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NikkolasKing posted:MSG and its "spiritual successor" have clear ideas of war but what about Wing and 00, the other two most alike Gundams? You said show by show basis, after all. I never could understand what 00 was getting at, especially since CB's terrorism ended up working perfectly. I think when looking at those two, you can't get the specter of commercialism out of the way when engaging with their themes. Wing especially, but 00 does it as well. I think 00 is a far more intelligent show than Wing, but I also have a gigantic soft spot for Wing for a variety of reasons. Wing's kind of loving crazy though, especially when you regard the philosophy of "Absolute Pacifism" and look at what Relena actually accomplishes during the show. She kind of drifts from one thing to another, the posh academy, the Sanc Kingdom, being Vice President(not even full president!) of the Earth Sphere UN or whatever, and is always kind of bailed out by her brother, Heero, one of the other Gundam pilots whenever she's about to be atomized. It's kind of comedic when everyone just lifts her up as this amazing person when she's really kind of passively(lol) milquetoast. She's made a philosophy out of being someone who kind of stands around and lets others do all the heavy lifting. You counter that with Trieze's batshit ideal of "War is beautiful, and I will help bring about the most beautiful war of all, and it will lead to peace because all those brave and beautiful 100K+ people I personally remember will all be dead" and you get a very loving confused show about what it's trying to say. Oh well, sells a lot of wall scrolls and gunpla, so whatever. 00 I think becomes more cogent when you see that "the plan" in regards to what CB is even supposed to be doing goes off the rails once Allejandro shoots Aeolia Schenberg in the face. It's this massively baroque and complicated thing and the one man who's supposed to tie it all together dies 2/3rds through the first season and never really did or said anything in the "present" anyway. So you have this vague plan, and your main characters are all victims of war in one way or another. Setsuna the child soldier, Lockon the terrorist victim, Allelujah the failed military experiment, and Tiera the construct that's been in service to this arcane and difficult to grasp plan . 00 becomes a story about being caught up in institutions. Not just war, but also force politics in regards to peace, as well as the commercial side of Bandai, and well the institution of Gundam itself. The terrorism that the Meisters did, yes, technically succeed, but it also lead to the Tau Drive being disseminated and even more weapons and hostility to be unleashed on the Earth sphere. 9/11 united a lot of the world behind America and well, look what happened with that. Unification against an outward force isn't always a positive and peaceful outcome. In fact, it might be something that caused a lot more problems than it solved. And the fact that CB is basically flailing in the dark with only a mysterious computer to guide them is kind of interesting in what ideology and the belief in it does to people with good intentions. Setsuna's key question is ,"What is Gundam", and I think that he really only answers that in the end of the movie: When he's freed from the old thinking of CB's arcane plan and actually does something unexpected: connects with an intelligence everyone thought alien and inscrutable. Oddly enough, it kind of wraps back around to the first Gundam that way. gently caress, I guess Ribbons and the 0 Gundam won after all. TNG fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 05:58
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NikkolasKing posted:MSG and its "spiritual successor" have clear ideas of war but what about Wing and 00, the other two most alike Gundams? You said show by show basis, after all. I never could understand what 00 was getting at, especially since CB's terrorism ended up working perfectly. Celestial Being's terrorism achieved its stated goal of ending world conflict, but it most certainly didn't work perfectly. The resulting world government was a fascist nightmare run by what amounts to the Titans which took a fair amount of work to fix.
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Nov 5, 2015 06:03
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Kanos posted:Celestial Being's terrorism achieved its stated goal of ending world conflict, but it most certainly didn't work perfectly. The resulting world government was a fascist nightmare run by what amounts to the Titans which took a fair amount of work to fix. Yeah, for all the mistakes Season 2 made in its decisions, making the post power blocs world government be a totalitarian oligarchy was one of its more astute and "realistic" ones.
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Nov 5, 2015 06:10
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I don't really see why I can't look at the "war is bad" message and the "giant robots fighting is cool to watch" part separately. The action part is meant to entertain, I don't think it diminishes the intended message. But it's a little hard to go "war is glamourous" because that's not accurate, it's "people fighting using giant colourful robots having stylish fights is cool". Maybe that's just me. Maybe lots of people don't get the same disconnect and that's why you get people who say stuff like "why doesn't shinji want to get in the robot, what a pussy" after watching Evangelion, people who are unable to look past the "robots are cool" part of a mecha show.
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Nov 5, 2015 06:30
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Well militarism in general is part of our society. Japan's too as they were an occupied nation, and didn't have full autonomy of all of their lands until the 70s. We've all been in a perpetual state of combat readiness since the end of WW2, no one really disarmed in the US and all of the conquered territories. My problem is that a lot of military fiction, and especially science or speculative fiction in that mode, normalizes that militarism and helps the violent attitude in our society to continue. I'm not saying it's the cause of it, hardly, but it becomes a lot easier to accept wars in foreign places and bigger, newer, and more wasteful pieces of military hardware when all of our pop culture entertainment gives it whizbang appeal instead of trying to inspire disgust. A lot of it's unconscious, but it keeps going on and on and I think if we want to say no to war we also need to say no to things that make it seem understandable, relatable, and somewhat acceptable. Someone earlier made a comment about the brutality of IBO's action making it "awesome" in some people's eyes. Perhaps, but for me I think the violence and action in that is being refreshingly honest because it's sickening and very disheartening in a lot of cases.
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Nov 5, 2015 07:15
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TNG posted:I think when looking at those two, you can't get the specter of commercialism out of the way when engaging with their themes. Wing especially, but 00 does it as well. I think 00 is a far more intelligent show than Wing, but I also have a gigantic soft spot for Wing for a variety of reasons. Wing's kind of loving crazy though, especially when you regard the philosophy of "Absolute Pacifism" and look at what Relena actually accomplishes during the show. She kind of drifts from one thing to another, the posh academy, the Sanc Kingdom, being Vice President(not even full president!) of the Earth Sphere UN or whatever, and is always kind of bailed out by her brother, Heero, one of the other Gundam pilots whenever she's about to be atomized. It's kind of comedic when everyone just lifts her up as this amazing person when she's really kind of passively(lol) milquetoast. She's made a philosophy out of being someone who kind of stands around and lets others do all the heavy lifting. You counter that with Trieze's batshit ideal of "War is beautiful, and I will help bring about the most beautiful war of all, and it will lead to peace because all those brave and beautiful 100K+ people I personally remember will all be dead" and you get a very loving confused show about what it's trying to say. Oh well, sells a lot of wall scrolls and gunpla, so whatever. I don't think you're being fair to Relena here. For all their giant robot goodness, Heero and the others don't really do much. Consider Treize's speech, which inspired the manga retelling of the show. "Glory of the Losers." That says it all right there. Heero and the others, after walking into Treize's trap, and then being abandoned by the colonies, are left pretty much powerless. I don't even think they have their Gundams at this point but even if they did, what good would they do? There's a reason Endless Waltz reveals the Operation Meteor we see in the show was a last-second spur-of-the-moment thing with no forethought or planning. Five teenagers with attitude in giant robots aren't going to change the world, no matter how good those robots are. Which is why we focus on them and their futile antics while the real plot is being set up off-screen. Relena re-establishing the Sanc Kingdom was the actual threat to the villains. The Gundam Pilots were nothing and no one except Treize cared about them anymore. Hell, Treize even tells Heero he thinks Relena is stronger than Heero where it really matters. Relena also had probably the best character development in the show, going from the girl who pined over Heero and tried to blow Lady Une's head off, to the woman trying to fix the world and refusing to kill Lady Une when given the chance. Yeah, Gundam Wing is a loving ridiculous and silly show but I think Relena Peacecraft was a genuinely pretty good character.
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Nov 5, 2015 08:04
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She just had a glaring problem. Like drat, she has resting glare face.
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Nov 5, 2015 11:01
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Shinjobi posted:She just had a glaring problem. Like drat, she has resting glare face. Most of the Wing characters (and pretty much all the female characters) did, didn't they?
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Nov 5, 2015 11:03
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The only thing I really remember about Relena is that she finishes off Endless Waltz by deciding that absolute pacifism was a bad idea, and leading a civilian revolt against the Marieamia (however the gently caress it's spelt) army to finish things, because their passive refusal to fight was what enabled that army in the first place. Which I thought was a pretty nice way to finish out her character given her advocacy of pacifism prior to that point.
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Nov 5, 2015 12:36
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tsob posted:The only thing I really remember about Relena is that she finishes off Endless Waltz by deciding that absolute pacifism was a bad idea, and leading a civilian revolt against the Marieamia (however the gently caress it's spelt) army to finish things, because their passive refusal to fight was what enabled that army in the first place. Which I thought was a pretty nice way to finish out her character given her advocacy of pacifism prior to that point. I always enjoyed that scene since up to that point, everyone had been fighting to avoid casualties, and then all of a sudden Heero drops in outta the sky ready to blow everything up with his beam rifle, no fucks given, and Relena gives him the OK to fire even though she's in the target zone.
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Nov 5, 2015 12:51
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TNG posted:Someone earlier made a comment about the brutality of IBO's action making it "awesome" in some people's eyes. Perhaps, but for me I think the violence and action in that is being refreshingly honest because it's sickening and very disheartening in a lot of cases. The violence of IBO is raw enough to be shocking but lacks the edgy gross aspect or the glorifying high-budget slow-mo shots that shows trying to make brutality a selling point tend to have. IBO is really good so far and I'm happy to see Gundam effectively convey that kind of anti-violence message without Tomino at the helm. 
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Nov 5, 2015 14:28
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Allarion posted:I always enjoyed that scene since up to that point, everyone had been fighting to avoid casualties, and then all of a sudden Heero drops in outta the sky ready to blow everything up with his beam rifle, no fucks given, and Relena gives him the OK to fire even though she's in the target zone. That's perfect Relena though, she's never given any fucks about ehr personal safety before, whether trying to assassinate Lady Une in broad daylight or making a speech calling out the Romefeller Foundation to their face.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:08
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GimmickMan posted:The violence of IBO is raw enough to be shocking but lacks the edgy gross aspect or the glorifying high-budget slow-mo shots that shows trying to make brutality a selling point tend to have. IBO is really good so far and I'm happy to see Gundam effectively convey that kind of anti-violence message without Tomino at the helm. I'd disagree for the mech fights, at least. The Barbatos does get a number of shots of it doing something viscerally awful to another suit and then getting a slow, loving pan up its body as heroic music swells. See also, when it pulped the rear end in a top hat squad leader's Graze in Episode 1, and when it said hi with a point-blank howitzer blast through the cockpit in Episode 5. The interpersonal violence is indeed significantly less sexy, though.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:12
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I've been rewatching Gundam 00, and I just want to say that Graham is awesome. <_< that is all. His organs should really just be a pulpy mess by now.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:37
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Darth Walrus posted:I'd disagree for the mech fights, at least. The Barbatos does get a number of shots of it doing something viscerally awful to another suit and then getting a slow, loving pan up its body as heroic music swells. See also, when it pulped the rear end in a top hat squad leader's Graze in Episode 1, and when it said hi with a point-blank howitzer blast through the cockpit in Episode 5. The interpersonal violence is indeed significantly less sexy, though. I agree with you in that we're supposed to cheer up for Barbatos and Mika cleaving through enemies more than Mika being a cold-blooded killer with his handgun, but even then IBO has a certain sense of disgust for violence in its mech fights. I think a reason for mecha's popularity is that it allows the portrayal of gruesome violence to humanoid beings without crossing the line into actual gore, and IBO does not shirk away from showing that anymore that it gives a discretion shot when Mika murders a man. Yes, the music swells up when Barbatos makes its grand appearance, and the rear end in a top hat Graze commander trying to run up his kill count gets what he has coming, but even then you see the cockpit crushed and Barbatos pulling its mace out of the ruined metal mess. In the Crank fight, Mika actually gets "blood" on him, and he is ready to brutally stomp on the cockpit before he sees Crank wounded and unable to continue piloting. In Episode 5, Coral realizes all too late he's distracted before Mika smashes him with the mace and pulls the trigger on the pile bunker, leaving a floating, eerily still Graze in space and the muted horror of the Gjallarhorn pilots. There are no THEY GOT ME cries, fade to white shots and aseptic explosions to erase the consequences of mobile suit combat. In the hands of someone like, say, Fukuda, there would be people puking their bloody guts on their helmets and nigh-comical gore, but IBO lets the audience's imagination fill in the blanks, with mecha corpses as real evidence that people died awfully.
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Nov 5, 2015 17:20
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Droyer posted:No it's the opposite. Almost no one buys the gas grenade one, so they use trying to buy it as a secret code. I think at least, I could be misremembering. This is correct, asking for a Zaku I Gas Grenade was the coded message that you wanted to talk with one of the underground informants. The manga doesn't ever give any real indication such a model even existed either. The best Seller was actually Dozle's Zaku II, which was a memorial piece since at that point in continuity Dozle had been Gundam'd. The entire arc of Leopold going to meet Reinhart was really good. Gundam: Plot to etc. was really good. Omnicrom fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 18:04
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Omnicrom posted:This is correct, asking for a Zaku I Gas Grenade was the coded message that you wanted to talk with one of the underground informants. The manga doesn't ever give any real indication such a model even existed either. The best Seller was actually Dozle's Zaku II, which was a memorial piece since at that point in continuity Dozle had been Gundam'd. The entire arc of Leopold going to meet Reinhart was really good. Gundam: Plot to etc. was really good. Jesus, that's some absurdly quick plamo creation considering the war ends less than a week after Dozle dies.
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Nov 5, 2015 18:21
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ImpAtom posted:Jesus, that's some absurdly quick plamo creation considering the war ends less than a week after Dozle dies. Well, it is only a regular Zaku II in a different shade of green and with gold stickers, it's not like they had to design anything new.
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Nov 5, 2015 18:30
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Well, it is only a regular Zaku II in a different shade of green and with gold stickers, it's not like they had to design anything new. A big heat hawk!
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Nov 5, 2015 21:09
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NikkolasKing posted:MSG and its "spiritual successor" have clear ideas of war but what about Wing and 00, the other two most alike Gundams? You said show by show basis, after all. I never could understand what 00 was getting at, especially since CB's terrorism ended up working perfectly. 00 is a very long and elaborate message about promising beginnings that end in utter disappointment.
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Nov 6, 2015 00:45
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Infected posted:00 is a very long and elaborate message about promising beginnings that end in utter disappointment. Actually it was more a message of "don't try anything new and/or successful, or the guys upstairs lose their loving minds".
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Nov 6, 2015 02:41
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Oh hey, I didn't realize that MSG was on Blu Ray already. It's a few bucks cheaper than the DVD set on Amazon. Is it worth it on Blu ray? The animation isn't exactly amazing.
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Nov 6, 2015 16:49
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Gammatron 64 posted:Oh hey, I didn't realize that MSG was on Blu Ray already. It's a few bucks cheaper than the DVD set on Amazon. Is it worth it on Blu ray? The animation isn't exactly amazing. It does look nicer, if you don't have the dvds then absolutely pick it up, but if you already have the dvds then I guess it depends on how often you rewatch it
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Nov 6, 2015 17:02
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Srice posted:It does look nicer, if you don't have the dvds then absolutely pick it up, but if you already have the dvds then I guess it depends on how often you rewatch it I might as well do it. I only have the movie trilogy on DVD\VHS. I really do like the series and I've wanted to have it for my collection. I could just never find it for a good price.
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Nov 6, 2015 17:09
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Is the bluray set still missing Doan's Island?
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Nov 7, 2015 00:00
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Raxivace posted:Is the bluray set still missing Doan's Island? Yes, the box sets list 42 episodes with 21 per set.
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Nov 7, 2015 00:57
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CaptainYesterday posted:Yes, the box sets list 42 episodes with 21 per set. What's the deal with that episode?
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Nov 7, 2015 06:40
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Parallax posted:What's the deal with that episode? It looks awful even by the standards of the rest of the series, and is completely self-contained so cutting it doesn't hurt the overall story
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Nov 7, 2015 06:42
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It's a nice little story but the show can live without it. It's very poorly animated. Tomino himself even animated for it, and while I love the guy, he's not an animator.
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Nov 7, 2015 06:44
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Nov 7, 2015 06:44
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Whoa, a walking one-eyed gas masked green bean!
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Nov 7, 2015 06:46
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Looking great after that diet That's a shame though. I thought it was for content reasons or something.
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Nov 7, 2015 06:48
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It's a silly bad episode, but it still bothers me that they're just leaving out an entire episode of the show. For better or worse, it's still a part of Gundam history.
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Nov 7, 2015 06:51
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EthanSteele posted:Oh and there's a line of Haro themed scent spraying things. You know the things where you walk past them or press a button and it sprays out something that's called Summer Breeze or whatever. Anyway, those but it's a Haro and it's called Haromatherapy.
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Nov 7, 2015 07:05
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I was reminded of the episode where Chibodee Crocket reveals his fear of clowns because clown terrorists killed his mom. Basically I just wanted to say G Gundam was cool.
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Nov 7, 2015 07:57
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Three Cookies posted:I was reminded of the episode where Chibodee Crocket reveals his fear of clowns because clown terrorists killed his mom. Basically I just wanted to say G Gundam was cool. Clown terrorists, you say? 
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Nov 7, 2015 08:00
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ACES CURE PLANES posted:Clown terrorists, you say? 
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Nov 7, 2015 08:22
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 After the 2nd season at least.
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Nov 7, 2015 08:30
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TNG posted:
Gary Biaggi was a cool dude
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Nov 7, 2015 10:02
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TNG posted:
Doesn't quite count. Ali is a terrorist, and a clown, but the two don't intersect in some way. At least Trowa incorporated his trapeze routine into his piloting.
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Nov 7, 2015 14:18
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