The Great Gundam Wing Rewatch: Episodes 15, 16, 17, and 18

[nanslice]

First, a recap!


Episode 15: To The Battleground Antarctica
Noin finds Heero and Trowa and takes them to Antarctica, where Zechs is completing the reconstruction of the Wing Gundam for his intended rematch with Heero. When Inspector Acht, who ordered the destruction of the Gundam, arrives to expose Zechs as a traitor, Noin and Trowa destroy the search parties before they reach Zechs.

Episode 16: The Sorrowful Battle
Heero and Trowa arrive at Zechs' Antarctica base, where Heero is reunited with the rebuilt Wing Gundam. However, Heero chooses to use Trowa's Gundam Heavyarms to duel Zechs instead, until Relena's arrival to stop the battle interrupts them again. During this, Noin reveals to Relena that Zechs is her brother, Milliardo Peacecraft. When OZ carriers arrive to arrest him, Zechs decides to surrender to them in order to allow Relena and Noin to escape, while Trowa uses the Wing Gundam to pick up Heero and escape as well.

Episode 17: Betrayed By Home, Faraway
Lady Une has become a diplomat of OZ to the colonies and the colonies debate if they should accept OZ's proposal. Duo and Quatre attempt to catch the attention of the other three pilots while Une captures the five engineers of the Gundams. The five pilots take off into space after Quatre self-detonates the Gundam Sandrock.

Episode 18: Tallgeese Destroyed
Zechs fights a heavy battle with the Tallgeese against Alliance mobile suits, while Lady Une forces the Gundam engineers to design and build mobiles suits superior to the Tallgeese and the Gundams under the threat of destroying a shuttle with Quatre inside.


Thoughts and speculations! Remember, future spoilers are welcome as long as you use white text or Rot13. :3

Comments

Eps 15-16

[taichara]

Episodes 15 and 16 continue to demonstrate how Heero will go out of his way to try to rectify situations where he genuinely feels he fucked up. Watching Trowa try to wrap his head around caring for any of it is also fun. The two of them are working wonderfully well as a real team at this point (which is good, considering the number of Evil Black Cars and whatnot), something which will come up again.


Actually, all of the Noventas are awesome people and make a great contrasting foil for Relena, who spends these episodes at the height of being a spoiled, self-absorbed little shit, frankly. Sylvia was awesome. Her grandfather was awesome. And her grandmother is also awesome, wanting to contact Heero (and ultimately doing so by letter) specifically to tell him that what happened is not his fault and he needs to move on and keep fighting, there's no ill will held against him, and all kinds of similar things.

Which we know, because Pagan has hacked into a zillion systems (also finding out about Wing's reconstruction in the meantime) and found out, somehow, about Ms. Noventa's efforts to contact Heero -- and when Relena contacts her and is given the letter to deliver to him, she has absolutely no shame in reading it herself. More than once. Yup. Oh and also somehow barging right into the Victoria Base -- from Europe to Africa without batting an eyelash -- demanding to talk to Zechs


These are also the infamous Antarctica Duel episodes and a lot happens here and about. We see Romefeller starting to close in, Treize being all too convinced that his control on Zechs is absolute, an Evil Inspector [tm] for us to hate on, and Zechs' conflicting issues over everything from having been trounced by Heero to his very concept of being a "soldier" and his conviction that he's been too tainted to hold to his original ideals. He also has an obsession with allowing no handicaps to be placed on the duel, which if he was paying any attention at all he'd have noticed that Heero is a mess and very obviously wounded since he keeps bleeding all over the place ... It's fun watching Trowa play guard dog -- less fun to see point-blank how he can lose control himself while in combat. That scene with him prying his hand off the trigger controls is a telling one.


Of course, Relena's bizarre interruption of the duel -- oh, and screeching for Zechs' blood. Yup, that's a pacifist alright :Db

"Heero, defeat that man! Anyone associated with a foul group like OZ is an embarrassment to the Sanc Kingdom! Go ahead! Kill him!"


Even though these two episodes focus on a relatively self-contained set of incidents, they do still reveal how thoroughly and overkill-ly Romefeller will react to any perceived threat to their power, even from -- especially from -- one of their own. They hunt Heero and Trowa by car -- but throw essentially an entire fleet, with units upon units of mobile suits, against Zechs to bring him down for reconstructing Wing. If there's one thing that fascists fear, it's that someone might have the strength to turn their own ideology against them.


Full episode meandering is here; Glory of Losers is here --

Eps 17-18

[taichara]

Oh, now we're getting into the meat of things here.

First, the introduction of the mobile dolls. Suppression and slaughter just got that much easier for Romefeller -- which is exactly what they want.

Of course, in space they're being quite canny and deploying the Taurus dolls against the Alliance -- finishing off the destruction of the power bloc they want to supplant with their own fascist regime, while simultaneously removing those who could prevent them from getting a toehold in the colonies and making themselves look like heroes to the colonies at the same time --

Because that is exactly what they are doing. As the "OZ Peace Support Organization", OZ/Romefeller are gathering the colonies to their banner one by one under the false flag of protection from the Alliance and supposed mutual benefit. The colonies are led by those too young to remember the time under President Yuy's governance, and one by one we get to see these naive fools buy into Romefeller's rhetoric.

This push is space is spearheaded by Une, now in a more sedate and concilitory guise, but she's doing Romefeller's work all the same. The real imbalance with her is yet to be seen. It doesn't stop her from beginning to scour the colonies for the Mad Five and take them captive, mind you.


Faced with the shifting political tide, Quatre and Duo attempt to raid an OZ base to find a means back into space to counter these maneuverings, but even the arrival of Wufei and Shenlong can't quite turn the tide. All of the pilots escape ... but Quatre only survives because Sandrock sacrifices herself after he activates her detonation, opening her cockpit and indicating he needed to save himself before marching off to confront the tide of OZ suits.

And I do say 'her' and 'sacrifice' and all the rest for very good reasons ...


These episodes also hand us Zechs' spectacular break with OZ, with Romefeller, and with Treize. It's very telling that even Treize's supposed great friend is to be sacrificed for political capital -- there's no court martial, no trial, just a slaughter that will be essentially a staged ~valiant battle (against desperate Alliance troops pressed into the role to 'redeem' themselves, itself creepy and fascistic) in order to make the now-useless Zechs into a martyr for said political capital.

Alas, Zechs declines to conveniently let them slaughter him. And that seed -- and the shattering of the Zechs persona -- is going to have some interesting repercussions.


Full episode meandering is here; Glory of Losers is here --

[dragonscrawl]

It's interesting what Relena's butler says to her about Zechs. I'm pretty sure he knows Zechs is Relena's brother, but does seem to be keeping the secret for him. After all, the implication that Zechs was a hero to the Peacecrafts implies he was around and active 13 years ago before the Peacecrafts were overthrown, which we know can't be current with the current person calling himself Zechs. On the other hand, he does specifically say Zechs' age when they fenced, which might be a hole in his secretkeeping.

I want to point out that the Taurus mobile dolls are unexpectedly fast when fought in these episodes, which implies that they aren't bound by human reactions times or what a human can survive in space. This is something I want to come back to later.