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Dishwasher posted:What's the consensus on MSG? Is the series or movies better? I've heard mixed opinions on both. While Lemon-Lime favours the films, I will offer my thoughts which favour the television series. The films are better if you really just want the crash course rundown of 0079 and not a lot of time to spare. However, they are not really films so much as they are compiled episodes, and it shows. The films do not follow a film structure, so they begin and end at bizarre intervals, such as the first film ending right after introducing a new enemy pilot and his and Amuro's initial battle. There are a few benefits to the TV series. First of all, yes, it does follow more of a "monster of the week" formula, which the movies do away with. I feel that this works better for the kind of story 0079 is trying to tell, as a big part of it is showing how Amuro changes over time as he's worn down by the stress of combat. It feels more natural on the show, and while the films also feature this combat exhaustion, it also applies to the audience, where the movies can just be draining to watch as they fly from one battle to the next. By slowing down the pacing, the TV series has more time to explore the conflict and how it affects different sides. A lot more attention is paid to grunts on both sides of the war, where it makes clear that not all Zeon troopers are evil, even if they are fighting for a reprehensible regime. The TV series also features a much better English dub done by the Ocean Group, who have pretty much the best English Char ever. The 0079 movies do have a dub, but it is a lot older and has some very odd choices and pronunciation. If you're watching in English, stick to the TV series. The music is also better on the TV series because it gets weird and groovy in a way only early 80s music can. I even enjoy a lot of the goofier elements cut from the films, as a lot of the stranger mobile suits of the week are frankly hilarious.
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Oct 25, 2018 00:11
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The TV series, the movies, and the The Origin manga all have their own benefits and are all worth checking out. Really interesting to compare and contrast them too.
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Oct 25, 2018 00:21
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 There's something in it for everyone in any version, especially if you've already went through one version. And, while it definitely shows its age, I like the original MSG despite its fading colors, just going by Amuro's developing PTSD and how... un-anime it feels. It's a trauma that sticks with Amuro for the rest of his life, and most of is anime incarnations are really good at putting it on display.
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Oct 25, 2018 00:30
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if you have another gundam show you want to watch, like say zeta gundam, that you need to have seen MSG for beforehand, watch the movies if you want to try to engage with MSG on its own merits, you'll get more out of the tv show unless you have a really rough time swallowing cheap old animation, in which case the movies will be a more pleasant experience unless you want to watch an english dub, in which case the tv show is the way to go
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Oct 25, 2018 01:02
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As a note, if someone doesn't have much experience with anime in general, and/or Gundam/mecha in particular, the films probably aren't a particularly good introduction to the franchise. Disjointedly jumping around and not leaving any time for the work to breathe aren't generally good things for someone unfamiliar with a genre to begin with. So that's something to keep in mind.
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Oct 25, 2018 02:07
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I’m glad all these people are posting these long well thought out paragraphs on IBO, because they’re a lot better than what I can come up with. I really liked the show!
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Oct 25, 2018 02:48
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Lord Koth posted:As a note, if someone doesn't have much experience with anime in general, and/or Gundam/mecha in particular, the films probably aren't a particularly good introduction to the franchise. Disjointedly jumping around and not leaving any time for the work to breathe aren't generally good things for someone unfamiliar with a genre to begin with. So that's something to keep in mind. Yeah but that's also not particularly uncommon in Tomino works so it can function as an introduction in that sense.
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Oct 25, 2018 03:05
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ManSedan posted:I’m glad all these people are posting these long well thought out paragraphs on IBO, because they’re a lot better than what I can come up with. Agreed. I really wish I had more to contribute other than saying I really adored the series despite a couple of rough patches. I think on a whole it had a lot of good action and a very entertaining, if sad, story.
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Oct 25, 2018 04:04
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The true version of 0079 is the one that exists in your head
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Oct 25, 2018 05:15
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ManSedan posted:I’m glad all these people are posting these long well thought out paragraphs on IBO, because they’re a lot better than what I can come up with. Yeah. I think I've been getting to like it more as I've considered it more, which is nice. Wasn't sure how it would hold up on the landing, but rewatching it has held together better than I expected.
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Oct 25, 2018 10:34
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Perhaps the real 0079 was the one inside us all along.
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Oct 25, 2018 14:51
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3ZszWyfyuE
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Oct 25, 2018 21:17
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I also want to speak in favor of the original MSG TV series over the movies, because one thing that I really enjoy about late 70s/early 80s anime is the slow pace/dramatic tension (VOTOMS is fantastic at this). Maybe it was to save on the animation budget, but it really helps to sell the gravity of what's occurring on screen. Rewatching it as an adult, I'm starting to appreciate a lot of the fine details (or possible oversights) that help define the character. For example, in the very first episode Amuro leaves the shelter in order to contact his dad to get the civilians transported on to White Base - he justifies his departure by telling everyone that's exactly what he's going to do. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself holding the operations manual for the Gundam. What does he do? He does what any protagonist who's been introduced to the audience as a genius shut-in does: he immediately drops his entire mission to get help for the other civilians - his very reason for leaving the shelter - and just sits there absorbed in the Gundam manual while the Zakus wreck the colony around him. Eventually, the civilians from the shelter evacuate of their own accord to go to White Base. And, as always, Fraw Bow comes to pull his head out of whatever it is that he's doing at the moment to focus on the fact that the colony is threatening to come down around their ears. Finally, I feel that seeing his transition from bystander to complicit soldier to a soldier coming to terms with the consequences of his actions is something that best plays out over time rather than condensed into a few movies. LuiCypher fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Oct 26, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 18:10
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I just finished December Sky last night (Bandit Flower this weekend). Great if hosed up story, but is it just me, or is there a Vietnam War vibe to the whole thing? It doesn't help that "A Baoa Qu" sounds like a city in Vietnam.
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Oct 26, 2018 20:31
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Yasuo Ohtagaki (Thunderbolt's creator) is something akin to the Mangaka equivalent of that war/military buff friend/uncle who everyone has. Except, y'know, he gets paid. So it wouldn't be a wild guess that the vibes aren't just in your head. 
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Oct 26, 2018 20:50
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He definitely hits the Vietnam marks better than 08th MS Team, which really only uses the aesthetic and geographical location to inform it's story.
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Oct 26, 2018 22:22
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Vietnam vibes fill a lot of the OYW and pre-Zeta post-OYW stuff, especially the designs by Kobayashi, Kondo, and Izubuchi
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Oct 26, 2018 23:34
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Solkanar512 posted:I just finished December Sky last night (Bandit Flower this weekend). Great if hosed up story, but is it just me, or is there a Vietnam War vibe to the whole thing? It doesn't help that "A Baoa Qu" sounds like a city in Vietnam. I was trying to figure out what it was about Thunderbolt that was tripping the wires in my head. That said, I'm a little lukewarm on Thunderbolt as it stands. The Federation characters just aren't that compelling to me (slightly better in Bandit Flower), and I think post-IGLOO, Gundam really needs to walk back some of the sympathetic fascist stuff. The One Year War came about as a result of populist backlash allowing a family of fascist dictators to take control and commit unspeakable atrocities. The Federation definitely had a thumping coming with their blatant plutocratic colonial system, but maybe making broad swaths of the Federation so nasty that you start thinking they deserved to be gassed and have colonies dropped on them isn't the best optics... Maybe I'm just having a sudden crisis of conscience though. I loving love the Thunderbolt suit designs. Give me more GM shield walls.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:23
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I don't really see how Thunderbolt makes the Federation any worse than their depictions elsewhere, or how it makes Zeon anywhere near as sympathetic as IGLOO or 0083. The child soldiers scene is frequently pointed to as the point where the Federation crosses the line, despite the fact that it's been established since the very first episode of 0079 that the war has killed so many people that kids as young as 15 are getting conscripted. The sympathy shown to the Living Dead Division is applied to the soldiers themselves, but not Zeon itself. The Living Dead Division's goals are nothing short of monstrous and it's loving tragic watching so many of the human guinea pigs giving up their lives for a regime that treats them like dogshit. The Federation are sending teenagers into combat, but they're not hacking people's limbs off and throwing cripples into combat as if Unit 731 victims were welded into tanks for field testing. I find Io to be the more interesting of the deuteragonists specifically because of how bloodthirsty he is and the contradiction that causes for his closest friends. There's the Io that we see, and the Io that Cornelius and Claudia remember him to be. It's sad because the friend and lover they used to know died a long time ago, leaving a hollow adrenaline junkie consumed entirely by war. As a protagonist, he's pretty different from your typical Gundam pilot idealist. It's also why I was a little let down by Io in Bandit Flower, because he's just not as interesting. They try to keep his hardass attitude while softening him to be more likeable, but instead he just comes off as being boring. I'm not saying that they couldn't do a mellowed out Io coming to grips with everything he's lost, but they didn't do as good a job as they could have, so he's more of a childish cocky rear end in a top hat than a broken man trying to put himself back together. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Oct 27, 2018 |
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Oct 27, 2018 01:10
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Arcsquad12 posted:He definitely hits the Vietnam marks better than 08th MS Team, which really only uses the aesthetic and geographical location to inform it's story. 08th is interesting in a modern context since the main selling point in US fan discussions is pretty well obsoleted by more recent shows. Obviously it was never as gritty as its reputation suggested, but Thunderbolt is a quick little number that plays up War Is Hell more than 08th ever did, with a protagonist who's not just a soldier, but the kind of professional killer who loves his job. There's the some of the same somewhat-obnoxious "Maybe both sides suck?" messaging, but where 08th let the protagonists float above the consequences, Thunderbolt shoves everybody in the same poo poo. Meanwhile, the "Mobile Suits as machines needing upkeep" angle was pushed more in Iron Blooded Orphans, where there was even a gradual arc for the maintenance standards from "...I forgot the thruster fuel" to a smooth, well oiled operation able to rapidly cycle multiple teams through the hangar. IBO also kept up the grit, has the protagonists be veterans, and has minimal beam weapons. Basically, what people used to promise with 08th, other shows do a better job of fulfilling, even though the same points come up from time to time.
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Oct 27, 2018 01:35
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08th MS Team is still pretty good, but it definitely has more in common with a 50s or 60s "War as an Adventure" film than it does with any war film made after A Bridge Too Far. Plus, Michel and Kiki really drag things down and make it hard to take the show seriously at points. Anyone with half a brain would either scrub Michel out or throw him into rear echelon because he's a massive liability, while Kiki is literally only there to flash her tits, jam her rear end in Shiro's face and make a dumb, go nowhere unrequited romance for a show that already has a pretty weak romance to begin with. When 08th MS Team is focusing on being a buddy squad adventure show where teamwork saves the day, it works pretty well. Karen, Terry and Elodore are all good supporting characters, Yuri Kellarne and Norris are fun antagonists, and it even has some poignant episodes where it questions people's reasons to fight and if you can really be a pacifist when lives are at stake. I stated above that I don't like Kiki that much, but the episode where her village gets massacred and Shiro compromises on his unwillingness to kill is probably the best part of the whole show.
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Oct 27, 2018 01:53
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At the same time apart from the 3 episodes at the start and the 2 episodes at the end IBO is still a show about teenage muscleman supersoldier aces crushing a seemingly endless stream of jobbers while no less than two unsubtle Char clones fly around for no reason other than the show having a quota to fill. And Thunderbolt is a literal melodrama where the main characters are Shadow the Hedgehog and Lil' Brudder.
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Oct 27, 2018 02:11
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Arcsquad12 posted:I don't really see how Thunderbolt makes the Federation any worse than their depictions elsewhere, or how it makes Zeon anywhere near as sympathetic as IGLOO or 0083. The child soldiers scene is frequently pointed to as the point where the Federation crosses the line, despite the fact that it's been established since the very first episode of 0079 that the war has killed so many people that kids as young as 15 are getting conscripted. The sympathy shown to the Living Dead Division is applied to the soldiers themselves, but not Zeon itself. The Living Dead Division's goals are nothing short of monstrous and it's loving tragic watching so many of the human guinea pigs giving up their lives for a regime that treats them like dogshit. The Federation are sending teenagers into combat, but they're not hacking people's limbs off and throwing cripples into combat as if Unit 731 victims were welded into tanks for field testing. In general, a surprising number of people have a hard time separating what the characters are saying with what the overall work and authors are saying. It's like how some people take Starship Troopers at face value instead of as a parody. I still don't like Thunderbolt because it reminds me of how absolutely worthless GMs are when they are on-screen, and I like GMs more than most grunt suits. They keep saying that GMs are way better than balls, but I'm not sure they've shown it.
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Oct 27, 2018 02:53
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Not every Ball pilot is Shiro Amada.
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Oct 27, 2018 02:59
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In war, everyone is a casualty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUn7KgXhwwI
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Oct 27, 2018 03:27
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Now I'm sad. I can't watch 0080 without getting a tangible reaction.
Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Oct 27, 2018 |
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Oct 27, 2018 03:38
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Thunderbolt has an A+ soundtrack tho
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Oct 27, 2018 04:23
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Arcsquad12 posted:I don't really see how Thunderbolt makes the Federation any worse than their depictions elsewhere, or how it makes Zeon anywhere near as sympathetic as IGLOO or 0083. The child soldiers scene is frequently pointed to as the point where the Federation crosses the line, despite the fact that it's been established since the very first episode of 0079 that the war has killed so many people that kids as young as 15 are getting conscripted. The sympathy shown to the Living Dead Division is applied to the soldiers themselves, but not Zeon itself. The Living Dead Division's goals are nothing short of monstrous and it's loving tragic watching so many of the human guinea pigs giving up their lives for a regime that treats them like dogshit. The Federation are sending teenagers into combat, but they're not hacking people's limbs off and throwing cripples into combat as if Unit 731 victims were welded into tanks for field testing. I think that is the main problem with Thunderbolt though. There is the Federation and Zeon as organizations, and they are both shown to be pretty drat nasty. The only reason the Feds can claim the moral high ground is that they're not actual fascists. (Though, they are pretty loving close to it.) Zeon uses nerve gas on civilians, commits warcrimes on a daily basis, and have a wünderwaffen program that would make Dr. Mengele blush. This is contrasted by the individuals fighting the war itself. The soldiers on both sides are just people doing their jobs for whatever reason that might be. Some fight to survive, others for nationalistic idealism, some to get back at the other side for the crimes it has committed. There is a wide variety of motives here, but most of those motives are sympathetic and understood by the viewer. That's where Io and Claudia fail as Federation soldiers. Io has been consumed by the machine that drives the Federation, and both him and Claudia only have their positions because of their connection to Side 2 nobility. The Moore Brotherhood is painted to be even more corrupt than the Federation at large. Claudia at the very least is shown to be quite aware of her incompetence, which is how I presume she ended up being a space heroin addict. Io, on the other hand, knows he is good, and revels in it. The few times the show tries to show some introspection on his part, it gets shrugged off almost immediately. His consideration of the teenage conscripts is the best example of this. "Gee, this is pretty nasty, the Federation expecting me to use those kids as human shields. Well, better get to it then!" It comes off as insincere, and given that he is the point of view character for the Federation, compared to the unquestionably sympathetic LDD soldiers, it undercuts the dichotomy between The Federation and the soldiers fighting for it. I have to give Cornelius a fair billing here, since he is the only PoV Federation character that shows a lick of discomfort with what is going on. His "why the hell are we continuing to murder each other, do you want to die?" speech is the only actual both sides moment in the show. Bandit Flower does nothing to improve on December Sky's rendition of the Federation either. Bianca is as bland as it gets, I think, and while there is room for part three to give Io some introspection, I have a hard time believing that it is coming. chiasaur11 posted:Obviously it was never as gritty as its reputation suggested, but Thunderbolt is a quick little number that plays up War Is Hell more than 08th ever did, with a protagonist who's not just a soldier, but the kind of professional killer who loves his job. There's the some of the same somewhat-obnoxious "Maybe both sides suck?" messaging, but where 08th let the protagonists float above the consequences, Thunderbolt shoves everybody in the same poo poo. Essentially, Thunderbolt fails to convincingly make the "both sides suck" argument that is endemic to Federation vs. Zeon shows. 0079 doesn't talk too much about it since the point of view never really focuses on The Federation as an entity. 08th, 0080, Stardust Memory, Zeta, CCA, and Unicorn all do a relatively good job of this. 08th especially has a great rift between high command and the grunts on both sides. Same with Zeta (and Stardust as essentially the prequel to Zeta). CCA shows that the Federation government and Londo Bell do not see eye to eye, though Char's Neo-Zeon doesn't get the same treatment. But Unicorn comes right back to it with The Sleeves/Full Frontal being divorced form the Garanciere/Mineva and the Federation/AE being divorced from Londo Bell/Cardius Vist (again). In each of these, the organizations at the top are decidedly unsympathetic shitheels, while the people working for them are varying degrees of sympathetic. Both side-ism is less onerous when it is being used as a backdrop for the character stories is what I'm trying to say.
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Oct 27, 2018 04:38
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Warmachine posted:Essentially, Thunderbolt fails to convincingly make the "both sides suck" argument that is endemic to Federation vs. Zeon shows. 0079 doesn't talk too much about it since the point of view never really focuses on The Federation as an entity. 08th, 0080, Stardust Memory, Zeta, CCA, and Unicorn all do a relatively good job of this. 08th especially has a great rift between high command and the grunts on both sides. Same with Zeta (and Stardust as essentially the prequel to Zeta). CCA shows that the Federation government and Londo Bell do not see eye to eye, though Char's Neo-Zeon doesn't get the same treatment. But Unicorn comes right back to it with The Sleeves/Full Frontal being divorced form the Garanciere/Mineva and the Federation/AE being divorced from Londo Bell/Cardius Vist (again). In each of these, the organizations at the top are decidedly unsympathetic shitheels, while the people working for them are varying degrees of sympathetic. There's a strong division between genuine "both side-ism" where the Federation and Zeon are treated as morally comparable (08th, Stardust Memory, and Unicorn) and the Tomino stuff where the Federation's main flaw is their higher-ups being too trusting/cowardly/corrupt to reign Zeon, the Titans, or Char's Neo-Zeon while Zeon's entire ideology from top to bottom is based around committing genocide on a scale larger than every previous genocide in history put together. The Federation doesn't even do anything wrong in 0080. They're on Side 6 with explicit permission because Side 6 was afraid Zeon was going to gas them like they gassed the other neutral colonies. And it's entirely justified because Col. Killing does try to nuke Side 6 (for entirely non-strategic reasons) and but is stopped by the Federation.
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Oct 27, 2018 05:50
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Microcline posted:There's a strong division between genuine "both side-ism" where the Federation and Zeon are treated as morally comparable (08th, Stardust Memory, and Unicorn) and the Tomino stuff where the Federation's main flaw is their higher-ups being too trusting/cowardly/corrupt to reign Zeon, the Titans, or Char's Neo-Zeon while Zeon's entire ideology from top to bottom is based around committing genocide on a scale larger than every previous genocide in history put together. Except, you know, the scene where Cyclops team goes "We're making a perfect distraction here, because the Federation wouldn't dare fire into civilian occupied areas, so just be careful not to fire yourself, and we can safely bait out the Gundam" and the Federation officer goes "You know that being careful when around civilians? I was thinking, and hear me out here, because this is a real brainstorm: gently caress that." It's even a big part of the finale, where Chris nearly loses because she went after Bernie in the forest, following his gameplan. Unlike the higher ups, she actually gives a drat about collateral damage.
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Oct 27, 2018 06:00
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It's a tough situation for the Federation to come out looking like a rose in, because their options are to let the Cyclops Team hide behind human shields and accomplish their sabotage mission or to open fire and hope the collateral damage isn't so bad. Christina loses the hot rod new Gundam and nearly dies fighting a single Zaku Kai because he baited her into a ground of his choosing laced with traps specifically by preying on her desire to not inflict collateral damage. Like it's not morally okay to open fire when you know it's going to hurt civilians, but it's honestly worse to actively exploit the enemy's reluctance to fire on the human shields you're hiding behind while engaged in an attacking mission.
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Oct 27, 2018 13:19
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Arcsquad12 posted:I find Io to be the more interesting of the deuteragonists specifically because of how bloodthirsty he is and the contradiction that causes for his closest friends. There's the Io that we see, and the Io that Cornelius and Claudia remember him to be. It's sad because the friend and lover they used to know died a long time ago, leaving a hollow adrenaline junkie consumed entirely by war. As a protagonist, he's pretty different from your typical Gundam pilot idealist. It's also why I was a little let down by Io in Bandit Flower, because he's just not as interesting. They try to keep his hardass attitude while softening him to be more likeable, but instead he just comes off as being boring. I'm not saying that they couldn't do a mellowed out Io coming to grips with everything he's lost, but they didn't do as good a job as they could have, so he's more of a childish cocky rear end in a top hat than a broken man trying to put himself back together. Io works as a bloodthirsty rear end in a top hat in December Sky because the situation in the Thunderbolt sector rewards that kind of behavior. In Bandit Flower though he's on a much more nebulous mission and he doesn't have anybody in particular to get murderously obsessive or obsessively murderous about, or not at least anyone who lasts longer than a minute against him. The manga actually gave Io a much more amicable personality though (and a catchphrase  ) so he at least has that to fall back on in the South Seas Alliance arc.Warmachine posted:Essentially, Thunderbolt fails to convincingly make the "both sides suck" argument that is endemic to Federation vs. Zeon shows. 0079 doesn't talk too much about it since the point of view never really focuses on The Federation as an entity. 08th, 0080, Stardust Memory, Zeta, CCA, and Unicorn all do a relatively good job of this. 08th especially has a great rift between high command and the grunts on both sides. Same with Zeta (and Stardust as essentially the prequel to Zeta). CCA shows that the Federation government and Londo Bell do not see eye to eye, though Char's Neo-Zeon doesn't get the same treatment. But Unicorn comes right back to it with The Sleeves/Full Frontal being divorced form the Garanciere/Mineva and the Federation/AE being divorced from Londo Bell/Cardius Vist (again). In each of these, the organizations at the top are decidedly unsympathetic shitheels, while the people working for them are varying degrees of sympathetic. I've just started watching Victory and its own special flavor of both side-ism has been pretty amazing so far. Zanscare is set up as the bad guys by way of evil-looking mobile suits and not having the white Gundam, but from what has been shown in the first 10 or so episodes, despite a little theatricality they're mostly comprised of perfectly reasonable people. Even the main antagonist has been nothing but a gentleman outside of his duties as a soldier. The only grunt so far who started to get outright war-crimey was swiftly executed by his captain, who later died reeling in the horror that he had been fighting a child. Meanwhile Marvet and the engineers keep on chastising a 13 year old boy for not being murderous enough. I must admit I didn't get Victory Gundam until now. I had tried to watch it before but the weird sponsor friendly episode order put me off immediately and I wasn't really a fan of the Zanscare suits either so there wasn't a lot to keep me going. I actually sat down determined to get through the first few episodes the other day and wow, it's been a while since a Gundam show had me going like this. The moral reversal of the classic boy falls into Gundam premise was pretty great. Instead of having the boy heroically step up to the plate to save his friends, we instead see military insurgents prepare a child for war while his friend looks on horrified. The 90s animation palette is always welcome too.
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Oct 27, 2018 14:56
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i don't understand why it's a problem for the federation to be presented as nasty and bad
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Oct 27, 2018 14:56
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Zanscare suits are the best. Fear the bug eyes.
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Oct 27, 2018 15:36
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Kanos posted:It's a tough situation for the Federation to come out looking like a rose in, because their options are to let the Cyclops Team hide behind human shields and accomplish their sabotage mission or to open fire and hope the collateral damage isn't so bad. Christina loses the hot rod new Gundam and nearly dies fighting a single Zaku Kai because he baited her into a ground of his choosing laced with traps specifically by preying on her desire to not inflict collateral damage. For Bernie, it's shown he's out of town for the same reason that Chris goes after him, which is part of the tragedy. They're both good people who don't want to get any bystanders hurt.
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Oct 27, 2018 18:29
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I just finished Victory. Whoof, what a weird Gundam show! It's Tomino cranked up to 11. I'll try to discuss it in a spoilers-light manner for people still watching it. Overall I enjoyed watching it as a UC fan, and I enjoyed the characters quite a bit. It does have huge problems though: the second half is much weaker than the first, Tomino puts some weird gender politics on display, and Shakti feels more like a plot device than a character sometimes. I think many of the aspects of Victory are like an inverse of Turn A. In Turn A, the warlike faction are the ultimate bad guys. Everyone else is able to come to an understanding via diplomacy eventually. Diana is a very heroic character, and Loran makes the moral choice even when it's difficult. In Victory, the bad guys first try to colonize via terrorism, then just literally flatten via military might, then kill all intelligent life on Earth via mind control rays. Shakti nearly always makes things worse, and Uso tries to be kind but mostly fails. I quite enjoy the setting and atmosphere of Victory. The "good guys" are struggling desperately throughout the whole show. It really feels like it follows the general arc of Zeta -> ZZ -> Char's counterattack in peaceful life getting more and more precarious as institutions break down. I really liked the supporting cast. The ZZ Gundam crew irked me throughout the whole show, but Odelo, Warren, Tomas, Martina etc all have good development and serve critical roles. Even the old men have a lot of charm to them (they must have been young around the events of Unicorn?). I think Uso is a pretty good protagonist too. He's probably the nicest Gundam protagonist after Loran, but he's forced into terrible situations time and time again. He's often in anguish over killing people. The mobile suit designs are also excellent. The bug-eyed Zanscare suits are so menacing. The Victory, V-Dash, and V2 are sone of my favorite MS designs. It was an excellent choice to make them mass-production too. My favorite scenes in the show are the crew just talking in downtime. For example, the whale graveyard episode had some great discussions. Even the second to last episode had some nice talks about why they were fighting and what they thought of the war. Turn A really improved on this aspect as well. I think the villains really poo poo the show up around the halfway mark though. Up until then, they're interesting social climbers. They joined BESPA to get ahead in life, and they're not above some occasional heinous poo poo to get the job done. After that, the Motorrad Fleet loving sucks. They're just hardline imperial weirdos obsessed with something stupid. Then the final bit of the show brings back the earlier villains, but also stupidly obsessed with weird grudge matches. It really ruins most of the second half of Victory Gundam for me.
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Oct 27, 2018 20:44
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ninjewtsu posted:i don't understand why it's a problem for the federation to be presented as nasty and bad It's okay for the Federation to not be portrayed as a perfect government with some real problems as long as there's not some kind of attempt to equate the Federation and Zeon as being somehow equivalently bad so it's just as valid to support either side. The Federation is a representative democracy that runs the entire drat world, so it's got some real inefficiencies and problems with inequality and it definitely has a real rear end in a top hat problem existing in its absolutely gigantic bureaucracy and military. Zeon is an amalgamation of a whole lot of fascist ideas and imagery ranging from Imperial Japan to Nazi Germany and also includes a heaping helping of institutional racism(spacenoids best!), honest to god war crimes, and genocide as part of their core ideologies. As a whole ideology, they're pretty much the ur-villains, a disgusting pastiche of basically all of the worst and most abhorrent trends in human government in the past real life century. Like people draw the conclusion from Thunderbolt that it's got "both sides"-ism to it because Io is a shithead and the Federation pulls out some super young soldiers, but the Zeon forces are literally a disabled human lab rat battalion sent into battle on lovely prosthetics and used as guinea pigs for experimentation while being ordered to fight to the last man and die for a bombed out ruined colony sector with no material value by their superiors. Just because Daryl is a nice guy and Karla feels bad about what she's doing doesn't change the fact that holy poo poo Zeon as a government and an ideology are amazingly loving evil as all hell in Thunderbolt.
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Oct 27, 2018 20:55
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The thing I don't like about "thunderbolt makes zeon sympathetic" is that the sympathetic zeon characters are all victims of zeon, not representatives of it The feds are crummy and cross some awful lines but the fact that it takes half of thunderbolt for the feds to send in the child soldiers is really the difference between how bad they are and how bad zeon is: the feds crossed a line. Zeon started with the line far behind them, and just kept barreling forward nonstop from there. It's insane to equate them, so a lot of that criticism to me just looks like "it's against the law to show the federation as being bad people"
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Oct 27, 2018 21:24
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ninjewtsu posted:The thing I don't like about "thunderbolt makes zeon sympathetic" is that the sympathetic zeon characters are all victims of zeon, not representatives of it I know we've done this whole song and dance before, but the thing I find weird about Thunderbolt is how, based on the facts on the ground, the Feddies are way better people, but the camera lens keep being more sympathetic to the Zekes. Like, the Feddies try for arrests, the Zeeks go for suicide bombing, the Federation is fighting for home, Zeon is fighting in the ruins of a mass grave they created. But the Federation leads are a fight junkie and an actual junkie, while Zeon has people who are shown to be sad about life. Zeon's biggest scumbag is depicted as only sort of attached to them, while Claudia's right hand man tries to murder her. Again, this is a repeat, but it felt kind of like how IBO occasionally pulled the rug away to remind you that Tekkadan isn't exactly the heroes, except that we already know Zeon is the baddies.
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Oct 27, 2018 21:58
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I think "who the good guy is and who the bad guy is gets a little muddled when you're looking at individual soldiers" is kind of the point. It's like reading nazi soldier diaries: yeah, obviously the nazi were an insanely evil government that needed to be eradicated, but once you start looking at individual soldiers you start seeing a lot more nuance and humanity in them, especially the ones who don't agree with the regime but ended up in the armed services by circumstance, or who immediately realized how hosed up things were as soon as they saw the atrocities in person, or who were themselves victims of the regime. This is not an understanding that is contradicted by the nazi government being atrocious.
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Oct 27, 2018 22:51
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