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Caros posted:Seed destiny, age, 0083, build fighters tri, Gundam x, f91. Could definitely go on and there are a ton that it is at least on more equal footing with. Yeah, I can agree with all of these being below IBO on my list minimum. Maybe giving 0083 a pass for some sweet-rear end animation but even then eeeh.
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Apr 10, 2017 19:31
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ImpAtom posted:Yeah, I can agree with all of these being below IBO on my list minimum. Maybe giving 0083 a pass for some sweet-rear end animation but even then eeeh. Yeah, the sweet rear end animation I'd nice, but it really doesn't make up for the plot being hot garbage, sadly.
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Apr 10, 2017 19:32
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the first half of 00 is cool but the second half fell apart utterly. both halves of IBO are solid so as a complete show it's definitely leagues above 00
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Apr 10, 2017 19:55
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I adore 00S1 and love the Gundam designs all the way through but S2 shits the bed so ludicrously badly that IBO crushes it by a mile.
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Apr 10, 2017 20:27
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I like both season of 00 but IBO does seem more well thought out and more internally consistent.
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Apr 10, 2017 20:30
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Guy Goodbody posted:I wasn't crazy about Iok's death either. He's shown to be so dumb and malleable, he will basically do anything as long as it fits his view of nobility. I wish Rustal had died, and it had been Iok who ended up implementing the reforms to Gjallarhorn. Rustal should definitely have not been the one to reform Gjallahorn. He should have won the fight against McGillis, but be unable to continue the status quo, and be forced by new people stepping up to fight for reforms.
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Apr 10, 2017 20:50
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Guy Goodbody posted:I wasn't crazy about Iok's death either. He's shown to be so dumb and malleable, he will basically do anything as long as it fits his view of nobility. I wish Rustal had died, and it had been Iok who ended up implementing the reforms to Gjallarhorn. Iok's entire character arc is that he's so far up his own rear end that he's completely unable to draw reasonable conclusions or learn from his mistakes. It would be a pretty ridiculous leap for him to go from "the way to honor the sacrifice of my dead men is to murder civilians with illegal superweapons" to "man, the plight of the poor and dispossessed is pretty lovely, let's do something about that". He never got a single scene where he was shown to give an ounce of a poo poo about anyone but himself, Rustal, or his own men. Kuroyama posted:Rustal should definitely have not been the one to reform Gjallahorn. He should have won the fight against McGillis, but be unable to continue the status quo, and be forced by new people stepping up to fight for reforms. Rustal is shown to care primarily about stability; he's not at all married to the idea of Gjallarhorn as a static organization. That was the entire point of him waxing philosophical about how McGillis views Gjallarhorn in the context of symbolism and fairy tales from the past while Rustal views Gjallarhorn in the context of an evolving organization that changes with the times as necessary. It makes total sense for him to push for reforms if they ensure the continued integrity and stability of the organization rather than its destruction or decay.
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Apr 10, 2017 21:34
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Yeah, the issues with the ending were a lack of characters doing things on screen, not characterization itself. I don't know how anyone can watch the last ten episodes and not think it makes perfect sense that Rustal would be the one to push for reforms if he saw the writing on the wall - but he would sure as hell make sure he was the one on top after all the paperwork, which he, uh, did. Also lol at the concept of Iok ever doing anything even remotely political ever that didn't simply enforce his childish notions of how people be.
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Apr 10, 2017 22:08
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Kanos posted:Iok's entire character arc is that he's so far up his own rear end that he's completely unable to draw reasonable conclusions or learn from his mistakes. It would be a pretty ridiculous leap for him to go from "the way to honor the sacrifice of my dead men is to murder civilians with illegal superweapons" to "man, the plight of the poor and dispossessed is pretty lovely, let's do something about that". He never got a single scene where he was shown to give an ounce of a poo poo about anyone but himself, Rustal, or his own men. He's a moron, he only used superweapons because Rustal told him to. If Kudelia was standing in the same room as Iok she could talk him into full communism in half an hour
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Apr 10, 2017 22:16
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Guy Goodbody posted:He's a moron, he only used superweapons because Rustal told him to. If Kudelia was standing in the same room as Iok she could talk him into full communism in half an hour Rustal explicitly didn't want him to use those superweapons and it would have been a really big political problem for Rustal that would have been used against him if Gaelio wasn't around to flush McGillis into open warfare. Iok's usage of Dainsleifs was one of the primary reasons Rustal put him under house arrest, because he realized Iok was dangerously naive about the political situation. Note that Rustal not wanting Iok to use Dainsleifs wasn't due to Rustal being morally opposed to their usage(because as the show displays, he's pretty eager to use them), but Rustal understands the need for a plausible justification to play for the cameras before unleashing stuff like that. That's why he went through the whole song and dance of planting an agent in McGillis's rebel fleet to fire the first shot.
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Apr 10, 2017 22:28
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ImpAtom posted:Yeah, I can agree with all of these being below IBO on my list minimum. Maybe giving 0083 a pass for some sweet-rear end animation but even then eeeh. Regardless of plot issues, X did have relatively good main characters, and developed arcs for them. IBO is better than it in some areas, though at least some of the plot issues X had were of course due to having the # of episodes massively slashed in the middle of the series, but in terms of main characters I think X somewhat flattens IBO.
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Apr 10, 2017 22:31
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Kanos posted:Rustal is shown to care primarily about stability; he's not at all married to the idea of Gjallarhorn as a static organization. That was the entire point of him waxing philosophical about how McGillis views Gjallarhorn in the context of symbolism and fairy tales from the past while Rustal views Gjallarhorn in the context of an evolving organization that changes with the times as necessary. It makes total sense for him to push for reforms if they ensure the continued integrity and stability of the organization rather than its destruction or decay. But then you have the part where he refuses Orga's surrender to protect Gjallahorn's image as the end-all-be-all in power. If he had misread the situation and assumed that McGillis's rebellion would be a one-off thing that could be crushed and everyone will step back in line, then have to put up with new groups calling for reforms to the system, I'd be more satisfied. Darth Walrus posted:Once you get past the questionable decision of making Imperial Japan the main allegory, IBO has some really intelligent things to say about the struggle of the marginalised to make their voices heard. This is a big thing, Rustal didn't hear any of the marginalized, so he should not be the one who gets to grant their wishes.
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Apr 10, 2017 22:44
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Kuroyama posted:But then you have the part where he refuses Orga's surrender to protect Gjallahorn's image as the end-all-be-all in power. None of that is mutually contradictory though. Rustal needs to establish control so he doesn't have a bunch of more uprisings that can make the political situation worse and spiral out of control. So tekkadan had to be made an example of. After stability is established move on to reforms. I do agree it should have been more hinted towards though.
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Apr 10, 2017 22:58
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Kanos posted:Rustal explicitly didn't want him to use those superweapons and it would have been a really big political problem for Rustal that would have been used against him if Gaelio wasn't around to flush McGillis into open warfare. Iok's usage of Dainsleifs was one of the primary reasons Rustal put him under house arrest, because he realized Iok was dangerously naive about the political situation. He also knows the difference between a legitimate target (an enemy army that could cause you significant fatalities) and an illegitimate one (a civilian shipping company that happens to be friends with some people you blame for your own fuckups). There's a reason that Rustal goes to McMurdo to make a deal in addition to telling Iok to sit down and stop loving everything up. Rustal and Iok is like if Vetinari was friends with Lord Rust's dad. I get the feeling Rustal's response to hearing about Iok's death was, roughly "Of course he did."
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Apr 10, 2017 23:36
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Kuroyama posted:But then you have the part where he refuses Orga's surrender to protect Gjallahorn's image as the end-all-be-all in power. I think that IBO's message is a lot more cynical than that. This is what it looks like when the voices of the marginalised are heard - the powers that be give them some approximation of what they want, but they, personally, are sidelined, villainised, or outright destroyed, while a more palatable, photogenic figure who can be sold as 'one of the good ones' is lionised as the saviour of their people, regardless of how much they contributed - this, I think, is why Kudelia got sidelined in S2, as the struggle shifted from a political to a military sphere. IBO is an angry, angry show.
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Apr 10, 2017 23:45
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genericnick posted:I don't yet know how well it holds up on a rewatch but for me it's really only Turn A that might make the cut. I never really bought into the 00 first season. I like the basic idea of the grand plan but there were a lot of things that muddled the water. Without the Thrones and whatever the season 1 badguy's name was I'd probably have enjoyed it more. At least conceptionally. I just started watching turn a for the first time and it's cool. that intro song tho, lmao 00 I thought was kinda subpar at first and nosedived into bad in the second season ibo I liked from the word go, but it does waste a lot of time and has some problems. kudelia isn't nearly as bad as what's her face from 00, but she does still disappear from relevance in season 2, and they should have explained rustal's motivations and goals better so that the ending didn't feel so out of nowhere. outside of that tho, the core cast is really strong and mika/orga made good protagonists
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Apr 10, 2017 23:59
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Manatee Cannon posted:I just started watching turn a for the first time and it's cool. that intro song tho, lmao Marina Ismail? (The
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Apr 11, 2017 00:06
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yea that's her. she's such a non-character in that show
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Apr 11, 2017 00:09
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I think IBO is one of the worst Gundams in my view. There were things I liked about it. When they GOT to the actual plot, I actually enjoyed it a lot more. It just felt like too much of both seasons, but especially season 1, was faffing about. This could be because they were both more or less written on the fly with basically different premises, but it didn't really help their cohesion. Like, they could have easily had time for a proper epilogue if they hadn't spent so much time on the Tekkadan styling on useless losers. Also disliked: Tonally the show was incredibly inconsistent. We'd have scenes like the one with Mika and Orga in season 1 where he's grabbing Orga's collar and pulling him back on he path of idiocy but the music seems like it wants us to think that this is a heroic and inspiring scene. Frankly, I couldn't care less about most of the Tekkadan. I ended up liking Shino and Yamagi and that's it. Mika and Atra and Mika and Kudelia had very little chemistry, though part of this was due to how little they got to interact overall. Kudelia and Atra basically had more chemistry because they got to bond in scenes that weren't painfully forced. I was way more invested in McGillis and the whole Gjallarhorn civil war plot. The animation was pretty bad for the most part. The fights didn't have much weight to them most of the time and they just substituted giant melee weapons for beam weapons when it came to one-hit kills. I also saw what would be 'tween' frames lasting for entire scenes and felt embarrassed watching them.
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Apr 11, 2017 00:13
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Kchama posted:I think IBO is one of the worst Gundams in my view. There were things I liked about it. When they GOT to the actual plot, I actually enjoyed it a lot more. It just felt like too much of both seasons, but especially season 1, was faffing about. Honest question, but what Gundam do you like if not this? Because apart from maybe Gundam as tank style from 0083 and 08th mobile suit team I can't really think of any Gundam show that does the 'these are enormous loving robots fighting' better than IBO.
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Apr 11, 2017 00:21
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Darth Walrus posted:I think that IBO's message is a lot more cynical than that. This is what it looks like when the voices of the marginalised are heard - the powers that be give them some approximation of what they want, but they, personally, are sidelined, villainised, or outright destroyed, while a more palatable, photogenic figure who can be sold as 'one of the good ones' is lionised as the saviour of their people, regardless of how much they contributed - this, I think, is why Kudelia got sidelined in S2, as the struggle shifted from a political to a military sphere. Yeah, that's kind of what I got from it. Nobody cares about the truth. Nobody wants to find out if Tekkadan was really as bad as the news said, as bad as the stories said. The only people who do know aren't going to make a fuss because the truth isn't worth it. The sole group that still clings to the old Tekkadan are out for revenge rather than anything else. The story of the marginalized is used by the powerful to push forth their own agenda, and the other groups of marginalized people are cowed or satisfied with the results to not push back against it.
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Apr 11, 2017 00:22
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Caros posted:Honest question, but what Gundam do you like if not this? Because apart from maybe Gundam as tank style from 0083 and 08th mobile suit team I can't really think of any Gundam show that does the 'these are enormous loving robots fighting' better than IBO. I'm talking less literal weight and more that the fights left me with very little impression. For most of the show they were rather rote in terms of how they played out. I had this same problem with a lot of the fights in the middle of GSD too.
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Apr 11, 2017 00:30
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Kuroyama posted:But then you have the part where he refuses Orga's surrender to protect Gjallahorn's image as the end-all-be-all in power. Rustal refused Orga's surrender because he's interested in maintaining Gjallarhorn's role as supreme peacekeeper because he believes that is necessary for stability, just as he was willing to institute some internal reforms(which oh so coincidentally left him as top dog) to ensure that Gjallarhorn itself remained sound and intact. He is repeatedly and consistently framed as a very intelligent, forward-thinking individual who understands what makes people tick, and anyone like that is going to look at the huge rebellion McGillis spawned and go "huh, there might be some legitimate concerns here that I need to pay lip service to addressing in order to quash that discontent". There's no rule that says that the person who grants the wishes of the marginalized has to give a poo poo about them, either in the show or in reality. If anything, the show's depiction of how Rustal got things done lines up far more with how these kinds of things often happen in reality - where popular discontent boils over violently and then the ruling class consents to some minor reforms in order to take the momentum out of the popular revolt - than a storybook ending where Queen Kudelia saves the world.
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Apr 11, 2017 00:48
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Kchama posted:I'm talking less literal weight and more that the fights left me with very little impression. For most of the show they were rather rote in terms of how they played out. I had this same problem with a lot of the fights in the middle of GSD too. Thats cool. Just wasn't sure if you were being literal. I don't agree with a lot of your complaints (different strokes etc) but that one simply seemed nonsense to me if you meant actual weight.
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Apr 11, 2017 00:53
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Darth Walrus posted:I think that IBO's message is a lot more cynical than that. This is what it looks like when the voices of the marginalised are heard - the powers that be give them some approximation of what they want, but they, personally, are sidelined, villainised, or outright destroyed, while a more palatable, photogenic figure who can be sold as 'one of the good ones' is lionised as the saviour of their people, regardless of how much they contributed - this, I think, is why Kudelia got sidelined in S2, as the struggle shifted from a political to a military sphere. If anything I think they were a little too vague on that. Like, it could have used one or two more scenes to make it clear what's going on, and that Rustal's basically been convinced that introducing limited reforms are about the only way avoid the whole thing repeating itself in a couple of decades, and sees Kudelia is a convenient face to deal with. Or better yet, have Kudelia herself come to this realisation and have to have a brief internal crisis about cutting a deal with the person responsible for murdering her friends and lover. I can respect show don't tell, but in this case I think it was too subtle.
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Apr 11, 2017 01:42
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Kanos posted:Rustal refused Orga's surrender because he's interested in maintaining Gjallarhorn's role as supreme peacekeeper because he believes that is necessary for stability, just as he was willing to institute some internal reforms(which oh so coincidentally left him as top dog) to ensure that Gjallarhorn itself remained sound and intact. He is repeatedly and consistently framed as a very intelligent, forward-thinking individual who understands what makes people tick, and anyone like that is going to look at the huge rebellion McGillis spawned and go "huh, there might be some legitimate concerns here that I need to pay lip service to addressing in order to quash that discontent". It's a bad ending. The revolt should not be the final moment in a social "revolution", it should be the match that sets everything off. Darth Walrus posted:I think that IBO's message is a lot more cynical than that. This is what it looks like when the voices of the marginalised are heard - the powers that be give them some approximation of what they want, but they, personally, are sidelined, villainised, or outright destroyed, while a more palatable, photogenic figure who can be sold as 'one of the good ones' is lionised as the saviour of their people, regardless of how much they contributed - this, I think, is why Kudelia got sidelined in S2, as the struggle shifted from a political to a military sphere. If IBO were an angry show, the ending would be filled with riots and vandalism, while Rustal is stuck realizing he isn't as world savvy as he thinks.
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Apr 11, 2017 01:56
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Darth Walrus posted:I think that that was deliberate, as part of one of the show's tricker, more complex themes - that marginalisation and abuse are degrading, not ennobling, creating a vicious cycle in which the marginalised are easier to vilify, but that this doesn't mean we should, or that who they are or what they do is valueless. I was very much reminded of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana, where the health of the characters' romantic and sexual relationships is closely tied to the health of the land itself. I'm not sure I'd quite file Nadi and Merribit in the same bin as most of the relationships on the show. I mean, there's an age gap, but he seems to be somewhere in his early forties, and she seems to be in her late 20s, which... unusual but not absurd. It's not exactly Prince Andrei and Natasha, you know? That said, it doesn't disprove the theme at all, since they're unusual in Tekkadan in that they weren't on society's lowest rung. Merribit was pretty well off, and Nadi was in a skilled career drawing tolerable money. Still a long way from even Merribit's rung on the ladder (Martian cyborg is a lower class niche), but he didn't have a boot on his neck all his life like most of the protagonists.
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Apr 11, 2017 02:23
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Kuroyama posted:It's a bad ending. The revolt should not be the final moment in a social "revolution", it should be the match that sets everything off. The social revolution isn't over. The last political scene we get is Kudelia and Rustal collaborating to pass a bill banning human debris, which is incremental progress towards making a less lovely world, not a "happily ever after" moment. Incidentally, Kudelia's entire approach to the horrifying poverty and social issues was incrementalism rather than revolution - remember that her entire objective in season 1 was to deliver a speech to convince an economic bloc to give Mars slightly more economic autonomy so they could better their situation, not "FREE MARS NOW!!!". As for being "the match that sets everything off", what is there left to set off? The open revolt was a coup de tat led by a single charismatic rebel who bamboozled a bunch of head-up-their-rear end nobility, child soldiers, and grunts used to toeing the line and following orders into believing that he was the one in charge by doing the equivalent of rules lawyering by claiming he owns the Bael so everyone listens to him. It wasn't a popular revolt of the common man, and it got totally, utterly, and completely crushed with little to no meaningful damage done to the faction suppressing it. The ringleader of the revolt was outed as a lunatic malcontent and killed and his closest allies were publicly demonized and then killed or driven so far into hiding that nobody knows they survived. Rustal then pushed concessions and reforms in order to placate less extreme but still discontented segments of the revolt and society in order to tamp down on any potential follow-ups which would largely deflate any further attempts at popular revolt. There's even a scene when Arianhrod is engaging McGillis's revolutionary fleet when he first fires the Dainsleifs where he instructs his men to focus their fire on McGillis's die hards and leave the rest of the rebellious forces mostly intact because the moment McGillis gets his rear end kicked they'll fall back into line and there's no sense in wasting good soldiers.
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Apr 11, 2017 02:24
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Kanos posted:The social revolution isn't over. The last political scene we get is Kudelia and Rustal collaborating to pass a bill banning human debris, which is incremental progress towards making a less lovely world, not a "happily ever after" moment. Incidentally, Kudelia's entire approach to the horrifying poverty and social issues was incrementalism rather than revolution - remember that her entire objective in season 1 was to deliver a speech to convince an economic bloc to give Mars slightly more economic autonomy so they could better their situation, not "FREE MARS NOW!!!". The human debris ban is going to be a landmark moment in that world, and Rustal does not deserve to be the one who gets to end it. quote:As for being "the match that sets everything off", what is there left to set off? The open revolt was a coup de tat led by a single charismatic rebel who bamboozled a bunch of head-up-their-rear end nobility, child soldiers, and grunts used to toeing the line and following orders into believing that he was the one in charge by doing the equivalent of rules lawyering by claiming he owns the Bael so everyone listens to him. It wasn't a popular revolt of the common man, and it got totally, utterly, and completely crushed with little to no meaningful damage done to the faction suppressing it. The ringleader of the revolt was outed as a lunatic malcontent and killed and his closest allies were publicly demonized and then killed or driven so far into hiding that nobody knows they survived. Rustal then pushed concessions and reforms in order to placate less extreme but still discontented segments of the revolt and society in order to tamp down on any potential follow-ups which would largely deflate any further attempts at popular revolt. There's even a scene when Arianhrod is engaging McGillis's revolutionary fleet when he first fires the Dainsleifs where he instructs his men to focus their fire on McGillis's die hards and leave the rest of the rebellious forces mostly intact because the moment McGillis gets his rear end kicked they'll fall back into line and there's no sense in wasting good soldiers. My dissatisfaction comes from Rustal being too perfect a villain. If there was something that showed him to have a flaw (like a misunderstanding of people too far below him), then he would be much more interesting.
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Apr 11, 2017 02:44
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he's not perfect. he's just up against a lunatic and literal children while not being a moron like iok. plus he had a massively superior force so him winning in the end was pretty simple
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Apr 11, 2017 02:47
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The gap between the end of Tekkadan and the end of the show made it sound like Rustal was able to get everything done nice and clean. That shouldn't be the case. My "light the fire" comment was to mean that there should have been smaller protests against Gjallahorn, because it gets out that McGillis was promising to make things better for lower classes and they decide they would like them. Maybe McMurdo or someone else from Teiwaz releases information about Iok framing the Turbines, and that creates more ill will towards Gjallahorn. Rustal should have won the military battle, but lose the social war. He wants to sit back and think that things are good and comfy again, but things work out wrong and Tekkadan end up as martyrs for the cause of reform in the system.
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Apr 11, 2017 03:07
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Kuroyama posted:The human debris ban is going to be a landmark moment in that world, and Rustal does not deserve to be the one who gets to end it. Deserve's got nothing to do with it. He's not perfect. People have pointed out that he was too lenient with Iok (which gives McGillis a pretty big round of political ammunition at the start of his rebellion), and that, generally, he's a conventional strategist, going for the slow and grinding wins rather than planning for Tekkadan style death or glory runs. If Julieta was just a little worse a pilot (she's not a match for Amida or Mika, but she's still drat good) he would have gotten the Kycilia special, because he didn't think someone would pull a move that crazy when all hope was lost. But you don't need to be perfect when you can get away with drat good, and Rustal had the talent and the advantages he needed to win. Plus unlike most people on the show he didn't go in assuming things would come easy.
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Apr 11, 2017 03:15
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Kuroyama posted:The human debris ban is going to be a landmark moment in that world, and Rustal does not deserve to be the one who gets to end it. What does deserving have anything to do with it? That's not how politics work, at all, and Rustal's not passing this stuff out of the goodness of his heart because he's actually a super swell guy. He's a pragmatist who recognizes that some measures are necessary to forestall further unrest. Banning Human Debris effectively nips any future attempts at Tekkadan: The Sequel in the bud, as an example. Rustal is hardly a perfect antagonist. His plan to discredit McGillis on Earth ends with one of his most loyal subordinates dead and McGillis himself largely unharmed, It takes him absolute ages to put a leash on Iok despite Iok repeatedly opening dangerous vulnerabilities in his political position, and he dangerously underestimates Tekkadan's level of desperation to the point where he is nearly killed for it. Just because he makes smart moves and ends up winning in the end doesn't mean he's perfect. His opponents are incredibly weak and easy to outmaneuver: a psychopathic manchild who lives in a fairytale realm, a bunch of Carta-like rejects who value bluster and honor over results, and a gaggle of feral child soldiers whose only response to any situation they end up involved in is naked, brute force. Kuroyama posted:The gap between the end of Tekkadan and the end of the show made it sound like Rustal was able to get everything done nice and clean. That shouldn't be the case. My "light the fire" comment was to mean that there should have been smaller protests against Gjallahorn, because it gets out that McGillis was promising to make things better for lower classes and they decide they would like them. Maybe McMurdo or someone else from Teiwaz releases information about Iok framing the Turbines, and that creates more ill will towards Gjallahorn. Rustal should have won the military battle, but lose the social war. He wants to sit back and think that things are good and comfy again, but things work out wrong and Tekkadan end up as martyrs for the cause of reform in the system. Rustal very deliberately cut a deal with McMurdo after the Turbines fiasco. Why would McMurdo suddenly decide to stir poo poo with him when he can be at peace with the most powerful man in the solar system when he was more than willing to let Tekkadan wither on the vine and die? McMurdo is a businessman. Similarly, who would Rustal lose the social war against? He very deliberately ran a media campaign specifically to demonize everyone fighting against him as a dangerous criminal/psychopath and intentionally framed everything being released to the public as he and his forces fighting defensively against outlaws and criminals. Then, after the war, he shows willing to compromise and accept change, to the point of openly working with Kudelia, a woman who had very public and very deep personal ties to violent rebels. That's pretty much Rustal shouting from the rooftops "don't fight me, i'll work with you".
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Apr 11, 2017 04:00
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I'm saying that Rustal should not be the one to come down from the high tower of Gjallahorn and offer peace. He should have a misunderstood what exactly it was that made the rebellion possible, and think that crushing the rebellion would be enough. He gets blindsided by the finer details of cleaning up afterwards, and has to step down to not end up being strung up somewhere. The ending's implications were that the shift was too neat for my tastes, and probably one of the results of the writers deciding to spare some Tekkadan members. I'm done trying to argue this, I think we're talking past each other at this point.
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Apr 11, 2017 06:29
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Kuroyama posted:I'm saying that Rustal should not be the one to come down from the high tower of Gjallahorn and offer peace. He should have a misunderstood what exactly it was that made the rebellion possible, and think that crushing the rebellion would be enough. He gets blindsided by the finer details of cleaning up afterwards, and has to step down to not end up being strung up somewhere. I mean, I guess I don't understand why you want someone whose entire character is being very perceptive and analytical and specifically not hidebound by honor and tradition like Iok/Carta to horribly misread something that should be incredibly obvious to everyone involved.
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Apr 11, 2017 06:32
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Kuroyama posted:It's a bad ending. The revolt should not be the final moment in a social "revolution", it should be the match that sets everything off. I'm not sure how one follows from the other. A work ending on the villains getting away with an act of injustice is generally designed to stoke anger - it's a rallying call for the real world. You think that Boys Don't Cry was totally OK with trans folks getting murdered because the killers got away with it in the end, or that 1984 was chill with Winston getting brainwashed and the whole ghastly system grinding on? Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Apr 11, 2017 |
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Apr 11, 2017 10:00
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Kuroyama posted:I'm saying that Rustal should not be the one to come down from the high tower of Gjallahorn and offer peace. He should have a misunderstood what exactly it was that made the rebellion possible, and think that crushing the rebellion would be enough. He gets blindsided by the finer details of cleaning up afterwards, and has to step down to not end up being strung up somewhere. I'm sorry you didn't get the exact ending scenario you wanted, but that would have made zero sense given Rustal's character as depicted in this entire season.
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Apr 11, 2017 10:50
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Finally got to watch the last two episodes. The discussion here was very interesting. Walrus nailed the Imperial Japan stuff to the wall and I agree with a lot of what people are saying in terms of both the show's strengths and it's flaws. I feel like when the show was good, it was really good, but there were a lot of episodes where we were just spinning our wheels and there were a lot of wasted characters. Ultimately, I'm glad that Tekkadan were destroyed by Orga's hubris and McGillis. Orga and Mikazuki were too toxic and too reliant on utopian idealism to triumph over a harsh and powerful world, even though they both did their level best to right the ship and get their people out alive after they realised they were past the point of no return. I stand by my earlier assessment that they were very static characters. Orga worked out his mistake at the eleventh hour and turned away from his previous path of pursuing victory in the face of overwhelming odds, and ultimately died almost by accident, which felt appropriate. I liked Orga a lot and I think him coming to grips with the burdens and responsibilities of leadership was the strongest element in Tekkadan. Mikazuki, on the other hand, never really changed at all, and that perhaps was his tragedy. After Orga died, he continued to live in accordance with Orga's orders. In doing so, he was able to save his friends from destruction, though ultimately he surrendered himself to Barbatos and died alone, regarded as a demon by the world. His death, too, felt deeply appropriate. But to be fair to him, perhaps the Mikazuki of season one would have led Tekkadan to destruction in a quest for revenge, to judge by how he behaved after Biscuit's death. I may be being unfair to him in that respect. I was fond of both of them, despite them being fairly static, and I think they're good tragic characters. They were both truly brilliant in their fields, and their downfall came naturally from their fatal flaws. In that sense I shouldn't complain they couldn't change, because that was exactly the point. But Mika was more interesting to me for what he did to other people. He was absolutely strong and so became a symbol of strength, a warrior who struck terror into the heart of his enemies and drove others around him to madness and destruction. Still, one man could only do so much, and he destroyed himself bit by bit to obtain the power he needed to triumph over his enemies. As McGillis so helpfully demonstrated, the power of one man could not triumph over the military and political forces that ruled the world of Iron-Blooded Orphans, even if it could kill a lot of people in the process. McGillis was hilarious. I kept assuming he would have some grand plan, a trick to even the odds and turn situations around, or even a small plan like orchestrating Orga's death. Ultimately, through, he was just a dude who probably missed his calling in life as an ace pilot who went around being bros with Gaelio. I think you guys said everything that needed to be said about him after episode 49, so I won't belabour the point. Gaelio was the strongest single character, I think, though he definitely had his limits. He was personal until the very end, a man with no understanding of or interest in politics, simply reacting to the people he met and the things that happened to him based on his gut instincts. But thanks to that, he was able to change and become a more complete person through his interactions with Ein, Julietta, and of course McGillis. He was the Id to Rustal's Superego, the man who made the emotional case for the importance of human connections and sentiment while Rustal destroyed ancient knights with orbital strikes fired by faceless soldiers. In both cases, the moral is starkly illustrated- no man is an island. Gaelio is a truly weird hero, and the utter sincerity with which he embraces plugging himself into his murderous cyborg friend's brain as a proof of his humanity and connection to the world would be comedic if it wasn't treated so earnestly by the show. But a hero he remains, the man who exposed McGillis as a false messiah and then slew him in an honourable duel to the death. I was very pleased to see him in the final episode, liberated of his Gundam and the AV System, free to joke around the way he used to when he was just McGillis's wacky friend. Even after losing his physical and political power, he is content, demonstrating the fundamental difference between him and McGillis. I and others wondered if he might change the world, but he'd never truly possessed that kind of vision even when he paid lip service to reform in season one. Julietta had a similarly strong arc, and her dynamic with Gaelio was one of the best realised relationships in the show. His positive influence on her is perhaps his most important contribution to the wider setting (apart from the obvious one where he shot McGillis dead). She stands between Gaelio and Rustal, learning from both and changing as a result. In the end, she accepts and reaffirms her humanity while also accepting that her idol is no hero and her cause is just one among many. It's a complex and slightly contradictory worldview, since she reaffirms her cause and acts in a ruthless way to realise it while retaining the detachment to empathise with her vanquished enemies and acknowledge their common humanity. In that sense, she's one of the more complete people in the show, and I can see why Rustal would choose her as his successor. Her arc is fascinating to me, because she's an ace pilot in a Gundam show who not only fails to become stronger but learns that it would be actively harmful for her to do so. She strikes the final blow to Mikazuki when he is in no state to fight, killing him without ever coming close to matching him as a pilot. Strength was only ever a means to an end, and there are other means. Rustal has been discussed to death, and I think he's a fairly flat character anyway. He is the ideal reforming conservative, a man who understands the nature of power and the spirit of the age. His decisions weren't perfect, but they didn't need to be. In the end, they were good enough, though he was saved by a moment of outstanding prowess from Julietta. He embodies in an utterly unsubtle way the power of the collective, as symbolised by the Dainsleif, but it's notable that he only uses his trump card in appropriate situations when he's done the political groundwork to control the fallout. He didn't use it to stop McGillis's final charge, for example, even at the cost of accepting casualties. I was not surprised by his decision to reform Gjallahorn while reserving executive power for himself. I think any reasonable reading of his speech about Gjallahorn's history being more important than the legend of its founder would point to his capability to reform if the circumstances demanded it. I was surprised he lived to reach the summit, though. I don't really have anything to add about Kudelia, except to reaffirm that she was rewarded for going slowly where others rushed to their deaths. So slowly she didn't do anything in season two. Oh well! Ultimately, IBO was a story about the importance of patience, pragmatism, and a willingness to compromise with a sordid and morally bankrupt reality. Even allowing for the Imperial Japan parallels, it endlessly reaffirms that individual strength, power, and personal prowess don't really achieve anything in the grand scheme of things, even if they are beautiful and even inspiring to behold. The future is made by the truly powerful, the men and women who rely on their connections to others, the relationships they cultivate, and their understanding of how their actions influence the world around them. These people are usually either born to immense privilege (Rustal, Kudelia) or mentored by a powerful patron (Julietta), but if privilege was everything Iok and Carta would rule the world. Self-awareness, intelligence, and ability are required. As for the orphans, the most successful of them are co-opted by the system as a result of their ability (Takaki, Eugene), while a few die-hards can't let go of the past and continue to run around murdering people. It's a very cynical show, to put it lightly, but I appreciated its ultimate commitment to creating a robust world that our heroes were ultimately unable to overcome by force. For a long time, Tekkadan ran roughshod over anyone who dared stand against them, but eventually their luck ran out. Gjallahorn (America) might lose many battles, but never the war. The outcome was preordained. Lestaki fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Apr 11, 2017 |
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Apr 11, 2017 21:56
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Overall,I'd put IBO in my top ten Gundam shows. At the bottom, of course, for what it got wrong, but it's not on my worst list because it also got a lot right.
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Apr 12, 2017 00:04
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Lestaki posted:Still, one man could only do so much, and he destroyed himself bit by bit to obtain the power he needed to triumph over his enemies. As McGillis so helpfully demonstrated, the power of one man could not triumph over the military and political forces that ruled the world of Iron-Blooded Orphans The point is rather undercut when one man with a very basic machine nearly did triumph over the whole of the settings military and political forces, and was only stopped because of another single man in a single machine. Rustal's use of the Dainsleif's seems much more emblamatic of that theme than McGillis almost succeeding and only really being stopped by one guy. A guy it's heavily implied is one of the few things that could have stopped him.
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Apr 12, 2017 02:10
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