tinyozlion

[tinyozlion]

I ADORE your blog and everything in it. Thank you so much for sharing your deep thoughts about Gundam Wing. I might go on a reblogging spree soon, LOL

Thank you for enriching this fandom with your meta essay. Really. It's a pleasure to read. 💕

Hwa...whait wait wait....hold on... j... hold on i need a moment wait old honh i need. to sit down i think wait....

This is so tremendously kind, thank you so much?? and thank you to everyone who has continued to show up despite my long absences and piles of WIPs and endless reworking of previous posts. you mean the world to me. I will remembr this. I will fight for u.

[tinyozlion]

LET'S ABSOLUTELY GOOOOOOOO

News - The Official Gundam Channel has uploaded a special video celebrating Gundam Wing's 30th Anniversary! The video includes brand-new animation, with nods to Wing's various manga spin-offs that have never been animated before. Kentaro Waki, the Director of Photography for this special video, knocked it out of the park making the animation look very close to the original's 90s style!

As of this writing, no new Gundam Wing anime or films have been announced, but it's cool to see something like this celebrating the anniversary of the series!

[tinyozlion]

I have a lot of grievances with Glory of Losers, but goddamn, the way it restructures the opening act of Wing is unequivocally an upgrade.

Alas, the Zeonic translation that's available online is nowhere near as coherent as the official manga, I'm sorry to say. Also it doesn't come with this chibi comic/toy ad in the back of the 2nd issue, so 0/10 stars, massive oversight, some crimes cannot be forgiven. 🔫😔

chomp chomp

[tinyozlion]

The distinctive cranial "helmets" of the genus Char were likely used in intraspecific combat and as display structures; the flanged and ornamented crests of Char Aznabalii seem ideally suited for both courtship rituals and defense, while the plain, domed crests of Char Merquisia suggest a more combative use, perhaps to reinforce the skulls of sparring sub-adults competing for dominance-- though of course we may never know for certain.

[tinyozlion]

Operation Pride's Weekly Prompts! June 1-7th - Family and Community June 8-15th - Relationships of All Kinds June 15-21st - Personal Identity June 22-28th - Once Upon a Queer June 29th and 30th - Free for All!

As part of each week, we have created a list of prompts for all creators to use and enjoy - to participate, create a work that includes at least one of the weekly prompts and post during that week! Posting late? No worries! You can post for any previous week during the following weeks. There will be a 'grace week' July 1-7th and any works posted during that week will be included in our A03 Collection! Questions? Please see our Rules post and our FAQ! Happy Pride! image credits to our wonderful @seaofolives

[tinyozlion]

I purchased three used GW manga that I already own for the following reasons:

Used and purposefully beat-up copy of Episode Zero specifically so I can further mangle it for scanning purposes, sparing my ancient and beloved copy out of nostalgia.

New copy of Blind Target to replace my ancient copy of Blind Target that the dog chewed.

ANOTHER copy of Episode Zero, brand new, in Japanese, for comparison purposes, bringing my total number of copies up to three.

[tinyozlion]

Heero Yuy gets invited to Tekkadan

I'm very sorry @tinyozlion, I start watching Wing and the first thing I do is drawing one of your blorbos getting a sucker punch to the throat. But in my defence, he has been shown to be quite resilient so I'm confident he'll get back on his feet and resume his brooding in no time.

[tinyozlion]

This essay keeps expanding like sourdough starter

[tinyozlion]

This essay was brought to you by a prompt from @billveusay, for which I am most grateful! Not sure if this has entirely cleared out the cobwebs and I apologise if this is less focused than usual, but it certainly got the gears turning.

"Oh hey, I was chatting yesterday with TinyOZlion about various Gundam shows, and we touched on the topic of how much IBO and 00 were inspired by Wing (although in the case of 00, "inspired" is a very generous word). And if you haven't already written about it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what IBO took from previous entries in the franchise, and how it put its own twist on them."

The earliest thread that Iron-Blooded Orphans is pulling can, I think, be traced to Gundam ZZ and its cast of teenage delinquents. The children from Shangri-La aren't suburban space colonists swept into the arms of military caretakers but rather kids who have been deprived of a conventional upbringing in a more protracted sense, working salvage on the scrap-heaps left over from two series' worth of wars. They have an established gang dynamic that clashes directly with the efforts of perennial child-endangerer Bright Noa to use them in furtherance of his increasingly poorly-defined mission, throwing the generational conflict depicted throughout 'Universal Century' Gundam into sharper relief. Previously, while a large proportion of the main cast were teenagers (including Bright himself, originally), they always operated within the bounds of adult supervision, occupying a place in the military structure befitting their youth. In ZZ, the gang ends up entirely supplanting all adult leadership and hijacking both the ship and the plot.

There are character commonalities with IBO as well: Beecha is a more abrasive, less morally consistent prototype for Eugene, down to sporting an out-of-place tie as part of his alternate costume, and I think Leina is a more direct analogue for Atra than the root of the 'homely support character' we find in Fraw Bow. However it is this shift towards centring generational conflict quite literally that the later show elaborates upon the most. Like Judau Ashta's friends, Tekkadan supplant the adults who bear responsibility for their situation, rebelling against abuse and foolhardy authority in search of a better future. And like their predecessors, that situation is rooted in poverty and the loss of parental figures who might have provided them with a more conventional normality. Mars is stricken with colonial division, rendered abject by the extraction of its resources, and subject to callously indifferent rule. Its children, orphaned by the resulting conflicts, must fight or starve – a more desperate echo of Judau pursuing the cash necessary to improve he and his sister's lot.

This does additionally, I am forced to admit, seem to owe something to Gundam AGE, where the antagonistic faction originates as discontented colonists abandoned on an inhospitable Mars by a central Earth-based authority. I deeply dislike crediting anything to AGE since I view it as by far the most morally compromised series, precisely because of its conceptualisation of a violent, absurdly powerful, atrocity-committing faction emerging from extreme deprivation. Even so, it does make sense as a point of reference for the development of the Post Disaster setting. AGE equally dabbles in hidden history ala IBO's Calamity War, extending an idea taken from Turn A and combining it with the a devastatingly powerful, autonomous mobile armour. 'Sid' presages Hashmal right down to its appearance.

A greater part of the conceptual landscape, however, seems owed to Gundam Wing. First, we have the relationship between the Earth and the colonies firmly tipped in Earth's favour, with no uniting organisation to take the colonists' side, even in a perverted form like Zeon or Vagan. There is no possibility here of an actual war, in the conventional sense, no national structure imposed on a conflict between oppressor and oppressed. Mars consists of divided vassal states and makes stuttering, incremental progress towards something more substantial, against the wishes of organisations assigned to keep it and the other space colonies in check.

Second, there is a sharp division between ground and space. We don't have ships that can traverse gravity wells and operate as well in one environment as the other. Passage across the Earth's surface must be managed by different means, relying on local assistance. The mecha too need to be adjusted depending on where they are deployed, creating obstacles in the plot. This serves to delineate different forms of action, as battles assume differing characters based on location.

And third, the social stratification running through Iron-Blooded Orphans is anchored at its top end by an aristocracy.

The handling of Gjallarhorn versus OZ provides a good example of where IBO's priorities diverge from its predecessor. It is tempting, I think, to position OZ as a more fanciful take on the nobility, infusing them with a certain validity and granting the argument that some are more fit to lead or inspire others. However they, the Alliance in which they originally hide themselves and the Rommerfeller Foundation they ultimately serve are all presented as vectors for oppression. These groups contain a non-zero number of unhinged murderous lunatics, after all, and engage in a great many nefarious activities for the sake of inflicting authoritarian rule on the population.

Nevertheless, members of OZ are permitted qualities that not only belie those elements but allow them to serve a higher purpose in the long run. Their nobility exists more in greater aims and ineffable qualities ascribed to 'true' soldiers than in any specific bloodlines – although, of course, Relena, adjacent in possessing importance via her heritage, benefits from both. There exists meaningful depth to the aesthetics and formality of the aristocracy, something notably, deliberately absent from Iron-Blooded Orphans.

Gjallarhorn are noble exclusively in the hereditary sense. What honour can be found among their ranks is fool-hardy and ineffective. Their manners and etiquette are vectors of snobbery, prejudice and abuse. While sympathy is evoked for individual members, it does not readily offset their actions – their purpose – as a colonial police force. Theirs is simply not a story that ends with letting bygones be bygones and everyone working towards the same ends.

Above all, IBO places a much greater focus on those who suffer under Gjallarhorn's domination than Wing does on those persecuted by the Alliance and OZ. Both shows use still images to convey mass protest and military action against civilians. But IBO takes the time to introduce us to people who belong in those scenes – labour activists and vulnerable populations, Tekkadan and the Turbines – while characters such as Ein, Almira and McGillis showcase the suffering present within Gjallarhorn, pervaded as it is by the same toxic attitudes it imposes on the world. The perspective through which we understand the setting aligns with the ground floor of the system, not the top. Even Kudelia, who apes Relena as a sheltered upper-class girl coming to understand a wider world, represents a lower social position than a long-lost princess adopted by a key government minister. Most of the time, we see things through the eyes of outsiders, not power-brokers, and when we are privy to the thoughts of the latter, they are coloured by antipathy and corruption.

Cynicism is one of IBO's main watchwords. Not hopelessness, yet it trades on a much grimmer view of people and power. Another interesting comparison to Wing is how it handles the inspirational nature of its protagonists. In Wing, the Gundam pilots are lauded for their purity and courage, often out of proportion to their actions, in ways that still work thematically. Meanwhile Tekkadan embody Quatre's infamous 'violent and dangerous but all nice guys' line to a T and also provide inspiration to others – as examples of how children like them make excellent soldiers. This isn't absent in Wing's approach, exactly, but like OZ's aristocratic nature, there is more space provided for it to be framed positively. In IBO, it forms part of the doom towards which Tekkadan rush. Sure, their inadvertent instigation a renaissance in mobile suit and 'space-rat' usage is a passing reference at the start of Season 2. But McGillis veneration and overestimation of their abilities is different only by degree, not kind. He makes them a part of his revolution precisely because they invigorate his belief that the downtrodden can change the world. A form of fetishisation, reducing them to objects, that runs explicitly contra to how we as the audience are allowed to understand them.

Given the fundamental mistakenness of McGillis' idea of them is key to both his failure and their destruction, it's hard not to read it as explicit rejection of some of Wing's more dedicatedly heroic framing. Even as Tekkadan earn sympathy from those closest to them, their commitment to violence-as-livelihood renders them fools, not martyrs; their achievements, a less significant step along the road to a better future than is made by Heero Yuy and co. I do find this a slightly tricky distinction to articulate because I'm aware it's another matter of degree. An engagement with something not absent in the earlier work so much as downplayed – left incipient rather than truly confronted. Wing's pilots save the day because they are better than the world they inhabit in key ways, despite exemplifying some of its worst aspects. Tekkadan succeed only in a fractured survival because they cannot be better than their world, despite being good kids regardless.

Where I feel on firmer ground is in looking at McGillis and Gaelio as a fascinating engagement with the whole concept of a 'Char clone'. Quite apart from Gaelio being perhaps the only fully-fledge Garma clone (depending on how one looks at it, Glemy Toto might be the only other candidate), I'm in two minds as to whether we can even properly classify them in those terms. The pattern set by Char depends heavily on rivalry as an underpinning component, manifesting as a competition between the protagonist and a masked figure who challenges them to become better, even when that figure is nominally on their side. Yet in Iron-Blooded Orphans, rivalry is largely rejected as a significant motivating force. To put it bluntly, Mikazuki doesn't care. His first fight with McGillis gestures in the direction of how a rivalry could form but never does. McGillis is Tekkadan's erstwhile ally by the middle of the first season. At the same time, Gaelio's attempts at pursuing a vendetta against Mika are repeatedly foiled by his inability to keep up. It's left to Ein to push Mika to be… honestly 'worse' might be the more adpt descriptor, with the resulting disablement tying Mika progressively further to his role as an engine of destruction over his wishes to be a farmer. And I don't think I can argue that Ein Dalton is a Char clone if the term is to retain any meaning.

Actually, 'Char clone' has always struck me as a bit of a slippery classification, insofar as it is habitually used. I don't feel it's correct to just assign it to every masked figure going, since to do so overlooks the specific qualities of Char and Amuro's relationship in the original Gundam. This is why I tend to exclude Ulube in favour of Schwartz Bruder in G Gundam: Ulube is too much of a mastermind, too little involved in Domon Kasshu's development. As I said above, rivalry and challenge are important to Char's character and its derivatives. Perhaps the area where McGillis is most firmly in Char clone territory is that he is challenged by Tekkadan. The inspiration he takes from them is actually pretty close to how Char's character trajectory is impacted by Amuro. He wants that power for himself, to prove he is as capable as he thinks he should be.

On the other hand, the lack of a reciprocal component from the protagonists complicates this view. That part is given over instead to Gaelio, who takes the role of McGillis' rival in the sense of pursuing him following the whole 'attempted assassination' thing and of a long-standing desire to 'catch up' to his best friend. Indeed these twos divvy up aspects of the Char archetype pretty neatly between them, with McGillis possessing the secret backstory, grand ambitions and affinity for impressionable youths, while Gaelio is infused with the quest for revenge, the dubiously-ethical psychic technology and being a snobby prick. It's not an entirely unique trick: the history of Char-alikes is full of different spins, including this kind of multi-character distribution of traits (funnily enough, in Gundam ZZ and Gundam Wing). But I don't think there's a cleaner example in the franchise and there's something amusing about it being a result of taking the 'what if Garma lived' concept extremely seriously.

Well, as seriously as one can ever take this level of melodrama. It's Gundam – you get used to masked wing-nuts engaging in angry debates at the tops of their lungs.

There's a bunch of other lesser threads to consider. Aesthetically, Grazes are a reinterpretation of the Leos from Wing and the Rodis are Zaku-inspired, leading to the rare case of two different classic mook designs fighting one another. Nothing especially deep about that but it's quite fun. Naze's outline as a Jupiter-born man with a harem owes something to Zeta Gundam, if only as answering the question of 'what if that guy genuinely respected women rather than just being a manipulative creep?' Tekkadan likely owe at least something to Setsuna F Seiei's backstory from Gundam 00, doing justice to the concept of a show anchored by actual child soldiers without devolving into teenage fantasies. And I mentioned Turn A Gundam's hidden history: the Gundam frames are surely a new take on that same idea, of mobile suits as buried relics of a by-gone age.

I will also sound a note of caution about tunnel-vision when analysing Gundam shows – or any long-running media project. A good example, which I read years ago on Twitter, is arguing over whether Krypto the Super Dog or Ace the Bat Hound has priority as the original super-pet in comic-book history, without appreciating the then-current popularity of TV shows like Lassie. Not every aspect of a piece of art comes from inside the house, so to speak. Influences from the wider genre landscape or from outside that particular niche have to be born in mind. With IBO we might consider the proximity of shows such as Aldnoah.Zero (a depiction of an Earth/Mars conflict centred on an exceptionally skilled and stoic teenage soldier, featuring aristocratic antagonists and a shattered moon) in addition to prior Gundam series.

But I think I'll leave it there for now, with the primacy of the teenage characters, the structure and perspective of the world, the treatment of social hierarchy and ideal, and the dissection of the Char clone as the main areas where Iron-Blooded Orphans engages with prior entries in the franchise.

[tinyozlion]

God... it's... it's worse than this actually. I regret to inform everyone that That Guy is not That Guy because That Guy (who is not That Guy) is That Guy.

For clarification:

I hope that helps.

Fear not, everyone, I am here today with an exhaustive* spotter's guide to that bunch of masked lunatics we like to refer to as 'Char clones' in the Gundam fandom. Because people are always getting into this monolith of the mecha anime canon and I thought it would save some confusion.

Row 1, left to right:

Char Aznable (Mobile Suit Gundam, 1979): hey, it's that guy!

Quattro Bajeena (Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, 1985): it's that guy, again, supposedly

Free space (Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, 1986): ZZ omits masked lunatics to make room for all the unmasked lunatics

Iron Mask (Mobile Suit Gundam F91, 1991): evil uncle stepfather dad cut-price Darth Vader

Cronicle Asher (Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, 1993): some guy who is not really trying with this whole 'mysterious masked man' thing

Schwarz Bruder (Mobile Fighter G Gundam, 1994): just your average German ninja sportsman guy (honest)

Row 2, left to right:

Zechs Merquise (New Mobile Report Gundam Wing, 1995): a totally new guy with very familiar fashion-sense

Jamil Neate (After War Gundam X, 1996): ersatz guy, but not the one you think

Harry Ord (Turn A Gundam, 1999): what a guy!

Rau Le Cruset (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, 2002): not that guy

Neo Roanoke (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, 2004): also not that guy, or that guy

Graham Aker (Mobile Suit Gundam 00, 2007): This guy...

Row 3, left to right:

Full Frontal (behave yourselves; Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, 2010): not that guy either, probably, maybe, perhaps

Zeheart Galette (Mobile Suit Gundam AGE, 2011): a guy named after baked goods

Luin Lee (Gundam Reconguista in G, 2014): 'Captain Mask'

McGillis Fareed (Mobile Suit Gundam IRON-BLOODED ORPHANS, 2015): a guy who is way too into this

Vidar (Mobile Suit Gundam IRON-BLOODED ORPHANS, 2016): say, Iron-Blooded Orphans, how come mom lets you have two guys in masks?

Prospera Mercury (Mobile Suit Gundam the Witch from Mercury, 2022): mom

*Mainline series, at time of writing

[tinyozlion]

Fourth round of screencaps from my liveblog of Gundam Wing

(Spoilers below)

(Again, I am liveblogging to @theotherwesley, this magnificent sketch in the sixth image is his creation) < Part 3

[tinyozlion]

y....you drew me a Maganac Bunny??🥺 for me? you do this for me? This is the most lovely wonderful fluffy little guy, i love him unconditionally, he is my son now

I'm getting ready to make an emergency trip back home to help take care of my dad who is having a health scare, which means I have to leave the bunnies in the care of a nice friend-of-friend-of-family person I've never met before, and I'm so. so. stressed. I don't even know how long I may be gone for, and I don't know how they'll cope in an outdoor hutch... I mean the weather is nice right now and when I rescued them they were surviving just fine in a field in the middle of winter with a bunch of feral cats, so like, Outdoors is not the problem, it's Outdoors In A Hutch rather than Indoors With A Whole Room that's giving me heartburn... I've never had to leave them for this long before. In fact, I don't know that I've gone a full day without seeing them since I got them?? My babies? ;; What if they're stressed out the whole time? They're going to miss me and wonder where I went? What if they think i abandoned them like they were before? What if they forget me? No. No.

[tinyozlion]

"A Banquet for Pleiades", New Mobile Report: Gundam Wing: Glory of Losers, Sakura Asagi, Hajime Katoki

Illustration for Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám - Omar's Horoscope, Elihu Vedder

"The Pleiades" (1885), oil on canvas, Elihu Vedder

Catasterism: the transformation of a hero into stars - from Ancient Greek katasterismós, “star legend”, katasterízō, “to place among the stars”.

[tinyozlion]

Remember back when 90s shonen animes would basically make official fan art entirely out of constext?

Anyway, here are the characters from Yu Yu Hakusho as a band!

The top left is primotion for the actual show, while the top right is the official band AU for advertising.

More American anime should play around with spoofing their own material to encourage engagement.

[tinyozlion]

Milestone Monday

Aces High

On April 21, 1918, the famous German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, widely known as the Red Baron, was killed during World War I. This is the subject of the book, The Day the Red Baron Died, published in New York by Bonanza Books in 1970, which is presented here. Written by Dale M. Titler Sr. (1926-2014), an aviation and military history writer, it provides a detailed account of Richthofen’s death, which occurred while he was engaged in a dogfight over the Somme River in France. He was ultimately brought down by a single bullet. 

The exact circumstances of his death are disputed. It is widely believed that he was shot by Canadian pilot Arthur “Roy” Brown. However, some accounts suggest that the fatal shot may have come from anti-aircraft troops, as argued by Titler. 

From the jacket of the book:

This is the most detailed and colorful biography of the many that have been written about Manfred von Richthofen—the famed ‘Red Baron,’ so named for the all-red triplane he flew and was flying the day he was shot out of the sky. As a documentary it is a story that evokes the romantic legend of the knight of the air, white silk scarf and all.  Ever since World War I the manner of death of Germany’s most famous ace has remained a controversy--until the publication of this book. The Day the Red Baron Died presents the facts that prove conclusively that von Richthofen was not shot down by a fighter but was brought down by ground fire.

This groundbreaking work shakes up old stories and enriches our understanding of one of aviation's most iconic legends.

Our copy of this book comes from our George Hardie Aviation and Aerospace History Collection.

-View more Milestone Monday posts

--Melissa, Special Collections Library Assistant

[tinyozlion]

Oh no, Suzie! :( </3 I did not mean for it to read that way, and that sucks of me. I'm sorry, I know it's a bad time to get hit in the face with the wet fish of guilty-pleasureism. Trust me that I would be INSANE if I said I thought GW didn't have value outside of being a guilty pleasure; like if that ever leaves my mouth or keyboard, please assume I'm being held at knife-point and the kidnappers are forcing me to post on tumblr. To clarify, the "shared hallucination" is an ongoing bit that started with ->this, and I'm afraid the rest of the context got lost in the shuffle-- some of it is left in comments and the rest got moved to the auxiliary blog, because 1) I'm a big dummy who forgot to use read mores and the posts were twenty miles long, and 2) I'm *desperately* trying to get this blog back on track. :'D

The gist of it is that from the perspective of new/returning viewers the stand-alone anime is missing so much critical background material that the seemingly disproportionate fandom that's been flourishing since 2000 A.D. makes it seems like we all kind of... dreamed a totally different show into existence? And, with nothing but respect to our incredibly prolific fandom, that's kinda true! I mean we've had thirty+ years of deep scrutiny and collaborative headcanons to work with! It's impossible to substitute all that for a few fandom.wiki pages, and I get that most people don't have the energy or motivation to track all that down. (That's why I'm here, doing the thing I am doing).

For my part I think I may have been coming off a bit harsh? dismissive? to my literal favorite show on earth lately because I've been immersed in the process of on-boarding a lot of new people to it, and I've needed to rewire 30 years of conditioning that took for granted that Gundam Wing is an example of mature science fiction that deals with serious topics and has deeply fascinating characters whose emotional journeys are very compelling and the philosophical conclusions of the show are quite profound and meaningful-- AND TO BE 100% CRYSTAL CLEAR: I STILL THINK THIS. I WILL THINK THIS ON MY DEATH BED. But-- from observation I can no longer pretend that that's what most new viewers experience on their first encounter. I've been adapting my tone to the purpose of reaching outside the choir and that means opening myself up to the idea that post-Wing Gundam/Mecha series have had this whole time to build on many similar themes to Wing, but with better management and more hindsight, and people will be coming to it from a place of having already seen these developments beforehand. In an earlier post, 'Words and I were comparing Wing to a historical drama or musicals like Les Mis-- partly because it relies heavily on exposition to introduce its premise rather than introducing the viewer to it diegetically-- something which is normal for Gundam as a franchise-- and partly because the characters tend to narrate their emotions out loud for the viewer. It is a heavily stylized show, with theatrical tendencies, like a play, and like a play, it is ART. I've had to pry myself out of decades of hyper-familiarity with the show to accept that it sounds hammy to current audiences, because yes, it's a product of its time (and that itself is historically interesting!), but for me it's encouraging that people can acknowledge the incidental hamminess and still take it as seriously as we do (and we still have fun with it, yeah?). Imagine someone saying that Les Miserable, a book that's been in publication since 1862 and on pretty much continuous run as a play for forty years, didn't have lasting value because it was bombastic and had expositional dialogue. Please know that if I'm comparing Gundam Wing to theater, it is because I deeply respect theater. And as said above, taking it as a theater performance was what made it more accessible and enjoyable for a returning fan! That's a win in my book. :)

Also, not to speak for 'Words here, but I know he has been genuinely enthusiastic about rediscovering Wing and its missing backstories! I don't believe it's fair to take the above response as indicating that he didn't find it meaningful, especially because he states the opposite. I guarantee this was all meant in goodwill. <3

Yeah, no, for me at least, watching the Gundam Wing dub is definitely the way to get the most out of it. Having that extra mental cue to treat it as a theatrical performance really helps put me into the right mindset for appreciating it, to the point where things like Zechs cursing himself for not being able to strike down Noin, Une reigniting Treize's will to battle, and Treize revealing that he keeps an exact tally of the dead all hit like flipping freight trains.

Coupling that to having read Episode Zero means I finally have the tool-kit to really jibe with what the show is going for. And, I mean, come on. In context, more clearly understanding the philosophy behind his actions - Wu Fei's 'I didn't think I'd win'? That's an epic poem in a single line.

No wonder he's in such a bad state come Endless Waltz! Poor kid just cannot catch a break when it comes to building a solid world-view for himself. It's so very cathartic to see him backing up a crowd of unarmed protestors at the end of the movie (him AND Dorothy, let's not forget).

Once I knew to look, there's so many little details feeding the performative aspects of it, too. Treize and Zechs having conversations when they absolutely cannot hear the other side of the exchange. Dorothy's vamping. Duo entirely disregarding the fourth wall.

Is it a good engagement with the material reality of war and pacifism? Not particularly. But you don't necessarily need a high melodrama performance to be true to the reality of specific philosophies, as long as it remains emotionally grounded and compelling. And taken on its own terms?

Yeah. There's a damn good reason this show took a generation by storm.

Last time around, I complimented the Gundam Wing fandom on the show they'd hallucinated into existence. My sincere thanks to @tinyozlion for providing me the toolkit necessary to join them on the trip.

(Obligatory hot take: I like the TV version of Wing Zero much better than the Endless Waltz design. EW!Zero is just a bit too fey; TV!Zero has the beef necessary for it to be a believable engine of devastation.)

(Obligatory uncontroversial take: the mecha design for Gundam Wing is some of the best the franchise has ever produced, especially the OZ mobile suits. High Grade Aries when, Bandai?!)

That was a very fun way to spend my week. I am now going to go for a walk and resist the urge to splash out on a Real Grade Tallgeese because while I lack the space, it is extremely pretty and relatively inexpensive. For similar reasons, the upcoming Real Grade TV Wing Zero is going to be very dangerous to my wallet.

[tinyozlion]

THIS IS NOT A DRILL, Mark Simmons is rebooting GundamUnofficial.com, AND he is on bluesky being a legend.