It's a Gundam thread!

I'm gonna get shanked for this but...I liked the movie and S2 of 00? I don't deny their flaws compared to S1, it seems Sunrise is not very good at taking advantage of the split season format to not just take your time crafting the second half of your series; but also making sure the quality is as good story wise. Yet at least to me Gundam 00 S2 seems like a natural progression with how Ribbons and Alejandro fucked everything up for Celestial Being. They couldn't continue the same path because their own organization was uprooted along with their VERY important Quantum Super Computer VEDA. Now I say them learning to fight on without VEDA was one of the highlights of the 2nd half of Season 1 and Season 2, especially the last fight.

That said I do agree there are flaws, both with character development for some characters and seemingly characters doing stuff that goes....nowhere. That said I still hold it in high regard both because I enjoy it and compared to what came before it's a far cry and more coherent. Yes the message gets hammered home too much; but I've seen other G series do worse.

The movie is a bit messy but I think I like how they went about the whole 'first contact' scenario with Aliens and how the problem wasn't the aliens were out to invade but the inability to communicate and the aliens biology of assimilation and having a hive-mind was the cause for the need to take up arms plus; the threat felt REAL. More than any doomsday weapon scenario since if everyone fails, they're all truly doomed not just some crackpot taking over. Plus we do see the culmination of what Celestial Being tried to do; unit the world and the world truly unites with Ribbons and his A-Laws out of the picture. The ending just felt...well seeing the bright future of humanity was a plus, giving us one of the happiest endings of a Gundam series. That to me gave a sense of all everyone went through was worth it. Plus the soundtrack and action scenes were pretty badass, 00 never failed us there.

Was there wasted potential and the message hammered home to preachy levels? Oh yes, again I do not deny the flaws in 00; I guess just after Seed Destiny pissed me off so badly I was happy to see a Gundam series that drew me in and felt like there was solid effort and writing put into it. Hell when AGE became a mess like Seed/Seed Destiny it kinda of just made my love of 00 stand stronger since it's follow up was crap. I was rather gunshy of diving into Gundam again so I initially overlooked Build Fighters until some friends assured me it was worth a shot, thank God for it, Try and Iron Blooded Orphans. Sunrise maybe onto better Gundam series give or take some flaws.

So anyway I guess I still hold S2 and the movie pretty well but admit they're flawed.

00 was my gateway series into Gundam and I still like it to this day.

My only issue with it is its "and now that the bad guys have been defeated, we will have eternal peace forever" ending. That sort of thing is never going to happen. Ever. Humanity is just too warlike for it and no amount of nice words or Japanese anti-war idealism will make them change. Damage control is the best anyone's ever gonna be able to do. That's why I prefer the season 2 ending over the movie's ending and that's why I love the shit out of the Universal Century despite its own faults.

I think some of the side manga tied to the movie try to showcase Humanity doesn't get over it's warlike tendencies right away; but I do agree I find Japan's idealism anti-war stuff to at times be unrealistic which is what has hurt many of the Gundam series anti-war messages and the pacifist protags who just preach bullshit.

Yeah, I think Season 2 is alright but I got tired of Saji and Louise's baggage. And Graham went through Flanderization to be a blatant and shallow Char Clone instead of being a subtle and deep one. I'll give the movie points for changing him back to his S1 persona though

And Try is kinda bad, and while I like IBO, it has some gaping flaws in certain areas

edited 26th Feb '17 2:25:09 PM by AlphaVII

I didn't think Graham was that great in Season 1 either. And it's like the writers completely forgot about him in the S1 finale, given how he shows up after the final battle is over.

I liked Graham in S1. He was a cool, interesting dude, especially for Gundam, even if he didn't get all that much screentime in the long run. And then they desperately tried to simultaneously make him as Japanese as possible without literally racelifting him while also turning him into a Char Clone, taking away any real depth or subtlety he had and devolving him into a one-note archtype for Setsuna to go up against every few episodes.

I also liked how Graham was portrayed in the movie. It was a nice middle ground between the previous two takes on him, bringing back a lot of his S1 characterization while still keeping some of his S2 traits, such as bearing a slightly gruffer and more respectable air and continuing to call Setsuna 'Young man'. And then they killed him off. Somewhat pointlessly in fact. And after getting only so many scenes throughout the whole movie. Which makes you wonder what the point of even bringing him back was when his sole purpose now was to shoot things up for a bit before kicking the bucket. Of course that's all assuming there even was a movie, because what movie?

edited 26th Feb '17 9:57:35 PM by kkhohoho

Don't even remind me of that. That actually made me made that he died

Once the movie was greenlighted several characters that were supposed to die in series, were spared so they could die in the movie instead. Graham was one of them.

If the movie didn't happen he'd have just kamikazed into Ribbons or something instead. That's why he no showed the season 2 finale cause they moved his big scene to the movie instead.

Char the lucky bastard

I watched the Thunderbolt compilation movie. It was pretty good. Pretty much no story but the animation was good and the artstyle was... different. The dub was solid as well. Should I watch the episodes too?

No need, the movie is literally just the episodes stitched together with some extra footage at the end.

Thunderbolt was good. I watched the first couple episodes and decided that all the characters were assholes so gave it up, but ended up watching the movie when it came out, and the second half really redeems it — it does a great job of showing that everyone has a good reason for being an asshole, and actually manages to make them somewhat sympathetic despite the assholery.

That said, the blatant plot-directed lightning bolts annoy the hell out of me. I wouldn't mind so much if the lightning was a constant thing that everyone had to take into account while in combat, but that's not what they do. Lightning only shows up like three times, and each time it massively changes the course of the fight in progress, which is intensely irritating.

Soo... I want to ask 2 questions in regards to the series's Merchandise-Driven stuff that happens behind the scenes. (Wich I normally dont really like to talk about)

And the questions are, which series were affected the most? And wich ones were affected the less by the Merchandise stuff?

In regards to the most I know Victory had that problem but I cannot think of any other examples

edited 2nd Mar '17 10:02:51 AM by dood9780

G Gundam is probably the most obvious one — they noticed that Gundams sold better than non-Gundams, so they decided to make all the mecha Gundams and see how that went.

Turns out that just calling it a Gundam won't make people buy really silly mecha.

We still got a kick-ass show out of it though. I'd call that a win.

Very kickass show.

Besides there is a better example for Gundam overload anyways. Build Fighters Try. Wanna know how many mook or non-gundam suits showed up? 4 as far as I can remember. Wanna know how many of them actually meant anything? None.

Build Fighters Try was far more Gundam than G Gundam ever was.

IIRC, Dearka's Heel–Face Turn in Seed was meant to boost Buster Gundam's lackluster sales.

I'd say Gundam Build Fighters was the most obviously merchandise-driven entry, given that it was an anime basically all about how awesome Gundam model kits are.

But hey, just because it's a blatant merchandise commercial doesn't mean it can't be a fun blatant merchandise commercial, which Build Fighters was (Try, not as much, but still not horrible).

Yeah but Build Fighters wasn't Gundam only. Several Non-Gundam suits held up.

What does that matter? Bandai sells tons of model kits of non-Gundam mobile suits as well, and they need to be advertised too.

edited 2nd Mar '17 12:29:17 PM by DarkHunter

My point is more or less that GBF's biggest strength was how many models it marketed and still made look cool and dynamic.

Whereas Try modeled nothing but Gundams and most of their action was samey super moves.

Try's not bad, but it's boring. That's what my point is.

Okay so I got answers to my first question, but what about the 2nd one?

What series was the least affected by Merchandise stuff? ...Or is it that such case does not exist?

Well, all Gundam productions are ultimately funded in order to sell more kits, so you can't say any are untouched.

Maybe Gundam The Origin, which has relatively few new Mobile Suits introduced that weren't already in 0079 and focuses more heavily on characters.

Turn A. Given that, uh, there wasn't any merchandise for it.

Mind you, it's not hard to see why, seeing as most of the Moonrace suits would have been near-impossible to turn into kits, and that character merch didn't really take off until SEED.

Turn A Gundam might in there too. I can't honestly say that idea of ' The American Revolutionary War With Mecha' is something that's easily marketable to the kiddies, especially with mecha designs by Sid Mead that look absolutely nothing like how you expect Gundam mechs to look. (As awesome as they are.)

...Dagnabbit.

edited 2nd Mar '17 12:53:14 PM by kkhohoho

Thanks alot for answering my questions.