#gundam bael

[iuciferic]

biomech training

[gundamfight]

[gremoria411]

Just a little on the Gundam Asmoday/Asmodeus today (it apparently could’ve been called the Ashmodai, which is neat).

Okay, so the ASW-G-32 Gundam Asmoday is found by Wistario the Erda II crew (specifically Sinister) inside an Aridne Cocoon in the Debris zone. It’s specifically noted to be essentially brand new, with no records of it fighting in the calamity war, and a full complement of weapons ready to go. Based on this, and the fact that it seems to have its reactor hooked up to the cocoon, we can gauge one of two things. Either;

The Gundam wasn’t completed until either very late in the Calamity War, or just after, and thus didn’t have an opportunity to fight against the mobile armours.

This Cocoon relay station was apparently important enough to dedicate a Gundam frame just to keep it operational.

Based on the assumption that a bunch of regular ahab reactors would probably have done the job just fine, I think it’s more likely to be a case of it being completed late.

What makes this interesting is that we only know of one other Gundam frame that was completed late in the calamity war:

The ASW-G-71 Gundam Dantalion.

Now, because this is both at the end of the series (71/72) and because it’s stated that the Dantalion had been completed late, I had previously assumed that the Gundam Frames were completed sequentially. So, the ever-elusive ASW-G-70 Gundam Seere would have been completed just prior to the Dantalion, and the 72nd Gundam would have been completed after, possibly even being completed postwar (At a guess, either the Gundam Andromalius or Gundam Pruflas/Bufas - I’d be very interested in know what happened to it, since it’s be the most likely source as to any clue to the end of the calamity war and it’s immediate aftermath). But the Asmodeus implies something quite different. Unless its deployment was delayed for whatever reason, then it’s evidence that the Gundam frames may not have been built sequentially. (I’m not sure which it would be - it doesn’t seem to have any equipment that’d be too difficult to work with, being structured as a fairly direct combatant - gigant javelin as a sort of whip-sword to attack from a distance, smoke grenades and then grand tonfa’s up close, but then there’s plenty of other reasons for it to not have seen combat).

We do, however, know that Bael was the first. Add to that the seeming increase in complexity as the numbers climb (Dantalion appears simple but it has a bunch of add-on equipment not shown above, a lot of the 50’s and 60’s-series Gundams have fancy designs or systems, especially compared to the relative simplicity of the 00’s and 10’s), and we can guess that they were at least designed sequentially, with Asmoday’s presumed delay being an exception.

However, what I also think is interesting is where it was found. Inside an Ariadne Network Cocoon, big enough to be used as a harbour, administrative and let’s face it defensive point, in the network. Administered by the Falk Family (presumably headed by either Kalf Falk or his immediate successor), who already possess a Gundam Frame to their name - the Gundam Gamigin (shown above).

So what was the Asmodeus, for all intents and purposes a “phantom machine”, which exists on paper but was never actually deployed, doing there? Each Seven Stars Family or similar organisation within Gjallarhorn has precisely one Gundam Frame to their name, with no evidence of one family using multiple frames. I find it particularly interesting that it’s the Falk’s of all people that seem to have this frame - they’re one of the two families we know the absolute least about, the other being the Baklazan’s. Even then, most of the information we do know is what can be inferred from their Urdr Hunt point and their Gundam Frame. The only real supposition we can make is that they’re probably the oldest out of the Seven Stars - assuming no family got multiple Gundam Frames during the calamity war (which feels a fair assumption to make, given that we know absolutely nothing about any frames that were destroyed, implying no-ones really around to keep those records), then the ASW-G-04 Gamigin Gundam was likely deployed the earliest out of all the Seven Stars Gundam Frames, shortly after Bael (again, assuming sequential deployment). So it’s possible that the Falks were the longest surviving active participants in the Calamity war, besides Agnika Kaeru himself, of course. But it’s unclear why they would end up with another Gundam frame, and then not use it. A few possibilities:

The Intended Pilot for the Asmoday was killed before it could reach them, and the Falk’s didn’t have another pilot on hand to use it.

There was a Cocoon was involved in transporting the Gundams to their pilots, and it was kept at the cocoon until it’s recipient could be sorted out.

The Falks wanted extra “insurance” of their position once the Calamity War was over, and arranged for a second Gundam frame to be assigned to them somehow.

The Asmoday had nothing to do with the Falks, and it was left at the Cocoon by N as prize for Urdr Hunt participants.

It was salvaged from its transport during the war, and restored by the Falks.

In short, I don’t know why it was there and we’re probably not going to find out anytime soon, but it’s fun to think about. I would also like to point out that the Asmoday was also just…. Left there, which feels like it must have been purposeful in some way, but also means that the Falk’s didn’t recover it in the intervening 300 years.

[kydoesthings1]

kimaris vidar vs bael if mcgillis was locked in

[doubleddenden]

I built my second gunpla- Gundam Bael from Iron Blood Orphans. Hate the Pilot, but damn if that ain't a cool looking mobile suit

It took me about 2 days- not 48 hours, it was more like 6 total. There's a lot more pieces than I remember from last time, and this one is more flexible too. Lots more tiny pieces as well. Still, a good way to work my hands.

I might consider another in the future. I'd REALLY love to find Barbatos Lupus Rex and Gusion Rebake Full City, but generally I am open to whatever looks coolest and is on sale at the moment.

Fuck those stickers though. Why are they so TINY

[sanshiroiv]

Gundam Bael

[eightbitroots]

Doing some posing practice

[jlcomicsandgames]

Gundam, Gunpla from Japan! Bael Gundam, Gundam Aerial, Crossbone Gundam,...

[pretend-im-not-there]

Containing the soul of Agnika Kaeru! Kidding, but a good time to have finished the kit.

Gundam Bael, HG version. Paint markers used this time on the eyes, the ends of the horns, and a few hard to see places.

But he came out pretty well.

[newtyperowan]

I built Bael tonight, I wasnt expecting to like it quite as much as i did but it was a fun ride! I always forget how loose IBO kits tend to be though lmao

[partikron]

Gundam Bael and Demonology - Iron Blooded Orphans Spoilers:

All of the 72 Gundam frames in Iron Blooded Orphans are named after demons found in various grimoires and demonological texts, most famously the Ars Goetia in the Lesser Key of Solomon. The Gundam Bael is especially important to McGillis Fareed's master plan in Season 2, but who is Bael in the Lesser Key and elsewhere?

The name "Bael" clearly connects the demon to the Canaanite deity Ba'al (an honorific term meaning something like "lord" usually used for the rain, fertility and storm deity Hadad), a deity that was something of a cultural and cultic rival to the worshippers of Yahweh in the area, a rivalry that's easy to pick up on if you read the Old Testament or stumble on fundamentalist conspiracy theories. Like many deities that were competing against Yahweh for followers, Ba'al became a demon in Judeo-Christian mythology and demonology.

In the Lesser Key of Solomon, Bael is said to appear as a man, cat, toad, or even a combo of such, and the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of Johann Weyer says he will appear with the heads of all three (as you can see above in an illustration found in the Dictionnaire Infernal, another grimoire of note). Bael is said to have 66 legions of spirits under his command, and is often described as a "hoarsely-voiced king" with the power to make men invisible, etc.

Personally, I think IBO made a huge mistake by not making the Bael Gundam frame three-headed and grotesque, but that's just me.

[iuciferic]

bael

[gremoria411]

Alrighty, so a little more on that Gundam Belphagor. Part of the reason that I wanted to talk about all the G Generation designs is that they all occupy this weird canon state. All their bio’s say “built, deployment unknown” or “designed, maybe built” or “limited deployment to obscure front”, so they’re all basically “you can’t prove it didn’t happen” which is a nice angle.

(There are a few that are explicitly non-canon, like the monoeye gundams and things original to the games, like the Halphas, above)

But nonetheless it’s interesting seeing what’s been worked in, whether it’s an Axis Prototype that didn’t make the cut, an evil knockoff of the Victory Gundam or a whole new Gundam.

A whole new Gundam, oh my. Wouldn’t it be grand if there was a series that had “gaps” if you will, units we know existed, but don’t know anything about. Units that a brand new Gundam would fit right alongside.

I mean, there might even be a series that already fits with the gundams being named after demons from the Ars Goetia, like the Halphas and Barbatos, that’d be cool.

So yeah, I’m kinda looking forward to seeing what weird thing the next game to get original designs adds.

[taikonaut-songhai]

I finally finished up w/ Gundam IBO and ended up enjoying it a ton. I have complaints, its definitely a lot more "Anime™️" than what I typically watch as far as tropes go with like the harem ship and stuff but I just really liked the story it was trying to tell and the tragedy of Tekkadan's existence. I actually thought the mobile suit designs were pretty dope but that could be the result of them feeling Armored Core adjacent, and the OST was great. I was worried about season 2 going into things since I had heard complaints about it but I might even like it more than the first, the emphasis on showing the fallout of Tekkadan makes the commentary feel more complete, it was an interesting tidbit of info we got hearing that the group's success at the end of s1 "proved" the efficacy if child soldiers and in a roundabout way made things a lot worse though that specific aspect wasnt super explored. There's a lot I could say in regards to the story's themes and a ton to dissect but im lazy and my impression of the series rn was that it was a great ride. Also it was raw as hell and that's important for me.

[toskarin]

even though it's notoriously audience-hostile, there's a lot of cute things in IBO that endear me to it. for example, mcgillis uses two swords while piloting his graze despite nobody else doing that... because gundam bael dual wields

[wordsandrobots]

Is it just me or do the pilots that hold onto their suits for longer just generally tend to be stronger than the ones that switch them around? Mika and Gaelio, the ones that held on to the same MS for the longest in the series (Barbatos and Kimaris, respectively) are freakishly powerful with their respective Gundsms. The Bael, being the first Gundam in IBO, stayed with its pilot for the entire duration of the Calamity war. There's some sort of strengthening connection between pilot and machine going on here. The thing with the AV system pretty much being the first system in a mainline show where the pilot has to be physically tethered to the MS might also play into this. Idk this is sort of a thought vomit.

No, it's definitely an interesting angle . . .

Iron-Blooded Orphans isn't strictly the first Gundam series to play with the idea of linking a pilot directly to the 'suit. Arguably, the psycommu from the Universal Century stuff is the earliest human/machine interface in Gundam, albeit one bound up in the psychic powers and suchlike. Mobile Fighter G Gundam introduced a telepresence-style interface allowing martial artists to map their skills on to their machines. Later, Turn A Gundam would include a full-body connector allowing direct operation of a mobile suit, which would be kind of back-adapted into the UC canon via Unicorn's NTD system. All these, however, are presented as exceptional and fairly unique (in G Gundam, the Gundams are their own special class of mobile suit, even if most of the mobile suits we see *are* Gundams).

In IBO, though, the Alaya-Vijnana system is a more widespread, even commonplace technology, allowing the production of cheap, expendable soldiers who require minimal training. True, there is an original or 'perfected' version of the system that accords better with past examples, permitting mobile suits to operate at a superhuman excess. Mostly, however, the A-V is used as an illustration of the impact of military development beyond a national army or clean lab setting. They also have that great visual of the tethering, a far more viscerally arresting image than past attempts to play with the same concept.

This aside, what about the idea of pilots growing stronger the longer they use the same mobile suits?

I think in IBO specifically, there's a few things at play that mean it's worth digging into what we mean by 'stronger'. At a base level, certain mobile suits are described as being more powerful -- the whole point of the Gundam frame is to be exceptionally strong and durable, with two Ahab reactors allowing it to perform fetes beyond other machines. It is however entirely possible for a non-Gundam machine to match or even best a Gundam (Kimaris vs the Grimgerde or Barbatos vs the Reginlaze Julia). Pilot skill is also a factor and on top of that there's the A-V system, which allows for more instinctive control over a mobile suit, making it a physical extension of the pilot. In some cases, this permits novice pilots to overcome those who we can assume to have had much more training and experience; conversely, in others, a skilled non-A-V pilot can overcome pilots using the system -- see the Turbines vs the Brewers, for example.

Then there's the fact Gaelio is a cheating cheater who cheats. The Alaya-Vijnana Type E exists specifically because he comes up short in his fight with McGillis; even with Kimaris' extra oomph, he doesn't have the raw skill necessary to beat his old friend. So he lets Ein's undead brain do the flying instead. The way it's presented, while Gaelio is technically in Kimaris' driver-seat throughout, he isn't actually in control for the majority of its operations during Season 2. The writing is very explicit that the Type E is puppeteering his body, allowing it to exceed those pesky human limitations without resorting to full-on Alaya-Vijnana surgery. Gaelio selects the target, yes, but it's otherwise not *his* strength at play. In fact, the Eve of Vidar side-story shows the system can run entirely out of his control, to the point of tearing off and destroying everything in its path (hence the 'calibration' that keeps Gundam Vidar out of action for the first few episodes of Season 2).

[As an aside, we know the IBO setting has AI technology capable of matching and exceeding human pilots, and that mobile suits have algorithmic control programs assisting with their operation, so it wouldn't be out of the question to do all this without the squishy bits. Certainly, on the face of it, there seems little reason not to just plug Ein's brain into Kimaris and let it have at. But since military AI has a history of working out . . .

. . . poorly, it would make sense for there to be restrictions on its use. It might even be unquestioned best practice to always have a human with their hand on the on/off switch. So whether or not the Type E is actually capable of running a Gundam on its own, Gaelio's presence is probably non-negotiable.]

My point is, Gaelio is functionally a doorstop when the Type E is in operation so can we actually say he's getting stronger as a pilot over the course of the series? He certainly expends a lot of effort and makes personal sacrifices in order to reach a position where he beats McGillis. He has to be physically augmented to use the Type E, breaking his previous moral stance on that kind of thing. And Kimaris itself undergoes a lot of upgrades aimed at combatting McGillis' style of fighting. So in a sense, yes, being Kimaris' pilot for such a length of time means he gets stronger. Yet isn't it more like a lot of compensation for a persistent lack of strength? Gaelio himself doesn't necessarily improve through all this; it's more that he's willing to do things that give him a greater edge.

Which is a good point to turn to our other example. Mikazuki and Barbatos follow a similar trajectory over the course of the show, with the 'suit undergoing constant upgrades and Mika gradually removing the limits on his connectivity with it. True, it's not a case of Barbatos using Mika's body but --

Well, let's back up on that one. Because it isn't presented as Mika becoming a redundant extension of his 'suit. He is always clearly the one in control. However, when he takes . . . let's call it the first-stage limiter off his Alaya-Vijnana system in Edmonton, demanding more so he can beat the Graze Ein, he suddenly knows how to use Barbatos' sword to its fullest extent. Previously, his comments suggest he's at 'pointy end goes in the other guy' level with the thing. After the connection is deepened, he's able to perform incredibly precise cutting strikes and take Ein to pieces. As if the information on doing that was already stored inside the machine and just needed to be unlocked.

Yet the interesting thing is, he doesn't use that skill again. Not directly. Barbatos Lupus' sword is designed more for clobbering than slicing, for all that it *is* a sword, distinct from the clubs he favoured before. Later, he'll return entirely to the mace as his principle melee weapon. Almost as if he took the skills he'd . . . downloaded and then adapted them to his existing strengths.

That seems to be what is happening here. Where Vidar/Kimaris is a deliberately constructed weapon targeting McGillis, circumventing the shortcomings of its pilot, Barbatos is somewhat more organically tailored to act as an amplifier for the man in the cockpit. It's reworked to fit his style. Even in the middle of battling Hashmal, where we might expect residual performance data to come to the fore again, instead Mikazuki's existing impulses go into overdrive, crushing everything in his path with speed and raw power.

So the longer Barbatos is with Mika, the more it resembles him and the more strongly they act as a single unit. Not accidentally, either. Despite the implied contrast above, it's very much something Tekkadan and Teiwaz's mechanics deliberately engineer over the course of events. But it's based on Mikazuki's personality and his preferences (he seems to have looked at Hashmal's tail and gone 'I need that'), rather than with a particular end in mind.

I think if I was going to draw a thesis out of this, it'd be that all this is just an extreme version of something that happens with any pilot. Amida outfights Julieta (someone whose life is literally dedicated to mobile suit combat) and the Julia (a machine at the bleeding edge of 'suit development) in a relatively unexceptional Hyakuren. That is to say, the Hyakuren isn't a very flashy mobile suit. But this *is* a custom model and more importantly, one Amida has been using for a considerable length of time. We know pilots update their 'suits using data from old fights, that they tweak the settings to better fit their abilities, and that they train extensively in simulations. It makes sense for someone like Amida, with likely approaching a decade of additional experience, to be nigh-on unstoppable compared to everyone around her. She's put in the effort. She's gotten comfortable with her equipment. She knows exactly what she's doing.

The Alaya-Vijnana exaggerates this effect, allowing both rapid advancement in ability (the Tekkadan boys are exceptionally quick students because part of the point of the surgery is to circumvent learning curves) and for the pilot to adapt to the machine and vise versa. I think the longer someone used an A-V with the same 'suit, the more they'd be able to understand that 'suit's quirks and direct maintenance to correct or increase them. Ultimately, though, I suspect that's just speeding up a general rule.

Because the A-V is never presented as an instant-win condition. It doesn't trump everything else on its own. Skill still matters. Experience still matters. Ein runs rings around Shino while they're using comparable machines because, A-V or not, Ein trained for years in a Graze; Shino had been using one for a few weeks, at most.

I love that about IBO. It never has any of the tech be magic by itself. You need a pilot willing to go the extra mile and put in the effort to become something truly incredible.