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00 S2's big problems are: A) Setsuna's basically crappy character arc. He goes from being a hosed up child soldier to being a Messiah but doesn't get the time, focus or energy necessary to make it really work. He's too static a character for someone who is supposed to fill that role, his writing isn't strong enough to carry it, and he basically sits around going "Gundam" rather than really developing. He changes a little but not enough for that huge an arc. He also gets horribly underutilized for the scenes that should be big scenes for him, like discovering the truth about Ribbons. His 'romantic interests' also are kind of weak and half-baked. B) The villains are just awful. S1's strength was that the 'villain' factions were basically a hair away from being heroes themselves and the story played into that. In S2 they are literally nothing but cartoonish villains who exist to be evil for evil's sake while anyone even slightly remotely sympathetic congeals into the now-traditional Heroic Protagonist Faction. It nullifies the interesting ambiguity of S1 in favor of a villain literally named Bring Stabity. C) The power levels are way off. Despite Celestial Being theoretically losing the advantage the 00 Raiser is so absurdly powerful that they keep having to avoid having it in fights because it so trivially solves problems. They even have things basically resolved offscreen with "Setsuna shows up, fight over." It defeats the cool idea of Celestial Being finally being on the wrong foot because they have a protagonist unit so strong that it can do with a single oversized beam sword what it took the rest of Celestial Being doing a crazy suicide sniping run to do. D) It's really afraid to take any risks. It is super-duper safe in every way it can possibly be, adhering to generic Gundam tropes but giving them almost no bite at all. It doesn't need a kill 'em all ending but it isn't even willing to wave its hand at it. For all that it waves its hand at real danger it won't even do bad things to side characters unless they are Unambigiously Evil. It's not the worst Gundam series but even though S1 had problems S2 devolving into what it did is just disappointing.
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Nov 28, 2016 04:10
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Anew died and that kinda sucked
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Nov 28, 2016 04:20
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Barring AGE, what is the worst Gundam series? I mean, yes, Stardust Memory is bad, but even then, it isn't *that* bad when compared to the dross from other franchises. I'm looking for something that is an absolute failure on almost every level.
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Nov 28, 2016 04:20
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Arcsquad12 posted:Barring AGE, what is the worst Gundam series? I mean, yes, Stardust Memory is bad, but even then, it isn't *that* bad when compared to the dross from other franchises. Gundam SEED Destiny,Build Fighters Try,and I can't think of any others.
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Nov 28, 2016 04:25
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AradoBalanga posted:Tell me about it, Hayato gets almost no love in the expanded works. The Origin gave him a decent subplot. But it was also a subplot about him being a poo poo pilot, and his one status marker of being The Decent Not-Newtype Pilot On White Base was stolen away by Job John.
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Nov 28, 2016 04:29
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Arcsquad12 posted:Barring AGE, what is the worst Gundam series? I mean, yes, Stardust Memory is bad, but even then, it isn't *that* bad when compared to the dross from other franchises. I'm looking for something that is an absolute failure on almost every level. It's probably Destiny or 0083
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Nov 28, 2016 04:34
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ImpAtom posted:It's probably Destiny or 0083 That is actually a fairly good track record, then. There's still plenty to like about 0083 if you ignore the main cast's idiocy.
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Nov 28, 2016 04:39
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ImpAtom posted:It's probably Destiny or 0083 Destiny is worse than 0083. 0083 has beautiful animation and is short. Destiny is ugly and four times as long
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Nov 28, 2016 04:41
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Yes the worst part of Destiny is that it's a million episodes long and crammed full of stock footage. But look at it this way, it SEED spawned astray, which as a model kit is a smash hit and people cannot seem to stop buying it, thus further funding bandai and indirectly helping the creation of other projects. AGE had everything going for it and failed triple times. BF Try began cool and turned into the most uninspired, boring soulless toy ad imaginable, and this is a transformers fan saying it.
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Nov 28, 2016 05:10
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Ka0 posted:Yes the worst part of Destiny is that it's a million episodes long and crammed full of stock footage. But look at it this way, it SEED spawned astray, which as a model kit is a smash hit and people cannot seem to stop buying it, thus further funding bandai and indirectly helping the creation of other projects. SEED also has Stargazer, which is surprisingly good. Like, I'd file it as one of the better Gundam serieses. Definitely preferred it to Thunderbolt, for whatever that's worth. AGE has... nothing.
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Nov 28, 2016 05:14
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Try was uniquely disappointing because once in a while they had cool funny episodes to remind you of Build Fighters 1 and to show you that they can write fun stuff, before they dove straight back into generic tournaments and bad fights.
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Nov 28, 2016 05:16
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Neddy Seagoon posted:English Dub Rau was a villain in need of a far better series No, there's a recut of the original dub out there that spliced it into place on the HD remaster encodes, but if you listen closely to it, there are spots where the music and effects make heavy jump cuts because the dub won't sync up as-is. I've slowly been recutting the episodes by restoring mouthflaps and upscaling scenes to restore the original cut, but when I say slowly, I mean, I've done 10 episodes in about 3 years.
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Nov 28, 2016 05:53
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Tae posted:Anew died and that kinda sucked Anew seemed like a really really forced addition and she always stands out as particularly weird to me in that show
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Nov 28, 2016 06:17
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I like 00 S2 more than S1. Fight me.
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Nov 28, 2016 06:36
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Belzac posted:I like 00 S2 more than S1. Fight me. I dunno, what if you cross-classed fracture
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Nov 28, 2016 06:47
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ImpAtom posted:D) It's really afraid to take any risks. It is super-duper safe in every way it can possibly be, adhering to generic Gundam tropes but giving them almost no bite at all. It doesn't need a kill 'em all ending but it isn't even willing to wave its hand at it. For all that it waves its hand at real danger it won't even do bad things to side characters unless they are Unambigiously Evil. Louise Halevy's Whole Life hates this part of your post. It got abruptly bad in S1, but S2 is basically the Kick Louise Halevy A Lot Show from her perspective. She's essentially mindfucked into subservience to A-Laws/INNOBEYTAHS, has to deal with Andrei Smirnov's very loving existence, her boyfriend is literally working for the organization she believes killed her whole family, she's suffering from psychotic episodes and super-cancer caused by magical science particles, and she's dumped her whole family fortune into an anti-terrorist organization that has then conditioned her to be an emotionless (kinda, she's working on it/on meds for it) soldier. Another Gundam story would have killed her off either abruptly or in some overly dramatic yet completely needless fashion (Marida Cruz), and in a way it's a kind of miracle that they didn't take the easy way out for her by having her die "to end the suffering." It's a shame that her whole arc is basically "This is a Victim Of War" across two seasons and a movie, but it's also interesting in that for her, unlike so many other main characters in 00, she doesn't get magically "better" again so she can resume the heroic struggle. Even after she's "cured" of a lot of the bullshit she had to deal with, in the movie it's explicitly shown that she's still a wreck from everything that has happened, and will likely never be "normal" again. Also, Sergei Smirnov is still dead at the hands of his fuckass son (though that kid also spends his entire screentime being poo poo on by fate/the script/his own general incompetence and he probably only survives S2 out of pity or spite). It's right for most other people though, though I suppose you can also throw Graham Aker in there on the short list of side characters who aren't unambiguously evil that get poo poo on by S2 (mostly because S2 was a total waste of his character).
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Nov 28, 2016 06:48
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00 S2 is the only gundam show to deliver on understanding being the ultimate form of strength and for that no one will ever convince me it's dumb.
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Nov 28, 2016 06:53
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I liked Awakening the Trailblazer more than S2.
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Nov 28, 2016 06:59
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The best understanding in S2 is when Hilling Care got
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Nov 28, 2016 07:00
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H/Allelujah understood the value of disabling the ejection pod before owning them.
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Nov 28, 2016 07:02
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fivegears4reverse posted:Louise Halevy's Whole Life hates this part of your post. It got abruptly bad in S1, but S2 is basically the Kick Louise Halevy A Lot Show from her perspective. She's essentially mindfucked into subservience to A-Laws/INNOBEYTAHS, has to deal with Andrei Smirnov's very loving existence, her boyfriend is literally working for the organization she believes killed her whole family, she's suffering from psychotic episodes and super-cancer caused by magical science particles, and she's dumped her whole family fortune into an anti-terrorist organization that has then conditioned her to be an emotionless (kinda, she's working on it/on meds for it) soldier. Louise Harvey is a Generic Cyber Newtype Plot where she has no meaning or agency in her own plot and it's resolved literally offscreen. It's insanely badly executed by any stretch of imagination. fivegears4reverse posted:Another Gundam story would have killed her off either abruptly or in some overly dramatic yet completely needless fashion (Marida Cruz), and in a way it's a kind of miracle that they didn't take the easy way out for her by having her die "to end the suffering." Eh. Giving them any credit at all for her surviving would require them to do something with it. She becomes something for Saji to rescue and once she does she might as well not be a character anymore. fivegears4reverse posted:Also, Sergei Smirnov is still dead at the hands of his fuckass son The character who blatantly and obviously set up to be the dying older mentor who dies isn't really escaping predictability, no. Belzac posted:00 S2 is the only gundam show to deliver on understanding being the ultimate form of strength and for that no one will ever convince me it's dumb. What? It absolutely isn't. Like even if you want to ignore the various Newtype shows, G Gundam's final plot is resolution by Domon opening up and speaking and trying to express himself in a way that isn't fighting and THAT is what ultimate defeats Devil Gundam. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Nov 28, 2016 |
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Nov 28, 2016 07:08
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Belzac posted:00 S2 is the only gundam show to deliver on understanding being the ultimate form of strength and for that no one will ever convince me it's dumb. Do you really want to go that route? Because AGE had an ending that was full Understanding too.
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Nov 28, 2016 07:14
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You have a weird definition of offscreen when the final confrontation between Saji and Lousie takes place on screen and is pretty awesome. Also no, what ultimately defeats the Devil Gundam is the Love Love Tenkyoken. And to be fair what ultimately defeats Ribbons is a sword to the face but as for the ultimate expression of strength, the Quantum Burst only allows communication and is the key factor of victory in both S2 and the movie.
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Nov 28, 2016 07:18
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The episodes before Trinity appears in 00 S1 comes up a blank for me. Nothing really major happens until the big 3 join together to fight CBeing.
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Nov 28, 2016 07:19
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Pureauthor posted:Do you really want to go that route? Because AGE had an ending that was full Understanding too. Most Gundams that try to do anything resembling newtypes ends with Understanding but outside of the Pyscoframes few have tried to show that through a weapon or power. AGE has a sudden change of heart to not mass geonicide and a space dragon shows up for everyone to team up and fight. Arguably the ultimate form of power in AGE is two CGI robots merged together that laser spams. If you wanted to go a different route CCA's Axis Shock and whatever you want to call the ending of Unicorn. Angel Halo is also close but malevolent both in it's powersource and intention. Belzac fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Nov 28, 2016 |
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Nov 28, 2016 07:22
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Belzac posted:You have a weird definition of offscreen when the final confrontation between Saji and Lousie takes place on screen and is pretty awesome. Nope! Go watch Episode 24 again. Louise's mecha grabs the 00, one of the suicide machines crashes into them, it cuts to the op, cuts back to the 00. Saji 'wakes up' and when he does the machine is disabled and Louise is in Setsuna's hand. Saji and Louise have a confrontation afterwards outside of the mecha but it's really loving bad and resolved by Quantum Burst curing cancer. Belzac posted:Also no, what ultimately defeats the Devil Gundam is the Love Love Tenkyoken. And to be fair what ultimately defeats Ribbons is a sword to the face but as for the ultimate expression of strength, the Quantum Burst only allows communication and is the key factor of victory in both S2 and the movie. The Love Love Tenkyoken is literally a symbolic representation of the communication between Rain and Domon born of Domon's willingness to talk to Rain. You're being pretty dishonest to claim that it doesn't count but somehow the Quantum Burst does. Edit: Like G Gundam's entire thing is that it transforms conversations into fights. ("We speak with our fists.") BUt where that is Domon's strength it is also his weakness because he's bad at communicating and expressing himself to the person he cares about. So when Domon finally is able to do that he is able to transform that open communication into the strongest attack because that is Domon in a nutshell ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Nov 28, 2016 |
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Nov 28, 2016 07:25
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ImpAtom posted:Nope! Go watch Episode 24 again. Louise's mecha grabs the 00, one of the suicide machines crashes into them, it cuts to the op, cuts back to the 00. Saji 'wakes up' and when he does the machine is disabled and Louise is in Setsuna's hand. Quantum Burst isn't symbolic, and rather than just a final kamehamaeha to end the show it was built up through dialog and actions as the true purpose of the gundams, to truly end conflict. Also having a confrontation end with two people talking out their feels is more interesting to me than a weird looking MA and the 00 fight it out in an interesting but emotionally devoid fight. MSG knew this.
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Nov 28, 2016 07:33
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Tae posted:The episodes before Trinity appears in 00 S1 comes up a blank for me. Nothing really major happens until the big 3 join together to fight CBeing. The early episodes are more about the Earth faction's point of view, trying to comprehend and capture these four nigh-magical machines that seemingly came out of nowhere and picked a fight with the entire planet. The point of the early fights is watching the factions slowly getting an idea of how each Gundam works and, if it wasn't for Celestial Being planning things VERY carefully, drat-near succeeding in capturing them.
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Nov 28, 2016 07:35
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I feel like i understand what is going on in G Reco but I would never be able to explain it to another human in a coherent way.
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Nov 28, 2016 07:36
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Belzac posted:Quantum Burst isn't symbolic, and rather than just a final kamehamaeha to end the show it was built up through dialog and actions as the true purpose of the gundams, to truly end conflict. Also having a confrontation end with two people talking out their feels is more interesting to me than a weird looking MA and the 00 fight it out in an interesting but emotionally devoid fight. MSG knew this. Quantum Burst is exactly as symbolic as the Love Love Tenkyoken. You're also conveniently ignoring the fact that the Love Love Tenkyoken actually resolves the plot while you even admit yourself RIbbons is resolved by a sword to the face and in fact proves himself entirely immune to understanding and communication. The only way to resolve that plot was for Setsuna to ditch his machine specifically designed for fostering understanding and communication and getting back into his machine specifically designed to kill Gundams. I'd also agree with you if Saji and Louise as a confrontation between two people expressing their feelings and not Louise having a Cyber Newtype freakout before dying of plot cancer followed by a sudden revival due to Quantum Magic. Other characters actually do have that happen during Quantum Burst but Saji and Louise is basically "It's sad -> magic cure -> S-Saji?" and that is basically the end of Louise's screentime. Characters communicating rather than fighting is interesting but 00 was more interested in its ~symbolic~ Exia-killing-RX78-2 scene and decided that Setsuna's plot must be resolved by him murdering dudes instead of communicating. The movie almost had an interesting idea except that it spends the entire film on the fights and when Setsuna gets to the communication it involves him teleporting offscreen in the last 4 minutes of the movie. The 00 movie's biggest problem was that it was way more interested in the meaningless fights against CGI monsters than the central idea of communicating with an unknown species. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Nov 28, 2016 |
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Nov 28, 2016 07:37
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Snooze Cruise posted:I feel like i understand what is going on in G Reco but I would never be able to explain it to another human in a coherent way. That didn't stop Tomino
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Nov 28, 2016 07:38
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Gundam 00 isn't necessarily about Understanding Solving Everything, because it doesn't, much like Newtype Bullshit never ever ever stops war from breaking out every other week in UC. 00 is about at least trying to understand The Other, even if it doesn't necessarily work out perfectly. Communication, of any kind, even if you don't agree or "understand" whom you're communicating with akin to the traditional newtype horseshit, is better than resorting immediately to destruction of the Other. 00 is filled with people who didn't try to communicate or attempt understanding until it was too late, if ever. It's also filled with people who understand plenty and don't give a poo poo either way. And it's also filled with people who have had a very poo poo hand thrown at them across the whole spectrum of good guys and bad guys, and the successful ones, the surviving ones, pushed past their difficulties because they changed who they were, for better or worse. It's not particularly well done across S2, but the themes of Understanding, Communication, and Change are there and are built up as early as S1. Newtype Horseshit theory begins and ends with "UNDERSTANDING SOLVES PROBLEMS" except it never does because UC Gundam is a story where humanity, newtypes or otherwise, refuse to change how they are. It is perpetually stuck in a refusal to understand or communicate across social or political barriers in ways that don't result in horrific multi-million kill counts per fuckin' skirmish, because UC Gundam is not exactly a very positive look at human beings in general. The good ones are ground to a paste, by time and circumstances or by the many battles that are waged, and the bad ones only pay for doing horrific things AFTER getting away with it for months/years/decades, if at all. Most of the important deaths in Gundam ultimately change nothing outside of their immediate circumstances, and that's really the best anyone can hope for because Everyone Is poo poo, Forever. Newtypes ultimately solve nothing, and most of the time are no better as people than the bog standard human being, regardless of whether or not they got brought up as a Cyber Newtype, are 100% Organic No GMO, were or were not abused as part of their formative years. The most positive thing to come out of Universal Century is UNICORN's message of BUT EVEN SOOOOOOOO, and we already know as fans that this is utter loving wank at best. The rest of the UC world has basically given up on understanding or communication, and not even a newtype sacrificing himself for our sins, his space ghost visible around the whole Earth Sphere, was enough. In Gundam 00, "understanding" is the first step to solving a problem. Change is equally important. You can "understand" all you want about someone, but even so, if you are unwilling to change in light of your newfound understanding and keep being a vile poo poo, well, you're Ribbons Almarck or Ali Al Saachez. And for those people, there's the sick extended final battle punctuated by a sword to the face. If Setsuna's a newtype, the biggest difference between him and Amuro isn't that one lived and the other didn't, it's that one guy's magic had an audience receptive to its effects. 00 ultimately ends with humanity communicating, understanding, and changing as a result of contact with the ELS. I don't think it was particularly well done, but it's there. Understanding by itself can't solve a drat thing, and if it actually did then Gundam 00 S2 would be a hell of a lot worse than it actually is while being just as handwavey and just as filled with magic do-everything sparkleshit.
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Nov 28, 2016 08:49
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The 00 movie has a lot of bad things but one thing I liked about it was the back and forth between humanity and the ELS, even if there's a lot of issues at parts with the depiction. My take on it is that the ELS can't really interact with anything except quantum brainwaves and their primary physical method of interaction is assimilation. So of course, when the former doesn't work (puny human brains) and the latter just leads to them getting shot at, they incorrectly make the assumption that humanity communicates via shooting. So they start shooting back. Obviously it's a bit handwavey since you'd think they'd get some information from all the assimilation they did to understand humanity better than shoot lasers, and it ends up being a setup for some excessive beamspamporn but it's a nice take on aliens that's usually lacking in media.
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Nov 28, 2016 09:08
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Xarbala posted:That didn't stop Tomino 
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Nov 28, 2016 09:37
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Xarbala posted:That didn't stop Tomino I got to the SEEKRIT LINEAGE plot twist and gave the gently caress up on it. That show is loving weird and not in a cool way. On the upside the cast is more relatable and realistic feeling than Macross Delta. (Course Gundam has War in the Pocket and Macross has Plus so both have some really high notes. War in the Pocket is a bit better though.) But a lot of anime now seems to be making weird unrealistic and relatable characters. Like there has always been some of that but they were done with enough style that you didn't care or Facepalm when SPACE MILITARY acted more stupid and lax than real ones. Now it's just... Wtf.
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Nov 28, 2016 10:01
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The Capital Army were not a trained military force by modern standards. They were more like WWI enlistees off to give the drat Pirates and Ameri .
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Nov 28, 2016 10:16
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The Capital Army were not a trained military force by modern standards. They were more like WWI enlistees off to give the drat Pirates and Ameri It's even a reoccurring bit where they pretty much outright say that the army is newly formed and many of them don't know what they're doing.
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Nov 28, 2016 11:36
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Including Tomino.
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Nov 28, 2016 14:25
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Ka0 posted:Including Tomino. Tomino knows exactly what they're doing. The entire point of the various armies is that they are people raised in an era of literal peace and prosperity where war is such a long ago and forgotten thing that nobody has any real mental consequences for it anymore. Which is somewhat exaggerated in G-Reco land but is an actual real-world problem facing quite a few countries (including Japan, whose increase trending towards pro-militerization is a good chunk of what G-Reco is about.)
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Nov 28, 2016 15:59
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G-Reco is great and was a breath of fresh air in modern mecha anime. 
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