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The Great Gundam Wing Rewatch: Episodes 11, 12, 13, and 14!
First, a recap!
Episode 11: The Whereabouts of Happiness
With his retreat path from Siberia blocked off by OZ troops, Duo is forced to travel with Quatre and the Maganac Corps to their base in the desert, but when OZ troops locate the Maganac's base, they distract the enemy while Duo and Quatre escape. At the same time, Zechs gathers the remains of the Wing Gundam and plans to rebuild it, seeking a rematch of his interrupted duel. Meanwhile, Relena attempts to take revenge on Lady Une and is nearly killed in the process, but is saved by Noin.
Episode 12: Bewildered Warriors
Heero awakes at a traveling circus troupe after being rescued by Trowa from his near-death experience in Siberia. Meanwhile, a depressed Wufei encounters former Alliance Major Sally Po, who is now a guerrilla leader. Sally helps Wufei overcome his loss to Treize, causing Wufei to pilot the Shenlong Gundam once again.
Episode 13: Catherine's Tears
Zechs returns to the Lake Victoria Base, where he meets two of Noin's former students. He agrees to join them in a military offensive, but Zechs is forced to kill them when they reveal their merciless attitudes to war. Meanwhile, Trowa uses the Gundam Heavyarms to attack an OZ base, planning to self-destruct afterwards, but Catherine Bloom, a knife thrower in the circus, forces Trowa to realize the value of his own life.
Episode 14: The Order to Destroy 01
Heero places his fate in hands of Sylvia Noventa, the granddaughter of Field Marshal Noventa, who Heero killed at New Edwards, while Relena openly defies Duke Dermail, the leader of the Romefeller Foundation, the organization of European nobles with monetary and military support for OZ, which impresses Treize. Meanwhile, Zechs begins to reconstruct the Wing Gundam until suspicious officials from Romefeller order him to destroy it. While Zechs complies with the order, it is revealed that he has arranged for a dummy to be destroyed.
Thoughts and speculations! Remember, future spoilers are welcome as long as you use white text or Rot13. :3
teal deer running around the world --
We get to see some interesting details tucked around in here. One of the first to catch my eye is the flickering of information of countries outside the Alliance -- or even that there still are countries outside the Alliance. It's intriguing that at least one "Arabic" country is outside the Alliance and possibly others, although I'm not certain whether the Maguanacs' home nation is in the Middle East or the Maghreb, off the top of my head. The Maghreb would slot in nicely with ...
... the emphasis on locations in Africa is fascinating, and a little unsettling. Victoria Base, New Edwards, and the Alliance base in Mogadishu (Somalia) just in the first fourteen episodes -- there's a lot of Alliance/OZ bases and thus military activity on the African continent, which has less than savory implications when you consider the almost total lack of characters who could be identified as of African descent (Mueller may be an exception, though not a flattering one).
(the hearsay I'd picked up at one point that originally the character who became Wufei was going to be African, though never verified, would have made this fit together better. to say nothing of his stint terrorizing Victoria Base.)
We also learn that China has fragmented! :o And at least one of the warring polities is clamouring for recognition as a nation. This naturally attracts the Alliance and OZ, because it's basically political capital waiting to be picked up. I'd love to know how much territory is contained in that nation-to-be, and what's happening with its neighbours, former portions of China and otherwise ...
There's a nice touch of homeland ties, as well, in that Sally returned to fight against her local tyrant alongside the guerilla forces after the clusterfuck at New Edwards.
Russia gets added to the slate of European locations, as well as Marseilles; it's nice to have non-imaginary places namechecked, sorry for your troubles Sanc ;3 Mister Narrator also helpfully pointed out that the all-powerful Romefeller Foundation -- in all its regressive, repressive, fascistic "glory" -- is specifically grounded in European aristocracy. (see side-eyeing the whole Africa situation above.)
Also: has anyone else noticed yet that half the planet seems to be missing? Because I have -- there's a stunning lack of North/Central/South America in this "United Earth Sphere Alliance" to date.
Character-wise, while a closer look at Heero's relative stability and pro-activeness when not under active orders vs. Trowa's passive self-destructive tendencies is interesting, and seeing Quatre and Duo firming up their resolve together (they work well as a combo, really) was fun
as was Wufei getting a comeuppance from Sally, lol, the real highlight here is seeing the curtain being pulled back from OZ's black heart.Romefeller, whether from Dermail's mouth or Treize's, makes no bones about the fact that they intend to have their boots on the neck of, not just the colonies, but everyone outside of their tiny little clique. Oh goodie, aristo-fascism, just what I always wanted!
-- and in the form of Alex and Meuller, we also get to see just what all that
programmingtraining can get you, namely fanatics who kill for the cause and take joy in it, the ultimate us vs. them combined with the casual display of callous destruction against their "lessers". That entire episode was a display of the Romefeller ideology in microcosm ... with a preview of where it should ultimately lead.Noin, meanwhile, demonstrates her own brand of batshittery in her parroting of Romefeller's ideology while simultaneously demonstrating her blind, almost mindless loyalty to Zechs/Sanc/Relena, now. Is it actual (and, at least, initial) belief in Zechs, one has to ask, or has she simply transferred the pledge of loyalty -- the one she has also been trained to accept as right-thinking -- to a different kingdom ,as it were? Certainly there's no actual critical thinking being involved here.
And Zechs has his own problems, but is actually one of the more stable cards in play, which is kind of depressing when you consider we're talking about someone now obsessing not only over all his other obsessions, but has added Wing, Wing's pilot, and dragging his sister into his bizarre passion play to the list. (I'd love to know what kind of crazy he has Noin pouring into Relena's ear offscreen; it would explain some things later in the series.)
Unrelated to basically everything, I love that analysis turns out Heero as not being human. Certainly fits with my own outlook, lol ;3
Re: teal deer running around the world --
Re: teal deer running around the world --
Removing the New Edwards base doesn't really change the amount of activity on the continent that badly, however.
Re: teal deer running around the world --
I, too, have always thought that their depictions of the Earth were missing some pretty huge land chunks.
It is interesting that you write that Wufei was going to be African. I wonder if that means he would have been sub-Saharan African, or North African (although if Quatre is Berber, he could technically be North African, and some folks do include some regions of North Africa in what they consider to be the Middle East). As an African-American, one of the things that saddens me about anime in general is the seeming lack of characters of sub-Saharan African origin. Perhaps someday . . .
It is probably good that Wufei was not sub-Saharan African, because if his personality was going to be the same as it is written now, he would have been the poster child for the Angry Black Man trope (not necessarily a bad trope, but I do tire of seeing it--we are capable of emotions other than anger!).
Re: teal deer running around the world --
That Noin (and Une) are included in that fascist regime rather than it being completely masculine speaks louder than the individual characters.
Unfortunately I can't verify that note about Wufei one way or the other; I received it second-hand, as it were, and I'll admit I haven't seen it in any source materials (so far) --
Re: teal deer running around the world --