It's a Gundam thread!

To be fair, Tomino's characterization is.... not the greatest in general, especially when characters appear across several series.

I personally can buy Char as being viewed as a Stauffenburg or Rommel type, but that's just me. Not like those guys were saints either.

edited 19th Mar '12 8:54:10 AM by Scherzo09

I'll second that. He sometimes does seem to forget that he's already established the character's personality and that he cannot simply replace it.

I just got annoyed with Char by CCA, his character is all kinds of inconsistant, and I wish Gundam villains would not resort to aping him every time without fail. I thught it was nice 00 didn't have one..... until Graham became Mister Bushido in that silly second season. I was really liking AGE until the Second Generation came along, and, among others things, all the "Char!" crap got forced on Zeheart

I agree with you that Char is copied far too much, but I would argue that the problem is that the imitators take his defining quirks (screwed personal relantioships, agressive fighting style, masks, eloquence) rather than more general features like charisma, unpredictability, intelligence and ambiguity which would not prevent a new character from developing an unique identity.

On the other hand, I don't think Zeon's popularity is due to them trying to be good people. It has more to do with them being far more passionate/desperate/emotional about their desires than the protagonists, which leads to the audience connecting to them better on an emotional level since their beliefs appear to be stronger (which is why in super robot shows the hero has to out ham the villain without looking ridiculous, thus conquering the audience).

edited 19th Mar '12 5:48:12 PM by luislucas

That and there is so much My Country, Right or Wrong going on.

I don't mind the Char Clones when they are well done—that is, when they succeed in being independent characters, despite their similarities to him. That is why, for instance, I love Rau Le Creuset (who was given very good reasons for being the way that he is) and loathe Zechs Merquise with an unholy passion (who is...Char. Seriously, the only thing he's missing is the tendency towards seducing teenage girls). Honestly, I don't mind them putting the mask on Zeheart, if only because it comes off as more of a shout out than anything else; he's certainly not a straight up copy of Char. Still, with few exceptions (Le Creuset again) I typically find the other villains to be more interesting than whoever the Char Clone is (of course, I found Gihren, M'Quve, and Kycilia to be more interesting than the original Char was in the first place).

EDIT: I'm expanding quite a few of the Gundam character sheets and am adding Gundam examples to a variety of pages. As such, I've got a question I thought I'd bring here—would Yazan Gable qualify as The Brute within Zeta? Decil Galette is listed as such during the second third of AGE, and their portrayal is certainly very similar. What does the forum think?

edited 19th Mar '12 9:57:38 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Regarding ZZ Gundam: I like to pretend that it's pronounced "Zeta Zeta Gundam" because that sounds like the coolest fraternity ever.

Also, I just finished building a HG Nu Gundam, and those fin funnels make it impossible to stand up. Imagine the nu engaging in battle on Earth, the fin funnels would be useless. And really, aside from vaguely defined supernatural powers, those funnels were all the nu had going for it.

I don't think Char is a bad character; but I would agree it isn't fair that he overshadows a lot of the other antagonists. Kinda liked all the politicking in the Zabi family, for example. How Degwin, for example, now seems to regret ever signing off on the war but recognizes that Zeon is both in too deep to withdraw and pretty much in the hands of his son Gihren by then.

edited 20th Mar '12 10:38:05 AM by Scherzo09

Did you mean he overshadows the other antagonists? Because if so, I definitely agree. The Zabi's Big, Screwed-Up Family was one of the more interesting aspects of the show, and I found Gihren in particular to be somebody I could really Love to Hate (as well as a great illustration of how a Smug Snake can be a competent, threatening antagonist without ever having to graduate to full MB status). I would have liked to see them all get some more characterisation and screen time, though to give Tomino credit, he does well with what little time he gives them; they all feel like fleshed out characters even though they are only in a few episodes.

Gihren never felt particularly interesting to me. Kycilia and to some extent Minerva's father (whose name I can't even remember) were much more interesting than Gihrens rather one-note evil.

You're right in saying that Gihren doesn't qualify as a magnificent bastard, but he did kind of strike me as sort of a combination of Otto Von Bismark and Adolf Hitler; how he manipulated the real complaints and aspirations of the Zeon people into justifying his genocidal war of making him absolute ruler of the Earth Sphere. Despite claiming to be a practitioner of Zeon's philosophy, he's really a megalomaniac who uses realpolitik to get what he wants.

As for Char, I think its an example of people seeing Hidden Depths where there aren't any. Since Char often appears to be a cipher, most fans assume there's more to him than that. But I think in the end it's a case of what you see is what you get; Char is an emotional cripple who seems incapable of forming meaningful interpersonal relationships that aren't somehow instrumental for him (Even Lalah, whose relationship with Char seems a bit foggy, I can't tell how much she was a tool for him to prove his father's Newtype hypothesis and how much he actually cared for her), who believes his way of viewing reality is inherently superior to anyone else's. And unlike Gihren, I think he's pretty unaware of how much of a self-centered asshole he is.

Mineva's father is Dozle Zabi. And he was indeed, very, very, awesome.

See what I appreciated about Gihren was how simplistic he was. He wants power and he's going to get it, through whatever means he can. He's far less cartoonish than some of Gundam's other monsters (especially Ali Al-Saachez and Decil Galette); instead of being a supervillain he's just a moral black hole.

That is one of the better explanations for Char's popularity that I've seen. He's mysterious so he must have depth. Sort of like those English teachers who assume that the more confusing a book is, the deeper it must be.

My favourite Gundam villain is actually Haman Karn.

EDIT: I think the issue isn't that Gihren is evil, it's that it's pretty much the sum total of his characterization. It's kind of notable since many other gundam antagonists have humanizing elements even when they're bad people (loved ones, hobbies, etc.)

edited 20th Mar '12 12:23:20 PM by Arilou

Oh lots of them do. But at the same time, you've got ridiculously popular characters like Ali who have no humanising characteristics about them. If I have to choose between Ali, who would be more at home in a comic book than a Gundam episode ("I'm the worst kind of person there is, mwa ha ha") and Gihren, who wants power and will do anything to get it, I'll take Gihren. Fact is I've met people lik Gihren (albeit on a lesser scale). I've never met anyone like Ali. I'm stunned they never had him tie anyone to a set of railroad tracks.

Personally, I'm divided on the subject of Haman Khan. On the one hand, she's a pretty cool bad guy. On the other hand, her creepy attraction to Judau and the fact that a huge part of her characterisation boils down to "Char dumped me!" just sets off my misogyny radar (and I'm hardly a raging feminist).

edited 20th Mar '12 1:59:41 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Oh god, Tomino must have some major issues with Women, because he has these.... bizarre ideas how they should operate, which will be especially apparent when you get to Victory Gundam.

I think Gihren sorta typifies the dark side of the Nietzschean "Will to Power"; morality is nothing more than a tool to him for achieving his ends. I don't think he goes out of his way to create suffering, but will use any means at his disposal to get what he wants, regardless of the suffering it will create or the people used as tools to get it. Obviously, Kcyllia hates him for it; I always got the feeling she'd been wanting to shoot him in the head for some time before she finally got the excuse to do so.

Then again, Victory Gundam contains dangerously high levels of WTF in general. The difference with earlier installments is really visible.

I think a lot of it is Tomino just phoning it in, especially with all the Editorial oversight to add shit that would move stupid model kits, but his view on women there is just... yeah.

The hilarious thing is, I don't think he's trying to be misogynistic. Don't get me wrong, he's succeeding in being that way, but I'm not sure that he's trying to be. On the one hand, he gives us Action Girls like Sayla Mass and Emma Sheen, who in a Japanese show in the eighties would have been serious rarities (given that 80s Japan is roughly equivalent to 60s/70s North America as far as the feminist movement goes). On the other hand, he gives us multiple damsels in distress, as well as Kycilia, Haman, and Katejina who are practically archetypal "bad women." Haman in particular is a refugee from a Greek tragedy.

Tomino, unlike a lot of the other sci-fi writers at the time, should probably be given credit for at least trying to engage with gender issues. His handling of it is awkward, and in some cases, downright bad, but I'll take it over having no important women at all.

On another note, that's a pretty good way to describe Gihren. It's like the SOB read Machiavelli, but skipped all the parts on being feared and loved if possible.

edited 20th Mar '12 1:57:23 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Mind you, there's a strong literary argument that Machiavelli was writing satire. The Prince doesn't exactly gel with the content of his other books.

I think Gihren sees getting his people to love the Zeon cause is more important than liking him personally. He definitely plays to the Spacenoid Nationalists and I think he's actually pretty loved by them. He doesn't care what dissidents and Earth sympathizers think; they're irrelevant to him. Better to be loved by those that matter and crush the ones who don't than try to please everyone and ending up pleasing no one. I do think he followed the Machiavellian model well.

Yes he had women who played important roles, but he kept reinforcing that they needed to be overseen by a strong male, such as Bright Noa or Sleggar Law, or else they'd be misguided (like Miharu) or evil (like Kcyllia, more or less).

On the subject of Zabis, I don't really like what The Origin manga did to him. I mean he still works really well as an internally consistent character, but I felt the writer played up Garma's character flaws waaaay too much to make him a pampered douchebag. I guess this goes into that whole "whitewashing Char" thing, since maybe its a misguided attempt to try to justify his murder.

edited 20th Mar '12 2:23:14 PM by Scherzo09

I think that has more to do with a federation policy that dictates that women are not commanding officers, since Marbet or Muller from Victory did just fine without a man leading them. You could make a case that women in Tomino's story are essentially driven by romance/love and it's consequences, which is rarely the case with male characters. Even Haman's determination could be traced back to the aftermath to an episode with Char, not to mention Diana Sorel's character defining decision to leave her love life behind on Earth.

edited 20th Mar '12 2:39:23 PM by luislucas

But that's bullshit. Matilda Ajan was the commander of that transport squadron.

Plus how does Tomino having sexist feddie regulations, which I don't think there are, somehow make it okay?

I didn't say that I took Machiavelli seriously. I said that Gihren memorised the part about being feared and not loved.

Like I said, Tomino does make a lot of mistakes. Not denying that. Although weirdly, Kycilia could be seen as something of an exception to the "overseen by a strong male" thing, as while she's evil, she's not even close to as bad as Gihren, whom she quite neatly gets rid of.

Personally, I don't think Gihren cared if the people loved Zeon or not, as long as they did what he wanted. Everything was pretty much a means to an end to him.

The driven by romance/love thing is definitely true for Tomino's female characters, and continues to be a factor long after he left the series. That said, it's hardly unique to Gundam. Female characters in fiction have a general tendency to be guided by those feelings.

Was meaning that loving the Zeonic cause was means for control, one that could get them really riled up to go to war. He did a really good job of selling the war to the people and make them want to fight and die for his cause. Like Hitler said, "It is easier to get people to fall for a big lie than a small one."

That he did, and it's one reason I like him (once again, in a Love to Hate way. No leather pants, please, it would just look silly). I find it interesting that in the original plans for the show, Kycilia was supposed to die earlier, Gihren was supposed to be the last Zabi standing, and Char was supposed to go when A Baoa Qu did. I'm not sure about some of those things, but I certainly could have lived with that last part.