#Gundam ZZ still trying to remove my will to live

[multitrackdrifting]

G-Witch EP 15 Thoughts & Review

warning: spoilers for UC timeline as part of my speculation about the end game of the story

Really good no-nonsense episode of G-Witch, naturally some people on socmed were like "idc abt this go back to characters I like", but the literal setting of this story wants you to be cognizant of the fact that it doesn't matter if you like one of the characters, their parents are usually tied up in corruption and sewing the seeds of discord across space.

The time for slice of life is over, the facade of chasing the title of "holder" is over, these are largely a distraction from the real suffering created by the status quo in this universe.

If the narrative beats are too bleak for you idk how to tell you that you're watching a franchise that stands on a legacy of writing about warfare and while the characters are important, the "what" of the world is absolutely essential to those characters - it is not about living a fulfilling school life and never was going to be that. It's more than likely they gave the audience doses of fulfilment specifically to take it away. I criticised how this early setting of the show was likely a facade and now that it is continually shown to be the case people are getting annoyed that G-Witch looks more like every other gundam despite knowing that things have fundamentally changed between seasons. Gundam writing no matter how bad does not dangle the illusion of peace for a super long time, so just let it go and enjoy what the series is as opposed to what you want it to be.

Guel Jeturk is, naturally, walking the path of the GOAT. He's trying to figure out who he is, and he is traumatized from killing his own father. For now, he wants to connect with what his father stood for, but naturally, that may mean reckoning with his corruption and role in the injustice created in the world. This is not new, so don't get too annoyed that he is doing that.

Seeing more death at the hands of spacians has probably coloured in the abstract world of Earthian suffering that Miorine doesn't even understand to the same level. His allegiance going forward is questionable, but I do not doubt we will see him creating instability in the power structure going forward - and don't worry - even if he "dies", he still can come back.

Factions are not hardline restrictions in Gundam, even Shaddiq could become a temporary ally despite everything he has done - McGillis certainly hopped around factions a lot in IBO. Even Char was technically the "good guy" after 79 for a while, but it's not to say that any one side of the conflict is correct, just that the injustices committed during warfare are intrinsic to it.

In Zeta Gundam we're seeing a side of char that has all the qualities of a protagonist, and it's part of his evolution of self - the comparison of Prospera to Char is funny because Char has such a specific evolution that every subsequent "char clone" holds his aesthetics but not his character arc. But the idea of a char clone is that they disrupt the world in a way meaningful to its context so she is one, I'm just saying that Char is poorly understood mostly because people haven't seen UC (and ZZ is impossible to watch on streaming through legal platforms for one reason or another).

Char is working through his ideals and sense of self in a way, going from "icognito fella bent on revenge on the Zabis" to "I'm not sure if I want to take the mantle up" and then of course, we reach end-game Char who wishes to remove Earth from the equation. If the object of desire & conflict is gone, surely this will fix things.

It's a lot more nuanced and comlpicated than that for sure, but Prospera will undergo a few changes, and I believe wholeheartedly there will be faction shifts, and her plan won't just sit in the abstract for a super long period of time.

The Earth-Space conflict in G-Witch is interesting because the Earth Federation is just cartoonishly oppressive in UC, but nothing about Earth is framed that way. It seems that Earth has some kind of puppet government, the benerit group has literal riot mechs made by the Jeturks stopping social instability on there & it honestly seems pretty clear that (for now) the Spacians are resented because Earth is like a colony in UC.

From this episode, it seems that Earth has a lot of pseudo-conflicts [war partioning] to keep them busy and unstable, unable to unite and rebel against the spacians and then there is the Spacians who are so brain dead that they're busy fighting for the title of holder and playing hte zero sum game inside Asticassia because their parents are more obsessed with climbing the ladder than engaging in unregulated profiteering and warfare.

Delling Rembran's big goal in my eyes is not absolute power, but the belief that a big enough deterrent and system of control can end suffering itself and Quiet Zero is that key. As a person who has walked the battlefield and seen the curse of gundams take his close friends and comrades, there needs to be a world without it.

Starting as an ideal, QZ is just an abstract ambition - but having seen UC Gundam my firm belief is that Quiet Zero converts people into Data. The rhetoric used to explain it to Mio in this episode entrenches that belief, "the restoration of human nature", "there was always some new enemy or rebellion".

Aerial itself is a different story, I think it's pretty obvious that Aerial at high permet scores is interacting with "permet" and "augmentations", this is akin to the NewType Destroyer in the Unicorn Gundam. That it can overwhelm and kill people is not that surprising since the Unicorn has way more overpowered abilities (e.g. Time Travel, Time Control, Control Funnels and much more).

Aerial at the moment seems to operate under the principle that none of the G-Witch Timeline (Ad Stella) doesn't have Electromagnetic shielding like other series.

Aerial has a stun wave, and the prev. episode showed how Sophie's death was accelerated by Aerial interacting with "the curse". The appearance that people take on with Permet scores is akin to a circuit, so I think this is all building up to some kind of technology based survival with Quiet Zero - if you have played a certain deep ocean game the concept might not be that foreign to you.

I'm thinking that right now the endgame is that QZ is some kind of device that envelops the entire universe in a data storm and uploads them to some kind of "ark".

The reason the "AI world" theory is so strong for me is that this current series has largely been about transcending the curse of gundams - what if that means binding oneself to a Gundam. Ericht is gone, that much is clear - but in the future, it seems that other people will also be gundams. It's not a new idea to the franchise either.

The reason it's about transcending the curse is because of the virtue held by Gundams and their ability to "enable living in space", and this begs the question, what is Aerial's role in this?

Aerial technology: Bind mankind to machines and transcend physical limits.

Quiet Zero Technology: Either a giant stun wave that completely disables GUND-ARM tech, or converting mankind itself into Data, the ability to live properly in space is probably difficult to achieve because of acts of terror & conflict - the only path forward is to leave behind ones physical body to become one with space.

If nothing else, it seems that physical bodies being left behind is going to be a recurring solution regardless of whether Aerial or QZ is the solution.

In UC Char says that people's souls are held down by gravity, but the hostile nature of space in Ad Stella suggests that we don't need to overcome the curse of space, but the curse of our bodies. That's how I interpret it anyway.

[sarkos]

HAMAN & GLEMY: JUST WHO ARE THEY?! We have covered the final episode at a glance, but many things are still shrouded in mystery… Many of you must have thought the same. Yes, for example, “Mineva (in ZZ) was just an ordinary girl,” her saying “I will not become like my sister,” and the “bloodline” mentioned by Glemy that meant Glemy and Ple are related? All of these mysteries were not made clear in the main story of ZZG, it seems. According to Director Tomino’s “Tomino Memo,” all of these settings had already been fleshed out. It is unclear why it was not depicted in the main story, but let us unravel the mystery once and for all. First of all, Haman’s identity. She is the younger sister of Zena (Mineva’s mother and) the wife of Dozle, the 3rd son of the Zabi family, and was Dozle’s lover. After losing Dozle to her sister, Haman swore to take revenge on the Zabi family. She became the guardian of Mineva only to use the restoration of the Zabi family as a cover to advance her own agenda. On the other hand, Glemy actually has no father or mother. He is a clone created from the sperm left behind by Gihren Zabi, the dictator, in the same way as Ple and Ple Two. This is why Glemy clung on to their blood relations and was convinced that he could mentally control Ple Two. Now, about Mineva. In the final episode, she confessed that she is only a body double. It appears that the real Mineva was taken away by Char during the time in between Z and ZZ. Is he also trying to revive the Zabi Family…? Now, we have an even deeper mystery on our hands.

GUNDAM-CLUB ’87-2 | Zeonic|Scanlations

Dear Tomino Memo,

God willing, this is the the stupidest thing I’ve read today, and hopefully the last time I read the words “Gihren Zabi“ and “sperm“ in the same sentence