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May 26, 2021 20:42
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Fivemarks posted:This goes back to my earlier assertion: Japanese audiences don't want interesting fights or stakes, they just want the unbeatable heroes winning with big explosions. Look at SEED Destiny, look at The Origin (especially the moon fight), look at Sword Art Online. my man racist
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May 26, 2021 20:47
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Have pity for the oriental nihonjin, for their brains - so addled with sake and a diet of rice and raw fish - are simply too unsophisticated to properly appreciate a true man’s fight with tides of give and take
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May 26, 2021 20:49
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Its not like “the West” doesn’t have its fair share of invincible heroes anyways. Like I’m not sure there’s that much fundamental difference between like Kira and Kirito and so on and like, Sherlock Holmes solving every mystery or whatever. Or these superhero movies where bad guy always gets beat at the end.
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May 26, 2021 20:56
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I'm not racist, I'm just saying that the audiences that Gundam generally aims for in Japan (because I don't really think they care about western audiences), are more interested in the self insertion power fantasy aspects and the "The heores are great and never fail and always win" aspects that you get out of that kind of stuff. Doesn't mean that the entire country only wants that, but the money making audience, the core demographic if you will, definitely wants that.Raxivace posted:Its not like “the West” doesn’t have its fair share of invincible heroes anyways. I think the major difference between "Kira/Kirito never faces any challenges and is the perfect hero who gets the girls" and a (Good, because Sherlock exists) Sherlock Holmes or Arsene Lupin story is that there's the mystery, and Sherlock isn't infallible. There are Sherlock Holmes stories where Sherlock just straight up gets outwitted or misses something important. Even in Superhero movies, in the good ones, the heroes can fail or face personal loss or even get hit or suffer injury before they win. The problem isn't "The hero always wins", the problem with a character like Kira Yamato or Kirito is that they win with no effort. Fivemarks fucked around with this message at 21:00 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 20:57
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Kanos posted:I'm not going to be The Big Destiny Defender because I will freely acknowledge that the show is ultimately not good, but I really don't think Destiny rates this harsh of a criticism. It has a lot of positive points - the opening act of the show(up through Break The World) is one of the stronger and more engaging opening acts in the Gundam franchise IMO, the new cast has a lot of potential and is good and entertaining up until the back 20 episodes of the series where none of them get any screen time anymore, and the show occasionally has some flashes of choreographic brilliance in fights like the Lohengrin Gate(the Minerva crew vs the Gells-Ghe) or Operation Angel Down(Impulse vs Freedom). There's a lot of actually worthwhile stuff in there, which is more than you can say about a lot of anime productions! It just falls apart as a complete product and the final act and climax are pretty much completely terrible. The opening act is in a vaccum great, but its completely spoiled by what follows after the first 15 or so episodes. It takes returning characters and makes them even more painfully accentuated to the point of caricature almost. It does that at the expense of actually making the new characters we've met relatable or more than filler. I'm ready to admit there are some cool units and sequences, but when the entire point of the show is to take a number of strong established characters and walk back their development or make changes wholesale to make them pointlessly incompetent, the nice choreography falls to the wayside for me. Cagalli is undone, Athrun is undone, all of the progress between naturals and coordinators implied by Buster's pilot hooking up with Kira's friend, all of it gets undone. So the only parts it kept were the biggest most popular piece (kira/lacus) and then works very hard to make them up on a pedestal where the others are reduced to terrible decisions and actions to highlight how much we are expected to love Kira. Oh and then the actual plot of the drat thing spirals into non sense by about the halfway mark that the run to the finale is just a mess. The redeeming features of Destiny are the ones I think I previously mentioned, some of the unit designs which does result in a few cool early battles before more beam spam. It might have had a decent OP/ED or two, but I remember the SEED ones better. The worthwhile stuff is just buried in so much that bothers me I know i'll never revisit it to see any of the "decent" stuff. That makes it a failure for me even if there is technical competence or even excellence buried in there.
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May 26, 2021 20:58
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Fivemarks posted:I'm not racist, only racist people say this
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May 26, 2021 21:00
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just take your lumps for making a stupid baseless post and drop it imo
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May 26, 2021 21:04
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I hope SEED 3 keeps making the unit names even longer so something can beat the ZGM-1000/R4 Command Zodiac Alliance of Freedom Treaty Armed Keeper of Unity Command, Control and Information. Give us a name that goes 3 acronyms deep, Sunrise.
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May 26, 2021 21:11
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The Notorious ZSB posted:*snip* I generally find some value in shows that have some really good parts, even if the overall product is a mess. Destiny is a bad show that nevertheless engages my attention and makes me think about it a lot more than a bleak void of nothing like, say, the original Build Divers or the original Gunpla Builders. I think this is going to be an entirely cordial "agree to disagree" thing, which is totally okay. 
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May 26, 2021 21:33
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As the thread OP i would be happy if noted racist Fivemarks no longer posted here. TIA
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May 26, 2021 21:33
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Fivemarks posted:This goes back to my earlier assertion: Japanese audiences don't want interesting fights or stakes, they just want the unbeatable heroes winning with big explosions. Look at SEED Destiny, look at The Origin (especially the moon fight), look at Sword Art Online. Endorph fucked around with this message at 21:45 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 21:40
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and also in terms of gundam IBO was very popular and successful and literally ends with half the main cast dying because they werent strong or smart enough to get out of the desperate situation they found themselves in. i guess you could argue mika is still the best pilot in the show and was just taken down by numbers/op cheat weapons, but still, i would not describe ibo as an unbeatable hero winning with big explosions
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May 26, 2021 21:43
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Fivemarks posted:This goes back to my earlier assertion: Japanese audiences don't want interesting fights or stakes, they just want the unbeatable heroes winning with big explosions. Look at SEED Destiny, look at The Origin (especially the moon fight), look at Sword Art Online. The moon fight explicitly serves the purpose of showing how badly out of date and behind the curve the Federation was at the outset of the war. It's not really a "gently caress yeah kick their rear end!" moment, it's a one sided slaughter with dangerous implications of just how badly things would go for earth.
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May 26, 2021 21:50
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Arcsquad12 posted:The moon fight explicitly serves the purpose of showing how badly out of date and behind the curve the Federation was at the outset of the war. It's not really a "gently caress yeah kick their rear end!" moment, it's a one sided slaughter with dangerous implications of just how badly things would go for earth. All the fights in The Origin are basically one sided slaughters. Even when someone grabs Char's shoulder, Char's SO AWESOME that he just looks at the guy and he flies away hard enough to crack pavement. Y'know, I know there's a 'reason' for that, but it feels like the worst parts of Unicorn all over again.
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May 26, 2021 21:52
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Endorph posted:and also in terms of gundam IBO was very popular and successful and literally ends with half the main cast dying because they werent strong or smart enough to get out of the desperate situation they found themselves in. i guess you could argue mika is still the best pilot in the show and was just taken down by numbers/op cheat weapons, but still, i would not describe ibo as an unbeatable hero winning with big explosions Season 1 was sending taciturn badass Mika out with his crazy strong robot to destroy all opposition. Season 2 showed the costs of that but it was still largely Mika simply being the best at smashing people. The point at which they can't just keep fighting their way out is as you say, literally the end. Mika's even a stone cold killer without Barbatos early on (at CGS, Dort).
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May 26, 2021 22:01
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The worst parts of Unicorn were more than just "so and so just can't lose" The worst parts were "why are we stuck with Mr. Boring and the most intriguing characters keep dying"
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May 26, 2021 22:10
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Raxivace posted:Its not like “the West” doesn’t have its fair share of invincible heroes anyways. I think those aren't the best examples. Sherlock Holmes famously loses big a couple times, and most superhero movies have a few scenes where the heroes look to be on the ropes. That said, it did make me think of the scene in the Mandolorian where Luke just goes through a small army of killbots like a chainsaw, so I agree with your broader point. Liking a few scenes of a hero just kicking rear end with contemptuous ease is common worldwide, not just in the USA. It's a part of the basic tension release structure, even. To go with one of the classics of manga, the Namek arc is just the heroes running and barely surviving for most of it, they're on the ropes with even an alliance with a villain doing nothing... then Goku shows up to wreck a few guys, releasing the tension and letting the audience recover from things like Krillin dying again. (I oversimplify a little, in the interests of time). For SEED, that scene is the first flight of the Freedom, where Kira returns after being thought dead to bail out his friends as the situation seems absolutely hopeless. Again, tension and release. To go back a bit to a more fun part of the conversation... wdarkk posted:I mean he won (or at least got a tie in) a fight using an unarmed cargo shuttle, so I can't disagree. A tie against a pilot who was beating Char and Kamille. At the same time. Amuro's big wins emphasize his skill. Kira, meanwhile, tends to get big wins that emphasize his shiny new toys. When he's in something that isn't best in class, grunts can give him trouble. I think it's intended to be a source of tension that doesn't require Kira to make mistakes, but by doing that (and continually giving Kira new toys like the Meteors), it instead makes him look less impressive compared to his peers. Kira wins or loses against aces on his machine, not his merits as a pilot. (Doesn't hurt that Amuro's always playing dirty, with all kinds of cool tactics, while Kira seems to just be activating his "shoot everyone" macros.)
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May 26, 2021 22:18
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Kira is basically Amuro if what Ramba Ral said about him only winning thanks to his Gundam was actually true.
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May 26, 2021 22:30
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Fivemarks posted:All the fights in The Origin are basically one sided slaughters. Even when someone grabs Char's shoulder, Char's SO AWESOME that he just looks at the guy and he flies away hard enough to crack pavement. Y'know, I know there's a 'reason' for that, but it feels like the worst parts of Unicorn all over again. That doesn't describe any of the worst parts of unicorn In fact I'm not quite sure which parts it describes at all
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May 26, 2021 22:39
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Arcsquad12 posted:Kira is basically Amuro if what Ramba Ral said about him only winning thanks to his Gundam was actually true.
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May 26, 2021 22:48
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Kanos posted:I generally find some value in shows that have some really good parts, even if the overall product is a mess. Destiny is a bad show that nevertheless engages my attention and makes me think about it a lot more than a bleak void of nothing like, say, the original Build Divers or the original Gunpla Builders. 100% it is okay for us to like different things! It is also okay for there to be different kinds of bad. Bland usually bothers me less than offensive/poor things so I can see how when comparing them you'd come to that conclusion.
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May 26, 2021 22:49
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So remember those questions about the SEED Blu-Rays recently?RightStuf posted:Gundam Seed Replacement
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May 26, 2021 22:53
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Tulalip Tulips posted:Overall I just find Kira to be a really frustrating character. I don't hate him but I do think Seed's tendency to make him right and pull some very abrupt character changes definitely made him a character I wasn't super in to. The characters that surround him and how they interact with Kira are a lot more interesting to me. Like Kira's whole relationship with Flay is intensely weird but it works for me because it's has Kira failing and it's good foil to his relationship with Lacus. That kind of messy drama is a lot more appealing to me, for good and trashy reasons, than Kira beam spamming peace across the galaxy. I liked Flay in general honestly, because she starts as a terrible person with a lot of room to grow, and actually does go through some growth when her circumstances change, Kira is no longer around and then suddenly she's kidnapped and living among the people she fears so much and they're basically the same as anyone else. I think the writing over-compensated with how much this realization made her character change, and she becomes almost a faux-Lacus when Kira sees her die, but it's one of the more compelling developments in the show. Natarle was compelling for much the same reason. She was a hard rear end who put military efficiency above people, but forcing her to work with unsavory people after a life among comrades in arms put her actions in stark relief and she went down swinging for ideals rather than following orders. The execution isn't perfect by any stretch, but the concept is so simple and good that I can't help but enjoy it regardless. Kanos posted:I'm not going to be The Big Destiny Defender because I will freely acknowledge that the show is ultimately not good, but I really don't think Destiny rates this harsh of a criticism. It has a lot of positive points - the opening act of the show(up through Break The World) is one of the stronger and more engaging opening acts in the Gundam franchise IMO, the new cast has a lot of potential and is good and entertaining up until the back 20 episodes of the series where none of them get any screen time anymore, and the show occasionally has some flashes of choreographic brilliance in fights like the Lohengrin Gate(the Minerva crew vs the Gells-Ghe) or Operation Angel Down(Impulse vs Freedom). There's a lot of actually worthwhile stuff in there, which is more than you can say about a lot of anime productions! It just falls apart as a complete product and the final act and climax are pretty much completely terrible. I haven't seen Destiny since it aired, but I remember watching and enjoying the first dozen episodes and finding Kira's return in episode 13 itself quite emotionally stirring. It's the old hero riding out one last time, and he was cool as his music played etc. I stopped watching almost immediately afterwards though. Not because I think the show was bad in the following episodes, just because I found it got dull really, really quickly. I continued getting the episodes, but I just stopped watching them and it was near the half way mark that I realized I hadn't watched the last 10+ episodes and felt no actual desire to do so. So I just never finished it. Kanos posted:I don't really think "Kira is a bad pilot carried by his unit" holds a lot of water. Kira spends the first half of the show dunking on anyone and everyone he meets with the Freedom, a suit which itself is already technologically behind the times and is primarily only special by Destiny tech standards due to its nuclear reactor(which is much less of an issue in Destiny because we basically never see suits run into constant power issues in combat like we did in SEED due to improved battery technology). Kira only ultimately loses the Freedom when he fights Shinn(who is a prodigy-level pilot) piloting the Impulse(a unit tailor made to manhandle Kira's fighting style by being functionally unstoppable unless you disable the pilot) after Shinn deliberately studied and planned specifically how to beat him. I'm not so sure about that. Freedom still packs a lot of guns, can fly and has exceptional maneuverability even by Destiny's standards. There are other units with lots o' guns too, such as the Abyss Gundam, but the Abyss isn't nearly as maneuverable as the Freedom. Freedom's guns also just seem flat out more powerful, and the Freedom's railguns actually damage the armor on the Abyss Gundam through phase shift if I recall. Kanos posted:Destiny's technological progression is such an insane leap forward compared to early SEED that this is really easily put down to the Strike Rouge being hopelessly and completely outmatched by Destiny grunts. Even Amuro would get smoked if you put him in the equivalent of the RX-78 and told him to fight Geara Dogas. Nobody really blames Amuro for being horribly outmatched when he pilots the ReGZ against Char and Gyunei. The Geara Doga is actually kind of a poo poo unit by the standards of that era, and two of them are taken out by vulcan fire in Char's Counterattack, suggesting they have really light, thin armor. I'd imagine some of the mass produced units from ZZ, such as the Zaku III or Bawoo would be more of a challenge than the Geara Doga. I also think that while you can rationalize Amuro standing up to Char in the Re-GZ as Char not being invested in the fight, he was absolutely over-matching Gyunei in the Re-GZ and at least putting up some fight against Char in the Sazabi using it. EthanSteele posted:Yeah! Compare Kira's "stare blankly as you see the lock-on indicators happen" big move and the equivalent thing in Macross Frontier where Alto and Ozma have their eyes dart around everywhere as they look at each target. The more important consideration in that comparison is that you generally only see scenes like that once or twice in a Macross entry, and they're usually saved till the climax for the heroes to show off a bit. Macross is actually kind of weird with it's protagonists in that regard, and they generally don't actually end up taking out their rival in battle. Hikaru didn't personally kill Kamjin, Basara didn't take out Gigil etc. The rivals are usually killed by someone or something else, and it's more common for the protagonist to either grow past them or the rival to be taken out because of his obsession with conflict while the protagonist succeeds because they aren't defined by it or something.
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May 26, 2021 23:08
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tsob posted:I'm not so sure about that. Freedom still packs a lot of guns, can fly and has exceptional maneuverability even by Destiny's standards. There are other units with lots o' guns too, such as the Abyss Gundam, but the Abyss isn't nearly as maneuverable as the Freedom. Freedom's guns also just seem flat out more powerful, and the Freedom's railguns actually damage the armor on the Abyss Gundam through phase shift if I recall. Flight is pretty old hat by Destiny standards. Every single grunt can fly with the proper backpack attachment, and some more specialized suits like the Saviour are deliberately intended to be super agile air superiority units. Hell, the Saviour has functionally the same armament as the Freedom while also having a super agile MA mode - for all the good that did while Athrun was gasping like a fish out of water while Kira chopped his limbs off. The Freedom absolutely isn't a junkpile in Destiny but it's not really massively ahead of the curve anymore by any means; it's definitely not a 00-esque Exia vs Enact situation where the machine can do 100% of the work, especially since Kira's fighting style isn't simply "beat the opponent", it's "fight at a massive handicap by deliberately refusing to kill his opponents and instead focusing on disabling their units instead".
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May 27, 2021 00:12
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RE: Freedom being a God unit or junk by Destiny: IIRC Cross Rays has Durandal comment on it saying something like, 'ah yes, the most powerful mobile suit ever created, the Freedom.' I would need to check though.
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May 27, 2021 00:54
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There's that manga about the office lady discovering gunplas, she's a Shinn fangirl.
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May 27, 2021 00:54
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Ashsaber posted:RE: Freedom being a God unit or junk by Destiny: I believe Shinn and Rey call it the most powerful unit while reviewing footage too from discussion I've seen of it over the years. Powerful is fairly vague though, and could just mean reactor power, rather than it's battle capacity or anything.
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May 27, 2021 01:01
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Freedom was OP as hell on Gundam Vs Gundam NEXT what with being the only unit that could step cancel.
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May 27, 2021 01:14
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tsob posted:I believe Shinn and Rey call it the most powerful unit while reviewing footage too from discussion I've seen of it over the years. Powerful is fairly vague though, and could just mean reactor power, rather than it's battle capacity or anything. I mean, when everything about a suit is drawing from the same power source (weapons, armor, thrusters), then having unlimited uptime is a pretty important factor in battle capacity.
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May 27, 2021 01:34
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Ojjeorago posted:And they can’t even do that right. The show goes out of its way to show that Kira isn’t actually a very good pilot on his own when he’s forced to use the Strike Rouge to get to space and is dunked on so hard by some grunts that the ship has to tow in the remains of its torso about 30 seconds after he shows up. That isn't really accurate. Kira does relatively fine in the Rogue (and is literally shot getting into the carrier.) The thing is though that the Strike Rogue is, by that time, a hopelessly outdated mobile suit. It is just an identical version of the *Original* Strike Gundam which has a power extender which makes its armor a slightly different shade. Especially considering the absurd power bloat of the CE it's like going into a CCA battle in a GM classic. Within the confines of the fight and with those limitations "get to the carrier" is presented as actually something that requires some piloting chops. Framing it as "lol kira gets owned!!!" requires ignoring the actual scene. That said the HD version specifically updates that scene so Kira goes into the fight with the Strike Rogue Ootori and Kira does significantly better in that, likely to emphasize A) We want to sell a new toy and B) Kira wasn't helpless in the fight, he was fighting with a giant handicap because there is literally no suit deployed on the battlefield that sucks as much as the Strike Rogue by that point but it was the only suit they had available. Trying to frame Kira as someone who only wins fights because his MS is so awesome kind of involves ignoring a huge chunk of the things we're shown Kira actually doing. The Freedom is a strong machine but it's strong in very much the same way most protagonist upgrades are: It's a powerful machine that is designed in such a way the protagonist can take full advantage of it. Most people could do well in the Freedom but it isn't as strong as it is without a strong pilot backing it up because it still requires you to be able to fight well in it and take advantage of its capabilities. You could stick Sai in the Freedom Gundam and he'd probably die to a cockpit shot within five minutes because by that point most things were packing some form of beam or anti-PS Weapon. One of the themes Gundam tends to go back to is that the real limit to a character's power is how much the machine holds them back, not how much the machine amplifies them. From the Magnetic Coating onwards it's pretty rare for a pilot to upgrade because they need more power. They upgrade because the unit they are using is literally not able to keep up with them in some form or another. Even Amuro, who gets a drat impressive showing in Zeta, shows a huge improvement from the ReGZ to the Nu. The only pilot I can really think of in Gundam who basically kept keeping up in his bare-rear end basic mobile suit was Asemu Asuno who was using a downgraded AGE-2 all the way to the end of his show where he singlehandedly kicked the poo poo out one of the most advanced mobile suits of the era at a time frame when the AGE-2 was literally being mass produced. But this is true of pretty much every pilot. Even someone like Mika, who is defined by his symbiotic connection to Barbatos, only can achieve his full potential once Barbatos starts being tailored to fit him. Same with Domon who effectively uses his martials arts through the medium of a robot and still shows a tremendous increase in capabilities once he has God Gundam. The only time this isn't really true is when the 'protagonist' Gundam is explicitly not something the pilot can use well, like the Alex or the Turn-A. The Turn-A in fact is a rare case of the pilot needing to match the overwhelming power of their god-tier MS but a major point of the show is that Loran isn't an ace pilot but a good person and of the two the latter is more important for having control of something that can literally undo civilization. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:07 on May 27, 2021 |
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May 27, 2021 02:46
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Also, we know Mikazuki is a good pilot because he's smart and ruthless, making effective use of improvised weaponry, diversions, and ambush tactics. None of that is automatically afforded to him by having a really strong, really tough suit. This is one of the issues with SEED's weak fight choreography - it's easier to see various characters in advanced suits as substandard pilots because a lot of their fights seem to be won through overwhelming firepower rather than cleverness, and a lot of them seem to be lost through bad decisions on their parts.
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May 27, 2021 03:42
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I said this a year ago on a previous SEED go around, but one of the things that frustrates me about DESTINY is how badly it does by Kira and his character. One thing that I don't think get enough consideration, especially given the reframing from DESTINY is that Kira basically failed at the end of SEED. Kira couldn't save Flay, he couldn't save Mu, he killed Nicol, Tolle died, and he could never really refute Rau. Kira didn't save ORB, he didn't beat/save the druggies, he didn't stop Azrael, he didn't stop Patrick Zala, he didn't shut down the GENESIS, Blue Cosmos is still doing just fine, ZAFT still exists… Basically nothing that CAUSED the war in the first place went away. Naturals and Coordinators still hate each other enough to wipe out mankind over their generational grudge and no progress towards resolving the disparity between them. Kira, the best pilot with the best genes and the best giant robot fighting his hardest alongside all of his friends managed to successfully avert the absolute worst possible case scenario, and that's all. Nothing has changed. Even after everything that happened, even after everyone who died, the world is still one minute to midnight. Of course there was another war, Kira and the TSA didn't stop the conflict, all they managed was to put it on hiatus for a little while. And that's not information that is relevant or present in Kira's depiction in DESTINY. And you think it would be, right? Kira comes out of the blue and tries to stop the war single-handedly without killing anyone, and you'd think this is some kind of Messiah complex happening because Kira, who in the original SEED was very much a bleeding heart for better or for worse, feels overly guilty about all the things he couldn't do and is throwing himself into the new fight out of the desperate and possibly suicidal need to "save everyone" because he couldn't before and he wants to make it right. But that's not really what's happening in DESTINY, the series seems to take the tact that Kira is in the right with all of his actions and that he does have his priorities straight and that maybe his big character arc is learning that he should take on significant and official political power to change the world for the better. And by the same token you'd think Kira would have an interesting dynamic with Shinn, as no matter who actually fired the shot at ORB the Asuka family represents four more people that Kira couldn't save. And I say for because Shinn is now gunning for him to get revenge and has joined the military and is going to continue to perpetuate cycles of violence and is therefore just another one of Kira's failures. But that's also not what happens, Kira barely engages with Shinn and then Shinn's rival becomes Athrun for reasons only tangentially related to Kira. Shinn's entire motivation basically doesn't matter, and for that matter neither does Kira's really. And again, it really should, right?
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May 27, 2021 03:56
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Darth Walrus posted:Also, we know Mikazuki is a good pilot because he's smart and ruthless, making effective use of improvised weaponry, diversions, and ambush tactics. None of that is automatically afforded to him by having a really strong, really tough suit. This is pretty incorrect on two levels. Mika has plenty of fights where he wins because his suit is Stronger and Faster and the people fighting him have to desperately try to keep up with his raw level of power. This is in fact one of the ways they show early on that McGillis is a drat good pilot, because he's capable of recognizing both Mika's power and the flaws in his fighting style. He's arguably not as skilled as some pilots but makes up for it by being jacked into his machine in a literally suicidal way, whereas we see other pilots who are not so pull of far more impressive moves. That isn't to say Mika is terrible but the reason he is a demonically terrifying pilot is because of the perfect melding of man and machine, not because he's the most talented guy on the field. His big strength is being willing to ruin himself to win. Likewise SEED actively does show characters fighting with strategy, even later on. Early on they do a lot of stuff with ambushes, taking advantage of enemy weaknesses, and so-on. It starts to fade away later (not in the least because everything starts to fly, one thing IBO does avoid more or less) but there aren't many fights that Kira wins against any remotely equal foe which are won just by having the biggest gun. There are absolutely plenty of fights where it's just A Loss Because Machine Is Better but that is also not exclusive to SEED. SEED has a lot of issues but I feel like some of the "Actually the characters never do anything but press the big gun button" involves combinations of misremembering a show and conflating it with Destiny which does have a bigger issue with Kira overwhelming his foes with a strong suit (but then again we see multiple situations where Shin takes advantage of the flexibility of the Impulse. That mostly fades once he gets Destiny but I don't think anyone can argue Shin getting Destiny isn't the point where the series gets at its worst.) Omnicrom posted:And that's not information that is relevant or present in Kira's depiction in DESTINY. And you think it would be, right? Kira comes out of the blue and tries to stop the war single-handedly without killing anyone, and you'd think this is some kind of Messiah complex happening because Kira, who in the original SEED was very much a bleeding heart for better or for worse, feels overly guilty about all the things he couldn't do and is throwing himself into the new fight out of the desperate and possibly suicidal need to "save everyone" because he couldn't before and he wants to make it right. But that's not really what's happening in DESTINY, the series seems to take the tact that Kira is in the right with all of his actions and that he does have his priorities straight and that maybe his big character arc is learning that he should take on significant and official political power to change the world for the better. I think it's worth pointing out that the intended reading of the ending of Destiny isn't "Kira was right and has been right all along" but "Kira has actively made the choice to fight and kill." He goes into the Messiah with the intent of killing Durandal but Rey Ex Machina prevents that from actually happening, which is a serious bit of poor writing. That doesn't change the fact though that the final confrontation boils down to Kira going "I have decided I am willing to fight and possibly kill my enemies." Unfortunately quite literally the only post-series Kira we have is the bonus character from G Generation though it's worth pointing out that all of his combat quotes are "I will loving end you" kinda stuff. Like Destiny clearly wanted to wave its hand at Kira's big flaw being his unwillingness and inability to actually fight or commit to something with consequences he has to shoulder the blame for (and this comes up in several conversations throughout the series, including being why he loses to Shinn) but shits the bed on making that actually stick by having Rey take the final shot instead and Kira getting all the benefits and none of the consequences of choosing to kill Durandal himself, but that is hand-in-hand with the 'we're afraid to make Kira even remotely objectionable" thing that goes on throughout Destiny. (See also: The implication that Kira may have accidentally killed Shinn's parents with a missed shot being all but forgotten in favor of generic angry blaming from Shinn.) If you watch Destiny you can see a real clear line where they intended to make Kira come across as less heroic. The Freedom is framed as a dangerous enemy on multiple occasions, made to look almost demonic at times, is responsible for getting people killed, literally causes the death of Minerva crewmembers, and personally kills Stella. It isn't even entirely accidental, like when Kira tears Savior apart the Freedom is presented like a bad guy with dark shadowed face. (In fact this becomes his dynamic kill in SRWZ when the Freedom appears almost exclusively as an enemy unit!) It's just that at some point they decided that they didn't want to do the "Kira has to be objectively onscreen wrong and deal with consequences" so that all gets dropped which is a big part of what makes Destiny so disjointed. It spends a lot of time painting Kira as someone terrifying and then in the post-Destiny(the MS) part of the series that poo poo all vanishes. A big part of the problem with discussing Kira is that there are basically three Kiras: SEED Kira, who is a good-hearted guy who only wants to protect people and ends up murdering a lot of people through action AND inaction, Early Destiny Kira who is SEED Kira but framed as an antagonist and whose 'victims' are people who the show spends time with, and late Destiny Kira who is a super good guy who never actually has to do anything objectionable even when it is literally part of his character arc that he decides to do that. The three are basically impossible to connect because they don't make any real logical sense following one another. (In comparison like, Amuro actually makes total sense as a guy who goes from a nebbish shut-in nerd to an actual mature adult, because whatever flaws the early UC has it at least knew what it was doing with Amuro.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:50 on May 27, 2021 |
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May 27, 2021 04:22
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There's a reason I've noted quite a few times before that SEED's setting manages to be the bleakest Gundam setting in spite of the fact that multiple other Gundam series are post apocalyptic in nature
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May 27, 2021 04:52
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The Kira thing might be a problem less of the writing and more of sunrise. SEED was the biggest hit Gundam had in nearly two decades, by a lot, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it at least partially saved the franchise. Or at least the concept of AU gundam series being produced regularly. And Kira was very, very popular. Sunrise being gunshy about painting him in an antagonistic light, taking focus off him, etc, makes more sense to me than the writer and director suddenly becoming completely incompetent. Like, say what you will about Morosawa and Fukuda, Dendoh, CyberFormula, and OG SEED show a baseline level of competence and consistency. Some stuff gets executed kind of stupidly in SEED and it can be weirdly petty and mean-spirited towards the side characters, but character arcs are setup and paid off in a logical way in a reasonably efficient matter. It never gets lost in the weeds the way Destiny does. And there's plenty of evidence of Sunrise interference in both other Gundam series and their anime in general. Geass R2, anyone? Not that this is any kind of absolution for Destiny as a show, just that it's weird how quickly the fingers gets pointed at the creative staff.
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May 27, 2021 06:03
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ImpAtom posted:This is pretty incorrect on two levels. You're ignoring that one of the things about that first McGillis fight is that, in the span of minutes at most, Mikazuki discovers and corrects that weakness. (The ability McGillis is trying to counter also isn't just raw power. It's Mika dodging every shot, which requires a lot of good combat instincts in addition to speed on the suit.) He's got the self destruction and the machine tailored for him (although Barbatos is kind of a finnicky piece of poo poo until Saisei, with several fights emphasizing the difficulties that come from a repair crew who've never worked on Mobile Suits) but he's also repeatedly shown to be That drat Good, to the point where Julieta's skill is shown initially by her copying one of his tricks in the first season with an armor eject, and where Hush notes that Mikazuki is moving further on less fuel than anyone else. Mika's a hosed up little bundle of issues, but he's also a conventionally talented pilot on top of that, one that nobody else can quite keep up with. SEED may try to have fights that rely on planning, but the fight choreography is terrible, even before it starts leaning heavily on stock footage, which makes it harder to distinguish between "this bit is Kira being skilled" and "this bit is Kira having a big stick". And, again, the one time we see Kira in a confirmed weaker machine, he gets trashed by mooks. Comparing him to Amuro in the Origin manga is quite illustrative, since Amuro gets in a similar situation in Jaburo. Unlike in the original series, he's stuck in a GM when fighting Char (which is why Lt. Woody has to bail him out), and unlike in the original series he's on the backfoot, but everything in the story emphasizes that this isn't a fault of Amuro's. Char compliments the unknown GM pilot as almost being good enough to challenge him, while Amuro is cursing at the lovely machine holding him back. And since it's Char, Amuro managing to barely win is a very respectable narrative beat. Kira, meanwhile, doesn't get proper grounding to convince the viewers that even what he did is impressive, given the circumstances. We don't see Kira talk about how the old machine now feels so slow compared to what he's used to. We don't have enemy pilots laugh at someone being crazy enough to fly a museum piece on a modern battlefield before being shocked at the monster ace somehow getting through their defenses. We don't see an ace pilot with proper establishing scenes lose to Kira pulling off some stunt that only the hero of the Bloody Valentine War would have dared pull off. We just see him get chewed up, and since he spends most fights in the most powerful machine on the battlefield, it's easy to think he needs something like that to fight on par.
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May 27, 2021 07:05
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Surprised to hop into the gundam thread to find out it was time for Big Racism hours Just take the L on this because the boring invincible hero is just a symptom of lazy hack writers with an urge for wish fulfillment and those were never uniquely Japanese phenomena. Hell there are American fans of Kirito for crying out loud, that alone makes the assertion laughable.
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May 27, 2021 18:29
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I don't even really agree with the idea that a one sided fight automatically makes the fight bad. I think fights with a back and forth are generally better but saying those are the only good fights seems like kind of a narrow view of what can be exciting about watching a fight scene or what they can accomplish within a story
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May 27, 2021 21:07
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also i need to repeat again, kirito actually struggles a lot and later on there are even fights he loses. like i realize defending sword art online is not the purpose of this thread but its weird how much that series is just something people who dont like it made up in their heads rather than the many flaws the actual series has.
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May 27, 2021 21:12
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