It's a Gundam thread!

The thing is that unless you assume the existence of mobile suits, there's nothing a Dom would be actively fighting at close quarters. Before that, melee weapons are purely for breaking open hard targets that can't hit back, and a heat hawk would be smaller and more efficient for that. A heat saber isn't an Emergency Weapon, it's a centrepiece of the Dom's loadout.

The Dom was actually greenlit because Zeon realized that they needed an MS more suited for fighting on Earth as opposed to space.

This is why they had to be somewhat redesigned for space combat, resulting in the Rick Dom. This was something of a desperation move, since by this point Zeon was in retreat from Earth and back in space, their Zaku II was pretty much obsolete, and they had yet to begin production of the Gelgoog in earnest.

Edited by M84 on Feb 12th 2020 at 10:27:21 PM

Eh, I won't disagree that giant robots using melee weapons is more of a genre convention than a reasonable outcome of the technology, but that's hardly unique to the Dom. "Why give it a melee weapon if there's nothing to fight in close quarters with?" is just as applicable to the Zaku and Gouf.

I don't agree that the heat hawk would be a smaller or more efficient option than the Dom's heat rod, though. The heat rod is longer and potentially more awkward, but it's not like a Dom is flexible enough to bend at the waist and touch its toes anyway, so its length isn't likely to actually impede the Dom's movements much. The main difference is that an axe is better for delivering more force from a one-handed swing, while the Dom's longer and thinner cutting surface is better suited to slashing attacks as the Dom glides by at high speed (as rather memorably demonstrated in an early episode of 0083).

The Dom vs the Rick Dom seems to be a case of a chassis being designed for one thing, but turning out to be suitable for something else entirely with minimal changes — like the F-15 being designed as a pure air superiority platform, but being turned into a very capable ground-attack craft as the F-15E Strike Eagle. The Dom seems to have been primarily built around the jet engines in its legs giving it excellent speed despite its considerable bulk, but it also turned out that you could strip those out and replace them with conventional rockets for a very similar high-speed attack capability, but in space.

Edited by NativeJovian on Feb 12th 2020 at 10:12:48 AM

Also... I kinda see the saber as the Dom's flyswatter.

It doesn't have Vulcans or carry a machine gun. The saber is what it would use against tanks or fighters.

Looking at the wiki entry it seems like some Doms were in fact equipped with Heat Hawks. And Heat Maces?

I mean, the wiki includes literally every weapon the suit has ever picked up.

For example, the Aries has Wing's Buster Rifle listed under its armaments and no one would ever say that's part of its equipment. I'm almost surprised that "rock" isn't listed under the Zaku II's armaments.

Doms have equipped the Zaku machine gun in canon (such as in 08th MS Team), but it's safe to say it's not its intended loadout.

Edited by Larkmarn on Feb 12th 2020 at 10:34:56 AM

So since Rise From The Ashes has a trope page, I've been thinking that Blue Destiny oughta get one too. I've been writing one up in Notepad, making sure that I stay within TVT bounds and all that. If anyone wants I'll post what I've done so far and y'all can help contribute.

Best way to do that is just launch the page and let Wiki Magic happen. It doesn't have to be "finished" for you to launch, as long as it's got the basics (a brief description of the work, some trope examples, a page image would be nice...), just throw it up there and you can fill out the rest when you have the chance, but in the meantime everyone else can add things too.

Alright, thanks. I gotta think about a page image and categorising too.

/ I've been wanting Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story The Blue Destiny to get its own trope page for a long time.

In terms of Page Images, would something from this selection suffice?

The Saturn boxart would definitely work, yeah.

Here's a teaser of "G", the main theme for the Gundam: Reconguista in G movies by DREAMS COME TRUE;

I'm looking forward to those movies. Maybe we'll get some MG Gunpla out of it, too.

Those Gundams eyes are weird.

So, what about these Reconguista movies? Are they going to be a sequel, or just movies retelling the series?

Edited by JG98 on Feb 18th 2020 at 12:11:15 PM

The latter.

Retelling with significant alterations, mind you. Tomino wants them to be the definitive version of the story.

Word is he was disappointed with how Reconguista was received, saying people didn't understand the story he was trying to tell.

Which he blamed on himself, so the movies are an attempt to correct that.

I'm torn between "well, G-Reco was an absolute mess, so maybe he can fix it with a remake" and "Tomino, you made a bad show, it happens, accept it and move on, don't waste your last major creative project on trying to fix the unfixable".

I need to see G-Reco to see how bad it is.

Especially since I'm pretty sure its Super Robot Wars version managed to butcher its story even further, which is... honestly kinda amazing.

Though the SRW version of the ending theme is straight fire.

Edited by Larkmarn on Feb 18th 2020 at 1:18:08 PM

G-Reco's real problem is that it's trying very hard to be a serious artistic work that discusses high-minded concepts like war and politics in a way that is grandiose and timeless, but still applicable to everyday life. As a result, its characters often feel less like people and more like stand-ins for worldviews or political positions, which can be baffling and frustrating when you find yourself wondering why the hell character X did thing Y, and the only answer is "because they're concept Z". (Minor example: at one point a character busts up a political rally by physically destroying the venue while the politician is giving a speech. Why? Because the politician is Shinzo Abe and Tomino doesn't like him. There's no real in-universe rationale for it.)

Now, highly allegorical shows where everything is representative of something else certainly can work, but G-Reco really didn't. Thus my split between "maybe he can fix it" and "it's a lost cause, abandon ship".

Edited by NativeJovian on Feb 18th 2020 at 1:42:54 PM

Points for trying I suppose, but realistically, can it be fixed? Or is he better off starting from scratch?

I'm not gonna lie, G-Reco's setting is something I kinda want to explore...

But I kinda want to integrate it with my own AU ideas about Gundam EXA.

G-Reco really does have an interesting setting that's ripe for storytelling.

But the first step was a misstep.

I've only seen the first half but honestly unless the second half takes a massive drop in quality I'm not sure why people say it's badly written.