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And again, Io isn’t presented as an irredeemable monster, because Bandit Flower exists. Dude’s still not very good at being a hero, but in his own clumsy, awkward way, he really is trying to look out for his friends. It’s an additional layer of tragedy - both Darryl and Io were reborn in the Thunderbolt Sector and learned it’s lessons, but they’re still beholden to the fates of their sides. The Federation won, so Io gets to spend his time in relative comfort with people who will support him, care for him, and call him out for his poo poo, and when he wants to practice what the Thunderbolt Sector taught him and keep his friends safe, he has the power to do it. The catch is that he’s in the proto-Titans, and the system that currently helps him will likely end up weaponising him for monstrous ends. Zeon lost, so Darryl’s stuck fighting for a cause he no longer believes in so that his superiors can weaponise the empty shell of his girlfriend. Not only that, but he’s got zero emotional support from his new crew, leaving him with just Fisher to keep him sane. About the only light at the end of the tunnel is that as a disaffected Zeon ace, he’s a prime recruitment candidate for the AEUG when they form... assuming he can live that long.
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Apr 3, 2018 00:13
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Monaghan posted:well thanks for being a condescending dick because I have a different viewpoint of a show than you, despite you giving me poo poo for using a hyperbole earlier. Sorry that I'm being hostile. I've had a fristrating day and it's dumb as hell to take it out on poster on SA. I just think your analysis is wrong.
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Apr 3, 2018 00:28
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The very thought that people apparently think that Thunderbolt is somehow Zeon apologism leaves me with a headache. The movie begins with a battle that takes place in the middle of a shattered colony bunch that Zeon obliterated and features Zeon snipers chatting amicably to each other while dispassionately mowing down terrified Federation soldiers who can't even see what's killing them. There's even a line about the Feddies having an inkling about where the snipers are hiding but not wanting to return fire because the snipers are literally hiding in the wreckage of the soldiers' former home. After the battle, we get a scene where Daryl and his squad members solemnly carry the dead body of their friend who Io killed into their ship, and they are immediately ordered to take his body down to the lab so that the body's prosthetics can be removed and studied. When Daryl's friend protests, the doctor coldly responds "That data's why you can fight" instead of backpedaling or showing any form of sympathy. Karla's entire backstory is another example of how badly this movie paints Zeon, to the point where it's almost cartoonish. Karla became a prosthetics expert because she wanted to help disabled people, complete with a shot of her holding her father's primitive prosthetic hand. Zeon threw her father into prison as a dissident and threatened to execute him in order to force her to apply her prosthetics research to making weaponry. This isn't something you need to infer or pick up from context clues or get from backstory, this is openly stated as fact in the middle of the movie. Yeah, let's emphasize that: Zeon took this woman's father hostage in order to force her to apply her extensive research and knowledge about prosthetics to making a loving war machine to stick invalids in so they could continue to be useful fighters. But Io is a mean jerk who kills enemy soldiers and brags about it whereas when Daryl manages to remain dispassionate when he kills enemy soldiers, so Thunderbolt is clearly biased in favor of Zeon.
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Apr 3, 2018 00:54
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ninjewtsu posted:I've asked people who I showed thunderbolt to "who were the good guys" and the answer was always, even from several people who have 0 experience with gundam, the federation. Crying zeon apologizism is weird to me when I've never actually seen anyone who came away thinking they were supposed to be rooting for zeon. But I think one of the messages from thunderbolt is "there's not really a good and bad guy if you're a soldier. There's just the people in charge of you and the people you shoot, and both of them are awful people." I don't think it's Zeon apologia at all, but... it does feel weird. It's the framing, I think. They have the usual OYW story ratios of Federation to Zeon war crimes, and as far as there's a "good person" in Thunderbolt 1, it's Cornelius, but the way the show presents things is odd. Zeon deaths get the tragedy shots, the weeping lovers, and the friends mourning. Federation pilots dying gets glossed over. Other than Daryl, the use of the Living Dead isn't emphasized as an atrocity, while we get a pause and stare on the Feddie child soldiers. Claudia's incompetence is a focus, while Zeon gets a captain who, unlike Claudia, is of the same stratum as his troops. In the manga, it's much more straightforward, with both sides getting the same kinds of sympathetic and tragic scenes, setting up war as a mutual enemy, but as the movie goes, it's awkward. It kind of reminds me of how IBO season 2 kept having the protagonists do something incredibly questionable, then framed it as heroic to kind of trick the viewer into glossing over it until the hammer came down. The difference is that Iron Blooded Orphans was doing that as a whole bit, with Tekkadan's status as the "villains" (to an extent, it's complicated) being both central to the second season and played as close to the vest as possible. Zeon being the bad guys in Thunderbolt was text, but it still felt like they were trying to pull the same trick. As I said, odd. Comparing it to 0080, though, where the main Zeon characters are even more sympathetic and their side is shown to be even worse, I think 0080's softer approach is actually an advantage, in general. You read autobiographies, watch interviews, and the like about wars, you see a whole spectrum of reactions. Deep metal scarring, weird humor, distant sorrow, all kinds of things because people are different. Thunderbolt depends on the worst case reactions, while War in the Pocket shows the tragedy of the absolute best case.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:06
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chiasaur11 posted:I don't think it's Zeon apologia at all, but... it does feel weird. This is exactly the issue, yes, you can argue all day about how oh no zeon are totally the bad guys here just look right off camera where they did all this evil shiiiiiiit but at the end of the day what matters is the characters who are depicted and how they are depicted, and Thunderbolt spends as little time as possible ruminating on the humanity of federation soldiers while playing up the humanity and -this is important - downplaying the agency of zeon soldiers so that they, the show's representative of Zeon as a whole, don't actually have to be held responsible for all the evil stuff that those bad Straight up how someone can watch the way the child soldier brigade is employed and not realize the showrunners want you to think the Federation is bad mystifies me. e: like this is all exactly the same kind of narrative psychology slasher movies used to use to defend showing off sex and rape and brutal violence, by saying that it's all in the service of morals because all the people who do the sex end up being killed and only the pure survive. Nobody buys it, nobody ever loving bought it but the rubiest of rubes, but it provides an efficient fig leaf so bloodthirsty audiences could get their rocks off watching coeds being fed into threshing machines and not feel bad. Babysitter Super Sleuth fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 01:27
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The point is that soldiers being sympathetic or not is entirely independent of which side is "the good guys"
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Apr 3, 2018 01:36
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they want you to think both sides are bad because war is bad, but you're also still supposed to sympathize with them both to a degree because they're still just people in a lovely situation they have no control over in the middle of a pointless battle over the wreckage of a war crime. maybe they focused more on humanizing the zeon faction because the entire setting of the first movie is like a monument to how evil they are thunderbolt doesn't always stick the landing on the humanizing elements for either side but they are there
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Apr 3, 2018 01:36
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I make a distinction between the Moore Brotherhood and the Federation. Moore is justifiably pissed off at Zeon for what happened to their colonies. You might say it's showing how the mean ole' Federation is wasting time on the Living Dead Division but I read it as a bunch of rich yuppies with clout got the Federation to give them some suits and a carte blanche to do what they pleased to get their territory back.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:38
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I have never met anyone who watched that movie and thought you're supposed to be rooting for zeon, or even really darryl (weep for darryl, maybe, but think he's doing the right thing? Lmao) The idea that anyone would think zeon comes out positively in thunderbolt is baffling.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:39
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Sympathy is not the same as support. When I read A Stranger To Myself: The Inhumanity Of War, I sympathized deeply with the nazi who wrote it. This did not make me think any better of nazism? Is that like, some kind of crazy phenomenon that only I experience or something?
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Apr 3, 2018 01:42
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yea you're definitely not supposed to agree with zeon and the main characters of that faction in thunderbolt are sympathetic in part because zeon has destroyed them like most of the bad things that happen to the living dead unit are because of zeon, not the federation. their situation sucks but zeon itself is never painted positively in thunderbolt. daryl being more likable than io doesn't mean the show is saying that zeon is morally in the right or something
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Apr 3, 2018 01:48
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:Straight up how someone can watch the way the child soldier brigade is employed and not realize the showrunners want you to think the Federation is bad mystifies me. Because it's a direct mirror to the Living Dead! Both are used as cannon fodder by uncaring officers. And the misery inflicted on the Living Dead by Zeon gets way more focus. Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:oh no zeon are totally the bad guys here just look right off camera where they did all this evil shiiiiiiit It's not off camera, it's on camera all the time, it's literally the setting of the show. Everything that happens in December Sky is literally surrounded by the remains of a Zeon genocide. The literal stage was literally set by Zeon annihilating a colony, a fact which is referenced in dialogue multiple times and also is literally omnipresent.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:52
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3 posted:charred hamburger I know you didn't do this on purpose but given the subject I love you for it anyway.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:54
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Oh no zeon are the bad guys look at all this bad poo poo off camera and also on camera holding a scientist's father hostage so she's forced to perform horrific, life-destroying surgery on their own soldiers, leaving her emotionally broken as she's forced to betray her base morals and ideals But yeah io's kind of a dick a couple times, it reflects pretty poorly on the federation as a whole
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Apr 3, 2018 01:55
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The Zeon Genocide is on camera, though. You see Side 4 get trashed during Io's flashback to his father's suicide.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:57
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:downplaying the agency of zeon soldiers so that they, the show's representative of Zeon as a whole, don't actually have to be held responsible for all the evil stuff that those bad Alright yeah it was kinda weird when Gihren showed up and ordered Daryl to drop a colony on those minorities and then Daryl actually did it, on screen, in that extended sequence
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Apr 3, 2018 01:59
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it's on camera literally every time the camera is showing space or literally any scene inside the zeon ships. you can't escape it because they're floating in it
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Apr 3, 2018 01:59
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Zeon soldiers casually slaughtering an entire federation squad while kicking back and relaxing, only to get ridiculously upset and serious as soon as a single Zeon soldier dies, is definitely supposed to reflect positively on Zeon and the sympathetic Zeon soldiers Io was a real jerk about it too, he savagely trashed darryl's taste in music, totally uncalled for
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Apr 3, 2018 02:00
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Yeah those terrified screaming feddies were just getting what was coming to them, but the apple pie guy? What a tragedy.
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Apr 3, 2018 02:06
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Nazis have a secret base in Antarctica The jazz Gundam movie has a sequence in Antarctica but the Feds don't destroy it 
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Apr 3, 2018 02:13
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I haven't watched Thunderbolt yet (I'm a highly impatient guy so I'll wait until it's complete, plus I started ZZ today and I should probably focus on the series I am actually wa-oh hey another series to watch!) but there is a weird thing in this thread where if the Federation is treated as even slightly morally corrupt it's immediately categorized as "ZEON IS GOOD AND COOL" despite how much it may show Zeon is, in fact, neither good nor cool (okay, maybe a bit cool, not the whole colony dropping thing but c'mon, Zakus!). It makes me wonder how people here defend Zeta so much when it portrays the Federation so terribly with the Titans.
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Apr 3, 2018 02:16
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Marx Headroom posted:Nazis have a secret base in Antarctica well duh, it was secret
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Apr 3, 2018 02:24
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Doesn't thunderbolt literally end with Io laughing in darryl's face for daring to think he could claim any amount of moral high ground over him
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Apr 3, 2018 02:36
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ninjewtsu posted:Doesn't thunderbolt literally end with Io laughing in darryl's face for daring to think he could claim any amount of moral high ground over him Basically, yes.
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Apr 3, 2018 02:43
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every discussion of Thunderbolt just ends up back hereImprobable Lobster posted:Yeah Thunderbolt wasn't exactly subtle
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Apr 3, 2018 02:44
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I'm not very into Thunderbolt because the characters and events feel more like farce than tragedy to me.
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Apr 3, 2018 02:50
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brainwrinkle posted:I'm not very into Thunderbolt because the characters and events feel more like farce than tragedy to me. Yeah I don't think Thunderbolt's faults are with it being Zeon-centric (because MS IGLOO already has more than enough of that to go around) but rather because it's nihilistic about both belligerents to the point of parody. The Federation is shown as a callous mass-murdering autocracy that employs both sociopaths and child soldiers while Zeon is a cackling Unit 731 death cult that cons a dude into lopping off his other good arm so he can be a robot slightly better. I will say I do like Thunderbolt more than I like IGLOO because it is really quite pretty, but I just can't take it seriously because everyone in it is an inhuman garbage person that exists to be poo poo on constantly. Midjack posted:I know you didn't do this on purpose but given the subject I love you for it anyway. 
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Apr 3, 2018 03:43
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brainwrinkle posted:I'm not very into Thunderbolt because the characters and events feel more like farce than tragedy to me. This is actually a very valid reason to not like Thunderbolt, in my opinion. I think December Sky has some very interesting things to say, but it is extremely over the top and nihilistic to the point of approaching self-parody, which is not something for everyone, and its nature as a series of web shorts stitched together into a movie means that the character writing is far too blunt and one-note. I especially loathe Claudia's portrayal and role even if I understand it contextually.
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Apr 3, 2018 03:45
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Have any of you ever seen the film Funny Games? That's sort of how I view Thunderbolt. It's a wildly different show tonally from the rest of the franchise and I'm wondering if that was an intentional response to how war is portrayed in other series. Are they trying to say something about Gundam's portrayal of war by going in such a different direction, or are they just taking what was already in Gundam to an extreme for the sake of it? Kind of like how I don't especially like Evangelion's plot, characters, themes, etc, but I find it fascinating on a metatextual level as insight into Anno's thought process. Thunderbolt is something I want to analyze and understand why it was made that way more than it is a show where I want to root for a character or follow its plot. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 03:46
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ninjewtsu posted:Doesn't thunderbolt literally end with Io laughing in darryl's face for daring to think he could claim any amount of moral high ground over him Yeah, which kinda ties into why that aspect feels so weird to me. It's trying to pull the rug out from under the viewer at the end, but someone threw out the rug earlier. It's an episode of Columbo where they expect you to be shocked by the reveal of the killer.
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Apr 3, 2018 04:40
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Gotta be honest, I haven't seen Thunderbolt, and while I want to watch it for the animation quality and the OYW setting and the overall bleakness, I keep getting put off by how much of a horrible piece of poo poo Io sounds like, and the fact that he ostensibly "wins" (I realize that Thunderbolt deliberately isn't that clear cut) keeps turning me off. I'm already dealing with the tail end of IBO, I don't know if I can handle another shithead winning out at the end of a Gundam series, even if the Zeon guys are even worse. I guess this is me throwing in on the 0080 pile, over Thunderbolt. 0080 owns.
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Apr 3, 2018 04:49
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ANAmal.net posted:Gotta be honest, I haven't seen Thunderbolt, and while I want to watch it for the animation quality and the OYW setting and the overall bleakness, I keep getting put off by how much of a horrible piece of poo poo Io sounds like, and the fact that he ostensibly "wins" (I realize that Thunderbolt deliberately isn't that clear cut) keeps turning me off. I'm already dealing with the tail end of IBO, I don't know if I can handle another shithead winning out at the end of a Gundam series, even if the Zeon guys are even worse. He doesn't win. His side does, but he doesn't. And in part 2, he's trying to be a better person. He's not good at it, but he's trying. Further, yes. 0080 owns.
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Apr 3, 2018 04:52
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What I love about 0080 is that the dub is also excellent.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:02
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For me, I just agree with Thunderbolt more. Just being a part of the war machine starts to eat away at your soul, and I think Thunderbolt gets that more than most other shows do. I think that's why I hate 0080 so much, I don't believe the "oh they're just good people on both sides thrown into bad situations" thing for a second.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:05
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Except Bernie and Chris aren't the main characters of 0080, Al is. The primary conceit of 0080 is war through a child's eyes, that is the core of the entire series. Everything is built around that concept and how Al interprets events. You might not believe in the "good people in bad situations" but Al does, because he has bonded with both Chris and Bernie, and he is still operating from a child's worldview. Until it inevitably gets shattered when reality comes in. Bernie's final act was not only suicidal, but senseless and stupid. He was doing it for good reasons, but they had already become moot by the time his plan was put into action.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:19
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ACES CURE PLANES posted:For me, I just agree with Thunderbolt more. Just being a part of the war machine starts to eat away at your soul, and I think Thunderbolt gets that more than most other shows do. A key thing to remember about Gundam's view on wartime ethics in general, and the OYW era shows in particular, is that they're more evocative of a WWII/Vietnam era conscription service than the modern concept of the all volunteer military. In those eras, it absolutely was a thing for a regular rear end person to just get called into war by forces entirely out of their control and just have to deal with being an otherwise good person forced into an absolutely nightmarish scenario. It doesn't mean every show does a good job with that theme, but it's the thematic underpinning for a lot of the more 'good people on all sides' end of the narrative, and is maybe a bit less culturally relevant in the modern context of what war looks like to the average viewer.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:22
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Dulkor posted:A key thing to remember about Gundam's view on wartime ethics in general, and the OYW era shows in particular, is that they're more evocative of a WWII/Vietnam era conscription service than the modern concept of the all volunteer military. That's kind of what I'm talking about though. Just by virtue of being a cog in that machine, it slowly starts eating away at you, even if you're fighting a 'good' or 'just' war. Take 'no ethical consumption under capitalism' and apply it to war, and that's about my philosophy on it.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:29
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Don't mind me just reposting for the new page.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:31
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Does Zeon apologia extend beyond Japan? Because pretty much everyone in this thread, myself included, gets a rather strong reaction to the more "Zeon wasn't so bad" series in the franchise.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:37
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ACES CURE PLANES posted:That's kind of what I'm talking about though. Just by virtue of being a cog in that machine, it slowly starts eating away at you, even if you're fighting a 'good' or 'just' war. You must be real fun at parties.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:40
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