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sassassin posted:There's cartoon physics going on with some of Heero's falls, Trowa's circus jumps etc. but it never really becomes important to the plot that they are special in that way, even if it is explicit in early episodes. It never becomes important to the plot, but it's pretty important to Heero's character that he's a programmed super soldier and his entire story in Endless Waltz is that he's tired of killing and wants to embrace his emotions instead of burying them again and again. sassassin posted:The Zero system allows a pilot to combine a massive wealth of combat data and statistics with their own tactical knowledge, intuition etc. It's not magic autopilot. We see similar use of combined systems with the mobile dolls (when Dorothy oversees them), and the M&V being programmed to use Heero and Trowa's fight patterns. It's not autopilot no, but then, neither are any human+ biological systems in Gundam and plenty of Newtypes at the very least have died because being one doesn't automatically make you a better pilot all on it's own. It's still a magic system that predicts the future with almost faultless accuracy despite only having limited data on the actual units it can see and not their pilots, their commanders etc. I say "almost" by the way for the simple reason that it probably did fall short at least once, but I don't recall it ever doing so either. Dorothy and Quatre use the exact same system with the mobile dolls, so it's not really an exploration of it in any way. Especially when both stop using it after only a few minutes, and the Mercurius and Vayeate isn't even use of the Zero System; just the mobile doll system with new combat data. sassassin posted:Epyon's system was programmed by Treize to drive a pilot towards his glorious future. Heero is able to recognise that it's insane, but Zechs is stupid and lost enough to invest all his marbles in it. Huh? The Epyon System is just the Zero System in a fancy new shell/helm, and Heero acts exactly the same under it's influence as any of the other Gundam pilots do under Zero's i.e. asking who their enemy is and not what their destiny is or something.
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Apr 6, 2018 14:09
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tsob posted:Huh? The Epyon System is just the Zero System in a fancy new shell/helm, and Heero acts exactly the same under it's influence as any of the other Gundam pilots do under Zero's i.e. asking who their enemy is and not what their destiny is or something. From what I'm aware, the Epyon System differs from the Zero System in that it doesn't have a filter on it. So it can drive you a little crazier if you let it.
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Apr 6, 2018 14:21
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tsob posted:It never becomes important to the plot, but it's pretty important to Heero's character that he's a programmed super soldier and his entire story in Endless Waltz is that he's tired of killing and wants to embrace his emotions instead of burying them again and again. I think it’s mentioned that the Wing Zero shows you the path to victory, while the Epyon shows you the ways in which you can be defeated (because Treize is weird like that). So they’re both equally useful, and work in pretty much the same way, but the Epyon is slightly more psychologically scarring.
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Apr 6, 2018 14:23
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tsob posted:Huh? The Epyon System is just the Zero System in a fancy new shell/helm, and Heero acts exactly the same under it's influence as any of the other Gundam pilots do under Zero's i.e. asking who their enemy is and not what their destiny is or something. Heero rejects the Epyon system and tells Zechs he can't make any sense of it. The god Treize has created is insane. He's fine with Zero (eventually). tsob posted:It never becomes important to the plot, but it's pretty important to Heero's character that he's a programmed super soldier and his entire story in Endless Waltz is that he's tired of killing and wants to embrace his emotions instead of burying them again and again. The programmed soldier/assassin parts are very important to Heero's character and arc, I agree. Beyond surviving a few suicide attempts the super part is practically window-dressing.
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Apr 6, 2018 15:13
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sassassin posted:Heero rejects the Epyon system and tells Zechs he can't make any sense of it. The god Treize has created is insane. Nothing about the second part is included in Heero's reasoning and all he says is that he can't understand Trieze, not that the system itself is insane. Which could just as easily apply to his understanding of the overall machine i.e. Epyon itself and not just the Epyon system. Plus, if you're really going to go along that line of reasoning then Heero and Zechs both humanize their machines and speak to them as if they're capable of understanding and reacting if I recall. It's almost certainly just directorial flair to help get across what the character is thinking, but the same basic thing is true of their use of Zero/Epyon and deciding to swap them for vague reasons that are almost certainly more practical in reality. sassassin posted:The programmed soldier/assassin parts are very important to Heero's character and arc, I agree. Beyond surviving a few suicide attempts the super part is practically window-dressing. Those suicide attempts are kind of important to him as a character though, both in establishing how he views orders and objectives as well how far he's willing to go for them. I was more referring to the mental reprogramming and emotional cleansing though honestly, which itself is super soldier territory really.
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Apr 6, 2018 15:32
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tsob posted:Those suicide attempts are kind of important to him as a character though, both in establishing how he views orders and objectives as well how far he's willing to go for them. I was more referring to the mental reprogramming and emotional cleansing though honestly, which itself is super soldier territory really. He's not a unique (or even especially strong) example of mental reprogramming and emotional cleansing in a show with Zechs/Milliardo, Colonel/Lady Une and "Trowa".
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Apr 6, 2018 16:00
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sassassin posted:He's not a unique (or even especially strong) example of mental reprogramming and emotional cleansing in a show with Zechs/Milliardo, Colonel/Lady Une and "Trowa". Zechs/Milliardo never lost his memory or had any kind of mental issues but was instead just knowingly using different personas for different purposes like Casval/Char/Quattro, Lady Une had split personality that was beyond anyone's control and Trowa never knew his own past if I recall; Heero on the other hand never lost his memory, he just had his emotions cleansed repeatedly and was programmed to be a better soldier according to Endless Waltz.
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Apr 6, 2018 16:20
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You seem to be confusing protagonist hardiness in the context of this sci fi show with actual psychic powers which is what being a newtype is mostly about. Super soldiers with superior physical abilities float through plenty of stories, but they are clearly distinct from the spiritual/psychic components of "Newtypes". Nothing about whatever Heero's training or physical augmentation allows him to connect with others better or not have his SOUL WEIGHED DOWN BY GRAVITY. Epyon is def a tainted version of the Zero system. It is clearly distinct, both Zech's and Heero note that it is scarier than whatever is in Zero. Zech's is just willing to buy into it where as Heero says nah that absurd suicidal future ain't for me. It might be magical technology, but it is obviously distinct from the organic evolutionary magic of Newtypes. It's thematically and operationally different too (for example they're both static systems vs the expanding sphere of power/influence that growing as a newtype confers). They aren't the same thing in any meaningful sense.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:06
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tsob posted:It never becomes important to the plot, but it's pretty important to Heero's character that he's a programmed super soldier and his entire story in Endless Waltz is that he's tired of killing and wants to embrace his emotions instead of burying them again and again. On this note, Wufei's whole Wing arc is sort of an interesting parallel to Heero's. One of the other themes of Wing is finding something concrete to fight for through connecting with other people. Heero's thing throughout is connecting to the other pilots, soldiers, and Relena and how that effects him and brings him out of that super soldier mindset (to a degree). Wufei never really forms those connections, even when they're in the moon base dungeon or towards the when they're on Peacemillion as a team. He's the only pilot who has nothing to go back to and noone waiting for him at the end of the TV series. It's really easy to see how he joins up with Mariemaia aside from the fact that Wufei is the worst. His fight with Heero in Endless Waltz, to me, is also about the clash between someone who has someone or something to protect vs someone who is fighting for an ideology because at the point ideology is all Wufei has. Heero is still kind of a sad character for me over all though. Like there are more tragic characters in the Gundam franchise but I've always felt the worst for Heero for probably a mix of nostalgia and having a lot of feelings.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:12
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tsob posted:Zechs/Milliardo never lost his memory or had any kind of mental issues but was instead just knowingly using different personas for different purposes like Casval/Char/Quattro, Lady Une had split personality that was beyond anyone's control and Trowa never knew his own past if I recall; Heero on the other hand never lost his memory, he just had his emotions cleansed repeatedly and was programmed to be a better soldier according to Endless Waltz. They're all reflections of the same recurrent theme. Lady Une's split personality was a direct result of Treize telling her she needed to fulfil a different role to achieve his victory. She decides to become this friendly, flirty diplomat to try to please him but it leads to a complete breakdown when she can't balance the two roles as leader of Oz's space forces. Trowa constantly reinvents himself to fit in places, it's not simply that he doesn't know his past. He's a guy with no name who pretends to be Trowa the Gundam pilot who is pretending to be a circus clown and then joins up with Oz as a double agent and gets full-blown amnesia after he's blown up. Characters struggling with the identities they've either inherited or chosen is like 90% of Gundam Wing. Heero's not a rare or remarkable example of someone who has forced themselves down a course of action for their mission, or of someone with emotional issues. I guess he's a little super-human in that he handles it a bit better than average, though. Just some light murder and war crimes. "Zechs never had any mental issues" suggests you haven't watched the show in a while. He's nuts, especially after he gets his (meaningless) revenge and finds he can't shed the masked soldier persona.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:14
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None of the main characters in Wing are mentally stable. Sally and Catherine are the only normal ones, maybe Howard too since he fucks off to Earth and takes style notes from Master Roshi.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:25
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I 've been rewatching wing and the narrator himself describes the zero system and how it works. The narrator say that there's only two machines that have it, the wing zero and the epyon. Nothing in the show indicates that the systems are different. Heero reacts to both systems in the exact same when he jump into each machine- he goes nuts and tries to kill everyone around him. On a side note I love the zero system and it's one of my favorite technological mcguffins in the entire franchise.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:33
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The Notorious ZSB posted:You seem to be confusing protagonist hardiness in the context of this sci fi show with actual psychic powers which is what being a newtype is mostly about. You never specified super people as only "psychic powers", and Heero is implied throughout Wing and Endless Waltz to have been physically and mentally augmented. It might be a different type of "super", but it's still super. The Notorious ZSB posted:Epyon is def a tainted version of the Zero system. It is clearly distinct, both Zech's and Heero note that it is scarier than whatever is in Zero. Zech's is just willing to buy into it where as Heero says nah that absurd suicidal future ain't for me. It might be magical technology, but it is obviously distinct from the organic evolutionary magic of Newtypes. It's thematically and operationally different too (for example they're both static systems vs the expanding sphere of power/influence that growing as a newtype confers). They aren't the same thing in any meaningful sense. Wing still has a technology that is for all intents and purposes magic and which enhances only a handful of characters (i.e. the protagonist and his rival) beyond the capability of anyone else specifically in their ability to foresee things. I fail to see how that's meaningfully different from the complaints about Newtypes centering on how they are superhumanely predictive/precognitive. Actually, it might just be worse in that regard, since I don't recall any Newtype or Newtype equivalent ever getting visions months into the future that shape their actions for an extended period. They do a lot of other crazy poo poo, but they don't do that that I recall. That said, when do either say that the Epyon System is scarier than the Zero System? When does Heero say he doesn't want any part of that suicidal future? sassassin posted:Heero's not a rare or remarkable example of someone who has forced themselves down a course of action for their mission, or of someone with emotional issues. I never said he was; I said Heero was an example of a super human and at most that him being so was an important part of his character in establishing how he views missions as an addendum after starting to discuss that he was a super soldier in the first place. And that he was a super soldier both for his physical attributes and because he had been emotionally and mentally conditioned on numerous occasions to make him a better soldier/assassin by outsiders according to Endless Waltz. Not that Heero forced himself down this path, since he was (a) a child and unable to give informed consent and (b) it's not even entirely clear he gave uninformed consent for his handlers to start changing/operating on him. I don't recall saying that he was meaningfully different on an emotional level from any other character in the show either. sassassin posted:"Zechs never had any mental issues" suggests you haven't watched the show in a while. He's nuts, especially after he gets his (meaningless) revenge and finds he can't shed the masked soldier persona. I meant "he has no mental issues affecting his memory", since that seemed to be where you were going with the entire post. tsob fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 17:40
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Monaghan posted:I 've been rewatching wing and the narrator himself describes the zero system and how it works. The narrator say that there's only two machines that have it, the wing zero and the epyon. Nothing in the show indicates that the systems are different. Heero reacts to both systems in the exact same when he jump into each machine- he goes nuts and tries to kill everyone around him. If they're identical then Heero giving the Epyon to Zechs because 'you know/I don't know how Treize thinks' no longer makes sense. Epyon's zero system is evidently customised to some extent.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:46
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sassassin posted:If they're identical then Heero giving the Epyon to Zechs because 'you know/I don't know how Treize thinks' no longer makes sense. Epyon's zero system is evidently customised to some extent. Again, he could simply be talking about the entire machine in a rather purple tone fairly typical of the whole production given that Trieze explicitly customized it to be a dueling machine with no distance weaponry (beyond that one error of it using machine cannons in the finale). Heero thinks of combat as a thing to get done for a purpose with no real boundaries on what he'll do so long as the desired result is achieved, while Treize wants to fight in a specific way that would almost certainly leave Heero confused.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:51
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tsob posted:Wing still has a technology that is for all intents and purposes magic and which enhances only a handful of characters (i.e. the protagonist and his rival) beyond the capability of anyone else specifically in their ability to foresee things. I fail to see how that's meaningfully different from the complaints about Newtypes centering on how they are superhumanely predictive/precognitive. Actually, it might just be worse in that regard, since I don't recall any Newtype or Newtype equivalent ever getting visions months into the future that shape their actions for an extended period. They do a lot of other crazy poo poo, but they don't do that that I recall. Everyone who uses the zero system in Wing is enhanced by it. Heero, Zechs, Duo, Quatre, Trowa, Wufei, random Oz dude and Dorothy all use it to kill things better. Noin could've strapped herself in (and probably done better than the Gundam kids), it wasn't an exclusive technology for special people. I don't remember any visions in the show taking place months into the future. Most are a few seconds ahead of the user dying or blowing up a colony or something.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:54
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sassassin posted:Everyone who uses the zero system in Wing is enhanced by it. Heero, Zechs, Duo, Quatre, Trowa, Wufei, random Oz dude and Dorothy all use it to kill things better. Noin could've strapped herself in (and probably done better than the Gundam kids), it wasn't an exclusive technology for special people. Only Heero and Zechs learn to control it. Everyone else who uses it goes crazy and most of them refuse to use it again. I'm pretty sure Heero and Zechs are noted as being particularly mentally capable for being able to learn to do so as well. sassassin posted:I don't remember any visions in the show taking place months into the future. Most are a few seconds ahead of the user dying or blowing up a colony or something. Heero and Zechs talk about how the Zero System shows them their future, and I'm pretty sure Zechs joins White Fang based on it. Treize does the same thing too, and gives up fighting for a while specifically because Epyon showed him that he had no future.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:00
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tsob posted:Only Heero and Zechs learn to control it. Everyone else who uses it goes crazy and most of them refuse to use it again. I'm pretty sure Heero and Zechs are noted as being particularly mentally capable for being able to learn to do so as well. Heero installs a modified version of it back in to Sandrock despite Quatre begging him not to. Quatre uses it to coordinate the rest of the Gundams, minus Heero, against Dorothy's Zero system controlled mobile dolls.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:10
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Wing is loving weird because it has some shades of newtype stuff, like when heero first uses the zero system, he falls out of the machine. He starts glowing and Quatre somehow transfer the glow to his hand and the light somehow tells him what heero is feeling or something.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:13
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Tulalip Tulips posted:Heero installs a modified version of it back in to Sandrock despite Quatre begging him not to. Quatre uses it to coordinate the rest of the Gundams, minus Heero, against Dorothy's Zero system controlled mobile dolls. After which both only use it for a few minutes before Dorothy breaks under the stress and Quatre stops using it because the rest of the Wing boys had started listening to him so he didn't need it anymore. Not to mention that Heero gives Quatre/Howard a single floppy disk retreived from a large bank of computers inside the Wing Zero's cockpit and Dorothy is using a helmet not connected to anything and both appear to only be receiving unit movement data without any of the extreme paranoia inducing information overload and predictive systems. This is the actual Zero System. https://my.mixtape.moe/zxfbmw.webm Quatre gets one floppy disk. There is no way that he got the whole package.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:18
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tsob posted:Only Heero and Zechs learn to control it. Everyone else who uses it goes crazy and most of them refuse to use it again. Heero and Zechs go crazy when they first use it, too, and it's a stretch to think Zechs actually learned to control it. He just started thinking bigger than simply whipping everyone. Zechs is a very good pilot, top of his class etc. but he's not a genetic marvel/next step in humanity's evolution or what have you. Three years after Wing there'll be a zero system installed in everyone's phone, I guarantee it. It's perfectly safe after a mild adjustment period*.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:19
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The other disks are just his tunes. They didn't have big flash drives back then.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:20
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sassassin posted:Heero and Zechs go crazy when they first use it, too, and it's a stretch to think Zechs actually learned to control it. He just started thinking bigger than simply whipping everyone. The show's dialogue would disagree with you then, because Heero says that Zechs has mastered it. sassassin posted:Three years after Wing there'll be a zero system installed in everyone's phone, I guarantee it. It's perfectly safe after a mild adjustment period*. And Frozen Teardrop disagrees with this. Never mind that in the show the Zero System is something like 20 years old and the scientists who designed it as a control system were so afraid of it they never touched it again.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:21
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sassassin posted:The other disks are just his tunes. They didn't have big flash drives back then. so wing's godlike music is actually playing in universe through the gundam's speakers? makes sense.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:22
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tsob posted:And Frozen Teardrop disagrees with this. Frozen Teardrop disagrees with a lot of things.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:24
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sassassin posted:Frozen Teardrop disagrees with a lot of things. Then just look as far as Frozen Teardrop. It's only a year or so after the TV show, but the Epyon, including it's Epyon System has been destroyed, Heero is planning on destroying the Wing Zero, including the Zero System and the 5 scientists who designed the system have made no indication they intend to resume work on it. The system is limited to Heero and Zechs for controlled use, and the show and setting obviously have no intention of ever expanding or exploring it.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:43
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sassassin posted:Frozen Teardrop disagrees with a lot of things. I mean Zechs is a marginally better father than Duo and that's just not right. Also Noin's bro being Zechs's lookalike is makes that whole relationship a bit weirder.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:50
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Newtypes are cool when they aren't Super Saiyans like in Unicorn. I think Quatre is a Newtype or something very close because he is a sensitive boy who cares about things and has the heart of space, which is warm and friendly, not cold and empty.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:58
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Noin's relationship with Zechs was always a bit odd. She's introduced recounting how long it's been since they last met down to the number of days despite not seeming particularly focused on numbers outside that one area. Her feelings for him seem a little obsessive given that. Edit: Heero is the one who was the "heart of space"; Quatre was the one who said he was.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:59
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And how would he know? Takes one to know one!
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Apr 6, 2018 19:01
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tsob posted:Noin's relationship with Zechs was always a bit odd. She's introduced recounting how long it's been since they last met down to the number of days despite not seeming particularly focused on numbers outside that one area. Her feelings for him seem a little obsessive given that. Yeah it's definitely weird from the start. Zech's first words about her imply she took a dive so he could be number 1, which reveals a lot about her character. I like Noin a lot but it always irritated me that she never actually got to do something cool in a mobile suit. She did single handedly bust Sally out of prison so that was still neat but then turned into a team mom until she couldn't kill Zechs.
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Apr 6, 2018 19:24
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Well I attempted to make a thread for Build Divers, so I guess GBD discussion goes there now. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3853669
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Apr 6, 2018 19:31
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Monaghan posted:I 've been rewatching wing and the narrator himself describes the zero system and how it works. The narrator say that there's only two machines that have it, the wing zero and the epyon. Nothing in the show indicates that the systems are different. Heero reacts to both systems in the exact same when he jump into each machine- he goes nuts and tries to kill everyone around him. The narrator is the best character in Wing
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Apr 6, 2018 19:41
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EthanSteele posted:Newtypes are cool when they aren't Super Saiyans like in Unicorn. I think Quatre is a Newtype or something very close because he is a sensitive boy who cares about things and has the heart of space, which is warm and friendly, not cold and empty. Quatre is a privileged, simpering buffoon on the surface, but you know deep down he's a vindictive little poo poo because the zero system led him to murder a bunch of innocent non-combatants in a tantrum instead of merely fantasising about it. He didn't know his doctor was his sister, and thought Heero was the heart of space. It's obvious why his Gundam seemed specialised towards keeping him alive rather than accomplishing any actual missions (like the self-destruct system that ejects him and waits till he's run to safety), kid's a liability who only got the job because of his daddy's money. Noin would have made a more convincing commander/tactician figure (even if she was weak at the knees for a lunatic).
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Apr 6, 2018 20:09
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sassassin posted:Quatre is a privileged, simpering buffoon on the surface, but you know deep down he's a vindictive little poo poo because the zero system led him to murder a bunch of innocent non-combatants in a tantrum instead of merely fantasising about it. Quatre sort of landed the "commander" position because he's the only one of the Wing boys who is portrayed as being interested in communication and cooperation ever. The rest of them range from active lone wolves to openly antagonistic.
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Apr 6, 2018 22:13
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jackhunter64 posted:The narrator is the best character in Wing HOWEVER,
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Apr 6, 2018 22:24
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Kanos posted:Quatre sort of landed the "commander" position because he's the only one of the Wing boys who is portrayed as being interested in communication and cooperation ever. The rest of them range from active lone wolves to openly antagonistic. "I can't wait to meet them, I'm sure they're all lovely people." *cut to Wufei blowing up a dormitory and taunting the weak woman who tries to stop him*
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Apr 6, 2018 22:34
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Kanos posted:Quatre sort of landed the "commander" position because he's the only one of the Wing boys who is portrayed as being interested in communication and cooperation ever. The rest of them range from active lone wolves to openly antagonistic. Duo is a nice and friendly boy for someone that calls himself the grim reaper.
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Apr 6, 2018 23:46
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Blaze Dragon posted:Duo is a nice and friendly boy for someone that calls himself the grim reaper. Duo is friendlier than most of the others but he's still a lone wolf sociopath.
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Apr 6, 2018 23:53
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Kanos posted:Quatre sort of landed the "commander" position because he's the only one of the Wing boys who is portrayed as being interested in communication and cooperation ever. The rest of them range from active lone wolves to openly antagonistic. You have to be able to communicate if you've got a mercenary army. In theory anyway.
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Apr 7, 2018 01:05
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