#...i need to start watching more gundam

[elliewiltarwyn]

nothing really going on here, just some gpose practice with mia cause it's been a while

[kouichikimura]

Flay..stay away from the sweet angel boy Kira D:

[garygoldenbignaturals]

DO I HAVE TO WAIT FOR NEXT MACHUESDAY TO EVEN SEE MORE THAN 3 SECONDS OF KYCILIA. FUCK MY LIFE

[emiliosandozsequence]

i finished gundam witch from mercury today and hnng i can't stop thinking about it.

[boobertronian]

Gundam Model Kit

Karina x 2 friends

Proofread by @vorrentis, big thanks with the ideation from @kise15

Word counts : 5743 words All works are fiction ENJOY !!

9:30 am

On Discord server:

Cheesecatblu: Helloooo my fellow otakuuuu !!!

Chadmurogray: Hey Karina

Garcaznable: Wassup

Cheesecatblu: Yooooo!!! I’m bored!! what are you two doing ???

Chadmurogray: Uh … binging My Hero Academia

Garcaznable: Going to play resident evil

Cheesecatblu: sounds fun!!! I’m bored …

Chadmurogray: Uh… ok? you can go watch some new anime?

Garcaznable: Yeh ... I mean, we’ll never run out of them

Cheesecatblu: I binged everything !!!!!! I need something more fun !!

Chadmurogray: sorry, can’t help ya

Garcaznable: You can uh… play games ?

Cheesecatblu: played everything on my phone already…. Actually? You two, I want to ask!! What’s Gundam ????

Chadmurogray: Sci-Fi mecha anime

Garcaznable: and model kit

Cheesecatblu: What’s mecha ?? and what’s model kit ???

Chadmurogray: It’s giant robots in Japanese term

Garcaznable: and model kits are plastics you can build up

Cheesecatblu: Like Legos ??

Garcaznable: Well, plastic model kits like Gundams are something quite different than Legos. You do build stuffs, just the outcome and skills required are different. Plastic model kits are more on the detailed display side once you finished with them while Legos you can have more fun taking it apart and rebuild. Not many model kits can do that. Unless you have a bit more advance skills to do those modifications.

Chadmurogray: Many times, you’re going to need more tools for model kits to assemble too not just your hands. Take quite some time to get used to.

Cheesecatblu: Whattttt ?? That sounds cool ?? Are you two having those... Gundams?

Chadmurogray: Of course,

Garcaznable: We even go to competition

Cheesecatblu: Niceeeee !!!!! I’m searching for them now!! I saw them at the department store a lot but … I thought they’re just some kids’ toys ….

Chadmurogray: Bruh, they aren’t kid’s toys

Garcaznable: It’s a lot of effort there

Cheesecatblu: Can I try one ???? I want to do it !!!

Chadmurogray: Uh…. You really want to ?

Garcaznable: Yeh... I mean, you sure ??

Cheesecatblu: Of courseeeeeee. I’m not afraid of trying new thingssss!!!

Chadmurogray: Ok… I mean, if you want to , should start with a simple one

Garcaznable: Yeh, don’t go for the complex one, you’ll cry

Cheesecatblu: Okkkkk!! Can you teach me ???

Chadmurogray: sure … but how? Live stream ?

Garcaznable: But that might be hard though

Cheesecatblu: You can come to my houseeee !!!! I’m free now!!! NingNing is away with her fam so come over !!!

Chadmurogray: Bruh, your apartment is like more than one hour train

Garcaznale : too lazy bruh

Cheescatblu : Nuhhhhhhh!!! You got to teach me!! I’ll treat your food !

Chadmurogray: Uh… no thanks man

Garcaznable: dude, I just want to stay in my room and deep dive Resident Evil

Cheesecatblu: Noooooo!! Ok, how about, I’ll bribe you with something you like so you’ll come here and teach me ???

Chadmurogray: Uh …. What would you bribe ?

Garcaznable: Yeh, I mean, what can you bribe to make us drag our lazy asses there lol

Cheesecatblu: How about … I’ll buy you those... model kits... you like ?? So, you can show me how you do it ??

Chadmurogray: What? for real ?

Garcaznable: I mean… you can buy us those ?

Cheesecatblu: I can!!! But if I do You have to promise me, you’ll teach me !!!

Chadmurogray: Lol ok... I want MGEX Strike Freedom Gundam

Garcaznable: And I want PG Nu Gundam lol

Cheesecatblu: DONE! Ordered it for ya !!!

Chadmurogray: WHAT ?

Garcazanable : The hell, I was joking bruh

Cheesecatblu: Here are your receipts!!! You’re going to get here and get your packages once they’re being delivered!!! And then you can teach me yeyyyyy

Chadmurogray: Bruh… really ?

Garcaznable: sigh… man... I want to play resident evil dude…

Cheesecatblu: Nuh uhhhh, I bought you things so you’re going to get here!! I’ll give you till weekend!!!

Chadmurogray: Ok, I’ll fix my time then

Garcaznable: fineee, for the sake of the PG set I’ll come

Cheesecatblu: Yeyyyyyy!! See yaaaa thennn!!! Btw you said there will be tools? what sort of tools, should I get some ?

Chadmurogray: Oh, yeh forgot about that, I’ll send you a list

Garcaznable: and you should get some model to practice too, look for something with the word entry grade or SD.

Cheesecatblu: Okieeee , I’ll choose and let you know !!

A few days later

DING

Doorbell rings

“Yoooooooooo Chase!!! Yooo Garfield!!! welcome to mi casa!!”

“Gosh that was a long ass trip Karina.”

“Yeh dude… what the hell, feels like forever to get to your place.”

“Sheeessshh, I must get you two out of your cubicles, right ?? Come on I got fried chicken!! Stop complaining!”

The three friends then start dipping into their lunches.

“Damn this is some good fried chicken.”

“See ?? Told ya!! I do not want to treat my guests badly!”

“So, Ning isn’t home for the week?”

“Till next week too! So, I’m alone and boooooreeeeddd!”

“Ok, that makes sense. But your parents didn’t visit?”

“Just did yesterday! They were super surprised I bought the Gundam boxes lol.”

“So... how many did you buy?”

“5 boxes yeyyy!!”

“Damn, and you got the tools right?”

“I do! Kinda feels like buying manicure tools!”

“Ok, so once we finish the food whenever you’re ready.”

“As promised , here are your big boxes of Gundam!”

Karina goes into her room a bit then brings out two large boxes and presents them to the guys.

“Woah, holy shit!”

“Damnnnn, can’t believe I get this thing without using my own money”

“Soooooo, I bought you the Gundams!! You’re going to show me how to build MINE !!Correct?”

“Yep”

“I’m super hype!!”

“Btw, why the sudden interest?”

“Oh, you remember that MV Hot Mess I did?”

“Ohh, yeh , I mean, you did some Gundam inspired getup and your shirt too.”

“YEPPPP!! The fans kept commenting about it, so I was like huh? Gundam? So, I must ask you!”

“Ok, so, welcome to the club of Gundam builders Karina.”

“YEYYYY” Karina suddenly stands up and strikes a pose, swinging her arms clockwise.

“That’s…. Kamen Rider.”

“Oh … sorry ….”

“Anyway, yeh, you’re ready? We can start once we clean-up.”

Karina then happily brings out all her tool and the 5 Gundam boxes and put it on the coffee table.

“Okay so you have entry grade RX-78-2 Gundam, Nu Gundam, Strike Gundam and two SD Gundam Exia and Aerial , ok that’s not too bad.”

“Yeah, these are nice to start.”

“Really ??? Cool!! Can I choose one to start?”

“Yeh of course, which one you like.”

“This one!!”

“Ok, so the OG Gundam, RX-78-2. The entry grade has new technology for the kit where you can snap the parts out by hands, but for the sake of learning we’ll just show you how to do it with the tools yeh?”

“Okieeeee.”

Karina opens the box in full excitement and takes out the plastic bags with all the kit runners inside, lays it onto the table.”

“Ok Karina let’s look at the instructions here, ok? like how you do Lego, taking a good look at the instructions is vital for Gundam building. “

“Got it!”

“So do you see the words here and these numbers? when you start to look at the manual, take the part from the exact tag of the runners, and the exact number too. For example, if you look at this, A1-1, which means you’re going to look to the runners with the tag A1, and look for part number 1. Here, there it is”

“Woah ,that’s cool!”

“So here, A2-16, so we’ll look for runner A2, then part number 16. Once we take them out, we will sap them together.”

“Ok Karina, I’ll give you a demo how to cut the part out. It’s not that hard so watch closely, ok? Take your nippers and place them like this, closest to the runner and snip the part while making sure to leave some of the plastic on the part, like this.”

“Okiee.””

“Then  we will proceed to cut the excess plastic out of the part to get it prepped for the next step, which is sanding and cleanup. Here, the part just fully cut out. “

“ Nice!”

“Here’s the sanding part. Let’s grab your sandpaper, and your hobby knife. Take the knife and carefully cut the excess plastic, like this, carefully cut it out. You don’t have to do this if you have more finer nippers, but since we don’t have it here so this will do. See? Clean cut for you.”

“Woaaa, like cutting nails!”

“Lol. Ok, so grab the sandpaper and polish that part out, it will take some effort and patience but will have a good result. See? fine and clean part ready for assembly”

“Woah, that’s neat!! Lots of steps!! Can I try please?”

“Sure, it’s your kit anyway, let’s try and we’ll help”

“Yesss”

Karina then carefully looks at the instruction, then finding the runners, cut out the part in good precision.

“Careful, don’t cut to close. Yes, that’s it, cut it right about there.”

“Okieee.”

Karina then carefully cut the part out, then following the step to cut the excess plastic. She then grabs the sand sticks and sandpapers to polish it.

“This is like doing manicure with all the sandings!!! Look! My part is ready!”

“Huh, nice job. For a beginner you did good though”

“I know I do hehehe! Ok!! Onto the next part!”

“Yep, go ahead, take your time don’t rush “

Karina follows the instructions closely. Parts after parts are being cut out of the runners, then being polished with precisions. She then snaps the parts, slowly building up the Gundam’s head.

“Look!! I formed the head!! So cool!!”

“LOL that’s some Voltron reference right there, but yeh congrats Karina, you did it. You built the first part. Now let’s do it with the rest of them. Be patient.”

“Yesssss”

Karina once again dives back into the kit. Pieces by pieces of the Gundam are being built and polished with her tools and surprisingly good beginner’s skills, from the torso to the arms, then the legs, then the weapons Once everything done, she snaps everything together and fully form her first Gundam.

“OMGGGGGG!!! LOOOOK CHASE & GARFIELD !!!! I DID IT!!! MY FIRST GUNDAMMMMM !!!!! OMG HE’S SUPER CUTEEEE AND SO COOL!!” Karina screams in excitement, like a child learning how to build her first toy.

“Gotta admit, you did very well Karina. Like, I’m impressed.”

“Yeh, and you did it fast too. We were quite struggling back then. Fully built and polished.”

“I’m going to call him Rocket Punch Gundam!!”

Karina then immediately taking pics of the Gundam , and post it on her Instagram

Katarinablu: My first Gundam !!!!! So cool !!!! You guys are building Gundams too? Let’s build together !!

Aerichandesu: What the, who let you do this Jimin lol

Imwinter: Jimin-unnie so cool!!

Imnotningning: Woooa Unnie!! I want to try too!!!

“Okeeee So now let’s do another one!! This is addictive!!”

“Sure, this time you should try all by yourself without us interfering. Sounds cool?”

“Yeppp!! Wait and see!!”

A few hours later…

“Taaaaaadaaaaaaaa!!! Rocket Punch Gundam now has friends yayyyyyyy”

“Dope, great job Karina, that was very good.”

“ Yeh, never thought you’ll learn this fast.”

“Yisssss!!! Now we’re going to build more!!”

“Actually , I think we must get back home, it’s getting pass the evening. Our places are far from yours, so we need to catch the train soon.”

“Whattttt ??? Noooooo!!! I want to build more! You promised you’ll teach me more!”

“Yeh but it’s late man, we need to get back home too.”

“Nuuhhhhhh!! But I’ll buy you food and I can set up place for you to stay here and keep teaching me!”

“Well, we can come back later.”

“Nuhhhhh!! You might run away for real!! how about this …” Karina then suddenly proposes an idea that the two couldn’t believe their ears.

“How about... I let you have sex with me , then you stay and teach me!”

“WHAT?”

“NANI?”

“Why do you sound so surprised! I’ve been noticing you too stare at my boobs since you got here lol. You think I didn’t know that?”

“Ah shit, she knows.” Chase thinks in his head

“Oh fuck, busted.” Garfield also thinks in his head

“You two are just those perverts!! I caught you two staring at my boobs in the mirror all this evening , bruhhhh , how dare you!!! But well, since you taught me how to build Gundam I let it slide ~~ “

“Uh…. well… I mean… we did stare at your boobs ...”

“Yeah... they’re big …”

“And not only my boobs, my entire body too! Man, you two were being caught off guard without you know it!! Am I right ????”

“Yeh…”

“ Tell me, you guys’ love seeing big boobs girls ~~?”

“Yeh...”

“And I bet you two watch JAV and pornos ~~”

“We did too...”

“And you ever had sex before ~~?”

“Well, I did last week, Garfield not so much lol.”

“Dafuck, I did last week too “

“How was it ~~”

“It was ok” the two answered in unison

“Then how about, if you have sex with me, I’ll let you do things you always wanted with me ~~ Considering this is your payment for me buying those Gundam boxes for you, even if I paid already ~`”

“Uh … like… for real?”

“You’re not joking right?”

“Why do I have to? ~~”

Karina then proceeds to take her hands and grab onto her tiddies, squishing them a bit just to tease the two guys.

“See ~~ Big and squishy ~~ You love it right? ~~”

“Not going to lie, those are nice pairs Karina.”

“Yeh… Those are nice.”

“Then go ahead and touch them ~~”

Garfield and Chase approach Karina, hesitantly move their hands towards their boobs, touching her in each side.

“That tickles ~~ But I like it ~~”

“SO ... we ... can do this with you for real?”

“You won’t call police on us… right?”

“Why? I want some sex anyway ~~ Been a while I have any , too busy ~~ how about this, I was thinking, how about, I have another proposal, or a dare if you call it : If I can build a Gundam while you guys have sex with me, you will show me more skills! And I’m very confident with my multitasking ability ~~”

“What the ?? … No way you can do that Karina, we just taught you how to do it hehe.”

“Yeah, I mean, you’re still beginner level, even though you learned fast, that sounds... impossible and… like seriously, how can you even focus doing … that. Ain’t no way you can lol.”

“You underestimated my power !!~~”

“ But seriously, you let us … really do this?”

“Yeh... sounds like a weird prank.”

“Stop it!! Just do it already!! We’re wasting time!!! Come one don’t you want to see me naked ~~”

Karina then stands back a bit.

She pulls off her oversize shirt and strips down her baggy pants, revealing her pink lingerie, grabbing her tits to tease the two.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Go for it!”

The two slowly approaches Karina again, putting their hands on each side of her tits.

They grab a handful of her boobs, squishing it lightly, still a bit scared of the invitation.

Karina then spices things up, she unbuttons her bra and throws it to the side, letting her tiddies bounce out of it and slight motion.

“Holy shit that’s … bouncy”

““Yeh… your tits are nicely ... big.”

“I know right? ~ You’re not the only ones said that ~~ Come on, you should do more than just touching them ~”

The two seem to get her idea, they use their hands and fingers to grab on her bare tits again, using their fingers to tease the hardened pink nipples, circling their finger digits around it, letting Karina’s body shakes slightly.

Once they feel enough courage, both then dive their mouths into her of her nipples, licking and sucking them tastefully.

Her body scent arouses them, keeping them hooked into her big mounds.

Their hands and mouths are working in coordination, feasting on Karina’s lustful tiddies m leaving her moaning out through the motions.

“Ahh ~~ Ahh ~~ Oh my ~~your tongues and hands ... are making me … ahh … feel good ~~”

“ Your tits are amazing Karina, they’re so soft.”

“I couldn’t stop tasting them.”

“My tits are high quality treasures don’t you know that ~~ Ah ~~ Yesss right there … But my lower body. ~~ ahh ~~ Needs some care too ~!”

The two guys then move their other hands down to her slim waist, massaging along her curves.

Then their fingers reach into her undies, slowly remove it down, with Karina also kicks it to the side, leaving her body naked in full glory.

The guys use their fingers to run along her pussy lips, while the others on her curvy buttcheeks.

They alternate with each other back and forth, grabbing and teasing her entrances and curvy backside.

Their fingers work their ways into the interior of her pink tight walls,  moving in and out of her front wet entrance, while also circling around her tiny pink backdoor.

The smoothness of her body makes the guys feel irritated to do even more, with their mouths, hands and fingers are attacking her fair skin body, faster and rougher than before due to their rising horniness, and Karina loves every single bit of it.

“Ahhh ~~ Oh … yess ~~~ Ahhh ~~ Sooo… freakin… good ~`”

“You’re… leaking now Karina.”

“Yeh… I think... you’re getting wet “

“Of course, I am wet ~~ I feel so  ~~ ahhh ~~ So freaking good ~~ I guess ~... I’m going to return the favor for you guys ~~”

Karina then pauses the guys a bit. She then kneels to their knees, rubbing her small palms onto their jeans, feeling their bulges forming up.

She helps them pull down the zippers, then their pants down to their knees.

Their hardened dicks pop right out to her face , pointing straight into her lips.

“Dang, big for me ~~”

“can’t help seeing you naked like this Karina …”

“Yeh… too hard for you now …”

“That’s the plan ~~”

Karina uses her fingers to play around with their tips, sensing their leaking precums.

Her tiny palms are stroking along their hard dicks, prepping them up harder.

As the guys start to breathe harder with her hand’s movements, Karina then takes Garfield’s dick into her lips, surprising him .

“Ah… shiet... Karina.”

“Enjoy ~~”

Karina moves her lips in and out of his tip, using her tongue to circle around and runs alongside the veins of his lengthy rod, sucking him in and out.

She doesn’t leave out Chase either, switching to him immediately and taking him whole, alternating her head left and right, giving her partners the blowjobs of their lives.

Chase and Garfield slowly pull off their shirts, then quickly discard their jeans as well. Looking at Karina in her naked self-raising up their hormones to the roof.

“Oooh , buff bodies ~~ You guys do sports?”

“Taekwondo for years actually”

“Jiu-jitsu, been taking my brown belt.”

“Woaaa ~~ buff nerds, I like that ~~ AT least you’re not those closet garage nerds ~~”

Karina keeps on sucking the guys, faster in paces.

She teases their ball sacks with her palms as well, taking them from the tip to the base, spicing things up with giving them titfucks, wrapping her big pairs around their erected rods, wanting them to focus all the attentions onto her.

Her tight walls are leaking of her own juice, quickly stain the floor down below.

“Hope you guys like this ~~”

“Fuck that’s hot…”

“Can’t believe … you’re doing who’s going to do this …”

“Then I guess you guys should prepare for the next steps then ~~”

Karina then stands up and walks towards the coffee table.

She puts out the instructions and runners, along with the tools preparing for the build.

In quick movement she gets to an all-four position, pointing her butt towards the guys, using her hand so slap her cheeks a bit, with her fingers spreading her wet lips out for them.

“Come on now ~~ Who want to go first ~~ I’m ready ~~ Fuck me in this now ~~”

Chase goes first, he gets behind her, lining up his tip to her pussy lips, hesitant to penetrate her with his rod, but he does so anyway, making Karina shakes a bit with the penetration.

“Ahh `~ big, really big ~~”

“Still not so sure doing this with you Karina …”

“Don’t be ~~ Do it, fuck me ~~ I insist on it!”

Chase then pushes his dick further inside her pussy, inches and inches of his dick are passing through her wat and warm hole, reaching into the deepest of her vagina.

Prepping his hip, he starts pounding into Karina, making her moan out in pleasure.

“Let’s see ... Ahhh … so good … Ok ~~ A2-17 going to connect to B2-11 for the head parts.... AHhh ~~ Ohh ~~ SO bigg ~~ A1-1 connects to... Ahh ~~ to A2-16... ~~ Omg this is great ~~” Karina slowly cuts out the parts from the Gundam runners, snapping the pieces together to form the Gundam’s head, while enjoying the penetration from Chase inside her tight walls.

Seeing Karina somehow can hold on into the task, Chase gains some confidence, pounding her faster, making her tits bounce back & forth along with her body.

Her erotic moans are music to both Chase and Garfield’s ears, as they’re starting to feel like this is going to be one hell of a sexual event.

“Ahhh fuckkkk … SO tight Karina!! Fuckkkk how can you even do this?”

“Cause that’s me ~~ I can do anything! Ahh ~~ So good ~~ Keep fucking me ~~ Ok , taking this part here for A1-2  then  A2-15 …for the horns… Ahhhhh ~~ Keep doing it!” Karina still focuses on her task at hand, while taking his big dick inside her.

Garfield couldn’t hold himself anymore, he suddenly taps onto Chase’s shoulder to switch up, with Chase reluctantly removes himself from Karina’s warm walls.

Garfield then quickly penetrates himself into her , pounding her hard and good like she always wanted.

“Ohh ~~ Ahhh ~~ So good… fuckkk ~~~ I... finished the head see ~~ Ahh ~~ Oh shit so hard ~~... Now let’s continue…. A2-12 connects to A1-4 and ... Ahhh shittt so good ~~ … A2-14 for the torso … oh ~~”

“Damn Karina, you did it, nice job … And fuckkkk you’re so tight!”

“I told you ~~ I … ahh ~~ Fuckkkk I can do it… ~~”

Without any more delays, Garfield and Chase are repeatedly switching and pounding Karina in turns, smacking their lower bodies into her incredibly hot walls, while she’s continuing her tasks with the Gundam kit.

Her head and body are shaking and tilting up & down, but that doesn’t stop her to proceed with her crafts at hand.

“let’s change position boys ~~ how about I ride you ~~ I like that one ~~”

“Sure!”

The three then switch up to cowgirl position, with Karina, hands are still holding the Gundam kit and nippers, but body is bouncing up and down one guy after another.

The bounces of her body and her big tiddies are not much of a problem for her, as she adjusts herself quickly to the new position.

“Ahhhh ~~ Fuckkk ~~... Ohhhh My goddd so gooooddd ~~!!! Ok … New parts to do … A2-20... then A1-4 to ... Ahh ~~ the waist... Ahhh shitt keep pounding me ~`”

“Fuck you’re looking hot like this Karina!!”

“Yeahh!! Still so surreal seeing you like this!! Fuckk!”

“I guess … you’re going to want... to do more with me ~~ Ahhh ~~ fuckk ~~ Do you … Wanna go further ?~~”

“What’s in your mind Karina?”

“Like… you can even do more ?? Like ... for real?”

“of course!!! ~~ See? The head and upper torso is almost there … minus the arms and lower torso, and the weapons ~~how about… We get spicy ~~”

Karina then removes herself from the guys, snapping some parts of the Gundam tightly.

Then she proposes an idea that shocks the two even more.

“You two, must have heard of… double penetration, right? ~~”

“Yeh… wait a minute… you’re not … suggesting that do you?”

“Like… how is that even possible to do… when you have the Gundam ???”

“You guys keep doubting me!!! YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER !!!! See I learned that from Star Wars hehe.”

“I mean… we… don’t want to well, make you uncomfortable with that one.”

“Yeah… I mean… that will be hard.”

“Nuuuhhhh!!! I never tried it before ~~ Now I want to, and since we have three people here, why not ~~ Come on, I insisted to do it ~~ Don’t you wanna fuck me at the same time? ~~ I know it’s your dreams ~~”

“Well... since you insisted … don’t say we didn’t warn ya first Karina …”

“Yeh... we will not be responsible for your Gundam to be broken though…”

“You’ll love it , I want it , trust me ~~ And… since you two haven’t cum yet, that’s your chances ~~”

The two guys then prepping Karina once again, groping her big tits and thighs, slapping her curvy cheeks just to rile her up again.

Then Garfield, knowing the cue, he then lays his body down the carpet below, dick is poking up for Karina to sit straight on top of him, bouncing hard for a few bounces while still cutting and snapping the Gundam parts.

Chase then quickly gets behind Karina’s beautiful curvy back, pushing her body slightly down to Garfield, revealing her tiny pink anus.

Using his index finger, he’s teasing her tight entrance, spreading it out slowly with Karina suddenly gasps for air, hands are still holding the Gundam parts.

Slowly and slowly, Chase penetrates his hard tip towards her tiny hole, making some efforts to pass her entrance, with Karina suddenly blurts out a big moan

“AHHH ~~~ FUCKKKK ~~ Been a while ~~ I take it … ahhhh ~~~ In my ass ~~~ Hurry … push it in meee ~~”

“Fuckk it’s freakin tight Karina! “

Chase’s slow and patient efforts are being paid off, as his erected rod finally fully penetrates deep inside Karina’s tight anal hole.

With two hard erected dicks are fully sheathed inside her two holes, Karina has nothing to say but only one line

“AHHHH ~~ FUCKKK MEEE ~~~ “

Hearing her erotic command, the two guys start to move their bodies, pumping in and out of Karina in good paces.

They’re going harder at this point probably nothing can stop them from enjoying this sexual act with their beautiful partner, who’s surprisingly can still be aware of building the Gundam while her holes are being smashed repeatedly.

“AHHHHHH ~~~ FUCKKK ~~~ OHHHH~~~ Hahhhh ~~ Ok … ~~~ B1-7 … connects to A1-11 ... AHHH FUCKK ~~~ THAT’S SOOO GOOOD ~~ Then …. B1-6 ... connects to that part... for the arms …. AHHH `~~ Then A1-10 … OH FUCKK MY HOLES !!~~”

Karina moans louder, closing to screaming.

Her face and body are turning red from pleasure, her hair flips back and forth along with her big tiddies, while her bodies are being pounded relentlessly by her two partners, almost on the verge of breaking her.

Their poundings are faster and rougher, fucking Karin’s body holes to cloud nine, while she’s doing her best to maintain her crafts, mouth is fully open with erotic sounds.

Their cocks are filling her heating holes, one in and one out, penetrating her deep and with harsh velocities, leaving Karina with ultimate pleasure.

“AHHH FUCKKKKK ~~~ SOOO GOOD ~~ I LOVE ITTTT ~~ Hahhh… So ... A1-6... connects to A1-5..., AHHHHH ~~ KEEP FUCKING MEE ~~ … then ... connect with ... AHHH ~~~ B1-9 for the shoulder… HAAHHHH ~~~ ICAN FEEL YOUR DICKS INSIDE MEE !!~~”

“Fuckkk your; fuckin hot Karina!!! So tightttttt!”

“SShiettttt… Can’t stop fucking you !~!!”

“Then… ~~ KEEEP GOINGG AHHH ~~”

The two continues to pound Karina’s body for a couple few minutes, with her still incredibly still handles the situation with the Gundam, almost finishing its upper body.

It’s about time, as the two guys are finally giving in to their orgasm

“Karina… Going to cumm... Fuckk!”

“Gonna… fuckk... can’t hold anymore!”

“CUM IN MEE ~~ I’M ALMOST THERE TOO ~~!!”

And without a doubt, the two guys finally shoot their hot cum inside her beautiful warm holes, filling her completely shots after shots.

Their body tense up, stay still from their orgasms, with Karina fully enjoy they’re cum inside her, breathing hard in and out from her messy state. Karina does some final steps, fully snapping the remaining parts of the Gundam’s torso and handheld weapon, happily show to the guys while still recovering from her tired self.

“Look ~~~ See ~~ Upper parts done !!!~~ Hahh... you fucked me good ~~~ I love it ~~ “

“Fuck you’re amazing Karina… “

“Yeh... and great job with the Gundam so far too… fuck you’re so great ...”

“Soo… hahh… We... still have the lower parts… how about... we switch to a new position... one last time … ~~”

“I can’t see why not Karina!”

“Hell yeah!”

The two then do their bests to remove themselves from her, sorely standing up preparing for one final round.

Once they stand up, they can see Karina’s holes are leaking out with them cum, with them smile at each other happily.

“See ~~ You’re cum is leaking in me ~~ It’s hot right ?? !!~~ Now, one more time !!~~ Gimme a HOT MESS ~~”

Garfield once again taking the bottom, sitting on the sofa while holding Karina up, but this time he puts Karina in a reverse position, pushes his cock deep in her ass, while Chase takes the top with her pussy, fully penetrating her once again.

The three people continue their final sexual act, with the guys are pounding Karina with no mercy and non-stop, intending to give their all to her.

Karina doesn’t see this as a challenge anymore; she continues to build the final parts of the Gundam while having two big cocks thrusting inside her holes.

“AHHHH ~~ MORE PLEASE ~~~ KEEP FUCKING MEE ~~ SOO GOOD ~~ So ... B1-8 ... connects to A3-22… then B1-10 for the hip part… AHHH `~~~ FUCKK DON’T STOPPPP ~~”

Seeing Karina is still minding her business while taking their cocks, the two guys’ erotic souls skyrocket to the roof, their bodies are charging up like Super Saiyans, thrusting in her holes with mighty forces, it’s like they can seriously break her.

“AHHHH, I LOVE IT ~~~!!! HARDER PLEASE ~~~!!!! Ahh… this part…. B3-17 to … A30-23 … AHHH ~~~ for the kneecaps… ~~ then B3-20 to B3-16 ... AHHH ~~ FUCK YOUR DICKS ARE BIGGG IN ME ~~~… Ahhh… Gonna... finish the leg… AHHH ~~~~FUCKKK~~”

“Fuckkk... man you really UP’d your skills Karina!”

“Shiettt … you’re one crazy girl Karina!”

“DON’T STOP OK !!~~ I’M ALMOST THERE !!!~~~ Hahhh B3-19 to A4-30 for the feet AHHH ~~~ SO GOODDDDD ~~ FUCK ME HARDDD ~~Almost done ~~~!!”

“Karina I’m close ...!! Going to cumm again !!’

“Oh fuckkk !!!! Going to cummm 1!!”

“BLOW YOUR CUM IN ME !!~~~~ I’M DONEE!!”

The two guys erupt they’re cum inside Karina’s holes again, pouring out every of their juices into her, as the three of them hit their final orgasms of the day.

Loads of cum are flowing into Karina, with her face right now is full of satisfactions, both from the cum and the Gundam.

Tiredly remove themselves from Karina, Chase and Garfield flop down to the ceramic floor, body full of sweats, their dicks are slowly turning to their original states, while catching their breathes from the aftermath.

Karina sorely walks between the, drops her body down to the floor, facing up the ceiling, body reddened, holes are gaping and leaking thick white cum.

In a surprise act, she then startles the guys

“Tada ~~~ Fully assemble … STRIKE GUNDAM ~~!!” 

“Man... you’re something Karina, great job!”

“One hell of an achievement Karina...!”

“Glad you two likes my result, and glad you feel good fucking me ~~”

“Fuck yeah we did.”

“Fucking hell, you’re seriously … from another world...”

“ Guess we should continue like this more ~~”

“Actually ... Karina... it’s... very late... we must get home…. The bus won’t be much after this hour…”

“Yeh… but... we promise ... we’ll come back to teach you ... how to do ... panel linings … and paintings... and more kits if you like ...”

“Sure ~~ You did your bests today ~~ You can go ~~ Take your rewards with you ok ~~ if not I’ll touch them hehe ~~ Pinky swears for me and ... see you soon ~~”

“Thanks for the gifts, Karina!! G9!”

“Yeh!! See ya next week!”

“G9 you two ~~”

The two then start cleaning themselves and packing their things, dressing up and run down to the bus stop.

Karina, still laying down fully naked, cum are still leaking from her holes, slowly stands up and grabs her phones.

She then takes some nude selfies with the Gundam’s, either doing cute poses with them, or putting them on her tits and thighs for some erotic selfies.

Once done, she opens her private chat and send to a person.

Cheesecatblu_:  Hey, look Aeri-Chan, Gundam’s and nude selfies ~~

Aerikim_gi: Lol, you did it, you fulfilled my dare for the day, you finally fucked them with the Gundams haha

Cheesecatblu_: told ya I can do it !!~~

Aerikim_gi: guess it’s my turn for the Gundam sex lol. But hey, you still have one more dare left

Cheesecatblu_:  And what will it be? ~~

Aerikim_gi: POST IT ON YOUR INSTAGRAM HAAHAHAHAAH

Cheesecatblu_:  YOU’RE ON !!!!

[pretentiousfork]

I give up, I needed to scribble something quick. Firstly, because the week was a fucking mess and I need endorphins! Secondly, to get him out of my head at least for a little bit :"3

We haven't reached this series yet, but i start watching Gundam only because of this pretty creature

and one more under cut

what a snack aaa

[zoe-oneesama]

Hey Zoe sorry to disturb you if you are busy but um is Angelic layer like Gundam build divers only more expensive and you have to buy your own gaming console to go with it? I've never watched angelic layer so I don't know.

Don't worry babes, I gotchu. (I'll also be explaining this as it happens IN the story). I'll walk you step by step what it takes to start playing Angelic Layer, and give a summary of what gameplay is like at the end.

To start, you need an Egg.

Can't just buy a premade doll, you gotta buy the doll suspended in weird shock absorbent gel that ruins your bathroom.

Different Eggs will have different dolls, though female body type tend to reign supreme in the show/manga (it'll be more even in my AU).

Then, you have to cut the dolls hair.

Hope you're good at wig styling, your doll will have this hair forever~

Then, with an Angelic Layer Laptop and Angelic Layer Rings..thingies, you can customize and activate the doll. This is where you'll set stats, like prioritizing speed or strength, light or heavy.

In the manga, these are never seen again, which makes them super wasteful 🙃The anime at least brings them back when Misaki (the main character) needs to repair her doll, so that's probably where the value comes from.

Now the doll is technically playable, but you still need an outfit. You could probably buy some premade ones from the store, but it's apparently the standard to just make your own, given how Customization is kinda the whole point.

Congrats, you're ready to play! Oh wait, no you're not, you need an Angel Card to enter tournaments. You know, as proof that you're registered (and thus are giving tournament entry fees money~). It doubles as a points card that your winnings go to.

Obviously that's points = MONEY when you're just starting out. And to start out, you need to practice, so, time to rent a practice ring!

As the image says, you need a headset to take control of your angel, which means these practice rings and tournament settings are the only place you can actually play with your angel! 🙃You can't play at home~! (Okay, the anime introduced the idea of home rings but they're obviously massive, like a coffee table, and the one they had was a prototype and I bet the electric bill on that would be insane-)

So that's how the game works - Deus' (players) control their Angels (dolls) with a headset that only works within Angelic Layers. There, they engage in 1 v 1 battles which are won under two conditions - knock your opponent outside of the layer, or knock your opponent's HP points to zero. (both the anime and manga are unclear on what constitutes as a more powerful attack).

Over the course of the original series, terrains were added - ice covered landscapes, an island beach, rocky mountains, the anime added a pirate boat as a setting lol. Since my AU will be taking place full decades after the original, these will be standard from the beginning, with these flat layers only being really present when practicing.

So yeah, despite being called a "game", the level of commitment and money you have to put down to "play" makes it feel a lot more like a sport, and I have some jaded ass biases against certain sports that I'll be exploring with this AU lol, thus my constant jabs at how expensive it probably is despite price never really coming up in the original series.

[genshingorlsrevengeance]

You know, what would Firefly think of a s/o who has the G-Gundam or Armored Core mech?

(H:SR) Firefly with an overdramatic S/O

I spent the last 2 hours writing for this piece, only to realize it was exceeding 2.5k words so I'm drafting that and scaling this back down because I got WAY too carried away. But enough of that!

LET'S GET THINGS STARTED! GUNDAM FIGHT, READDYYYYYY...GOOOOOOOOO!

Firefly has met some strange people in her life so far. There were the Stellaron Hunters, the people of Penacony, the Astral Express Crew, and countless more.

Even if they seemed fine on the surface, any extended period of time spent witht hem would prove that they would be unhinged in some capacity. But in this vast galaxy, of course they would be! Who wouldn't?

Firefly couldn't deny she had some strange qualities herself, and yet nothing could prepare her to meet the King/Queen of Hearts.

And absolutely nothing in this universe could have told her that she would have fallen in love with this person.

Firefly was inside her own suit as she watched her S/O first enter that colorful mech of theirs, kicking and punching rapidly as their transformation finished.

What stunned her the most was that people just watched it happen.

Upon realizing that she was SAM, most people immediately went for their guns or tried to stop her in some capacity.

Then again, they were probably stunned by the yelling and grunting S/O was doing as they performed some honestly pretty admirable martial arts skills.

And before anyone could react, S/O lunged forward with their right hand burning.

(S/O) "ERUPTING, BURNING, FIIIIIIIIINGEEEEEEEEEEEEER!-"

To which those admirable skills turn into something horrifying, as their robotic fist suddenly grabbed someone's torso, lifted them into the air.

(S/O) "AND NOW, HEAT END!"

Firefly watched with a mixture of curiosity and terror as the guard they had grabbed suddenly exploded, without any warning or even any way to trigger that explosion as far as her suit could tell.

S/O seemingly could just detonate whatever object they grabbed after screaming their signature move on command.

(Firefly) "If I can ask, how exactly can you do that?"

(S/O) "Hah! It is a secret technique from the Undefeated of the East! The School of Master Asia! However, of all the people I have met in this world, I believe you could master it as I did!"

She couldn't deny that their moves were effective, and honestly it'd be great if her suit could recreate their devastation.

But...did she really have to scream out their moves?

And much to her embarassment, yes she would.

In the worst way possible: In front of all the other Stellaron Hunters.

It was during the climax of their first mission together, S/O and Firefly had traveled together for nearly half a year as friends, usually on their own and sometimes joined by other companions.

The two had developed feelings, but Firefly was too conscious of her identity as a Stellaron Hunter and Elio's script, and S/O was never good at speaking their mind, always thinking with their fist first.

But after an argument, Firefly felt guilty and charged off to defeat their final quarry alone, causing her suit to get heavily damaged, with S/O rushing in just in time to save her.

...

(S/O) "FIREFLYYYYY!"

S/O's suit flew down next to Firefly's, one hand propping her back up as they shook her.

(S/O) "Firefly...Can you hear me?"

(Firefly) "...S/O?"

Her suit's hand grabbed theirs, yet S/O took that moment to phase out of his suit, much to her confusion.

(S/O) "I don't need you to answer just...hear me out...When you told me that your mission with me was part of your script...I was angry, yes but...it doesn't matter."

Firefly's suit phased out promptly with S/O's, letting her wide-eyed expression be seen fully.

Truth be told, she was actually fine, better than S/O, she had suffered much worse than this, but decided to stay quiet.

(S/O) "Did you seriously think that I would hate you when you told me who you were? About your mission?"

(Firefly) "I...I didn't want to lie to you, S/O. You had told me everything about you and I...-"

S/O shook their head, gently standing her up finally, both their hair drifting along the wind, ashes from the fires below them slowly scattering into the air-

WAIT, THE MONSTER-

Firefly's eyes turned to the corner, seeing the monster-...

...Patiently waiting? It was literally standing a few dozen meters away, towering over them and not doing anything as S/O continued to spill their heart out.

(S/O) "Do you remember what I said before we fought? That once this mission was over, I wanted to talk to you about something?"

Firefly's attention was brought back to S/O, who held both her hands tightly as their soft expression made them her only focus.

(S/O) "I'm a person who's ill at ease and only knows how to fight. That's why it's been hard for me to say this...Honestly, I...I...!"

S/O clenched their fist, just as the fires around them surged even higher, the heat escaping both their notice as her heart skipped a beat.

(S/O) "I LOVE YOU! I WANT TO BE WITH YOU!"

At that very moment, both their suits came back on as the flames swirled, as if moved and empowered by S/O's confession.

The absurdity of this situation was ignored by Firefly, who only shed a single tear, her guilt being replaced by overwhelming love and determination.

Though unknown to her at that moment, Silver Wolf, Kafka, Blade, and even Elio was watching from the sideline.

(Kafka) "So, was this cheesy love story in the script too?"

(Elio) "All I could see was that The King/Queen of Hearts would be an ally. I said and saw absolutely nothing about...whatever this is."

(Silver Wolf) "Maybe it's a secret romance route?"

(Blade) "Why did the monster stop attacking them midway...?"

As if on cue, the monster lunged forward to attack, though the Stellaron Hunters saw S/O and Firefly step into motion, still inside their mechs.

Both their hands were still held together, facing outwards as if ready to tango.

(Elio) "...What are they?-"

(S/O & Firefly) "THESE HANDS OF OURS ARE BURNING RED!"

Instead of Sam's voice coming through the mech, it was entirely her own, loud and clear with her S/O.

She didn't have time to think how ridiculous they looked, Firefly was too caught up in the moment with them.

Letting go for a split moment, they both extended their fist outwards.

(S/O) "THEIR LOUD CRY TELLS US-"

(Firefly) "TO GRASP HAPPINESS!"

The wings on S/O's suit flared out as a glowing halo appeared behind them, while Firefly's entered Complete Combustion, the suit's visor flipping up as energy wings shot out from her back.

Instead of actually using their weapons, Firefly and S/O got into position to tango dance once again, with a heart of pure energy forming behind them.

(S/O & Firefly)

"SEKIHA LOVE LOVE TENKYOKEN!"

With their furthest arms, they both motioned together outwards and to the monster, the heart that had formed behind them turning into a physical projectile, which was still heart-shaped somehow, through the chest of the beast.

(Kafka) "...Oh my god.-"

(Blade) "This is asinine.-"

(Silver Wolf) "This is cringe."

With their fists raised high and hands burning red, the two flew off into the sky as explosions erupted from the massive, comical, heart shaped hole in the monster, a final detonation setting the trees ablaze, the two mechanized lovers leaving a pink trail behind them.

Which was impressive, given that Firefly's thruster colors were typically blue in that mode.

Later on, Firefly would get teased by Kafka and Silver Wolf about their whole "love" technique being able to destroy monsters.

Meanwhile Elio and Blade tried to forget they even saw the whole affair.

[starlightmoon96]

Yandere TFP Ratchet x female human reader(Gundam model builder nerd) pt.1

(Not a lot of fanfics of gundam builder nerds and I figured that it would make a perfect combo for something a little different)

__

You where a gundam nerd, from the old models from the 90's to the much more modern ones. Even as a kid you had a strong love for them and would always ask your parents in getting you the model you wanted, your mom was confused why you wanted figurine models like a nerd that lived in his parents basement and never spoken to real women before. Though she saw that you where improving in school with your focus and ingenuity thanks to building the models, your father was on your side with the model building and supported it seeing how much it was helping. By the time you graduated high school you where already a master builder and model painter, so much so that you had gotten commission orders and started earning income for college.

As to how you met the autobots, well it was by accident really bulkhead had almost ran you over after you where in a hurry in getting the tools you needed for your recent commission order. That's where it started, it also worked great for you in having a new building area at the base for more of your detail works. Ratchet wasn't that happy when Optimus as assigned him to you as your guardian and you didn't argue much, you where living your greatest dream. To you it was like having real gundams around and you couldn't be any happier. The kids especially miko where impressed that you build gundam models and being paid in building them, Raf was impressed by the detail work you did with the hand painting of a master grade model that was for a commission.

When the kids were at school you stayed at the base a good chunk of the time since you did online classes and the large space you now had really helped you out, at first Ratchet was worried that you where a talking. But to his surprise you weren't when you where working on a model project or doing school work, he was happy that you understood the value of space and not speaking unless spoken too. You reminded him of himself especially seeing how focused you where in paying attention to details on your models, a lot like him with paying attention to detail whenever he works. He had grown curious into your building and painting, though he admits that he was impressed by some of the designs of the gundams especially the high grades in seeing the detail work and small parts.

Ratchet was impressed when you showed him the detail how too sheets in putting the models together, the amount of patients and being observant for what your liked building got his attention and he ended up started to talk to you and open up to you a little bit more.

To his surprise you wanted to know the model details of his species, you explained your reasons because of all the gundam you had watch and was curious. None of the human children of Fowler had ever asked that before and you where generally curious which he could tell, it had also brought up your science and engineer side that he had never noticed before upon him showing you his blueprints. Seeing your eyes sparkle seeing the blueprints fascinated him, he didn't think humans where capable of being mesmerized by cybertronian anatomy. He slowly started feeling close to you like thee other members of his team with the human children, though he was happy he had someone knew to talk too and understand.

When the children weren't around or the rest of the autobots where out, Ratchet would talk with you when you where at the base working on another model. Instead of building you where painting a 3-D model that you where being paid in doing for a client.

"You've been doing a lot of painting lately (Y/N), is there a reason?" Ratchet asked that out of curiosity and you replied while still staying focused on your model

"I have a deadline with some of these models, I also need the extra cash in paying my tuition loan. It's starting to breath down my neck. The faster I get these done the faster I get paid, not to mentioned my jerk landlord just increased my rent." Ratchet heard thee annoyance in your voice, you continued speaking as you sighed

"If I'm being honest with ya, I'm afraid I might have to move back with my parents if things get worse." Hearing that part Ratchet couldn't help but be a little concerned

"Didn't you mention something about not being from Jasper?"

"Yay I grew up around Los Vegas, serious nightmare fuel for builders like myself and a lot of freaks at night. I like Jasper because it's quiet and no crazy weirdos or basement nerds wanting my phone number." Where your words when you got focused back on your model that you where almost finished with, you didn't notice the look Ratchet was giving you while you where focused on something else. He had concern, he had finally found someone knew and interesting to talk to even if it was human. He started even enjoying your company and like listening to your conversations with him, he didn't want to lose you. Though when he realized that he started questioning himself about what he was feeling, now this is an old bot much like Optimus who wasn't the confident with his emotions and YOU knew right away that Ratchet had little to no experience when it came to romance. But he wasn't thee only bot you noticed that had that same problem, you easily could tell that Optimus Prime was in a worse bot than Ratchet when it came to love. Both felt appreciation and care but it wasn't the same thing, you could easily roast everyone's lives and choose not too in not being a jerk.

Despite your strong love in Gundams more than real guys you where an expert in dating, you had helped a lot of nerds getting girlfriends and they paid you well enough to cover half of your college tuition before you graduated. They even paid you extra in giving them a makeover, along with speak dating progress. When you moved you had to leave your match making business and it was when you had finished painting the model was when you had thee idea in restarting that business, using Jack and Miko in helping to spread the word would really help you out.

Now for Ratchet when he started to see you a little less after close to a week because of your online classes or had recently started your other side business with the help of the children, it had started making him a little depressed. It was in your absence that he realized that he had cared for you a little too much and was in denial of it, it didn't want to convince himself that he had developed feeling for a human. Little did he know that him in denial would make things worse....

[thequietkid-moonie]

Hey there! I really liked the hc you did with the girls finding out about the reader's depression and was wondering if you could do one with Gundam, Fuyuhiko, and Kokichi?

Finding S/O's depression out by a breakdown

[ SCENARIO ] [ Gundham, Fuyuhiko, Kokichi ]

[ Goodbye Despair ] [ Killing Harmony ]

Sorry for making you wait so long for this!! I been procrastinating a lot little bit but I had fun writing this!! Honestly, it helps me get the comfort I needed soooo thank u ❤️

Gundham Tanaka

Despite the initial shyness and confusion once Gundham start a relasionship he does know that he loves and holds close to his heart that person (not everyone can get close to the forbidden one after all), it will take him a while to ge used to be in a relationship but even if is a slow process you can see that he actually actively seaks your company and is always happy to be with you (he doesn't even have shame to express it, but he does it in his own way)

Is just normal to care about someone is important for you, and he won't really be an exception nor even try to hide the fact that he cares about you (although, he normally just insist that he has to protect his beloved from the unworthy mortals or even from his cursed powers, even when you seem to be immune to them)

Even when he can be dramatic and eccentric he genuinely cares about you, he tent to pay close attention to you either for worry or simply apreciation, he finds some difficulties to express himself and interact with others but since he have always being taking care of diferent animals he is more more used to pay attention to the reactions, he honestly doesn't care much about others reactions and just be himself, but he cares about yours so he is contantly paying close attention to you

There is a high chance that Gundham reach the conclusion of you not being exactly emotionally alright, even if you say that you are fine he can see the sadness on you, he isn't exactly strange of such feelings but he doesn't want to be pushy or assume the worst from the start, so is more likely that he tries to remember you that you have him here for you if you ever need help and even encorage you to speak to him if there is something bothering your mind, he will use his powers to help you delete the burden without a doubt

Getting to see you having a mental breakdown is something Gundham didn't really wanted to see, not because it was disturbing or ugly but because it hurts his heart watching someone he loves so much suffering like this, there is an initial anxiety but despite that Gundham will imediatly try to help you. It doesn't matter if he found you when you were already in this state or if you broke down at his side, Gundham will imediatly try to help you out, and he is actually surprisingly good at helping you calm down by trying to create a comfortable enviroment and taking your mind out of whatever was bothering, still he won't stop you from venting all you need

Honestly, seeing you like this make him feel anxious and in distress, but he push aside his own worriy to fully focus on helping you calm down, because when you finally calm down then he calms down too

Getting to know that you actually suffer from depression may don't really surprise him but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt him, Gundham feels his heart squeezing by the news and he will be totally up to voice off his worries ti my to make you see that in this world there is someone who loves you and want to see you well

After that day Gundham will try to be more attentive over your mood and feelings, being more direct with expressing how much he worries and loves you (even when he feels incredibly embarrassed or even shy), and never fails in reminding you that you managed to pass through the cold walls of his heart, and because of that he must respond with the same care and show the love he has for you and only you

Kuzuryu Fuyuhiko

Fuyuhiko is having a hard time to adjust to be in a relationship, even when he won't be in one if he isn't 100% that he loves you and this is what he wants he is just feel troubled because he doesn't want anything bad happening to you because of him, so he mainly show his affection and love by indirect ways

For being the powerful yakuza he is Fuyuhiko has learn to read the body language of the people and to always pay attention to his surroundings, so even when he feels bad for watching your every move so intensely he just can't help but do it from time to time, specially when he suspect that something is off with you. It actually be a little difficult to hide your depression from him for how much attention he puts on you, however there is a high chance that he doesn't think that is for depression but for feeling uncomfortable or even treaten by your surroundings (is more likely that Peko is the one who think on the posibility of being something more emotional)

Fuyuhiko fears that something could happen to you so he tries to asure your safety as much as he can, directly or indirectly, he does even try to bring you the feeling of safety and security when he is around, that could lead you to feel comfortable enough to just let all those emotions you have being bottle up explode

Seeing you having a mental breakdown will be totally shocking for Fuyuhiko, he really wants to ensure your safety so watching you explore like that it just trigger him too much, he probably will just assumed from the start that you have been attacked or someone or something have threaten you, but when you start saying all those things that your mind tells you that come from the depression Fuyuhiko will be shocked again, he will even stop and just stare at you while the frustration and anger build inside if him; he is not mad at you, in the slighest, he is mad at himself for not noticing this sooner, he is mad at himself for underestimating your condition and letting himself being blinded for all those times you said you were fine, he may don't know what is like to be depressed, but he can see how much distress this causes you and he knows how bad this kind of pressure can affect a person

Fuyuhiko wants to help you but he himself is feeling in so much distress by just seeing you in this state that he doesn't really is able to think on something that can help you right now, so he just decide to try to bring you the feeling of comfort and safety again, holding you close (if you let him) and just let you vent all you need, he probably will end up showing some vulnerability too by showing you how worried he is for you

Ayer this episode Fuyuhiko will remind himself that you aren't alright quite a lot, if he wants to protect you he has to do it from that voice on your head that tells you all that horrible things too, even if he doesn't know how he is determinated to help, and the first step is to search for profesional help (he will kinda force you to seak the profesional help but he insist that is for your own good and that he will be there with you in every step of the way)

After that day Fuyuhiko will be constantly asking you how you feel and will pay even more attention to you, however he will be a little awkward and nervous about approaching the topic, so he is kinda trying to motivate you to talk about it (and seaking Peko's help too because he just feel a little incopetent in this topic)

Kokichi Ouma

For Kokichi starting a relationship means a big step because is letting someone to be close enough to have the opportunity to see him in vulnerable moments, and even if he doesn't express it much he will want for you to feel comfortable enough to do the same (he actually expect it, as if he was trying to confirm that is alright to do it by your example)

Kokichi really wants to make you happy and be a good boyfriend, he cares for you enough to let you be close to him, so he doesn't really want anything bad happen to you and that lead him to pay a lot of attention to you (also because he wants to see your reaction to diferent situations, specially his jokes and pranks)

Kokichi is really smart and observant, it won't be easy to trick him and hide things from him, so even if you try to hide your depression from him he will find out soon or later, however he may not confront you about it right away, he opt more to give you little hints to let you know that he knows or that there is something important that you should talk to him

Honestly, Kokichi is a little offended that you would hide something like this from him, your boyfriend! But more than offended Kokichi is worried, he isn't stupid nor insensitive, he knows how much damage can do to a person things like anxiety and depression and it hurts his heart knowing that you aren't just suffering from this but also you are trying to handle it alone

Kokichi is already incredibly worried about the posibility of something serious happening to you due the depression, so when you have a mental breakdown because of it is like if the world were falling apart, is just that Kokichi feels like he already knew this would happen but didn't did anything about it and now you are in this state!

Despite feeling frustrated and even slighly guilt because of it Kokichi will try to keep his composture and imediatly help you, and he is actually good at it but what he does depend on how bad is your actual stage is, going from trying to distract you, taking your mind off of whatever your mind is telling you and making you focus completely on him or to actually trying to help you catch your breath just enough to don't drown or something and let you vent

However, if the case is that he had found you when you were already having a mental breakdown it will be more difficult for him to stay composed because it hit him harder, still he will try to help you calm down at the same time as he tries to calm down himself

After this experience there is no way Kokichi will let you keep hiden and bottle up your emotions like that, even if he has to be pushy he will be constantly asking what and how you feel because he doesn't want you to push yourself to the edge like that ever again

Kokichi will indirectly suggest for you to seak help, the ideal is to seak profesional help but if you don't feel ready for that then at least let him and your other friends help you. As well, Kokichi will try to have more affectionate features with you, direct and indirect displays of the inmense affection he has for you because he doesn't want you to never forget that there is someone on the world that loves you and want you to be alright (specially when he knows you are feeling specially down)

[kaxtwenty]

Having finished six Gundam shows, including Gundam's original trilogy (0079, Zeta, ZZ) and with GQuuuuuuX on the horizon, I've been thinking a lot about what I think Gundam is really about. I've talked before about Gundam being a story about loneliness and finding a place where you can belong, but I think there's a third thematic throughline that pervades throughout every show.

Survival.

In the shows I've watched so far, each story is about people thrust into conflicts they didn't start nor fully understand and having to do their best to get through it without dying or losing themselves to the madness of it all. These characters rarely have that much power to change the world around them and can only hope that their actions may one day lead to a future where they and their descendants don't have to fight.

To me, compared to similar franchises like Star Wars, Gundam stories are generally less about creating a better future and more about not losing hope in one. As a kid who's had to come into adulthood in the 20-fucking-20s, I find endings like IBO's and ZZ's a lot more relatable and even kinda needed in this day and age. Sometimes, the world just refuses to really get any better and the best you can manage is to survive it with the people you love.

These shows have honestly helped me cope with a lot of the...everything that's happened this year and I can't thank them enough.

[rdmaaron]

I saw a post somewhere that put forward that SSSS.Gridman and Gqux are effectively doing the same thing in thematic terms. (Sequels disguised at first as reimaginings, huge nostalgia fest with a ton of Easter eggs to their original series some more subtle than others)

I think the core difference for why Gridman works and Gqux didn’t ultimately comes down to a combination of presentation and the series themselves.

The original Gridman tv show was very much in “cult classic” status until the anime came along and revitalized it. It’s novel to think how the staff at Trigger were such fans of a relatively forgotten tokusatsu show from the 90’s that they went through the trouble of making an anime sequel to it. It’s fun watching them lovelingly recreate scenes from the original show.

Whereas, and I really shouldn’t need to explain this, Mobile Suit Gundam is a massive pop cultural touchstone on par with the likes of Star Trek and Doctor Who. There are multiple life sized statues of multiple different Gundams in multiple different countries. It’s not exactly obscure. Like, no duh the folks that worked on Gqux liked the original Gundam, that came free with their Japanese citizenship.

Gridman returning to his original form doing his classic transformation sequence while the original shows theme song starts jamming in the final episode was both incredibly hype and also earned by the show at the point. It positions the show itself as being essentially an extended episode of that original series.

Whereas the closest equivalent scene of the RX78-2 emerging out of a time hole while playing Beyond the Time, a song from a movie that the RX78-2 WAS NOT IN, doesn’t really evoke much emotion beyond “oh hey I recognize both of those things”.

[vanillinwrites]

yandere Char Aznable

a/n: I recently watched mobile suit gundam, and mobile suit gundam origin, and I loved it! in fact, i loved it so much i had to write a tiny little profile on yandere char! i wrote this all in one sitting, and without much proofreading, so forgive any mistakes. i just had a lot of motivation to write this. i know gundam is a dead fandom but it brought me a lot of joy to write.

Char Aznable-

-the calculating type of yandere, outwardly cold and aloof but secretly obsessive and doting. deeply controlling and possessive. Char is completely lucid- he knows what he doesnt is wrong, and that love shouldn't look like this, but he finds himself unable to care as long as he gets what he wants. Because of this, he isnt bothered if you are bothered by his behavior, he knows you’ll come around with time and constant manipulation from him.

-likely to approach you and try to charm you in a normal way before trying the full yandere approach. It’s likely he’s seen you around once or twice, and you caught his eye each time. It’s strange for him to have his interest drawn by someone, so he indulges in talking to you. He doesn't really expect anything to come of it, but once he talks to you he’s hooked and can't let you go. 

-he's naturally charismatic, so he has optimism that he can sway his darling without resorting to manipulation, blackmail, kidnapping or murder. Because honestly, he’d rather you think highly of him without fear if at all possible. 

-it's easy for him to sway most people to his side; he can always make people see the best in him. Not to mention all his prestige from his years in the military and as a mobile suit pilot. For that reason, it's likely he'll be able to capture his darling's heart without much work. 

-its likely his darling wouldn't agree with the things he does, so he doesn't take the risk of letting them know the real him. Not Casval, and not the Char who will do whatever it takes to reach his goals. Instead, you meet the ace pilot, the red comet, the war hero. Anything below that is carefully hidden from view. 

-he knows all the right things to say; offering just enough about himself to make you comfortable enough to tell him about yourself, eagerly taking in every word. It’s like everything you say is a new victory, a new opportunity to pry deeper into your life. It’s amazing how easy it is to talk to him, you thought he’d be intimidating, you thought he’d have better things to attend to, you thought he wouldn't have time to listen to you talk about your favorite books or foods or even funny little stories. But he seems interested in you in a way no man ever has been. It’s strange how even when you share more than you should, for some reason, you don't feel embarrassed, you just feel heard, listened to. It feels like talking to an old friend. Maybe you don't mind that, or maybe you’re suspicious; but no matter how you look at him, you can’t find anything out of place. Maybe you should just forget about your worries and accept the newfound attention he gives you.

-he wants your admiration; he wants you to think highly of him. I don't think he needs his darling's praise exactly, but he’d certainly like it. He wants you to blush and smile when the red comet talks to you like you’re the only one in the room, he wants you to be flattered by the attention. On some level, he’d like for his darling to be in love with him. It’s not a need at the start, he’ll settle for you simply being compliant or even skeptical, so long as you aren't too difficult. But as time goes on he does everything in his power to make sure you fall for him.

-but if his darling doesn't fall for him- either they can see the cracks in his facade, or their heart is not so easily won- he won't hesitate to resort to violence and manipulation. 

-I think at first it’s a subtle pressure. Everyone around you expects things from you; everyone would consider you a fool to reject Char Aznable. Everyone tells you how lucky you are to have caught his eye. How happy you’ll be with him. But for some reason you can't believe them- you feel something is off about him, like there’s something no one else can see.

-And not only that, but your friends seem distant lately, like they don't care for you anymore. In fact, it seems like everyone around you just doesn't have time for you anymore. When loneliness sets in, as well as the creeping worry that something is wrong with you that drives people away, maybe you’ll be more receptive to his company. Afterall, he is kind, and funny, and he always makes time for you. Maybe he’s the only person in your life who really cares about you.

-he will do whatever it takes to make his darling his. If he has to isolate you from everyone in your life, if he has to have you removed from any social or political position you’re in, if he has to kill everyone you love, if he has to steal you away to his side- all of it is worth it if he can have you. In fact, he doesn't even feel bad for it. Seeing you cry is…disquieting, but he’s sure you’ll calm down with time. Time heals all wounds, afterall. 

-he doesn't like to hurt you, avoids it even. there’s always something else he can do to make you yield; violence is almost never needed. But he scares you regardless. Something in him is so cold when he’s not putting effort into making himself seem loving and kind. When you upset him you can see the facade drop, can see him turn into somebody else. This is who he really is, you realize in those brief instances. The Char you know is a lie. If you say something he doesn't like, he’ll ask you to repeat yourself. It’s best not to, to assure him that it was nothing, that you hadn't said anything or that you hadn't meant it. If you do something that displeases him, he’ll make you say aloud what you did; he’ll make you explain aloud to him exactly what you did even knowing he’d be angry. It’s best to apologize and beg and plead with him, say it was an accident, say you didn't mean to, say you didn't know he’d be upset. Maybe he’ll take pity on you.

-if there’s one thing Char loves, it’s seeing you beg. Maybe it’s the assurance that making him happy is important to you, maybe it’s knowing the power he holds over you, maybe it’s how you look just a little bit pathetic- pathetic, but still so perfect- maybe it’s some sick thrill that comes from the tone of your voice and the endless streams of ‘please’s’ and ‘Char’s’. No matter the reason, beg and he’ll almost always humor you. He’s aware of what you’re doing, but if it’s worth sacrificing your pride he’ll oblige you.

-life with him isnt bad once you settle into it, all things considered. He treats you well, not quite spoiling you, but certainly making sure you’re well cared for and never in want for anything. He loves to show you off, is proud to call you his and is eager to let everyone know as such. He regards you warmly, speaks to you like he cares for you above all else. It’s easy enough to see him as a lover- once you can see past all the horrid things he’s done- and with enough time and pressure from Char, you will. 

-The man who has enacted such horrors will feel more and more like a myth as time wears on. Because your Char is kind. Your char is handsome. Your Char is so gentle. He treats you like you’re glass, but never with disrespect. He treats you like you’re worth all he’s done for you. 

-once you’ve settled well enough into his affections, he loves to have you near him at all times. At parties thrown in his honor, at meetings you shouldn't be allowed to attend- but you’re allowed because he insists- even in his ship. He wants you at his side. No matter where you are, he needs you as near as the circumstances allow; a hand on your waist, an arm around you, your hand in his. If you’re somewhere private or relaxed enough, he loves to have you sit in his lap- it feels intimate without being vulnerable on his part, but of course he’d never force you and he’d never use it to degrade or embarrass you. Afterall, being with him isn't a punishment and he’s adamant you don't see it as such.

-sometimes it’s hard to believe he loves you; after all the lives he’s taken, after all the people he’s hurt, after all he’s taken from you. How can a man like him love at all? How can a man who feels no sorrow or remorse or warmth feel love? It’s best not to ask him these questions, no matter how they burn in your mind. When the words leave your mouth you can see his demeanor shift- even with his eyes covered, you can tell he doesn't like what you’ve said. He’ll ask if you really think so lowly of him, and it’s best for you if you yield and assure him that you don't, that you just misspoke. 

-sometimes you do believe he loves you, but you can't figure out why. What about you was so special? What had caught his eye? Couldn't you be replaced by anyone? You wonder what he sees in you. It’s painful to love someone so renowned and respected when you feel like you’re nothing at all. He reassures you when your mind wanders like this, that you’re the only one he could ever love, that his heart has never beat for another. These words flatter you, but they speak a truth that is both exciting and terrifying- that he can't feel anything for anyone but you.

-he doesn't revel in stealing away your freedoms, and is careful to never let you lose the spark he fell in love with, but he has no qualms about taking from you either. It’s best not to upset him, because he knows you better than you know yourself, and if you upset him he’ll surely make you pay for it. Even when you think you have nothing left to lose, he’ll find something more to take. 

-While he rarely lets himself dwell on it, he’s lost a lot in his life- his parents, his adoptive father, his real identity- and he’s determined not to let you go now that you’ve caught his eye. It’s likely he doesn't realize just how afraid he is to lose you. The conviction not to lose you gives him strength and resolve to do anything it takes to keep you at his side forever.

-it’s possible Char himself doesn't realize how deeply he feels for you- he knows he cares for you, and that he hasn't cared for anyone in a long time. He knows he sometimes can't keep his mind off of you- even though his thoughts used to be so singular. He knows he wants you near him every second of the day, and that even when you're near you can never be near enough. But he doesn't notice when his attraction spirals into obsession, doesn't notice when his interest becomes love, and doesn't realize when he ceases to merely want you and now needs you like he needs to sleep or eat or breathe.

-in his mind, he downplays how important you are to him. Promises himself that you are a luxury that he could part with if needed. That you would never get in the way of his goals. That you aren't a liability or a weakness. If he could admit to his own faults, he’d be forced to realize that he never should have let you get so close to him.

[ladyloveandjustice]

My Top 12 Favorite Anime of 2023 (and more)!

This was a great year for anime, so here's a long list of my top 12 (including some bonus great anime). If you get tired of clicking the review links, check out my anime overview collection for all of them here.  You can also check out my list of favorite manga here!

Some of these are ongoing, so consider those only a review of the first cour-- no official endorsement on the rest because it hasn't aired yet!

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (Season 2)

When I listed G-Witch in last year's top anime list, I prayed the show wouldn't betray me. Fortunately, it didn't! Though the final half of the show was a bit rushed, it remained must-see, compelling sci-fi full of exciting twists and turns. And I adore the well developed romance between the robot-piloting protagonist and precious girl, Suletta, and her fierce fiancé, Miorine.  Whether you’re here for starcrossed queer lovers, robots wrecking each other, tense battles between opposing political factions, or morally-horrifying moms on a revenge spree, you’re in for a treat.

See my full review here.

Yuri is my Job!

Hime is roped into working at a cafe where the waitresses playact as students of the fictional all girl’s school from a beloved novel series. However, Hime finds her co-worker, Mitsuki, has an inexplicable grudge against her. Thus begins a tangled web of romance and wounded feelings among the girls in the cafe! Yuri is My Job seems like a fun comedy boasting a cast full of quirky lesbians, but then reveals itself to be a complicated and fascinating examination of performance- as it intersects with queerness, girlhood,  and the desire to be “likeable” and “cute". It's top-tier lesbian drama full of fraught relationships and it's absolutely worth a watch.

See my full review here.

The Apothecary Diaries (still ongoing, review is for the first cour)

Though it's still going, I have to sing the praises of this dazzling anime about a saavy apothecary who uses her medical expertise to solve the many murders and betrayals in the Emperor's palace. MaoMao is a fantastic lead, a poison-obsessed gremlin who's whip-smart, deadpan, and fun to follow. The Apothecary Diaries has intrigue, well-developed characters, and an impeccable atmosphere. It tells a great range of stories, from romantic triumph, to bittersweet tales of recovering from grief, to pure tragedies. I'm totally hooked.

See my full review here.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady

When Euphie is dumped by her fiance at a ball, the oddball princess Anis rescues her.  Euphie becomes Anis' assistant in her quest to develop magical tools. The girls also start to develop feelings for each other, while discovering a conspiracy among the nobility. I'm always desperately in need of cool lesbians having action-packed fantasy adventures, and Magirevo delivers. The characters grow in entertaining ways, we get to see them fight dragons in killer action scenes, and the romantic development is completely satisfying. It's a simple story at its core, but the lovable characters, joyous queerness and jubilant execution make it a great watch.

See my full review here.

Birdie Wing: Golf Girls' Story (Season 2)

In the second season of the anime about girls homoerotically golfing while dealing with the mafia and ludicrous family drama, Birdie Wing remains a bombastically absurd sports anime that is fun all the way through. Please come watch these girls get ridiculous sports  injuries, scream their super golf attacks, experience extremely extra plot twists--and be super gay with each other, of course. The finale didn't go quite as hard as I wanted (and the romance is more subtexual than I wanted), but you need to allow yourself to experience the madness of Birdie Wing.

See full review here.

Skip and Loafer

An endearingly dorky, earnest, and driven girl moves from her small town to Tokyo. While she struggles to adjust, she befriends a nice popular boy who's got some baggage. Skip and Loafer is a show that’s like a warm hug. It's sweet, entertaining and funny. It handles adolescent struggles with tender nuance. There's a emphasis on kindness, connection, and looking past stereotypes and misconceptions. It also includes a trans character who's treated with respect (and is a great character in general!) Let this show touch your heart.

See my full review here.

Undead Murder Farce

An immortal woman has had most of her body stolen by a mysterious man. Reduced to a head carried around by her maid, she teams up with a half-demon man to track the thief down while solving supernatural mysteries all across Victorian England.

This a fun, campy mystery series starring three asshole weirdo protagonists,  it’s bursting with supernatural creatures and literary references. We've got Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom of the Opera, Carmilla and more...along with a vampire murders and werewolf drama galore. UDM is a wonderful romp with stylish, slick direction... and it’s unexpectedly really gay.  I’m aching to see more of these scrappy misfits and their adventures.

See my full review here.

Migi & Dali

A story of twins who are pretending to be one kid in order to fool their foster parents and find out who killed their mother. It starts out as an utterly absurd comedy becomes a impressive and genuinely tense murder mystery that is incredibly moving at times, all while keeping up it’s signature brand of goofiness. There’s genuine commentary on abuse, the damage you can do to children by forcing perfection on them, the struggle of being a foster kid, grief and recovery and more. There's also some great character development. It's a weird one, but it's absolutely worth sticking with.

See full review here.

Pluto

Somebody is killing the most advanced robots in the  world and murdering humans alongside them. A robot detective is trying to track this killer down, but he might be compromised as well. Pluto is a tense, tense, tightly plotted robot murder mystery that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Through robots, it explores the idea of being a tool in a corrupt system, and tackles subjects like war, imperialism, and the nature of hatred. It's a masterful psychological thriller with stunning animation and a rich story.

See my full review here.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

This anime approaches the story of Scott Pilgrim and Ramona's seven evil exes from a brands new angle, and the results are great. We get a exploration of relationships and regrets, the messiness of communication and connection, the trials of becoming an adult, all with the signature goofy video game antics. Characters neglected in previous iterations finally get their due, new facets of the story are explored, queer relationships are delved into more, girls kiss...and it's all accompanied by phenomenal animation and a killer soundtrack.

See my full review here

Soaring Sky! Precure

Sora lives in a world called Skyland and wants to be a great hero. When rescuing the kidnapped baby princess, she falls through a portal to earth. There she meets her fellow magical warriors, and as Precure they protect the princess from the villains!

This vibrant, warm-hearted adventure got me back on the Precure train! This series boasts a lot exciting firsts for the franchise--the first official male cure, the first main cure that's eighteen years old- but above all, it has a lively team of characters with who have an entertaining dynamic and enjoyable individual journeys. It's often very funny, the baby has a surprisingly good character arc, and it's bursting with magical girl (and boy) goodness! It's also not afraid to give you an emotional gutpunch when you've been lured into a false sense of security by all the fun times. If you're new to Precure, this is a great jumping on point, and if you've watched it before, this is a series you won't want to miss.

I'm in Love with the Villainess

Rae is reincarnated as the heroine of her favorite dating sim. But she has no interest in romancing any of the boys- she’s head over heels for Claire Francois, the snooty villainess.

Villainess may not be as polished--storywise or animation-wise-- as these other entries. It's a messy series, it has plenty of problems...but it's also very fun, and it touched my queer little heart like no other. Queer people get to indulge in our imperfect faves too, and the silly shenanigans, blatant lesbian wish fulfillment, honest advocacy for queer people, and the joy and earnestness of the series works for me!

See my full review here.

Some Other Great Anime:

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (still ongoing, review is for the first cour)

Frieren is a long-lived elf who was once part of an adventuring party that saved the world from the Demon Lord. But now her friends are passing away and the world is moving on. She decides to retrace her old party's journey so she can understand what she's feeling.

Frieren is both an interesting examination of what happens after the hero saves the world, as well as a meditation on mortality, grief,  and the endless march of time. It takes you on a quiet, beautiful and sometimes touching journey though a pastoral fantasy world. There's some breath-taking animation and excellent atmosphere to enjoy.

See my review here.

Spy x Family (Season 3)

Spy x Family is pretty much staying the course from when we last checked in,  though this season gives a lot more attention to Yor, and I love the cruise ship arc and all the ridiculous fights she gets into a lot! That arc contains some of my favorite gags of the series too (like Loid’s  attempts to be a cool dad). Otherwise, Spyfam has settled into a series that intends to be around for the long haul, so don’t expect too much forward plot momentum. And Yuri (the man, not the genre) unfortunately still exists. Overall it was good season and remains a fun  adaptation. Yor, please step on me.

[kittleskittle]

I just need to take a moment and gush about Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 and how much it's altered my brain chemistry, especially recently, and talk about why you - yes, you! - should take the plunge and watch it!

I've always gotten the vibe that people unfamiliar with Gundam beyond the basics think of it as your run of the mill cool giant robot/mecha anime, but it's so much more than that. Yes, there are many very cool giant robots, but there's a reason why Gundam, especially the Universal Century timeline, is so beloved to this day and remains a cultural mainstay in Japan. The entire UC - from 0079 to Unicorn and all of the OVAs and AUs and movies in between and beyond - is worth watching, but I'm going to focus on the original, 0079, because no other Gundam series has topped it for me yet.

Don't let the dated (but very charming and distinct) animation fool you; 0079 still holds up incredibly well today. The story and characters are timeless and touch on themes like the tragedy and horror of war, hope in desperate circumstances, and how much of one's soul and humanity they must sell in order to survive.

Here's the synopsis, per Wikipedia:

"Set in the futuristic calendar year 'Universal Century' 0079, the plot focuses on the war between the Principality of Zeon and the Earth Federation, with the latter unveiling a new giant robot known as the RX-78-2 Gundam piloted by the teenage civilian mechanic Amuro Ray."

But this summary just barely scratches the surface, and doesn't tell you exactly what makes 0079 so special, so I'll talk a little about why it's so special to me specifically. Let's start with one of my favorite subjects in stories, the depiction of trauma and war!

And oh boy, does 0079 have that kind of content in spades. Certain moments continually haunt me, like these scenes of Amuro - who's only 15 here - grappling with PTSD as a conscripted child soldier. It's still one of the best portrayals I've ever seen of dissociation.

To add, 0079 doesn't shy away from showcasing the horrors of war front and center and how they affect soldiers and civilians alike, and it never lets you forget this specific theme for a single episode. I mean, even the mere concept of a colony drop is terrifying, and this moment is shown at the start of the first ~10ish episodes. Sorry, Sydney.

I'd like to talk about the art a little, because while there are those out there who dislike how dated it is, my opinion is that it's unique, well-designed, and full of incredible little animation flairs. For example, Amuro is often shown biting at his thumb, and there are many similar moments - like a soldier trying to wipe sweat off his brow without realizing that he's still wearing his helmet. It's little things like this that makes the characters feel very real, especially when taken alongside the writing.

Later on, 0079 also has several experimental animation sequences that are gorgeous and visually interesting - and also, they're peak 70's aesthetic. The entire sequence this shot comes from plays in my head frequently, both because of the visuals and the sheer emotion it inspires.

And then there's the characters. Each and every character, even antagonists like Char and the Zabi family, is so beloved to me and many others. Most major characters get solid arcs that continue throughout the show's 42 episode run, and even the characters you may not initially like start to grow on you. By the end, the White Base crew - Amuro, Sayla, Bright, Mirai, Frau, Hayato, Kai, Ryu, and the kids - feels like a true family who have suffered through the trials of an awful war, but you're left with the feeling that it'll ultimately be okay, because they have each other.

Does 0079 have its issues? Of course. Everything does. While I find that it was very ahead in a lot of its concepts, it's still a product of its time. A lot of people also have issues with the pacing at the end, due to the series being initially unpopular and therefore getting cuts to its planned 50 episode run.

But still, it remains at the very top of all of Gundam for me - and in fact near the top of my favorite pieces of media ever - because the story it tells resonates in a rare timeless way. It gets under your skin, makes you think, and doesn't let you go for a long time. It's one of those shows that I can always turn on and enjoy, and when I finish my big Gundam watch with my partner, I'll be going back to the beginning and watching 0079 all over again, because it's just that good.

There's so much more I could say, but I'll leave it here. Consider giving a 46 year old anime a chance, because it truly is an all time great.

Or get Bright Slapped™. Your choice!

[wordsandrobots]

IBO reference notes on . . . the lie of Agnika Kaieru

This is a post about McGillis Fareed.

Originally presented as an antagonist ala the Gundam franchise's 'Char clone' archetype (named after Char Aznable, an expy of the Red Baron by way of the Last of the Romanovs), McGillis turns out to be one of Iron-Blooded Orphans' key protagonists, his initial appearances reframed by an eventual alliance with Martian mercenary group Tekkadan, home to the more obvious lead characters. In large part, it is his story we watch unfold, as he attempts to secure control over Gjallarhorn, the repressive extra-national military in which he serves.

And it's hard to discuss that story without reference to Agnika Kaieru, the man credited with founding Gjallarhorn to counter AI-controlled 'mobile armours' three hundred years earlier. The apocalyptic conflict between humanity and the armours known as the Calamity War is the source of the current social order, not to mention the titular Gundam mecha. Agnika is responsible for leading Gjallarhorn to victory, an achievement for which McGillis idolises him. He is also a non-character, haunting events solely through McGillis' commentary, at once vitally important and entirely absent.

I thought it would be interesting to examine how that works. I ended up writing 7000 words about it. Spoilers for everything and content warnings for mentions of child sexual abuse.

The character who wasn't there

If we take McGillis at his word, his personal philosophy was defined by reading a biography of Gjallarhorn's founder at a young age. More specifically, at a young age, while being sexually abused by his adoptive father, Iznario Fareed, who had extricated him from working at a brothel, a situation he was previously forced into after being abducted while homeless on the streets. The Life of Agnika Kaieru was a light in this darkness, offering a path out of a situation that, though seemingly improved from his original impoverishment, continued to be highly coercive and harmful. McGillis was made heir to a powerful family, yet had to sneak out of his patron's bed in the middle of the night, naked, with visible bruises across his body. He was desperately in need of hope.

The abuse appears to have been baked into this plot-beat from the start, with hints to it provided at multiple points during Season 1. Iznario being accompanied by a blonde boy and blonde young man (echoing the excesses of Carta Issue, a character who surrounds herself with McGillis lookalikes owing to an unrequited crush), McGillis' reluctance to spend the night at the Fareed estate, and the questions of legitimacy surrounding his inheritance all take on darker significance when the truth is revealed in Season 2. We may safely assume he was always planned to be reacting to this form of exploitation.

I suspect Agnika was a later creation. Comparing the outline of the Calamity War provided at the very start of the show to the ways it later becomes relevant suggests a considerable amount of fleshing-out in the interim. There are few outright contradictions, or at least, few we cannot explained by assuming in-fiction ignorance. Nevertheless, the importance of Agnika as a historical figure, the myths surrounding his mobile suit, and the very existence of the mobile armours each enter without previous set-up. This is inelegant, in the manner of much of IBO's exposition: workmanlike additions to propel the plot along, extending exactly as far as required and no more. But we cannot discount their importance to the final result and since McGillis aspires, in a very real sense, to become his hero, it is instructive to consider what the show tells us about Agnika.

Immediately we run into the fact we know nothing at all about him as a person. The only 'canonical' description of his personality was provided by the series' director, who compared him to 'the hero in a shonen manga': a charismatic character who always saves his friends. Apart from reinforcing my belief any spin-off set during the Calamity War would be more typical fare than Iron-Blooded Orphans turned out to be, this tells us little. Within the story as it plays out, Agnika is blank space. Being three hundred years dead, it does not actually matter what he was like – itself a statement about how people can be forgotten even when their names reverberate through history. Indeed, the thematic parallel to the fates of a large chunk of the cast is a potent one. Time has rendered Agnika a cipher, subject to the judgement of distant strangers, his exact morals and intentions long-since stripped away.

What remains are his legacy and beliefs. That we must speak of these separately is telling. The Seven Stars, descendants of Agnika's fellow Gundam pilots and Gjallarhorn's present-day leadership, show little deference to the man who commanded their ancestors. There are no statues memorialising him and though Gundam Bael has its attendant ghost stories, of Agnika's spirit living on inside and how it will only awake for his true inheritor, it is shuttered away, a monument nobody ever goes to see. One gets the strong impression McGillis is the only person to pay him more than lips service in centuries.

Consequently, McGillis' personal interpretation of Agnika's philosophy is the only window we get on his beliefs, and the most thorough explanation of that interpretation is given to his eleven-year-old child-bride, Almiria Bauduin.

Fairy tales told by a pied piper

From what we see on screen, McGillis is never overtly abusive towards Almiria, to whom he becomes engaged as part of a political scheme. He is pushed into the arrangement by Iznario and in the side-story covering its commencement, he goes out of his way to provide Almiria with the choice he lacks – something that spurs Almiria to form a genuine attachment to him. However, the engagement also serves his personal ambitions extremely well and he unquestionably manipulates her over the course of it (hard to think of another term to describe comforting her on the loss of her brother Gaelio, for which McGillis is himself responsible). We could and probably should label his apparent concern for her emotional wellbeing and indulgence of her desire to be seen as a grown-up as an attempt at grooming her, not in the sexual sense, but to make her a more amenable chess-piece. On the other hand, McGillis prevents Almiria from killing herself when the truth comes out, at the cost of an injury that severely disadvantages him in battle shortly thereafter – a notable action when her political utility has just evaporated. On the other other hand, this incident prompts him to describe her, quite disdainfully, as 'troublesome'.

What I'm saying is, the question of whether McGillis sees Almiria as a tool or somebody he truly cares for is thorny, as it is for virtually every single character with whom he has a meaningful relationship. Nevertheless, I think we are meant to believe he is being honest when he talks to Almiria about The Life of Agnika Kaieru. What he says fits his actions elsewhere and there are no on-screen indications he isn't being truthful – at least from his perspective – when he credits Agnika's principles with 'saving him'.

McGillis states Agnika wanted a world where “humans could live as humans”; that is, where humans of all backgrounds could compete fairly to achieve their dreams. To a child of low-birth, abused behind closed doors, this is an enticing prospect. McGillis goes on to entice Almiria in turn with the promise of 'loving whomever you wish' and of neither of them being mocked for the age imbalance between them. He concludes the scene by saying it is time to “pry open the door to that world with my own two hands.”

A few episodes later, in an internal monologue, he refers to Agnika as the “greatest symbol of power the world had ever seen. Authority, vigour, might, capability, vitality, influence, as well as brute force.” Inspired by this man's life story, he is determined to usurp rule over Gjallarhorn and finally address the want of power that had defined his own life since birth.

Like everything to do with Agnika, what this tells us about his principles is somewhat vague. Quite literally the child-friendly version (sort of; McGillis openly tells Almiria he contemplated suicide prior to reading the book and is likely a poor judge of age-appropriateness). Still, the philosophy described combines individualism with egalitarianism. The stated goal is a level playing field, free of artificial advantages like wealth or social status, where everyone can pursue their dreams as far as they are each able. This is implied to be a natural state for humanity, such that achieving it would be a form of reclamation. Further, the kinds of power McGillis lists are personal – physical strength, intelligence, charisma – and he works obsessively to cultivate them. We don't get confirmation that self-improvement is another of Agnika's ideals, but it would fit from what is presented.

If you are anything like me, your brain will have turned to all sorts of weird capitalism fans and their buzzwords for justifying frantic competition between people at every level of society. Phrases like 'personal responsibility', 'rugged individualism', and 'rational self-interest', possibly with a side-helping of – gods help us – libertarianism. You may also be asking, if this is what Gjallarhorn's founder espoused, how did it end up enforcing disparities between different populations, oppressing workers and maintaining social hierarchies, at large and within its own walls?

To which I might reply, have you looked at what all those weird capitalism fans get up to, recently? This is an unsatisfying answer, though, and to properly examine how Agnika's legacy intersects with the dreaded c-word, we need to take a couple of side-steps, starting with why it should be a natural connection to make within the context of this show.

A digression into narratives about capitalism

Iron-Blooded Orphans is one of the few entries in the franchise to directly engage with capitalism as a major source of global problems. That probably sounds a little strange if you're aware of the the reputation Gundam has as a whole, so let me explain.

[Also, let me remind everyone the definition of capitalism is “an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.” (Wikipedia; emphasis mine). It's worth being exact.]

When the concept of space colonies is introduced in 1979's Mobile Suit Gundam, they are framed as a response to global overpopulation and the consequent ecological decline of the Earth (pause to appreciate the massive fuck-off dog-whistle; we'll come back to that in a second). The war the show depicts is presented as a matter of sovereignty, whereby those offloaded into orbit rise up against rule by an indifferent terrestrial government. The colonies themselves are cities built within artificially landscaped environments inside O'Neil cylinders. They do not appear to serve any commercial purpose in and of themselves; when we see labour happening in space, it is in service to the colonies, rather than something they are for (the Zeon miners in sequel series ZZ; there is also the fuel-collecting Jupiter Fleet but they are a very odd entity and not fleshed out).

Contrast this to IBO where Mars' utility as a source of 'half-metal' is of paramount importance to its political and economic position, and the space colonies are explicitly shown to be factory complexes, company towns, resorts, and prisons. The middle arc of Season 1 is focused on a workers' revolt against the corporation running a particular group of colonies, the Dorts, while the impetus behind spin-off game Urdr Hunt is the lead character's desire to transform his home's fortunes by making it a popular tourist destination. There are also mentions of 'resource satellites' and glimpses of what appear to be colonies built to mine asteroids. And true, it isn't stated whether all the colonies originate as extractive operations and production centres. But those purposes are depicted the reason they are maintained to the present day, removing such dirty businesses far above the 'precious', 'unsullied' Earth (cue 'The Lightship', played with maximum irony).

[Side-note: the Dort Company runs its colonies as a 'public enterprise on behalf of the African Union', implying state ownership. However there are multiple references to 'rich factory owners from Earth', suggesting private control. Best I can figure, the colonies are state-owned while the production facilities inside them belong to private companies? Since everyone appears to work for Dort (every worker we see wears the same green jacket), I'm not certain how that functions. Perhaps the workforce is leased to private factories via the Company? That would be fittingly grim.]

Now to be clear, I am not claiming Gundam as a whole doesn't tackle problems caused or exacerbated by capitalism. The introduction of Anaheim Electronics into the original Gundam timeline marks clear interest in exploring the influence of corporate entities on warfare. We may also – from the outside – interrogate overpopulation concerns as deflecting blame from capital's destructive activities, going hand-in-hand with racism over migration, and obfuscating who exactly gets sent to 'colonise the unknown' (spoilers: it's the poor and vulnerable). I'm unconvinced the original run from Mobile Suit Gundam to Char's Counterattack is intended as commentary in this manner; equally, I don't think it's hard to get there (as Gundam Unicorn somewhat demonstrates).

What I'm trying to articulate is a distinction between 'being about a problem' and 'naming capitalism as the cause'. Most Gundam series tend to depict capital as part of an amorphous blob of 'Earth-sphere corruption' or 'greedy elites'. Even Anaheim acts as a third party in the Earth/space conflict, taking advantage of the war rather than shaping the fault-lines along which it occurs. Additionally, actual money very rarely tends to be a factor in the plot. Groups like Celestial Being from Gundam 00 appear to possess near-infinite budget; Gundam Wing's itinerant teenage terrorists have only erratic and arbitrary issues obtaining supplies (where are you getting the damn ammo, Trowa?!); and even in The Witch From Mercury, where you'd really expect expenditure to matter, it… doesn't. G-Witch toys with access to funds and the requirement to be profitable early on, but overall is more a courtly drama in business drag, unconcerned with why corporations work the way they do. Issues such as the exploitation of vulnerable populations for the sake of driving down costs are gestured to without becoming strictly plot-relevant.

Meanwhile over in IBO, the poverty of the Martian characters is an ever-present threat and come the denouement, whether they have any money left is of paramount importance. The show tells us bullets have a price-tag, using this to drive actions inside a world run for the sake of profit. It is mentioned that productivity in the African Union's colonies is expected to drop following the Dort labourers wining better working conditions, a boon to the competing economic blocs that leads to one of them sheltering Tekkadan in gratitude for helping bring this change about. The reason co-main character Orga Itsuka does not survive episode 48 is because arms-dealer Nobliss Gordon thinks it will be financially advantageous to have him killed. That fellow businessman McMurdo Barriston extends limited aid to Tekkadan after publicly cutting them loose for the sake of the Teiwaz conglomerate's reputation and revenue is highly relevant to his characterisation. And Teiwaz itself is run like a mafia, a riff on yakuza practices that erases the line between big business and organised crime – a hell of claim to make in a story where another of the leads' entire goal is uplifting Mars by playing the economic system.

Now, in my reading the major theme running through Iron-Blooded Orphans is exploitation. An acute depiction of how capitalist societies operate – the amorality of the profit motive, the colonial underpinnings, the sheer, monstrous cost – is a subset of this. I don't feel it's any surprise that an attempt to realistically depict child soldiers and other exploited groups should lead to a detailed rendering of the gears in which the world is currently caught. Equally, I don't think it fair to reduce IBO to being about capitalism, full-stop. Patriarchy, slavery and repressive class structures all have older roots and there is an argument to be made that where it touches those things, the show cares less about them as artefacts of modern economic arrangements than as evils in their own right.

It still manages to say stuff about the functioning of capitalism with more bluntness than most pieces of fiction I've encountered and, speaking as an Englishman, the thing that strikes me most is the decision to make the lynchpin of its world an aristocratically-led military force.

A further digression into aristocratic fables

Aristocracy means 'government by a hereditary elite'. It is sustained via wealth passed down through generations of a small group of families and was one of the key mechanisms by which the feudal system operated, prior to the slow capitalist revolution of the 16th to 18th Centuries. It is often treated as obsolete, having been superseded by more modern forms of 'being rich'. Certainly it seems quaint in these days of tech billionaires and oligarchs to talk of descendents of feudal lords who prize family trees traced back to William the Conqueror.

What you have to understand about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (official name used with illustrative intent) is that this country never properly rid itself of its aristocracy. We are a monarchy. Our parliament includes a House of Lords. And while these are both vestiges of earlier systems, they are neither of them ceremonial. The Lords and the Crown possess actual power that can affect decisions made by the House of Commons, our democratically-elected governing body. The Lords (who are not elected and include those appointed for life alongside ninety-two hereditary positions [this was a compromise]) can review and send back certain types of bills passed in the Commons, delaying their introduction into law. Meanwhile the Crown technically still holds an absolute veto at the end of the legislative process, which only by convention do they not use (royal assent is required for any bill to become law; apparently the last time it was withheld was 1708, but the threat remains and the Crown continues to interfere in proposals affecting their interests).

As you might expect, there have been murmurings for years about replacing the Lords with elected officials and we all like to pretend the King just exists for show. Regardless, these institutions – hundreds of years old and holdovers from a completely different social and economic order – persist because the aristocracy remains a useful tool of the modern British state. The Royal Family can be said to be its advertising wing, not in the sense of attracting tourism but of going around shoring up foreign relations, to help keep Britain the fifth richest country in the world. These diplomatic efforts are a key reason why they are worth the maintenance costs (and the noxious scandals). However it goes deeper than that.

Kings and queens don't make sense without the idea of hereditary superiority, and even with its overt political power reduced by changing times, the British aristocracy continues to shape our upper classes. We have an entire parallel school system preparing the children of the wealthy for life running the country. Our public schools (fee-paying schools open to all who can afford them; we call the free ones 'state schools') have been educating the sons of the 'best families' for centuries. They were the source of the officers and administrators who maintained the British Empire and they continue to be where a massive proportion of our diplomats, politicians, journalists, civil servants, and military leadership receive their education.

This system, funnelling kids through schools like Eaton and Harrow to Oxford and Cambridge Universities, is a factory for class solidarity. It allows students to network and, just as importantly, instils in them the signifiers of being 'the proper kind of person'. Ways of speaking. Ways of dressing. An awareness of who they should defer to and who they can look down on, so that they can be recognised by other alumni as 'correct'. Trustworthy. Reliable.

Above all, it reinforces the notion they have both a right and a responsibility to lead.

Because that's the heart of the lie nobility tells: 'there is something about us that means we must rule over them.' If Britain no longer entirely subscribes to this quality being inborn, it can at least be taught to those of the right stock, bringing them a little closer to the true aristocracy. They can elevate themselves above the plebs, as diligent servants of the Crown, who remains the untouchable pinnacle of quality. [Translation note: 'the Crown' refers to both the reigning monarch and the state. They are functionally the same thing. That's what being a monarchy means.]

Thus, the Empire was able to send its younger, weirder sons out to plunder far-off lands, and produced many an honourable sort to lead thousands against machine guns in Europe, and, in a post-imperial age, Britain can still present an impeccably polite face to the world, to negotiate better deals. Diminished as it is, the aristocracy's shambling husk continues on, manufacturing not the capitalists per se (although the successors to the original land-lords are hardly above enriching themselves and plenty of our lifetime peers are people who've run successful businesses), but the supporting apparatus for capitalist operations. The grease on the wheels and a permanent roadblock along the road to meaningful social change.

You literally cannot have equality if there's a guy at the top who gets a stupid hat and ungodly amounts of influence just for who his parents were.

The wrong story, at the right time

It isn't hard to imagine about how it happened.

Gjallarhorn is the only significant military force left standing after a quarter of a solar-system-spanning human race has been exterminated. Faced with the task of reconstructing civilisation, it splits the world into four blocs for easier administration, abolishing the old national borders. At those blocs' request, it then applies the same reorganisation to Mars and Jupiter, the better to funnel resources towards restoring the Earth. Throughout, it maintains the position of a neutral arbiter; Gjallarhorn was formed to stop the War; now it must ensure there will never be another.

To this end, the tools that allowed it to triumph – the Alaya-Vijnana augmentation technology and the Gundam frames that meant flesh and blood could out-compete tireless machinery – are buried. Victory is instead attributed to the resilience of pure, unadulterated humanity. The pilots slew the monsters not thanks to their equipment but their innate ability. The greatest among them are heralded as champions and natural leaders.

It is a small step to decreeing that their children will inherit their positions. Innate qualities can be passed down and heirs, raised in the image of their parents. Maybe this is an extension of those traditions from which sprang duellists bearing red flags. Maybe it is merely a result of the new-born legends. What matters is, Gjallarhorn endures, guided by its seven stars.

Over the following centuries, the system embeds. The ethos of human purity takes hold, measured by distance from the homeworld. Unfortunates born to space or on distant, dusty worlds posses utility for digging up half-metal or labouring in orbital factories but have no place inside Earth's atmosphere. They would make the place untidy, now the scars of the War are scrubbed away. Those who seek to upset this situation are dissuaded. Those subjected to augmentation, dismissed as subhuman. The peace is kept.

Sadly, new generations of the ennobled families lack the moral fibre of their forebears, accepting bribes, pushing the boundaries of Gjallarhorn's neutrality. There are rules and those tasked with enforcing the rules and yet still the rot spreads. These younger generations lack the moral fibre of their vaunted forebears. A sad decline.

Or perhaps that is bullshit and they are exactly the same: people come into power, who will justify anything for the sake of never giving it up and ensuring that all things flow towards the centre.

Gjallarhorn is the armed wing of the Earth super-state, operating for the benefit of the whole despite competition between the individual blocs. That is to say, it is the army of a capitalist state writ large, in the usual manner of sci-fi magnifying things across time and space. Broadly, a state's purpose under capitalism is to facilitate the smooth running of private enterprise by maintaining infrastructure, providing a workforce, and destroying anything that gets in the way of expansion. Tradition, upper-class solidarity and ideological frameworks all help hold the arrangement together. It is useful, after all, to train people to believe they're supporting a grand cause when they are in fact facilitating exploitation and theft for the benefit of someone else.

And it is here we must turn our attention back to The Life of Agnika Kaieru. Above, I glibly compared the things McGillis says Agnika stood for to capitalistic propaganda. What I mean is that it reads as the ideology surrounding free-market capitalism, where companies are released from all restraint and allowed to compete irrespective of consequence. This is often said to fuel innovation and create a healthy market that will – somehow – benefit everyone, despite observably driving owners to increase profits at the expense of large numbers of people, including their customers.

In that context, claiming you want to ensure everyone competes 'fairly' is disingenuous, since it entails the removal of both limitations and safety nets. No artificial advantages and reliance solely on personal strengths means those who are old, disabled, or otherwise lacking Agnika's stated virtues will automatically be left behind. This is not hypothetical; I see it around me everyday, as a result of policies predicated on exactly this basis, just as we see it represented in IBO by a wide-scale absence of social support and characters too vulnerable to survive a free-for-all (Atra, Builth, the Turbines, in flashback). But the ideological statement elides such problems.

Given the title of the biography, I assume it dates from after Agnika died. Any impression derived from it must therefore be suspected of being what Gjallarhorn required him to have believed. Historically, both aristocracy and capitalism alike have benefited from this kind of distortion, so it would be no great surprise if the book turned out to be more PR than honest report. While Agnika's principles are incompatible with the hereditary advantages enjoyed by the Seven Stars, there are ways to read them as being aligned with the wider social and economic arrangements. As such, it is entirely plausible the way he is remembered was designed to support those arrangements.

The right story, at the wrong time

The rhetoric of McGillis' attempted coup centres Gjallarhorn's failure to adhere to its original values, citing unwarranted attacks against civilians and inference in Earth politics. The Seven Stars must be replaced with sincere believers to correct a drift away from what Agnika intended. McGillis outright proclaims his 'revolutionaries' have the truth of Gjallarhorn on their side.

Even if this is a calculated stance designed to rile younger officers into being the army he requires, McGillis' internal monologues reveal a commitment to the ideal of the individual seizing their dreams through sheer personal strength. He seeks not only to prove this is possible, but also to inspire those who cower because “they don't know how to use their fangs” into following his example. From what we see, he has taken Agnika's words – as they were relayed to him – as gospel.

Is his interpretation correct? And if it is, was it what Agnika believed, or simply what it was useful for him to say? McGillis is manipulative, spinning tales to make others do what he wants. Was his idol the same, pre-empting biographical distortions by espousing a finely-tuned message that would reassure the masses while he built a system geared toward curtailing the power of all but a few?

Trick question. There's no answer in the text. As I said, Agnika isn't a character; what he really intended is irrelevant and therefore not present. Yet a distinction must be drawn between what is said publicly and what is said behind the scenes. This is a layering IBO captures via Rustal Elion, McGillis' rival for control of Gjallarhorn, who out-manoeuvres and defeats him. Rustal is a pragmatist unencumbered by quasi-mystic belief in Agnika or some 'true purpose' to Gjallarhorn. He does whatever it takes to best McGillis, casually breaking centuries-old weaponry restrictions and even provoking a fresh war to undermine his opponent's plans – all while presenting as a bastion of lawful rule. Privately, he admits to being 'shady', willing to deal with whomsoever furthers his goals (e.g. Nobliss Gordon, who starts violent uprisings to spur sales of his merchandise). It is this capacity for realpolitik that means Rustal comes out on top.

The narrative does gesture at motivations beyond self-interest. When Rustal reforms Gjallarhorn in the wake of the Seven Stars decimation at McGillis' hand, he abolishes the aristocratic council (of which he is also a member) and replaces it with a more democratic form of governance. That he is immediately elected to the role of supreme commander gives us some reason to doubt his sincerity. Offsetting this, he is also shown to be working towards the abolishment of slavery in his society.

Regardless of his exact degree of progressiveness, however, Rustal appears entirely uninterested in changing what Gjallarhorn is for. See, institutions and social structures have specific purposes, which need not be the ones they claim, via statements or appearances. A capitalist business may claim to exist to provide a product or service, but its actual purpose is the generation of profit. The police may claim to be an institution of citizen protection, but their purpose is the enforcement of the law, which can be detrimental to some or all of those selfsame citizens.

Gjallarhorn's purpose is to control the colonial holdings of the Earth and maintain the current division of the world. They administrate the extraction of resources, quash attempts at social change, and crush resistance to exploitative business practices. Moreover, Rustal is certainly well-aware this is what his job entails. It is his fleet that carries out a calculated massacre of the Dort workers' unions when they push for better conditions and he personally orders an orbital strike on defeated child-soldiers as an exercise in image management. His reforms thus smack more than a little of an army or a weapons manufacturer improving its hiring policies: sure, they now employ women and members of minority groups; they still exist to kill people.

For these kinds of entities, purpose is all-important. You can dress them up however you want, so long as their function continues to be carried out. I bet, when I described my country's persisting aristocratic elements, you immediately went, “that sounds like [mechanics of regional upper class and attendant justifications for social division].” Yes. Precisely. We don't have feudal system holdovers at the centre of our society because they're the most efficient or only means of fulfilling those roles. They're simply the ones that make the most sense at this point in our history. A different environment would necessitate a different form, but the function would remain.

[I am glossing over the mutability of function here – the power of the king has reduced greatly via political and economic shifts, so he's no longer performing quite the same role as his ancestors – but hopefully you get what I mean.]

Rustal's reforms are an illustration of purpose superseding form. At the end of the show, the narration informs us trust in Gjallarhorn has been restored, indicating an end to meaningful opposition to what we have seen it do. Similarly, when Rustal states that the organisation's history matters more than its mythology, he is saying it has largely been operating correctly and should continue to do so in the future. The public claims can be altered, the set-dressing reworked. The function remains.

Poor delusions

Like the British state and its equivalents, Gjallarhorn is draped in heroic, mythological imagery. From uniforms to equipment naming conventions, it presents as grand and noble, even possessing heraldry, as if originating in a gathering of brave knights. We, the audience, know that this is a veneer plastered atop the material reality. Scenes of its foundation are comparatively mundane: sober men wearing drab suits, shaping the future with the stroke of a pen. The dress-up played since is pure embellishment.

McGillis, however, takes the imagery seriously.

His plan hinges on 'awakening' Gundam Bael and being 'accepted' as its new pilot, fulfilling an old rule/tradition whereby whoever possesses this particular mobile suit is the undisputed leader of Gjallarhorn. By taking a disgraced Iznario's place among the Seven Stars, augmenting himself with an Alaya-Vijnana system, and capturing the facility containing Bael, McGillis intends to anoint himself the new Agnika. At a stroke, he believes he will gain the loyalty of all Gjallarhorn forces on Earth and thus the military strength necessary to defeat Rustal's Moon-based Arianrhod Fleet.

For reasons I'll detail another time, I don't think his strategy is necessarily ridiculous. But it doesn't work. The other Seven Stars do not automatically bow down to Bael's new pilot, instead adopting a neutral position awaiting the outcome of the impending battle, and there is no mass uprising among the ranks below them. Since Rustal otherwise commands an overwhelming number of troops, this turns the conclusion into a foregone one. The few who do join McGillis' cause are annihilated and he is forced to retreat, eventually dying in a one-man attack on the Arianrhod flagship.

It must be stressed that McGillis isn't stupid. He is a canny political operator who correctly identifies the biggest obstacles to success, and while his analysis of Gjallarhorn's corruption is deployed principally as a rhetorical tool, he's not wrong. The leadership are complicit in a lot of extremely shady activity, including experimentation with Alaya-Vijnana technology, contravening the taboo against augmentation their ancestors propagated. They do act against their publicly-stated values, to the detriment of ordinary people and in the interests of those who benefit from a hideously exploitative system.

His mistake is to treat this as a bug, rather than the feature we might more correctly diagnose it to be. Within The Life of Agnika Kaieru, McGillis believes he has discovered the hidden truth about Gjallarhorn. He imagines by setting Agnika aside, the Seven Stars obfuscated mechanisms to curtail their authority and an ethos more welcoming to people like him. (There is a lot we could discuss about the ways McGillis is immunised against some forms of bigotry by his station, despite his illegitimate status, and how he exploits more disadvantaged soldiers like Ein Dalton and Isurugi Camice for his own ends. It's just, that'd be another two thousand words and I really need to wrap this up.)

Yet if we follow Rustal's advice and heed history, the timeline shown in Season 1 has Gjallarhorn dolling out sections of Mars to the blocs a mere three years after the Calamity War ended. Among the many things we don't know about Agnika is if he survived the War, but whether he did or not, his organisation pretty instantly became a tool of social division and exploitation. The most we may allow is that its original purpose was truly noble. Its actions once the apocalypse had been averted speak for themselves.

This has been long walk, I suppose, for the fairly succinct summary of McGillis as a character who rejects private truth in favour of embracing a public, propagandising lie. I am compelled by the idea even so. Capitalism is far from the only system to have claimed universal virtue while benefitting merely a select few, but it has gone uniquely hard on the idea 'you can make it too'. Given IBO's uncluttered depictions of a world run for profit (with the complicity of ostensibly non-capitalistic institutions), taking a cynical read on Agnika's supposed ideology is trivial. Human triumphalism and Gjallarhorn conceptualised as the arbiter of fair competition dovetail into the show's unjust present in a manner too neat to discount. More than anything else, the choice McGillis makes is a common one in real life.

Sometimes, that's a positive thing, pushing people to insist on making promises come true to the detriment of the swindler proffering them. Others, it is a source of profound disorientation, leading in very dark directions as blame for the dissonance is attributed to anything but the root cause.

[This seems is as good a juncture as any to remark that McGillis is not a proponent of anything we can easily label fascistic. He focuses on individual freedom irrespective of national identity; he is attacking people genuinely perpetuating his world's ills; and he definitely doesn't bother courting a disaffected public by playing to middle-class anxieties. He doesn't need to. His plan is to enact a coup from high up inside a military hierarchy, while promising to lessen the force exerted against society. Though there are links to be traced between his ideology and fascist rhetoric, it isn't the avenue his circumstances compel him to go down.]

[I am 100% certain he would've gone in that direction if they had, but that's a counterfactual, not what the show actually presents.]

How McGillis got to where he did is another of IBO's many examples of adaptations to extremis that look utterly bonkers when seen at a remove. An outsider, thrust into the realm of a vicious upper class, he accurately declared the whole thing a nest of lies and hypocrisy. He could never buy the pretences it sold, to others and to itself. His very existence was damning disproof. Then, at his lowest ebb, he found a story about what it should be and that – that he bought, hook, line and sinker.

Already primed to consider power the be-all and end-all of life, he took Agnika's story as a guide to gaining the upper-hand, going so far as to tell Rustal (then a young adult) that the only thing he now desired was Bael. Though it seems he lapsed into a wait-and-see approach between prepubescence and his mid-twenties, witnessing children from Mars fighting using Gundams makes him believe destiny is taking a hand in events and the time has come to act. He betrays Carta and Gaelio, his two closest friends, both heirs to other Seven Star families, for the sake of clearing his path forwards. These were the first people to treat him like a normal child and he admits with his dying breath that he reciprocated their affection. This was part of why he killed/attempted to kill them: in their company, he started losing the will to pursue his dream, put off guard by finally having something positive in his life. So he chose to violently reject them, unable to give up on what he'd started.

That could easily be McGillis' epitaph. He is characterised by an overwhelming commitment to seeing through his power-grab, even if it means fighting an entire fleet to go personally kill Rustal. This is very far from a sane response and we might say likewise about everything he does prior. From his gleeful divinations at the sight of ancient relics, to his rapturous exultation on activating a machine he knows just required the appropriate brain/computer interface, the personality lurking beneath his habitually polite mask is little short of unhinged.

Which is of a piece with a group of teenage orphans clinging tight to the idea a good life lies just beyond the next battle, having internalised that proving their strength is the only way to survive. McGillis has to think taking on Agnika's mantle will bring him what he wishes, because otherwise his actions have been for nought, nothing can be changed, and the misery he endured is inescapable. It's the same self-reinforcing spiral, turned up to eleven.

(Re)imagining the world

In the final outcome, Iron-Blooded Orphans refutes McGillis' individualism, albeit not without caveat. Destabilising the Seven Stars creates space for incremental change and self-interestedly assisting independence activists lays the groundwork for Mars' eventual freedom from Earth. McGillis does create a “storm in this stagnant world,” with lasting consequences regardless of how swiftly it subsides. Nonetheless, his death is a futile one compared to the other causalities during the finale, who all manage to make their last acts count for something. Where Tekkadan share a mutually-supporting community – they are a 'pack of wolves' – he stands alone and saves nothing of what mattered to him.

As I said above, I don't want to treat IBO as a story solely and absolutely about capitalism. In a similar vein, I'm not trying to position an interpretation of Agnika as a vector for capitalist propaganda as the intended one. There are multiple moving parts here, spinning out from that serious consideration of child-soldiers as more than just a trope in fiction aimed at teenagers. My read on those parts is contextualised by my cultural background (I do now want to look into how Japan's own aristocracy mutated with their forced induction into global capitalism).

At the same time, McGillis indisputably misapprehends how a structure within a capitalist environment works because he wants to believe a version of what says about itself. And The Life of Agnika Kaieru is an artefact of that environment. Even without knowing more about its authorship, publication or veracity, and setting aside what McGillis brings to the table (his desire for power was set years before he'd heard of Agnika), the fact he finds it in Iznario's library speaks volumes. Biographies are not neutral objects. As alluded to above, the act of public remembrance shapes culture and hence society. I think it both reasonable and interesting to look at McGillis' arc with the assumption the book is ultimately commensurate with everything he was reacting against.

What would have happened had McGillis won is another moot question when the narrative hinges specifically on his failure. But a land of competition, overseen by the supreme authority of Gjallarhorn, where the only moral law derives from the dreams of the strong?

Perhaps the most damning thing to be said of McGillis' principles – of Agnika's principles – is that they would produce a world functionally identical to the one we started with.

———

Postscript:

For the sake of absolute clarity, I do not believe whether a story is about capitalism or not has any bearing on its quality. My discussion of the other Gundam shows is intended purely to highlight what I see as a fundamental difference between what they are doing and what IBO is. I don't think it is a problem that G-Witch is a personal/courtly drama, or that Wing is focused on fighting in a more philosophical than material sense, or that the franchise has overall tended towards addressing conflict per se, without any serious interrogation from an economic angle.

Stories can only fail at what they attempt, not at what they don't.

I nevertheless stand by what I said. A piece of fiction concerned merely with some generalised notion of 'human greed' is not about capitalism in any meaningful sense, and I fear that's where most Gundam shows land, one way or another, when they touch on corporate interests.

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