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I'd say SEED's biggest failing is that it's just plain gross whenever it does any actual violence
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Nov 18, 2019 04:31
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0083 Rebellion is definitely better than the OVA, but I largely agree that it has a lot of MSV fanwank and "hey look remember these other side story characters? they're in this one now too!". It spends a lot of time rehabilitating Kou and fleshes out a lot of the side characters(seriously, Monsha in 0083 Rebellion is an actual good character) in a nice way. Unfortunately, it seems like it couldn't just get rid of the bad character writing and instead sort of localizes it in Nina and Gato, so they're actually even worse than they were in the OVA.
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Nov 18, 2019 05:02
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As has been detailed pretty well in a few effortposts, I tend to think "Gundam is Anti-War" is the wrong conclusion to take, though if I have to give a synopsis in two sentences or less, I'll certainly say that. Rather, I find that Gundam (across the vast majority of its works) asks the question, Is war justified? Part of my answer to this is explicitly rejecting Marida's musing in Unicorn: "No war is ever truly justified." Stopping Ghiren's genocide, the Titan's oppression, Neo Zeon's oppression and probably genocide (I don't remember the end of Zeta and ZZ very well, so I don't remember if depopulating Earth was in the cards like it was for Ghiren and Char), and Char's genocide are all argued to be good reasons to fight a war, even at the cost being paid--which Gundam is remarkably consistent in saying is massive. Wars gently caress up the people involved in them, either by outright killing them, scarring them physically or mentally, or just utterly disrupting their lives. Even if a refugee is never close to a combat zone and doesn't have anyone close to them die, they had to abandon their life and restart somewhere else. The common thread of these wars is that if they aren't fought, the cost of not going to war is higher than actually fighting. In Gundam you see quite a few justifications for war, and you see people refute these justifications. Char thinks his war is justified as he believes human beings will not change on their own--they have to be forced into space to become Newtypes if conflict in the Universal Century is ever to end on a timescale that won't wipe out the human race. Amuro disagrees, saying that the cost that will be paid for Char's accelerationism isn't justified--humans will change on their own through natural societal pressure and dropping an asteroid to render the Earth uninhabitable is killing a bunch of people for no good reason. Char things that the price of not going to war is higher than the price of going to war, while Amuro believes the opposite. We know that Amuro's path ultimately leads to Turn A/G Reco, so you could argue that Amuro was wrong and people never changed. Treize in Wing is similar, in that he believes his war with Zechs is not only justified as a defensive measure against a potentially genocidal foe, but also that by paying the cost of war he can remind people how horrifying it is, and teach people that the price should only be paid if absolutely necessary. This backfires a bit with Endless Waltz, where people have become so wary of the cost of war that they fail to recognize when they need to stand up and pay the price. At least until Dorothy rolls up in a gold-plated semi truck. SEED twists the justification, in that what starts as a defensive war against a genocidal foe becomes a war of mutual genocide as both sides dehumanize their foes. I won't analyze why it escalated to this point, since that involves analyzing the facism in the Earth Alliance, the machinations of Rau Le Cruset, and how ZAFT's attempt to deescalate the war actually escalated things, but it floats the idea that one of the potential costs is mutually assured destruction. The cost of your war could very well and very literally be "everything." So Gundam asks is war justified by showing you the cost of war, and asking if that price is worth paying. It hopes to instill a critical wariness of anyone calling for war, and asks the reader to examine the justification for a war before supporting that war, because the cost to be paid will assuredly be high. (As aside, G Gundam doesn't focus on this question as much as other Gundams, but it is still there. The Gundam Fight is explicitly supposed to minimize the cost of war, but as Master Asia and That Italian Police Officer point out, the cost is still paid, and both reject that the cost is justified. The question just gets drowned out by cool robots and Domon's personal story.)
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Nov 18, 2019 05:05
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Gonna double post because that bit I teased about "ZAFT thinking they were deescalating the war but actually escalated it" needs to be answered and I can't resist. Consider this as a sidebar on my last post dealing with something interesting but not necessarily related to the discussion at hand. Characters in the show note that the energy crisis on Earth after ZAFT sent down the N-Jammers sent Earth's economy into a depression as the nations of Earth couldn't meet their energy needs. This created civil unrest that was very easy to direct into hatred of Coordinators, playing right into the hands of the fascists in OMNI and Blue Cosmos and giving them an excuse to further escalate the war. The PLANTs under Clyne weren't genocidal, but the Earth Alliance/Blue Cosmos didn't need that to be true to paint the intentional energy crisis as an act of genocide. It is the same cycle that Mineva warns Full Frontal about in Unicorn. His "Side Co-Prosperity Sphere" isn't a bad strategy in a vacuum, but like ZAFT's N-Jammers, would have the consequence of fermenting hatred of Spacenoids on Earth, leading to potentially genocidal conflicts in the future.
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Nov 18, 2019 05:19
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Kanos posted:0083 Rebellion is definitely better than the OVA, but I largely agree that it has a lot of MSV fanwank and "hey look remember these other side story characters? they're in this one now too!". It wouldn't be so bad if they actually ya know... explored that Gato's essentially a wind-up soldier that Delaz has moulded him in to. Like there's a line in both the OVA and manga where Gato says "You saved me" and Delaz clarifies that Gato was "Reborn as a warrior of Zeon" and that's real loving cultish. I think that's ultimately a major problem with 0083 as a series that like... no one ever seems to call Delaz out on being a fanboy of the worst Zabi, or perpetuating a war for self-professed Space Hitler's ideals. Like... I remember back in 0079, where the Sieg Zeon speech is going on, and the moment it's over Bright immediately calls bullshit on Gihren. No one ever calls out Delaz, no one ever calls out "My Ideals!" It's not that Delaz being deluded and Gato essentially being his mouthpiece isn't allowed to be, but there's no opposing viewpoint presented. All anyone ever says is the equivalent of "Don't listen to them!"
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Nov 18, 2019 05:40
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Isn't the thing with Nina that the male writers believed that women are unknowable so they delierately constantly wrote her doing the opposite of what would make sense or did I imagine this?
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Nov 18, 2019 15:21
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Szmitten posted:Isn't the thing with Nina that the male writers believed that women are unknowable so they delierately constantly wrote her doing the opposite of what would make sense or did I imagine this? I think you imagined it. I've never seen anything like that.
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Nov 18, 2019 16:02
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Szmitten posted:Isn't the thing with Nina that the male writers believed that women are unknowable so they delierately constantly wrote her doing the opposite of what would make sense or did I imagine this? I recently picked up the Gundam 0083 BDs and there's a promotional short on those with the... director I want to say (not sure, can't check right now), who's just watched any of 0083 for the first time in a decade as part of the promotion leading up to the BD release in Japan. His reaction is roughly "so that's apparently how I wrote female characters back then." with an undertone of embarrassment.
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Nov 18, 2019 16:03
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Szmitten posted:Isn't the thing with Nina that the male writers believed that women are unknowable so they delierately constantly wrote her doing the opposite of what would make sense or did I imagine this?
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Nov 18, 2019 16:04
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Nessus posted:I think this is a Nina thing because Cima and the tall mechanic lady whose name eludes me were fine. Also, on positives, Cima is more prominent in Rebellion. Her death is still lovely, though this time it's not at the hands of Kou (making Kou much more likable) This time Bask betrays her in the middle of the battle and she dies rushing his hip. It's still a dumb dead (He gets impailed on the beam cannon as she gets close) but at least she isn't killed by the protagonist, making him more unlikable. I'd say my only 'issue' with Cima, beyond that, and this is just a me thing... I kinda wish she'd gotten more interaction with the Albion. She fights em a bit, she's responsible for totalling the GP-01 and she meets Kou while he's helping Kelly but... that's basically it? She's got her own plot which... alright other minor gripe but it's a not a Cima thing it's a Rebellion thing. So Rebellion adds a fight with an underwater zeon team called Kraken as the Albion pursues Gato to Africa, at first I thought I was getting MSV'd but they are original to Rebellion.  This is Clara Lodge, I actually like her backstory, being a Zeon cadet who was inspired by a pre-traumatized Cima when she came to give a speech. And her goal is basically to join Cima's marines. Now... we're 11 volumes translated, 12th slowly on the way as it gets completed, and I could not tell you why she exists. She... wants to be a marine, she hooks with Cima's crew, she gets the Tetra for her and wants to be taken seriously. Cima doesn't want her to join because Cima is a war criminal and thus even working for her would make Clara one (which she doesn't want, her entire goal in the manga is to find a way for her men to be free of their lable as criminals so they can live in peace) And finally when she aids Cima in the operation at the Colony when it's dropping on Luna, she makes Clara a marine. But Clara hasn't developed, she doesn't think "Man space is harder than I thought" or "Zeon's a bunch of fucks" or anything, she's just... same person. I'm kinda waiting for... the point. And it's not coming. I'm pretty sure she'll survive the final fight.
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Nov 18, 2019 16:17
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The fact that Kelly not only survives but is the one to tell Gato that he’s full of poo poo greatly pleases me
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Nov 18, 2019 18:14
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The thing I hate about the SEED Kira beamspam never kill anyone but perfectly disable them every time is it implies that one of the reasons war is bad is because we're not good enough at it. If we were all good enough at fighting that we could just perfectly disable our enemies and never kill them then war would be completely bloodless. SEED is not the only one that does it, but its the one that draws the most attention to it. When it was just one character that could do it (Amuro) it was a cool special thing that only one very special case can do, but then a bunch of others do it too and it ends up being a thing that you can just attain by practicing hard enough and I don't like it.
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Nov 18, 2019 18:26
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Onmi posted:But Clara hasn't developed, she doesn't think "Man space is harder than I thought" or "Zeon's a bunch of fucks" or anything, she's just... same person. I'm kinda waiting for... the point. And it's not coming. I'm pretty sure she'll survive the final fight. Maybe they're setting up a sequel manga starring Clara
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Nov 18, 2019 19:02
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EthanSteele posted:The thing I hate about the SEED Kira beamspam never kill anyone but perfectly disable them every time is it implies that one of the reasons war is bad is because we're not good enough at it. If we were all good enough at fighting that we could just perfectly disable our enemies and never kill them then war would be completely bloodless. I'm sure the pilots greatly appreciate dying of asphyxiation or starving instead of blowing up.
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Nov 18, 2019 19:17
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Azubah posted:I'm sure the pilots greatly appreciate dying of asphyxiation or starving instead of blowing up. I'm pretty sure somebody would come and get them. If a ZAFT pilot radios back to base that his MS had been immobilized, the response isn't gonna be "drat that sucks! Good luck!"
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Nov 18, 2019 19:22
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I again point to Super Robot Wars Z, which had a couple of missions where Kira flew around shooting but not killing units on both sides of the battle. It turns out the opposing force has no compunctions mopping up.
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Nov 18, 2019 19:25
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EthanSteele posted:The thing I hate about the SEED Kira beamspam never kill anyone but perfectly disable them every time is it implies that one of the reasons war is bad is because we're not good enough at it. If we were all good enough at fighting that we could just perfectly disable our enemies and never kill them then war would be completely bloodless. Amuro... doesn't go for the disabling shots. Amuro goes for the kill. Did you mean Kira? Gripweed posted:Maybe they're setting up a sequel manga starring Clara Potentially? I wouldn't be against beyond my hatred of Zeon MechaX posted:The fact that Kelly not only survives but is the one to tell Gato that he’s full of poo poo greatly pleases me I'm sure he's gonna die, everyone else who was slated to die did so, just at a different time. Dick Allen: Died in Episode 2 when a Dom blasted his GM at close range. In Rebellion, he survives until the end of Africa, since Monsha doesn't show up for a while, he's the one who demands the Gundam from Kou and sabotages his Corefighter's landing. Allen's scared of dying basically, dude survived the OYW and almost getting wiped out by Gato's assault has basically pushed him over his limit. However, when he hears that Orvell (the spy) sabotaged the Albion's guns, he flies back to the battlefield and pulls a Ryu on the Adzam the Africa forces got.     South Burning: Doesn't even get a briefcase or a stupid bullet lodged in. Unlike in the OVA where he's told he's perfectly healthy, the doctor tells Burning that he's hit the wall and should quit being a Pilot. Despite not being medically cleared, he tags along with Kou's GP-01 Full Armor to Solomon in an attempt to stop Gato, there, he and Kou fight Kelly and Kelly kills him.        Another change facilitated by Kelly surviving (and strengthening the Kelly/Kou bromance even more) is that after double KOing Gato, Kou is caught in the explosion and critically wounded, basically he's going to die of blood loss and he has a rare bloodtype to begin with, one that Kelly just so happens to have.      Kelly is referring to Kou defeating the Val Waro and not killing him despite begging Kou to do so.      
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Nov 18, 2019 19:25
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All I can say right now is that Rebellion has very pretty line work.
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Nov 18, 2019 20:20
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have Gato kill Kelly for ultimate tragic boyfriends unless i'm misunderstanding and Gato is already gone, which seems like it'd be weird.
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Nov 18, 2019 21:03
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Gripweed posted:I'm pretty sure somebody would come and get them. If a ZAFT pilot radios back to base that his MS had been immobilized, the response isn't gonna be "drat that sucks! Good luck!" I vaguely remember tales of one of the people that worked on SEED joking that because of all the regular Gundam Interference that the emergency channel is what Kira and Athrunn are yelling each other's names on so all those people just drift off into space and die because they can't get through to anyone. Onmi posted:Amuro... doesn't go for the disabling shots. Amuro goes for the kill. Did you mean Kira? I would never say anything was cool about Kira. I guess Kamille is the one who does it first where he does a bunch of disabling shots towards the back half, shooting out heads and limbs. The worst offender imo is Banagher doing insane bazooka trick shots after two launches. Omnicrom posted:I again point to Super Robot Wars Z, which had a couple of missions where Kira flew around shooting but not killing units on both sides of the battle. It turns out the opposing force has no compunctions mopping up. It's SO good when he says how he didn't kill anyone and your crew actually call him out about how all those guys that were donked on couldn't defend themselves and even outside of him making them defenceless his presence flying around distracts people and yeah, while he didn't pull the trigger there are definitely people dead as a direct result of his actions.
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Nov 18, 2019 21:49
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There is so much cool stuff in the Astray mangas that never shows up in Seed. Giant motorcycle races on Mars, photojournalist Gundams, and Zaku Hospitals. Give us an Astray anime, Sunrise! 
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Nov 18, 2019 21:54
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For a moment I was like "is that a Death Stranding Zaku?" but that actually makes a lot of sense - if I'm reading the line work right the Zaku hunches down and presumably its reactor powers the hospital. You could probably have a desalinization Zaku that works the same way. A Zaku-based reclamation economy.
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Nov 18, 2019 22:01
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Lying in bed with a broken bone while on the back of a giant robot that moves by walking around seems, real bad.
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Nov 18, 2019 22:19
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Another casualty of the "what if they used mobile suits for fuckin' everything" fallacy.
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Nov 18, 2019 22:43
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Droyer posted:Lying in bed with a broken bone while on the back of a giant robot that moves by walking around seems, real bad. It is a mobile field hospital. It doesn't carry people inside while moving. It is a MS because it can use the MS as a power source.
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Nov 18, 2019 23:30
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ImpAtom posted:It is a mobile field hospital. It doesn't carry people inside while moving. It is a MS because it can use the MS as a power source. Which would make sense if the Zaku in this case wasn't battery powered. Given the timeline it would still make more sense to use a GINN for that, you don't use the new frontline stuff in rear-echelon roles, particularly in wartime.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:08
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A field hospital habitat likely uses far less power than the mobile suit with a laser machine gun does. That said, it is very extra that they didn't just... attach the binder to a regular Zaku. They gave the motherfucker a new paint job and ambulance lights. edit: The Ginn doesn't have the swappable binders ("Wizards" I think they call them?) that the Zaku has in Seed D.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:10
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:Which would make sense if the Zaku in this case wasn't battery powered. The Destiny-era batteries are extremely goddamn good. Like the only ones that come close to running out are when a suit is throwing beams literally everywhere while having Phase Shift Armor running. The Zakus themselves are fine. Likewise all the medical stuff is just a backpack and can be swapped out to become combat ready as easily as any other Zaku. The only meaningful one we see is piloted by Mikhail Coast who was literally a doctor in addition to being one of ZAFT's top aces and he took it out during the aftermath of Break the World. It was just a dude slapping a medical backpack onto his already-existing unit during an emergency.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:16
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Warmachine posted:A field hospital habitat likely uses far less power than the mobile suit with a laser machine gun does. The Hospital Zaku also has extra batteries, that's what the side skirt armor is. And painting it in hospital colors makes sense because it's basically saying "I am a hospital please don't shoot me"
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Nov 19, 2019 01:16
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Warmachine posted:A field hospital habitat likely uses far less power than the mobile suit with a laser machine gun does. Makes sense to me. You don't want the enemy to see your medical-use giant robots, mistake it for a combat-use giant robot, and start shooting up your hospital and its generator.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:19
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Anshu posted:Makes sense to me. You don't want the enemy to see your medical-use giant robots, mistake it for a combat-use giant robot, and start shooting up your hospital and its generator. I mean you're talking about Blue Cosmos. They would do that if it was an adorable puppy wearing a beret.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:22
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Yeah I feel like in the SEED universe "Don't shoot medics/hospitals" is not high on the priority list.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:27
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Onmi posted:Amuro... doesn't go for the disabling shots. Amuro goes for the kill. Did you mean Kira? Amuro goes for a disable a few times in Zeta. (Most amusingly in a fight with Hi-Zacks, where Kamille attempts to mimic him and instead blows up the reactor). Amuro being able to occasionally not kill people and still take them down is a sign of how obscenely good he is, but even he can't count on it. The guy who relies on it without being intolerable is Loran in Turn A, who's helped a lot by how almost nobody actually knows how to fight.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:28
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ImpAtom posted:I mean you're talking about Blue Cosmos. They would do that if it was an adorable puppy wearing a beret.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:28
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Anshu posted:I haven't seen anything SEED, so I can't dispute that, but we paint our hospital units in bright, identifiable red-and-white for that exact reason in the modern day. I believe it's a war crime to fire on marked hospital units. To be fair most Gundam factions (including often the 'good guys') haven't met a war crime they don't like.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:29
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So I’ve “watched” Zeta at least twice now and Its bores me to the point of barely paying attention by the end. What the heck was Scirrocos goal? I remember him trying to assassinate the Titans leader like, twice. They just gave him the most powerful battleship they have because...?
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Nov 19, 2019 01:40
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EthanSteele posted:The thing I hate about the SEED Kira beamspam never kill anyone but perfectly disable them every time is it implies that one of the reasons war is bad is because we're not good enough at it. If we were all good enough at fighting that we could just perfectly disable our enemies and never kill them then war would be completely bloodless. This is an interesting criticism I've never thought of before. I wonder if it can be applied to somebody like Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin or Vash from Trigun.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:41
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Anshu posted:I haven't seen anything SEED, so I can't dispute that, but we paint our hospital units in bright, identifiable red-and-white for that exact reason in the modern day. I believe it's a war crime to fire on marked hospital units. Yeah, the thing about SEED is that the folks they would be worried about "mistaking" their hospitals for military targets are exactly the kind of people you don't want to point out your hospitals to--people looking to genocide your people at any cost. At roughly the same time the other posters said that thing was deployed, there were black ops teams of "Naturals" (non-gene modded humans) going around and purposely false flagging things like this to try and capitalize on anti-Coordinator (gene modded humans) sentiment. And had these been legitimate military field hospitals treating soldiers and not being used for refugee aid, the Naturals would have been even more ginned up to shoot them because the Earth Alliance is run by a bunch of genocidal extremists. For all it's cool lasers and Jesus Yamato, SEED isn't a great setting to live in. Just in case you're doubting, the Earth Alliance tries multiple times to use nuclear weapons on civilian colonies, and the original war in SEED is kicked off because (presumably) an extremist armed with a nuke fired it during a standoff and succeeded in blowing up one of said civilian colonies. Warmachine fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 01:55
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NikkolasKing posted:This is an interesting criticism I've never thought of before. I wonder if it can be applied to somebody like Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin or Vash from Trigun. You could maybe argue that, but know that the setting and the circumstances of those characters are different from Amuro, Kira, et. al. Firstly neither Rurouni Kenshin nor Trigun is set during a war, whereas Gundam very explicitly is, thus their refusal to kill is not tied so directly into a broader theory of combat. In terms of personal missions I can't speak to Vash since it's been ages since I watched Trigun (and I never read the manga), but Kenshin is explicitly fighting the way he is as an act of penance for the lives he took during the violent years of the Bakumatsu. Moreover the series spends a lot of time pointing out that Kenshin is going through hell on a quest for penance, that his penance is basically impossible to attain, and that a lot of other people are dealing with the fallout of the conflict in their own way and that Kenshin's path is merely one of many for good or ill and may not even be the best or most moral path. Basically a technically pacifistic fighter looks different in Gundam than from other series because the broader context and setting in Gundam. It may well be a valid point to level at Kenshin or Vash or whoever, but it doesn't correlate one-to-one. Warmachine posted:Just in case you're doubting, the Earth Alliance tries multiple times to use nuclear weapons on civilian colonies, and the original war in SEED is kicked off because (presumably) an extremist armed with a nuke fired it during a standoff and succeeded in blowing up one of said civilian colonies. Let's also not forget that Coordinators may or may not have been responsible for an attack of bioterrorism what with the incurable superflu that ravaged the planet but somehow didn't ever infect Coordinators and also cropped up almost immediately following the assassination of George Glenn. Even if the S2 Influenza pandemic wasn't a deliberate act of terrorism it was yet another source of tension and bad blood between Natural and Coordinator. The Cosmic Era had been gearing up for a hell war since long before the Bloody Valentine, that was just the starting pistol on the grisly affair.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:16
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NikkolasKing posted:This is an interesting criticism I've never thought of before. I wonder if it can be applied to somebody like Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin or Vash from Trigun. Kenshin kinda runs up against it. After beating social Darwinist Shishio, the kid sidekick in his gang is like “you beat him so your ideology must be stronger!” and Kenshin is like “no, dummy, that logic was the basis for his ideology. I’m just a better swordsman. Nobody proved anything today.”
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Nov 19, 2019 02:23
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