|
Gundam is increasingly becoming more distant from Tomino and I feel this is for the better as it appears to be producing increasingly good shows that have surpassed his works. Like Star Trek, Gundam has to move on and grow. Admittedly Star Trek's track record since DS9 has been dubious and isn't the best example when it comes to quality. The transition for Gundam has been alot smoother as it wasn't based on a sudden death, but something that evolved more naturally as Tomino doesn't have the direct control Gene had.
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 15:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 12:45 |
|
|
The original Star Trek was one of the best in the franchise so "the further it gets away the better it gets" doesn't work there either. TNG had one of the worst first few seasons imaginable, and Enterprise and Voyager were hilariously awful so you've got like... part of TNG and DS9 followed by absolute trash. Which isn't too far away from Gundam! (the DS9 in this case is G Gundam, natch.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 15:56 on May 6, 2016 |
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 15:53
|
|
|
I'd be more on board with that idea if more directors decided to put out a more unique take on the franchise instead of rehashing a lot of stuff
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 16:04
|
|
|
As is, I think in recent years I realized that it's Tomino I'm a fan of, not Gundam.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 16:05
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:The original Star Trek was one of the best in the franchise so "the further it gets away the better it gets" doesn't work there either. TNG had one of the worst first few seasons imaginable, and Enterprise and Voyager were hilariously awful so you've got like... part of TNG and DS9 followed by absolute trash. I've never seen more than a few episodes from each ST series. DS9 does seem like the fan favorite of those select few people online, though, much like G Gundam. I know a lot of people who hate it because it doesnt match up at all with Roddenberry's vision, or so they've claimed. If they're all still on Netflix I need to watch them one of these days.... God, what a long summer that would be.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 16:05
|
|
|
Srice posted:As is, I think in recent years I realized that it's Tomino I'm a fan of, not Gundam. yeah, I watched Overman King Gainer and was like, "this is everything I like about Gundam, but it's not Gundam"
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 16:06
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:I've never seen more than a few episodes from each ST series. DS9 does seem like the fan favorite of those select few people online, though, much like G Gundam. I know a lot of people who hate it because it doesnt match up at all with Roddenberry's vision, or so they've claimed. DS9 is basically the "darker and more mature" take on Star Trek except in this case it's (more or less) well done and actually addresses issues that the previous shows gloss over. Some people dislike it for being 'not really Star Trek' or because it does have some genuinely bad episodes but the variation from the norm is why people like it also. boom boom boom posted:yeah, I watched Overman King Gainer and was like, "this is everything I like about Gundam, but it's not Gundam" King Gainer is one of my favorite Tomino shows, yeah.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 16:09
|
|
|
Gene still had control during TNG and the very beginning of DS9 hence why season 1of DS9 is strange compared to later seasons. I did say it has been pretty dubious for Star Trek and I didn't say it worked, in fact it has crashed so hard it's on it's way to China given the size of the hole. The transition for Gundam has been handled much better. As a reminder, I like MSG like I do TOS for much the same reasons. They will both will forever remain as the classics but shows in both franchises have surpassed them one way or another. DS9 was more realistic in tone rather than darker. Being more realistic does mean you have to deal with issues that are darker or outside the confines of it's more restricted predecessors giving the show a much greater range. Naturally when compared to TNG, DS9 comes of as dark as TNG is very idealised. TOS handled a wider range of issues with some questionable solutions so DS9 is in a way a return to TOS.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 16:34
|
|
|
The 'transition' for Gundam has given us many worse shows than it has good ones. Like the high points, (assuming you discount G-Reco) aside from a shonen toy battling series, are 'parts of Gundam 00 and IBO' at best and I'm not sure I'd even personally agree with that. Frankly, I'd even argue that the 90s Gundam series were stronger than the modern stuff and I'm no fan of Gundam X or Wing. Recent Gundam has been regurgitating the same stuff so much that it's just tiresome. I think the shows have strong moments but like Unicorn is Regurgitating Gundam: The Show and even IBO falls into the trap of assuming a OYW happened, legendary Gundams and oh look Char and Garma again.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 16:37
|
|
|
wow i never connected those two scenes before
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 16:54
|
|
|
Hey Ohhboy, what do you consider Good examples of serial fiction, just so we can get some context
|
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 17:32
|
|
|
Char is like a Phaser and Gundams are to Starships. While much harder to remove or change, it isn't impossible. DS9 didn't have a Starship for quite a while and when it did get one it wasn't your typical ship. Turn A/BF showed you can have a Char who isn't a raging sociopath or an omnicidal manic. Other non-Gundam shows have used Char likes that aren't male. Maybe with the next Gundam they make the Gundams legendary in name only. IBO does away with the need to always having a fight in almost every episode. It has ditched beam weapons, a massive staple to Gundam. BF Gundams aren't even "real" Gundams since they are toys and doesn't have the war aspect. 8th shows us Gundams that slowly become something lesser as parts are replaced and deal with real world restrictions. War in the Pocket has the protagonist pilot a mook suit, never to step inside a Gundam. SEED idealogical reasons for the fighting makes sense compared to the vague notions of of Spacenodies and Gravity of the OYW. Thunderbolt has no Chars. Unicorn doubles down the Gundamisms and suffers for it. Wing is just bonkers so YMMV. So no, I don't feel the despair you might have with Gundam's direction. mr. stefan posted:Hey Ohhboy, what do you consider Good examples of serial fiction, just so we can get some context
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 17:53
|
|
|
I don't know if I'd say I'm just a tomino fan or more overall a universal century fan. I certainly enjoy tomino's series quite a bit and loved the hell out of 0079, but I'm also open to other series as well. My gripes with shows like 8th ms team are the same complaints I could make about any Anime(naive optimism, needless nudity, FUCKIG HOT SPRINGS ON MOUNT EVEREST), rather than comparing them to tomino helmed shows.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 22:00
|
|
|
Arcsquad12 posted:I don't know if I'd say I'm just a tomino fan or more overall a universal century fan. I certainly enjoy tomino's series quite a bit and loved the hell out of 0079, but I'm also open to other series as well. My gripes with shows like 8th ms team are the same complaints I could make about any Anime(naive optimism, needless nudity, FUCKIG HOT SPRINGS ON MOUNT EVEREST), rather than comparing them to tomino helmed shows. Hot springs on mount everest doesn't come up that often in anime
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 22:01
|
|
|
There's a lot of anime, without any of those elements.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 22:05
|
|
|
I don't understand what you mean by needless nudity?
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 22:24
|
|
|
I just finished watching Turn A for the first time with Raku. It was pretty good and wow G Reko woulda made a LOT more sense if I had seen that first.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 22:25
|
|
|
I think Tomino is like an alien who want to understand humans but can't quite get there and it shows in all of his work, and that alienness doesn't fascinate me the way it does people who are genuinely Tomino fans. But Turn A was the time that alien managed to be genuinely sweet, whimsical, and almost coherent. I'm the guy who normally agrees with many of oohhboy's points, if not his way of saying it (and when you get back from your day-long GBS vacation, your list of liked shows is legit), but his insistence that Turn A is a bad show that fails to accomplish anything it sets out to do just rings false. Because Turn A Gundam successfully manages to rise above its flaws and convince its audience to grow fond of its characters and invested in what happens to them. Even SEED in the end couldn't really do that for me, despite it being agreed-upon as one of the more competently-made shows until Destiny retroactively soured the well. Turn A also had an interesting setting that played with franchise conceits in new and interesting ways, turning mobile suits and Gundams into an outside context problem for a people whose military was just sort of bumbling around with biplanes and who still have primitive and embarrassing coming-of-age rituals. When I realized one of the main plot mechanisms was going to be a goddamn Prince and the Pauper switch I was instantly enchanted. Like who even does that? In this day and age! I talk about Turn A Gundam a lot in this, and honestly other, less appropriate threads too (at last check I think I made a bunch of posts about it in the GW good thread and the Star Citizen thread). Because I like it and I also like talking about things I do like! Hell I think I wrote up an effortpost about Giant Robo in this thread. I'm certainly not going to "let it stand on its own merits" like a bunch of shows I don't watch and aren't interested in, and therefore have no real reason to talk about.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:05
|
|
|
People who think Tomino characters are alien have interacted only with a very small set of people or watched only a small set of media in their lives. I'm dead serious: Tomino has a very distinct way to write his characters, but they're not particularly bizarre in the great scheme of things. It's just one of these memes that gets constantly spouted. Edit: Wanna clarify that I'm not trying to be insulting here.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:17
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:People who think Tomino characters are alien have interacted only with a very small set of people or watched only a small set of media in their lives. Yeah, Tomino has a very noticable authorial voice, but rather than being a bad thing I feel that makes his stories better. The same is true of Imagawa, since Xarbala brought up Giant Robo
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:20
|
|
|
Tomino tries a lot of odd things which are not always successful but are intentional. Like in both Turn-A and G-Reco he plays around with language and intentionally tries to simulate slang or language drift. Like the Gaitrash from G-Reco is supposed to be Gytrash (the mythological black dog) with a name distorted by time. The fact it is wrong is an intentional design decision. His writing attempts to actually convey how people talk rather than the more structured and rigid conversation most fiction uses which leads to some really weird or obtuse conversations because... well, that is how people talk sometimes. It's fair to say he isn't always successful but it isn't because he's an alien or doesn't understand what he's doing.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:26
|
|
|
A lot of Tomino characters talk in unnatural ways but it's the same kind of unnatural I notice in a lot of media, especially in genre works. What I enjoy in the way he writes dialogue is that a lot of his characters have a fantastic rapport with each other. Even if the dialogue itself can be goofy at times, the way his characters nonchalantly bounce off each other makes them feel much more organic. Lots of interaction that would normally get heavy focus becomes downplayed and that just makes it more natural to me. After Turn A, I think Xabungle is my fave of his works and it's a show that's crammed full of those moments.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:32
|
|
|
In Tomino shows characters will lie, or be mistaken, or just say weird poo poo that makes sense for the character, and never be called out on it or corrected or explained by another character. Like the dude in G-Reco that tried to get the Earthlings to surrender by telling them he'd give them fish to eat. It's a baffling thing to just say in the middle of a battle, except that the dude genuinely thought Earthlings were barely above animals, and actually would stop fighting if given good food to eat. That's not explained in the show, you have to pay attention to the dude's actions and how he treats Earthlings vs. how he treats Spacenoids, and all of that in the context of the setting created in the show
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:33
|
|
|
I don't have any real problems with Tomino's world building; it's his character development that gets wonky. I recently finished Zeta Gundam and loved it overall! But man, that stuff with Reccoa near the end was incredibly strange. Even Kamille, Katz, and Amuro's developments feel kind of sudden. The audience is shown perhaps two or three scenes between Reccoa and Char, and yet that's enough development to justify her leaving AUEG? The key to enjoying Tomino shows (for me) is to imagine that characters are making decisions based on reasons or emotions the audience is not shown. You really have to roll with events and try not to nitpick. To Srice's point - the incidental dialog can be really great at times, but the really important stuff can be downplayed or glossed over too much. For example, Henken's affection for Emma was well developed and his sacrifice makes sense. Yet we have very little idea why the Titans are still so obsessed to take out the AEUG when the real Zeon (their stated mission...) show up. brainwrinkle fucked around with this message at 00:48 on May 7, 2016 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:45
|
|
|
The AEUG represents a more serious threat in that it represents a significantly powerful (or powerful enough) dissident faction within what is supposed to be their own ranks which undermines the Titans as a fascistic authoritarian entity. While Zeon is more easily painted as an enemy, the AEUG sews dissent and weakens the already-crumbling federation.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:51
|
|
|
Sure, one can infer that pretty easily in retrospect. But why isn't there a 30-second scene of the head Titans guys sitting down and stating that before they enter into negotiation with the Zeon remnants? Hell, you could characterize Sirocco more by having him gloat about how he will play everyone in his internal monologue in this theoretical scene. I feel like other directors make far more concessions like that to make sure the audience understands. Tomino just rolls with it and hopes you get the idea.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:56
|
|
|
I just took to the meme because it lines up with how I feel about Tomino's writing in a general sense. He doesn't really leave a lot of concessions to the audience in the way that's conventional. But those conventions exist for a reason, and I won't lie, watching through a lot of Tomino's older UC stuff felt in a way emotionally unsatisfying. I can suss out the reasons why people did the things they did given what I know about the setting, I can also figure what stuff was just Tomino having a bad day or just being weird about women, but I'll admit I'm a pretty passive viewer and having important character or setting beats presented nonchalantly without the sort of emphasis that usually comes with that sort of thing means stuff like that's easy to slip by. Even knowing why things are and being able to figure it out can still be unsatisfying. On a rational level I "get" that whirlwind Newtype connection romance thing. But emotionally it just lands like a thud. I get how the various cultures in G-Reco are strange compared to the context I know and am familiar with, and I can unwrap that and understand what's going on. It just doesn't feel satisfying to me as a viewer. I do like how charming the characters are in G-Reco though, and I can see how it could appeal to some people. I just completely understand why someone else wouldn't enjoy it, because I'm in the latter camp.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 00:58
|
|
|
Whoa hey "concessions to the audience" mind.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:00
|
|
|
Also seriously what the gently caress was he trying to do with Reccoa's plot in Zeta? Can someone explain it to me?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:02
|
|
|
brainwrinkle posted:Also seriously what the gently caress was he trying to do with Reccoa's plot in Zeta? Can someone explain it to me? I think it was a "women be cray cray" Tomino moment. Like if Emma was a woman who apparently abandoned her femininity for her mission, I gather Reccoa was supposed to be her opposite?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:14
|
|
|
Definitely in the weird about women category, and it's been a while so I don't recall the details, but I think a lot of it has to do with Scirocco having a passive Bluff Field and can charm anyone with a weaker will
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:17
|
|
|
i think there's also a bit of Char being lovely involved too. they made it seem like there was something between the two of them
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:18
|
|
|
Yeah you don't get the whole story there, which ends up leading to a lot of very not-very-good treatment of a female character in this case.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:22
|
|
|
I think it helps to have read a lot of 50s-to-70s sci-fi, which also often presented the background without explanations letting the readers discover the world and also had sometimes lovely opinions of women. Although Zeta really is the outlier on the Tomino spectrum, most of his shows are actually pretty good when it comes to women. In fact, most recent Gundam shows are way worse on that front.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:23
|
|
|
I think Zeta was about the time he had that infamously weird thing going on with the woman who ended up being Nagano's wife.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:26
|
|
|
Tomino does a bit of the 'put them on a pedestal" kind of thing with lady characters even in his better shows but to be honest that's better than the recent Gundam trend of Waifu or Useless. (Or that old Age special, the Useless Waifu.)
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:29
|
|
|
boom boom boom posted:In Tomino shows characters will lie, or be mistaken, or just say weird poo poo that makes sense for the character, and never be called out on it or corrected or explained by another character. Like the dude in G-Reco that tried to get the Earthlings to surrender by telling them he'd give them fish to eat. It's a baffling thing to just say in the middle of a battle, except that the dude genuinely thought Earthlings were barely above animals, and actually would stop fighting if given good food to eat. That's not explained in the show, you have to pay attention to the dude's actions and how he treats Earthlings vs. how he treats Spacenoids, and all of that in the context of the setting created in the show Raraiya regaining her mind probably looks like it comes out of nowhere if you don't pay attention and notice she's been slowly getting more lucid through every episode, and does stuff like casually slipping Klim Nick's grip or trying to book it for the G-Self when trouble turns up.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:30
|
|
|
muike posted:Definitely in the weird about women category, and it's been a while so I don't recall the details, but I think a lot of it has to do with Scirocco having a passive Bluff Field and can charm anyone with a weaker will Yeah I always chalked that up to Scirocco pulling some of his evil newtype shenanigans. It seemed like he was supposed to represent the other dark side of that kind of power, he didn't just use it for war but to manipulate and basically mind control people. In the end, his very existence was the big threat because he could so easily manipulate those gravity-bound earthlings. I mean he does show up halfway through the series and basically take over the Titans in the course of a couple months. He'd be ruling the whole earth sphere inside of a year.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:32
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:Raraiya regaining her mind probably looks like it comes out of nowhere if you don't pay attention and notice she's been slowly getting more lucid through every episode, and does stuff like casually slipping Klim Nick's grip or trying to book it for the G-Self when trouble turns up. There's also a thing in the setting notes that water is shown to have a healing effect on people's minds (which is the reason Venus Globe is a huge water globe among other reasons) and Chuchumi was actually having a positive effect on her.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 12:45 |
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:Raraiya regaining her mind probably looks like it comes out of nowhere if you don't pay attention and notice she's been slowly getting more lucid through every episode, and does stuff like casually slipping Klim Nick's grip or trying to book it for the G-Self when trouble turns up. And that time she fakes having a fever to avoid being seen by people who would recognize her.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 01:34
|
|