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nanslice
First, a recap of the episodes watched this week!
Episode Three - Five Gundams Confirmed
Heero is taken to an Alliance hospital, but Duo helps him escape and later returns the Wing Gundam to him. Meanwhile, Trowa Barton, pilot of the Gundam Heavyarms, and Quatre Raberba Winner, pilot of the Gundam Sandrock, meet in battle, but when Trowa surrenders after running out of ammunition, Quatre asks that they become friends instead. At the same time, Zechs is introduced to the Tallgeese, the original prototype mobile suit.
Episode Four - The Victorian Nightmare
Zechs arrives at the Lake Victoria Alliance base to meet with an old friend, Lieutenant Lucrezia Noin, but the base falls under attack from Chang Wufei, pilot of the Shenlong Gundam. Trowa and Quatre part ways after a brief respite from battle, while Heero repairs his Gundam by stealing parts from Duo's and later uses it for a mission to destroy an OZ transportation carrier.
We are better introduced to the remaining Gundam pilots, as well as meet some new characters here. We also get to see the characters have real interactions! How do you guys feel about some of the actions certain characters took? Feel free to discuss future spoilers if you want, just use white out text or Rot13. :3
teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-07 02:44 am (UTC)Despite the Duo - Heero antics (and the return of the Crazy Laugh [tm]), Wufei's nuttery and the last-minute appearance of Trowa and Quatre, these two episodes showcase the Specials. More to the point, it demonstrates how Treize and his wingnuts are not a good thing.
It really says something that even in the face of stunts like banishing Minister Darlian from the Alliance meetings (and his being dressed in conservative civvies, in a sea of baroque military uniforms), it's not the greater alliance at large that's the issue here.
Instead, in the form of Commander Bonaparte, we're told that unlike the leading 'old guard' of the Alliance/Alliance military machine, who favour caution and a certain avoidance of active conflict, it's the Specials -- a faction that has great power, is gaining more, is training the new crops of Alliance soldiers (never a good sign; we already see the indoctrination in the younger-looking minions that follow Zechs around, and remember: Zechs himself is only 19!), supplying mobile suits, and is answerable to no one -- that are gaining ground. And, more to the point, are spoiling for conflicts, making it themselves where necessary, and see it all as an "aristocratic game".
Combining this with the infodump (thank you Mister Narrator!) of how its Treize who heads the Specials, also being part of the Romefeller Foundation -- a financial powerhouse that has leveraged influence and is backed by (presumably mainly Western/European, judging from the cast etc) monarchies and actual aristocracies -- and, well, not only does the peculiar neo-aristo slant look even more explainable, it does make one wonder who is the actual driving force behind the conquering of the colonies.
Treize and his group, despite Zechs' issues over lost troops, and Noin also -- are indoctrinating the next generation into fanatic loyalty and a concept of war as a noble game, and that is a very dangerous thing.
Speaking of the colonies, Darlian's railing that the colonies want peace raises an interesting point: in an era of radio and tv satellites, and all the rest of technology, there's really no reason that "the colonies" at large have not heard about events (assuming they haven't been told outright by Darlian) ... and it would be simple enough to broadcast denouncements of the Operation Meteor actions. Either somehow the Alliance has blocked all such communications (although the Alliance heads themselves seem to think the colonies just flat support the operation), or ... no one had bothered. And silence can mean, or seem to mean, assent.
or the writers couldn't be arsed, but work with me here *lol*On the rest of the cast, not really a lot of comment. Duo is entertaining; Heero is entertaining in his own way; Sally is introduced, and I have to cheer even if her first outing is less than logical ;3~ Wufei cements his position as the most pragmatically arsehole of the five -- and yet, it's not that much worse, if worse at all, than putting boots on the face of the colonies (where there is nowhere to run, literally, and a fragile 'world' indeed). His more specific and personal attitudes are more of a problem.
The Taurus suits are an amazing design, and their pointed, dark and reddish aesthetic is frankly creepy-looking compared to the workhorse Leo and the benign vaguely-insectile Aries -- which is probably part of the point. These are competently space-capable units, and the only real purpose at the time being for spaceworthy mobile suits is to continue to terrorize the colonies with them; psychological warfare is still warfare. They also have a mobile armour mode that resembles a fighter -- Wing is not the only beast early on with an armour mode.
The respective Glory of Losers chapters have some intriguing bits about Tallgeese's intended pilot, Wufei's motivations, and when plans for the Epyon started up, as well as bit more for the gundanium shipment and other interesting things:
http://taichara.dreamwidth.org/152209.html
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Date: 2015-06-07 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-07 05:16 am (UTC)Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-07 05:21 am (UTC)Also yes Taurus suits looking great! It seems kind of rare for the mass produced MS in Gundam to be so dark and sleek in design. I also love their creepy little theme tune.
Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-07 05:25 am (UTC)Wing in general has awesome grunts; I think of the Gundam-series grunts I'm familiar with, the only one I like as much as the Wing machines is the AEU's Enact from Gundam 00 *grin*
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Date: 2015-06-07 05:47 am (UTC)Heero-trying-to-fall-on-his-head antics always continue to amuse me. Also the part where his serial-killer laughter made a comeback (tbh I'd thought it only happens in the first ep). Again, so many points I'd forgotten or misremembered.
Then Noin's intro and the backhanding never gets old. It's still weird though how soldiers like Zechs and Noin are already so high ranked (god everyone important in this show is so young).
Oh, and Wufei. Problematic fav. The way he just does the whole 'efficient lone wolf terrorist' thing at the start of the series makes for some great scenes. While the other pilots are getting tangled up in problems and kind of making friends, he's just out there ruining shit. But that's part of what makes his scenes so entertaining.
Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-07 05:57 am (UTC)And I was thinking of 00 too! Especially the Union's black Flags, though the Enact has a special place in my heart too because Ali started out with a custom Enact. With a skilled pilot the Enact is really pretty awesome and agile.
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Date: 2015-06-07 07:01 am (UTC)It's easier to get rank when having you in that rank is of benefit to the one you've already effectively sworn fealty to.
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Date: 2015-06-07 07:20 am (UTC)Gundanium, Mobile Suits, etc.
Date: 2015-06-07 12:08 pm (UTC)This is from the Gundam Wing Technical Manual, published by Tokyopop back in the day. It seems to be a translation of one of the wonderful Gundam Data Collections that Dengeki publishes.
Gundanium
Gundanium is created through the most advanced refining, fusing, and deoxidizing techniques, which are only possible in space. The complex formula was first called GND, short for Genetic on Universal Neutrally Different Alloy. Later, the suffix "-nium" was added to distinguish that alloy from other similar alloys that were being developed on Earth. Gundanium was still superior to the competition because of its zero-G process.
While it's called an "alloy," Gundanium contains many non-ferrous metals and non-analyzed matter, meaning it is not a true metal. It is crewated in high-termperature plasma that can only form in zero-G. The compound is adjusted in nano-units, a process so precise that it can only be done in gravitationally stable Lagrange Points. The annealing process, which strengthens the alloy, is performed by electromagnetic waves from the sun. It is even rumored that the nuclei of the atoms themselves are modified within the Gundanium alloy.
While many similar alloys were developed, no other compound is as immutable as Gundanium. The refinement process causes the alloy to become electrically neutral, making it ideal for use with Beam-type weapons, and as armor, the material is almost entirely resistant to damage. However, the extremely high cost of production makes it impractical for military use.
Some intelligence indicates that OZ scientists experimented with using Gundanium alloy in MS creation. The very existence of Gundanium was kept secret, perhaps because it was a possible secret weapon for OZ. The five scientists who left the Tallgeese project took with them the knowledge of Gundanium, allowing them to create the Gundams that would later become the bane of OZ.
The creation of the Gundams took decades of work behind closed doers, due in part to the slow process of manufacturing Gundanium. This is evidence of just how long a process Operation Meteor was, with the Gundams being created before their eventual pilots were even born.
AC mobile suits are notably lighter than other mobile suits in the franchise. (An average CE/SEED MS will weight about 50 tons bare-bones.)
Commentary on Tallgeese's size is interesting, because she's only a little over a meter taller than a Leo, though clocking in at 8.8 tons to a Leo's 7 tons. In another Gundam series, those ~two tons wouldn't be worth noting, but here it's a large difference. Both Tallgeese and Leos are made of a Titanium Alloy.
Re: Gundanium, Mobile Suits, etc.
Date: 2015-06-07 12:13 pm (UTC)fairy fartsGN Particles from Gundam 00.I also can't believe I never thought of the possible parallel between gundanium and tamahagane before this, either ... *fail*
Love the lightweight Wing machines, it makes cleaving the grunts like they're paper models so much more believable (and I love my kabooms-of-dozen battles, lol) ~ Generally assume there's a lot of relatively open space under the plating though X3~
Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-07 06:49 pm (UTC)I'm not going to lie, that actually distracted me a bit this time. I know I've seen this episode before and just overlooked it as generic text before, but I got distracted with it this time. And it's not as if this is the first time I've seen a show from Japan use actual text from something to fill in their computer screens for some kind of data.
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Date: 2015-06-07 10:00 pm (UTC)I really appreciate how we not only get to hear Noin talking about how she views battles that costs what she views as needless lives in a way that indicates she has concern from the lives of those under her command, but also get to watch her reacting based on those feelings after Wufei attacks the barracks instead of the Taurus suits.
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Date: 2015-06-08 12:26 am (UTC)Re: Gundanium, Mobile Suits, etc.
Date: 2015-06-08 05:13 pm (UTC)Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-08 05:38 pm (UTC)Duo is endlessly entertaining! I love his body language, it's so exuberant.
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Date: 2015-06-09 02:14 am (UTC)Oh Treize you dangerous, magnificent bastard. Never change.
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Date: 2015-06-09 02:18 am (UTC)And the duet between Quatre and Trowa. The cute, the cute!
I like Noin. I like Noin a LOT. Noin in these early episodes gets to show off how much of a heavy hitter she is, while still being rendered entirely ineffective due to Wufei's Plot Armor. Sigh.
That's OK. The more she shows up, the more I like her.
TREIZE YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, QUIT STARTING WARS, WE ALL KNOW YOU ARE VERY MANLY AND NOBLE. Also what did that pheasant ever do to you? Geez.
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Date: 2015-06-09 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 06:46 am (UTC)Okay. So. On the one hand, yay for Sally and Relena interacting! I am always up for ladies. On the other hand, what the fuck was that scene? Like. Okay, Heero is a super suspicious kid, fine, I get it. With the explosives and shit he was dealing with in the last episode, I'm not exactly surprised they strapped him to this freaky ass table and are trying to get every bit of information out of him. But then there's a couple of things that really, seriously bug me:
1. Why the fuck are you bringing Relena up to show her this? What, you think she's an accomplice and are trying scare tactics or something? After she had admitted being Vice Minister Darlien's daughter? Do you really think it's a good idea to be showing a civilian the inside of a dubious looking part of a military hospital? OR does this mean that everyone in the Alliance is pretty chill about tying up kids as long as they're not 'one of us' and she thinks Relena will be fine with it? (When Relena proves minutes later that she's really not.) And this is happening while Sally has concerns about using a 'truth serum' on Heero - insinuating she has some issues with kids in the war.
2. WHAT THE FUCK SALLY. "I really hope that boy's not one of our enemies." IF HE WASN'T BEFORE, HE PROBABLY WOULD BE NOW. What the fuck is that comment? Just. Seriously?! (Especially because the visible politics right now are Alliance vs. Colonies, right? & Within the Alliance, old fogies vs. Specials - but Heero is not Alliance, so who the heck do you think he's siding with?)
...on a totally different note, I am endlessly entertained by Duo's helicopter umbrella. Is that something he cobbled together himself, or a mass produced thing, do you think?
WTF. Dirigibles. Are you kidding me? How is that a good use of resources? Also, it is so weird because they clearly have airplanes and shuttles - what point could dirigibles possibly have in this world other than to be potential giant explosives?
Trowa. Quatre. You're both being idiots. Stop fighting each other and chase after the OZ aircraft. ...although, I guess I do like this scene between the two of them. Didn't know 03x04 scenes started so soon into the show. (Also, Quatre's outfit -vest especially- just cracks me up. He's so ~fancy~ compared to the rest of the Gundam pilots.)
04. the victorian nightmare
Those chairs in the anti-gravity chamber kind of crack me up. I mean, when you think about it, it's very reasonable. But that doesn't stop me from laughing at the ridiculous images in front of me.
Nnf. Wufei on a motorbike. Also, hi Shenlong. You are awesome.
Lots of interesting background on Zechs and Noin - that they graduated together, that Noin purposefully aimed for Zechs to be in the spotlight, that Noin knows he's a Peacecraft, their different philosophies... It is VERY interesting to me that while in the previous episode Zechs felt that five men were too many too lose, he thinks that Noin is too attached to her soldiers and that her desires to prize her men over the outcome of the fight and the equipment are going to hurt her in the end. (Also, I love Noin's uniform.)
I loved the entire Wufei-and-Noin sequence. I mean, yeah, Wufei is a dick, but he also seems to be doing the best job of all the pilots so far. Fucking shit up and disappearing into the night. And it's interesting that Noin is thrown by a kid attacking the base, when she is pretty much still a kid herself. Also, that she stops her men from (trying to) shoot at Wufei because he's a kid - like, he clearly had no problems blowing up your base, you think he's going to give a shit about killing your soldiers now? You'd think she'd be a little more sensible.
Heero cribbing parts of Deathscythe! DDD: Quatre and Trowa's magical duet! :DDD
...I want some timestamps on the episode itself. Has Noin just been sitting in her Aries this whole time? Did all of those things happen simultaneously?
Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-09 07:29 am (UTC)Otherwise, I just want to wallow in your commentary. ♥ I didn't realize Zechs was 19 - I was thinking 21-22, not that it's much of a difference.
Having war be painted as an "aristocratic game" by Treize and the rest of his cohorts makes me seriously question the motives behind the Romefeller Foundation - surely some of them realize that this will lead nowhere productive? You'd think the aristocracy would be a little more concerned about their sons and daughters getting killed off. While they may also be using plebes as cannon fodder, it is also very clear that blue blooded children are joining up for war. I mean, I guess they haven't been suffering any significant losses until the Gundams appeared, but still...
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Date: 2015-06-09 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 07:34 am (UTC)Pfffft. That is an excellent way to put it. As much as I am entertained by the 1x2 and 3x4 scence, I'm finding myself dancing in delight whenever Wufei strides into the scene to fuck shit up. I like him much more now than I did when first discovering GW...
Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-09 07:49 am (UTC)The catch is, I think, that Romefeller didn't start with Treize (and his age cohort), and he's as much a product of it as any other. It's his uncle Dermail that heads Romefeller at the start, frex.
As an organization, it's arguably to Romefeller's benefit to have some branches -- including, and especially, Treize and his Specials, but OZ as a whole is effectively just a military branch of Romefeller to begin with ...
The Romefeller gestalt wants power, and wants control; it's a political and financial institution. Insinuating into the Earth Sphere Alliance to the point of basically controlling the planet wasn't enough, and now ('now' being the kickoff of the series) they're looking for greater and greater power, and the colonies are it.
Not only would conquering the orbital colonies give Romefeller's controlling body (i.e. Dermail, and the rest of his family including Treize) power over the entirely of human existence, there's the additional factor -- admittedly I'm extrapolating from real-world space colony hypotheticals at this point -- that the space communities have access to vast amounts of resources (metals, volatiles, hydrocarbons) from asteroidal material, and we do see them having hollowed/made use of asteroids so the access is there (maybe just NEOs, I'm not sure; but hey the components of gundanium have to come from somewhere ~).
And all of that, plus whatever manufacturing and anything else going on in the colonies, that's going to be mighty tempting.
One would think that folks would realize that about their kids, but historically -- well, that notion of the nobility and honour of war is a thing that historically happened for a long time in many places across the globe. Latch onto it long enough (and probably with a heaping helping of assumptions of superiority to go with it; oh, I won't be killed by those peasants, not I ~), and it becomes a cycle that the majority don't think much of.
And that's assuming the parents don't see their children/nieces/nephews/grandkids as chess pieces to begin with, which is also a thing that history is filled to the gills with --
... I really do ramble on forever >.>;;
Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-09 07:50 am (UTC)Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-09 07:55 am (UTC)Re: teal deers! gundanium-plated teal deers!
Date: 2015-06-09 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 08:14 am (UTC)Maybe if we're lucky, some long-suffering servant came by and retrieved the pheasant which by some miracle was intact enough to be served for dinner later ~? X3
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Date: 2015-06-09 08:21 am (UTC)Yeh, I'd say Noin was in the Aries the whole time -- it was probably safer for her to stay put and wait for rescue ops to locate her than to try to strike out over however many leagues of Tanzanian forest on foot. It's no doubt overlapping with the other events, though, so not a huuuuuge span of time. (timestamps would indeed be nice, though ~)
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Date: 2015-06-09 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-11 12:08 am (UTC)Mind you, I think the dirigibles are dumb but Gundam Wing is based slightly on WWII so that may explain why there are some things like outdated technology and strange clothes (Quatre dresses like he walked right out of 1942 in my opinion).
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Date: 2015-06-13 01:31 am (UTC)Man every time I watch this series I find myself loving characters like Noin and Sally even more.