#try burning gundam

[gundamfight]

[alphamecha-mkii]

TBG-011G Try Burning Gundam by Crimson_Frame

[0094th]

My poor try burning has been broken for a while, built him years ago but gave him a new antenna, fixed his awful shoulder joint, gave him a new saber and completely re panel lined him, decided to go all out on the black to give him a mire cel shaded look, still need to make a front skirt for him but not sure how ill do it yet.

[reversemoon255]

SBG-E01 Shin Burning Gundam

So let's continue our look at how Metaverse could have better handled the returning characters from the previous series. And for Fighters Try, it was handled pretty well. Sekai is very on-point, and because his story was the latest in his timeline, his design fits, too. I do wish his gi had a little more flare to it to fit the other costumes we see in Divers/Metaverse, but him repping his school works from a character perspective.

Fumina's fine. She's mostly there for fan service, being the only character to get an actual redesign. And she feels like a fan service character, which, yes, they used her for fan service in her original series a little bit, but she was a much deeper and interesting character than just that, and that's very much lacking from this interpretation.

The Kit: It's just the Kamiki Burning Gundam again, but with a new shoulder, hip skirt, and backpack. Apart from the horns, you can basically rebuild the entire kit again. Still, the new parts are neat, and the new effect parts are cool.

The Details: Man, I'm just now noticing I forgot to clean one of the knees... Anyway, apart from panel lining and black fill, I used metallic blue for the eyes and peripheral cameras, as well as on the areas underneath the translucent blue parts. This is in contrast to what I did with the Exceed Galaxy where I used the red on the underside of the parts themselves. I also used gold, black, and metallic blue on the the two swords.

Overall, while it isn't an especially interesting upgrade, the new parts are still really cool, and another way of getting this kit that's kinda old and doesn't get reprinted as much. It's not really worth it if you already have a Kamiki Burning, but if you don't, then it's a perfectly fine kit with a very fun backpack. The backpack is very cool.

[cephalopadre]

mechtober day 6: wilfrid and transient gundam vs. sekai and kamiki burning gundam

Yeah GBFT has some escalation issues, but MAN the cap to that first cour hit for me. theyre fated rivals punching each other so hard they cracked the moon in half, your honor

[okami-zero]

So to accompany dinner, I rewatched the last three episodes of G Gundam, because none of my current series were "sticking", for lack of a better term. And this show, as absolutely over-the-top and shounen as it is (and as questionable as some of its name choices were), has probably one of the best giant space battles I have ever seen.

And a lot of that accolade owes to the fact that the number of other non-Gundam Fighter Gundam cameos is absolutely crazy.

One of the first ones, right off the bat, when it is shown how the Gundams are getting to space, we have a shot of the one and only granddaddy RX-78-2 hugging a rocket. There are a load of GMs sprinkled throughout, as one would expect. But we also have several shots of the RX-78 GP01 Zephyranthes, X Gundam and even Wing Gundam nearly a full year before it's show even aired! There's at least one shot with Victory Gundam (V Gundam) in the background, and rewatching today, I saw in one of the big dramatic pause shots a freaking GUNCANNON (It was drawn small, because it was far off, but red body, white head, giant grey backpack and all the shapes were correct, so Guncannon!). There is another mech in that shot that is very Not A Gundam™, likely from one of Sunrise or Tomino's other shows, but I don't have the knowledge to place it. There is also a Gundam in one of the end victory shots that has another Gundam I can't place, but the design pings something. Might be F91, but I am not sure.

Anyway, thought I'd share with any other Gundam fans who might enjoy this! (Was gonna say Gundam heads, but in G Gundam, there is a specific context that would make that not something to call someone! xD) That's it for now!

[queer-n-here]

Y'all thank you for your responses! So here is: Large and in charge reader, who's only nice to their on true love: OSAMU DAZAI!

(And yes, as you can see, I voted on my own poll. And yes, I voted for Tanizaki. I'm a simp for him broooooo)

Also, bruv, I dunno why but I got so carried away and this got really angsty. Like... I never do angst. NEVER. Yet here we are. I wonder if I'm okay. Well whatever.

Contents: Dazai getting drunk with reader.

Warnings: No smut, kinda angst, I totally digressed from the original plot line I had planned, and now I want nothing more than to give Osamu Dazai a big fat hug.

Dazai had found himself a new hobby: watching people's reactions as you talked to him.

I mean, most would think, really, how interesting can THAT be? But being the sort of person you were, all mean and menacing at one look but really soft and gentle on the inside, it was rare for you to really hold a conversation without coming off as intimidating. So when people saw you smiling softly at Dazai's jokes, and watching him fondly as he chatted away, they were generally more than surprised.

Dazai remembered distinctly the day you'd met. Fukuzawa had found you fighting solo against three of the Port Mafia's best ability-users, and known with one glance that you were stronger than even you knew. It hadn't taken him long to convince you to join the Armed Detective Agency; with painfully dead parents and a burned down house, you didn't really have anywhere else to go.

You passed their little entrance test, even though after they revealed that it was just an entrance test you couldn't help but be slightly annoyed. All that hard work to try and save that girl only for the whole scenario to be fake. Should've just ignored it.

It had been two years since then. And even though you wouldn't really say it out loud, you were happy that Fukuzawa had taken you under his wing.

How else would you have met Dazai? Or any of the others, who you did secretly like, even though you were unsure about expressing it.

One day, Fukuzawa sent you and Dazai to investigate a letter that the detective agency had received. The sender threatened to blow up the Gundam Factory in Yokohama, which was a popular entertainment place for tourists. Fukuzawa did contact the owner, but since the area covered by the Factory was quite large, and the number of people who were already there was also ginormous, the owner asked for them to investigate the culprit before the bombs could go off.

It was an easy job, and you two had it finished before 3 in the afternoon. All that was left now was some measly paperwork, which you would have to take care of alone because Dazai despised that part of work with a burning passion.

And so Dazai decided to fool around a little.

He took you to a bar, somewhere in a deserted alley in the middle of nowhere, walking with his hands on the back of his head and making nasty comments about everything he could lay his eyes on. You followed silently.

"Say," He yanked open the door of Lupin. "What about you, though? Where do you generally spend after-mission free time?"

Dazai led you into the bar, plopping down on a barstool in front of the counter.

"I sleep," You said, sitting down next to him.

"Huh?" He made a weird face. "That's it?"

A bartender appeared behind the counter.

"Mn," You nodded, looking at the bartender.

Dazai ordered 'his usual', and you decided to have the same as him. It wasn't bad, frankly, sitting there next to him on adjacent barstools and hearing him ramble on about everything and somehow nothing at the same time. He drank and drank and drank and drank, till he was telling you about Ango, about Odasaku and the days they spent together. He drank till his pale cheeks were flushed red, till his neck didn't have the strength to hold his head anymore, till his head was pressed into your chest and his shoulders were shaking with silent sobs.

You stroked the back of Dazai's head. Sober, he was a goof, running around pretending that everything was jokes and comedy. Drunk, he was much more grim, face set firm even as more tears splashed down it, eyes miserable in a way that made your heart ache.

"What's making you sad?" You asked him, desperate to take away at least some part of his sorrow.

But he didn't answer, shaking his head and clenching the fabric of your shirt so desperately it felt like he was hanging on for dear life.

You let him, wrapping your arms around him slowly, pulling him closer. You couldn't do anything but that, and the mere thought of it made you feel like the most useless being on the planet.

You paid for the drinks and heaved Dazai up on your shoulder, letting him stain a different part of your coat with tears as you walked away from the bar.

You took him to the agency dormitory, but once you were in front of his door you couldn't go any further.

"Dazai," You said, your voice gentle as you slowly put him down, and he wobbled on his feet. "Do you have your keys?"

The man couldn't even stand, and had to lean against the door for balance to look up at you. "Hmm..."

He began fumbling through his coat, hands slowly and thick with the weight of the alcohol in his veins. Finally, he produced a key, holding it up and pressing it into your chest. His tears had finally stopped.

You wiped the remnants off his cheek with your thumb. "Let me open the door, hmm?"

Dazai moved to lean against you instead of the door, and you placed an arm around his waist to support him as your free hand opened the door. You led him into the room, sitting him down on the floor near the doorway so you could take off his shoes. When you looked up, however, he had laid back on the floor, glossy eyes staring up at the ceiling.

"Say, [Name]," His voice was thick, his words were slurred. "Some people believe that right and wrong are relative... That there's no black and white... D'you think that's true?"

You looked at him. He was regretful, you could tell. But the fact that you couldn't help him, that you couldn't snatch all that pain away from him and swallow it was enough to make you bodily ache.

"I don't think I have a definite answer for that," You said, wishing you had, wishing you knew how to comfort him. "Why do you ask?"

Dazai's hands rose, clutching at the lapel of your jacket and pulling you closer to his face, making you hover over him on the floor. "D'you think... In a world like ours... We can ever do 'the right thing'?"

You shifted your weight to one hand, raising the other to caress his cheeks softly. "If you try hard enough, yeah. Even if no one's a hundred percent good, ever, if you try hard enough... I think that's all that matters."

"And..." Dazai's brow furrowed, and he looked adorably confused. "How hard is hard enough?"

You couldn't help but think of how, in any other situation, Dazai would've made a sexual pun out of those words.

"Hmm..." You thought of it, wanting to give him an answer that would satiate him. "Your best."

It was a simple answer, and yet Dazai's eyes widened, as if you'd solved the biggest mystery of the universe. "Just that?"

You nodded. "Just that. That's more than enough, Dazai."

And he nodded back, wrapping his heavy arms around your shoulders and pulling you closer, burying his head in your chest again. He fell asleep like that, holding you like a child.

You took him into the room later, taking off his coat and sweater and untucking his shirt before placing him on the futon and covering him with the quilt.

The next day when you saw him at the agency, he was back to his clownery, but something about the way he looked at you had changed.

[leaderdaimon]

"Sonia's a dom and Gundam is a sub!!!" "Gundam tops and Sonia's his queen!!" "Gundam is a breeder he's obviously good in bed!!" "Who knows what Sonia did in front of those cameras!!!"

Have you ever pictured them being domestic and not needing sex in their lives post tragedy, it's just them and their three dozen pets trying to cope with the world they were forced to burn to the ground? They have a wounded, tamed bear that lives outside their cottage, cats and dogs that follow Gundam constantly. When he laughs, birds flock to him. Imagine Gundam waking up to see his partner shaking in her sleep and gently holding her hand. The scars of yesterday are still deep under their skin with no signs of being removed, but they have each other.

[coquettedragoon]

could you expand a little on your writing and worldbuilding process for coquette? the way you write characters is really nice

my writing process is kind of informed by a sense of wanting every part of the thing i'm working on to be fun to work on, which sounds obvious... but well im one of those people who made webcomics excited to get to the big story payoffs 5 years down the track but didn't put any thought into what came before it and got burnt out. in the past i would've shown xios life before enlistment as a slow burn but instead i'm just opening right on it.

the overarching structure of coquette is informed by hxh... i really like how each arc of it is a drastically different setting and genre with a rotating primary cast, i don't intend for coquette to be as varied but it struck me as a really fun way of making longform work that feels consistently enjoyable to work on... ig as a brief example, the first section will focus on the zephyranthes, after this xio and co are sent to fight in sunset as part of the lilac occupation and then are left behind after the lilac force retreats (careful what you wish for ayane...) and Stuff Happens, ig what i mean is i dont want to linger on a status quo for too long.

as for the world, i mostly am drawing from legend of the galactic heroes/gundam 79 as a template. the duchy is the empire/zeon, the lilac is the FPA/earth federation, and sunset is fezzan/side six.

for the lilac in particular, i'm kind of drawing from like... how things felt being in school during the iraq war and the fervor among the students around me, i knew so many people who wanted to enlist after graduation etc and saw the army as like a winning ticket compared to the deadend town we were in, like girls wanting to join the army to get a degree as a lawyer or a pilot etc. the core of the lilac is its a society that exists to funnel people (especially like xio) into the army.

the duchy is a bit more vibes based, i just like when the baddies in scifi are anachronistic aristocrats. theres a section in the gundam origin manga about like... interpreting the zeon invasion of earth as a return to 'the sacred grounds of the soul' that carries a lot of weight. i think it sort of gave me an impression of the zeon as like... people living in the void of space and feeling spiritually/intellectually starved by it and driven mad by it, and i kind of used that as my basis for the duchy. they are obsessed with tradition and antiquity to feel like they have a sense of place in the world and aren't just drifting in space, the aesthetic sense is rooted in a sense of like.. older feeling things are more connected to earth and feel more 'human' to them. then ofc like the imperialism and arranged marriages and social stratification are all 'old' and can't be questioned so they are miserable anyway.

i guess it's all based on the thing in LOGH of how it opens on 'no human or society is immortal', and then depicts the slow collapse of the two nations founded on flimsy ideas. the lilac and the duchy are both dead end nations.

as for character writing... i think i kind of just take archetypes i like from moe anime etc and then try and dig into how their brains work living in the world of coquette. xio could be a happy little moeblob in most other worlds. ryukishis writing is probably what informs me better than anything else... i just want to try and depict what it's like to live inside these characters heads.

[tupppence]

I drew my half ignited Try Burning Gundam

[wordsandrobots]

'Real' robot? No thanks

I shan't be wasting time hang-wringing over the idea of a Gundam show from the point of view of the setting's antagonists. This is a well-worn and perfectly legitimate approach, and in any case, Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) goes out of its way to emphasise the humanity of the Principality of Zeon's soldiers. There are scouts who bend their orders to aid to civilians, wannabe special-forces who take the time to gawk at the teen prodigy who thwarted their attempt to blow up the Gundam, pilots who jump ship rather than go down with their mobile suits, and injured grunts who cling to family pictures while bleeding out in the desert. Even the actual *villains* of Gundam 79 – the Zabi family and their hangers-on – are generally presented as functioning people with loves and motivations beyond conquest. Only Gihren is utterly without morals. You know, the guy who took being compared to Hitler as a compliment? Garma, Degwin, Dozle, and even Kycilia all have moments of humanity, in spite of their reprehensible actions.

So yes, of course there are people fighting for Zeon because it's their job, because they believe the promise of spacenoid independence, because they buy into newtype theory, or simply because circumstances force them to. That's the kind of story Gundam is: the tragedy of people enduring a war driven by forces above their heads and beyond their control, who are just trying to make it home alive. If you don't get that, or that the Federation is squarely in the position of 'lesser evil but still a callous nation state doing dubious things to secure victory' from episode one, I don't know what to tell you. You've missed the point. I'm sorry, you just have.

There is nothing wrong with the premise 'wouldn't fighting against the Gundam be like living in a horror movie?' Indeed, I will go further: that is a good premise for a story.

But Netflix's Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is not a good story. It is, at best, a serviceable one, trotting from A to B with enough narrative cohesion and character beats to string the set-pieces together. By and large it manages an inoffensive momentum, unfolding a predictable sequence of events with reasonable competency. If I was not hugely entertained, I was not especially put off, either. They even remembered to turn on the contrast for the nighttime battles.

The biggest innovation displayed here is that this production was rendered in Unreal Engine as full CGI, eschewing Gundam's conventional animation style. In my view, that's also the key to its biggest problems. Let's take a quick spoiler break and I'll try to unpack what I mean.

I guess go watch the show before proceeding?

OK, so, there was a point in the middle of Requiem for Vengeance when I found myself questioning the physics of beam sabers. I'd never thought before about why what is essentially a burning stream of energy can be blocked by a bit of metal with a super-heated edge, or indeed by another such stream, because within the animation style usually used to depict such things, they are clearly physical in their interaction with the world. As solid as lightsabers and therefore as capable of acting like real swords.

But Requiem makes the decision to depict the Gundam's saber as, essentially, the jet from a blowtorch. Because that's what this *is*, isn't it? A narrow fountain of plasma? So it looks like fire, you can see the Zaku's heat-hawk through the Gundam's blade, and suddenly I'm wondering – how does that work? Why does the axe stop it instead of passing through? How does this obviously non-physical blade react as if it were a physical object?

There are any number of technobabble reasons you might give for how this works. Forcefields! It's probably forcefields. But what struck me was the beat of 'huh' I experienced, where I asked something I'd never previously *needed* to, even though it always existed as a legitimate question of the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo being deployed, and how that was a direct result of stylistic choices made when the Gundam was reinterpreted through the lens of CGI 'realism'.

Ah, yes. Realism. That elusive quality chased by film-makers and game-developers the world over. Or, specifically chased by a lot of big, mainstream studios who've decided it is vitally important the supernatural and the superscientific be placed within what is recognisably the real world.

In terms of such codifying modern works as 2008's Iron Man, this is primarily about papering over the stitching between what is filmed using actors and what is painted in later. In theory, something rendered entirely by computer does not have to worry about this. However, as many a 'triple-A' computer game has proven, the aspiration towards photographic quality remain. Characters and objects are honed so as to mimic the appearance and texture of real people and objects, with greater verisimilitude to life being a near-universally unquestioned goal.

I won't argue this doesn't have merit as a technical exercise. The results can be impressive. What I will say is: realism is worthless if it removes interest, and useless if it sacrifices coherence. The beam saber example is an instance of what I mean by the latter. Within Gundam 79, we apprehend immediately that the saber and the heat-hawk are of a kind, possessing an energised glow that is nevertheless opaque and physical. Within Requiem's portrayal, however, they no longer adhere to a visual language in which their interaction make sense. You cannot block an axe with a blowtorch flame. A minor illustration, yes, but it captures the tension created by transposing such elements into a more 'realistic' style.

Another may be found in the treatment of Zeon's various military vehicles. These are a bizarre selection of sci-fi objet d'art, from the aerodynamically questionable Dopp fighter jets to Magella tanks that can launch their turrets into open flight. They are strikingly weird designs that make little sense yet function perfectly inside their context. Where another, earlier anime would have had them belong to an alien species, Gundam is the show that pioneered 'what if the bad guys were human too' for the mecha genre, so they merely represent a design logic alien to the Earth Federation, which favours bold, blocky shapes more closely based on extant military hardware.

In Requiem, the Zeonic weirdness is deliberately muted. The Dopps are streamlined, literally flattened into a more traditional jet fighter profile. One Magella does attempt to launch its turret only to be blown apart before it can rise more than a couple of feet. Otherwise, they're just treated as ordinary tanks. And it's easy to see what the artists were doing here: "let's take these weird 70s designs and make them look like real tanks/jets." The result, unfortunately, is a dilution of the clear distinction between Zeon and Federation tech.

If you've watching the original Gundam and its sequels, you'll know how easy it is to tell at a glance which side something belongs to. Looking at them in stills, it is still reasonably clear these are meant to be Zeon vehicles. But in motion, it often took me a good few seconds to be sure I wasn't seeing their Federation equivalents. Visual interest doesn't exist purely for its own sake, after all; it serves to clarify the action. Plus, it seems to me that trying to downplay the wilder aspects of these designs actually draws attention towards those aspects. The Zeonic alienness has its own explanatory power; reducing it raises more questions, not fewer.

Lest you think me some terrible killjoy who doesn't like fun, I'm actually incredibly sympathetic to 'realistic' overhauls of classic designs. Have you seen what I spent years doing for the Daleks? Aesthetic overhauls aren't something I object to, nor do I think 'realism' as practised by the MCU and triple-A game developers is intrinsically a waste of time. What I am trying to demonstrate is Requiem's relation to its source material. It posits a story taking place exactly contemporaneously with episode 25 of Gundam 79, portraying the Battle of Odessa, the great Federation push-back that ejects Zeon forces from Earth. This is what was happening 'just off screen', depicted in a style actively at odds with that of the original

But not entirely at odds with it. Which brings us to another problem: an unwillingness to commit fully to the new style.

The big twist in Requiem episode 4 is that after being chased down by the Gundam and just barely managing to drive it off, Captain Iria Solari of the Red Wolf mobile suit squadron is recruited to go capture an example of the Federation's new mass-produced GM 'suit, so Zeon can identify its weaknesses. The hunted get to become the hunter, infiltrating a Federation base and attempting to hijack a couple of GMs, only for the Gundam to scupper things. All well and good. Not a bad swerve. Enables some useful developments.

Except this plan is delivered into the plot by a Zeon major general who appears to have stepped in from a different production entirely. Specifically, from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, because this is none other than Major General Yuri Kellerne, he of the Wolverine haircut and unfortunate disagreements with certain scientific officers (that is, it is unfortunate he should have disagreed with a man possessing so few qualms about massacring his own side).

It is truly surreal to have a character who looks like he actually belongs in a Gundam show enter the scene. I was quite impressed prior to this with the depiction of another character, Major Ronet, who captures the essence of a villain-of-the-week Zeon officer using Requiem's style. He looks entirely of a piece with the rest, while still being recognisably a certain type of character.

Kellerne though? For fuck's sake, he's got a full-blown anime bouffant. Juxtaposed with Solari's achingly realistic design, it's just – bad. This is bad. It's a stylistic clash that makes it impossible to take these scenes seriously. Not because either style is problematic on its own, but because they cannot work together.

It's worth pausing to consider Kellerne's native entry in the franchise, because 08th MS represents an older trend of revisiting the original setting. Starting with Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, this saw the release of OVAs with a superior quality of animation and a more ground-level take on events of the Zeon/Federation war. In many respects, Requiem is positioned as the successor to these series, as Kellerne's cameo makes overt.

The thing is, War in the Pocket, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory and 08th MS are all animes. Yes, they render the action with greater fidelity than Gundam 79. But they don't restyle it the way Requiem attempts to. The Dopp fighter is a great example of this. Compare the 08th MS version to the original and you will see that it merely adds extra layers of detail. It doesn't make it make more sense. Likewise for the character models. They look better than Gundam 79, by certain metrics. They still follow conventional anime aesthetics. You can't drop a design from this line of shows straight into a 'realistic' depiction and expect that to work.

Why does any of this matter? None of these issues exceed the threshold of nit-picking. OK, they're mildly distracting, but is there really a huge problem here?

Well, first, there is a philosophical underpinning to the drive for 'realism' we ought to grapple with, namely the idea only live-action and live-action-alike 'count'. I confess to having little time for this line of thought: the stylistic 'realism' discussed up to now matters far less than emotional or experiential realism. That is to say, whether something presents itself using stick-figures or a hyper-photographic style is not as important as whether it can convey the stakes, pathos, and other meat of a story. Art presents a plethora of options for communicating a message. Deciding one is intrinsically more valuable than the rest is a woefully narrow view of creativity. Traditional, non-realistic animation can be as emotionally arresting as any live performance. Why, therefore, should it be necessary to adapt it into a life-like style?

Second, there is the incomplete commitment to 'realism' that plagues Requiem and, I would argue, the entire concept of approaching works such as Gundam in this manner. Sure, stylistic 'realism' isn't about being strictly 'realistic'. It's about achieving a specific texture to the unreality that is functionally indistinguishable from that of the real elements. Yet doesn't the inclusion of a 17.5m-tall humanoid robot suits automatically grant you a get-out-of-realism-free card? If you have something that wild in play, why go to the effort of making it look like a real-world object? And if you're going to arbitrarily throw out the pretence for the sake of gratuitous continuity, what's the point of trying to begin with?

This circles close to what Requiem is, materially. If I use the phrase 'official fan-fiction', I hope you'll understand that's not necessarily derogatory. What I mean is something primarily homaging and reflecting a pre-existing work, rather than more straightforwardly building off it. 'Fan-fic' because it is bounded by what is already there; 'official' because it has the backing of corporate ownership and thus is positioned as more than merely people playing with the toys they enjoy. It's a category of derivative works into which I'd put previous projects such as Gundam Unicorn's animated adaptation – ring-fenced by an established canon, whatever their individual merits.

General Kellerne's stylistically disruptive presence is one example of the short-comings of such an approach. His design looks that way out of deference to 08th MS Team, whether or not it fits next to the other visuals (a side-effect of trying to cram him into Requiem's style is that he appears off-model anyway!).

Another is the plot. We might grant that doing Gundam-by-the-numbers is a self-contained introduction to the series' themes for a novice, but there isn't anything here those of us who've watched the anime(s) haven't seen a dozen times over. Even Solari's pocket-watch feels borrowed from 08th MS.

Now, credit where it's due: Requiem does not downplay the newtype angle. The psychic powers built up to over the course of Gundam 79 and made central to its sequels are usually the first thing ejected when the franchise tries to be more 'serious' and 'gritty'. It was a pleasant surprise to see them embraced. Solari is explicitly a newtype, with all the corresponding traits (supernaturally good pilot, able to sense threats, experiences predictive flashes etc). This is neatly used to establish some of the philosophy behind Zeon's cause, since most of our characters are already aware of newtype theory (humans moving to space tap into skills not previously needed) by dint of being on the side that uses this as justification for invading the Earth.

As in the source material, newtypes serve as a metaphor for the potential of each new generation. Solari was a talented violinist before the war, able to play near-impossible melodies, and this ability has been conscripted in much the same way OG protagonist Amuro Ray's mechanical genius was turned to murder. Equally, the central tragedy in Requiem resolves into newtype-on-newtype violence, as the pilot of the Gundam relentlessly hunting the Zeon soldiers is revealed to be a frightened teenager, paralleling both Solari's son, to whom she is fighting to return, and Solari herself, as someone struggling for their life in a war-zone.

I watching this straight after binging the original Gundam series (I'd previously seen the more refined compilation movies) and was struck there by how brief Amuro's interaction with fellow newtype Lalah Sune is prior to inadvertently killing her in battle. Then I remembered that's the point. These are two people sharing an identical potential for transforming the world, made opponents by circumstance, who understand one another immediately and intimately in the exact instant it is too late to matter. Amuro's cry that he has done something awful he cannot take back is not overlooking the other deaths he's responsible for; rather it is admitting the unique horror of lost possibility.

Following an encounter on the Federation base, Solari recognises the boy pursuing her is equally scared and out of his depth and thus attempts to talk him down. She even succeeds, reaching substitute!Amuro (hey look another traumatised child soldier who executes wild violence in a berserker-like fashion using a hyper-advanced military prototype; what are the odds?) and evoking his sympathy with her status as a mother (characterisation I'd be more annoyed by if Solari wasn't presented functionally identical to the trope of a father desiring to return to his family).

Then, immediately after saving Solari from being crushed by falling spaceship debris, substitute!Amuro is fatally stabbed in the back by another Zeon soldier.

Here we reach the crux of my dislike for Requiem. It has already muddied the clean Federation/Zeon divide and Gundam's internal physics in service of its chosen style, then compromised that style anyway in the name of slavishness to canonicity. Now, during what is position as the emotional climax, it openly rejects the visual language of newtypes.

Solari's powers are portrayed using vocally-stated unease and emotional connection to other individuals (as is standard), and a pair of dream sequences – one prophetic with respect to the Gundam pilot, another tying into newtypes' ability to draw in the souls of those who die around them. Performing at a darkened opera house, Solari's red dress slowly washes outwards, becoming a bloody wave as the audience is revealed to consist of the dead Zeon soldiers she failed to save. It's an arresting visual, as is the fiery descent into her own pocket watch (a souvenir from her dead husband, who was also conscripted into the war) that marks the earlier dream. We also see a brief shot of the Gundam staring straight back at her as she senses its presence on a distant battlefield. These are all effectively done and I genuinely enjoyed them.

Crucially, however, Requiem does not deploy the kind of over-layering that Gundam 79, Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam and the other follow-ups use to show the deep connections developed by newtypes. In the animes, in addition to visions and flashes of awareness, we have full-on mind-to-mind communication where people converse across voids of colour and light. Newtypes appear in ghostly form, too, interacting with the living during and after their deaths. There are also the obligatory glowing auras, cuing the viewer into supernatural happenings.

Requiem's 'realistic' style seemingly does not permit such things to occur in the waking world. That is to say, there is no reason you couldn't depict the standard newtype visuals in CGI, but this show opts not to. If I were to hazard a guess, given the restriction of overt psychedelia to dream sequences and what they did to the Zenoic designs, I would say the aritsts thought it would look silly.

The problem is, how do you then portray newtype connections? In the scene where Solari convinces substitute!Amuro to stop, we get a couple of cutaways to the kid in his cockpit, superposing with his Gundam's movements. That is a great decision, since the point of the newtype visuals is the characters looking past the armour and understanding the person within (not always a good thing, since antagonism can exist despite the link, but the central conceit is always to grasp the essence of somebody else). In these brief moments, we see, as Solari does, the human being, not the mechanical monster.

But the boy's subsequent death is just… the Gundam gets stabbed and keels over, and Solari is grief-stricken. That's it. No manifested ghost, psychic trauma conveyed by voice lines alone, a total absence in this crucial, heart-rending instant of substitute!Amuro's humanity. Just the destruction of property. The death of the monster, not the scared child.

If there had been one additional cutaway to the boy in the cockpit, I think this could have worked. A single shot of him looking at Solari in the second before being stabbed in the back. Something, anything, to imply the connection crucial to this scene. I am honestly baffled as to why it's not there. I feel I'm looking at a picture where a couple of critical numbers weren't coloured in.

To be clear, I don't personally care for the newtype concept as executed in the 'Universal Century' Gundam shows. I'm not annoyed by this because I'm wedded to the idea or the visual conceits. I'm annoyed by the incompetence of failing to land an obvious, even required emotional beat. The finale of Requiem for Vengeance is built around Solari confronting substitute!Amuro. She risks her chance to join the Zeon retreat from Earth – and thus of reuniting with her son – to help take down Federation forces endangering the departing space capsules. She then compounds this by attempting to convince the Gundam pilot to let everyone go, and ultimately abandons any possibility of returning home out of grief over his death. This is a life-changing encounter for her, as is normal for newtypes pushed into fighting each other.

In my opinion, the show does not sell that anywhere near as well as it could have. Further, it betrays the very concept of the newtype connection by leaving substitute!Amuro to be represented by his Gundam rather than his actual self in his final moments. There are cases where other newtypes meet such abrupt ends. Quess' death in Char's Counterattack springs immediately to mind. But that is a moment of a profound lack of communication, which is not what's happening here.

Animes such as the original Gundam shows can move seamlessly between high technology and visual metaphors for empathy without underselling either one. That they are not attempting to look 'real' provides the advantage of absolute coherence. Beam sabers, flying tanks, psychic powers – there are no joins to airbrush away. Everything is unreal, so everything fits together. A switch in medium and style creates the challenge of reinterpreting those disparate elements so they remain coherent. Ultimately, while Requiem for Vengeance has a good try at pulling everything across, it fails, not just at creating 'realism', but at capturing the conceptual depth of what it is assaying.

Being official fan-fic of the Battle of Odessa – being, essentially, 'the Gundam story' in miniature – invites unfavourable comparison with the original work. Unshackled from that, I suspect it could have done more to establish its own visuals, remove incongruities and find better means of conveying its emotional core. As it stands, I have to wonder if there's any sound argument for live-action-alike Gundam. Even the dream sequences don't provide something unique to this style. You could do the same in traditional animation and trivially push it further. So what, precisely, is gained by telling this story this way?

That's the question Requiem for Vengeance has left me pondering. And hey, if you want to answer with 'but it looks cool', fair enough. I'm writing way too much about my personal gripes with a perfectly passable piece of gratuitous mecha porn, simply because I found a more interesting complaint to make than “why the fuck didn't they hire somebody who knew how do facial animations?”

As for Captain Solari, she closing-monologues herself to Africa to join a Zeon remnant group and fight to give children a future without war. Never quite been sure how mecha pilots in these things envision that working, if I'm honest. Oh, and, uh, I guess nobody tell her that if she survives the next seventeen years, there's a decent chance she's going on a suicide run against the Federation spearheaded by a traumatised teenager strapped into a murder machine.

That might put a slight damper on what Netflix's music captions assure me is a heroic ending.

[A note to check you read all the way to the end: obviously the screenshot from Cucuruz Doan's Island shows CGI mobile suit models. But that's CGI aping traditional anime, rather than an attempt at realism. This is why I've been careful to talk about style, not medium.]

[cerastes]

Do not apologize for posting the unvarnished truth that is the gospel of Amuro Ray.

I am a firm believer in the idea that if Lalah's Newtype Ghost learned to give Amuro some GODDAMN PERSONAL SPACE ONCE IN A WHILE instead of getting up in his business every time he even thought of going into space, he probably would have been like... at least 10% less fucked up by the time Zeta Gundam rolls around.

Maybe.

He also 100% deserves to be a dad, if not in some kind of AU of the Beltorchika's Children timeline, then at the very least should get to be a surrogate father figure to other kid/teen mecha pilots in SRW games.

Lalah wanted to keep him fucked up for real, there's no other explanation.

SRW!Amuro is always heartwarming to me because he gets to hang out with a lot of people that ground the shit out of him, so you end up with the same Best Pilot Ever skills, but with a far, FAR happier personality that his usual "holding onto his last shreds of sanity with bloody splintered fingers" self. It's legitimately a miracle he never really snaps again after '79, but goodness, you can tell that he's trying his hardest, hence his freezing cold, silent, focused rage, that seething ardor that burns and consumes without making a ruckus.

My favorite parts of SRW!Amuro interactions are when he's just chilling with the mechanics and support staff of other shows and they are like "wait holy shit, why is this Super Ace Pilot so good at engineering and robotics?" that's his passion! That's what he actually loves and does! He just wants to build round little fellas, he just so happens to be Death Incarnate!

[weeb-polls-with-pip]

Autistic Anime Boys Prelims - Propaganda Division - Group 7

Propaganda:

Ash -

"he just has those vibes ya know?"

Charce -

"Has a very hard time understanding the emotions of others along with his own emotions. Others claim that he acts in a very strange way before it's confirmed that most of the things others thought were weird of him were either because it had to do with biology, his special interest, or it was him acting like how he thinks normal people act when he doesn't understand the way neurotypical people act in the slightest."

Setsuna -

"recent scientific developments find that autism might just be stored in the hair."

Nicol -

"A constantly expressionless boy who does not show his feelings, Nicol is quiet and tends to be distrustful. He is fiercely protective of his sister, and though his pretty face makes him popular, he resents that it means that those outside of his friend circle only see him for his looks."

Galo -

"HIS SPECIAL INTEREST LITERALLY HELPED HIM SAVE THE EARTH FROM EXPLODING!!! HE STOPPED MID FIGHT ON TOP OF A BURNING HIGH RISE BUILDING TO SHOW A TRIO OF ARSONISTS A PROJECTOR POWER POINT PRESENTATION OF EDO PERIOD FIREFIGHTING!!!! HE COULDN'T PILOT THE ORIGINAL DESIGN OF A GIANT ROBOT BECAUSE IT DIDN'T LOOK COOL AND HE COULDN'T JIVE WITH IT! AND ON TOP OF EVERYTHING HIS REACTIONS AND MANNERISMS TO FRUSTRATING SITUATIONS (ANGRILY SHAKING HIS HAIR WITH HIS HANDS AND RUNNING OFF IN A SITUATION THAT UPSET HIM IN A MANNER AKIN TO SENSORY OVERLOAD, COMBINED WITH HIM ESCAPING TO A QUIET AND COLD PLACE WITH LITTLE TO NO OUTSIDE STIMULUS TO CHILL OUT) PLUS HIS INCREDIBLY BLUNT WAY OF THINKING AND ODD MANNER IN SOCIAL SITUATIONS!!!!! THIS IS PEAK AUTISM! THE AUTISTIC ANIME BOY WITH A BURNING SOUL!"

Yuuji -

"The entire manga is about the mc moving to a new school and getting helped out by Yugami and then being like 'hey who is that guy' and all her classmates are like 'oh that's Yugami. He sucks.' And then she's like 'oh how sad everyone's bullying this guy :( I bet he's actually rlly nice since he helped me out' and then she tries to interact with him and. No actually he just sucks. The title is a reference to the fact that. He flat out refuses to make friends. People try a lot and he just rejects them. He's the ace of the baseball team but everyone hates his guts, INCLUDING his battery partner, who is just. Totally exasperated all the time. Anyways Yugami has a special interest in rakugou and will just. Recite rakugou. He does it in order to calm himself down during baseball games and everyone's like 'what.' He also jumps interests quite a bit? But every time he gets OBSESSED. There was a period where he was obsessed with building furniture. He cannot read social cues and he does not care. Like at all. He really likes structure! He makes a list every day of all the things he has to do and then checks them off. They have a school festival and he goes to every single exhibit. Just to check them off his list. Not even an actual visit. He pops in and immediately leaves. Someone will talk about some relationship issue and he's like 'just like in [rakugou].'"

Yasutora -

"People think he’s intimidating, but he’s one of the kindest characters in the show! He comes across as having a fairly flat affect with few expressions, and he’s often misinterpreted as being scary by others who don’t know him. He used to be aggressive, but chose to never fight unless protecting someone due to his abuelo’s influence, and I think he’s a low empathy flat affect icon!"

Taiyou -

"He befriends the main character through the power of autism (being completely unaware of the social cues telling him to avoid her and being extremely straightforward when complimenting her). He’s able to inadvertently twist any conversation by misinterpreting what people say, often taking things literally. The idea that someone doesn’t like this girl just Does Not Compute in his head. He’s astoundingly hyperempathetic, just the idea that he may have hurt someone made him burst into tears; and yet he seems to have difficulty reading other people’s emotions. And he has no sense of personal space at all. He’s a sweetheart and he makes up for every shitty “neurotypical person proves how nice they are by befriending the autistic person” trope."

Kai -

"I don’t think I can explain this in a convincing manner, but trust me it makes sense. For an (ex)assassin he is so bad a lying, he brings up details no one was talking about and ends up getting himself into trouble because of it. This is a massive spoiler, but I do think it’s really important to the point; during the first main game the cast are discussing the kitchen incident and whether or not Kai actually threatened Nao, causing her to attack Sou. During which they ask the question why? Why would Kai want Nao to do that, what would he get out of it? They eventually come to the conclusion that it’s because he was trying to steal the computer that Sou had found, and this immediately dooms Kai to his unfortunate fate. But the only reason they are able to get there is because Kai himself says ‘to steal something perhaps?’ when being questioned why he’d have it out for Sou. At that point it’s not even being bad a lying, there was no attempt to lie there he just said what happens in front of everyone and doomed himself. I love him but he’s not always the wisest. There’s something about even the main character thinking openly that he’s a bit weird. One of his first lines after being introduced is him worrying about the laundry he left hanging outside. They’ve been kidnapped and put in a death game and he’s worried about laundry. There something relatable about his limited facial expressions. His face doesn’t really change much unless he’s showing really big emotions, which makes him come across as really aloof and mysterious. The classic ’are you okay? you look sad’ face. Kai also won the most autistic Yttd character - excluding Gin- poll, so there’s that."

Albedo -

"Poor boy does NOT know how to be social with people and spends most of his time drawing stuff on a freezing mountain so he can avoid any kind of social interaction. Also he eats spiders and it's funny."

[tinyozlion]

The Char Aznable Problem 

Here’s a take for the MS Gundam fans in the audience: Using the Zechs-as-Char analogy will actually hinder you in understanding the finale of Gundam Wing.

I know there are unavoidable reasons for the comparison! Zechs is a deliberate homage, that's not in question. But I’d like to argue that taking Zechs’s actions on their own terms is the only reasonable way to evaluate them. Understanding Char’s Counterattack will certainly make Zechs’s performance more nuanced and recognizable, but expecting him to be the same person with the same copy-pasted goals is to miss the purpose of his character. 

Neither of their goals make sense outside of their respective settings and character arcs, in the same way that MS Gundam and Gundam Wing are related thematically but are both telling very different kinds of stories in different ways.

Zechs doesn’t do a heel-turn and become a Char just because the hand of the franchise swooped in and forced him to; he does a heel turn and puts on a Char Costume (…mask?) because he is playing the villain, and the villain he is playing is Char. 

Why? Because Char from Char’s Counterattack has no place in the universe of Gundam Wing. Standing up and saying Char Stuff™ in After Colony 195 makes you sound like you got the space madness. 

White Fang Milliardo shows up out of nowhere with this new kind of racism he just invented and delivers a treatise about how humans from Space have become biologically superior to humans from Earth within a couple generations... in a setting where Newtypes aren’t a thing. There is no established precedent in AC 195 for declaring that space colonists are a super-evolved utopian master race OTHER than to blatantly manufacture conflict.

 And like... ding ding ding, that’s the point. 

Char from Char’s Counterattack is a complex, disillusioned, flawed man who is trying to make the earth uninhabitable for complex, flawed reasons that he genuinely plans on carrying out.  

Milliardo is a complex, disillusioned, flawed man pretending very hard to want to make the earth uninhabitable because it’s an Ozymandias Gambit intended to galvanize all remaining forces to take part in a war that will ultimately burn through all of their military resources.

 Char from Char’s Counterattack exists in a timeline where the earth is a polluted wasteland, and the space colonies are pristine, self-sustaining eutopias with ten billion people living in them. 

Gundam Wing is a timeline where the earth is pristine, and the space colonies are oppressed dystopian slums with marginal populations still largely dependent on earth’s resources. Staging the KPG 2.0 in this context would be a death sentence for the colonies as well as the people on earth.

Char believes it’s his destiny to punish the people of earth for their selfishness and their inability to change or allow future generations to evolve. Milliardo believes the only thing he’s good for is to rid the world of people like himself, SO that the future generation has a chance to change for the better.

I’ve found that the more I know about MS Gundam, the deeper an appreciation I have for what Wing chose to adapt and where it diverged; I think that some of Wing’s greatest achievements are born from the moments it purposefully broke from its predecessor, and some of its greatest flaws come from when it chose to adapt things that just don't make sense outside of their original context-- I don't necessarily think that Milliardo pretending to be Char is one of those moments.

On the whole, what Wing feels like to me is a poignant echo of the Universal Century, as if we are seeing the reflections, the shared rhythms, of people and struggles across time and reality. Zechs is like a variation of the Char leitmotif transposed into a new composition.

…And anyway, Zechs isn’t even the Char Clone of Gundam Wing. Zechs AND Treize are the Char Clone of Gundam Wing. 

The Red Comet is an ace pilot simultaneously admired and hated for his abilities and the respect he commands as a soldier. He has the luxury of being chivalrous on the battlefield because no one can compete with him, and because his ultimate goals differ from those of the ruthless organization that holds his reigns. He has the burden of a spotless reputation hiding a dark, secret purpose. He eventually turns coat and becomes Quattro, a mentor figure to the talented pilots who idolize him and walk the same path he does. The complexities of war erode his confidence and understanding of what is right, of what is actually worth fighting for in a world where the grind of battle never stops, and the same points have to be made over, and over, and over again, paid for in the blood of young people– people just like him, who he encouraged to fight, who had bright futures ahead of them– each and every time.

The glorious Neo Zeon leader is a wheeling and dealing homme-fatale who can play the game of politics, who knows how to put on an inspiring show for the adoring masses, all while getting what he wants through deceit, charm, treachery, abuse of his charisma, even his sensuality. He is willing to do anything for what he views as the best future for humanity– particularly for the humans he thinks are worthy of that better future, all while knowing he is not one of the chosen ones. He will always carry a seed of self-loathing and insecurity with him. He knows that the version of him that people idolize is only a mirage, but he is willing to use that mirage to steer the future where he believes it should go, sacrificing whoever he needs to for an end that justifies any means.

Zechs is the ace pilot. Treize is the glorious leader. They’re both variations on theme of Char.

Char’s story takes place over the course of his lifetime, spanning multiple series-- Zechs/Milliardo simply doesn’t have time to be everything Char was in the time frame of Wing. Instead his influence is played by two people, representing different eras of his life, existing simultaneously and in coordinated opposition to each other.

Nobody can really be Char except Char, and Char can't really be substituted for Zechs or Treize within their own universe. Even clones grow up differently when they're raised in different environments.

[comradeyurika]

And with Kenanji gone, Prospera is finally ready to unleash her gambit. She certainly would have done this either way, but it is a big help for her to have one less person who could possibly see through what was going on present.

The lack of weapons insisted upon by Miorine serves as a good cover for her actions, although that was certainly not what Miorine ever had in mind from all of this.

And as Feng Jun talks with Bel, she reveals some real bombshells about what is going on and what Prospera has been up to. Ochs Earth are back, and they're being used by the Assembly League. Considering that the Dawn of Fold were using their Gundams, they must fit in to this as well, either as someone directly part of Ochs Earth/the Assembly League's plans, or as a tool that they're using. It's unclear which right now.

Miorine can only watch on in dismay as everything she was working towards goes up in flames. There is no longer a peaceful way out of this. Prospera has literally burned that hope to the ground.

Feng and Bel are on the verge of cracking the case of just what this has all been about, when Godoy shows up and ambushes them. It's unclear if Feng will survive or not, we didn't see a confirmation of her death, but I have a hard time imagining Godoy would just allow her to live; he's too much of a professional. Still, Bel and Guston have escaped for now and can start to figure out what the next step is going to be.

For now, all we can do is watch on in horror at the devastation that Prospera has wrought. The city is up in flames, families are lost, and war is here for sure now.

While Elan 5 has been given some humanity in this episode, the real Elan is just as much of a calculating sociopath as ever, while Shaddiq and Henao recognize that Prospera has dealt them a big blow. Shaddiq probably had big plans for those Gundams Prospera just blew up. And now Guel is going to be on the hunt for his next move as well, so it will be interesting to see how he navigates through that.

As the episode ends, we have a real reversal for both Suletta and Miorine. Suletta finally understands why Eri pushed her away, and she realizes what her mom has been up to this whole time. Meanwhile, Miorine can only look on in horror and bemoan how everything is her fault. In trying to free Suletta from Prospera's control, she herself was used by Prospera, and it is only now that she can actually see that. Miorine's arrogance that she understood everything has lead her here, watching the Earth that she dreamed of visiting for so long burn