have to side with Iaculus and Nik. As for moral cowardice, part of that could be attributed to losing his parents at an early age and having to abandon the rest of his informal family to avoid a life of exile and surveillance, then watching as a child soldier in a white mecha cuts down every soldier who has stood next to him, while his own sister has joined the very faction that his own is at war with, on top of being part of the ship that has constantly frustrated his efforts. Even with Amuro out of the picture, I can imagine he'd be hesitant to constantly risk the lives of his comrades.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

Char is consistently shown to be callous regarding the lives of his allies. This happens as early in the first few episodes of MSG when one of his minions is flipping his shit while burning up on reentry to as late as Amuro calling him out on his treatment of Quess in CCA. Char has absolutely no problem treating people who trust him as disposable resources.

In other news, I saw the entirety of Thunderbolt the other day. I'd watched the first two episodes on Youtube, but I watched the December Sky version. It was actually not as bad as I expected! The first couple episodes set up Io as a psychotic asshole in the vein of Yazan or Ali while Daryl was the noble selfless warrior of Zeon, but the latter half pulled back on both of those. It showed that Io's assholeishness was at least partially a front he put up to avoid having a breakdown and he did genuinely care about his friends and allies, while Daryl was essentially operating in Heroic Safe Mode and didn't really care about Zeon so much as he had no other options than to stay and keep fighting.

I will say that the blatant trend toward Darker and Edgier was annoying, though. Or rather, doing it badly was annoying. Showing dozens of faceless mooks dying by standing around waiting to be shot at doesn't really have much emotional punch, especially when they were clearly introduced for that sole purpose in the first place. Add that to the ham-fisted "everyone is either evil or stupid because war is bad, guys!" and it was all sort of meh.

The animation quality was really good, though. Not quite as buttery-smooth as Unicorn's, but it did have way more style than Unicorn did in terms of art style. The combat (outside of mooks dying in droves because that's what mooks are for) was fairly interesting but suffered from the action-scene equivalent of Ass Pulls. Random lightning bolts from nowhere completely change the course of a fight twice, and random flying debris does at least once as well. I get that that's supposed to be part of the combat conditions in the Thunderbolt sector, but it didn't affect anything outside of those handful of incidents, which make it feel like bullshit. There were a couple fights that it seems like Io lost because the story declared him the loser, as well. Daryl's Zaku I survives a grenade at point-blank range and escapes, despite the grenade being powerful enough to do significant damage to the Full Armor Gundam, which had much better armor and should have been able to pursue and catch up to a Zaku I anyway. Later, Io is apparently defeated by having his Gundam decapitated despite decapitating Daryl's Zaku in the same exchange, and still being at close range with vastly superior close-range weaponry than Daryl has.

The ending — which I assume was tacked on to the December Sky version — also didn't make a whole lot of sense. Seeing Daryl struggle to pilot a mecha with standard controls using his prosthetics was interesting and could have functioned as an epilogue to let the audience know that he survives the war, but it felt like a side-show compared to showing off one complete Zeong (not Char's) and several incomplete ones. Then The Stinger shows a naked Io with a gun in his hand surrounded by several dead Zeon soldiers, while the other Federation POWs look on. Uh, okay? What the hell was the point of that? One would naturally assume that Io and the other prisoners were repatriated after A Baoa Qu, so there was no real need for an epilogue, and showing the audience an image of Io going Rambo just seems random and pointless.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

From what I understand, the Thunderbolt manga has a storyline that spans multiple years: what the OVA showed was only the first arc.

The epilogue was probably meant to show that the characters survived the ordeal and to suggest that the story would continue.

edited 30th Jul '16 11:05:30 AM by DarkHunter

That grenade was a flashbang reflected against a colony's solar mirror. It did no damage to either suit, but it was incredibly disorienting. The lightning flashes also make a great deal more sense in a setting with Newtypes. Darryl in particular is strongly implied to be one, and that bolt of lightning powering up the Zaku Reuse [P] is highly reminiscent of Judau going 'fuck it, who needs battery power?' in his fight with the Psyco Mk.II.

The epilogue also makes more sense when you remember that Thunderbolt is an ongoing manga series, and the actual battle of the Thunderbolt Sector is basically the prologue that shapes the main story. Claudia's character arc in particular only takes off later - her role in the first arc is basically just setup for her role later on.

What's precedent ever done for us?

The grenade certainly did damage to the Gundam — we see a full-body shot of it with its armor blasted and burned by the explosion. I suppose that it's possible that it's meant to be a flashbang and the blast damage is just discoloring, but given that it looks identical (within the margins of the minor redesigns that happen every time a new UC show is animated, anyway) to the established Zaku "cracker" grenades, that wasn't at all clear.

I'm not sure I buy the idea that Daryl was a newtype, either. Certainly some of the other pilots think he is, but he never shows any sign of newtype powers beyond being a good pilot, which certainly isn't proof positive of newtype powers. It also doesn't make the Ass Pull any less of an Ass Pull, it just makes them "ass pull newtype powers" instead of "ass pull random chance".

I was aware that the Thunderbolt manga continues after the One Year War arc, but my understanding was that it gets super fucking weird (like militant Buddhist monks trying to take over the world level weird) and there were no plans to adapt anything past the first arc because of that. I'm also not sure how Claudia's character arc is supposed to go anywhere, given that she's very dead. Did you mean Karla, the Zeon scientist woman, rather than Claudia, the Federation captain in a relationship with Io? In any case, I still don't see how The Stinger leads anywhere except "Io is badass and a little crazy", which we knew already.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The damage is from Darryl's beam splashing him after being disrupted by the lightning. You see the damaged parts glowing immediately after that. The grenade behaves entirely like a flashbang, and its effects are foreshadowed when Darryl is blinded by the explosion of Sean's suit reflecting off the mirror, letting Io flank him. He just returns the favour. It's also worth remembering that it's only an Ass Pull if it never shows up again. Random bursts of power are often used to foreshadow a character's hidden potential, and we do get to see more and more evidence that Darryl and possibly Io are a wee bit Newtypey as the story progresses. Hell, we're introduced to Darryl as a superhumanly perfect marksman who's suspected to be a Newtype.

On later manga stuff, It's shown in the manga epilogue to the Thunderbolt Sector arc that Claudia survived Graham's attack (it's left ambiguous in both versions whether he shot her or the window behind her, and she was wearing her normal suit), and she ends up getting picked up by a salvage team crewed by disciples of a burgeoning Newtype cult.

The second, main arc is set during the Federation's consolidation after the One Year War, as it regains control of Earth after having the shit kicked out of it and losing much of its governmental infrastructure. Io and company are assigned to stamp out Zeon remnants and monitor/pacify the various nationlets and warlord states who've risen to occupy the post-war power vacuum, while Darryl is working for one of those remnants along with his old buddy Fisher (the Dom pilot who brought in reinforcements and won the battle) in exchange for Karla's therapy. The main conflict is centred around the South Seas Alliance, one of the biggest and most powerful of the Earth's new nations. It's an isolationist theocracy based off a spin-off of Buddhism that's had initially cordial but increasingly strained relations with the Federation, and now both sides have learned that it's where Dr. Sexton and his Newtype research fled to after the battle of the Thunderbolt Sector. Not only that, but they recovered and partially restored the wreckage of Darryl's Psyco Zaku.

Naturally, both the Federation and Zeon want in (because the Reuse [P] technology used on the Living Dead is basically an early, flawed version of what would eventually be perfected as Cyber-Newtype technology, and Newtype army hell yes gimme), and when the Alliance refuses to hand over Sexton and his work (because the secret to their success is that they're actually a Newtype cult, and their leader has used Sexton's technology to help boost his powers and set himself up as a living god - think Maria from Victory, but actually running the show), both Io and Darryl's teams are sent in to do a smash and grab. Then Io encounters a familiar face on the other side, and what do you know, it seems that the self-confidence boost from joining a cult was exactly what Claudia needed to become a genuinely dangerous, competent commander.

edited 30th Jul '16 5:45:16 PM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

Mini-nations popping up in the wake of the One Year War? I mean it kind of makes sense but I don't believe we've ever heard of that happening before, have we? Other than generic comments about "Zeon remnants hiding out around the Earth Sphere".

The damage after the lightning-diverted beam attack is limited to a few spots on the shields; after the grenade, the entire chest/torso and parts of the shields and face are affected. It's definitely not the same.

As far as Claudia, I didn't see it as ambiguous at all. Her XO is aiming at her at extremely close range. He fires and she rocks backwards, then globules of blood float up by her face. Then the windows break (and there's no bullet hole in it to suggest that the XO shot it; it's whole until we see cracks form just before it shatters), and Claudia is sucked out the window. You can tell it's her and not her XO because there's blood visible on her normal suit but not his. The ship blows up in the next shot. So if she's still alive, she survived a gunshot wound, being sucked into space in a shoal zone with a breached normal suit, being near a ship as it explodes, and floating for who knows how long before being rescued by someone. Which is incredibly contrived.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Re-examining the scene, the damage seems to be limited to the paint being stripped off parts of the chest area◊, with the armour beneath remaining completely intact. Which is, again, what you'd expect from a flashbang at point-blank range. You can't generate that degree of light without heat, after all - modern flashbangs are basically magnesium flares. The key point, though, is the way the grenade's effects are shown - there's no explosion, but a bright, lingering glow that Io simply flies away from rather than being thrown back by. That pretty obviously says 'flashbang'.

On the Claudia shot, Graham is also dying, and the scene creates ambiguity about whether the blood is his or hers - we see it floating towards her from his direction, and his next line is 'I'll be joining you shortly'. This also explains why he's not the most accurate shot - we do actually see him shifting his grip a little as he aims at her. We also see her get launched into space at very high speed shortly before a bunch of escape shuttles follow suit, and we know they survive.

What's precedent ever done for us?

re: grenade — well, yes, that's exactly what I said in response to your suggestion that it was a flashbang. But "a flash of pure light" is certainly how explosions are sometimes depicted in anime, so while I buy that it was presumably intended to be a flashbang, it was far from clear that that's what they were going for.

re: Claudia — it couldn't have been his blood because his normal suit is intact. We see blood on the inside of his suit, through his helmet faceplate, but there's no blood floating free like there is in front of Claudia. We even see a full-body shot of him as the two of them are being sucked out the window and his normal suit is completely intact. Plus, you can see her react to the impact of the bullet. As far as the launches go, they were actively accelerating away from the ship, which Claudia wasn't, so they would have been farther away from the explosion — and ships are less fragile than normal suits anyway, so "but the launches survived" doesn't necessarily mean that Claudia would have. It may very well be that she wasn't "really" killed, but the way the scene is composed, it's not ambiguous at all. She got shot, then sucked into space, then exploded. Without knowing how it plays out in the manga, I would say that she's 100% definitely really dead.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Quickly going to derail this entire conversation while I have this on my mind: which is better, a Ball or a Leo?

I'm voting Leo, because it can actually serve in multiple environments. That, and I'm already biased to Wing.

Sorry, bad wording on my part.

edited 2nd Aug '16 1:34:12 PM by alphazoid

Suck it, troper!

Wait, for which one's worse? Because if it's worse, than I'd say the Ball is worse than the Leo.

And here's a thought I've been considering, how to defeat a Dark History Turn-A for each of the timelines. Anyone have some ideas about that?

The only way that'd even be possible is if you found some way to disable the Moonlight Butterfly.

Otherwise, game over. You lose.