The Official Gundam AGE Anime Thread AGE-7

[Shinji103]

Ghandi never saw his homeland get demolished by Gafrans as a child.

Flit actually didn't enter his raging genocidal mode until after Yurin was killed, remember. Even watching entire colonies get blown up and his mother get crushed didn't equal the rage from seeing Yurin die, which shows Flit is more pissed over his love interest being killed than the Vagans being generally "evil."
That, and it doesn't change the fact that Flit is a borderline psychopath with a bit of egomania on the side. Shouting out desires for genocide while thinking you're the only one right and everyone who disagrees should take a hike, is not a sign of good mental health. And lest we forget the fact that Flit was essentially conditioning Kio to be a pilot from a young age.....

It is interesting to note that Flit hated the UE, but didn't really go into his Dalek mode until Yurin. So, question must be raised.

Had Yurin lived, would Flit be genocidal?

-Raptor, out.

Considering the very point you made there, I'd have to say no. Even watching his mother die by the Vagans' hand didn't send him into a near-psychopathic genocidal rage later in his life, not until Yurin's death.

[HellCat]

I don't really think it's all about Yurin, more that was just our first taste of how vengeful Flit could be. A rather important thing to consider- Desil killed Yurin, Flit went crazy on him. In the second gen Desil is obsessed with settling the score and trying to lock Flit in a duel. Does Flit say "It's you, the guy who killed Yurin! Stand down men, this is my fight!"? No- he considers Desil an idiot and uses his full forces to attack him and later doesn't even bother to launch, instead telling the Diva's gunner a firing sequence to keep Desil at bay. I think if Flit was that obsessed with Yurin, he'd want to do the job himself.

[Shinji103]

I thought the same thing too, but Flit's Vagan hate only showed the ferocity we see now after Yurin was killed. It would actually make sense that Flit didn't obsess with Decil because Yurin's death made him hate the Vagan as a whole instead of focusing his hatred on Decil alone. So it would make sense that he would ignore Decil, because he had the more important goal of wiping out all the Vagans.

[YazanGable]

You know, the more I look at it, the more I get the feeling any sense of love interest Flit had toward Yurin died a long time ago.
More than anything, it seems her death haunts him as a direct indication of his failure to be the savior everyone was talking him up to be.
I mean, all the other deaths to that point were unfortunate, yes. But Yurin was someone he'd known first-hand, caught up in a one-on-one fight she only got involved in because she went with them when they threatened that she'd never see him again, and then she died taking the hit for him.

The other deaths are easier to chalk up as casualties of war and simply part of the broader pantheon of Vagan's crimes.
To him, Yurin's blood is as much on his hands as it is on Desil's. It's a personal to-his-face failure. He still wants to see the Vagans wiped out for everything else, but Yurin hit him personally because that was much more distinctly "I couldn't save her."
In the great scheme, she seems to have gone from a Lalah Sune figure to the little girl and her dog from Endless Waltz. An innocent victim who only haunts the particular protagonist because he indirectly had a hand in why they're dead.

It's also worth noting the only time Flit ever really explicitly flashes back to Yurin is when he fights Desil. The rest of the time he just addresses the Vagans under the much broader "They're monsters that shouldn't be allowed to live" approach.

...just a thought, anyway.

[Kei Katsuragi]

Flit never explicitly said he wanted to exterminate the Vagans until the end of the second arc. Yurin's death helped with his hatred of the Vagan, but from what little I have seen of Flit's young adulthood from the video games, he doesn't look like the exhausted bitter man that he is now and when he was in Gen 2. I think all the events in Gen 2 as well made his hated of Vagan stronger. Grodek and Woolf's deaths played a part as well. And the near global genocide that was the battle for Nortrum. Then later, after the second Gen, he thought he had lost his son to the Vagan as well. So I just think it is a giant mass of many things that have made Flit the rage induced fallen hero he is now.

[kayone73]

^ In the 2nd arc, Flit was still commander of the Big Ring and Federation forces, he was still cool and in command and had to act like a leader. But his hatred was there. It was only after he was retired and suffered from 'old man disease' where they say whatever the f*** they want with ZERO filter, did he just let decades of rage and hate bubble unashamedly to the surface.

[Soma Taozi]

In regards to the whole argument about wither the Vagan's would be completely exterminated or not...I have to say that the Vagan's as they stand now DO deserve to be hit pretty damn hard...especially their fanatical military, BUT I think I would draw the line over complete and totally extermination for a very simple reason that I am surprised that no one has brought up.

Redemption.

Have we really become so cynical that we have forgotten that the even if the Vagan's are ALL fanatical, crazy, and genocidal...they weren't always...and at the VERY least, Lui implies that some of the Vagans at least have human qualities that are worth saving? That maybe some of them can be redeemed and saved? I personally think Kio speeches towards the Vagan pilots and trying to not kill them (although naive) speaks towards this ideal. Is it at all possible that Kio sees a little bit of Lui in ALL the Vagans? Yes, we have been shown that they are all crazy people bent on destroying the world with very little counterbalance to this argument, but with the Kio meeting and seeing the world of the vagan...I think it brings up the questions of, can they be helped and maybe saved? (I seem to remember the Gundam being made for the specific purpose of BEING a savior)

Even if only a handful can be brought into the light after the war, then wouldn't it be worth NOT exterminating all of them? Just to bring humans who have lost their way back towards the light?

I know this sounds a little cumbaya and so forth, and I really guess how you feel about the vagan comes from your own personal perspective. And I really don't want to get political here, but I personally feel that most people can be saved, even if they have done terrible things...that being said, I can understand people's perspective about making terrible people pay for their crimes...it is only just.

huh, is it at all possible that the writers did this on purpose to divide the fan-base of Gundam into the Flit side, the Asemu side, and the Kio side? NO. That is asking WAY to much, but even if this was unintentional or not, it is still really interesting to see the discussions here mirror the arguments in the show. So at the very least, that mediocre group of writers did something!

And now excuse me as I eat banana bread!

[Arbiter GUNDAM]

A sudden thought just occurred to me. What if... Ezelcant is influencing ALL the Vagans? The civvies and the soldiers. He's demonstrated the ability to project images into other people's minds before. Actually that might only work on other X-Rounders...

[Kei Katsuragi]

What if every Vagan is an X-Rounder, Arbiter O_o!?

[Arbiter GUNDAM]

Then we need a Psi Disrupter, pronto.

[Mythgarr]

What if every Vagan is genetically engineered biological ROBOTS ? Do we have evidence of Vagan/Human cross-breed?

[ShadowCell]

what if they're all actually vegans?

nobody ever actually disproved that you know so post hoc ergo propter hoc it must be true

[HellCat]

I recall joking with a friend about the idea of them all being X-Rounders during the episode everyone in Ezelcant's palace sees Romy in Kio before it's been explained to us. X-Rounder old lady maid, wielding a Dust Buster with lethal accuracy.

But on a serious note- yeah, the idea we've been seeing some 'mass hypnosis' struck me back in Asemu's arc. It kind of reminds me of how the Star Wars EU claims Palpatine used a technique called 'battlefield meditation', Force magic which kept his forces focussed as one at Endor. After he dies, the spell is broken too.

[teslashark]

I recall joking with a friend about the idea of them all being X-Rounders during the episode everyone in Ezelcant's palace sees Romy in Kio before it's been explained to us. X-Rounder old lady maid, wielding a Dust Buster with lethal accuracy.

But on a serious note- yeah, the idea we've been seeing some 'mass hypnosis' struck me back in Asemu's arc. It kind of reminds me of how the Star Wars EU claims Palpatine used a technique called 'battlefield meditation', Force magic which kept his forces focussed as one at Endor. After he dies, the spell is broken too.

Living in space must have did SOME degree of change to people's genes, and surviving the Mars radiation might have been a natural selection process? Though being a X-Rounder equals a defection... Are they easier to hyptonize with subliminal messages? Ezelcant must have paved roads with XR amplifiers.

[Sume Gai]

I think one really has to apply some fridge logic to Vegan society. Going from the Case of Lu and Deen we know that Vegans deal with death near constantly from an early age. Parents, siblings, friends even you yourself could contract Mars Rays disease which is a lingering death that, at best, can only be delayed.

Try for a moment to consider what this must be like, how the average citizen has a hardened heart when faced with this. How you have been told that the Federation simply dumped you or your parents in this living hell. How Exelcant, suffering just as much as you, comes along with the power to do something, anything. Lash out against your condemners work towards moving back to Earth or, better yet, do both.

I also wonder if their patience has something to do with these conditions. How many Vagan do ytou think have been waiting the full 60 years? How many are still alive from the first generation? If life expectancy in Vagan is low then this wait does not seem so odd. it is fairly easy to earn the trust of a child who will habitualize it and likely hold on to that trust for a good chunk of his, possibly limited, adult life.

I admit this would all be a bit better if we'd gotten some reason the Vegan can't just move back to Earth (overtly or by stealth) something simple that we may still get if Kio keeps talking to various Vagans

[teslashark]

I think one really has to apply some fridge logic to Vegan society. Going from the Case of Lu and Deen we know that Vegans deal with death near constantly from an early age. Parents, siblings, friends even you yourself could contract Mars Rays disease which is a lingering death that, at best, can only be delayed.

Try for a moment to consider what this must be like, how the average citizen has a hardened heart when faced with this. How you have been told that the Federation simply dumped you or your parents in this living hell. How Exelcant, suffering just as much as you, comes along with the power to do something, anything. Lash out against your condemners work towards moving back to Earth or, better yet, do both.

I also wonder if their patience has something to do with these conditions. How many Vagan do ytou think have been waiting the full 60 years? How many are still alive from the first generation? If life expectancy in Vagan is low then this wait does not seem so odd. it is fairly easy to earn the trust of a child who will habitualize it and likely hold on to that trust for a good chunk of his, possibly limited, adult life.

I admit this would all be a bit better if we'd gotten some reason the Vegan can't just move back to Earth (overtly or by stealth) something simple that we may still get if Kio keeps talking to various Vagans

Well, there was a joke about the unamed Gafran commander of Ep.01 being a charachter we met later (Desil, Yark Dole, muscle guy, even Yurin).
The reason Vagans can't move back to earth in plain sight seems to be one of two reasons, the lack of transport crafts or the rule of Flit. The ruling people he ousted was already contacting with Mars and heading towards someting, it seems.
Though, there are already so many operators infiltrated - why can't they get into the media and arrange some protests?

[HellCat]

I think one really has to apply some fridge logic to Vegan society. Going from the Case of Lu and Deen we know that Vegans deal with death near constantly from an early age. Parents, siblings, friends even you yourself could contract Mars Rays disease which is a lingering death that, at best, can only be delayed.

Try for a moment to consider what this must be like, how the average citizen has a hardened heart when faced with this. How you have been told that the Federation simply dumped you or your parents in this living hell. How Exelcant, suffering just as much as you, comes along with the power to do something, anything. Lash out against your condemners work towards moving back to Earth or, better yet, do both.

I also wonder if their patience has something to do with these conditions. How many Vagan do ytou think have been waiting the full 60 years? How many are still alive from the first generation? If life expectancy in Vagan is low then this wait does not seem so odd. it is fairly easy to earn the trust of a child who will habitualize it and likely hold on to that trust for a good chunk of his, possibly limited, adult life.

I admit this would all be a bit better if we'd gotten some reason the Vegan can't just move back to Earth (overtly or by stealth) something simple that we may still get if Kio keeps talking to various Vagans

I definitely agree this is something people are overlooking. Alot of people are judging Vagan from their stance in a developed, democratic and stable society, ignoring the fact the previous arc made it clear that this is NOT the lifestyle the people of Vagan enjoy. Like Ezelcant said, they're a race of humans who actively have to deny that very fact to survive. It's not like they're just a colony cluster that got uppity and went 'World domination via genocide sound good?'.

[YazanGable]

Not gonna lie, I think it would be an interesting turn of events if the show revealed the peace process has been hampered as much from Flit's own prejudices as it has Ezelcant's zealotry. Either through learning his 'peace offer' amounts to "We'll stop attacking, but you stay where you are." or actively turning away ANY attempt get people on Earth just to be sure.

I mean, we were only told in Gen-2 that peace offers were made. They never DID tell us what sort of terms Earth was offering. I wouldn't be surprised if, with Flit in charge of the EF armed forces, the on-the-table terms (as opposed to backroom negotiations) amounted to "Bugger off and you won't be killed" or similar 'Give them nothing' style terms.

Especially since even during Gen-2, his opinion of the Vagans wasn't particularly high.

Unfortunately, I don't think the writers would take that route, since they seem to more favor just making Flit trigger happy now that his grandson's going soft rather than suggesting this degree of hate has been in him for some time now.

[ShadowCell]

assuming that Olfenoa was telling the truth when he said he was trying to negotiate an end to the war, Flit pretty much killed the peace process right there by clapping him in irons.

then again, Flit's always had this hatred; it's just that he's also always had minions who would carry out his plans without question, so he never really had a reason to get all screamy about it. this arc has been the first time someone has said no and gone their own way, and he doesn't appear to be taking it very well.

[HellCat]

http://www.gundam.info/product/1135 Character songs!

Emily will sing 'Lucky Silver Medal'. Asemu to perform a remix on Volume 2.