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Darth Walrus posted:Since we were talking about the Freedom versus the Providence, this video with all the talky bits stripped out shows that it’s actually quite an interesting, tactical fight underneath it all. You can see Kira trying to feel out a way through Rau’s curtains of beams, and deciding which bits of the Freedom he can sacrifice to get a crippling hit in. Yes but then you miss out on the gloriousness of Dub Rau.
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May 9, 2018 00:29
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MonsieurChoc posted:Yes but then you miss out on the gloriousness of Dub Rau. Well, yeah, but this is more about analysing a specific element of the fight and seeing how it holds together.
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May 9, 2018 01:11
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Darth Walrus posted:Because it’s only one suit against two gigantic armies? That’s kind of a weird notion. Even if one machine is the best at everything, you’re still going to need more than one machine. The Infinite Justice is also more of a dedicated ace-killer, designed for tying up and neutralising elite pilots and powerful suits so that the Strike Freedom can get along with clearing out everything else. As for simply having a lot of weapons, that’s rarely a big negative for a Gundam. I mean, everybody loves the Thunderbolt FA-78 and the Exia, don’t they? Kira is pretty clearly capable of engaging entire armies in the SF. The Strike Freedom's big intro scene is a deliberate homage to Amuro going HAM on the Rick Dom squadrons where he singlehandedly and completely effortlessly disables(not even kills, perfectly disables) an enormous ZAFT squadron without breaking a sweat, and that's before you add in the fact that the Strike Freedom and the IJ can still use the METEOR packs so they're also Dendrobiums. Terminal shows up to the final battle with the sum total of their forces being Kira, Athrun, the Dom Squad, and some Murasames and they're the most powerful faction there if you discount the superweapons considering that their aces were able to rip apart the best that ZAFT had to offer with no damage to themselves. The Strike Freedom is such an impossibly powerful do everything suit that it makes the IJ look goofy by comparison. One suit is a functionally a one-MS battle fleet with a complete arsenal of weaponry for every conceivable situation and no mentioned limitations on the indefinite use of said arsenal, and the other one has a boomerang and beam shoelaces. Kanos fucked around with this message at 01:27 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 01:24
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Well, to be honest, "one man army" is the stated purpose of funnel/bit/Dragoon/etc mecha. The vast majority of what makes Strike Freedom an army killer over anything else is it getting to spam fast-moving insanely accurate beam weapons in every direction at once. It's easy to forget because we rarely see funnel mecha not going up against protagonists the crappiest of the crappy (Braw Bro/Elmeth) were weapons of mass destruction and someone like Haman is basically limited only by having to fight newtype aces who actually can dodge her poo poo. Funnels are one of those weird things where on paper they are so insanely powerful you rarely actually get to see them succeed because when they do it's just people getting torn the gently caress apart by things they can't even see.
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May 9, 2018 01:30
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I always held the belief that Lala/Char in the final battle would've easily won A Boa Qu if Amuro somehow died beforehand, because there's no way for oldtypes to even touch them.
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May 9, 2018 01:51
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Tae posted:I always held the belief that Lala/Char in the final battle would've easily won A Boa Qu if Amuro somehow died beforehand, because there's no way for oldtypes to even touch them. Even aside from Kai and Sayla being newtypes, Yazan "the beast" Gable was almost certainly a member of the Federation at the time. Horrible, horrible person, but he gave Kamille nightmares, and Char wasn't a patch on the kid when it came to newtype abilities. Being a Newtype makes you very, very dangerous, but there have always been a handful of oldtype pilots who were able to keep things competitive. (I think there's a scene in one of the Johnny Ridden mangas where he takes on a class of rookies who might be Newtypes in training and pretty much demolishes them, but I'm not sure about that.)
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May 9, 2018 02:07
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The big thing with Lalah is that she could effectively snipe poo poo while being nowhere near the battlefield. (Thus the "Ghost of Solomon' nickname.) Amuro being a Newtype is how they tracked her down while Yazan would just be getting barraged by beam poo poo from every direction. It probably wouldn't have singlehandedly won the war but it sure would have been a huge force multiplier.
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May 9, 2018 02:15
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Kanos posted:Kira is pretty clearly capable of engaging entire armies in the SF. The Strike Freedom's big intro scene is a deliberate homage to Amuro going HAM on the Rick Dom squadrons where he singlehandedly and completely effortlessly disables(not even kills, perfectly disables) an enormous ZAFT squadron without breaking a sweat, and that's before you add in the fact that the Strike Freedom and the IJ can still use the METEOR packs so they're also Dendrobiums. Terminal shows up to the final battle with the sum total of their forces being Kira, Athrun, the Dom Squad, and some Murasames and they're the most powerful faction there if you discount the superweapons considering that their aces were able to rip apart the best that ZAFT had to offer with no damage to themselves. The Strike Freedom is a match for a small fleet. The catch is that in the final battle, the heroes were engaging several very large fleets over an enormous distance. Kira couldn’t be everywhere at once. The Strike Freedom does also have the same weakness as the Providence - if you can dodge or deflect your way past all those beams (as several top-tier CE pilots are quite good at doing - the Destiny especially is almost a hard counter to beam-spam thanks to its Wings of Light), its close-quarters arsenal is fairly ordinary. That’s where the Infinite Justice comes in. It’s the Strike Freedom’s philosophy applied to melee combat - overwhelm the enemy with more incoming threats than they have any chance of countering no matter how good they are. Its shins are laser swords. Its shield is a laser sword and a grappling hook. Its wings are laser swords that can detach to become a giant, remote-controlled laser sword with guns. Its shoulders are laser swords that it can throw at you. If you touch any part of the Infinite Justice, your bits will fall off, and it really doesn’t have to exert much effort to touch you. That’s why Shinn could fight reasonably evenly with Kira, but got utterly loving rolled by Athrun.
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May 9, 2018 02:21
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chiasaur11 posted:Even aside from Kai and Sayla being newtypes, Yazan "the beast" Gable was almost certainly a member of the Federation at the time. Horrible, horrible person, but he gave Kamille nightmares, and Char wasn't a patch on the kid when it came to newtype abilities. Also 0079 doesn't devolve into "only newtypes can solve this problem" that later UC shows have. While Amuro definitely became an unstoppable monster towards the end of the show, he had to work his rear end off getting there and the majority of his fights before launching the counteroffensive following Odessa were skin of his teeth victories. Char got rusty after Garma died by being off the frontline for a long time to do work with Lalah and the Flanagan Institute. If Amuro were dead I'm not sure if he'd have had the same crisis of doubt, but even Char can't defeat an entire army in one of the largest space battles in human history singlehanded.
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May 9, 2018 02:29
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Darth Walrus posted:That’s where the Infinite Justice comes in. It’s the Strike Freedom’s philosophy applied to melee combat - overwhelm the enemy with more incoming threats than they have any chance of countering no matter how good they are. Its shins are laser swords. Its shield is a laser sword and a grappling hook. Its wings are laser swords that can detach to become a giant, remote-controlled laser sword with guns. Its shoulders are laser swords that it can throw at you. If you touch any part of the Infinite Justice, your bits will fall off, and it really doesn’t have to exert much effort to touch you. That’s why Shinn could fight reasonably evenly with Kira, but got utterly loving rolled by Athrun. Kira already proved that he had no issue tossing Shinn in the dumpster with little effort at Orb when they first meet in the Strike Freedom and Destiny respectively. The only reason Shinn didn't straight up loving die there was that Kira didn't want to shoot him in the cockpit. Shinn even goes apeshit and gets angry because he can tell that Kira is holding back enormously. Shinn and Kira don't have a meaningful fight in the final battle because Destiny is a loving dumb show and misses the incredibly obvious "Freedom vs Destiny" tagline as well as not having the two protagonists have their final conflict, but based on what happened at Orb and the fact that Shinn degenerates into a gibbering lunatic halfway through the final fight even in Final Plus I'm going to guess that Kira would have peeled him like an orange. Either way I'm not sure that a dedicated duelist mobile suit is an actually useful design when you could just make another Strike Freedom for the same investment of resources since the IJ is also a super overtuned ace suit. Arcsquad12 posted:Also 0079 doesn't devolve into "only newtypes can solve this problem" that later UC shows have. While Amuro definitely became an unstoppable monster towards the end of the show, he had to work his rear end off getting there and the majority of his fights before launching the counteroffensive following Odessa were skin of his teeth victories. Amuro was fortunate enough to be able to crutch enormously hard on a borderline unstoppable mobile suit for the early stages of the war until his skills developed to the point where it was the now-outdated RX-78 holding him back instead of him holding the RX-78 back.
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May 9, 2018 02:41
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Arcsquad12 posted:Also 0079 doesn't devolve into "only newtypes can solve this problem" that later UC shows have. While Amuro definitely became an unstoppable monster towards the end of the show, he had to work his rear end off getting there and the majority of his fights before launching the counteroffensive following Odessa were skin of his teeth victories. It's part of why IBO's ending worked for me. Mikazuki Augus is the single deadliest human being in the setting, able to fight evenly against one of the super weapons that nearly destroyed humanity. But, ultimately, even a one man army is just one man. Once it's him against a whole fleet, the only question is how many he's going to take with him on the way out. (The answer is almost all of them.)
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May 9, 2018 02:56
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Kanos posted:Amuro was fortunate enough to be able to crutch enormously hard on a borderline unstoppable mobile suit for the early stages of the war until his skills developed to the point where it was the now-outdated RX-78 holding him back instead of him holding the RX-78 back.
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May 9, 2018 09:33
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Raxivace posted:This is one of my favorite parts of the narrative progression in 0079. I wish more shows would rip this specific aspect off from it instead of just constant mid-season upgrades and so on. I'm personally fond of the fact that they took the "ace of the week" cliche to the logical conclusion of it meaning they weren't present at other battles that Zeon would've otherwise won.
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May 9, 2018 09:44
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I'm personally fond of the fact that they took the "ace of the week" cliche to the logical conclusion of it meaning they weren't present at other battles that Zeon would've otherwise won. Well, might have. The Feds had much better industrial capacity, and like they say, quantity has a quality all its own. Having Amuro playing human abattoir didn't exactly help, of course. Speaking of, I managed to finally get around to running some numbers on Mikazuki for IBO. Figured his killcount would be fairly modest, given how small fights were in the first season, and how even in the second, you only got one for every two or three episodes. Only got 33 there, so that part was right. What I didn't account for was the final battle. Around 28 grazes downed, including nearly a dozen after being hit with an orbital barrage. Total came to around 101 suits, a ship, and a mobile armor. Apparently, that's more than Kira managed to disable in SEED and SEED Destiny combined, although I'm less confident in the second assertion. Iron Blooded Orphans had a lot of people die really badly, is what I'm getting at.
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May 9, 2018 09:54
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chiasaur11 posted:Even aside from Kai and Sayla being newtypes, Yazan "the beast" Gable was almost certainly a member of the Federation at the time. Horrible, horrible person, but he gave Kamille nightmares, and Char wasn't a patch on the kid when it came to newtype abilities. again why I like X newtypes are extremely beatable, it's just that their opponents are typically too busy being huge racists and/or genocidal maniacs to do so
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May 9, 2018 10:20
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ImpAtom posted:Well, to be honest, "one man army" is the stated purpose of funnel/bit/Dragoon/etc mecha. The vast majority of what makes Strike Freedom an army killer over anything else is it getting to spam fast-moving insanely accurate beam weapons in every direction at once. It's easy to forget because we rarely see funnel mecha not going up against protagonists the crappiest of the crappy (Braw Bro/Elmeth) were weapons of mass destruction and someone like Haman is basically limited only by having to fight newtype aces who actually can dodge her poo poo. The opening Kshatriya vs. Jegan squad scene in Unicorn is a good example of this. The two less experienced Federation pilots are taken out effortlessly by the funnels, and only the Jegan oldtype ace/commander is able to put up a respectable fight. And that's with Marida, who doesn't really compare to the more powerful newtypes in the setting.
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May 9, 2018 14:46
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To be fair Kira's entire deal is pretty much not killing unless he has to.
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May 9, 2018 16:30
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EthanSteele posted:To be fair Kira's entire deal is pretty much not killing unless he has to. It's just insufferably boring as a deal though, and just makes them come across as conceited about their own skill rather than anything truly meaningful. The only way to really land a premise like that is as something like "look, just walk away. Walk away and nothing happe- gently caress it, fine, I tried  .".
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May 9, 2018 16:36
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Darth Walrus posted:Because it’s only one suit against two gigantic armies? That’s kind of a weird notion. Even if one machine is the best at everything, you’re still going to need more than one machine. The Infinite Justice is also more of a dedicated ace-killer, designed for tying up and neutralising elite pilots and powerful suits so that the Strike Freedom can get along with clearing out everything else. As for simply having a lot of weapons, that’s rarely a big negative for a Gundam. I mean, everybody loves the Thunderbolt FA-78 and the Exia, don’t they? Exia, yes - FA-78, no. Exia placed twice in the Top 100 MS rankings (#22 and #40 (Repair)), while FA-78 placed at #93, two spots above your bog-standard GM. I don't think everybody liked the FA-78 (but they do prefer the Psycho Zaku by a little - it placed at #67). Yinlock posted:again why I like X I think it's another reason why people like Graham Acre so much. He is - hands down - the best pilot in 00 Gundam because he recklessly overcomes both his own limits and those of his suit through sheer willpower. Even when he is hilariously outmatched - see when he fights Throne Eins and Dynames with nothing more than a Flag (albeit a customized one) - he is able to pressure his opponents and force them to fight him at full strength or else they run the risk of losing to one goddamn Flag. They never actually show him fighting an Innovade, but I think it's safe to say that he could probably handily dumpster most of them (except for maybe Ribbons). Setsuna appears to be slightly better than him, but more often than not it feels like he wins just because the show writers pull the protagonist card for him to win by default. Ali al-Saachez is Graham's foil on the 'antagonist' side, as he is able to pull off many of the same feats but with a crippling lack of morality and 'ganbatte'. As a result, he's much less likable. Anyways, glad to see that Graham is finally going to get some attention (especially if the new 00 thing turns out to be really significant, as they decided to make him the main character AND give him a Gundam - the one he loves most, Exia). LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 16:47 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 16:42
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EthanSteele posted:To be fair Kira's entire deal is pretty much not killing unless he has to. Kira post-Strike Gundam is the most boring, laziest character Gundam's ever pulled off. He's the epitome of a Marty Stu in every sense of the word. It was interesting when Shinn took advantage of his no-kill Marty Stu-ness to beat him in the Freedom Gundam with the Impulse Gundam. But then Kira went 'lol nope', got the Strike Freedom, disabled fleets with a single volley, and more or less stopped the Destiny plan single-handedly. I guess Athrun helped when he wasn't getting his rear end handed to him.
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May 9, 2018 16:47
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It was mostly in response to comparing someone's killcount to that guy. I think Kira sucks too!
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May 9, 2018 16:53
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EthanSteele posted:It was mostly in response to comparing someone's killcount to that guy. I think Kira sucks too! Ah, gotcha. Sorry for hijacking your post to rail about Kira being a bad character, despite much of the Japanese fanbase apparently liking him.
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May 9, 2018 17:44
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I see Kira's not-killing the same as Batman's: The people that do survive are hosed for life and his friends probably just like to him about how many died from battlewounds down the line. 
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May 9, 2018 17:56
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tsob posted:It's also not a Ball; it's a Ball that's been used as the basis to build a mobile suit off of. I'm also pretty sure it doesn't make logistical sense, since I recall Balls being nearly as big as a mobile suit. The Altas should be bigger if it uses a Ball as a torso. Or have weird proportions, with tiny limbs on a huge torso.  Yeah it does look pretty silly, kind of magical in motion though.
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May 9, 2018 18:10
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Zedd posted:I see Kira's not-killing the same as Batman's: The people that do survive are hosed for life and his friends probably just like to him about how many died from battlewounds down the line. The idea of Kira and Athrun flooding the emergency comm channel with their yelling because of the SEED equivalent Minovsky particle interference so everyone he doesn't kill can't get rescued until its way too late is a personal fave.
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May 9, 2018 19:46
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LuiCypher posted:Kira post-Strike Gundam is the most boring, laziest character Gundam's ever pulled off. He's the epitome of a Marty Stu in every sense of the word. It was interesting when Shinn took advantage of his no-kill Marty Stu-ness to beat him in the Freedom Gundam with the Impulse Gundam. But then Kira went 'lol nope', got the Strike Freedom, disabled fleets with a single volley, and more or less stopped the Destiny plan single-handedly. I guess Athrun helped when he wasn't getting his rear end handed to him. Nah. Kira in SEED is fine all the way. He's a kid with no real connection to the military and who is mostly pacifistic, so he tries to end things in the least violent way as much as he can. He's also an abomination of genetic engineering thus incredibly good at whatever he does - and carries one hell of a burden because of it, he gets forced into situations simply because he was born with the skill for it even if he doesn't like it (by coincidence, by Murrue, by Flay...), he ends up clashing with people he once loved, and then he learns of just how much blood was shed so he could exist. Kira in Destiny is another matter entirely. He's an awful perfect character that can do no wrong even when he's doing all the wrongs, the series will never call him out on his poo poo, he can do any and everything with no issues, and he gets the spotlight hard even when the series wasn't meant to focus on him. It's pretty blatant how his popularity pushed him hard into the spotlight at the cost of a series that could've been far better without him, or with him in a minor and maybe even antagonistic role.
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May 9, 2018 20:21
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To be fair, Athrun does call him out on it, he just gets immediately clowned on after.
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May 9, 2018 21:45
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EthanSteele posted:The idea of Kira and Athrun flooding the emergency comm channel with their yelling because of the SEED equivalent Minovsky particle interference so everyone he doesn't kill can't get rescued until its way too late is a personal fave. i'm imagining some poor zaft dude floating in the ocean in his escape pod having to listen to these two pretty-boys cry at each-other for hours in a battlefield war is hell
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May 9, 2018 22:02
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Neddy Seagoon posted:It's just insufferably boring as a deal though, and just makes them come across as conceited about their own skill rather than anything truly meaningful. The only way to really land a premise like that is as something like "look, just walk away. Walk away and nothing happe- gently caress it, fine, I tried that's why early destiny is rad, because it makes that interesting by exploring how unbelievably lovely some rear end in a top hat just blowing up everyone's guns and leaving makes things "well he just blew up our doomsday laser, meatgrinder it is, hope everyone likes corpses" 00 season 1 also explores that riiight up until season 2 botches it insanely hard
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May 9, 2018 22:05
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Is the last episode of Gundam The Origin out yet?
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May 9, 2018 22:06
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Booyah- posted:Is the last episode of Gundam The Origin out yet? Yep. It's up on Hulu now. Also, Loran is the best pacifist Gundam protagonist, since he has a concrete agenda (IF YOU WOULD JUST TALK FOR FIVE MINUTES, YOU COULD STOP KILLING EACH OTHER!), he has to work for his disables, and when a situation arises where he absolutely has to kill or die? He kills his opponent, feels bad about it, and moves on because war is hell. Loran's a good guy.
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May 9, 2018 22:16
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EthanSteele posted:To be fair Kira's entire deal is pretty much not killing unless he has to. I'm not sure the show ever bothered to explain why he "had to" cut two warships in half in the first series' last episode. Among the multitude of reasons the CE series have soured on me, lazyass writing like that is a huge reason. (What powers all these warships without reactors being another dumb but major reason)
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May 9, 2018 22:25
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chiasaur11 posted:Yep. It's up on Hulu now. Loran is easily my favorite Gundam protagonist. Dude spend the entire series reading the operations manual to figure things out, and is truly empathetic to just about everyone.
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May 9, 2018 22:43
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Loran would be a nice guy to have as a friend. As a protagonist of fiction though he's kind of terribly bland imo.
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May 9, 2018 23:05
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:(What powers all these warships without reactors being another dumb but major reason) Oh poo poo. I've never thought about that. drat.
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May 9, 2018 23:12
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https://instagram.com/p/Bii31ExlxfO/
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May 10, 2018 00:41
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That mew gun-dom isn't just for show.
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May 10, 2018 01:00
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Yinlock posted:that's why early destiny is rad, because it makes that interesting by exploring how unbelievably lovely some rear end in a top hat just blowing up everyone's guns and leaving makes things This actually continues even past the very beginning. Heine dies specifically because of Kira's disarmament; he's dunking the poo poo out of Stellar with little effort, Kira chops his arms off(and all the Gouf Ignited's weapons are in the arms), Stellar kills Heine.
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May 10, 2018 01:17
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Kanos posted:This actually continues even past the very beginning. Heine dies specifically because of Kira's disarmament; he's dunking the poo poo out of Stellar with little effort, Kira chops his arms off(and all the Gouf Ignited's weapons are in the arms), Stellar kills Heine. Outta curiosity I rewatched that scene. I feel like he would have died regardless armed or not... though really if he had stayed in place he wouldn't have died cause Stellar only kills him cause he happened to be in the way since she was aiming at Kira
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May 10, 2018 01:34
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Allarion posted:Outta curiosity I rewatched that scene. I feel like he would have died regardless armed or not... though really if he had stayed in place he wouldn't have died cause Stellar only kills him cause he happened to be in the way since she was aiming at Kira If Kira hadn't chopped his arms off he probably would have beaten her pretty handily. Either way he would have had absolutely no way to defend himself against anyone who wanted him dead.
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May 10, 2018 01:39
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