I has a gundam question

[jubeh]

Though I agree about Quatre, he is only one of five protagonists. And he is infinitely more interesting than previous gundam protagonists in his nature, mannerisms, etc. He's a bit of an eccentric (obv.). And I don't remember many episodes even focusing on Quatre. Heero doesn't whine about killing so much as he has flashbacks of his first massacre, and tries to interpret them throughout the series. He is a programmed assassin, so, despite the whole self-realization thing being an obvious trope, it makes sense.

Gunzet was the one that brought up heero who while I think is a dumb character is whining for a more interesting reason. He is whining that he feels remorse at all when he's supposed to be heartless.

The twists in the series are confusing to follow because you have a lot of love interests (five separate couplings for the main protagonists) and a cast of characters who are constantly defecting to both sides of the conflict, when not claiming to be independent. And then you have Zechs who is even harder to follow due to his identity and motives switching up all the time.

Its not the twists that are confusing but the actual conflict in general. You start out with something really basic albeit involving the worst plan of all time: give children invincible robots and not tell them about each other even though they are expected to cooperate. Then you have these pacifist dudes that are all about peace but are constantly getting bailed out in obviously non-pacifistic ways. Then white fang shows up and dudes can't decide what their names are.

And in all this the messages get confused. Gundam wing to me at its very core is safety through violence or pacifism but every time they try to hammer in the point its so bad. Oh you saw two guys in space fighting and now you want to put your differences aside? How about when your husbands and sons were put in mobile suits to be slaughtered by those same dudes?

The shows not without good stuff but it almost seems like it was written by 50 dudes who never talked to each other.

The gundams weren't invincible, just nigh invulnerable. They could be hurt with a lot of firepower, against a lot of skilled opposition and few lucky shots. I mean, they are being constantly repaired throughout the series.

This seems to me like a misunderstanding by the writers on what impenetrable armor would be like. Almost like it has hit points or something. Regardless it doesn't really matter, for all intents and purposes the fights lack dramatic tension because not only do you not have to worry about the protagonists dying -- at any given the time the stakes could be something you only just learned about.

[Regantor]

I seem to remember the only time a gundam was ever even beaten by a regular MS during the series was by Zechs in the tallgeese, and I'm pretty sure Heero was already wounded before the battle. The aforementioned vayeate and mercurius barely even count for giving the gundams a hard time because they A) Were made from gundanium, by an ex-project meteor scientist, B) They both had AIs based directly on gundam pilot main characters, and C) They end up getting blown up within an episode or two anyway. Include the non-project meteor Epyon into this list, and... Well, yeah. You can't really disprove that the main character's gundams weren't just character shielding it up until Endless Waltz.

EW itself... might have counted as a gundam loss if they didn't do the whole "Try to win without killing anyone!" thing. The MS serpents were supposed to be Oz's fanciest gundam-killing units from the end of the war in the first place. Did they actually knock out a single MS with a character inside? Even Noin's outdated Tarus? Nope. The Wing Zero more or less blew it's own arms off, so I have no idea if that one counts or not.

It's not the worst anime space opera series by a long shot at any rate, but, I'm sorry, the technology and tactics were sillyville.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is from the same-ish time period and has melodrama by the buckets, but still stands head and shoulders over GW because of the numerous unwinnable scenarios provided by it's attention to detail. That's the difference in my eyes, at least.

[CypressDahlia]

Actually the Serpents were extremely capable mobile suits. The pilots just sucked. When WuFei and Trowa defect to the Mariemaia faction, Trowa pilots a serpent and demonstrates how capable it is in skilled hands. Heero and Duo both put up considerable resistance against Altron gundam while piloting Leos. The mobile dolls were always capable, the Oz pilots were just nothing in comparison to the main cast. If anything, I'd say the extent to which the main cast are skilled is more plot armor than the actual gundams.

And the reason the Vayeate and Mercurius got wrecked is not because they were weak. One self-destructs and the other gets wrecked by Wing's colony-killer beam rifle (understandable, as that thing even blew Wing's own arms off). The episode where they get destroyed a second time is the first episode to feature Deathscythe Hell, who stands above its predecessor in the sense that it has a full cloaking device. At the end of the episode it basically just //appears// behind the two suits and takes em out with the scythe. Not an "easy" fight, just an unfair one. In fact, I remember Quatre having considerable difficulty fighting the Mercurius, despite piloting Wing Zero at the time.

[Regantor]

Well, okay, fair enough. Even I mentioned that the Serpents were supposed to be pretty capable, but yeah. I'll let go the fact that Trowa literally just stands there shooting, and is still only combating Heero and Duo in Leos at the time; We can put that down to effective bottlenecking or something perhaps.

Does that really excuse the amount of character shielding that the characters get, through? Come to think of it, there was also an episode early on where the sandrock goes down fighting bog-standard suits, but the (never before or since mentioned unless you count the zero system) AI outright asks Quatre to get out and run away before that happens... Which is just bizarre, seeing as one of his entourage totally could have just told him instead.

The technology and plotting are just kinda wacky, and I think that more attention to detail could have made it a hundred times better, that's the only point I'm trying to make. Even Turn-A's main character flying in drag seems to make more sense than half of the stuff in there.

[Delphinus]

Every time I see this thread I see "I has a goddamn question".

[AlmanacnamedTime]

I wondered who'd get that first....