Given how long the Gundam franchise has been around for, there are bound to be some moments where even a good bright slap isn't enough to get over our angst.
Keep in mind:
- Sign your entries
- One moment per work to a troper, if multiple entries are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
- Moments only, no "just everything he said," "The entire show," or "This entire season," entries.
- No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
- No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
- No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSes out loud.
- Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment Of Suck.
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
- Tropers/Falconwing: This might be almost sacrilege to say, but the death of Emma Sheen in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam was perhaps the biggest DMOS I could think of. Memo to Yoshiyuki Tomino just because you are writing an "Everybody Dies" Ending to your anime, doesn't mean you can just derail experienced soldiers into idiots who leave their mobile suits in the middle of a war zone. It was so stupid, senseless, and downright out of character for Emma to leave her Gundam like that.
- Heirophants Fool: Agreed, Yoshiyuki Tomino has a bad habit when he's in 'Sad/Evil Tomino' mode.
- Commando Dude: Jerid Messa being killed senselessly and effortlessly by Kamille at the end of the show when he'd been built up as a huge rival of his for the entire story. And not even being killed directly by Kamille, but being anti-climatically thrown into Radish as the ship exploded.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack
- Larkmarn: The chain of events leading to Chan Agi's death (not to mention the destruction of the ReGZ, which was my favorite mecha in the film).First, Hathaway and Quess fall completely in love. Okay; we're already Strangled by the Red String. Then Chan launches in the heavily damaged ReGZ and basically accidentally kills Quess in self-defense. So Hathaway murders her out of anger. She was already an underdeveloped character, but I sure liked her more than anyone else involved in that little Mêlée à Trois.
- Roark Tenjouin: Victory Gundam is what I consider to be the worst entry in the franchise (yes, even worse than Seed Destiny), and what really earned it the position of worst series in my mind was episode 29, where Repet was trying to see if Uso was a newtype - that in of itself wasn't the problem, it was the way she went about it. If you were to ask me how I would go about seeing if a 13 year old kid was a newtype, I'd test their blood, run some aptitude tests, or do some brain scans. What I would not do is have a grown woman basically rape a 13 year old boy. While Victory had been a chore for me to watch, it was tied with AGE at that point (I hadn't seen Seed Destiny yet), but this was what really solidified it as the worst series in my mind (and to this day, I can't even understand how anyone could consider it decent, let alone one of the best series). While I'm glad Tomino didn't succeed in killing off the franchise, I really wish he had just called it quits after F91 instead of making this abomination.
- Commando Dude: The time that Wufei bombed Victoria Base and Noin for some reason tells her subordinates to not shoot and destroy the Gundam right in front of her because a kid is piloting it. This just after said kid killed every single trainee she'd been teaching, and from one of Oz's top pilots no less. Which results in him killing her subodrinates, and then using the beam cannon they were going to shoot him with to destroy the Taurus mobile suits she was suppose to evacuate. All while she watches. The show practically calls her out on it too when Wufei insults her for not treating him seriously and states that he doesn't kill bleeding hearts or women.
- Amuro NT 1: One of the big, plot-critical moments in Gundam SEED comes when Kira and Athrun each kill one of the others' friends (Nichol and Tolle respectively), which leads to their berserk deathmatch and eventually to their realizing how futile the Cycle of Revenge really is. Fair enough...but then along came the HD Remaster of SEED, and the scene where Kira kills Nichol was completely reanimated. In the original, Nichol charges the Strike in an attempt to protect Athrun, and Kira reflexively swings his sword, nailing the Blitz Gundam in the gut. In the remaster, Nichol pretty much trips and runs into the sword blade with Kira doing nothing. Ignoring the fact that it makes Nichol look like an utterly incompetent pilot, it actually defeats the entire purpose of his death in the first place. There's literally zero reason for it to happen, except possibly the writing staff wanted to absolve Kira of as many killings as possible in order to maintain their stance that he's the Messiah of the Cosmic Era.
- Larkmarn: Lacus' apparent SEED mode while... babbling on the bridge of the ship in a weird ninja outfit. It was bad enough that she was... well, as 15 year old pop star and still the leader of the (inexplicably powerful) Three Ships Alliance. It got worse when she did her commanding while dressed as a kunoichi for some reason. But all that is made moot when her "leadership" consisted of Fauxlosophic Narration while she has the SEED mode effect makes it seem like babbling like a loon is her superpower.
- JediMasterDraco: I know this is going to bring hell down on my head, but Mwu La Flaga's Heroic Sacrifice. Mwu is coming in all shot up from getting blasted by the Providence. Archangel comes to a stop to allow him to board more easily. Things shift to the Dominion where Azrael orders them to fire the Lohengrin. Flay calls Archangel to warn them and gets attacked for her troubles. Then Natarle Badgiruel comes to her defense and orders an evacuation. Azrael tries to follow but Natarle stops him. The ship is fully abandoned and Azrael manages to target the Archangel and fire the Lohengrin (he's a civilian mind you). In show this takes about two minutes. And Mwu La Flaga still hasn't gotten on board, and Flay's warning is completely ignored. If Mwu is close enough to the Archangel that it stops to let him board, there is no way all of that happened in the time it took him to land. It made his whole sacrifice completely unnecessary.
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny
- Charred Knight: The final battle in Gundam SEED Destiny, a one sided Curb-Stomp Battle, that has ZAFT getting their asses kicked and hardly scratching the Three Ship Alliance. It ruins the characters of Rey, Talia, and Shinn.
- Justice Gundam: The absurd love story between Shinn and Lunamaria? Sorry, was I supposed to cheer for such a poorly done, nonsensical and Strangled by the Red String relationship? I don't care what people say about Shinn and Stellar, at least that pairing had a logical base instead of "Shinn, you killed my sis and my boyfriend... HOLD ME!".
- Chrono: The duel between Kira and Rey. What the hell was that about? They were freakin evenly matched before their little argument on their ideology! All it took was one (cheesy) line from Kira, and Rey was basically one-shot killed immediately after that. Sure, in-battle chat is always a constant in Gundam battles, but that scene almost tainted that concept as a way to force your opponent into submission. You don't win fights with heroic speeches!
- Commando Dude: The duel between Kira and Shinn. Where Shinn for some reason is able to completely kick Kira's ass just because he can 'analyze' that Kira never aims for the cockpit...so he's able to dodge everything thrown at him? Okay, it wouldn't be so bad. But then the series completely contradicts its own physics and Shinn finishes off Kira by ramming Impulse's physical anti-ship sword through Kira's shield and his Phase Shift armor...the armor that is suppose to be impervious to physical weapons
- Tanebi: The Impulse's sword is SUPPOSED to be able to extend the laser blade past the physical end of the sword, which would have explained that last part; though an animation error that bad is no less jarring. Adding to the above, if Kira really did deactivate his N-Jammer Canceller, why does the Freedom go up in a nuclear blast? Don't get me wrong, out of context it looks freaking awesome, but in context, it just makes no damned sense and seems to contradict the series's logic even further.
- Tropers/mbeowulf: Neo. Freaking. Roanoke. More specifically, from Episode 33. Up to that point he'd been a fairly typical Mysterious Masked Man - kind of a less crazy and better-dressed version of his predecessor Rau Le Creuset. Then they made him Mwu La Flaga, who in one of Gundam Seed's most memorable moments had sacrificed himself to save the lives of his teammates by throwing himself into the path an antimatter weapon that had literally vaporized the entire cockpit block of his mobile suit...with no explanation. To add insult to injury, the finale recycles that entire scene again, minus the Heroic Sacrifice part.
- Kirby 0189: If you want an idea of how stupid the Retcon for Mu's death is, back when he totally died in SEED (I say it like that because I prefer to ignore Destiny), his helmet was seen floating among the Strike's wreckage. In space. Where there is no air and he would have asphyxiated even had he managed to somehow survive being obliterated by the Dominion's canon. At least with Kira surviving the Aegis exploding and the Freedom getting stabbed (not that those are instances of good writing though), there is some leeway (you could assume even without reading the Astray manga that Kira could have been blasted out of the Strike by the Aegis' explosion for the former, and closer inspection for the latter reveals that Shinn really did miss the cockpit and Fridge Brilliance says that Kira turning off the Freedom's N-Jammer Cancelers would have caused the surrounding N-Jammers to remove the possibility of the Freedom exploding and killing him), but here there is literally no way that Mu could have survived. It's so bad that the HD Remaster edited out his helmet from the wreckage, but it still makes no sense because there's still the issue of him surviving the Dominion's shot to begin with. Ugh, I love SEED to death, so why did Destiny have to take such a hit in Sequelitis?
- Amuro NT 1: the Akatsuki. Gundam SEED established that Cagalli's relationship with her father was strained because he opposed her participation in La Résistance due to his being an Actual Pacifist, but then we got the beautiful Heroic Sacrifice where he re-affirms his love for his daughter. Then in Destiny, we find out he was secretly building a super-advanced Gundam for her, to show that he accepted her choices in life and so she could defend Orb with a machine that symbolized its willingness to defend itself. It's a very touching moment...and she immediately hands it over to Neo after one battle, when he was still in "I don't know who this Flaga guy you keep talking about" mode, so she can spend the rest of the series sitting in an office. I've heard rumors that the head writer hated Cagalli's voice actress personally and took it out on her by screwing over her character; I don't know if it's true, but with crap like this it's easy to see where the rumors come from.
- Larkmarn: The reveal of Akatsuki at all is a huge wallbanger. Technology has been moving to fast that a state-of-the-art non-nuclear mech from the last series is inferior in pretty much every way to a grunt unit at the beginning of Destiny. And yet, halfway through the series (when the modern units have gotten even stronger) they reveal the Akatsuki. Which, despite being made halfway through SEED can keep up with bleeding-edge suits. It's not even nuclear, and its special armor comes from nowhere. The armor supposedly is made of mirrors that reflect beam weapons, which makes no sense on a lot of levels (such as the fact that it seems to absorb attacks, then fire it back directly at the shooter a moment later). And then it gets freaking DRAGOONS (with beam shields) because... well, why the hell not? Even though that technology didn't exist then, it's somehow got all these incredible gimmicks that didn't exist when it was built, performance up to par with current bleeding-edge suits, and no issues with powering these gimmicks for some reason.
- Chris X: Gundam 00 finally had this after they had a Time Skip. Where do we begin? Well, for one thing, they killed Wang Liu Mei and Hong Long without shedding any backstories that they terribly needed in order for them to be well rounded characters... and secondly? They threw Nena's redeeming actions in episode 13 out of the window, reintroduced her as a psycho bitch again and then got her killed (yes, it's well deserved, but still.) Pretty sure there will be more dethroning moment, but this troper can only quote The Angry Video Game Nerd: "What were they thinking!?"
- Fat R: I was willing to cut the second season of Gundam 00 some slack for a long time, thanks to its great battle animations. I forgave them their poor handling of turning ruthless Anti-Heroes into real heroes. And making antagonists eviler than forty Hitlers (after the morally ambiguous first season, mind you). And turning Graham into a fucking joke. And turning Soma Peiris into Marie. And turning Colonel Smirnov into a wuss. Making Louise go stark raving mad and turning Setsuna practically invincible with a God Mode upgrade (after which the series had almost no interesting battles) started to stretch it. But the final drop was Deus ex Machina of episode 24, which must be seen to be believed. A word to authors: Instrumentality-like magic is not a good way to resolve personal conflicts and main characters going all Super Saiyajin and single-handedly turning imminent defeat into victory is not only an overused trope, but also isn't really appropriate for "realistic" series.
- Charred Knight: The revelation of Schenberg's plan being to evolve humanity into a new species by bombarding them with GN particles. Not only does it make a complete mockery of the series attempt to be realistic (a group of people are willing to spend 200 years and trillions of dollars following a guy whose plan is entirely based on theories) but the series claim that all wars are caused by misunderstanding is ridiculous. It shows that no one on staff has any understanding of current events, world history, or Japan's history. The entire thing doesn't even take into account the effect it would have on different culture or religion. The worst part is that it presents Celestial Being as right and anyone who dares stand against them as evil and misguided. It's like if Durandal was the hero of Gundam SEED Destiny.
- Flamemario12: While I kinda enjoyed Gundam AGE I really didn't like Episode 32. So who's the spy? Answer: Shanalua. While Shnalua does have a reason to spy Diva, her reason? She needs money for her sick sister. Seriously, Shanalua? You do realize that there's many other ways to earn money, do ya? She flees before they knew she was a spy. Then a Wrozzo attempts to attack Kio's Gundam AGE-3 Fortress. Shanalua saves him at the cost of her life. WHAT? Is this the best you can think about it? This episode also leads to fans starting to realize the writers treated most females character like trash. You know what pissed me off? She stabs the Wrozzo's head with her beam saber even through she scolds Kio for killing a pilot in the previous episode! Not to mention that her sister is never mentioned after that episode.
- Lily Nadesico 2: Episode 47. Kio goes into an Unstoppable Rage when his Vagan friend Deen is killed by Zanald, for a reason so illogical and detached from reason that it might as well have been For the Evulz. Kio goes apeshit on the bastard and dismembers his Mobile Suit... and then goes My God, What Have I Done? just when he's one second away from ending Zanald's worthless life. What have you done, Kio? You almost stopped a scumbag from wasting everyone's oxygen and possibly killing more innocents, this is what you've done. But you were too much of a pussy to go through with it. This was Kio's chance to rescue himself from the scrappy heap, and he blew it. I completely gave up on that Designated Hero by that point.
- Shadow Revolution: Kio's Understanding alone was enough to be a dethroning moment itself. Kio's constant failures grew irritating and is a reminder of why people are getting sick of Gundam. Aka, having your cake and eating it too.
- Roark Tenjouin: While I did have my fair share of problems with AGE, had it not been for Kio suddenly deciding to hand over the AGE Device to Ezelcant, I probably would've found it to be slightly above average by the end at least - but because he handed it over without even hesitating, the show started to really go downhill from there. If Kio had made them promise to not use data from the AGE Device for mobile suit development, Ezelcant had offered stricter terms (i.e., Kio originally had to hand over the AGE-3 in return for the medicine) that Kio had bargained down from, or if it had been a cure for what Lu was suffering from that Ezelcant was offering, I would've been more lenient with it, but this feels like it was just put there to give Kio's detractors even more reasons to hate him (which, if that was the goal, congratulations, you did a perfect job).
- Daishomaru: Episode 4. Kiara. Just... WOW. Kiara was a disappointment. The first three Gunpla Builders were AMAZING at first. Then the next episode preview shows us Kiara, who seems to be kicking Reiji's ass. It seems she would be a promising character, being a lookalike of Lacus Clyne/Meer Campbell, but an action girl as well. But nope, she's a cheating scumbag in the end. She could have been an interesting character, but all the potential just went down the drain.
- Calamity 2007: Replacing my last entry since in my opinion Nils is Rescued from the Scrappy Heap but my new one is for episode 21. Just ugh, as soon as the Embody system got introduced last episode I should have thought this would happen. But we get an overly drawn out emotional episode when Reiji thinks that Aila was in control when she humiliated Felini, so a good majority of the episode is them coming to terms with their feelings. But my problems don't really come up with until the battle itself, when the Embody system was turned on, the battle was quickly becoming a one-sided battle in Aila's favor but the charm she received from China and Reiji's bracelet reacted, giving them an "understanding" scene like the Trans-Am scenes in 00. Now while she did still decide to fight, she still was easily beaten in the next scene. Just so many things annoying about this episode like why couldn't she avoid a simple punch, even if it was enhanced by the RG System it still was coming from a ways away, and how did Sei and China know that the charm would do this? Also the whole "understanding" thing doesn't really fit right with this series and it just seems to highlight an ever increasing problem with the show to exploit the Plavisky Particles as Applied Phlebotinum that can do anything and is starting to border on magic now.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans
- xxebb1993xx: The Grand Finale has left a lot of bad impressions on my mind after having seen it. Now granted, Gundam has always been dark, but not to the point of being totally nihilistic. Not even Zeta or Victory, two of the darkest series the Gundam franchise had to offer before Iron-Blooded Orphans came out, went this far. The series ended with Mikazuki and Akihiro holding off Gjallarhorn with their last breaths before they finally get killed off. In the end, Mikazuki and Akihiro both die, with Mikazuki holding the title of being the first Gundam protagonist to bite the dust since Amuro Ray in Char's Counterattack. But what breaks my heart is that Rustal actually gets scot-free by the end of the series, not having to answer for the crimes he had committed. This alone gave me second thoughts of the series and makes me never want to watch it again. In fact, I feel like I shouldn't have watched this anime from the start, because I feel like Tekkadan was doomed from the beginning. If there's any consolation, at least Akihiro managed to turn Iok into an Iok sandwich and Ride executes Nobliss in retaliation for Orga's death. Hopefully this changes in a Super Robot Wars game or in a movie adaptation where Rustal gets the comeuppance he deserves.
- sayaleviathan: My problem with the finale is Rustal Elion being the one reforming Gjallarhorn. I get that his actions are similar to what a Real Life politician would do but even then, a Real Life politician had some Hidden Depths. But as for Rustal, we barely know the guy other than being a mustache twirling Well-Intentioned Extremist who loves to smirk onscreen. Sure, some people compare him to Tywin Lannister of Game of Thrones but to be fair, at least Tywin has reasons on why he's ruthless if one looks into his backstory unlike Rustal. I think there was supposed to be some story between him and that mercenary Galan Mossa who used to take care of Julieta before he handed her to Rustal. Unfortunately, we may never get to see it. The director did a poor job in portraying him which is why he comes out as a Flat Character who became a Karma Houdini and understandably, many viewers had a lack of sympathy on this guy. I guess he would be remember as the least interesting Gundam antagonist who defeated the protagonists and got away with it while Char, Trieze and the rest are sipping martinis and judging him.
- Nonamesever: To add to that, given how previous rebellions failed and how the only way a rebellion can have a chance is with Gundam Frames, it came out of nowhere and more insulting than a definite bad end that people thought would happen. When dictators crush revolts, they ALWAYS double down on the oppression, not the reform as we seen in the ending.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury
- Retloclive: The second half of season 2 has quite a rushed feel to it as if it was decided to suddenly bring the series to a swift end. This was no better demonstrated than how the original Elan Ceres was handled where he was built up as a potential end-game villain throughout the series. However, it turned out that his story ends with him basically just walking away from the villains' Peil Technologies, and suddenly starts working with the heroes' Jeturk Heavy Machinery. Not only does this make him a huge Karma Houdini for how he treated his Elan copies, it puts him overall in They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character territory. Definitely feel jipped here. The original Elan Ceres had everything going for him to be a great villain as if the story was just waiting for him to finally explode onto the scene in a big way, yet he just ended up remaining a background character.
