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I always liked Zanscare as an enemy faction, since they were dealing with religion as a source of political legitimacy. It's been 100 years since Zeon Zum Daikun's prediction about Newtypes, why wouldn't some opportunist assholes exploit that for military and political gain? Zeon was always super secular and philosophical, but also had the fascist bent towards a metaphysical cult, Zanscare actually went whole hog with using a Newtype religion as a tool to control the masses. A very interesting, and natural, extension of the idea of Newtypes, but I also tend to really be interested in strange Sci-Fi religions like in Stranger in a Strange Land and Childhood's End anyway.
TNG fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 14, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 22:56
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Uhhh, no Zaku, boy.
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Oct 19, 2015 01:55
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Reds posted:SNIP I dunno man, I think criticizing 0080 for its action scenes as "unimpressive" and "boring" is kind of the wrong direction to go since its aesthetic choices don't really lend themselves to buying into the "mecha action must be cool" narrative. After all, this is a show that criticizes military Otaku at every turn. Unlike a lot of other shows, which have a bit of a gekiga Samurai approach to their action scenes, 0080 emphasizes that combat is quick, brutal, unsatisfying, and pointless in a lot of cases. The Kaempher kills the Scarlett team so quickly not because of budgetary or writing failures, but because it's a killing machine that does ugly and brutal things and in a military conflict an exciting and romantic drama is never the case. Same deal when the Alex blows it away, or when Bernie in the end dies for nothing. Even the opening scene, with all its tactical rolls and sick no scopes or whatever, ends with Steiner holding the bleeding corpse of his comrade as the Gundam gets away anyway. Ultimately the show asks the people watching it, if they are so inclined, why exactly they're like Al and his friends. Do you(the audience) watch these types of shows because you like violence, the cult of the machine, and watching people die? No, you don't? Well that's what's being depicted, maybe you(the viewer) should consider what you're watching a little closer next time, you might just not find it as exciting or as endearing. It's why 0080 is really one of the better anti-war Gundam shows, its action isn't driven by a need to sell not only a plastic toy product but a mindset that has infected a great deal of science fiction stories. In fact, it's attempting to go the opposite of that. Which I find is really special, and something the genre needs more of. TNG fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 19:01
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Kanos posted:This is good analysis and I agree with you but I'm pretty sure Reds is taking issue with the fact that people like to gush about how awesome the fight scenes are in 0080 from a visual perspective when they have a lot of choreography problems. Whether or not they have those problems intentionally is another issue, but those problems do exist. Certainly, there does exist a discontinuity in the animation in parts, especially in that opening, and that does hurt the suspension of disbelief but I also think that the overall mise en scene of the work is preserved by how its action functions. The term jobbing is interesting here, since it implies that within a fictional reality there has to be a "realistic" bit of competency to people fighting. But to that, the writer and director make choices to get the other guy on the floor to move the story along. The choice here I don't think is "Zeon is wonderful and strong"; the GM's get butchered because 0080's main point is "War isn't fun and enjoyable". And that all these new wizbang designs like the Hygogg, GM Cold Type, Gelgoog Jaeger, and Zaku II FZ aren't so much advertisements for toys you can enjoy and support, but just a different type of coffin for all these characters. You'll die all the same in a variant as you would in the bog standard type. Of course, I really don't care too much for "cool" action scenes to begin with, and I very much like 0080 because of its supposedly "boring" action. IBO is really interesting to me because despite all the directing flourishes with oblique camera angles, it acknowledges that it's brutal and hosed up what the characters are doing. Not only does it acknowledge it, it very much does not shy away from showing you quite starkly. TNG fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 22:37
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Ernie Muppari posted:the fight outside the colony also has a layer of sad in that the whole thing is a diversion that seems to cost an awful lot of lives all around for how minor the thing they're covering for is All the while Bernie is sitting next to a guy who they had set up to look like he had caught a piece of shrapnel to the face. It's kind of awful to think about how Zeon got that guy.
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Oct 21, 2015 00:13
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Ple is both a deliberate attempt at marketing to pedophiles as well as a massive in-joke at their expense. Fits with ZZ in general really, in that lots of toyetic and 80s cultural forces are driving it and that it's an absurd mess that is having a laugh at its audience most of the time. Even the "serious" aspects of the show are kind of silly in a melodramatic "Gundam" way.
TNG fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 01:59
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ZZ's a funny show, since I am convinced Tomino was having a massive troll-y meltdown that he would only exceed in V Gundam. The title Gundam is this massive chuuni pile of guns and sharp angles, but even today does not quite work at 1/100th or 1/144th scale. And not a lot of the other designs with all their gimmicks do that either. You think the Federation is corrupt and bad? In this one they sell out to Neo Zeon and allow them to drop a colony on Dublin! Neo Zeon itself grows out of the far more restrained Axis remnant as an almost super robot evil empire type bad guy organization. The show literally ends with Judau screaming at how the adults ruin everything. It's like he's taking all the aspects he hates about the Franchise(tm) and all the other the things people expect out of it and moves them up to 11. You want more Gundam? I'll give you the loving Gundam-iest Gundam you've ever had! Honestly the serious parts are sillier to me than the episode where Bright has to catch a Chicken or Moon-Moon. Ple is also bad and creepy and everything about her is terrible, including Marida Cruz who adds a whole buncha poo poo to the already massive poo poo pile. TNG fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 02:39
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THE DEAD, THE DEAD! ZZ dub is hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vdfIFZYJvw gently caress you, Wong! Also, Torres macking on a honey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsRX94qHUfM Astronage can ACT!
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Oct 21, 2015 05:23
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boom boom boom posted:I don't think Tomino was "trolling" his audience at all, that's a weird thing to think. Like you say, it follows the themes of the earlier shows. And when you take it in context with Victory, there's a very clear escalation of crazyness in UC. It starts off with Space Hitler and after that the villains, the people who've lived through the events of the previous series and still want to start a war, get weirder and crazier as time goes on. Yes, but the way in which ZZ "follows the themes" is to an absurd level. A show with a super toy Gundam whose design precludes it from ever being an effective toy, comically absurd villains even when the show is being serious, and just generally ramping up everything in hilariously reductive ways. I'm not saying the show is bad, but it also stays silly throughout and gets even more-so. It's 80s toy commercial excess, and 80s Japanese nerd culture, and Tomino's own brand of amusement and contempt for the whole thing wrapped into one. It's kind of amazing. Weirder and crazier is right, but I very much think Tomino was having a laugh at the very concept of Gundam shows since the Original and Zeta had become such phenomenons and the production time leading into ZZ was so short.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:50
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The Zeta is a fairly sleek and elegant design if you omit the transformation gimmick entirely, which everything above a certain scale doesn't seem to want to do. But oh well. The ZZ is a boxy mess no matter what they decide to sacrifice for stability. It's kind of funny how much the ZZ and V have in common in regards to how they work within the animation compared to how they work in "reality". They're either flimsy as hell or have to really gently caress around with proportions to get their gimmicks working. Even with today's Gunpla engineering, they still kinda of suck, imagine late 80s or early 90s Bandai trying to reproduce them. Tomino having a poo poo fit about the rampant commercial part of the franchise just fits with everything I know about the man, but people are right, it's hard to say for sure. But my feeling about ZZ is still that's it's talking more to how Gundam works as a franchise than anything else. Which I think is an interesting approach and makes ZZ unique, since it goes just beyond drat ADULTS and into the minds of people that are responding to Gundam in 1986-87. ZZ is also funny when you look at the costuming of the new characters. Zeta very much had a space future 80s type look, but ZZ takes it as step further into reality with gymnastic outfits, legwarmers, and muscle shirts under vests with medallions. I found myself wondering where Beecha's Members Only jacket was. It's Not Anime indeed. Neo Zeon goes the other way with remixed 80s space fascist and super tacky headdresses. Man, I wonder what possessed Haman to get in that getup. I thought her black jumpsuit was really classy. TNG fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 19:14
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Droyer posted:One thing I think The OVA did well was how it never really went into detail on Marida's backstory like the books did (I think). She should have survived though, se was the coolest character in Unicorn It wasn't as explicit as the book, but it went into it with the flashback where she's always reaching out for something. Mirida Cruz's problem is that narratologically she's basically Cordelia. She's there to maintain a purity of character untainted (to an extent, she does have serenity of self by the time Riddhe frags her) by all the evil things that have been forced upon her, then to die to expand the tragedy of the male characters and give them insight about the conflict.
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Oct 21, 2015 20:20
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Malibu Stacy, with new hat!....er cuffs!
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Oct 22, 2015 00:14
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Not to mention her past has a lot of sexual violence, and the novel is even worse about it but Marida turns out a bit differently there, so you have the politics of Madonna/Whore to contend with. Marida's a big goddamn mess of a character. I mean jeez, when you're dealing with things like coerced prostitution and sexual violence, I think you need to be very careful with how the character ultimately ends up. The fact that she's exists to further Riddhe's sense of self and identity is a goddamn shame. Maybe....don't have a man kill her so that that man can use it for character development? A character that's been used by men her entire life, gets used by a man at the very end and she's just a-okay with that. Distasteful really.
TNG fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Oct 22, 2015 |
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Oct 22, 2015 00:18
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Super Slash posted:From someone who hasn't watched a whole lot of Gundam I'd recommend; This isn't exactly accurate. There's tons of bullshit in this show. It's like if a Vietnam movie was about a squad of grunts that are the key unit fighting the NVA who also at the same time discover the NVA's super weapon and bust up its testing, find the hidden NVA base by themselves, are the only ones to make contact with and help local guerrillas fight, fight in the pivotal battle for the war and do key things to win it, oh and the leader of the squad has a romance with the NVA commander's daughter. 08th MS Team is the 'The Green Berets' of supposedly gritty war robot anime.
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Oct 25, 2015 03:45
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Droyer posted:It does sorta doesn't it? It's made out of three vehicles that form one big robot Gundam Sousei''s explanation of the Ideon's production origin is loving hilarious.
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Oct 25, 2015 03:53
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Tomino really liked that movie, especially around the late 70s. Ideon is full of direct visual quotations to it.
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Oct 25, 2015 05:10
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"Weapons are dangerous Mr. Chronicle!" (Here I'll show you)
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Oct 26, 2015 19:21
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If anything, Zeon is more in line with Imperial Japan as far as ideology goes.They don't claim racial superiority, but rather moral and spiritual preeminence, which is point number 1 in Showa fascism. Ghiren gets ballyhooed around as Space Hitler a lot, by his own father even, but if you look closely at the Garma funeral speech, it's more in line with what Imperial propagandists were saying at the beginning of the war. Zeon propaganda is also all about fighting for "freedom" against a corrupt and decadent overpower, which you apparently do by launching an aggressive war of conquest. This lines up with how your average Mobile Task Force soldier was being sold on the idea that invading China, Korea, the Philippines, and the all the US territories was actually the right thing to do to combat the morally decadent and imperialist West. It's interesting how the philosophy of North Korea's Juche grew out of this, but that's another discussion. Either way, what made the original Gundam special was that Tomino was willing to turn the lens of criticism onto Japan's past. Which is one of the reasons I like it as an anti-war piece, since it was not giving Japan a pass for its violence and brutality by allowing it to feel pride or admiration for itself. That's gotten co-opted over the years, because Japanese nationalism has revived for a variety of reasons. There's also the government itself being more than fine with historical revisionism and white washing. MS IGLOO is stupid for the same reason that Space Battleship Yamato's initial scenario is stupid, because rather than looking at why a military-industrial complex would allow these sorts of machines to be made in the first place it instead puts all the focus on the "bravery" of the dumb bastards they get to fly and sail the things. Never mind that this whole system of militarism is flawed at every level, these men are brave and die brave deaths for what they believe in! Sure our government is corrupt and probably evil, but aren't these men and women the bravest? It's more of a hagiography of Zeon's martyrs than anything else. The reason I never buy the argument that IGLOO is critical of Zeon is that it still revels in its dumb loving robots. They're all deathtraps, but by god we'll make them a giant funeral pyre in the sky so bright they'll always remember! Rather than going "ZEON BANZAI" every time, it would probably be more germane to you know, be angry and terrified at the system that treated them like another component in the doomed and ultimately destructive machine of nationalism. A lot like this guy: http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage Which is a great of example of a man placed into a terrible technological and bureaucratic deathtrap that was rushed into production to try and win a battle in a dubious conflict
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Oct 27, 2015 16:42
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Yeah, this is one of the things that bugs me a lot about Zeon stuff - there are way too few Zeon characters portrayed as being reluctant about their orders or the war in general. In the background material there's some stuff about a Side 3 colony being violently suppressed because they were protesting the war, but you're right. In mainstream animation, the Zeon types kinda look sad and mournful at best as they go off to commit another atrocity. As an aside for anyone interested, here's a talk about North Korea's Juche ideology that goes into how Showa Fascism worked within the conquered territories before and during the war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw79POdZ0-g
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Oct 27, 2015 17:17
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Ernie Muppari posted:i'm not sure what makes that unusual exactly? war crimes don't commit themselves, and generally they don't get committed at all if anyone who'd be involved is willing to do more than be sad about having done them Yep, that's kind of how evil is done in real life. But within the metaseries, it's kind of funny how everyone on Zeon's side just kinda goes along with it, except for Char in the original series but he has personal and not necessarily moral objections. Especially for a show that a lot of fans feel is more "balanced" in its approach to sides on a war. I don't feel that myself, and I certainly don't feel like the Federation are unequivocal good guys, but Zeon certainly is all too willing to do unspeakable things. But history has shown, populations have been willing to go along with their governments doing the worst things, our own for example. 0083 has an almost absurd version of this with Cima''s backstory. "What? You mean that we gassed all those people with poison? I thought we were going to just knock them out , remove them somehow, and then use the colony to commit a war crime on Earth! You tricked me Zeon high command!" I object to this on the grounds that I thought I was going to be committing a different war crime than the one I actually did!
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Oct 27, 2015 21:51
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I wonder if any of those resources M'quve said would allow Zeon to fight another 10 years were sweet duds.
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Oct 28, 2015 05:58
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Char's best fight is with Haman, which he technically wins since he separates her from Scirocco and makes her irrelevant in the last battle.
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Oct 30, 2015 19:17
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yic2eaCnIao Don't be so upset about Mashymre. No one else was.
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Oct 31, 2015 19:09
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I think taking it on a show by show basis is probably the best course of action. Mobile Suit Gundam's politics towards war are quite different than Gundam SEED's for example. I would argue they're much better too, and is one of the reasons I don't care for SEED as it exists in a very cynical post 9/11 approach to violence and intervention. Gundam, as well as all military sci-fi in general, exists under the banner of American military hegemony. In a Japanese context, the worst stuff tends to run the gamut from being dreadfully naive to outright pining for the days where their military could go out and kill a lot of people. I generally dislike military fighting machines of all sorts, fictional or otherwise, because it helps reinforce certain narratives that our defense industry would love to keep going. It's all usually based on a buncha horseshit too, as one could see if you've ever read any thread glorifying the A-10 on these forums or elsewhere. On the flip side, this interview with Tomino has an interesting quote about the 1/1 Odaiba statue in that he regards the big gaudy thing as a standard to peace because of its "toy colors". Now that's an interesting thought, as the last 2 decades of UC have very much tried to put the robots into a more "realistic" mode, or rather something that isn't a standard to any sort of peace but instead a piece of commodity fetishism that helps to make people think the JSDF should be remodeled into something a bit more aggressive or that the F-35 is not a tremendous waste of money, resources, and lives. TNG fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Nov 4, 2015 |
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Nov 4, 2015 17:05
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Gundam Wing was the best Weiß Kreuz prequel ever.
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Nov 4, 2015 19:51
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Bernie: Well, I think I can say with the utmost of certainty than love definitely doesn't bloom on the battlefield.
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Nov 5, 2015 03:00
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NikkolasKing posted:MSG and its "spiritual successor" have clear ideas of war but what about Wing and 00, the other two most alike Gundams? You said show by show basis, after all. I never could understand what 00 was getting at, especially since CB's terrorism ended up working perfectly. I think when looking at those two, you can't get the specter of commercialism out of the way when engaging with their themes. Wing especially, but 00 does it as well. I think 00 is a far more intelligent show than Wing, but I also have a gigantic soft spot for Wing for a variety of reasons. Wing's kind of loving crazy though, especially when you regard the philosophy of "Absolute Pacifism" and look at what Relena actually accomplishes during the show. She kind of drifts from one thing to another, the posh academy, the Sanc Kingdom, being Vice President(not even full president!) of the Earth Sphere UN or whatever, and is always kind of bailed out by her brother, Heero, one of the other Gundam pilots whenever she's about to be atomized. It's kind of comedic when everyone just lifts her up as this amazing person when she's really kind of passively(lol) milquetoast. She's made a philosophy out of being someone who kind of stands around and lets others do all the heavy lifting. You counter that with Trieze's batshit ideal of "War is beautiful, and I will help bring about the most beautiful war of all, and it will lead to peace because all those brave and beautiful 100K+ people I personally remember will all be dead" and you get a very loving confused show about what it's trying to say. Oh well, sells a lot of wall scrolls and gunpla, so whatever. 00 I think becomes more cogent when you see that "the plan" in regards to what CB is even supposed to be doing goes off the rails once Allejandro shoots Aeolia Schenberg in the face. It's this massively baroque and complicated thing and the one man who's supposed to tie it all together dies 2/3rds through the first season and never really did or said anything in the "present" anyway. So you have this vague plan, and your main characters are all victims of war in one way or another. Setsuna the child soldier, Lockon the terrorist victim, Allelujah the failed military experiment, and Tiera the construct that's been in service to this arcane and difficult to grasp plan . 00 becomes a story about being caught up in institutions. Not just war, but also force politics in regards to peace, as well as the commercial side of Bandai, and well the institution of Gundam itself. The terrorism that the Meisters did, yes, technically succeed, but it also lead to the Tau Drive being disseminated and even more weapons and hostility to be unleashed on the Earth sphere. 9/11 united a lot of the world behind America and well, look what happened with that. Unification against an outward force isn't always a positive and peaceful outcome. In fact, it might be something that caused a lot more problems than it solved. And the fact that CB is basically flailing in the dark with only a mysterious computer to guide them is kind of interesting in what ideology and the belief in it does to people with good intentions. Setsuna's key question is ,"What is Gundam", and I think that he really only answers that in the end of the movie: When he's freed from the old thinking of CB's arcane plan and actually does something unexpected: connects with an intelligence everyone thought alien and inscrutable. Oddly enough, it kind of wraps back around to the first Gundam that way. gently caress, I guess Ribbons and the 0 Gundam won after all. TNG fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 05:58
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Kanos posted:Celestial Being's terrorism achieved its stated goal of ending world conflict, but it most certainly didn't work perfectly. The resulting world government was a fascist nightmare run by what amounts to the Titans which took a fair amount of work to fix. Yeah, for all the mistakes Season 2 made in its decisions, making the post power blocs world government be a totalitarian oligarchy was one of its more astute and "realistic" ones.
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Nov 5, 2015 06:10
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Well militarism in general is part of our society. Japan's too as they were an occupied nation, and didn't have full autonomy of all of their lands until the 70s. We've all been in a perpetual state of combat readiness since the end of WW2, no one really disarmed in the US and all of the conquered territories. My problem is that a lot of military fiction, and especially science or speculative fiction in that mode, normalizes that militarism and helps the violent attitude in our society to continue. I'm not saying it's the cause of it, hardly, but it becomes a lot easier to accept wars in foreign places and bigger, newer, and more wasteful pieces of military hardware when all of our pop culture entertainment gives it whizbang appeal instead of trying to inspire disgust. A lot of it's unconscious, but it keeps going on and on and I think if we want to say no to war we also need to say no to things that make it seem understandable, relatable, and somewhat acceptable. Someone earlier made a comment about the brutality of IBO's action making it "awesome" in some people's eyes. Perhaps, but for me I think the violence and action in that is being refreshingly honest because it's sickening and very disheartening in a lot of cases.
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Nov 5, 2015 07:15
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 After the 2nd season at least.
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Nov 7, 2015 08:30
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Droyer posted:Pretty sure Ali was dead after the second season Meaning that after season 2 was all said and done, Ali turned out to be both a clown and a terrorist.
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Nov 7, 2015 15:01
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