tsob posted:

This is my theory to explain the Guntank at least, because it's so big it's kind of useless as a tank and so clumsy that it's no good as a mobile unit either. I imagine someone designed a small, efficient long-range unit that would be a decent stop-gap while developing mobile suits and then some general demanded it be able to fight on the front lines as well; at which point it had to become a mobile unit itself. Which meant increasing the size so it could move around in a battlefield. So now it needed close range weapons, because it had to be able to defend itself in close combat. All of which meant it took so long to develop that it just got folded in to Project V, and it was nearly as big as a mobile suit, without the mobility and basically never had the time and safety to target at long range because you need time to work out distances, vectors etc. manually rather than relying on a computer to calculate it all off now unreliable sensors.


In animation sure, but if you count MSV, games, manga, novels etc. the Federation are probably just as bad as Zeon when it comes to prototypes, Ace customs and so on.

Warmachine posted:

Different variations of the RX-78 built during the One Year War alone. I can't read the Japanese, so I'm not sure which were distinctly produced, and which are just repaints of the same suit post-production. Notably, this doesn't include Io Flemming's Thunderbolt-sector variant of the Full Armor.



My personal favorite is Ford Romfellow's RX-78-5[bst]. Perfect about of greebling for my taste. But yes, the Federation loves its ace customs as well, and they did produce quite a few variants of the GM and Guncannon for the OYW. You just didn't see them in the 0079 anime because things like the GM Cold Districts, or ground type and sniper, didn't show up until OVAs started coming out. Meanwhile, Zeon had the Zaku I, II, Dom, Acguy, Gogg, Z'gok, Rick Dom, and Gelgoog all shown as grunt suits in the same run.

Add the one-off suits that had the potential to become mass production units (Gouf, Gyan) and the dizzying array of mobile armors, and it sure looks like Zeon wins the wunderwaffen war. But the Federation puts up a stiff showing that only gets better with OVAs and sequels.

Sharkopath posted:

https://twitter.com/hy53/status/1165303881397456896?s=20

GReco film stills compared to the broadcast version. Neat.

Arcsquad12 posted:

If the Zaku is an A6M Zero, the Gundam is something like a Spitfire or a Mustang.

Darth Walrus posted:

The Zaku is a Panzer III, the GM is a Sherman, and the Gundam is a Pershing.

The Gouf is a STuG, the Dom is a Tiger, the Gelgoog is a Panther, the Bigro is a King Tiger, and the Big Zam is a Maus.

Arcsquad12 posted:

I mean, yeah, the tank analogy works, but it's not really a secret that Zeon's mobile suit forces were based pretty directly off of the IJN and IJA aircraft performances during the Pacific War. It lines up almost exactly with the progression of japanese aircraft. The Zaku 1 is considered a quantum leap in mobile technology, the same way that the Mitsubishi A5M was the first monoplane carrier fighter to see active service. The Zaku 1 even has a similar serial tag, the MS-05. Then you have the Zaku II, with the tag MS-06, just like the A6M Zero. And just like the Zero, the Zaku II was an extremely deadly machine during the early stages of the war where they went up against underpowered machines and directly influenced the design of later American naval aircraft designs specifically made to counter their advantage. If we follow this line of logic, the Gundam is more of an F6F Hellcat, while the GM is an F4F Wildcat (yes, technically the Wildcat came first and therefore doesn't fit the "Gundam was a GM testbed", but bear with me). Hellcats outclassed Zeros with their higher speed, tougher armor and greater firepower. Wildcats were generally underpowered, but there were lots of them and they managed to go for parity with Zeros thanks to squadron tactics and attrition warfare.

After the Hellcat started making mincemeat out of the previously deadly Zero squadrons, Japan started pushing through a number of machines to replace their outclassed fighters, resulting in upgrades to the Zero like the A6M-5, which could be analogous to something like a Zaku F2 or Fz variant. They also had a number of technically excellent followup aircraft, like the A7M, the N1K for the navy, and the fearsome Ki-84 for the army, as well as decent interceptors like the J2M for home defense. The trouble was that Japan had a manpower shortage and several of their aces had been shot down, so their remaining aces were kept in reserve more often than not, while undertrained recruits were shoved into high performance machines on short notice and fared rather poorly against a growing number of very strong American aircraft with good pilots. That's pretty much identical to Solomon and A Baoa Qu where high performance Zeon mobile suits were getting shot down because all of their ace pilots had been killed by various Gundam units.

Darth Walrus posted:

I think Nazi tanks fit better than IJN planes simply because they involved so many bizarre, ludicrously ambitious dead-end projects, which was a major part of what screwed Zeon over. Japanese aircraft design was too conservative and sensible in comparison (give or take the odd suicide rocket).

PringleCreamEgg posted:

I heard a mostly mediocre to negative things about Reconguista but drat I love the look of the G Self.

PringleCreamEgg posted:

I heard a mostly mediocre to negative things about Reconguista but drat I love the look of the G Self.

Warmachine posted:

RillAkBea posted:

Hoo-boy. The text is a little small and it's fairly repetitive but here goes:
Unit 1 - RX-78-1 (Final spec. undecided)
Unit 1 - RX-78-1
Unit 2 - RX-78-2 (Roll-out)
Unit 2 - RX-78-2 (Luna 2 modifications)
Unit 2 - RX-78-2 (Jaburo modifications)
Unit 3 - RX-78-1 (Roll-out)
Unit 3 - RX-78-2 (Luna 2 modifications)
Unit 3 - RX-78-3 (Augusta modifications)
Unit 4 - RX-78-4 (Initial plan)
Unit 4 - RX-78-4 (Jaburo modifications)
Unit 4 - RX-78-4 (Deployment)
Unit 5 - RX-78-5 (Initial plan)
Unit 5 - RX-78-5 (Jaburo modifications)
Unit 5 - RX-78-5 (Deployment)
Unit 5 - RX-78-5Bst
(No text but some flavor of FA obviously)
(As above)
Unit 6 - RX-78-6 'Mudrock'
Unit 7 - RX-78-7
RX-78NT-1 (At docking on Libot)
RX-78NT-1 (Roll-out)
(No text but RX-78NT-1FA Full Armor)

This post (Roll-Out)

RillAkBea posted:

So it looks like Build Divers Re:Rise is a web series. I wasn't initially interested in it but I'm now at least a little interested to see if it's "not good enough for TV" web series or a "not safe enough for TV" web series (i.e. the good kind)

Spelling Mitsake posted:

Is it made by the same people? Because Build Divers made AGE look good by comparison.

tsob posted:

Would the main writer being different not signal hope?

chiasaur11 posted:

I suppose it could be a sign for less despair, even if the writer did a couple scripts for the original Build Divers (episode 19 and 22). But in general, anime is more shaped by the director than the writer, and the director for Build Divers did Try as well.

Not a good sign.

Paper Kaiju posted:

Wing and Turn A both have excellent first episodes, because they both give you a great preview of what you can expect in both tone and focus for the rest of the series. Both SEED series kinda fail in this regard.

Arcsquad12 posted:

The first episode of Wing gives you clapping students, unwarranted death threats and no machine guns for him.

Darth Walrus posted:

The first episode of SEED promises you soap opera and giant robots. The series then delivers soap opera and giant robots. It does its job.