#mariemaia

[the-ephemeral-bhg]

[astragifs]

[kasperl-ruprecht]

[cynfinnegan]

This is just damn cool.

I wanted to ask the artist if I could post this on my GW blog, but they turned off the comments. :(

[incorrectgundamwingquotes]

Wufei, to Mariemaia: When you turn 21, people are going to tell you to buy alcohol or drugs because you can.

Wufei: But no. You know what else is legal at 21? Blades. Get yourself a sword. A big knife is also okay.

[destroyscythe-heck]

Perfect!

No notes!

Correct!

[gundamzine]

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[tinyozlion]

I kiss this commentary a thousand times, i put it in my mouth, i carry it around gently like a baby bird, i am placing it in the pile of treasures

“Honor, Justice, Strength, Integrity” - Why Wufei’s 'Honor' is Different

Here’s an analogy: 

Someone stands up proudly in the debate club. They say “Today I’m going to be arguing strenuously for a topic I know almost nothing about and can barely articulate my stance on, but I’m going to opine about it at length and with great authority.”  

And you’re like: …Why?

Do you enjoy being humiliated? Do you like losing? Is this something you do often?

Why? Why stand up at all when you have absolutely no chance of making your point?

This is how Wufei feels about fighting. Wufei, after all, IS a debate kid. 

People who have no way of defending their argument should stay seated. They shouldn’t be here in the first place. If you’re too weak to win, you’re only a detriment to your own cause; when you’re weak, you make your cause look weak, when you lose, your cause loses.

So sit down. You’re in the way. You’re embarrassing yourself.

--If most of us look in our hearts and think of something that we would, honestly, truly, stand up and throw a punch / take a punch for, our ability to WIN the fight isn’t necessarily part of our criteria for doing it. If you gotta punch a bully, you gotta punch a bully. We view that as having integrity. 

Wufei would not agree– if you punch the bully and the bully wipes the floor with you, does it mean anything to anyone but you? And does your feeling of validation make it worthwhile to participate in a conflict that hands your enemy an easy victory? The bully is still Evil, he wouldn’t say otherwise. But you didn’t change that by getting your ass kicked;  the bully lives to bully another day. 

Why throw your life away for something you can't change? If the only thing you can do for you cause is die for it, then you need to get your priorities in order-- you should get better at fighting so you can WIN for what you believe in, or get out of the way of those who can, so you don't become a liability.

If a cause is worth fighting for, then as its champion you'd better commit to being strong enough not only to achieve victory, but to defend and enforce it– or don't you believe in your stance firmly enough to follow it through? If you can't bring yourself to implement it without hesitation, then your cause is not a worthy one. If you don't fully believe in the cause you're fighting for, then indecision will make you weak, and you will fail.

And it will be right that you fail. Because fighting without a unity of both commitment and moral authority is how you lose your way. It’s how unnecessary conflict and Evil are born: from the disorder left in the wake of those who fight without understanding of what they're trying to achieve or lack the resolve to implement it without compromise. To him, that internal unity of purpose is the measure of integrity. Never go to war without it.

“Honor” for Wufei is different from the “aretḗ” of Zechs and Treize. For Wufei, honor is a score you’re keeping with yourself and your family and your clan and your ancestors and your dead wife who’s spirit you idolize. It’s not glory, it’s not chivalry– honor is your reputation. It’s a designation of value assigned by your community; it keeps you accountable to them. If you are humiliated in battle, it disgraces you AND your community, and it is therefore their right to ostracize you. Honor is something you can lose-- not just by failing to meet your personal standards, but by by failure in general.

A circumstantial loss is one you can strengthen yourself against and bounce back from-- but a true defeat, one that ends with you knowing you've been bested by a far superior opponent? That is a failure. A deep and bruising mark of dishonor that makes you unfit to wield a weapon.

There’s an interesting, if perhaps cynical, description of “honor culture” that identifies it as a response to living in impoverished, tenuous, often remote conditions where there is minimal or no law enforcement. Your mileage may vary on that assessment, but one thing’s for sure, Wufei’s colony, the A0206 colony of the L5 cluster, fits all of those criteria. 

The Long clan’s reputation for great strength led them to be exiled by an insecure government to a decrepit, 200 year old relic of a colony teetering on the brink of extinction at the very edge of civilization. They have no money and few resources, their population is dwindling, the life support systems grow more tenuous by the year. The Alliance / OZ think of the people still living in L5 as vermin skittering around space trash. The Barton Foundation’s original plan for Operation Meteor designated A0206 as the colony destined for earth drop.  Both Earth and Space seem in agreement that his home is scrap metal waiting to be disposed of. The only resources of value Wufei's clan have are the few young people like him who are capable of fighting, and their honor as a people. (…And one Gundam with no ammunition.)

The Long Clan is depicted as being very strict, proud, and extremely conservative. They adhere to a Confucian tradition that values obedience to social hierarchies, and the acceptance of one’s social role within that hierarchy. It is understood that those with superior standing should maintain virtuous and moral conduct, and that those who are subordinate should obey them as long as this remains true. Civil order and peace is the expected result of maintaining this propriety. It is also expected that people strive for perfection and harmony in every aspect of life, with the understanding that perfection is a state that can be achieved. It’s very likely that the strict adherence to these very traditional precepts is what helps A0206’s small, endangered population maintain cohesion in the face of constant peril, and it would explain why these traditions have close to a religious significance for those living there, including Wufei. 

The hierarchies of this system are fundamentally patriarchal. Meilan is considered the “strongest in her clan”, but this seems to be something of a ceremonial designation, as she is repeatedly told not to fight in real battles on account of being a woman. In fact, it she seems to be the only woman with a visible presence in the colony. It’s possible that women are a rarity in the declining state of A0206, thus giving her increased value and status and making the rest of the clan overprotective of her-- but whatever the case, she must take on the spiritual mantle of Nataku to transcend her status as a woman and fight.

This is partly why Meilan finds Wufei so deeply infuriating when they first meet: she and Wufei are the strongest and perhaps ONLY members of their generation who are able to fight, and he (the one allowed and expected to fight by virtue of being male) refused to do so. Wufei did not see the point in fighting for a subjective concept– “Justice” lacks an absolute, universal definition, and therefore could not be defended.

--Like I said before: debate kid. 

Besides being an infuriating nerd, Wufei risks his whole clan’s reputation by refusing to commit to the fight against the Evil. (…Also, they were about to be exterminated by the Alliance, so choosing to let everyone die rather than be rhetorically incorrect was a bit of a dick move– as his mentor Doctor O astutely observed). When Meilan shames him, it is specifically for being a failure as her husband, as well as for shirking his duties as the most capable member of the Long clan. For both of them, propriety is of key importance.

But unlike Wufei, Meilan has no trouble reconciling her conviction to fight with her sense of justice. To her, it’s obvious that the universality of justice is infinitely less important than making one’s own idea of justice a reality. 

She isn’t having any of that what-about-ism bullshit– she is unhesitatingly ready to fight for what she understands to be true: that those who kill indiscriminately and oppress others for gain are Evil, and must be stopped so they cannot continue to do harm. And she fights also because… that is their way. The last and most enduring thing her people have is their identity, as ones who fight to uphold justice.

Ultimately, Meilan is killed while protecting the colony and Wufei. She is strong enough to win, but not strong enough to survive the victory. Their colony, their clan, and one the last few beautiful things they have managed to cultivate in spite of dereliction– their field of flowers, are safe for another day. If she hadn’t leapt to their defense first, Wufei would not have followed in the Gundam, and the population of the colony would likely have been killed en-masse by the Alliance, or decimated by OZ. She was directly responsible for their survival. Evil did not win, and yet, she died. She was strong, and yet she died. She was weak, and yet she was Justice embodied.  Such a contradiction meant the universe had gone insane. It lost its way, it stood in need of correction.

Wufei does not handle contradictions well. His ideology consists of absolutes and has no room for failure or extenuation. When the weak fight, they die, or they get in the way, so they shouldn’t fight. But Meilan– Nataku, was strong, and so, her spirit must live on in the Gundam, undying. It is her strength, her justice, which carries HIM to victory by lending him the strength of the mobile suit she died protecting. He must believe this, not only to honor her memory, but to preserve the structure of his ideology. 

When he encounters women in combat who remind him of her, he reacts with outbursts of sublimated anger and grief that is redirected into misogynistic vitriol. Women who fight will die, don’t they understand? They continue to pick up arms and fight anyway, even when they’re weak, even when they cannot possibly win. They’ll foolishly rush ahead because they believe in what they fight for, and it will kill them. But he will not be the reason for it. He will make them understand that they are weak, so they will stop fighting.

--But they don’t. And he has no idea how to deal with it. Just as he has no idea how to deal with his own defeat, until once again, a woman finds it worthwhile to help him regain his conviction and sense of justice, by demonstrating her own. 

He is a trad-i-tional boy, living in a trad-i-tional world.  

<-Back! —————————- Onward!->

[ikuzeminna]

Gundam Seed Freedom was… something

I'm not exactly a Seed fan. Yes, I own the gunpla, yes, Cagalli, Athrun and Badgiruel are my favorite characters, yes, I enjoy the series up until Kira gets the Freedom, but I will still mock it mercilessly, groan at every lack of bra or brain cell and by heavens, I want to smash every single one of Lacus' Haros to pieces.

And I only watched Destiny once because I couldn't stomach Cagalli's character assassination a second time. Or Gladys', literally, in the very last second. Like, ma'am, you have a kid. What are you doing dying on an exploding asteroid? :/

So you can imagine I wasn't exactly refreshing Gogoanime every two seconds to see if the movie had dropped. Eventually, it did and I got around to watching it, and although I had already spoiled myself with plot summaries and recorded scenes, this movie somehow managed to miss even my wacky expectations. I was promised wtf scenes, and I got them, but at x1.2 speed which just left me confused and checking my speed settings all the time.

So, let's get into this, with spoilers and all.

Though honestly, what's there to spoil? It's just the last episodes of Destiny all over again, which itself was recycling Seed's finale. If you have seen Destiny, imagine reading a retelling of its finale on Wattpad with a five-year-old and a fourteen-year-old collaborating. The five-year-old handled the plot while the fourteen-year-old handled the romances. That's Seed Freedom in a nutshell.

To be a little more specific, the plot is basically a new bunch of bad guys, Accords, who are super Coordinators able to read and manipulate minds, wanting to implement the Destiny Plan because... reasons. They were all grown by Walmart Mariemaia who Benjamin Button'd herself because... Tuesday. And she's the queen of a kingdom now, somehow, which has the brilliant name of "Foundation."

"Kingdom of Foundation." Why don't you have it run by Prime Minister CEO while you're at it? Seriously, this physically hurts if you speak English. -_-

Anyway, the Earth Alliance and ZAFT are still trying to kill each other because it's Seed and while people can genetically manipulate their offspring to be superior and even reverse age now, they still haven't figured out how to grow brains yet, which is why Cagalli launched Seed's version of the Preventers, called Compass, which is basically Kira beam spamming everyone into submission like he always does because it's forbidden by law to put the words "Seed" and "originality" in the same sentence. The Accords use the conflict to make it seem as though the Earth Alliance blew up their Kingdom of Stupid Name via nuke so that they can then retaliate with Requiem because, again, originality is not allowed in this movie. Oh, and the Accords are also racist, because duh, everyone is.

Does this all serve a grander scheme? Why, of course! Do you think it's so that they can stage a successful coup on the PLANTs to gain more allies?

Actually no, that just happens to coincide.

The far grander scheme is to pinch Kira's girlfriend!! -_- I kid you not, as soon as they fire those nukes on themselves, they pull a Lady Une and make a dramatic escape with Lacus straight to space within 5 minutes tops, just so that Orphee, the leader of the Affronts To My Intelligence and a visual cross between Athrun and Cagalli, can repeatedly get rejected by Lacus since Baby Queen Abysmal Eye Shadow hardcoded being horny for Lacus into his DNA, but her love for Kira overrides her own genetic coding finding Orphee attractive (since Lacus was apparently also created by Queen Baklava For Brains while her mom wasn't looking?), so Orphee just ends up growing Shinji levels of sexually frustrated with Lacus, which, given how Lacus' (and every female's, honestly) lip fillers make her look like a blowup doll in various scenes, especially when she forms an "oh" with her mouth, I can almost understand why hearing her say no is unexpected. Too crass? That's what you get for making me watch a zoom-in on Lacus' giant butt in a cat suit in the finale.

It doesn't culminate in him choking her out, but Orphee does try to force himself on her and the fact that Lacus doesn't knee him in the balls right then and there makes the whole scene pointless. It's very reminiscent of a fourteen-year-old fanfic writer thinking a woman talking her almost-rapist out of his action is the height of female empowerment. It's not. And this wasn't written by a fourteen-year-old. Fukuda says there were over a hundred drafts for this movie. And they settled for this? Lacus should have used that unearned Seed mode and gone Corin on Orphee's nuts.

(Go watch Turn A if you have no idea what I'm talking about. It's Seed but better. Which is an embarrassment, since Seed came out right after it.)

At this point it's pretty clear that our fourteen-year-old has infiltrated the plot with her romances, because we can't have a mere final battle with giant robots and pink explosions, it has to mean something!

And in this case, that meaning is a battle for Lacus' love!

Same, Cagalli. -_-

So it's time now to look at the romance side of this movie, just so that you can understand why my brain started dripping out of my nose by the 1 hour mark already.

Every single character arc in this movie is relationship drama. Every. Single. One. From Kira to Lacus to Orphee to Ingrid to Agnes to even Luna and Shinn. If characters interact, it's always in the context of the same freaking love triangle. No variation.

So let's go through the list. First, we have Orphee, who we've established wants to get into Lacus' pants. Ingrid, the blue-haired Accord chick, is saddened by this because she wants him to get into hers instead, which, given how this Village Of The Darned refer to Mini Me as their mother, is... Freudian to say the least. Baklava For Brains either didn't code her right or is a sadist, I guess. Next, we have Kira, who is in Lacus' pants, but thinks Lacus prefers Orphee and starts whining about it because the movie can't make up its mind on how it wants to portray their relationship. It's clearly established that them living together alone and acting like husband and wife is anything but platonic, but when Lacus and Orphee have their shoujo sparkle moments of intense, sexual attraction, Kira acts as though he isn't her boyfriend, when it's abundantly clear that he's seen her naked on the daily for the past year or so. The movie adds the new character, Agnes, to the mix here, who looks like a pink Misa Misa (alas, without the hidden intellect) and has the hots for her commander, Kira, taking every opportunity to hit on him, even going so far as to try to plant one on him while Lacus is "hiding" around the corner.

....She's not even trying.

And you know, you just know a fourteen-year-old wrote this because we hear nothing of the 152 regulations that hitting on your superior officer go against, never mind any consequences, because... brilliant writing. That they dare to give Agnes Flay's voice is such an insult to me, considering how her writing was freaking Mark Twain level compared to this Post-It note version we're getting here.

Kira ultimately rejects her and Agnes, who previously mocked Luna for settling for whatever came along (which had me laughing real loud because where is the lie?), falls into Walmart Yzak's arms a mere two seconds later because he told her she's pretty and proceeds to spend the rest of the movie as a bad guy because that's what happens to a woman scorned: both self-esteem and the IQ start hitting the negatives.

There are also Murrue and Mwu, and while they don't have drama, they are pretty much reduced to their relationship to each other. You think you were gonna get any personality out of the veteran captain of the Archangel? Pfff, not with Becky writing. Have Murrue jumping, straddling and kissing Mwu on the bridge in front of everyone instead.

The only girls who aren't strangled by a relationship are Meyrin, who barely says three lines but gets to be a pilot now for some reason, Cagalli, who is, weirdly, the best character in the movie, and Ehehe. (You will know exactly who I mean once you watch it.)

Out of those three, Cagalli is the only one actually in a relationship and, lo and behold, her and Athrun are unexpectedly handled well! They even use that they are dating in their fight against Walmart Yzak, which leads to that famous lewd Cagalli fantasy of Athrun's. Cagalli even gets to react to that! (She's not pleased. lol)

The funniest part is that we didn't even know Walmart Yzak is allergic to girl cooties, what with hitting on Agnes previously, so this was Athrun full-on trolling him with Seed's version of the Sexy Jutsu. Look at Athrun having a sense of humor. Look at Cagalli consistently making every scene she is in better. :)

I'm honestly surprised that the best characters in this movie end up being Athrun and Cagalli, with the former being the most badass and the latter the most relatable and best-written, complete with personality and crowning moments of awesome, given how they had been handled in Destiny.

Took them 20 years, but they finally made up for it. Now, if only the rest didn't suck so bad. :/

Because the rest is pretty much Kira and Lacus angsting over not deserving each other for almost two hours because they apparently never sat down and talked about their feelings and relationship, so the merest hint of rejection or competition sends them spiraling into a depression that becomes a galactic conflict for reasons beyond intelligence. Like, picture Shinji and Asuka in a stable relationship act like Shinji and Asuka in Eva, without any depth and in dumb. That's the level of Huh???? the relationship was written with. It makes no sense at all.

Why are you two so insecure? Why is all it takes one comment from random people to make you question your year-long relationship??

Agnes, Ingrid and Orphee are there to provide an external source of conflict because the relationship itself is full of gaping holes so we can't focus on that, and because Becky is fourteen, the best she can manage is contrasting Kira's and Lacus' lip service pure love with evil horniness. Even though it's heavily implied that they've boinked, too.

Okay, I'm being mean to my fictional Becky here. I have actually seen digital manhwa that have this exact same love story, so it's not like you can't write them as an adult and make money with them. I just had irrational expectations, I guess, after Flay hopped over that low bar.

The cherry on top of this sad puddle of melted brain matter is Fukuda saying in an interview that he viewed Kira as having an obsession with Lacus in Destiny, so this was his attempt to fix that. Sir? You catapulted their relationship right past toxic and straight to the acid pit from MK II, Erich Fromm quote or not. Lacus blathering about needing someone because you love them (mature love) rather than loving someone because you need them (immature love) is nothing but lip service in this fetishistic nightmare Lacan would balk at.

I had to sit through two hours of "Gundam Seed - Get All These Drama Queens Freaking Therapy, But Not For War Trauma, But For Their Psychotic Relationship And Self-Esteem Issues."

Because not being in a relationship with the person you want in this movie results in emo exits to the left (seriously, count them), incessant temper tantrums and desperate clutching from heartbreak. We also get to wade through Kira's emo episode as the movie's emotional turning point, whining that Lacus doesn't love him because he can't make her happy and that he's good for nothing, which Athrun thankfully beats out of him quickly in good ol' Beavis and Butt-Head fashion, lest they have to go through Kira's character development in Seed again, too. And no, Kira still hasn't learned how to throw a punch properly. Athrun destroys him.

I read in a lot of reviews that people cheered at this scene, but I had to check my speed settings because the movements were all so fast. The pacing is really abysmal in this movie and I don't mean in a plot kind of way, but in a "my cat hits my keyboard and keeps fast-forwarding scenes until I stop it" kind of way. There are so many scenes that feel like I've accidentally hit increase speed, especially in fight scenes, and I'm utterly confused because letting a scene breathe was never an issue in Seed. We all remember Kira bawling his eyes out every five minutes and either muting the audio or dying from laughter because the VA just sounded severely constipated. Here we get sequences like Kira's Freedom getting destroyed, Shinn's Justice getting wrecked, a nuke going off, the Archangel being blown to pieces, and if any of it was supposed to make me emotional then it utterly failed because not even the characters react to these events with how fast we have to get to the next scene. Never mind people practically teleporting from one location to another, except for Kira who takes longer than Goku to get somewhere.

Seed Freedom is a very weird mix of dragging and speed-running and I don't get why. You had 20 years, man. In fact, even the movie knows it's paced awfully, which is why it keeps giving you the location every time, to increasingly ridiculous degrees.

Anyway, back to the plot and romance. So, Athrun snaps Kira out of his funk with a good walloping. What's next? The rescue mission, of course, which is supposed to be the scene that fixes Kira's and Lacus' relationship by proclamation of their true love for each other! Yay, emotional payoff for this relationship I was totally invested in and not groaning through.

Well, truth be told, I can't stand kumbaya Kira and Lacus in Destiny, so this movie not making me want to scream at my screen whenever I saw them is a feat. Too bad Becky heard me, because she presents us with the following, which somehow manages to be the most mind-bendingly dumb exchange in the entire movie, which honestly requires a superpower at this point to pull off.

Kira, if she slits Lacus' throat, her vocal chords are gonna be the least of your worries. Why is the only one with a functioning brain in there Kisaka? Who, by the way, owns super Coordinator mind reader like it's nothing, despite being a Natural, because ovaries.

Just, ugh.

So after Kira and Lacus get to tell each other "I love you!" with dramatic catches thrown in despite no need for them, making things just awkward, we rush off to the final battle and it's like Fukuda took 5 episodes that were supposed to be the finale and condensed them into three, while cutting half the transitions. There's colorful pew pew, Shinn hilariously weaponizing his stupidity, things exploding, people dying, Yzak and Dearka pushing new gunpla sales, Mwu outright breaking the last remnants of my brain, Lunamaria and Agnes having a girl fight, Murrue ramming a space ship into another one because screw logic, and finally, rolled into this erratic nonsense burrito is Kira defeating Orphee with the power of Lacus' love and her being able to use the Force now, while Horny For Pink is still screaming about wanting to get into her pants and Ingrid still wants him to get into hers instead.

Thankfully, they both die and rid me of their presence.

The saving grace really are Athrun and Cagalli, who rely on actual skill and brains in their fight, and thus end up the best part of the movie by a landslide.

...And then there's Mwu tanking a Requiem shot to the face without issue and deflecting its beam with its puny shield to destroy various targets and Requiem itself because dinosaurs.

Dang it, D.J., stop writing the script for the movie and go back to your noodle pictures. I have a hard enough time reining Becky in as it is. The happy conclusion is everyone smooching or reaffirming their relationship status otherwise, while Lacus blathers over the ending song with her and Kira as two human shaped blobs ready to get nasty on the beach.

Hooray.

So what's the verdict?

Gundam Seed Freedom sucks. And I don't even mean that as a movie, but as a Seed movie. If I previously thought Seed's characters had the depth of a rain puddle, then Freedom threw a maxi pack of paper towels on all of them.

You get a gigantic cast, with various well-established characters with pasts, and, somehow, only Athrun and Cagalli resemble themselves. The rest are bulldozed to single word characteristics like dumb, horny emo, or rude.

For instance, there are two separate occasions where Compass fights a Destroy, and Shinn doesn't care. Stella even gets a cameo, going full Tokomon teeth in his mind at the Evil Dumbass Brigade trying to infiltrate it, but do you think her traumatic death would warrant a reaction when he has to face the mobile suit she piloted when she was killed before him? Naaah.

Kira starts the movie with something resembling a personality, but that gets quickly flushed down the toilet by the time he and Lacus go through the same scene for the 8th time.

Murrue? Don't get me started on Murrue. Murrue spends the entire movie in heat. Funnily enough, she's finally wearing a bra when Archangel gets hit, so no more gainaxing boobs. But she's worse than the horny teenagers.

Everyone else you know and love is just there. I don't remember Sai even getting a line. Miri does, one. Dearka and Yzak exist and it's a big, fat whatever. You'd think they could have put some of them on the ships' bridges, so that we could get cool discussions, right? Yeah, no, have two new characters instead, one of whom is voiced by freaking Jiraiya. No, not Jiraiya's VA, but Jiraiya, because that man doesn't vary his voice one bit.

As someone who used to watch Naruto, it drove me bonkers. Especially when the female VAs put in the effort to blow everyone out of the water. Props to Cagalli's new VA especially who manages to capture the original's stresses and pauses perfectly. I knew right away it was Cagalli despite the different voice. Kudos.

Another positive thing are the backgrounds of the movie. I'm pretty sure a sizeable chunk of the budget was invested in those. They all look gorgeous.

Those visual feasts sadly make the wonky characters stand out more though. Movements down to the very mouth flaps look really choppy, 3D Gundams are always a bad idea, please stop doing that, and often enough the animation quality dips noticeably.

This movie is also in love with potato noses so huge, Gerard Depardieu would laugh at them. It's especially weird 'cause half of those are on Coordinators. You know, the designer babies? Did dogs and pigs go extinct in the Cosmic Era that they need to sniff for truffles themselves now?

It's also a complete crime that the movie ends with no one having kicked Orphee between the legs. Or in the face. He taunts Kira so many times with the line that all he's good for is fighting that I kept yelling at my screen for Kira to please just display that and introduce a bat to Orphee's face.

Not even Shinn gets to throw a punch his way, and that boy is allowed to wave a sword at a person. But in a manner that makes me wanna tear my hair out.

That's a saber, you moron. You don't hold sabers with two hands. Coordinator, my foot. You deserve getting your butt kicked just for that. Though I went full panda facepalm when Yzak With Hair Horns started doing cart wheels during their fight.

Just. Throw a brick at my head, it's less painful.

Then we also have the gem that is the dance scene between Pinky and Horny For Her, which cracked me up specifically, because it's supposed to be this beautiful~ smooth~ charming~ skilled waltz the super Coordinators perform that makes Kira so sad, and I'm dying of laughter because I'm an avid Ballroom e Youkoso fan and if there is anything that series taught me, it's a) the man's hand goes where the bra strap is, so Orphee fails at a basic hold already and b) that's the most pathetic throwaway oversway I've ever seen. Total beer keg.

If Kira knew the first thing about dancing, he would have been sassing Blond Athrun instead of getting all mopey, like actual Athrun did to Discount Yzak. Would have improved the movie by x1000 actually if Kira had gotten the same amount of brain cells as his sister and friend and spent the two hours snarking at all the fanfic nonsense instead of acting like he got gut punched all the time.

Alas, we can't have nice things. What we get after 20 years and over a hundred drafts is a movie about Kira's and Lacus' love story that's literally no different from a Wattpad fic. It glues itself to the surface level of the concept and pulls it off as if the entirety of the two prior series doesn't exist, while making sure to give it no substance at all. Sure, they throw in names and reuse plot points that anyone who has seen the series knows, but they end up as mere Easter eggs. There is no taking advantage of established backstories or past events. Not even a nod. Creating a sense of continuity or closure?

Not in this movie.

Another thing is this bizarre tug-of-war between prudish and sexy Lacus. There's no opening anymore in which she can float naked across our screen, so the movie needs to push her boobs in our faces in a different way, I guess, but she's still a "pure" character so it just ends up being... weird. She won't kiss Orphee and probably whip herself every night for ever considering it, but she'll prance around naked on the beach with Kira and go all Golden Boy with how she's shown riding those wing attachments for the Freedom. Like, make up your mind, movie.

I understand why Fukuda wouldn't want to sully Lacus' "purity" (outside of teenager's minds >_>), but I really wish that she had just kissed Orphee. Just, give me something to work with here. You can't drag out "No! I don't love you! I love Kira!" for two hours by recycling the same exchange over and over. If she had kissed him, there would have been a point to all the relationship drama at least. But like this, it's just boring and inane because we're stuck at the setup and never move to a build up or climax, much less a resolution.

So yeah, outside of the Cagalli and Athrun scenes, this movie really didn't do it for me. I actually recorded my reaction for my own amusement because I thought I'd have a blast hate-watching it, but it's just me going "good grief" increasingly loudly as the movie goes on and pausing to check my speed settings.

Oh, and me losing my mind at Kira and Lacus keeping their motorcycles in their living room. Who on Earth does this???

[gatormeister]

Just finished Endless Waltz, and it is absolutely fantastic. I loved every second of that movie. Took everything that was good in Gundam Wing and turned the dial up to eleven. Got just that little bit extra backstory for the pilots. More Tallgeese is always a good thing. I like the TV versions of the suits better in every case other than the Deathscythe Hell, that one's about equal with the TV appearance I'd say. Give Heavyarms back it's orange damn it!

Absolute pacifism was always a weak ideal in the show, mostly because it just sort of worked all the time just by Relena talking. It was only ever really opposed by war mongers. Endless Waltz finally shows the struggle that is maintaining peace and peaceful attitudes in a way outside of having some cartoonish monarchist/fascist practically look at the camera and call it naive before being proven wrong very shortly after. Which was fine in the show really, as I said in a previous post, Wing tried doing a lot with it's plot that it couldn't fully support, and the end result was some plot points that just never sat quite right.

Mariemaia was a seven year old trying to become a world dictator. She was just a puppet of course. Sort of a Haman and Mineva situation there. But every time she'd open her mouth to try and sound smart I could only think, "You are literally seven, what the hell are you talking about?" Which was funny.

My favorite suits from the series and movie would be the Tallgeese with the Tallgeese II be my favorite iteration, the Wing Gundam of course with Unit 01 the first iteration being my favorite of those, the Sandrock, and the Deathscythe Hell TV version. I liked the Leos and Tauruses, but the rest of the grunt suits just weren't big hits with me. I'd put the Leo above the Taurus, but I would also say that everything I like about the Leo, the Graze from Iron Blooded Orphans does the same but better.

Over all an okay to good series with a fantastic ending. I don't know if I'd watch the whole series over again, but I'd absolutely re-watch Endless Waltz. Next up is War in the Pocket followed by Stardust Memory and Thunderbolt, but before that I'm going to take a small break from Gundam. I may have only just started posting about the shows with Turn A, but I have been watching Gundam basically nonstop since around the August last year. Going from G-Witch, to IBO, to The Origin, 0079 the series, Zeta, Double Zeta, Char's Counterattack, 08th MS Team, Unicorn, Narrative, Turn A, and now Wing and Endless Waltz. It's been a lot, and I am ready to watch some shorter shows without giant robots in them... for at least a little bit. I'm thinking I go back to Gundam in February. I'll still be posting pictures of Gunpla I build in the meantime, but that's a lot different than sitting down and watching multiple shows that are around fifty epsiodes each. See ya!

(Edited to add Narrative into the list. A movie so self contained I literally forgot to put it in with the rest of Gundam.)

[theotherwesley]

Character Opinion Bingo: Mariemaia Khushrenada?

Oh, Baby Strawberry Dictator-sama? I'm very normal about her thank you for asking

[thisweekingundamwing]

This Week in Gundam Wing 17- 30 September 2023

Here’s the roundup for September 17th - 30th, 2023!

Remember to give your content creators some love! Be sure to join in on the events at the bottom! And remember to send in any new works you see or make next week!

~Mod Hel

Fanfiction/Ideas/Snippets:

@noirangetrois

Green Mischief https://archiveofourown.org/works/50260426

Gen, Trowa Barton & Duo Maxwell

Sally Po, Trowa Barton, Duo Maxwell, Heero Yuy

Teen And Up Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Cocktail Friday, Alcohol, Trowa and Duo being little shits, bad star wars references, Wufei will not be pleased

Sally is unimpressed by the creepy-looking cocktail Trowa and Duo serve her, especially when they start talking nonsense. Before long, however, her own plan begins to form.

Wine and Hugs https://archiveofourown.org/works/50416243

F/F, Sally Po & Lady Une,Lucrezia Noin & Lady Une, Lucrezia Noin/Sally Po

Lady Une, Sally Po, Lucrezia Noin, Mariemaia Khushrenada (mentioned)

Teen And Up Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Cocktail Friday, Alcohol, Wine, Birthday, Friendship, Post-Canon, Not Gundam Wing: Frozen Teardrop Compliant

Sally and Noin bring Une a belated birthday gift.

Fandom Discourse:

gwpromptmeme

GW Prompt Meme event

Rules: https://gwpromptmeme.dreamwidth.org/408.html

Main Page: https://gwpromptmeme.dreamwidth.org/

Calendar Events:

@gwcocktailfriday

Cocktail Fridays!

Post responses on Friday, during Happy Hour between 3 & 5 pm in your own timezone.

Here’s the prompts for Friday, October 6th! https://gwcocktailfriday.tumblr.com/post/730182557559291904/cocktail-friday-post-responses-on-friday-october

In need of prompts!

@thisweekingundamevents

Events Calendar https://thisweekingundamevents.tumblr.com/post/730188053636841472/updated-events-calendar

If you are hosting an event currently, or are planning on one, hit us up with links and dates! We’ll add them to the Calendar and reblog your notices to get the word out!

GW Holiday Gift Exchange 2023

Participants List https://thisweekingundamevents.tumblr.com/post/730187822630322176/participants

GW Hallows

https://thisweekingundamevents.tumblr.com/post/729978476539559936/gw-hallows-2023-heres-the-prompt-list-for-this

[astragifs]

[noirangetrois]

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Gundam Wing Relationships: Sally Po & Lady Une, Lucrezia Noin & Lady Une, Lucrezia Noin/Sally Po Characters: Lady Une, Sally Po, Lucrezia Noin, Mariemaia Khushrenada (mentioned) Additional Tags: Cocktail Friday, Alcohol, Wine, Birthday, Friendship, Post-Canon, Not Gundam Wing: Frozen Teardrop Compliant

Summary: Sally and Noin bring Une a belated birthday gift.

Excerpt: Une had just gotten comfortable on her couch, reading glasses on and book open in her lap - yes, an honest to goodness paper book - when she heard a knock on the front door. Confused, she set down her book and got up to check through the peephole, then smiled as she recognized two of her closest friends.

“Sally, Noin, to what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked once she’d opened the door.

@gwcocktailfriday

[fostersffff]

The Big Gundam Watch, Part 10: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

As mentioned at the end of my post about the second half of Gundam Wing, the word on the street was that the sequel movie was Actually Good For Real. Naturally, I was skeptical: even with the context provided in response to that post about the nightmarish production schedule and sponsor requirements the series had, it was still the least good experience I've had with a Gundam show to date. The theatrical format can also be a double-edged sword if you don't know how to budget your time wisely, and quite frankly, I didn't have much faith in the Gundam Wing production staff to make a cohesive 90 minute movie after they had so much trouble with a 49 episode TV series.

I'm happy to report that Endless Waltz was, in fact, pretty damn good. In fact, I'd actually go so far as to say that of the Gundam movies I've reviewed in this format- the others being Char's Counterattack, Narrative, and Hathaway- this was the best! Not only was it a solid action movie with some terrific animation setpieces, it also addressed most of the problems I have with Gundam Wing, making both the setting itself and the movie much stronger.

THE STUFF I LIKED:

FLASHBACKS. Number one with a fucking bullet: I now have literally any understanding of the motivations for these main characters! And they were all pretty well executed! Trowa's a child soldier! Duo was trying to prevent the original Operation Meteor! Heero is suicidal and traumatized because he botched an attack on a mobile suit production facility and got civilians killed! Wufei... had one too!

I was a little worried about how much money this was going to have, because it was originally a series of OVAs. But that got put to rest when Noin and Sally launched the ITANO CIRCUS PODS followed by reaction shots of Taurus dolls moving at 800 frames per second trying to escape.

After spending the whole series bitching about how much the Gundams clash with original suits designed for the After Colony timeline, I think the redesigns they got for Endless Waltz finally made me stop being a hater. Especially Wing Zero; who cares how impractical contoured angel wings are, it looks fucking cool, and lends itself to that gorgeous activation sequence.

On the subject of mobile suits; the Tallgeese III isn't as cool as the Tallgeese- they really fucking nailed that design on the first take- but I was thrilled that when Char Quattro Zechs Milliardo Wind showed up to the fight, it was in a Tallgeese and not the Epyon.

And speaking of redesigns; Trowa got fuckin' yolked. Fuckin' Final Fight Mike Haggar looking motherfucker. I assumed they just bulked up all of the boys, but then one scene later Heero is as scrawny as ever, so they made the conscious choice to have Trowa buff as shit.

Dorothy showing up for five seconds to insult a bunch of random civilians for being cowards in order to rile them up and haul them over to the site of the conflict to protest Mariemaia's regime in a convoy led by her solid gold truck was perfection.

A brief return of my favorite version of Heero- sociopath Heero- when Mariemaia tries to taunt him over how indestructible the bunker is and he just goes "okay." and fires the Libra-annihilating gun down at it three times.

I thought Mariemaia and Dekim made a really great and complementary pair of villains. It makes perfect sense that 10 year old would be like "why hasn't anyone just tried being a perfect dictator" before you even factor in the grooming, and Dekim neatly introduces and ties up the whole "Operation Meteor was originally just a space supremacy ploy" idea that was introduced in the last episode of Wing, enhancing it with the added wrinkle that the Barton family were the equivalent of the Zabis in the Universal Century.

If you read my last post, you may think I'd be down on Relena abandoning her position of Total Pacifism. Instead, it actually feels like a natural development: the formation of the Earth Sphere Unified Nation was a unilateral agreement by all mankind that peace was what they wanted, so her goal of Peace via Pacifism was effectively achieved! But in the face of a group that would threaten that accomplishment for the sole purpose of self-interested domination, there's literally nothing to do but resist. And it's still optimistic because it flies in the face of the conventional, cynical wisdom of "good times create weak men create hard time create strong men create good times...", which is what Dekim was counting on.

THE STUFF I LIKED LESS:

The role of “Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid, but fucking stupid” is now being played by Wufei, who I literally groaned at when he appeared to defend Dekim from Trowa. I get it; they needed to have a cool mobile suit for Heero to fight against since Mariemaia and Dekim weren't pilots, and Wufei fits the bill since it's totally believable he's not over his tsundere mancrush on Treize, but the fact that his Category 6 MUH JUSTICE moment is stopped by Heero reminding him that civilians exist was just too much.

The idea that the Gundams were at a disadvantage against the horde of regular grunt suits because they were going for non-lethal takedown was charming, but also, like... Duo says that and then it cuts to Heavyarms fucking unloading. But maybe they were rubber bullets so it's fine, it's fine, don't worry about it.

Lady Une once again uses her unaddressed space-time warping powers to gain access to Mariemaia's neigh-upon impregnable underground bunker just in time to save her and Relena from falling rubble. I actually scanned back through the video to make sure I didn't miss something: we see her outside meeting with Zechs as he lands the Tallgeese III, and then the next time we see her she somehow made it into the compound and disabled every guard in one of the rooms. How?

Listen, Endless Waltz is a very elegant title and should make sense to basically everyone if they think about it even just a little bit. It was not necessary to explain it out for the audience.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS:

There were a number of lines and scenes in this movie that gave me a hearty, sensible chuckle, so I'm just gonna run down the ones that really stuck with me:

The way the dub narrator says "at the end of an... intricate battle" is the funniest and most polite way to describe the conflict of Gundam Wing.

“He’s pretty smart for a person who was elected democratically”

"I wouldn't be surprised if one day he starts saying that his lack of effort is the reason there's no air in outer space"

Zech's little book he's reading while waiting for someone to pick him up:

Not meant to be funny, but I love that the emblem of Mariemaia's regime is just "what if instead of an eagle holding a swastika, it was an eagle holding an M stylized like the one on Super Mario's hat":

Choosing to show Zechs and Noin reuniting and riding off to Mars together to start a new life as unromantically as possible by just having them play chess:

Speaking of Zechs and Noin going to Mars: I enjoyed this so much I looked at a summary for the sequel to this, the light novel series Frozen Teardrop, and then determined I will not be looking at anything else related to Frozen Teardrop.

Amogus.

IN CONCLUSION:

This was an incredibly pleasant surprise. Taken as a complete package, Endless Waltz seriously elevates Gundam Wing. It does so much groundwork for that series that I think you could make a compelling argument to skip Wing altogether and just watch Endless Waltz. Personally, though, I would just amend whether or not I'd recommend Gundam Wing to "if you're going to watch it, you absolutely MUST watch Endless Waltz, too, no matter how you felt about it".

Next up: I'm taking another break, as in the time it took me to watch through all of Gundam Wing I added a ton of other anime (and video games (and model kits)) to my to-do list. But when I do come back to this, we're going backwards and then sticking to chronologically-by-release order, starting with Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket.

[incorrectgundamwingquotes]

[during Mariemaia’s Rebellion]

Zechs: Hey!

Duo: Ugh, this guy again.