Gundam Thread 5: That's no Anime, boy! No Anime!

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Dulkor: Feb 28, 2009

That said, the simple fact she already goes as far as 'gently caress Zeon Pride' and backstabbing the Delaz fleet to the Federation elevates her over a good chunk of 0083's cast by itself.

Not that that's a particularly high bar.

# ? Dec 15, 2016 09:08

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# ? May 24, 2024 12:47

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

Raxivace posted:

IIRC that colony was also the home of Shiro Amada from The 08th MS Team.

Shiro is one my favorite Gundam main protagonists because he's just so chill. He just wants to hang with his girlfriend and say gently caress everything else.

Some people I know hate him for this because he blows off both the Federation an Zeon and they cite his backstory as "he should know better." As in, seeing the Federation can be really lovely shouldn't make him stop wanting to fight Zeon due to what Zeon did to his colony.

Droyer posted:

See, I don't agree with this. As was stated just a few posts above, none of the things that make Cima interesting are in 0083. Cima isn't an interesting or good character in 0083, she's made one retroactively by supplemental material that came out later.

Yep. Cima in SM is pretty much just that evil witch lady that everyone thinks is scum. Combined with her attire and evil laugh, I never thought of her as anything but a dumb villain.

# ? Dec 15, 2016 09:13

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

Most of my annoyance for Shiro comes from his ear scratching voice actor, despite being the oldest pilot protagonist in the franchise. He's 23 but Steve Staley puts on his most forced teenager voice ever. It works for Banagher because Banagher is rather patheiticand young, but it does not suit Shiro at all. The Japanese VA is better for sounding young but not sounding forced.

As for his characterization, he's good when he isn't pining after Aina. The worst episode ever happens when they try to push a romance out of the two leads. I'd prefer seeing Shiro's turn to pacifism come from a gradual shift rather than one night of getting his dick wet on everest. The romance doesn't feel well earned or developed which us why a lot of people get frustrated at him and Aina. It's romeo and Juliet except instead of dying they build a cabin in the woods between a pregnant woman and a cripple. If the show just left out that last episode, I'd have been fine with them faking their death and ditching everyone

# ? Dec 15, 2016 10:13

Kanos: Sep 6, 2006; was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

MonsieurChoc posted:

Well, she does almost saved the day only for things to be hosed over by the "heroes". Seriously, without Kou and his crew, she'd have stopped Delaz!

Her plan actually got derailed by Delaz and Gato being way more crazy zealous than she anticipated; she completely successfully sprang her trap and took Delaz hostage but Delaz's response was "gently caress it, my life doesn't actually matter, Gato finish the mission" which basically left her up poo poo creek.

Kou murdering the poo poo out of her was after the fact and basically Kou throwing a tantrum.

# ? Dec 15, 2016 11:29

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

I never finished 0083 because it was terrible but I do recall Burning died because of Cima. I imagine Kou killed her in revenge.

# ? Dec 15, 2016 11:34

Kanos: Sep 6, 2006; was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

NikkolasKing posted:

I never finished 0083 because it was terrible but I do recall Burning died because of Cima. I imagine Kou killed her in revenge.

Cima hosed up the GP-01(because Kou was an idiot) and in another encounter Burning died because of a suit malfunction caused by damage received in a skirmish with the Cima fleet, yes. However, Kou murdered her and blew up her battleship while she was screaming about how they were on the same side because she had formally switched to the Federation.

# ? Dec 15, 2016 11:41

Tae: Oct 24, 2010; Hello? Can you hear me? ...Perhaps if I shout? AAAAAAAAAH!

I mean, she got stsbbed directly by the barrel of the dendorium. She couldn't have been that great of a pilot

# ? Dec 15, 2016 13:56

Monaghan: Dec 29, 2006

I always liked the little detail of the gerbera tetra being blown up is that after it gets hit with the dendrobium barrel, it's arms get knocked off. The knocked off arm still has it's finger on the trigger of her machine gun, resulting in the rifle shooting the body of the suit.

for all it's flaws, 0083 really paid attention to the little things during the mech fights.

# ? Dec 15, 2016 20:03

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

0083 does a lot of things right. The music is awesome, the animation is great, the action is mostly good, there are a few strong side characters, and the general plot is decent. It's just that that plot was being used to tell the stupidest story possible with the worst characters in the clumsiest manner.

# ? Dec 15, 2016 20:52

Belzac: Mar 20, 2008; The third fracture I would do away with...I can't, sorry.

F R A C T U R E

I think the characters being stupid idiots is classic Gundam.

# ? Dec 15, 2016 21:46

AradoBalanga: Jan 3, 2013

Arcsquad12 posted:

0083 does a lot of things right. The music is awesome, the animation is great, the action is mostly good, there are a few strong side characters, and the general plot is decent. It's just that that plot was being used to tell the stupidest story possible with the worst characters in the clumsiest manner.

Personally, I think 0083 suffers a bit from prequelitis. It knows that it has to either set the groundwork or directly lead into Zeta Gundam, so it does limit some parts of the storytelling potential. But even with that limitation, there is still so much that could be told in that time frame, and the show does not attempt to even try to reach those heights. You could explore how the Federation let the spoils of victory get to their heads and warp their views on the world or how the remnants of Zeon cope with being labeled as monsters and villains because of the actions of a select few leaders. But we don't get that kind of story; instead, we get a small glimpse of interesting ideas or characters that then get violently smothered in order to make room for a bad plot. A plot that focuses on a group of mostly arrogant and/or unlikable people that do things in ways so stupid it baffles the mind in order to set up a show that was made about 4-5 years earlier.

In all honesty, it sometimes feels like they wrote the ending first, then tried to come up with an easy way to get to the ending without taking time to think over what was being written. The fact that things like Cima getting a much more expanded and interesting backstory outside of the OVA is baffling. What was so hard about doing that in the show from the get-go? Oh right, we needed more time devoted to Nina having sexual tension with Kou or Monsha making characters like Guy Gardner or Frank Castle look like saints. Because that's more interesting than exploring a post-war world that is ripe with storytelling possibilities.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 02:10

chiasaur11: Oct 22, 2012

AradoBalanga posted:

Personally, I think 0083 suffers a bit from prequelitis. It knows that it has to either set the groundwork or directly lead into Zeta Gundam, so it does limit some parts of the storytelling potential. But even with that limitation, there is still so much that could be told in that time frame, and the show does not attempt to even try to reach those heights. You could explore how the Federation let the spoils of victory get to their heads and warp their views on the world or how the remnants of Zeon cope with being labeled as monsters and villains because of the actions of a select few leaders. But we don't get that kind of story; instead, we get a small glimpse of interesting ideas or characters that then get violently smothered in order to make room for a bad plot. A plot that focuses on a group of mostly arrogant and/or unlikable people that do things in ways so stupid it baffles the mind in order to set up a show that was made about 4-5 years earlier.

In all honesty, it sometimes feels like they wrote the ending first, then tried to come up with an easy way to get to the ending without taking time to think over what was being written. The fact that things like Cima getting a much more expanded and interesting backstory outside of the OVA is baffling. What was so hard about doing that in the show from the get-go? Oh right, we needed more time devoted to Nina having sexual tension with Kou or Monsha making characters like Guy Gardner or Frank Castle look like saints. Because that's more interesting than exploring a post-war world that is ripe with storytelling possibilities.

I'd just like to remind everyone that Guy Gardner was briefly a caseworker for prison inmates, but quit to become a teacher for children with disabilities as it carried less risk of him losing control of his temper and causing someone harm.

Meanwhile, Hal Jordan takes Guy's apparent death as an excuse to start hitting on his girlfriend.

What I'm saying is, Monsha has better points of comparison.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 04:09

fivegears4reverse: Apr 4, 2007; by R. Guyovich

AradoBalanga posted:

Personally, I think 0083 suffers a bit from prequelitis.

UC Gundam as a whole suffers greatly from prequelitis and sequelitis, and it usually manifests in tireless efforts to make the space nazis who stared a war that killed billions in a single day seem "not that bad after all because the federation is just as bad~"

It's pretty much the worst aspect of all UC Gundam material to the point where it's all I can do to not roll my eyes back so hard that I manage to do a backflip and break my neck on the nearest convenient solid object. And the best part of it all is that, for all of the crazy poo poo the Federation ends up doing in all the side stories and supplemental sequels/prequels/midquels/quelquels and light novels, they never, ever get to be on Zeon's level. The War Crimes Are Bad All-Century FES was already won by Zeon in UC0079 because they managed to kill like eighty percent of mankind in a week, with only minor assistance from the Feds at best. The Titans wish they could get on their level, if only there were anywhere near as many targets left to be awful to. The best part is, they'd have very likely never been a thing had Zeon not been so utterly loving horrible that they turned all of mankind on its ear (assuming they weren't choking to death on skin melting poison gas, turned to radioactive ash by the largest nuclear exchange ever, or vaporized by a colony drop).

I'll still watch UC Gundam stories, and stuff like December Sky is rad as gently caress from a pure animation standpoint, but Gundam trying to find some sort of moral equivalence between two sides of a War Crimes Race has been insufferable and deserving of mockery since like Zeta Gundam.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 04:32

chiasaur11: Oct 22, 2012

fivegears4reverse posted:

UC Gundam as a whole suffers greatly from prequelitis and sequelitis, and it usually manifests in tireless efforts to make the space nazis who stared a war that killed billions in a single day seem "not that bad after all because the federation is just as bad~"

It's pretty much the worst aspect of all UC Gundam material to the point where it's all I can do to not roll my eyes back so hard that I manage to do a backflip and break my neck on the nearest convenient solid object. And the best part of it all is that, for all of the crazy poo poo the Federation ends up doing in all the side stories and supplemental sequels/prequels/midquels/quelquels and light novels, they never, ever get to be on Zeon's level. The War Crimes Are Bad All-Century FES was already won by Zeon in UC0079 because they managed to kill like eighty percent of mankind in a week, with only minor assistance from the Feds at best. The Titans wish they could get on their level, if only there were anywhere near as many targets left to be awful to. The best part is, they'd have very likely never been a thing had Zeon not been so utterly loving horrible that they turned all of mankind on its ear (assuming they weren't choking to death on skin melting poison gas, turned to radioactive ash by the largest nuclear exchange ever, or vaporized by a colony drop).

I'll still watch UC Gundam stories, and stuff like December Sky is rad as gently caress from a pure animation standpoint, but Gundam trying to find some sort of moral equivalence between two sides of a War Crimes Race has been insufferable and deserving of mockery since like Zeta Gundam.

Something I appreciate in Plot to Assassinate Gihren and 0080 is that they have sympathetic Zeon protagonists while understanding that Gihren's administration was the worst.

Sure, Captain Hardy's a good man on the wrong side, but his boss is a genocidal maniac who's sabotaging his own men so he has an excuse to murder millions of innocent people.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 05:57

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

fivegears4reverse posted:

I'll still watch UC Gundam stories, and stuff like December Sky is rad as gently caress from a pure animation standpoint, but Gundam trying to find some sort of moral equivalence between two sides of a War Crimes Race has been insufferable and deserving of mockery since like Zeta Gundam.

It's definitely been taken over by Zekewank but I'd put the turning point at 0083. Zeon might be defanged in Zeta but they're still space nazis out to hijack a giant laser to terrorize the solar system and the Federation are at worst good-men-doing-nothing (who are convinced through oratory to stop funding the Titans). 0080 plays up the "good men on the wrong side" angle but in the end the Federation is 100% justified in everything they do while Zeon tries to genocide a colony at the request of a guy named "Colonel Killing".

It's not until 0083 and Space Nazi Romeo and Juliet that the false equivalence comes in.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 06:07

Lord Koth: Jan 8, 2012

Hey now, that's not entirely fair. The vast majority of the Principality of Zeon became the Republic of Zeon after the 1YW and they basically either just sat there peacefully, or sided with the Earth Federation, through all the rest of the conflicts until at least 0100 UC. It's just lots of crazy holdouts from the war and random groups that took up the Zeon name for one reason or another that kept warcriming anything and everything.

Admittedly when there are like 20 distinct groups using some variation of that name over the years it gets a bit confusing. :v:

# ? Dec 16, 2016 06:33

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

chiasaur11 posted:

Something I appreciate in Plot to Assassinate Gihren and 0080 is that they have sympathetic Zeon protagonists while understanding that Gihren's administration was the worst.

Sure, Captain Hardy's a good man on the wrong side, but his boss is a genocidal maniac who's sabotaging his own men so he has an excuse to murder millions of innocent people.

The main character also quit the army because he got PTSD after seeing the wreck of the colony drop.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 06:34

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

I can't remember which Gundam game it is in, but one mission where you play as a Zaku pilot escorting the colony drop ends with the squadron cheering on the destruction. The flight leader turns to the protagonist and asks if he's okay with what just happened, to which the protagonist says he's really upset at the death. The flight leader replies "me too", and turns away. I thought that was interesting because it showed two different sides of Zeon. There are the people in the army who believe that the genocide was horrific and feel regret over their actions, but then there are other people, regular joes, who are gung ho about throwing space colonies into the planet, just because they want to get back at the Federation.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 07:26

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Microcline posted:

It's definitely been taken over by Zekewank but I'd put the turning point at 0083. Zeon might be defanged in Zeta but they're still space nazis out to hijack a giant laser to terrorize the solar system and the Federation are at worst good-men-doing-nothing (who are convinced through oratory to stop funding the Titans). 0080 plays up the "good men on the wrong side" angle but in the end the Federation is 100% justified in everything they do while Zeon tries to genocide a colony at the request of a guy named "Colonel Killing".

It's not until 0083 and Space Nazi Romeo and Juliet that the false equivalence comes in.

It's worth noting the rest of the original UC saga, though. In ZZ and CCA, the Federation was clearly not a force for good - every representative we saw was callous, self-absorbed, and happily nodding along to Zeon atrocities, and the heroes actually had to rebel against it to get poo poo done. I can see that shifting later writers' perspectives on the early Federation, if only to establish more of a sense of continuity.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 08:57

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

It was always intended to some degree that the Federation is flawed. They represent the status quo and one thing Gundam is never in favor of is the status quo. The Federation is full of Earthbound diplomats who want to use Amuro as a weapon and the only sympathetic one is General Revil who is also the one specifically pushing the idea of Newtypes. Zeon being atrotciously awful tends to overshadow the idea that the Federation's status quo adherence is damaging and harmful as well. (This is something Unicorn actually did do well with Riddhe, as he's both someone with a very good coherent 'gently caress Zeon' argument and a giant walking beneficiary of that status quo.)

The ongoing problem in the UC is that Zeon is the only organization to make any headway against the Federation and so their imagery and rhetoric dominates any group attempting tor rebel. The closest was the AEUG who were laser-focused against the Titans and who ended up being assimilated into the Federation except for the ones who hosed off or died. There's never been any genuine attempts to change the Federation that aren't coopted by crazy Zabist assholes because those crazy assholes are the only ones with enough leverage to make the Federation take notice. it's an insanely lovely situation overall because you're trapped between an increasingly meaningless status quo and a bunch of rampaging assholes who want to change things but also are Hitlers.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 09:05

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

ImpAtom posted:

It was always intended to some degree that the Federation is flawed. They represent the status quo and one thing Gundam is never in favor of is the status quo. The Federation is full of Earthbound diplomats who want to use Amuro as a weapon and the only sympathetic one is General Revil who is also the one specifically pushing the idea of Newtypes. Zeon being atrotciously awful tends to overshadow the idea that the Federation's status quo adherence is damaging and harmful as well. (This is something Unicorn actually did do well with Riddhe, as he's both someone with a very good coherent 'gently caress Zeon' argument and a giant walking beneficiary of that status quo.)

The ongoing problem in the UC is that Zeon is the only organization to make any headway against the Federation and so their imagery and rhetoric dominates any group attempting tor rebel. The closest was the AEUG who were laser-focused against the Titans and who ended up being assimilated into the Federation except for the ones who hosed off or died. There's never been any genuine attempts to change the Federation that aren't coopted by crazy Zabist assholes because those crazy assholes are the only ones with enough leverage to make the Federation take notice. it's an insanely lovely situation overall because you're trapped between an increasingly meaningless status quo and a bunch of rampaging assholes who want to change things but also are Hitlers.

It's also worth remembering that the AEUG's Earth branch, Karaba, specifically died after being betrayed by the Federation at Dublin, and then their Federationised remnant, Londo Bell, had to mutiny en masses to save the day. Twice, if you count Unicorn.

# ? Dec 16, 2016 09:15

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

Welcome to the universal century. A bad situation only made barely tolerable by having an alternative that is infinitely worse.

And then, once the zeon finally get put down, you start getting Jupiter assholes wrecking poo poo, followed by mass starvation and guillotines operated by insect fetishists

Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Dec 16, 2016

# ? Dec 16, 2016 09:31

chiasaur11: Oct 22, 2012