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The Great Gundam Wing Rewatch: Episodes 5, 6, 7, and 8
First, a recap of the episodes watched last week!
Episode Six - Relena's Secret
When Relena accompanies her father to the colonies where he is expected at an important meeting, he is severely injured in an explosion set off by OZ's Colonel Lady Une; father and daughter are soon spirited away by Doctor J, the engineer who designed the Wing Gundam and trained Heero. Before Vice Foreign Minister Darlian dies, he reveals to Relena her true identity, and Relena soon learns from Doctor J the extent of Heero's mission and his past.
Episode Seven - Party Night
Relena returns to school in time for a dance, but discovers Heero is going to transfer. After she challenges him to kill her after she reveals she knows all about him, Lady Une sends mobile suits at the school to kill Relena. Heero uses the Wing Gundam to fight back (believing the enemy suits have come to get him) and ends up saving Relena, much to his own disbelief.
And a recap for the episodes watched for this week!
Episode Seven - Scenario of Bloodshed
The five Gundams all gather at the New Edwards Base in an attempt to kill the higher echelon members of OZ, but they discover too late they have been tricked; Heero has already eliminated the pacifist leaders of the Alliance while Lady Une and the leader of OZ, Colonel Treize Khushrenada, manipulate the only survivor, General Septum, into declaring war on the colonies (before they kill him too). The Alliance is overturned from within and OZ takes over as the new ruling power.
Episode Eight - The Treize Assassination
Trowa and Wufei go after Treize while Heero, Duo and Quatre attempt to stop the detonation of the New Edwards Base. Wufei and Treize duel in a battle for honor and justice, but Treize decides to spare Wufei when the young man loses and allows him to escape.
A lot happens in these four episodes! Remember, spoilers are welcome as long as you use whiteout text or Rot13. :3
teal deer, teal deeeer
The continuing contrived-ness of Darlian's death just makes the episode even more galling. (also I'm not sure why the revolutionaries keep an IV line in his corpse. it's very strange.)
One useful thing that does come out of the episodes 05 and 06 sequence is the introduction of Doctor J, and -- via good ol' Doctor Claw -- an explanation, more or less, of how Heero functions which basically boils down to being a decent enough kid but buried under training and conditioning when he's "on the job".
Which is something the audience prompts gets to watch the results of over the next few episodes; Heero has very specific targets within his training schema (OZ and their affiliates), and he doesn't do well when forced beyond that. Such as his attempts to splat Relena at the school -- she's a civilian, and a civilian under threat from the OZ machines, that's not going to fly.
(thanks be to the gods the school was blitzed. those kids are creepy as all hell. and, somehow, didn't notice Wing chilling in the trees right next door *facepalms*)
This entire two-episode segment is essentially absent from The Glory of Losers, with events being substantially rewritten. For my first chunk of that, check here for last week's GoL post; I'll have the rest tonight. I had to split it because of how the GoL timeline plays out.
And then there's episode 07, in which the entire apple cart is upset and the audience is treated to just how far Treize, OZ -- and the Romefeller Foundation -- will go. Field Marshal Noventa is a terrible, terrible loss; and it's telling just how many of the Alliance council were ready and willing to reemmber basic human decency and power down the military machine, opening up proper negotiations with the colony nations. (it's also telling that the way these proposals were phrased suggests that Darlian was not actually officially doing anything of the sort.)
Of course, the trouble with allowing an outside force that has great influence, deep pockets and the source of the major military machine, figuratively and literally -- namely Romefeller -- sink its fangs into a world govenment is that one will inevitably wind up with exactly what happened.
Treize makes his bid for power and succeeds admirably; at this point he'd been spending years building up influence -- and his understudies, such as Zechs and Noin, have been helping with the indoctrination of every member of the Specials that entered their own spheres of influence -- and his particular brand of toxic 'glory' is one that easily appeals, and easily digs into the mind. Consider the two fools set by Une to annihilate a chunk of the African continent wider in diameter than the width of Sweden: "I'm sure they'd be glad to die with such honour.", they say, when confronted by a horrified Major Sally aghast that they fully intend to atomize their own people on top of everything and everyone else. 'Honour', indeed.
With the scattershot methods used by the Gundam pilots, it was no doubt pitifully easy to spread the false information concerning the attendance of the New Edwards meeting in the first place. There's no central organization, only the scientists sending directives with singleminded intensity -- easy to fool, easy to make them overlook details. (granted GoL adds an extra wrinkle to why the pilots were sent to the base, as noted in the link above.)
And, with the annihilation of the Alliance leaders -- those calling for peace, those not heading up OZ -- we're treated to seeing just how thoroughly Heero's mind goes off the rails when contronted with a major violation of his training. He's in shock, unresponsive, until Sally give him a new mission; one that jars him into action, and -- notably -- prompts the comment that failure means death, but he's not ready yet. An argument could be made that succeeding in disarming the missiles diverted his death-wish (not that he wouldn't have died instantly if he failed; no wonder he accepted), much the way that these successive mental jolts are going to begin to lay the seeds for other changes.
We also get to see how Heero is not by any means a normal human being. Aside from his 'training', programming, this is the first time (as I'm fairly certain there's another one) we see him casually crush metal bars and pull them aside. Sally of course finds him a most fascinating subject, and who can blame her --
The other major reveal throughout these episodes, Zechs, is handled well but would probably have had more of a punch if the hints didn't come one after another anyway before he puts a bullet in Onegell. More interesting (for me, at least) is his swinging back and forth in behaviour and principles, from encouraging the violence (and suggesting it may be too much for Noin) to "The Alliance and OZ ... it's not as if the world will change if one replaces the other, so why should we even fight" -- and yet leading a rebellion he does not believe in.
Zechs may think he's burying himself -- "May you rest in peace, the outraged and betrayed Milliardo Peacecraft" -- but what he's done is lay the groundwork for his further fracturing in the future.
More Glory tonight, I'll toss the link up here --
Re: teal deer, teal deeeer
Sorry for late reply; I'm terribly behind in my watching.
Re: teal deer, teal deeeer