Fighting is bad, you guys
If you're a fan of Gundam, you may have seen this meme popping up occasionally.
It's no secret that a huge draw of the Gundam franchise is giant fighting robots. In fact it's arguably around primarily as a vehicle to sell toys of said robots. It's interesting, then, that while the franchise tends to glorify war with cool giant robot fights, it also usually gives its protagonists a very anti-war standpoint. Very few characters in most Gundam shows are shown to enjoy the fighting they have to do, and those who do enjoy it are usually villains who tend to die horribly. Special mention to Yazan for being the only such character I can think of that survives all the way through multiple series which otherwise rack up quite the body count. Though I don't know that ZZ counts, since he's pretty much reduced to a Team Rocket style comic relief villain, but I digress.
I suppose it's easy for me to get sidetracked on this issue because I don't really have anything particularly deep to say about it, I just always thought this cognitive dissonance regarding war displayed in Gundam (and a lot of other media for that matter) was interesting, and while it often doesn't really make sense when you think about it past the surface level, I wonder if that doesn't make it all the more accurate a portrayal of real fighting. People's motivations don't always make sense under scrutiny, especially in stressful or threatening situations.
Why would someone blindly rush an enemy after their careful planning falls apart? If a space colony were under attack, why would one teenager break away from the flood of escaping citizens to hop into a nearby unattended giant robot that nobody's ever seen before?
I suppose a lot of similar questions about the franchise sort of answer themselves. The character in question is a teenager and teenagers often have poor self-preservation instincts and/or decision making skills when even highly trained soldiers often have their ability to make reasonable decisions stretched to breaking point during combat situations already.
I'm rambling now and I'm not sure where I was going with this, so I'm going to change gears just enough to bring up that Alu and I just finished Turn A Gundam. I don't want to spoil too much, but I think my favorite thing to say about this series is that it proves Char Aznable far more correct about humanity than he probably could have imagined. Maybe Amuro should have just let him drop that asteroid.
Also, turn-of-the-century militiamen in space is a fantastic premise.
Basically, watch this show.
Take it easy!
It's no secret that a huge draw of the Gundam franchise is giant fighting robots. In fact it's arguably around primarily as a vehicle to sell toys of said robots. It's interesting, then, that while the franchise tends to glorify war with cool giant robot fights, it also usually gives its protagonists a very anti-war standpoint. Very few characters in most Gundam shows are shown to enjoy the fighting they have to do, and those who do enjoy it are usually villains who tend to die horribly. Special mention to Yazan for being the only such character I can think of that survives all the way through multiple series which otherwise rack up quite the body count. Though I don't know that ZZ counts, since he's pretty much reduced to a Team Rocket style comic relief villain, but I digress.
I suppose it's easy for me to get sidetracked on this issue because I don't really have anything particularly deep to say about it, I just always thought this cognitive dissonance regarding war displayed in Gundam (and a lot of other media for that matter) was interesting, and while it often doesn't really make sense when you think about it past the surface level, I wonder if that doesn't make it all the more accurate a portrayal of real fighting. People's motivations don't always make sense under scrutiny, especially in stressful or threatening situations.
Why would someone blindly rush an enemy after their careful planning falls apart? If a space colony were under attack, why would one teenager break away from the flood of escaping citizens to hop into a nearby unattended giant robot that nobody's ever seen before?
I suppose a lot of similar questions about the franchise sort of answer themselves. The character in question is a teenager and teenagers often have poor self-preservation instincts and/or decision making skills when even highly trained soldiers often have their ability to make reasonable decisions stretched to breaking point during combat situations already.
I'm rambling now and I'm not sure where I was going with this, so I'm going to change gears just enough to bring up that Alu and I just finished Turn A Gundam. I don't want to spoil too much, but I think my favorite thing to say about this series is that it proves Char Aznable far more correct about humanity than he probably could have imagined. Maybe Amuro should have just let him drop that asteroid.
Also, turn-of-the-century militiamen in space is a fantastic premise.
Basically, watch this show.
Take it easy!
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