It's a Gundam thread!

It's actually a fucking shame that there was only one reasonable guy in the entire EA's command structure, and he's killed off a quarter of the way.

Actually, come to think of it, an interesting route could have been what if the TSA never really formed, but still fought ZAFT?

I mean, while the EA has the Druggies and the Cyclops System, they also used those guys/weapons out of desperation. ZAFT were taking Disproportionate Retribution to unholy levels.

And the stupid thing is that the EA still had to outsource their first iteration MS development to the ORB Union. Which is weird, come to think of it.

Of course, SEED Destiny made even more bigger assholes out of the EA by having one of the two Federations deploy three Destroy Gundams to obliterate their rivals over the pond. Calling that a Civil War would be a disservice.

The only thing that OMNI needed help with for developing their own MS was the software — everything else they'd already gotten done on their own. Orb actually stole a bunch of OMNI tech to produce the Astrays (and, you know, their very own Strike Rouge).

but ORB does nothing Wrong!

Really Cagilla being a Natural makes alot less sense with the whole is Kira's Twin deal

Then again its a plot thread that goes nowhere and seems only to exist to force Cagilla out of the Lacus option

"What your saying Cagilla was made Kira's sister strictly for the Banal reason of Ship sinking?"

I wouldn't put it past them

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Mar 9th 2019 at 12:10:03 PM

Nah, it's a Star Wars thing. Seed and Destiny actually have quite a lot of Star Wars references and influences (even putting aside how influencial Star Wars is in general). Pretty sure Fukuda said he's a big fan (which again, considering this is Star Wars, saying you're a fan isn't that notable by itself)

Edited by RangerJackWalker on Mar 10th 2019 at 1:54:01 AM

At least Cagalli didn't kiss Kira or anything.

I just realised something that confused me for a bit about SEED Destiny's opening thing.

Like, we all know in the beginning of SEED Destiny that a trio of Extended teen super-soldiers infiltrated a ZAFT military facility to nab three prototype Gundam-type Mobile Suits, right? And I was thinking: hang on, wouldn't they have enough resources to build their own next-gen Gundams?

But, in Stargazer, the Cosmic Era's own sidestory OVA, it turns out the Earth Alliance did have modified versions of three of the original G-Project prototypes: the Blu Duel, the Verde Buster and the Strike Noir. But they were all destroyed by the end of Stargazer.

So, it stands to reason that the EA couldn't develop any more, since they probably funnelled all their funds into developing those three, and failed to account for any other Extended pilots aside from Sven's team.

So... Fridge Brilliance?

I mean, it's a matter of quality. The color G-weapons were basically generation 1.5 mechs (IIRC Sven's Strike Noir was a Strike that had been updated), whereas the Gaia, Abyss, Chaos, and Impulse were true second generation weapons, which major new technologies.

Edited by Larkmarn on Mar 10th 2019 at 7:25:43 AM

Cagalli was unmodified and born naturally, while Kira was taken from their mother's womb while they were still fetuses and grown in a vat, essentially.

The more puzzling questions to me was how Dr. Hibiki got Kira out since his wife seems to dead set against it. You'd think she'd notice him fooling around in her stomach. And then why did he just take one of the twins and not both of them?

Also, remember when Cagalli's father made the Akatsuki gundam for her? It was a pretty nifty bit of tech with a really tacky gold colour. Too bad she got all of one sortie in it before it was handed to a war criminal.

I'm pretty sure when it comes to Twins removing one of the fetuses can be outright lethal to the other

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Mar 10th 2019 at 8:07:15 AM

Evidently that stopped being an issue circa 55 Cosmic Era.

A thought, has there been a female Gundam pilot/protagonist?

Christina Mackenzie, Karen Joshua are the first ones I can think of. Pilots but not exactly protags.

So not really.

To my knowledge, the only piece of Gundam media with a proper female protagonist is the manga Gundam École du Ciel. With its main heroine Asuna Elmarit.

There have been female Gundam pilots since Zeta, with Emma Sheen, who gets her hands on the Mk II and never looks back. As far as Gundam works staring a female lead, though, Ecole du Ciel is pretty much it, yeah.

Summary of the 00 stage play.

tl;dr, it's a streamlined version of the first season's plot and Ali gets a different Gundam.

Edited by lrrose on Mar 11th 2019 at 10:13:37 AM

You know, it's sort of weird to think about female Gundam leads because it's pretty common for the male pilot (who is the main character) to basically be The Heavy to a Big Good female lead. Like, the female lead is objectively more important to the narrative and setting, even though she's not a pilot. The main character is there as a blunt instrument.

Unicorn, Wing, Narrative, both SEED series, Turn A, IBO S1 all basically followed that formula.

Edited by Larkmarn on Mar 11th 2019 at 9:23:42 AM

About the issue of Gundam every really being a series about being Gray-and-Gray Morality with the Cosmic Era being somehow being the big exception to the rule is honestly quite ridiculous if you bother to look at every series unbiased. Because the real honest truth is that honestly only 0080, Wing and Iron-Blood Orphans are what you could call truly gray.

Let's go down the list a bit, shall we?

MSG: Zeon is lead by a guy who open admits that he wanted to genocide half of humanity and doesn't see being compared to Hiter as bad thing. The rest of his family may not wanted to go as far as him but they are still totally on-board with taking over the Solar System with Daddy only getting cold feet because his favorite child died, never mind the millions of parents who lost theirs already (Really, Degwin Zabi is a selfish old hypocrite, little better than Gihren.) Most of the high command is openly back-stabbing and glory-seeking and Char who is plotting against the Zabis is still aiding them in conquering Earth and Space. Even Ramba Ral, the nicest of the lot cares far more about his career than the fact that he is in service to a mass-murdering dictatorship. Meanwhile the worst thing we see the Federation do is have a bunch of low-level EF soldiers who behave like louts in Amruo's home town but is otherwise portrayed at least here as pretty honorable. That pretty much destroy any moral ambiguity.

Zeta: Do we ever see the AEUG do anything bad ever? No we don't. It's pure The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified with them. The Titans on the other hand do nothing but commit atrocities and constantly portrayed as a bunch of one dimensional evil doers that have no higher ideology than Might Makes Right and aren't even that support of the Federation. (It's mentioned off hand that their leaders actively wish to case it to collapse.) That is pretty black and white to me.

ZZ: The AEUG or what is left of it is still trying to fight the good fight but this is the first real time, we do see concrete-proof that the Earth Federation is corrupt and incompetent with them totally giving into Neo Zeon for the most part. But still, Haman Karn wants to oppress humanity because she resents having to live out in the asteroid belt and that Char didn't return her feelings. She drop a colony on Earth for no reason other than other to spread terror and make people down there suffer. (and this was AFTER her demands were met.) And Glemy Toto is little better with have many little girls he is willing to let die for him, staking and harassing Roux and the fact that he wants to become just like his alleged dad. He is like the Zeron version of an alt-righter.

CCA: Char wants to commit mass-murder for a plan that even he only halfheartedly believes in and really just wants to settle things with Amuro and if he is leading others to their deaths and causing a nuclear winter that won't succeed in making more Newtypes, so what? It's what humanity deserves for letting HIM down. Meanwhile Amuro just wants to keep people from dying (even Char himself it seems) and has faith that mankind can change if given time.

F91: Seabook and friends just wanted to live normal lives of peace. The Crossbone Vanguard wants to force everyone to live in 18th century under the "enlightened rule" of their social betters again and it's commander-in-chief plans to go even father then that by killing 9/10s of humanity to show his ex-wife that he was a man after all.

Victory: The League Militaire are once again total good guys who never do anything wrong while the Zanscare Empire commits war crime after war crime and has the ultimate goal of implementing a genocide via psychic powers. They are also a straw-man by Tomino for how "Feminism if taking to far will lead to totalitarianism!"

I'll cover the AU Gundams and the UC side stories in a bit as this post is getting long as it is and I'm getting tired already.

Edited by Xeino on Mar 11th 2019 at 7:49:08 AM

I think the issue with SEED is that it begins with one of the most concrete Gray-and-Grey Morality and completely throws it out.

Also, while plenty of other shows are Black-and-White Morality in terms of sides, they get some grayness by having shitty people on the white side and good people on the black side.

SEED has every non-shit person on the same side, without so much as a Token Evil Teammate.

Huh didn't notice that. Interesting when you realize it.

Generally most mecha protags are basically grunts whose only value is that they can kill stuff better than everyone else so its common to give them a commander who gives them a purpose to their killing.

Though in this case they've made a male grunt taking orders from a female superior almost formula.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 11th 2019 at 3:19:22 AM

Name a shitty person on the Protagonist side of Zeta Gundam. Reccoa jumps ship to the Titans, so she doesn't count. Name one for G Gundam or Gundam X too if you can.

Wong? All he does it hit Kamille and try to hit Judeau.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 11th 2019 at 8:08:59 AM

I mean, the senior Anaheim execs the protags meet in Hong Kong come across as pretty shady. Yes, they're making sure the AEUG get all the good stuff, but they're still selling to the Titans, and we know where that takes them further down the line.

The other grey element in Zeta is that by the end, it's made clear that every faction of any influence agrees on what has to be done, but disagrees radically on ideology. ZZ further suggests that while the Deikunist extremists might have been brutal and horrific in their methods, they were the best hope that the Earth Sphere had because doing things the nice way as the AEUG did just got you killed without accomplishing anything. The whole point of the finale is that Judau realises Haman is right about what needs to be done, but can't bring himself to go down that path, so he chooses to accept the creeping madness and death of the Earth Sphere as something unfixable and leave before it consumes him too.

Fair point, though you can chalk that up once again to Tomino in the 80s and early 90s having bad politics that bleed into his work. "Everyone in authority is corrupt or ineffective and the masses will never take action on their own. Only fascists have the resolve to do what really needs to be done."

I'm so glad he got over that kind of thinking for Turn A, Zeta: A New Translation and G-Reco.

Edited by Xeino on Mar 11th 2019 at 7:12:58 AM

I've toyed with the idea of trying to codify the Relena/Tiffa/Diana/Lacus/Marina/Kudelia type characters into a trope, but I've never been able to really nail down a definition to my satisfaction, and I'm not really sure how common the archetype is outside of Gundam.