It's a Gundam thread!

Actually the expensive part is the transportation of the materials off earth to get the first ones started... That is a long distance parts order. (Big advantage of 00's elevators) once the first ones are setup costs would go down a lot, even more so if there was a minIng asteroid nearby.

edited 21st Nov '11 6:24:08 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I expect better than a cut and paste rehash. Hell most of the Alternate Universes put a new twist on stuff derived from the UC era of MSG through CCA. For example, Gundam Wing wasn't the first to do a Mêlée à Trois between factions. (That was Zeta Gundam.) It however put a new spin on it by greatly expanding upon the political nature of the conflict and making each side question their own motives and goals.

SEED didn't do that in its first episodes. When I first saw SEED I was half expecting them to pull "We're jumping onto the White Base!" with the Archangel. They practically did pull just that.

edited 21st Nov '11 7:16:49 PM by MajorTom

Ugh. That's it. I've had it. I'm officially washing my hands of the entire Universal Century. It offers me nothing but broken hopes and shattered dreams. If I ever run into any of the authors, especially of ZZ or Unicorn, I'm jacking them straight in the face, consequences be damned.

I'm sticking to my alternate continuities henceforth. UC is dead to me.

Guys, what's your favorite non-UC Gundam show? For me it would have to be Turn A Gundam. It's kinda strange in a way, considering that it starts out completely unlike a Gundam show. Still, I love the way the ending was left without loose ends. It also shows that people can change (I'm looking at you, Tomino).

My favorite would have to be Mobile Fighter G Gundam.

After War Gundam X would be a close second, for both being the UC done right and how you can come up with proper closure for an era in 39 episodes.

I mean, a satisfying ending after 39 episodes compared to a Downer Ending after 100+ episodes? Yes please.

Neither goony beard-men nor rainbow-haired she-twinks will stand in the way of my dreams!

Eh... sort of. It seems less like they had to build space colonies to sustain the population and more like they made a conscious choice to put people in space colonies to preserve what was left of Earth's natural environment. After all, if you can build and run a space colony (which is a closed system that would require close to 100% recycling for basics like food, air, and water), then you should be able to handle environmentally-friendly living on Earth as well. This is more evident in later UC — Uso, for example, is said to be an illegal squatter living on protected land at the beginning of the series.

That said, it's probably easier to do that sort of thing after half of humanity gets killed off during the OYW. So maybe I'm getting it exactly backwards, who knows?

edited 22nd Nov '11 7:24:02 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Yeah, there should he high-density, high-efficiency ecologies on Earth as well. Tbh what we see of Side 7 in MSG and Side 6 in War in the Pocket looks too low density to be practical space colony of 10+ Million people. They'd have to be outliers IMO because you can't host 8 Billion people in outer space with all of the colonies just being recreations of Suburbia.

The idea though was that the Earth could no longer sustain the growing population anyways with the ecological destruction, so moving people into space was an easy means of population reduction.

edited 22nd Nov '11 11:31:01 AM by Scherzo09

These are the words that shall come from my mouth. I shall be known for speaking them.

This of course reaches the point of Fridge Logic when you wonder this—if earth's resources are so depleted that it's uninhabitable, were did they get enough resources to build the blasted colonies? Best not to think about it.

Asteroids; the heavy materials for the colonies were mined and refined in space from asteroids brought to the Lagrange points. Solomon and A Boa Qu are leftovers from the initial mining.

These are the words that shall come from my mouth. I shall be known for speaking them.

Pardon me for asking this, But am I the only one who thinks that Char Aznable for Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam and Chars Counterattack is more of a Smug Snake then the Magnificent Bastard and Memetic Badass that most of the Gundam fandom sees him as and that the Char Clones that followed him were far better anti-heros and villains.

edited 22nd Nov '11 4:14:37 PM by Zarmyn

^ To a degree. Zechs Merquise had a better motivation than CCA Char in the last third of Wing. Mainly because he had a far more realistic reason behind his sudden shift. His home country was destroyed right before his eyes a second time and his own sister the head of that state taken into Romefeller custody. In his own words he became "a soldier without a country" and White Fang gave him a country.

CCA Char kinda came out of the blue compared to his Zeta Gundam characterization. Zechs not so much.

Now other Char Clones? They don't have the same luck. (Full Frontal might be the exception but he seems somewhat shoehorned in given that at that point in the UC timeline Char has been dead for three years and thus too soon has passed to believe FF is a "second coming".)

edited 22nd Nov '11 4:20:52 PM by MajorTom

I just can't take his name seriously. I cannot.

Btw. Haman Karn is the best Gundam villain *nods*

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

^ Who's name? Char? Zechs? Full Frontal?

Full Frontal. He sounds like a stripper.

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

I disagree; Zechs deciding that colony dropping the earth was the best way to bring about peace came totally out of left field and really just served to solidify him as a char clone. You can see Char begin to buy into his father's philosophy by the end of MSG; in CCA he just takes it to its logical extreme.

These are the words that shall come from my mouth. I shall be known for speaking them.

Char's Evil Plan in CCA, is one of the biggest cases of And Then What? I've ever seen. He seemed to have no other objectives beyond dropping an asteroid which will some how bring peace and make everyone a Newtype and have fight with Amuro to the death. What was he going to do after that if he succeeded in both goals? At least the Big Bad of Gundam Seed's plan made sense since he planned to die while taking the rest of humanity with him.

edited 22nd Nov '11 6:08:30 PM by Zarmyn

Zechs at least had the plan that if he rammed Libra into Earth there would be no more war, no more suffering, no more tragedies of the Sanc Kingdom. It's hardly the And Then What? Char has in CCA.

How the hell is dropping a huge colony on a random country going to make peace for everyone?

"If there is a hole then it's a man's job to thrust into it" - Ryoma from New Getter Robo

I always thought that Zechs was pulling a Lelouch by pretending to be the bad guy in order to put an end to confilct between Earth and colonies and bring about true peace. That and finally getting to have a fight with Heero without interruptions.

edited 22nd Nov '11 6:25:33 PM by Zarmyn

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but Code Geass came out over 10 years after Wing. Also, Lelouch is a Char Clone, so it's more like Lelouch is pulling a someone. Really, if a later Gundam Char Clone emulates Lelouch it would be going full circle.

Two things that really bugged me about CCA and Zeta were the radical changes characters and politics had undergone. It was left to the reader to deduce what had occurred in between series. Char joining up the AEUG after MSG seems reasonable since he achieved his goal of killing off most of the Zabi family, but the only explanation for which he made such a great change from "I wish to see humanity become Newtypes and let Earth heal its wounds" to "I'm going to Colony Drop Earth to make most of humanity Newtypes and let Earth heal itself (after an Ice Age)" between Zeta and CCA was a cutscene in a Zeta Gundam PS Game (SPOILERS for Zeta's Ending). Well, better late than never.

In his words in a way, Space and Earth had become the catalysts for all wars. That there would never be peace so long as both Earth and Space existed. Take away one and the reasons for war are gone.

Nobody ever claimed that Zechs was a master of thinking things through. (Unlike Treize.) Especially after going through a bout of Soldier Breakdown in the wake of the Sanc Kingdom's (second) collapse.

edited 22nd Nov '11 7:54:49 PM by MajorTom

His goal was to make the Earth uninhabitable, which would force everyone to immigrate to space and evolve into Newtypes. It makes sense from that standpoint.

These are the words that shall come from my mouth. I shall be known for speaking them.

Zeta (almost) feels like it wasn't intended to be a sequel at all, considering how different the situation is at the start. They eventually explained/retconned it, but still.

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

The same can be said for CCA. You're just thrown into a space battle without any explanation as to whats going on. Really that OVA was too rushed; probably should've been two OV As, the first one better establishing the situation.

These are the words that shall come from my mouth. I shall be known for speaking them.

re: Char — the man is overrated as hell. He's a popular character, sure, but he's no great shakes as a pilot (as least as far as main characters go). In MSG, Amuro surpasses him while on Earth and by the end of the series he can barely manage a draw even in vastly superior hardware. In Zeta, he never really manages anything particular impressive — and gets utterly demolished in the final battle — despite having top-tier tech (again). In CCA, it's even worse; he gets completely taken apart by Amuro without even managing to land any good hits himself, in what's probably the most one-sided Final Battle in Gundam history.

re: Zeta Char vs. CCA Char — I don't think Char actually buys his own bullshit in CCA. I think he's really just trying to get himself killed. He goes out of his way to make sure Amuro can beat him (giving him the psycoframe, dueling him personally instead of letting his Newtype minions help), and seems more concerned with arguing about Lalah with Amuro than actually making sure his plan succeeds. Char is incredibly cynical by CCA — I'd guess that he figured the best legacy he could leave for the spacenoid/contolist cause was as a martyr. Either that and he's completely deluded himself into thinking he can beat Amuro on even footing, despite a decade of evidence to the contrary.

edited 23rd Nov '11 6:40:32 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.