The Official Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans Mecha Thread Mk II

[SonicSP]

[Note: I wrote this throughout the day before the manual link was posted so don't know whether that confirms or denies somethings. I spent so much time writing it that I wanted to post it anyways, lol]

The Plumas are........interesting. One one hand, they look like projectiles don't damage them easily. We've seen them being taken out by one shot before in the latest episode but we've seen that happen to mobile suits occasionally as well. And then Barbatos Lupus wipes the floor with a bunch of them easily to save Ride later on. At the same time, it took two Shidens to hold one down at the Teiwaz base. That might be because of lack of space to kill it with melee weapons but it's an indication of strength nevertheless.

This sort of implies that it has Nanolaminate Armor of sorts although possibly a weaker version. Kinda like how the Nanolaminate Armor is stronger than mobile suit just because they use a much larger Ahab Reactor, which we were discussing not too long ago. If it does have this though, it would need some sort of Ahab power source.

I find it super unlikely they have actual Ahab Reactors simply because the reasonable speculation that they are hard to make because these are high powered gravity generating semi perpetual devices that functions by using "phase transitions in a vacuum".

A more reasonable possibility is that they have the Ahab version of a GN Condenser or E-PAC where the Mother unit can recharge periodically (making the mother-children analogy even stronger lol)[/iW. Again, we have yet see such a storage mechanism but I think it's more likely than them making Reactors for now.

We do know what compressing Ahab Particles is really difficult though, as we can see from Asteroth Origin's Gamma Nanolaminated Sword.. It was really reallt difficult to do, at least on the human side so that suggests that the mobile armor side is more advanced to have achieved that* assuming that Nanolaminate Armor assumption holds true.

There are other anomalies as well. The first one is between the Pluma activated at Teiwaz base and the ones in the Martian desert. The former didn't react at all even after Flauros' Ahab Reactors were taken out of sleep state which suggests it's power was completely drained. The latter came to life the moment Hashmal did which implies that's they had some power reserves left.

It's possible that the Plumas on site are just separated into those with power left and those without, but they weren't at left behind I think. Maybe Hashmal can power them wirelessly somehow or that one poor Pluma ran out of power on the way in as it was trying to get back to his family.......
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*If an argument is to be made that the human side perhaps never developed beam weapons, the difficulty they had with the Nanolaminate Sword might be evidence that points out to it as it mentions that compressing Ahab Particles is difficult for them. Of course we don't know that the beams are Ahab Particles base or whether maybe making them
Into beams is easier so nothing is completely confirmed yet I guess.

[Shinji_Shinigami]

Well, if both parties have beam negating armor, it makes sense that this kind of weapon falls out of favor. An interesting twist so to speak, since all the armor achievements in previous Gundam Series made kinetic weaponry relativly useless.

What makes me wonder is, who the parties were. I mean, i doubt that someone builds hundreds or thousands of those things with the purpose of desroying humanity. And it did not seem intelligent enough for being sentient. Something like skynet? An unfinished and buggy OS? This lack of information reminds me of the loss of knowledge and technology in the middle ages. In a way, they truly have made an knight anime in the future ^^

[SonicSP]

Literally knights, they even mentioned that in the Road to IBO video too and I say they've done a marvelous job with the tech lore as well especially with recent developments.

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The HG Hashmal manual and the recent episode implies that it was an AI uprising. Specifically humanity built them as war automatons that eventually evolve into human massacring machines. They even mentioned "humans" and "mobile armor", implying those are the factions involved as opposed to it being an inter-human dispute that involved someone making anti-human automaton weapons. Or if they were initially, then all of them turned against humans and forced humans
to unite.

The word evolve makes it sound like they can improve themselves, which given their confirmed self-repair ability makes sense.

So yeah, Skynet though possibly less coordinated. Or Macross Plus but larger and way way more out of hand.

[Kuruni]

Well, as some on on another forum point out... since Hashmal's kit come with Barbatos' new katana (so it's likely that Mika will use it against Hashmal). It's matter of time before someone make Rule of Nature AMV after this arc .

[SonicSP]

Speaking of which, doesn't the Hashmal look like WAY bigger in the anime than the model kit scale would suggest? It's supposed only be 35.2 meters in height but it's claw can cover most a Reginlaze. Hell a Reginlaze jumped on it's shoulder even and their height is 18.5 meters.

Occasional scale mismatch does happen from time to time but this was throughout the episode. On the other hand, Barbatos and Hashma

[Shinji_Shinigami]

Well, i personally thought that the hashmal was bigger, when it was first shown, then it turned out to be in the last episode. Though i too felt, that the size was not very consistant. I honeslty wonder if this is a wanted omage to metal gear solid, especially the second part and Raiden or if it is just crative coincidence? Where is my veteran Mobile suit pilot, nicknamed Snake? XD

Given that the flauros was beside that thing it is probable to asume that they took each other out. But wouldn't that mean that a corpse would have been on the flauros? Oo

Also, it was stated somewhat in the anime that from all the gundam frames roughly half exist. Does the Flauros count as one of them? Or is it considered KIA since it was buried on the Mars?

[E08]

35.2m is the total length not height.

Wow, the Eng translations don't cover all the JP text. But it directly answers a number of questions concerning Hashmal and the Calamity War

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10420319

Not really surprised by the missing english translations, that has been mostly the case thus far. Anyway, the missing text does not have any important information. For those interested, the following is the information within the missing text:
-The half-metal mine is in Chryse region
-Mobile worker-like machines were also simultaneously uncovered around the MA, and initially no one knows the MA's identity (note: the latter part is partially translated in the manual)
-Hashmal is equipped with Ahab Reactor (note: unknown if singular or plural) as its main power source.
-Later on, they learnt that the name of this particular MA is Hashmal. (note: partially translated in the manual)
-Superhard wire blade is a product of the Calamity War era's high technological power (or technical skills).

Finally, the sword's text covered by the watermark basically says that the blade is made of the same rare alloy as used in the MS' frame.

[SonicSP]

Also, it was stated somewhat in the anime that from all the gundam frames roughly half exist. Does the Flauros count as one of them? Or is it considered KIA since it was buried on the Mars?

I personally can't recall the line in the anime that states the Gundam Frames remaining number, but some of the Season 1 model kit manuals mentions 26 Gundam Frames are confirmed to exist.

I presume by the part "confirmed" that those are the ones accounted for during in Season 1, which likely means newly dug out ones like Flauros presumably wouldn't count in that.

So yeah, that would mean there are 27 I guess

35.2m is the total length not height.

Thanks for the translation as usual. Length would be left to right.....right?

[BrentD15]

Official site updated with linearts and profile for Gundam Flauros and Helmwige Reincar

Helwige Reincar reminds me of a mobile suit from Gundam X.

[Dark Duel]

Yes, it does. It strongly resembles some of the SRA mobile suit designs, especially IMO the Jenice Kai "Slash Buffalo", with its enormous horns.

[Amion]

I for one enjoy the reference, honestly. Although I actually prefer the Helmwige Reincar. It just has a nice ring to it in name to go with its appearance.

About Hashmal's size: that is the one flaw I have seen with it, in my eyes. It just feels hard to believe these things were that destructive if they are so tiny. Then again, the beam weapon is just fine for mass slaughter, and we don't know how many of them were out there... I sure do hope Hashmal isn't the only Calamity Armor awakened by the end. Just one turned loose upon the PD world is not enough! Who knows, Idiok might survive long enough to wake up another.

[SonicSP]

I think the destruction they have caused in the size they were depicted in the anime is fairly believable since that thing is huge. When we were seeing Idiok shooting at it in first person with his railgun and that thing just dash behind him, it was very scary.

Of course, even if they are small like the manual stats, they are countless of them according to the HG, so they'll be a quantity over quality thing. Although I think the "self sustainable military-factory" thing will be far more believable if it was the size in the anime.

[zetatype]

Wow, the Eng translations don't cover all the JP text. But it directly answers a number of questions concerning Hashmal and the Calamity War

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10420319

Hmm...so it seems I wasn't too far off about the nano armor scattering the beam particles.

[YokozunaBulldozer]

I cannot help but think of Shovel Knight when I see Helmwige Reincar.
It is not 100% accurate but the horns and blue armor...
First Flauros as Giroro and now this. Hahah.

[Dark Duel]

Hmmm...Personally my first thought when I saw the uncolored prototype was Thrudgelmir, mainly because of that ginormous sword.
But you know, Looking at it again - and especially its colors - I have to agree with the Shovel Knight comparison...BIG shovel though


Hmm...so Hashmal - and presumably other mobile armors as well - is equipped with Nanolaminate Armor. That doesn't actually surprise me all that much, though it means I have to change my earlier theory somewhat about the development of Mobile Suits as anti-MA weapons.
I don't know why I assumed that NLA was something that was developed at the same time as mobile suits, but going from Hashmal's manual automated war machines were something that was more common until the Mobile Armors led to the outbreak of the Calamity War. One might assume then that beam weapons were more common then before the technology was lost following the War, which would be why MAs are equipped with it. And thus of course MS have the same armor because they need to be able to defend against the beam weapons of the machines they were created to destroy.

[SonicSP]

Hmm...so Hashmal - and presumably other mobile armors as well - is equipped with Nanolaminate Armor. That doesn't actually surprise me all that much, though it means I have to change my earlier theory somewhat about the development of Mobile Suits as anti-MA weapons.
I don't know why I assumed that NLA was something that was developed at the same time as mobile suits, but going from Hashmal's manual automated war machines were something that was more common until the Mobile Armors led to the outbreak of the Calamity War. One might assume then that beam weapons were more common then before the technology was lost following the War, which would be why MAs are equipped with it. And thus of course MS have the same armor because they need to be able to defend against the beam weapons of the machines they were created to destroy.

In addition to the defending against beams, Nanolaminate Armor is just good in general since it also good against defense against normal kinetic weapons too.

In any case, I think McGillis said that mobile suits was created in response to mobile armor. There are likely some advantage that the mobile suits have since otherwise they could have just gone with piloted mobile armors or non-humanoid fighters.

I think the answer may perhaps by the Alayashiki System itself. The AI appears to have great response times compared to humans so mechanizing the humans to have better specs seems like the thing to do.

Mobile suits being human shaped will help towards that. Like McGillis observed in Episode 5, Mika was able to avoid all damage to the parts of his mobile suit except the backpack because it wasn't part of his real human body. Mika was essentially able to "be" his mobile suit.

In addition, the human shape body may also help in the wielding of blunt and heavy melee weapons which is great at damaging Nanolaminate Armor. I presume these two factors together are the main reasons why mobile suits were developed as a counter to mobile armor.

Mika will be getting a new version of the Long Sword he used to defeat Graze Ein soon, so we'll likely see the Alayashiki being pushed to the limit again and that technique repeated if not taken further. Likely these are what the folks had to do in the Calamity War in order defeat them. McGillis did say in Season 1 that the original Seven Stars knights had to give up being human in order to win and end the war. It's just that now we finally get to see the horrors of what they were fighting against and why they did it.

[False Prophet]

Why does nosebleeding is always anime's answer to a brain working too hard, whether it is in an action show or an echii show? Does that happen in real life?

[Amion]

I wouldn't know, having never researched it, but there's really no way to research exactly how an AV system rewires the human brain. I'm pretty sure there's Hollywood examples for blood to leak out of ears, nose or eyes if someone's overusing their brain. At least in anime this is common enough. Blood vessels in the eyes can burst, and the sinuses are connected to the brain, I think.

Google Mayo Clinic or some other trusted online source. they might know something about it. At any rate the Alaya does seem to have a very physical affect on those afflicted with it. And we're about to see its full power...

[Gone Astray]

It's more visual shorthand that their brain is working in overdrive. Nosebleeds are usually harmless but they can be symptomatic of high blood pressure or even precede strokes. The more worrisome thing would be bleeding from the eyes or ears since those are usually the result of internal bleeding brought on by trauma of some sort.

If anything I would think it'd be more realistic for AV overdrive to result in ear bleeding, but I don't think we've seen that in this series. It's just usually more effective to show a bloody nose because most people don't know that that's often fairly harmless due to the nature and location of the capillaries that contribute to that happening.

[Dark Duel]

No, I don't think we've seen ears bleeding. Severe nosebleeds seem to have been the norm except in particularly exceptional cases, in which we have seen bleeding from the eyes - as in the Battle of Edmonton and, it looks like, the next episode as well.