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Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

Gripweed posted:

This is one thing I really like about Gundam X. It is very explicit that Newtypes aren't a way out of war for humanity, you can't just wait for the current people to be replaced by different people who will naturally be better.

Becoming a newtype means having hope for humanity and embracing that, the show is pretty drat clear on that

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TenementFunster
Feb 20, 2003

The Cooler King

Tulalip Tulips posted:

I'm an original version of Beyond the Time preferer but I can't say no to an 80s song.
yes the original is still the best but the moriguchi cover is a fanatic rendition. it is funny that they had her solo Beyond The Time on the first album, and it ended up being such a hit that TM Network had to get in on it for this one

speaking of, the flamenco/classical guitar rendition of Shine in the Storm from the first album is such a fun gimmick and i love it, ditto the big band style Tobe! Gundam.

Midjack posted:

Agreed on your assessment of her version of Turn A Turn.
her stand up to the victory and turn a turn really cook. love to see a bunch of studio musicians and some lady old enough to be my mom rip some nerd poo poo

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

drrockso20 posted:

new trailer for Gundam Evolution from the PlayStation State of Play stream;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu1fs6VcBFw

So thinking more about this, I'm wondering which suit is gonna be the Reaper Overwatch of Gundam Overwatch. The ostensibly easy-to-use character that's also mostly appealing to people on the aesthetic side of things. The natural pick is Barbatos, but apparently Exia is in the lineup too, might that give Barbatos a run for its money?

Also, what are they gonna go with for the first character added beyond the initial roster? G, Wing and Reco aren't in the initial roster anywhere, are any of those offering the first natural extensions?

The roster has some delightfully weird-rear end picks, by the way. Pale Rider is in there, the SeeD rep is a DOM Trooper from Destiny. Guntank is playable.

gimme the GOD DAMN candy
Jul 1, 2007
guntank with a core fighter whose sole purpose seems to be suicide bombing

Azubah
Jun 5, 2007

I wonder if the Guntank's special is called the Ryu attack.

tsob
Sep 26, 2006

Chalalala~

Kanos posted:

It's not supposed to be "replacement". The point of Newtypes in the original Gundam was specifically that Newtypes aren't X-Men Mutants where you're born with eye lasers mind powers, you can just kind of become one over time if you're in the right environment. 0079 hints very strongly that most of the white base crew are awakening, it hints that goddamned ancient old man Revil is awakening, and Zeta has Jerid awaken over time to the point where the newtypes in the final battle are noticing him(before he dies). The Gundam X newtypes are X-Men mutants who are just born with incredible powers.

I mean, to be fair, while Tomino started out depicting Newtypes that way, he himself seems to have shifted things over time. The fetal child Beltorchika is carrying is a Newtype in Beltorchika's Children, for instance. Tomino's view on things is probably best summarized in a statement that Judau gives in the Zeta Part II draft that "you're a child prodigy when you're born, a genius until you're ten and a normal human at 20" i.e. that everyone is born a Newtype and that only some people retain or awaken as Newtypes again later in life. I vaguely recall Tomino even saying something akin to that in an interview I read once, but I'd have no idea where to find it now even if I wanted to look; so I can't verify that, and it's worth taking with a whole barge of salt. The really nebulous circumstances around Newtypes don't help though, and Quess is a Newtype despite being a spoiled teen with no distant relatives she cares about or friends (that we know of) who's never experienced war or left Earth before the events of the film for instance. Which puts paid to most ideas of what causes Newtype awakening throughout Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam and Char's Counterattack all on it's own (maybe it's being born in space, maybe it's distance between loved ones, maybe it's war). Plus, characters certainly seem to be directly talking to each other via their mind (i.e. telepathy) rather than empathically feeling each other or something at times. Including in Char's Counterattack.

It's also worth noting here that Yazan seems to be awakening as a Newtype in Zeta Gundam, but rejects it and so stays an Oldtype. When he's first introduced, Scirocco has several interactions where he emphasizes how Yazan feels about things, or that Yazan should pay attention to his feelings and then when Yazan captures Reccoa he has some kind of vision but says that he won't be fooled by any such thing and ignores it. After which, it never comes up again.

Fivemarks posted:

I think this is why some people have an issue with the idea of UNDERSTANDING (All Caps) in later Gundam works, as being the end all be all of solving the problem. You can understand someone perfectly, but if they're an rear end in a top hat, you've still got to fight them.

The only time it's ever presented as the be all solution is Gundam 00, and even then, only in the film against a very specific enemy. Rau and Patrick still had to die in Gundam SEED, Durandal in Destiny, Ribbons and Ali in 00, Zeheart in AGE etc. And in Gundam 00's TV show it was even more explicit than normal because Ali had understanding magic worked on him, and was just disgusted by and rejected it. After which he had to be killed anyway.

drrockso20 posted:

Pretty much any of the songs that have gotten English covers through either Andrew WK's Gundam Rock or Ritchie Kotzen's Ai Senshi ZXR would probably work great for that purpose

I quite like Andrew WK's Gundam album, but my main takeaway from it has always been that his rendition of Gihren's speech is fantastic, and I'd be interested in seeing him do the full role on the strength of that alone.

Gaius Marius posted:

It's a metaphor

It's not a metaphor if it's not part of the show. Or even the background lore. You're essentially just making stuff up, and assuming it's part of the setting to support your argument. An argument that works perfectly fine without that element anyway.

Gaius Marius posted:

Humans being fallible does not preclude the possibility that they will succeed. Never in the series is the move to space ever shown to be a negative move. And we know that eventually the Colonies will move beyond the our galaxy, even if they still are falling into the same sins as modern humans.

The possibility of success is not a guarantee either, and while moving to space is never shown as a negative; It's also never shown to be positive. It's not good or bad; it just is, as a response to other problems and circumstances, but which introduces good and bad circumstances of it's own. A few characters say that it's a positive, but usually for quite nebulous reasons that depend on their own logic; logic that is demonstrably faulty. Which is why it's still an open debate that Hathaway is torn on to some degree in Hathaway's Gundam, since people like the taxi driver are happy with life on Earth and see no reason to push to space after the bare minimum environmental healing.

It's suggested a few times in early UC that Newtypes are a response to people moving to space, for example. This can't really be true though, because Amuro, the first Newtype we see on screen was born on and lived half his life on Earth, as well as awakening on Earth. A lot of Newtypes are either born on or awaken on Earth; including Lalah, who is the archetypal Newtype going off a lot of UC material. Or at least, she's born on Earth in Tomino's later stuff. The TV show and movies don't go into it, and she's from Side...4, I think it is, in the 0079 novels. It's only in a novel he wrote about her meeting with Char in the 90s that her being a child prostitute from Earth was introduced, and which most people and sources, including The Origin, go with now.

Also, while the colonies do leave the Solar System in Turn A going off a brief clip in the Dark History, we don't know anything about them beyond that in the show itself and the fact it happens doesn't say or indicate anything good or bad on it's own. You have to go to supplementary material to find out they were a Newtype civilization, and even then it doesn't indicate (a) whether they were all Newtypes, mostly Newtypes, lead by Newtypes or just had more Newtypes than normal UC or (b) whether they were even Newtypes when they left, or it only became a more prominent thing after they had left the Solar System. That civilization also built the Turn X, the most devastating war machine in the franchise, at least up to that point, which doesn't indicate anything positive.

Gaius Marius posted:

While Newtypes might have left this world, that desire remains strong enough that people like Guin cast their radio waves into the Aether hoping to connect through the abyss of space.

My impression there was always that the radio equipment Guin was using to contact the Moonrace was specifically for that purpose, and may even have been technology given to him by Moonrace agents specifically for that purpose because that level of communication technology is slightly out of step with other Amerian technology within the show. Radio equipment like that is only a few decades removed from the general turn of the century vibe of Ameria, so it may be organically part of Amerian life, but it didn't come off as such to me. It certainly seems plausible that Dianna Counter would have provided him equipment through agents like Teteth Halley or the Red Team to facilitate communication and dialogue over agreements once they had determined it was time to return.

Gaius Marius posted:

A lot of our discussions on this end up missing eachother because of this. You're grand historical scale is thousands of years, mine is hundreds of thousands to millions

I would personally hold that historical scales are in the order of thousands of years, and that hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years is stretching to geological scales and not historical. In this particular case I refer to historical scales of thousands of years, and not of hundreds of thousands of years (regardless of what name is applied to it), because that's as far as time within the Gundam setting is depicted. I can't refer to anything beyond that, because anything beyond that is speculation at best. Turn A Gundam and G-Reco are the most distant from UC, and that is only by a few thousand years. At which point, Newtypes are rarer. I could postulate what the future of Newtypes might be millions of years after that point, but it'd just be empty speculation, supported by nothing but my own thoughts on the matter.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

Azubah posted:

I wonder if the Guntank's special is called the Ryu attack.

I didn't realize why they had the Guntank do that but oh my god that is exactly why they did it, that's insane.

I think the Zaku needs an equivalent, but I don't know how you'd turn 'death by unprotected atmospheric re-entry' into an attack.

tsob
Sep 26, 2006

Chalalala~

Cleretic posted:

I didn't realize why they had the Guntank do that but oh my god that is exactly why they did it, that's insane.

I think the Zaku needs an equivalent, but I don't know how you'd turn 'death by unprotected atmospheric re-entry' into an attack.

The Zaku jumps up super high, bounces off the ropes and drops through the atmosphere, elbow first, onto the opponent as it burns up while doing so. It causes self damage to do it, but it causes super high damage if it connects.

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

NikkolasKing posted:

I gotta admit I've never really thought much on how subsequent Gundam series drop ideas of "transcendence." I just kinda figured this was because Tomino comes from an older school where psychic powers are totally natural and gonna happen if we just let them, dude. Dune type poo poo.

A page late but I think this is less an "old school" thing and more that they're drawing from the same well: LSD. Herbert has openly admitted the spice's expansion of awareness is directly inspired by psychedelics, and the imagery from Amuro and Lalah's newtype bonding scenes (particularly its use of colors) are very reminiscent of a psychedelic trip. Further, recurring newtype powers, like super empathy and the ability to see the future (also present in Dune), are logical extensions of the feeling of oneness with the universe that is a common effect of LSD as well, which is where the "transcendental" aspect of both the spice and newtypism comes from.

This could be a complete coincidence, mind. Tomino wouldn't be the first person to just... Put psychic powers in his books because they're cool. Also there aren't any studies in which people on mushrooms claim they can now make giant swords using the souls of the dead, at least not to my knowledge, but I'm willing to let that slide as just a cool powerup moment. Given we're talking about a man making an anti-war series with environmentalist themes in the 70s, its not a big leap of the imagination to think he either took LSD or knew someone who did and took notes from their experience.

GimmickMan fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Mar 10, 2022

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



I don't know if LSD was common in Japan or if Tomino himself went overseas, but he would have certainly had access to both SF discussing such things (Dune had been out for years, for instance, when MSG was created) and to a lot of psychedelia in pop culture.

drrockso20
May 6, 2013

Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

GimmickMan posted:

A page late but I think this is less an "old school" thing and more that they're drawing from the same well: LSD. Herbert has openly admitted the spice's expansion of awareness is directly inspired by psychedelics, and the imagery from Amuro and Lalah's newtype bonding scenes (particularly its use of colors) are very reminiscent of a psychedelic trip. Further, recurring newtype powers, like super empathy and the ability to see the future (also present in Dune), are logical extensions of the feeling of oneness with the universe that is a common effect of LSD as well, which is where the "transcendental" aspect of both the spice and newtypism comes from.

This could be a complete coincidence, mind. Tomino wouldn't be the first person to just... Put psychic powers in his books because they're cool. Also there aren't any studies in which people on mushrooms claim they can now make giant swords using the souls of the dead, at least not to my knowledge, but I'm willing to let that slide as just a cool powerup moment. Given we're talking about a man making an anti-war series with environmentalist themes in the 70s, its not a big leap of the imagination to think he either took LSD or knew someone who did and took notes from their experience.

I mean psychedelic mushrooms were legal in Japan till very recently(and only got banned because they didn't want to make themselves look bad by having foreigners take them when they were hosting the Olympics or something) so that's decently likely

Also this whole conversation is highlighting exactly why I prefer to ignore the "Philosophical Newtype" and only focus on the "Practical Newtype" cause while there's still some vague New Age woo woo that pops up here and there it just makes things a lot more consistent when you focus on only the stuff explicitly shown onscreen that Newtypes can do with maybe some theoretical extrapolation from there as a basis

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

The idea that anything extraordinary must be the result of psychedelics is some dumb bullshit. Frank Zappa didn't do drugs, listen to that man's loving albums.

drrockso20
May 6, 2013

Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Gaius Marius posted:

The idea that anything extraordinary must be the result of psychedelics is some dumb bullshit. Frank Zappa didn't do drugs, listen to that man's loving albums.

True, just pointing out that it is theoretically plausible in this instance

Iserlohn
Nov 3, 2011

Watch out!

Here comes the third tactic.
Lipstick Apathy
Got around to watching the first G-Reco movie since it's on the Gundam channel for another day. Overall, I recommend it! It doesn't cover too many episodes so the pacing doesn't feel as intense or disorienting as other compilation movies and the added scenes, though minimal, help give the movie oddly more focus than this stretch of the show.

Just some random thoughts:

Weird that they just use the TV series OP. The editing for it was always clunky and it seems like a missed opportunity.

There actually doesn't seem like a whole lot of new footage from what I can remember. The biggest changes are a handful of short scenes with Aida to clarify how she is dealing with the events of the show without taking up too much time. It's fairly elegantly done and creates a focus for the movie.

There's also an added line with Cumpa Rusita to 'slow down the response (of security)' while the G-Self gets stolen to further clarify that this was intentional.

G-Reco was already a really good-looking and well-animated show, so I'm probably missing a lot of revised scenes for the movies. Still, their effort isn't totally lost on me, the G-Self looks incredible in shots where it is the focus! Lots of great detail on the face and the main cameras and the beam saber looks deadlier, too.

There is some jank though.

An infamous scene where Aida criticizes the Capital for monopolizing the distribution of energy to Earth and Bellri's response is just edited out is still the same. I never disliked that scene, but I get the criticism and it's funny that it's still here.

Flashbacks and quick inner monologues are added for clarity. These are mostly nice but there's a specific flashback that gets partially used to illustrate Klim's thought that gets played again but in full for a future scene with Aida. Just seemed jarring.

Speaking of Klim Nick, he's still great! However, they cut out the 'I'm a genius-oh no!' meme scene. They were separate scenes before but one of the scenes is cut. Sad, could've made the meme real.

The poop scene is extended! Thank you, Tomino.

The G-Self cockpit shares the same sound effects with Master Duel. Where is card games with giant robots??

Mick Jack gets like one line.

All these scenes are in the show, but there is a clear progression of the Capital Army becoming more militarized from the acqusition of resources from other departments, the gaudy camo paint job on the crown, the rally before going to war, to the fleet of Cait Sith.

I was thinking the movie would get to the Reflector Pack battle since that struck me as the first really big moment in the show, but i like where the movie ends. I don't recall if it was in the show, but the final battle of the movie ending with Aida saving Bellri is also a nice way to illustrate her starting to move on and accept that she has responsibilities as a leader that are more important than her personal beliefs, which felt like it didn't become a bigger thing until much later in the show. And again, it's a good thing that the central conflict of the movie is based on Aida's inner turmoil and development instead of just another big battle.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!
Is watching G-Reco through that channel recommended? Are they showing a good, complete, well-paced version, or would it be better to go for watching it elsewhere?

Iserlohn
Nov 3, 2011

Watch out!

Here comes the third tactic.
Lipstick Apathy
All three existing movies are on there, but they're only 3/5. They seem like a pretty good substitute so far, but you'd have to finish with the TV series elsewhere.

Marsupial Ape
Dec 15, 2020
the mod team violated the sancity of my avatar
Does anybody have experience with playing old Gundam playstation games on emulators? I was an XBox kid growing up, so I missed all that.

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

Marsupial Ape posted:

Does anybody have experience with playing old Gundam playstation games on emulators? I was an XBox kid growing up, so I missed all that.

G v ZG always ran well for me on pcsx2 as well as Freddie vs zeon. Encounters in space i had a little more trouble

tsob
Sep 26, 2006

Chalalala~

Gaius Marius posted:

G v ZG always ran well for me on pcsx2 as well as Freddie vs zeon. Encounters in space i had a little more trouble

Crossovers are going to some weird places these days.

wdarkk
Oct 26, 2007

Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

tsob posted:

Crossovers are going to some weird places these days.

Look he's got a GBN hookup, it was inevitable he'd try it.

drrockso20
May 6, 2013

Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

tsob posted:

Crossovers are going to some weird places these days.

Honestly I can kind of see it, some of the stuff in FNAF I could easily see intersecting with Newtype shenanigans in very disturbing ways

wdarkk
Oct 26, 2007

Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten
I feel like three posters in a row assumed different Freddies.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Marsupial Ape posted:

Does anybody have experience with playing old Gundam playstation games on emulators? I was an XBox kid growing up, so I missed all that.

Some. G savior ran well, as did Gundam versus Zeta Gundam and MS Saga. G savior is better than you might expect. Final boss is rough, though.

Marsupial Ape
Dec 15, 2020
the mod team violated the sancity of my avatar

chiasaur11 posted:

Some. G savior ran well, as did Gundam versus Zeta Gundam and MS Saga. G savior is better than you might expect. Final boss is rough, though.

Cool. It's been a long time since I messed around with emulators. Do they let you save your game, nowadays?

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Marsupial Ape posted:

Cool. It's been a long time since I messed around with emulators. Do they let you save your game, nowadays?

Save and quicksave, yeah.

Marsupial Ape
Dec 15, 2020
the mod team violated the sancity of my avatar

chiasaur11 posted:

Save and quicksave, yeah.

Very nice. I'm looking at these game rom sites, right now.

PringleCreamEgg
Jul 2, 2004

Sleep, rest, do your best.
Watching these G-Reco movies since I’ve only seen the first one. It is an absolute crime that the G-reco line of gunpla apparently didn’t sell well. The Recten looks so fun to customize with its TV head, and the Grimoire is the absolute best looking grunt suit ever. I even like the G-Self a lot, though I absolutely can see why some don’t.

RevolverDivider
Nov 12, 2016

As much as I loathe G Reco G Self Space Pack is one of the best designs in the franchise

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

The Greco model line is unfortunately not of particularly high quality, they mustve made some sort of changes in manufacturing or design cause the ibo kits are much better done.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Gaius Marius posted:

The Greco model line is unfortunately not of particularly high quality, they mustve made some sort of changes in manufacturing or design cause the ibo kits are much better done.

A lot of Build Fighters kits were much better too, as were the Thunderbolt kits and the contemporary HGUCs. G-Reco just got a lot of disappointing kits, with the G-Self getting the worst of it.

(The Grimoire was a hit, though.)

TenementFunster
Feb 20, 2003

The Cooler King
https://youtu.be/Z8lmF0lbb3I
80s idol veterans: stronger than us marines

Stairmaster
Jun 8, 2012

well yeah if you watched macross youd know that

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

chiasaur11 posted:

A lot of Build Fighters kits were much better too, as were the Thunderbolt kits and the contemporary HGUCs. G-Reco just got a lot of disappointing kits, with the G-Self getting the worst of it.

(The Grimoire was a hit, though.)

This is a goddamn tragedy, I can already tell the mech design in G-Reco is gorgeous.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Cleretic posted:

This is a goddamn tragedy, I can already tell the mech design in G-Reco is gorgeous.

They're gorgeous, but they're also not designed to make life easy for model kit engineers. The kits still look good, but they need a ton of stickers and don't move as well as other lines. Meanwhile, IBO had common skeletons, which was a real boon to making cheap but good kits. Reusing tooling saves a lot of RnD time.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!
Wasn't able to finish watching the first G-Reco movie until it was taken offline, but I did watch long enough to pinpoint its vibe as being distinctly 'PS2-era JRPG'. In the best way.

tsob
Sep 26, 2006

Chalalala~

GimmickMan posted:

A page late but I think this is less an "old school" thing and more that they're drawing from the same well: LSD. Herbert has openly admitted the spice's expansion of awareness is directly inspired by psychedelics, and the imagery from Amuro and Lalah's newtype bonding scenes (particularly its use of colors) are very reminiscent of a psychedelic trip. Further, recurring newtype powers, like super empathy and the ability to see the future (also present in Dune), are logical extensions of the feeling of oneness with the universe that is a common effect of LSD as well, which is where the "transcendental" aspect of both the spice and newtypism comes from.

What's slightly funny about drawing a parallel to works like Dune is that Tomino has stated in interview that he's not a big fan of sci-fi. Or of mecha in particular for that matter, as a subset of sci-fi. Tomino's just kind of a strange dude, and he appears to take influence from a fairly wide net of culture, while complaining about how insular a lot of anime staff are these days, and how that has created a situation where new anime just pay reference to old anime and don't really build off much else so they end up as regurgitating them without adding anything. It wouldn't surprise me if he took the kind of imagery and psychedelic experience you're talking about from other works (which may have been inspired by drugs themselves) rather than personal experience of drugs.

wdarkk posted:

I feel like three posters in a row assumed different Freddies.

Yeah, I meant Freddy (I didn't even realize the spelling was slightly different until I looked it up just now), the 80s horror movie character who had a crossover film called "Freddy vs Jason" already, but I'm pretty sure wdarkk meant Freddie the Gundam Build Divers: Re-Rise character, while drrocks20 seems to have meant Freddie from 5 Nights at Freddies. Obviously the solution is an interdimensional team of Freddies. Freddie from GBN can even pilot Freddie from 5 Nights, since he's got a chest silo, and is even somewhat of a heroic character as of the latest game, from what little I know of the franchise.

tsob fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Mar 11, 2022

gimme the GOD DAMN candy
Jul 1, 2007
i was thinking of freddy from cromartie the entire time

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

tsob posted:

What's slightly funny about drawing a parallel to works like Dune is that Tomino has stated in interview that he's not a big fan of sci-fi. Or of mecha in particular for that matter, as a subset of sci-fi. Tomino's just kind of a strange dude, and he appears to take influence from a fairly wide net of culture, while complaining about how insular a lot of anime staff are these days, and how that has created a situation where new anime just pay reference to old anime and don't really build off much else so they end up as regurgitating them without adding anything. It wouldn't surprise me if he took the kind of imagery and psychedelic experience you're talking about from other works (which may have been inspired by drugs themselves) rather than personal experience of drugs.

Yeah, that's all true and Tomino's relationship with other media is interesting, especially in light of things like Star Wars releasing right before Gundam. Did he watch it and then come up with char's costume and beam saber duels? Did an executive tell him to put those things in a show? Did he simply hear people going on about how cool those bits are and incorporate them into his work? We'll never know for sure. I didn't watch Star Wars until my 30s and I don't care much for it, but I like many of the things it inspired, so I can definitely see that kind of happening for Tomino and Dune (or another previous work with similar ideas).

Ultimately, where an idea comes from doesn't matter (oftentimes there isn't a singular source, but a multitude of them, as you point out) as much as what you do with it, and Tomino made all the concepts he used in Gundam "his" well enough that we're still arguing which ones are more fundamental to Gundam and which ones aren't.

tsob
Sep 26, 2006

Chalalala~

GimmickMan posted:

Yeah, that's all true and Tomino's relationship with other media is interesting, especially in light of things like Star Wars releasing right before Gundam. Did he watch it and then come up with char's costume and beam saber duels? Did an executive tell him to put those things in a show? Did he simply hear people going on about how cool those bits are and incorporate them into his work? We'll never know for sure. I didn't watch Star Wars until my 30s and I don't care much for it, but I like many of the things it inspired, so I can definitely see that kind of happening for Tomino and Dune (or another previous work with similar ideas).

I know Tomino was actually responsible for a good few mobile suit designs (including almost all the mobile armors; if not all of them) in Mobile Suit Gundam, while Okawara just cleaned those ones up but changed little to nothing from Tomino's original sketches, but I don't think he's responsible for any character designs. If he is, even for sketches that Yaz cleaned up or something, then it's news to me at least. There's also interviews like this, where he definitely says he didn't have anything to do with Char's appearance:

Yoshiyuki Tomino posted:

I decided to name the antagonist Char. Char is a pretty cool name, right? But why is it cool, you ask. You see, when Char arrives, he comes charging in. That’s as far as I went with Char’s creation. Then that dummy Yasuhiko took my charging antagonist and gave him a mask of all things. If the character underneath that mask wasn’t hiding some disfigured face, and instead had a significant personal backstory, he would probably have to take off his mask eventually. If let’s say, he had a family member nearby, and they happened to meet face-to-face, he would have to take off his mask. I’m telling the truth. If you notice, Sayla wasn’t created until we started drawing the storyboards. She was a character we pulled out of thin air.

We would put his little sister on the allies side, and that would be even more reason for the protagonist side to have to deal with Char. The enemy having such a relationship with the protagonist allies was something I absolutely haven’t reproduced since. It’s such a stage drama kind of character. I thought, huh I guess I can write drama.

I would say that Cecily/Iron Mask was a pretty similar relationship though, despite him talking about it like he's never gotten close to that. I guess he might not be including it because he doesn't think it was as well done though. Or possibly just not as successful. That aside, Tomino has said he did see Star Wars just before Gundam released and was inspired by it, but he seems to have been inspired more by it's tone, success, drama etc. rather than any particular element of the setting or narrative.

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Tulalip Tulips
Sep 1, 2013

The best apologies are crafted with love.
Why does anyone listen to Beecha? No one should listen to Beecha.

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