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ninjewtsu posted:pretty good show that one lovely character kind of ruins Also multiple people have said this: which one?
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Apr 10, 2020 16:49
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Dog Kisser posted:Also multiple people have said this: which one? I personally didn't hate him at all, I can see what they where going for; but there are some gross aspects to him for sure.
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Apr 10, 2020 16:55
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I despise IBO but I'll fully admit to being 1. In the vast minority on this and 2. An extremely harumphing man who basically hasn't liked anything post-Turn-A Gundam. Except for Build Fighters.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:10
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Dog Kisser posted:Also multiple people have said this: which one? the guy who has a harem
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Apr 10, 2020 17:16
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I think his ending redeems him as a character, if not him as a person, by showing the limitations of the style of leadership that Orga has chosen to emulate and further setting up the tragic inevitability of the ending.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:23
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Zedd posted:Without spoiling too much: Space Mafia man, introduced pretty early on. There was potential there for an interesting take on polyamory, but the fact that it is basically fitting the stereotype of the patriarchal polygamist sans him coercing the women to stay with him undercuts it hard. In the end it comes off as creepy, and the point-of-view characters using it as a template for an alternative family structure rings a bit out of tune because of it. Spoilered it for the goon still watching, even though most of the spoilery bits are already revealed.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:53
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Warmachine posted:There was potential there for an interesting take on polyamory, but the fact that it is basically fitting the stereotype of the patriarchal polygamist sans him coercing the women to stay with him undercuts it hard. To be fair, the show does at least try to walk it back somewhat in season 2 with a reveal that they're not ALL his wives and kids, it's a cover for abused women fleeing from their abusers with a blanket statement of "They belong to a Lieutenant of Teiwaz now. Hands Off Or Else". It's doesn't fundamentally fix the problem that a lot of them are transparently his harem, but it at least acknowledges it was poo poo writing and tries to patch it a little. It's still pretty drat creepy though.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:05
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Bluh, can there be no anime without sketchy sex poo poo?
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Apr 10, 2020 18:16
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yes there's plenty, next question
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Apr 10, 2020 18:59
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dogsicle posted:yes there's plenty, next question Follow up: can shows with otherwise compelling plots refrain from sketchy sex stuff? It's always frustrating when this stuff crops up in shows and undercuts their overall quality. Telling people that there are other shows without sketchy sex stuff is fine and all but it doesn't make the harem in IBO any less awkward and unneeded.
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Apr 10, 2020 19:03
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Arcsquad12 posted:Follow up: can shows with otherwise compelling plots refrain from sketchy sex stuff? Yes sorry this is specifically what I meant - I'm not going to STOP watching something I otherwise like because of it, but it would be neat to ever have a show I could recommend to, say, my wife, without being like 'it's got some really stellar animation and plot and some minor fanservicey sexual abuse and...'
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Apr 10, 2020 19:12
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The extent of this character's "harem" thing is that he has a ship full of women that he is legally married to, and that some of them have kids with him and those ones are shown to be mutually in love with him (some of them instead are, as mentioned, just legally married to him for protection). If the basic concept skeeves you out, that's fine, but IBO is not a show about the space mafia running around building a harem. It's a setting detail about an important ally to the main characters. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Apr 10, 2020 |
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Apr 10, 2020 19:16
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Arcsquad12 posted:Follow up: can shows with otherwise compelling plots refrain from sketchy sex stuff? no, because this all exists in a venn diagram i can't possibly find the energy to care about this in the abstract because each case comes out of very specific contexts and is executed differently. specific to the situation with naze, well the fixation on him has always seemed ott and i don't feel its anywhere significant enough to undercut the show or be worth preempting a recommendation with
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Apr 10, 2020 19:40
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The character in question sucks and the way the show handles him also sucks, but he's not really a front and center main character who hogs the screen constantly.
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Apr 10, 2020 21:44
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Dog Kisser posted:So! I just started watching my first Gundam series, Iron Blooded Orphans. Anyone have any opinions on it (spoilery or not)? It's excellent with some problematic relationships aside, as mentioned. I think it deviates from the core (Universal Century) mythos more than most series but tells its own story very well. If you like it I'd recommend getting the original series in to know where the derivative works come from, they all benefit from that added context I think. Edit: whoops, lots of responses already. It's been on my mind as I think I'm about to watch the English dub.
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Apr 10, 2020 21:57
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BizarroAzrael posted:It's excellent with some problematic relationships aside, as mentioned. I think it deviates from the core (Universal Century) mythos more than most series but tells its own story very well. If you like it I'd recommend getting the original series in to know where the derivative works come from, they all benefit from that added context I think. Yeah, seeing more of the older stuff provided some nice context for how IBO called back to the original, but it still felt like its own thing, with characters going in different directions than their inspirations. For an example of a callback I only noticed when listening to a podcast about the original... Julieta's final talk with Mika bringing up how he's fighting without a cause references Lalah and Amuro in the original.
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Apr 10, 2020 22:45
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The point where a lot of gundam shows fall apart is when they lean too heavily on emulating MSG+Zeta+CCA. 00 First Season? Great, Inventive. Second season? It tries to be Zeta again and falls flat for some people. The same goes for Gundam Wing, which tries to shove the entire character arc of Char Aznable, from MSG all the way to CCA, into a single series.
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Apr 10, 2020 23:31
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Fivemarks posted:The point where a lot of gundam shows fall apart is when they lean too heavily on emulating MSG+Zeta+CCA. 00 First Season? Great, Inventive. Second season? It tries to be Zeta again and falls flat for some people. IIRC the sad thing here is that the writers did realize this, 00 was meant to be its own thing, and then it didn't sell so it got some bad Executive Meddling in and we got S2. I may be misremembering though but it does seem like a very likely scenario.
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Apr 11, 2020 01:39
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Lockon 2 definitely feels like some executive meddling. Same with his romance with Anew. Most of the romantic subplots in season 2 feel that way though.
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Apr 11, 2020 01:44
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Lockon 2 was probably planned because 00 had a weird theme of duality, which is why Tieria had a clone, Allelujah was two people and Lockon's identical brother Lockon appeared. I however would not be surprised if he wasn't intended to be a replacement but an antagonist or something at some point.
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Apr 11, 2020 03:37
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Is there any actual evidence of executive meddling in 00 S2 or is it just speculative fan babble?
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Apr 11, 2020 04:24
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RillAkBea posted:Is there any actual evidence of executive meddling in 00 S2 or is it just speculative fan babble? Yes, they've actually discussed it. Not actually in terms of 'they ruined things' but they've spoken about the fact that they made changes to Season 2 to make Gundam fans more happy. This includes both the increase in Zetagundaming and the redesigns of the suits to be more toy friendly compared to the S1 suits which were apparently a pain to do. Anew Returner's plotline was also specifically something added in after the fact (and shows it.) I'll see if I can dig up the interview but it was all very polite speak that amounted to "loving Gundam fans didn't give us a chance because our show wasn't Gundam enough." Which is why the ending of 00S2 is pretty bluntly Exia murdering the original RX-78-2 Gundam. The same goes for most Gundam shows. Fukuda spoke pretty bluntly about how he made changes to the plot based on studio or fan demands (which is why certain characters survive and why Dearka and Buster Gundam play a bigger role in SEED's ending) and the AGE development team openly stated they were making Parts 2 and 3 "More Gundam" after fan displeasure which is why Asemu's plot changes massively after like the second episode of his arc. They even increased his age as well to compensate so the early info about Asemu has him notably younger than the final version. Tomino never said anything about G-Reco that wasn't blaming himself but G-Reco also pretty bluntly was Tomino being given free reign IBO is hard to say for sure but we do know there was a backlash against Mika's murder of the prisoners in the second episode and they apparently toned some things down after that. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Apr 11, 2020 |
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Apr 11, 2020 04:51
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Do you remember who specifically that Mika prisoner backlash was coming from? I seem to remember internet people saying the Japanese were saying that parents were complaining about a kid's show being too violent, but well that's just my memory of a five year old game of telephone and I don't trust that.
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Apr 11, 2020 05:09
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Raxivace posted:Do you remember who specifically that Mika prisoner backlash was coming from? Japanese Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization had some complaints for episode 3, according to wikipedia. From what I've read in interviews, though, most of the IBO changes came from Okada and Nagai. For example, Ein wasn't initially going to make it out of the starting arc, but Masaya Matsukaze's performance as Gaelio made Mari Okada go "Whoa, I was just thinking of this guy as a McGillis's snobby friend who'll get the Garma treatment, but this performance is selling me on him having more going on under the surface.", which let Ein stick around so Gaelio had someone to bounce off. You know, a Jesse in Breaking Bad deal. Similarly, it was Okada (and the other writers) who got us the ending we got rather than the initial ending plans, while the producers were willing to go all in. (Also, considering... everything in season 2, I have a hard time believing that those broadcast complaints had a significant impact.)
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Apr 11, 2020 05:40
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On 00 season 2 and Lockon 2, I could ansolutely get that Lockon 2; Lockon Harder was planned without any other info or manipulation if Anew didn't feel as tacked on as she did. Lockon the second had a scene with Feldt that was entirely based around setting him apart from the original Lockon and that could have been explored much better. It was like the Soma/Marie duality in that there was a good idea in there that got swept aside by things that felt really out of place. Nena and Wang Liu Mei was another plot point of season 2 that fell really flat for me but I wished had some more substance to it, or at least a moment to go over how Nena ended up there in the first place.
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Apr 11, 2020 05:51
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I feel like a really good UC Gundam story would be about Anaheim Electronics just this completely amoral Weapons Manufacturer profiting off of literal genocide
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Apr 11, 2020 08:28
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Race Realists posted:I feel like a really good UC Gundam story would be about Anaheim Electronics "So we gonna give this week's prototype one eye and give it to Zeon, or give it to the Federation as-is?" "Uhhh... got a coin we can flip for it?"
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Apr 11, 2020 09:12
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Race Realists posted:I feel like a really good UC Gundam story would be about Anaheim Electronics Neddy Seagoon posted:"So we gonna give this week's prototype one eye and give it to Zeon, or give it to the Federation as-is?" There's literally a manga that's just this. It's a complete dad manga that glorifies death from overwork though, so it's not anywhere near as fun as you would hope.
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Apr 11, 2020 09:37
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RillAkBea posted:There's literally a manga that's just this. It's a complete dad manga that glorifies death from overwork though, so it's not anywhere near as fun as you would hope. i meant one that wasn't poo poo thank you very much 
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Apr 11, 2020 09:53
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I really don't think that's a fair complaint about season 1, considering it's not even really a botched ending; It just very transparently swerves for one part in a way that's clearly from someone popping their head in to a meeting mid-writing and saying "oh, hey, you got another season after all". Getting a second season is never a guarantee for a show and murdering ALL the secondary characters doesn't leave you a lot to build on for a followup. It could've been better executed, but it's better than getting a pair of Lyle Delandy's. I may be remembering this wrong, but as far as I recall the show didn't set up a scenario where it was going to [end of season one of Iron Blood Orphans spoilers]murder all of the secondary characters, and only 3 of them were ever suggested to die to my recollection. They were also somewhat disposable, not just because they were secondary characters, but because they were all parts of large organisations filled with other pilots that could easily have taken their place. Yeah, the show would have had to introduce new characters in their place, but none of the ones suggested to die had so much presence that would be hard to do. A larger reason to do it, or at least, a more obvious fallout of the way things played out regardless of whether it was done specifically for that reason or not, is that Tekkadan [spoiler for season two of Iron Blood Orphans]took no real casualties despite the audaciousness of their plan, which further emboldened them going in to season two. ImpAtom posted:Lockon 2 was probably planned because 00 had a weird theme of duality, which is why Tieria had a clone, Allelujah was two people and Lockon's identical brother Lockon appeared. I also wouldn't be surprised if he was originally going to be less blatantly similar looking, and if they weren't going to have him be more visually distinct with a different hairstyle or something. Race Realists posted:I feel like a really good UC Gundam story would be about Anaheim Electronics I think it'd be a cool idea to do a story about them, but I think I'm in the minority in that I don't see them as the worst thing ever and the main/only reason that war happens at all in UC and thus I don't really like the idea of a show where AE as a whole is the antagonistic faction that needs to be defeated. I like how AE were originally depicted in Zeta and ZZ, where they're not double dealing at all and only support AEUG (outside the time the Titans show up at AE's Granada base and force them to hand over their new mobile suit design at least), and their moral ambiguity comes not from the fact they support everyone with no hesitation, and instead comes from the fact they see AEUG as a private army and want AE to fight in ways that benefit them personally at times. I've also seen some suggestion they may have supported AEUG not out of moral purity, but because the Titans and Federation did all their designs themselves and if AEUG could defeat those design, it'd show AE's superiority. I don't remember anything in the show that actually implies that, but it seems like a decent way to create moral ambiguity at the same time. Even taking Char's Counterattack in to consideration, it seems less like they're amoral opportunists and more like they had Spacenoid sympathies and supported the causes they thought best placed to advance Spacenoid causes. In Zeta, the Titans need to be defeated, because they're authoritarians and use murder as the first, last and only answer to opposition, and Neo Zeon weren't much different despite coming from space while AE are a much cleaner and better alternative who try to advance Ereist ideals (i.e. everyone should leave Earth, because humanity is loving it up and space is cool). Char at least hid his intentions, and acted like he was trying to advance a Spacenoid nation though, so it's not surprising that AE would secretly support him while fulfilling their government contracts. It's only really in 0083 that they become outright morally ambiguous, and one of the managers sells a suit to Cima as a representative of Zeon for no other apparent reason than money. Which is all anyone in manga, games etc. seems to remember them as anymore, and is kind of a shame in my opinion. Not that it'd be surprising for a group with some moral ambiguity to become less morally murky over time and shift to a much more starkly villainous group, but if it was going to happen, it seems like something that should happen after UC0100, when the Federation is pushing it's own new in-house design studio and the people who were morally upright there age out and/or replaced. At that point though, AE basically just disappear until Victory, and even then, they only come back in to things as one of the groups supporting the League Militaire in supplementary material. Which puts them back in the Zeta/ZZ era territory really. tsob fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Apr 11, 2020 |
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Apr 11, 2020 11:12
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ImpAtom posted:Yes, they've actually discussed it. Not actually in terms of 'they ruined things' but they've spoken about the fact that they made changes to Season 2 to make Gundam fans more happy. This includes both the increase in Zetagundaming and the redesigns of the suits to be more toy friendly compared to the S1 suits which were apparently a pain to do. That's interesting, 00 was my first series and the Exia my first or second gunpla kit (I got sent a SEED Destiny Zaku Warrior as a secret santa, wish I still had it) and I always thought there was a big engineering jump somewhere around there. The season 1 suits seemed to have limited articulation, things like the elbows only going to right angles, whilst the 00 Gundam and derivatives and especially the 00Q are still some of the most pose-able kits I know of. But it's not apparent to me what about the designs might have forced that. Does this mean I should look at non-00 kits from around that time?
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Apr 11, 2020 11:17
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tsob posted:I may be remembering this wrong, but as far as I recall the show didn't set up a scenario where it was going to [end of season one of Iron Blood Orphans spoilers]murder all of the secondary characters, and only 3 of them were ever suggested to die to my recollection. They were also somewhat disposable, not just because they were secondary characters, but because they were all parts of large organisations filled with other pilots that could easily have taken their place. Yeah, the show would have had to introduce new characters in their place, but none of the ones suggested to die had so much presence that would be hard to do. A larger reason to do it, or at least, a more obvious fallout of the way things played out regardless of whether it was done specifically for that reason or not, is that Tekkadan [spoiler for season two of Iron Blood Orphans]took no real casualties despite the audaciousness of their plan, which further emboldened them going in to season two. Yeah, Mari Okada actually cited that as a complication in writing the first season finale in interviews. They weren't sure if they'd get a second season, so when they got it, she suddenly had to pull a lot of punches. That said, while I agree the tonal thing was central, I'm not so sure that the characters could easily be replaced. Gaelio was pretty much essential for the whole McGillis arc in season 2, but even Shino and Lafter have arcs that would be tricky to assign to new characters. Now, you could go without those subplots, and do something else in their place, but Shino's specific cast dynamics were important to make his death hit properly as the 'Everything is hosed now' moment, something that wouldn't work the same with a relative rookie. tsob posted:I think it'd be a cool idea to do a story about them, but I think I'm in the minority in that I don't see them as the worst thing ever and the main/only reason that war happens at all in UC and thus I don't really like the idea of a show where AE as a whole is the antagonistic faction that needs to be defeated. I like how AE were originally depicted in Zeta and ZZ, where they're not double dealing at all and only support AEUG (outside the time the Titans show up at AE's Granada base and force them to hand over their new mobile suit design at least), and their moral ambiguity comes not from the fact they support everyone with no hesitation, and instead comes from the fact they see AEUG as a private army and want AE to fight in ways that benefit them personally at times. I've also seen some suggestion they may have supported AEUG not out of moral purity, but because the Titans and Federation did all their designs themselves and if AEUG could defeat those design, it'd show AE's superiority. I don't remember anything in the show that actually implies that, but it seems like a decent way to create moral ambiguity at the same time. I was actually going to bring up the same thing. In Zeta, Wong's a real piece of work. He's an armchair general without real experience, he's arrogant and wheedling by turns depending if he can pull rank, and he beats Kamille half to death when Kamille was barely even mouthing off, let alone doing something to justify that action. But at the same time, despite all of that, Wong believes in the cause, believes it enough that he'd give his life for it without a moment's hesitation. He almost did, once, and, despite him bringing up every other drat thing when trying to bully people into following his plans, him nearly dying is just what you expect from anyone fighting for the cause. AE is shady as all hell, but in Zeta they're shady, ethically compromised people who still believe in something, and while their methods are questionable, well... so are Quattro's. Even Bright recommends doing things he doesn't like morally from time to time to accomplish the common goal. In CCA, where they're shadier, they still feel like, well... Some of the guys in accounts really believe in Char, and the mechanics working with Amuro honestly think Londo Bell is working for the good of humanity, but they all know about the disagreements and kind of agree to not make a fuss of it. It isn't that Anaheim only cares about making money. It's that money is the one thing everyone agrees on, a kind of social lubricant that prevents the various factions from splitting and going at each other's throats. To put it another way, CCA Anaheim doesn't sponsor the Sleeves to make money. They sigh and accept that the Contolist hardliners in advanced system design are going to support their cause because at least the new contracts helps keep everyone out of the red this year. (Speaking of the Sleeves, I saw some interesting thinking on their role in the UC recently. Basically, for a while at least, they were a terrorist group everyone benefited from. The hardliners had a second coming of Char and a philosophy to rally around. The EFSF had an enemy to keep their budget healthy, letting them keep a presence in space and have a fig leaf when acting against colonial governments. The Republic of Zeon could argue that they needed to be allowed more freedom or people would go to the hardliners. And regular people weren't getting colonies dropped on them. Everyone wins with store brand Char!)
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Apr 11, 2020 12:53
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chiasaur11 posted:Yeah, Mari Okada actually cited that as a complication in writing the first season finale in interviews. They weren't sure if they'd get a second season, so when they got it, she suddenly had to pull a lot of punches. Saving Lafter from the season-one chopping block was well worth it for a late season 2 payoff, as it gives Akihiro solid motivation to go down swinging.
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Apr 11, 2020 14:44
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Honestly, one of the "better' versions of 00 S2 that I wish we had gotten would've been with a whole new team of Meisters: Specifically, Graham, Soma, Patrick, and Saji, complete with a mixture of CB support Staff from S1 with other S1 non CB characters joining in- like Kati becoming the new Tactical forecaster, Billy becoming the mechanic. It would've let them do a lot more stuff and maybe be more dynamic than just doing Zeta again, and it would've let them do more stuff with having Setsuna still being around in the Exia Repair being Gundam. Y'know, fun stuff.
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Apr 11, 2020 15:18
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BizarroAzrael posted:That's interesting, 00 was my first series and the Exia my first or second gunpla kit (I got sent a SEED Destiny Zaku Warrior as a secret santa, wish I still had it) and I always thought there was a big engineering jump somewhere around there. The season 1 suits seemed to have limited articulation, things like the elbows only going to right angles, whilst the 00 Gundam and derivatives and especially the 00Q are still some of the most pose-able kits I know of. But it's not apparent to me what about the designs might have forced that. Does this mean I should look at non-00 kits from around that time? Right around then was a turning point in Bandai‘s quality, particularly the HG kits. Come over to the Gunpla thread and get some detailed recommendations!
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Apr 11, 2020 15:43
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The issue with the IBO s01 ending isn't "they didn't kill everyone," it's "they presented the final fight as a last-ditch do-it-or-die battle against a monstrous foe, had several side characters get brutally mangled on-screen, and then none of them actually died or suffered any long-lasting effects." If they'd had one person die and the others at least get some sort of lasting scar or injury, it would feel a lot less like a cheap copout.
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Apr 11, 2020 16:27
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Lemon-Lime posted:The issue with the IBO s01 ending isn't "they didn't kill everyone," it's "they presented the final fight as a last-ditch do-it-or-die battle against a monstrous foe, had several side characters get brutally mangled on-screen, and then none of them actually died or suffered any long-lasting effects." Somehow it still feels less cheap than Aldnoah Zero. Hell, even Mika feels like a way way better character than Inaho, despite them being similar.
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Apr 11, 2020 17:02
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00 s2 had a lot of problems, but by far the biggest was that hobo exia was only in one episode.
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Apr 11, 2020 20:41
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Lemon-Lime posted:The issue with the IBO s01 ending isn't "they didn't kill everyone," it's "they presented the final fight as a last-ditch do-it-or-die battle against a monstrous foe, had several side characters get brutally mangled on-screen, and then none of them actually died or suffered any long-lasting effects." To be fair Mika did suffer a long-lasting effect but yeah the other things were absurd. People were making comical jokes about the survival because it was so implausible and then next week it turned out to be accurate.
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Apr 11, 2020 20:51
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Still way better than "Three characters got shot in the head, none of them died" that some shows have done.
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Apr 11, 2020 21:04
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