Gundam Show Thread - MSG thru Witch from Mercury

[kajnrig]

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

What all did they change in the HD Remaster of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED besides the music?

(Remember, I've only previously attempted to watch the series in its painfully bad, edited-for-TV American broadcast release.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Strike Rouge gets a new Aile Striker-esque backpack. This assumption is based solely on the model kits released.

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

With the best will in the world, I would have to argue that's a fair description of the Gundam SEED as a whole based on what I've seen of the series thus far.  It feels like the show's pitch meeting was "Let's remake Soldiers of Sorrow but everyone has a Gundam and nobody has any positive character traits."

Stargazer is absolutely the diamond in the rough of this particular franchise. It still has some faults related to being part of said franchise, but it managed to entertain and engage me more in its 45-minute runtime than most Gundam shows, and all of Seed and Seed Destiny put together. I can only imagine what it could be if it were untethered from the shounen mecha genre in general and Gundam Seed in particular.

[azrael]

I actually liked the HD remasters. They cleaned up a lot of the 3rd party-studio animation and plenty of the just awfully animated scenes. The cost was that they cropped the film to change it to a widescreen aspect ratio. 

Strike Rouge’s new pack shows up in SEED Destiny. I won’t spoil but it made that scene 100x better. 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, azrael said:

I actually liked the HD remasters. They cleaned up a lot of the 3rd party-studio animation and plenty of the just awfully animated scenes. The cost was that they cropped the film to change it to a widescreen aspect ratio.

I'm certainly finding the HD remastered edition of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED significantly less unwatchable than the SD American broadcast edition, and since all my TVs are widescreen the letterboxing doesn't bother me much.

 

1 minute ago, azrael said:

Strike Rouge’s new pack shows up in SEED Destiny. I won’t spoil but it made that scene 100x better. 

100 x 0 still equals 0.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm now 20 episodes into Gundam SEED and I really haven't seen any of the instances of mistimed music alluded to earlier.

That said, this show has an unreasonable number of flashbacks.  It's not quite to Dragonball Z "Freeza's five minutes" levels, but it feels like if the characters stopped flashing back all the time this show would be at least 2 or 3 episodes shorter.

So far, the most likeable character in the series seems to be a toss-up between Mwu La Flaga and Ramba Rommel... er... "Andrew Waltfeld".

[Sandman]

On 2017-12-15 at 5:55 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm now 20 episodes into Gundam SEED and I really haven't seen any of the instances of mistimed music alluded to earlier.

That said, this show has an unreasonable number of flashbacks.  It's not quite to Dragonball Z "Freeza's five minutes" levels, but it feels like if the characters stopped flashing back all the time this show would be at least 2 or 3 episodes shorter.

So far, the most likeable character in the series seems to be a toss-up between Mwu La Flaga and Ramba Rommel... er... "Andrew Waltfeld".

The mistimed music is when the ending song starts up in the last 30-40 secs o the episode. Having not seen the prior non-hd remaster, you probably won't notice what I mean. 

If you read the YouTube comments on the gundaminfo videos, they go into more detail.

[Seto Kaiba]

21 hours ago, Sandman said:

The mistimed music is when the ending song starts up in the last 30-40 secs o the episode. Having not seen the prior non-hd remaster, you probably won't notice what I mean. 

If you read the YouTube comments on the gundaminfo videos, they go into more detail.

I'm kind of surprised you let the "Ramba Rommel" comment slide...

@BlackRose and I just moments ago finished the final (48th) episode of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED's HD Remastered edition.  I have to say, this being my first time actually getting past the 12th episode of the series, it wasn't actually that bad.  Not my cup of tea, Gundam-wise, but actually not nearly as bad as I remember from my attempts to get through its broadcast cut on Toonami back in the day.  That said, it feels like the Cosmic Era setting is an even bigger craphole than than the Universal Century.  There is absolutely nobody on either main side outside the main cast who is in any way admirable, honorable, or not a frothingly insane genocidal bigot.  These people are 5x10^f'ed up.

I'd probably have rated Gundam SEED a lot higher if there'd been any sign on the OMNI and ZAFT sides that there were people who hadn't totally lost the plot.  Even the Zabis had more class and restraint than Patrick Zala, and Azrael's so obviously axe-crazy and suspicious that the absence of any reasonable authority figure is the only reason he didn't spend pretty much the entire series in a padded room somewhere.

You're right, I absolutely did not notice any musical cues that seemed jarring our out of place.

Tomorrow, when we're not watching my younger brother go mano-a-mano with an unruly kitten, baby ball python, and a large and ornery monitor lizard, @BlackRose and I will be starting Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny to continue our holiday march through the new offerings on Crunchyroll.

 

[kajnrig]

8 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Azrael's so obviously axe-crazy and suspicious that the absence of any reasonable authority figure is the only reason he didn't spend pretty much the entire series in a padded room somewhere.

I'll be honest, at first I legit thought you were talking about @azrael and did a double take.

[BlackRose]

6 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

I'll be honest, at first I legit thought you were talking about @azrael and did a double take.

Good thing we're not coordinators.  Just in case.  

[azrael]

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

I'll be honest, at first I legit thought you were talking about @azrael and did a double take.

No relation. (I claimed the name before he ever showed up)

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

@BlackRose and I will be starting Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny to continue our holiday march through the new offerings on Crunchyroll.

Watch only the HD Remasters. Thank me later.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 12/24/2017 at 12:12 AM, azrael said:

No relation. (I claimed the name before he ever showed up)

Yes, give our best to Gargamel.  

 

On 12/24/2017 at 12:12 AM, azrael said:

Watch only the HD Remasters. Thank me later.

Well... we don't actually have the option not to.  We're at the mercy of Crunchyroll's catalog of licensed titles, the only version of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny they licensed was the high-definition remastered version.

At nine episodes into Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, I can definitely see why this show has such a bad reputation.  Shinn Asuka's supposed to be the main character, at least on paper, and he's so thoroughly unlikeable that the show seems to want to focus on literally anyone who isn't Shinn Asuka.  Mostly Athrun Zala, the man with the Earth sphere's worst paper-thin alias.  What with Kira having become a hermit or something and a new secret Earth Forces unit faffing about doing shady stuff, this show is really feeling like the bargain bin version of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.

I'm kind of amazed that, after all that happens, nobody has yet remarked "didn't we do this exact thing just last year?" when OMNI forces under the direction of Blue Cosmos uses a paper-thin excuse to launch a nuclear attack on the PLANTs and it doesn't work because the PLANTs have a new superweapon.  Not!Azrael has much worse dress sense than Azrael did though, what with the silver-trimmed yellow suit with the mandarin collar and the purple lipstick.  I have a feeling I might hate the obvious Lacus impersonator more than I hate the genuine article...

[azrael]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

....

I'm kind of amazed that, after all that happens, nobody has yet remarked "didn't we do this exact thing just last year?" when OMNI forces under the direction of Blue Cosmos uses a paper-thin excuse to launch a nuclear attack on the PLANTs and it doesn't work because the PLANTs have a new superweapon.  Not!Azrael has much worse dress sense than Azrael did though, what with the silver-trimmed yellow suit with the mandarin collar and the purple lipstick.  I have a feeling I might hate the obvious Lacus impersonator more than I hate the genuine article...

Should have been around when it aired the first time. The audience was getting a case of deja vu.
Concerning Not-Lacus, I'll comment when you've finished her arc.

[eXis10z]

Anyone caught Gundam Thunderbolt yet?

[anime52k8]

On 12/26/2017 at 2:22 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

this show is really feeling like the bargain bin version of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.

It feels that way because it kind of is.

I remember not hating SEED destiny as much as I thought I would the last time I watched it, but beyond that I don't remember much of the actual show other than liking Athrun and hating most of the other characters. (this runs through both SEED and SEED Destiny).

Edited January 2, 2018 by anime52k8

[Seto Kaiba]

On 12/27/2017 at 2:40 AM, azrael said:

Should have been around when it aired the first time. The audience was getting a case of deja vu.

Yeah, I'm definitely getting a bit of that myself... it feels like only the names have been changed to protect those involved.

Like Shinn and Stella having basically the exact same castaway scene together as Athrun and Cagalli did in SEED, or the useless effeminate ZAFT officer pal of Athrun's getting sliced in half by a beam saber graphically... the only difference between how Nicol bought it and how Heine did is one got it from the front and the other from behind.

I'm 27 episodes in, and with all the recycled launch sequences for the Impulse I'm starting to wonder if Destiny was done by the same team that wrote the Freeza Saga for Dragonball Z.

 

On 12/27/2017 at 2:40 AM, azrael said:

Concerning Not-Lacus, I'll comment when you've finished her arc.

Every time she appears, I'm struck with the distinct impression that Durandal is quietly screaming inside because she's doing the Earth Sphere's worst impression of Lacus Clyne.  It seems like the only reason nobody notices is because they've never looked at any part of her above her collarbone thanks to that skintight outfit.

 

 

6 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

It feels that way because it kind of is.

Well then, that's a good reason for it to feel that way I guess.

 

 

6 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

I remember not hating SEED destiny as much as I thought I would the last time I watched it, but beyond that I don't remember much of the actual show other than liking Athrun and hating most of the other characters. (this runs through both SEED and SEED Destiny).

I confess that thus far I've found most of the characters bland and inoffensive apart from Ramba Rommel... er... "Andrew Waltfeld", and that downright Shatnerian scenery-devourer Rau le Creuset.

Cagalli Yula Athha is rapidly becoming an exception to that in SEED Destiny.  She was a useless gung-ho idiot in Gundam SEED, but she at least kept the whining to a minimum and was more than willing to go bust heads when circumstances dictated.  Now she's basically Relina Peacecraft with a mobile suit, which I guess makes her Rule 63 Saji Crossroad.  She seems to have replaced Yzak Joule as the tantrum thrower-in-chief, having screaming and sobbing fits when the world refuses to conform to her naive ideal... even in the middle of the battlefield.

 

 

10 hours ago, eXis10z said:

Anyone caught Gundam Thunderbolt yet?

Read the manga, and I've seen the first episode of the series.  I wasn't impressed.  

It's a Universal Century Gundam sidestory for this guy, in which abso-bloody-lutely everybody is a complete and utter psychopath and it's trying SO HARD to be dark, gritty, and Hellsing Ultimate levels of hardcore that it feels incredibly forced, almost to the point of becoming a self-parody.  (This is not helped one jot by the art style, which makes it look like the cast were rejected background characters from Charge! Cromartie High School and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.  The music doubles down on the weirdness, making the whole affair feel like they're trying to ape Cowboy Bebop as well.)

[anime52k8]

yeah, Thunderbolt is kind of everything I hate about UC side stories. The battle sequences were pretty sexy though. BTW, I never fallowed up on Twilight axis after the first "episode". Did it start making sense after a while or did it stay a hot mess the entire time?

[azrael]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, I'm definitely getting a bit of that myself... it feels like only the names have been changed to protect those involved.

Like Shinn and Stella having basically the exact same castaway scene together as Athrun and Cagalli did in SEED, or the useless effeminate ZAFT officer pal of Athrun's getting sliced in half by a beam saber graphically... the only difference between how Nicol bought it and how Heine did is one got it from the front and the other from behind.

 

Every time she appears, I'm struck with the distinct impression that Durandal is quietly screaming inside because she's doing the Earth Sphere's worst impression of Lacus Clyne.  It seems like the only reason nobody notices is because they've never looked at any part of her above her collarbone thanks to that skintight outfit.

Don't worry, Stella will turn into Four Murasame soon. You're almost there.

Can't say Durandal doesn't know how to use a pair of T&A to his advantage though.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 minutes ago, azrael said:

Don't worry, Stella will turn into Four Murasame soon. You're almost there.

Yeah, we picked up on that one early on... we've been calling her "More Murasume" ever since Shinn rescued her from falling off that cliff while imitating Four's carefree little spinning dance.

 

6 minutes ago, azrael said:

Can't say Durandal doesn't know how to use a pair of T&A to his advantage though.

At least he has Talia Gladys to prove that Meer Campbell isn't reflective of his own personal tastes...

[dizman]

15 hours ago, eXis10z said:

Anyone caught Gundam Thunderbolt yet?

Yup it's pretty great though I think the first season is better since it's a complete story where the second feeds into a bigger story that isn't finished yet.

 

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Read the manga, and I've seen the first episode of the series.  I wasn't impressed.  

It's a Universal Century Gundam sidestory for this guy, in which abso-bloody-lutely everybody is a complete and utter psychopath and it's trying SO HARD to be dark, gritty, and Hellsing Ultimate levels of hardcore that it feels incredibly forced, almost to the point of becoming a self-parody.  (This is not helped one jot by the art style, which makes it look like the cast were rejected background characters from Charge! Cromartie High School and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.  The music doubles down on the weirdness, making the whole affair feel like they're trying to ape Cowboy Bebop as well.)

Aw come on it's nowhere near Hellsing Ultimate levels of edgy hardcore violence, though I will give you that everyone is a psycho. It's hilarious that the comic you posted called the fast descent into violence that the Transformers movies became.

 

2 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

yeah, Thunderbolt is kind of everything I hate about UC side stories. The battle sequences were pretty sexy though. BTW, I never fallowed up on Twilight axis after the first "episode". Did it start making sense after a while or did it stay a hot mess the entire time?

Twilight Axis is a hot mess through and through, who woulda thought that a low budget three minute episode show about nothing would be such a failure. I've gotta read the novel one day, I hear it's ok and slightly bridges the gap between CCA and F91.

[Seto Kaiba]

23 minutes ago, dizman said:

Aw come on it's nowhere near Hellsing Ultimate levels of edgy hardcore violence, though I will give you that everyone is a psycho. It's hilarious that the comic you posted called the fast descent into violence that the Transformers movies became.

Granted, Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt doesn't actually manage to achieve Hellsing Ultimate's level of gratuitous hardcore violence... but, like I said, it's the fact that it's blatantly trying so very hard to reach that level of dark and edgy that makes it impossible to take seriously to the extent that the effort itself almost crosses the line into comedy.  Mobile Suit Gundam's Universal Century was already plenty bleak and dark so the sudden effort to be gritty and hardcore comes across as both completely unnecessary and as a desperate plea for the audience to take it seriously.  It's the cinematic equivalent of that one put-upon kid every school seems to have these days, who starts dressing all in black and posts selfies with replica anime katanas captioned with crap like "*teleports behind you* nothing personal kid" because they think that's edgy and will make them look like a badass.  (So, guys like Ben Solo c. The Force Awakens.)

Put simply, the series is a poseur.  It's putting on airs of gritty grimdarkness in the hopes of covering up its weak, directionless mess of a plot and to distract the audience from the characters all being completely, hopelessly unlikeable.  It's all flash and no substance.  Nobody seems to have told Ohtagaki-san that a character who's a complete monster is only workable on a narrative level if those kinds of characters are few and far between.  If every character's a complete monster, that stops being intimidating or impressive and thus a complete monster is just the new normal.

 

 

Got thru another episode of Gundam SEED Destiny over dinner.  The new normal there seems to be the Minerva getting its sh*t wrecked because the Archangel and Kira intervene while they're defending themselves from Orb's forces, saying they'll attack anyone who fights and then ONLY attacking the already outnumbered ZAFT side who are just defending themselves rather than going on the offensive.  Kira and Cagalli are kinda laying on the hypocrisy with a frontloader at this point... and Shinn earned himself more than a bit of my respect for having the stones to take a couple of shots at her with genuine killing intent while Kira was around.  Seeing him work out his issues with the Athha family on those Orb ships with a colossal sword is surprisingly cathartic, especially since Orb's leadership is so genuinely unlikeable.  It's like the therapist handling all of the grief counseling and anger management cases on the Minerva is Bruce Banner.  If Shinn'd actually managed to shoot her down or taken a swing at Kira, he might've effected a promotion for himself to the ranks of my favorite Gundam characters.

[dizman]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Granted, Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt doesn't actually manage to achieve Hellsing Ultimate's level of gratuitous hardcore violence... but, like I said, it's the fact that it's blatantly trying so very hard to reach that level of dark and edgy that makes it impossible to take seriously to the extent that the effort itself almost crosses the line into comedy.  Mobile Suit Gundam's Universal Century was already plenty bleak and dark so the sudden effort to be gritty and hardcore comes across as both completely unnecessary and as a desperate plea for the audience to take it seriously.  It's the cinematic equivalent of that one put-upon kid every school seems to have these days, who starts dressing all in black and posts selfies with replica anime katanas captioned with crap like "*teleports behind you* nothing personal kid" because they think that's edgy and will make them look like a badass.  (So, guys like Ben Solo c. The Force Awakens.)

Put simply, the series is a poseur.  It's putting on airs of gritty grimdarkness in the hopes of covering up its weak, directionless mess of a plot and to distract the audience from the characters all being completely, hopelessly unlikeable.  It's all flash and no substance.  Nobody seems to have told Ohtagaki-san that a character who's a complete monster is only workable on a narrative level if those kinds of characters are few and far between.  If every character's a complete monster, that stops being intimidating or impressive and thus a complete monster is just the new normal.

 

I'm not sure where you are getting a directionless plot from, the first part was survival during the last days of the war and development of the Reuse P device. The current plot (or at least what I've read up to) is both sides racing to recover the data before the cultists start churning out an army of Psycho Zakus or whatever they can imagine stuffing a person into. At least that's the the super abridged version of goings on. It's a darker story than your average UC but I'm still not seeing the try-hard levels of edge that you are, I'd even count IBO as more wannabe edge than Thunderbolt. As for everyone being monsters becoming the new normal, that's probably what Ohtagaki was going for. Sure that's probably a bs excuse for bad characters but it works in a war setting as far as I'm concerned.

[kajnrig]

8 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

I never fallowed up on Twilight axis after the first "episode". Did it start making sense after a while or did it stay a hot mess the entire time?

As dizman says, it starts and ends a hot mess. It's being made into a compilation movie with more scenes and showing in theaters alongside the Thunderbolt... movie? I think, yes. The movie poster had the Tristan getting real close to French kissing the Atlas Gundam, I remember...

I think the final runtime for it is something like 20 minutes? If you want a good Gundam story in less than an hour's time, just watch Gundam Seed: Stargazer instead.

6 minutes ago, dizman said:

I'm still not seeing the try-hard levels of edge that you are, I'd even count IBO as more wannabe edge than Thunderbolt.

For my part, I think UC in general is a bit too in love with its "war is hell" theme. Some shows work with the theme better than others, but a lot of the new UC stuff is so self-serious. Thunderbolt reminds me of Yukikaze, where literally every character is a morose, cynical douchebag and/or is literally framed in a morose, cynical douchebag light in pursuit of the coveted "Best 'War is Hell' Treatise" Award.

IBO has its faults, and I did lose touch with it midway through season 1, but the bit I saw (and from what I've gleaned about the rest of the show) did a more... honest? job of exploring its thematic pillars (ie child soldiers and the unique traumas inflicted upon and by them) than Thunderbolt did with its.

But I mean, really, I disliked Thunderbolt because its music was terrible, and didn't dislike IBO because its music wasn't terrible.

[anime52k8]

6 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

But I mean, really, I disliked Thunderbolt because its music was terrible, and didn't dislike IBO because its music wasn't terrible.

I feel like most people hated the 'I really wish I was Cowboy Bebop' free-form jazz the most, but I wasn't really put off by it nearly as much as I hated all the random doo-wop.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, dizman said:

I'm not sure where you are getting a directionless plot from, the first part was survival during the last days of the war and development of the Reuse P device. The current plot (or at least what I've read up to) is both sides racing to recover the data before the cultists start churning out an army of Psycho Zakus or whatever they can imagine stuffing a person into. At least that's the the super abridged version of goings on.

Principally from having read the Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt manga.

The whole first arc is a wandering mess that tries desperately, and fails miserably, to make the rivalry between Io and Daryl into something halfway interesting... in no small part because Io and the Moore Brotherhood spend a fair chunk of it literally wandering aimlessly hoping to track down a sniper by enticing him to take potshots at them.  It's actually kinda funny in hindsight when you realize essentially it's the story of two grown men trying to murder each other in a disagreement over whose incredibly pretentious music that they'll listen to on the radio, the kind of plot that in the real world normally starts in the news with the words "Florida man".  The whole schtick with the Moore Brotherhood and their quest for nonspecific space revenge on the Principality of Zeon for destroying their home colony is literally aimless (they don't have a focus for their revenge plot) and is so completely irrelevant to the story (besides justifying why the Federation side engages in so much pants-on-head stupidity) that other than providing some terribly stilted "drama" from a largely unimportant supporting character it's so lame even their side's own main character can't be arsed to care. 

Thunderbolt's second story arc, about the religious cult trying to recreate the Psycho Zaku, is so nonsensical that its runs-on-nonsense factor is actually lampshaded right in the manga with a character pointing out that nepotism is basically thing only thing keeping Io's story going.  Otherwise he would've been punted out of the EFF and never so much as allowed to look at a Gundam after screwing up and allowing Zeon to capture one in the first arc.  It's a fine example of an idiot plot.

 

 

11 hours ago, dizman said:

It's a darker story than your average UC but I'm still not seeing the try-hard levels of edge that you are, I'd even count IBO as more wannabe edge than Thunderbolt. As for everyone being monsters becoming the new normal, that's probably what Ohtagaki was going for. Sure that's probably a bs excuse for bad characters but it works in a war setting as far as I'm concerned.

Thunderbolt's a darker-than-average Universal Century story, but the reason it's a wannabe-edgy tryhard waste of time is that it's taking the same "slaughter spectacle" route to being dark and gritty that Attack on Titan did.  Because absolutely everybody in the story is an amoral psychopath there's none of the Universal Century's trademark humanity in the Thunderbolt series.  Nobody in the Moore Brotherhood or the Living Dead Division seems to have any real misgivings about the war or the human cost of so much killing.  It really feels like Ohtagaki-san didn't really understand why the Universal Century is dark... the reflection on the horrid cost that killing inflicts upon the human soul, and the sheer senselessness of hurting each other when you fail to communicate.  There's nothing about the human condition in Thunderbolt, its pretensions to gritty darkness involve nothing more than jacking up the body count to the max and making each death or near-death as gruesome and bloody as possible.

Iron-Blooded Orphans is a different animal entirely... it wholly embraces the darkness that Thunderbolt is merely a pretender to.  Yes, Mikazuki Augus is a complete monster just like the principals of Thunderbolt, but it works in his case because he's the ONLY ONE.  It became meaningless in Thunderbolt because, if everybody is a bastard then nobody is, thus it ceases to have meaning.  Iron-Blooded Orphans takes a sincere look at the toll severe inequality exacts on humanity.  Many of the characters are horrible people because they live in a world that forces them to be either the exploiters or the exploited, with the protagonists being a group that seeks a fairer world.  Tekkadan is full of broken people, and the damage a life of poverty and the low regard for human life has inflicted on them is thrown into sharp relief by their own desire to make a better life for themselves and, later, all Martians.  They're not fighting for the sake of fighting or the pleasure of killing, but to overturn a status quo that supports things like massive economic inequality, child labor, slavery, and mass murder in the name of maintaining order.  Mikazuki Augus is a complete monster because he is the most broken of all, as someone who had to kill at a very young age just to not starve to death, and all the things he doesn't understand about living a normal life are used to throw into sharp relief how absolutely horrible life was thanks to Gjallarhorn's suppression of Mars.

 

Put simply, Thunderbolt is merely a pretender to darkness because its darkness is purely for the sake of spectacle.  Iron-Blooded Orphans is dark because its darkness serves to actually say something, and that something is horrible.

[Kelsain]

Well said, Seto. Also, having lived in Florida for 8 years, I approve of the "Florida Man..." bit.

[dizman]

"Two men, two styles of music, one war to settle Jazz vs Pop!" I could see that as a tagline 

I get where you are coming from now Seto, I don't think Thunderbolt is as heartless as you make it out to be but that's ok we will just have to disagree.

[Seto Kaiba]

49 minutes ago, Kelsain said:

Well said, Seto. Also, having lived in Florida for 8 years, I approve of the "Florida Man..." bit.

Unfortunately, Io and Daryl will never be quite as "Florida Man" as that one Zanscare officer in Mobile Suit Victory Gundam who declared "By reviving the bikes of the middle ages, and reviving the tradition of driving, I've now become unstoppable!"... but they're working on it.

 

 

28 minutes ago, dizman said:

"Two men, two styles of music, one war to settle Jazz vs Pop!" I could see that as a tagline 

"Whoever wins... we lose." also works well.

(Credit where credit is due, the marketing department behind Aliens vs Predator in 2004 was so on point they came up with a slogan with damn near infinite reuse value...)

 

Speaking of a "Whoever wins... we lose" scenario, thanks to my company laptop making a noise not unlike a cage full of angry finches going through a roll press I've been stuck with little else to do for the last two days and have made great progress on Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny.  The guy who cleans the monkey house at the zoo said it best: This sh*t is bananas.  Shinn had a few absolutely badass moments, delivering an epic "What the hell, hero?" to Athrun, pimpslapping Kira so hard he turned the Freedom into a fetching piece of modern art on the seafloor, and then delivering ANOTHER epic "What the hell, hero?" to Athrun before proceeding to pimpslap HIM so hard he reduced Athrun's stolen GOUF to still more abstract art on the seafloor.  Now he's come over all weepy again, and you can just tell it's the prelude to a Heel Realization once Durandal's big plan goes public.

One thing I admit has me kind of vexed is how easily the Atlantic Federation military just rolls with absolutely any insane plan LOGOS comes up with.  They seem to genuinely have less self-awareness than the actual goddamn Nazi party.  "Hey, we built this big damn death-thingy that might as well be indestructible, it's armed with roughly enough firepower to level Western Europe with a cough, and it's piloted by a drug-addicted brainwashed crazy person we abducted as a child and experimented on... can we use this to go kill every last civilian in Germany with your help?" "Sure, why not?  D'you want us to pack you a bag lunch and some mittens?".  The whole fricking world is up in arms after Durandal calls them and every last member of LOGOS on it, and what do they do?  They pull up a goddamn sofas in their operations center for Djibril and his ilk and serve them wine while they wait for ZAFT to start shelling their military's supreme headquarters for no reason other than that they're sheltering LOGOS members.  They even stop to help Djibril get away while ZAFT is busy wrecking their sh*t.

(I also get the feeling this show would be a lot shorter, and include a LOT less fratricide, if people would finish their sentences.  Athrun nearly ends up in an octupus's garden in the sea because he couldn't be arsed to finish a loaded sentence about Durandal's sinister plan despite having about five minutes in which to do so.)

Durandal's own painfully obvious telegraphed reveal of Djibril as the fake ultimate badguy to his real ultimate badguy is a bit silly too.  Kind of reminds me of a line of Bender's from Futurama: "Citizens of Me!  The cruelty of the old pharaoh is a thing of the past!  Let a whole new wave of cruelty wash over this lazy land!".  Nice of him to leave his old homework behind on that colony where anyone could find a bunch of thinly-veiled references to his sinister plan (and presumably a whole lot of angsty poetry).  It's almost as lazy as the whole "Neo Roanoke is Mwu la Flaga" thing... Murrie Ramius was pretty much THE ONLY ONE who was surprised by that one.

Episode 40's my next up, and it looks to be finishing a round of everyone getting their mid-series upgrades.  Durandal just handed Shinn and Rey the keys to the Destiny and the Legend, Lacus forked over the Strike Freedom, and after having Kira borrow and wreck her Strike Rouge Cagalli seems to be getting something downright blingtastic.

[azrael]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Cagalli seems to be getting something downright blingtastic.

Wait till Akatsuki goes to space, then I got an image for you.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, azrael said:

Wait till Akatsuki goes to space, then I got an image for you.

Since Cagalli's new MS is entirely done over in incredibly tacky high-gloss gold (which I assume is probably an anti-beam coating like Quattro's Hyakushiki from Zeta), I half expect the little inscription on the gem-like thing at the center of the v-fin antenna to say something like "CRUNK AIN'T DEAD".

[kalvasflam]

are you really just watching GSD for the first time?  

I remember watching that show a decade plus ago, it was pretty horrible.  I swear they were trying to do a version of Zeta Gundam, and finally said screw it, we're just going to use the old characters again and yammer on and on about how war is bad, and peace is good.... but oh by the way, we have the biggest frigging guns on the baddest mech you're going to find anywhere, just because we can.

the only Gundam I've watched lately is Gundam the Origin; it is pretty good. even if they did keep trying to retconn more Feddie mobile suits into the mix

Edited January 4, 2018 by kalvasflam

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

are you really just watching GSD for the first time?

Yeah, this really is my first time watching Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny.  Also my first time watching any Mobile Suit Gundam SEED episode past the 12th.  Every time I tried watching it back when the series was airing in the US, the bowdlerized broadcast edition was so offensively awful that it drove me away.  I only started watching it now because the HD Remastered edition is on Crunchyroll.

 

9 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

the only Gundam I've watched lately is Gundam the Origin; it is pretty good. even if they did keep trying to retconn more Feddie mobile suits into the mix

Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin was beautifully animated, though I confess I'm a bit disturbed by how much more of a following its more blatantly evil version of Char has.  Even the localization team for the manga was absolutely gushing about how hot the more evil Char is.

For my money, the best recent Gundam is still Iron-Blooded Orphans.  A good Gundam series should feel like a suckerpunch to the gut when all is said and done, and Iron-Blooded Orphans stopped to put brass knuckles on first.

[Focslain]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

For my money, the best recent Gundam is still Iron-Blooded Orphans.  A good Gundam series should feel like a suckerpunch to the gut when all is said and done, and Iron-Blooded Orphans stopped to put brass knuckles on first.

I'm about half way through season 2 of IBO, and agreed. There were parts in season one that cringey in a good way. Especially in concerns to those near Mikazuki. 

Edited January 4, 2018 by Focslain

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Focslain said:

I'm about half way through season 2 of IBO, and agreed. There were parts in season one that cringey in a good way. Especially in concerns to those near Mikazuki. 

For me, what sold me on Iron-Blooded Orphans was how different its setting is from the standard fare of Gundam's Universal Century and most of the standalone shows.

Gundam, and particularly the Universal Century timeline, has a formula that it adheres to every bit as rigidly as Nintendo's Mario franchise¹... which has become so pervasive that it sucks a lot of the fun out of it for me by making the shows incredibly predictable.  So I was pretty pleased when the writers of Iron-Blooded Orphans threw most of the standard Gundam rulebook out the window.

 

1. Say it with me now!  Grasslands, Desert, Forest, Jungle, Ice World, Fire World, Boss!

[kajnrig]

16 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

For me, what sold me on Iron-Blooded Orphans was how different its setting is from the standard fare of Gundam's Universal Century and most of the standalone shows.

In fairness, IBO had its share of "War is hell" fetishization as well, but that was mostly kept to the first half-dozen episodes or so, and after that it started to really hone in on how fraked up the characters are for not thinking anything of the things they do and how screwed up the world is for letting things be that way.

16 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

1. Say it with me now!  Grasslands, Desert, Forest, Jungle, Ice World, Fire World, Boss!

Untz, untz, untz, untz.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Just a moment ago I finished watching PHASE 42 of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny's HD Remaster, and there's something about this series that I've been struggling to ignore but has really just become inescapable as of the end of the episode.

The real villain of Gundam SEED Destiny isn't Durandal.  It's not even Djibril.  It's Kira Yamato.

Absolutely everything that Kira and the crew of the Archangel who are following his lead do makes the war between ZAFT and the Alliance a million times worse.  With the same sanctimonious, holier-than-thou smugness exhibited by Orb's Athha family, he runs headlong into battles between ZAFT and the Alliance and attacks BOTH SIDES, inevitably resulting in more casualties than either side would've been able to achieve alone, prolonging the battle by preventing either side from gaining an advantage and forcing a retreat or surrender, and in so doing causing the war to drag out far longer than it otherwise would have.  FFS, the very first thing that he does is start harassing ZAFT forces to support the Alliance, having apparently forgotten that the Alliance military is still a branch Blue Cosmos and had literally just launched an unprovoked nuclear attack on the PLANTs with genocidal intent.  It really doesn't get much more villain-y than siding with the side whose policy is genocide because you're not certain the other side are saints. 

Then he kidnaps Orb's head of state from her own wedding.  I mean, sure, it was an arranged marriage to a complete arse, but it literally directly resulted in a militant change of governing policy in the country.  With Cagalli kidnapped by a hostile power, Kira'd enabled the Seiran-led takeover of the Orb government.  He singlehandedly removed the one thing stopping LOGOS's supporters from taking over Orb and making Orb's forces a puppet of Blue Cosmos.  Every single Orb soldier who died, died because of what Kira did.  He keeps poking his oar in over and over again, until ZAFT literally catches Orb red-handed sheltering Djibril.  ZAFT and literally every other country on Earth are baying for this guy's head on a pike, and when Orb refuses to hand over Djibril peacefully Kira intervenes on Orb's behalf when Orb is invaded for harboring a known terrorist guilty of mass murder and all kinds of other crimes against humanity.  Thanks to Kira and the Archangel's intervention, Djibril is able to get away AGAIN, and it looks like he's made it all the way to a superweapon this time... so Kira's responsible for all the people Djibril'll kill with THAT.

Honestly, I don't know why Djibril's so down on Coordinators... with enemies like Kira Yamato, who needs friends?  Kira's the best damn thing that ever happened to Djibril's plan most of the time.  Kira may be Gundam's ultimate villain in that he totally gets away with having caused the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people and is regarded as a hero.

[azrael]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The real villain of Gundam SEED Destiny isn't Durandal.  It's not even Djibril.  It's Kira Yamato.

*clap clap* He's the result of mankind's dream and future. *evil laugh* And he must vanish! Muhahahahahah! (you'll get to there later)