It's a GUNDAAAAAAAAM. Your general Gundam natter thread!

[Optimus Prime]

I gave F91 a shot because I saw some toys of the Gundams with pirate skulls on them and thought they looked cool. Needless to say, I gambled and I lost.

Already mentioned, but Crossbone Gundam is what you want to check out - it's pretty badass.

 

[Assorted Nuts]

I ask you, how many other series have a man using a headband to rip off a giant robot's head? Just one. G Gundam. This is why I fucking love G Gundam.

 

[fuehrer_dessler]

I ask you, how many other series have a man using a headband to rip off a giant robot's head? Just one. G Gundam. This is why I fucking love G Gundam.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IAizwLfZbUA

G Gundam was hilariously over the top and loved it because of that.

 

[Florence]

Now that IBO season 1's over, what did everyone think of it?

 

[Sanshain]

Now that IBO season 1's over, what did everyone think of it?

I just finished it myself. In a nutshell, I'd say that IBO is one of the best things to come out of Gundam in the last decade. It has great characterization, superb pacing, great intrigue and a refreshingly complex narrative. It also manages to be incredibly dark and flat-out uncomfortable to watch at times while still managing to connect with the audience through well-timed moments of comedy and lightheartedness. Characters in this show feel human. They laugh, they cry, they have feelings and complex emotional reactions to the volatile, bitter situations they find themselves in. It's just about the best and most engaging anime I've watched since Madoka Magica.

 

[HipstrsGonnaHip]

@Kamen Rider Black RX you tackle this one. I'm too lazy.

 

[Kamen Rider Black RX]

The story of IBO is very weak. There was simply not enough content in it for a 25 episode series, so they padded it out the ass. They stretched it as far as they could go with enough repetition one could easily devise a drinking game for the series. A lot of people tell me that they're focusing on the characters and that should be appreciated, but look at how many times Kudelia goes on about being useless. How many times the show plays "my long lost brother" gig. How many scenes where Mikazuki does nothing but eat those Mars dates. This is what I mean. A third of the series could easily be cut and nothing would be lost.

And while we're on the characters, let's talk about Tekkadan. Once the series gets into space, the whole child soldier aspect gets reduced to nothing more than "these children can't read" and "they're dirty" on Kudelia's part. Beyond that, they act as normal human beings until Biscuit dies. The twist, that they are damaged emotionally, works because the show spends so goddamn long telling us they're more or less normal. Then we get Merribit crying while everyone shows a cult-like devotion to Tekkadan's future ("If I die, I'll make the cult, I mean Tekkadan stronger"). And then in the last episode they go "Oh, they can return to being normal kids."

Child soldiers do not recover like that, and it's insulting on the show's part to say they do.

But then you get into how black-and-white the show tries to paint itself. Gjallarhorn is bad, just look at what they did to the Dort workers. The colony arc actually got the show into hot water in Japan over how it glossed over the fact the workers were threatening violence (with assault rifles and tanks) if their demands weren't met. That's terrorism, and the show wanted us to emphasize with them. "Oh, they were peaceful," doesn't work when they opened fire when Gjallarhorn tried to arrest them for receiving smuggled weapons. False flag operation or not, they were not innocent.

And let's not forget how Makanai set the entire show's plot in motion because he lied to Kudelia to get her to come to Earth, then blackmailed Tekkadan into being his personal armed escort. Is he ever called out for this, or him using child soldiers to get reelected after he resigned and went into exile (following a bribery scandal according to his bio on the Japanese website)? No. We're supposed to cheer for this guy because he helps Kudelia achieve her dream.

The show is very dumb when you start putting together the implications. There's also a lot of off model animation, including cutting and pasting over assets over and over again. Battles are fueled by many highly detailed panning shots, almost everyone jobs to Barbatos, and are too few in number. This show isn't terrible like Aldnoah Zero, but to say it's one of the best Gundams is a complete lie. It's very flawed and hopefully sees improvement in it's second season.

Which they're no doubt doing considering it's lukewarm reception in Japan (ratings were really, really bad in it's second half).

 

[Sanshain]

The story of IBO is very weak. There was simply not enough content in it for a 25 episode series, so they padded it out the ass. They stretched it as far as they could go with enough repetition one could easily devise a drinking game for the series. A lot of people tell me that they're focusing on the characters and that should be appreciated, but look at how many times Kudelia goes on about being useless. How many times the show plays "my long lost brother" gig. How many scenes where Mikazuki does nothing but eat those Mars dates. This is what I mean. A third of the series could easily be cut and nothing would be lost.

And while we're on the characters, let's talk about Tekkadan. Once the series gets into space, the whole child soldier aspect gets reduced to nothing more than "these children can't read" and "they're dirty" on Kudelia's part. Beyond that, they act as normal human beings until Biscuit dies. The twist, that they are damaged emotionally, works because the show spends so goddamn long telling us they're more or less normal. Then we get Merribit crying while everyone shows a cult-like devotion to Tekkadan's future ("If I die, I'll make the cult, I mean Tekkadan stronger"). And then in the last episode they go "Oh, they can return to being normal kids."

Child soldiers do not recover like that, and it's insulting on the show's part to say they do.

But then you get into how black-and-white the show tries to paint itself. Gjallarhorn is bad, just look at what they did to the Dort workers. The colony arc actually got the show into hot water in Japan over how it glossed over the fact the workers were threatening violence (with assault rifles and tanks) if their demands weren't met. That's terrorism, and the show wanted us to emphasize with them. "Oh, they were peaceful," doesn't work when they opened fire when Gjallarhorn tried to arrest them for receiving smuggled weapons. False flag operation or not, they were not innocent.

And let's not forget how Makanai set the entire show's plot in motion because he lied to Kudelia to get her to come to Earth, then blackmailed Tekkadan into being his personal armed escort. Is he ever called out for this, or him using child soldiers to get reelected after he resigned and went into exile (following a bribery scandal according to his bio on the Japanese website)? No. We're supposed to cheer for this guy because he helps Kudelia achieve her dream.

The show is very dumb when you start putting together the implications. There's also a lot of off model animation, including cutting and pasting over assets over and over again. Battles are fueled by many highly detailed panning shots, almost everyone jobs to Barbatos, and are too few in number. This show isn't terrible like Aldnoah Zero, but to say it's one of the best Gundams is a complete lie. It's very flawed and hopefully sees improvement in it's second season.

Which they're no doubt doing considering it's lukewarm reception in Japan (ratings were really, really bad in it's second half).

Remember kids, you're always entitled to an opinion, its just that your opinion may be the wrong one.

 

[HipstrsGonnaHip]

I find it hilarious that the guy who calls SEED his favorite has the balls to go around and shit on other people's opinions and criticisms.

 

[Sanshain]

I find it hilarious that the guy who calls SEED his favorite has the balls to go around and shit on other people's opinions and criticisms.

I find it hilarious that they're such terrible criticisms. If you'd like me to write a more comprehensive rebuttal, then feel free to ask me for one.

 

[HipstrsGonnaHip]

I find it hilarious that they're such terrible criticisms. If you'd like me to write a more comprehensive rebuttal, then feel free to ask me for one.

Go for it. I'd love to hear your opinions on IBO's supurb pacing. I'm sure you enjoyed it because it was just slow enough for you to keep up. The rest of us, however, were bored.

 

[Sanshain]

Go for it. I'd love to hear your opinions on IBO's supurb pacing. I'm sure you enjoyed it because it was just slow enough for you to keep up. The rest of us, however, were bored.

Sure thing! I'm going to do what I usually do in these cases and treat each paragraph separately, with spoiler tags to ensure that those unfamiliar with the show don't have their experience ruined in advance.

Spoiler: Here we go!

The story of IBO is very weak. There was simply not enough content in it for a 25 episode series, so they padded it out the ass. They stretched it as far as they could go with enough repetition one could easily devise a drinking game for the series. A lot of people tell me that they're focusing on the characters and that should be appreciated, but look at how many times Kudelia goes on about being useless. How many times the show plays "my long lost brother" gig. How many scenes where Mikazuki does nothing but eat those Mars dates. This is what I mean. A third of the series could easily be cut and nothing would be lost.

The story is quite complex, and in my mind gets slightly less screentime than it truly deserves. As far as I'm aware, the show pulls the 'my long lost brother gig' exactly once, and it lasts for all of two episodes. It is true that these incidents are a little 'fortuitous' (meeting your long-lost brother again during a random encounter years after you last saw him? Okay, I can swallow that. Meeting your long-lost brother again during a random encounter years after you last saw him just after revealing his existence for the first time? No thank you), but these are side-stories that are used to develop the characters in question, rather than a driving force behind the main plot. The main plot itself has a simple beginning (naive ambassador travels to Earth to argue over unfair trade agreements), but it is then expertly used to explore a much more deeper story that is rich in both political intrigue and grand spectacle. A great deal of effort is taken to establish how the many different factions within the Earth Sphere are trying to manipulate this seemingly minor incident in the pursuit of larger gains, which gives a sense of impetuous to the events that play out as a consequence to all these backroom deals. Tekkadan is essentially a 'create your own villain' antagonist for the corrupt political system maintained by Gjallarhorn and the Seven Stars. All the efforts put into destroying and silencing them backfire one by one, eventually turning the hired escort to a minor dignitary from an economic and social backwater into popular heroes, while the minor dignitary herself is catapulted into prominence as a symbol of change for an entire generation of oppressed workers. There is a sense of delicious irony about the whole affair, which I especially appreciate.


As for Kudelia ‘continually complaining’ about being useless, I can’t describe this as anything other than woefully missing the point. Setting aside the fact that her complaints are confined almost exclusively to the early episodes prior to her undergoing extensive character development, it doesn’t make any sense to criticize her for something that is perfectly understandable within the context of the situation that she finds herself in. In her past life, Kudelia has been isolated as part of a rich aristocracy. Her independent initiative has been continually suppressed and confined by the strictures of her rank in society, leaving her feeling justifiably inadequate when surrounded by a group of people her own age and younger that are far more streetwise and physically capable that she is. However, what massively invalidates any negative comparisons to previous Gundam heroines is that Kudelia tries her utmost to rectify this issue. Almost as soon as she joins Tekkadan full-time, Kudelia can be seen helping out in any way she can. She doesn’t try to fling herself cluelessly into a masculine role that ends in near-tragedy (lookin’ at you here, Cagalli), but instead contributes productively according to her limited abilities. First she’s a cook, then a schoolteacher, then a nurse. You’ll never find Kudelia hiding in a cabin while everybody else is out fighting, you’ll find her where she thinks she can the best good to the largest number of people. She doesn’t scream hysterically about how everyone should just stop fighting and be nice to each-other (Hi there Marina), and every tragedy she encounters only serves to stiffen her resolve to do something about the grim situation she has found herself in. She channels Relena Peacecraft, taking all the aspects that made that character a powerful force in her own series and honing them to a razor edge. I mean fuck, in the final battle she calmly gets out of a crashed car and distracts the Gaze Ein, not even flinching when the obviously insane man is about to obliterate her with a mobile-suit sized axe. That isn’t somebody who complains about being useless all the time.

And while we're on the characters, let's talk about Tekkadan. Once the series gets into space, the whole child soldier aspect gets reduced to nothing more than "these children can't read" and "they're dirty" on Kudelia's part. Beyond that, they act as normal human beings until Biscuit dies. The twist, that they are damaged emotionally, works because the show spends so goddamn long telling us they're more or less normal. Then we get Merribit crying while everyone shows a cult-like devotion to Tekkadan's future ("If I die, I'll make the cult, I mean Tekkadan stronger"). And then in the last episode they go "Oh, they can return to being normal kids."

I thought the juxtaposition between how easily these children seem to cope with their situation and the moments that paint them as the truly damaged human beings that they really are underneath was the whole point. The fact that they can laugh, play and have fun despite their circumstances is what makes them likable, but it also serves to highlight the tragedy of their existence. When push comes to shove, these children are soldiers; they’ve been taught to kill without remorse and have assimilated this as a basic fact of life. The illusion of normality is there to challenge the viewer and create an intentional dissonance, something that seems to have flown over the heads of many people.

Child soldiers do not recover like that, and it's insulting on the show's part to say they do.

They don’t recover. As I’ve said above, they have the illusion of recovery, which the show then uses to demonstrate just how bad their condition truly is.

But then you get into how black-and-white the show tries to paint itself. Gjallarhorn is bad, just look at what they did to the Dort workers. The colony arc actually got the show into hot water in Japan over how it glossed over the fact the workers were threatening violence (with assault rifles and tanks) if their demands weren't met. That's terrorism, and the show wanted us to emphasize with them. "Oh, they were peaceful," doesn't work when they opened fire when Gjallarhorn tried to arrest them for receiving smuggled weapons. False flag operation or not, they were not innocent.

Of course they weren’t innocent, and the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that. This is called ‘subtext’, and it’s a pretty blatant subtext at that. When Orga realises what they’ve been transporting to the colony all along, you can tell from the expression on his face that he’s utterly shocked. The show treats viewers as intelligent enough to understand the potential political and physical consequences of the actions these workers are undertaking without them needing somebody to actually announce ‘by the way, what we’re doing is technically terrorism and totally not okay.’ I know the idea that a Gundam show could engage in ambiguous grey and grey morality play is completely incomprehensible to some people (mostly those that unironically like Zeta), but come on. In addition, I genuinely can’t understand why anybody would think that the show ‘glosses over’ the fact that the workers were threatening violence. These are the same people that respond to Gjallarhorn’s tactics by engaging in a massive terrorist campaign of bombings, hijackings and outright conventional warfare with mobile suits after their armed protest march is gunned down. The Dort colony was a powder keg, and we’re shown in person how crazy the worker’s union actually is to try what they do. The only way this could be more self-evident is if somebody remarked something along the lines of ‘these people are all going to die’ as soon as they opened those weapon crates.

And let's not forget how Makanai set the entire show's plot in motion because he lied to Kudelia to get her to come to Earth, then blackmailed Tekkadan into being his personal armed escort. Is he ever called out for this, or him using child soldiers to get reelected after he resigned and went into exile (following a bribery scandal according to his bio on the Japanese website)? No. We're supposed to cheer for this guy because he helps Kudelia achieve her dream.

Why are we ‘supposed’ to cheer for him? You keep referring to how we as the audience are ‘supposed’ to be doing this and ‘supposed’ to be thinking that. Why? What is your logic here? Did your viewing of the show include a free propagandist subtitle track that flashes up glowing red ‘THIS PERSON IS THE HERO’ or ‘THIS PERSON IS A BAD, NAUGHTY MAN’ signs at the appropriate moments you seem to point to in your arguments? Acting as though the creators are standing behind you whispering exactly what your opinions ought to be into your ear as you watch is nothing less than strawmanship. Either way, this is another point that I honestly can’t even begin to understand. Makanai is obviously a corrupt, scheming and evil person who the heroes manage to manipulate to their own ends out of necessity. Absolutely nothing in the show that I watched painted him as the kind of person we ought to be rooting for.

The show is very dumb when you start putting together the implications. There's also a lot of off model animation, including cutting and pasting over assets over and over again. Battles are fueled by many highly detailed panning shots, almost everyone jobs to Barbatos, and are too few in number. This show isn't terrible like Aldnoah Zero, but to say it's one of the best Gundams is a complete lie. It's very flawed and hopefully sees improvement in it's second season.

How exactly is ‘Battles are fueled by many highly detailed panning shots’ a criticism? Also, I’d like to see some evidence of this off-model animation, as I’ve never seen any of it. It sounds more like you’re critiquing Gundam SEED Destiny than anything else. Remember the last time we had a Gundam show that had a massive amount of combat happening almost all the time? We called that the Cosmic Era timeline, which remains infamous for the huge amount of stock footage it contained. I’d much rather have superb combat occasionally than boring combat near-constantly.

Which they're no doubt doing considering it's lukewarm reception in Japan (ratings were really, really bad in it's second half).

The only Japanese-based criticisms I can easily find on this show are as follows:

However, the series has received some harsh criticism from the Japanese Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization, regarding the harsh themes and depictions of child soldiers in the anime. They also stated that "several nonresistant prisoners and enemy soldiers are gunned down by the young male protagonist. If you look at the title, one would immediately think of this as a children's show and that many children would be watching.", referring to one scene in Episode 3, and that "If you want to broadcast such material, please provide some sort of age limit for viewers."

Source.

Otherwise, IBO has received near-universal acclaim. It has an average score of 8/10 on most of the websites I've visited, and 4.5/5 on several others. To say this is an objectively bad show borders on critical research failure.

I could probably go on for another 4,000 words or so, honestly. But this is a thread, not a blog, so I'll leave it here.

 

[HipstrsGonnaHip]

As far as I'm aware, the show pulls the 'my long lost brother gig' exactly once

I stopped reading here. They did it twice, once with the Human Debris guy and once with Biscuit. No wonder you find this show so complex. You're too slow to follow along even the most basic of plots. I'm going to stop here, because I don't enjoy belittling retards as much as I used to.

 

[Sanshain]

I stopped reading here. They did it twice, once with the Human Debris guy and once with Biscuit. No wonder you find this show so complex. You're too slow to follow along even the most basic of plots. I'm going to stop here, because I don't enjoy belittling retards as much as I used to.

Pffffft.

 

[Vitriol]

Are you two really arguing about children's cartoons? c'mon lads this is ridiculous. Just ignore each other.

 

[XYZpdq]

That's a lot of things that aren't robots fighting.

 

[Golly]

Now that IBO season 1's over, what did everyone think of it?

I watched IBO as an outsider to the Gundam franchise. I'd only ever seen Unicorn before, and I vastly prefer IBO. I'll freely admit I'm not the intended audience for Gundam- I care more about drama than cool giant robots and fight scenes (...shots fired?). IBO had characters that seemed to actually have motivations and care about things. The characters in Unicorn just felt very wooden to me. I remember thinking the only character in Unicorn worth caring about was Zinnernan because while Banana and Audrey II were just blankly philosophizing about the way the world should be, he actually cared about people. Likewise, Mikazuki and Kudelia were actually connected to their surroundings. Mikazuki, as the main character pilot, is supposed be an autistic sociopath, but despite being more disassociated, even he came out as more human than Banana to me. The only place I felt the series suffered was the designated masked villain. I couldn't really figure out his motivation and that was because it was (I assume) rooted in Gundam politics, which I find to be kind of dry. Again, Gundam outsider. Overall though, I thought it was a pretty enjoyable series and I'm looking forward to the next season.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

Now that IBO season 1's over, what did everyone think of it?

It was meh. The series itself (as of now, seeing as a second season's in production) feels rushed and under developed. @Kamen Rider Black RX more or less summed up why I didn't like the series plot-wise, though I can't say I agree with him entirely on the animation- A fair amount of the mecha fights were actually well-animated (even if they resorted to stills half the time), though the character animation was often suspect, even during said fights.

My main issue with the series is how there were several episodes (near the beginning) that documented the cast going back to Earth, with little to no mecha fights. Which felt unlike Gundam- a series with at least one battle per episode each season. Even if it's only a few seconds long. And that drug the pacing down a fair bit.

 

[Hodor]

I need to catch up on IBO, but I dig what I've seen. It's nothing fantastic character-wise and the pacing is kinda shit, but I'm a sucker for the Mobile Suit designs and character designs, plus the soundtrack is pretty sweet and the overall aesthetic is neat. It really reminds me more of an oddball series from the 80s or 90s that got a cult following than Gundam.

 

[Bonesnap]

So apparently they're doing a full tv series retread of Unicorn. I stopped watching the OVA around episode 5 as I grew to hate Banagher, Full Frontal and Mineva, all the hand-wringing and deus ex newtype that started to overwhelm the good parts of the series. I suppose I'll give it a try if it means more sweet grunt action. I stopped keeping up with Gundam during G Reco and they seem to have spat out tons of new content in the meantime with IBO, Thunderbolt and Origins.

Speaking of G Reco, what happened with that series? There was a lot of hype around Tomino's return to Gundam and it seems like there was just a lot of wasted potential. Were there problems behind the scenes? Tomino has essentially apologized for how that show went, which seems uncharacteristic of him.

It's always a little bit disappointing when artists dislike or reject their most popular creations, like the way Thom Yorke hates "Creep", and I've always had that impression from Tomino. Does anyone know more about this? He seemed so derisive of Gundam for so long, and when he finally came back to it he made a series rife with the same issues as non-Tomino Gundam. Will he ever do another series? Will we ever see another Gundam series on the level of Zeta or Turn A?