On UC Gundam vs “all that new stuff”
I will try my best not to sound like an elitist piece of shit here. This is serious! Also, this entry will have spoilers for various Gundam series.
I’d like to think I’m different than most UC fans who simply hate stuff that’s not UC because it’s not UC. Contrary to popular belief, I am a bit of Seed fan (was real Seed obsessed just two years ago) but Seed lacks something the originals had, and that’s soul.
I’m partly borrowing Patrick Macias’ words here. The generation of creators that made works such as Mobile Suit Gundam are people who lived through their country being bombed and occupied as children. They more or less lived through war, and the resulting feelings and images clearly resonate in their works. In Gundam’s opening narration, we are treated to images such as a hole being blown through a colony, a fallen battle ship in flames, and the entire city of Sydney being brought to ruin by a giant colony. This may seem the stuff of fiction to us almost 30 years later, but these images were very much a reality to the creators. Gundam is a show about war, but it doesn’t glorify war. It’s an anti-war show, but it doesn’t out right tell you “war is bad.” Rather, it lets the viewer come to his own conclusion about the events unfolding on screen.
Over the years the anti-war message has stayed consistent, but it’s become diluted. The new generation of creators simply can’t grasp the kinds of things the creators of the past experienced. Hence, the result usually feels like a copy of a copy. Looking at things in a very objective manner, First Gundam and Seed are probably on the same level. However, Seed lacks that kind of hard real world experience present in the older Gundam works. The sacrifices made by Ryu Jose and Sleggar Law were most probably realities to Tomino. However, the writers behind Seed totally miss the point of Mwu’s epic sacrifice in the end of Seed, and bring him back in Destiny with just a few scratches and a case of amnesia.
So, in the end I suppose it comes down what kinds of messages and themes you associate with. I’m sure Seed has some underlying themes that I don’t especially get that appeal to newer fans, but I find the messages in the original to be a lot more striking to me. Maybe I’m just old fashioned. I dunno.
Also, as an aside: while Gundam is a good example of a work of fiction influenced by real world experience, Space Battleship Yamato is probably the best I’ve seen with regards to that. I mean fuck, it’s about resurrecting the sunken Yamato to save Earth from nuclear radiation, which is a result of horrible bombings from an alien world.
Bandai doesn’t care about that.
All it cares about is MONEY.
They’re a company, and they know these things sell like hotcakes.
Like it or not, it’s the average joe’s/fat yaoi fangirls’ fault for this.
And believe me, Mwu should have stayed dead.
>>Also, as an aside: while Gundam is a good example of a work of fiction influenced by real world experience, Space Battleship Yamato is probably the best I’ve seen with regards to that.
You mean to say that you haven’t watched Godzilla?
oh and also anime wants to be free, overthrow our capitalistic oppressors, ani-socialism for all, etc
The beautiful thing about UC is the lack of bishonen. The pre-UC0090 series of Gundam is truly manly anime.
I was going to bring that up but I felt it was a bit of a cheap shot, since sex appeal is so common now a days and has been for years.
Besides fanservice isn’t that bad. On of the best parts of Seed and Seed Destiny was all the Doujinshi and fanart that was created off of Lunamaria, Flay, and Lacus. Sure we have to deal with Yaoi fangirls, but overall on the design aspect, everyone wins!
But yeah, I think Wildarms is right on this one. I mean, I like Mwu, and him being a live isn’t a bad thing. But it totally outline the inability of Seed to keep things serious. For example, Seed was originally suposed to end with Flay acting as a human bomb, destroying the Arcangel and killing Kira. However the series was too popular and the staff didn’t have the balls.
I think I started watching Gundam Wing, then Seed and then some MS 08team or something.
And then I went back to the original Gundam and yes, while Seed is great, it is still just a damn rewritten story from the original series, which is kinda boring.
So I agree on you that Seed has no soul. But still, Seed has Lacus-sama :)
hrm, i’m almost disappointed that I have no opinion in this debate. I’ve only seen a minimum of Seed, Wing, and the origional. The only one’s I’ve seen for real are 0080 and 0083 and G Gundam, as well as char’s counterattack. I’ve never been to big a fan of any gunda, series since I’m not all that big on the art of war and stuff, plus a lot of the fans of stuff like wing ruin it for me >_> Char’s counterattack is still bloody awesome, though, so i guess I can say I’m a big fan of one sort of gundam – the kind that takes place in less than 2 hours ^^;;
I agree with wildarms about Mwu as well, when I first saw Mwu’s sacrifice, I thought it was the most epic thing ever at the time. When he came back alive, that entire scene was completely killed for me. I think Andy should have stayed dead too instead of come back alive (despite how awesome he is).
I think Seed does a pretty good job of bringing Gundam to people who havn’t seen the original stuff. Hell, even Destiny had it’s good bits (despite being a ripoff of Zeta, the Destroy bit was pretty good IMO). Pity the bad far outweighs the good (including all the OTHER UC ripoffs – ZAKU’s? DOM Troopers? GOUFS’s? Please.)
I haven’t watched Seed (and I don’t plan on ever watching it) because of one simple thing – the woman with the silver mask on. When I saw that, I knew it was a copy of Char. (Then I remembered Wing and its copy of Char, and that made me pity all the people who’ve watched Wing and thought that guy was the shit but have no plans of watching 0079.) Everything learned after was just more shit added to the pile, more reason for me not to watch the show.
I wasn’t a big fan of Gundam when Wing came on Cartoon Network, but once I watched the original series (and then moved on to Zeta and beyond), I completely fell in love with the series, or at least the UC series. It’s just too bad 90% of American anime fans will only suckle off of Wing and Seed and never watch the originals, series where people who die actually stay dead! (I suppose for Seed, people don’t die when you kill them.)
“the woman with the silver mask on.”
Well, that’s actually a man. He’s actually a pretty decent Char clone in that he’s totally insane.