lack of discipline in the gundam series

[Scheuch13]

one consist theme through all the series is the constant trouble with a ship ful of angsty teens and adults doing whatever they want whenever. On top of that you have unprofessional romances between officers and enlisted, insubordinate attitudes and our right disobedience of order which often cross into court marshaliable offenses, yet rarely do we see a character get more then a slap across the face.

Any professional military would discharge, lock up or execute you for many of the things that these characters do on a regular basis. Simply put no matter how good of a pilot you are, if you cant follow orders, respect the chain of command and have a sense of discipline then you have no place im the military. And if you actions put your fellow soldiers in danger you will be out of uniform faster then you can say newtype.

Seems odd that such a stright regimented and respectful society like japan would constantly fill their shows with such laughly lax discipline and almost no enforcement of military regulations.

[HellCat]

Because a show about a bunch of emotionless, by the book androids would be incredibly boring.

[Hyakushiki]

You have to remember in Gundam most of time the crew are made of civilians that forcibly drafted into service due to casualties among the actual military personnel stationed on board, the replacements only have the technical competence to handle their assigned tasks but none of the regimented discipline that would have drilled into them normally at boot camp or a military academy. Most of the commanders we see on these ships are also a little lenient and flexible when it comes to protocol Bright Noah for example knew when to crack the whip and when to just let his people handle their jobs the best way they knew how. The fact that they knew to wear their uniforms on duty and conducted themselves with some professionalism under adverse conditions specks to the fact that the White Base crews had some level of discipline among there ranks. Groups like the AEUG were made up of mostly military personnel, chiefly One Year War veterans some regulations could be relaxed since these are people mature enough to know not to let personal distractions interfere with their duties.

The point being, we are seeing a rag-tag group of survivors forged in the heat of battle, who are more concerned with making through this battle to get to the next one, not that they followed all the rules of conduct in the handbook, these are the guys that just go in, get work done, then go home to get ready for the next fight. Is it correct from a military standpoint, probably not, but does it make for interesting drama for television, it sure does.

You also bring up Japanese culture being so formal and regimented so why isn't that reflected more in their military dramas. Well Gundam is first and foremost an anime, and most anime center on characters that are non-conformists, that bend or outright break the rules but still achieve results. Because Japanese entertainment by and large is the collective social release valve for all that pressure to conform, just why do you think anime is so damn weird?

[Kenji]

Think of it in terms of the intended audience: Older children and younger teenagers. Angsty people, by nature. These characters were designed to be identified with and related to, and so they're designed thus.

Besides, while Japanese society is more structured than we Westerners (especially Americans and Canadians) would be used to, they're not robots in lockstep, either. If they weren't prone to interpersonal drama and angst, why is it everywhere in their entertainment?

[Tangerine]

The settings make an excellent excuse tho. so much years into the future without many major battles occurred. I think the UC the military themselves, particularly the space branch of the EFSF isn't as rigid or as disciplined as their real world counterpart.

Stardust and 08ms team addressed this issue tho, at least partially. both series portray military discipline like normal military do. from pushups for training failure to court-martial and the ever-looming execution threat for spying or collusion with the enemy.

[Crimson-Lightning]

In many cases the crews of these ships are civilian volunteers. Even under the US Military's UCMJ their are no provisions or regulations for the conduct and punishment of civilians. Actually I think the first actual case of a main character pilot actually already being in the military who committed a major violation was Kou Uraki who was sentenced to confinement and hard labor for stealing the GP03, though he gets let out due to the Stardust cover up. On that note I think Captain Synapse gets executed for mutiny and theft.

In SEED the civilian side of punishment is actually briefly touched upon in EP 11. Murrue states that Kira was subject to the death penalty for launching without permission to take Lacus back to ZAFT. She however goes on to say that their are no provisions for punishing a civilian though he is assigned extra duty cleaning latrines. I also believe in Sai spends at least a week in solitary for moving the Strike without permission sometime later. I also remember Murrue's handling and discipline of her personnel also comes into question during a review board at Alaska.

Though not directly said during SEED itself but virtually said during Destiny is that the main character has become so good that he is virtually unpublishable. Kira during his time in the Alliance is essential due to their lack of mobile suit pilots and for the literal survival of the Archangel which I actually believe is more or less said. It is directly said in Destiny as Shinn gets away unpunished for taking Stella back to the Alliance though to Talia's credit she seemed to want the full book thrown at him.

And I think their is something of a misconception of how the scales of discipline really tip between peace and wartime. Believe it or not during wartime rules and standards tend to be relaxed in order to maintain troop numbers. Over the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the US military has seen dramatic spikes in areas such as sexual assaults, DUIs, among other outright felonies. Its also spread to general misconduct such as many troops not showing customs and curtsies for many army buck sergeants and even going higher in ranks up to and including command sergeant majors. During the last few years many of these infractions have simply resulted in slap on the wrist punishments such as extra duty or pay reductions to even complete dismissals of all charges against the offender.

Now that the military is looking to downsize due to the drawn down of the war in Afghanistan these standards are rapidly coming back into play. The rate of soldiers being chaptered out of the military and being prosecuted is rapidly rising. This isn't just related to this war either. This is something that happens during any long drawn out conflict. As militaries are entrenched in long drawn out conflicts the quality of force drops in order to maintain and raise numbers. After the wars are said and done these militaries then clean house.

[Amion]

Great post Crimson, with some very interesting information I didn't know. I read recently of some conduct similar to that during WWII, so I am going to make the assumption that the severity of the war increases the laxity.

Also, in Zeta, ZZ, V, and the majority of protagonist forces are not regular military, and the above logic Crimson mentioned explains away the antagonists' actions.

[T0-burnth1sHeart]

Wow crimson, that was really insightful. I've heard about such incidents on the news many times in these past months and it got me wondering what the hell the military was doing. Your post has given me some insight into how such things happen during an ongoing armed conflict. A good read to be sure.

[Tangerine]

It's pretty logical with limited numbers of soldiers and percentage of them are either killed, wounded or incapable of fighting, anyone still able to hold their weapon and follow orders are to be maintained despite their lack of discipline. of course once it ended the capitulation began.

Oh and about the series, didn't we see much of them being confined in brig due to some problem with following order? Kou got one along with one of the vets for taking their MS for some paintball skirmishes. I think Camile and Amuro also spend their time in a brig or two along the series.

[teslashark]

It's pretty logical with limited numbers of soldiers and percentage of them are either killed, wounded or incapable of fighting, anyone still able to hold their weapon and follow orders are to be maintained despite their lack of discipline. of course once it ended the capitulation began.

Oh and about the series, didn't we see much of them being confined in brig due to some problem with following order? Kou got one along with one of the vets for taking their MS for some paintball skirmishes. I think Camile and Amuro also spend their time in a brig or two along the series.

It's interesting to see in the credits of two Evolve episodes that Camille and Quatro actually had to write reports for damaging Argama property during their practice battles. Don't know which is better: Someone order them to apologize or they actually gave more than a shrug.

[Hyakushiki]

Filling the reports seemed to be a bureaucratic formality, they know that during practice stuff gets broken and all that, they just need to document the incident as a matter of record. Even Kamille complained about how pointless the official apology portion of the document was since the whole thing is merely a formality and no one would care if he was sorry or not.

[Amion]

It's off-topic but-when was this? I remember Evolve's episode with Lieutenant Quattro getting mad and actually firing rounds at the Argama in frustration. I don't remember Kamille being there either.

[Sulendil Zeta]

It's off-topic but-when was this? I remember Evolve's episode with Lieutenant Quattro getting mad and actually firing rounds at the Argama in frustration. I don't remember Kamille being there either.

Quite an early episode (episode 2 if I'm not mistaken), where Kamille is piloting the Gundam Mark II.

[Amion]

Oh that one. I remember now, thanks.

[AmuroNT1]

Honestly, if anything, the written apologies in Evolve 2 and 12 just further reflect the lack of discipline. Kamille's has a cursory apology, then descends into bitching about the AEUG leadership, even calling Quattro incompetent by comparing him to a monkey handling a bomb (and then saying that's an insult to monkeys). Quattro's apology isn't shown long enough to read, but it's very wrinkled as if it had been wadded into a ball and then smoothed back out.

Anyway, like I said way back in Burke's Destiny topic, one of the problems is that Gundam sticks to the classic meme of the Bright Slap - which makes for a funny joke, but is far from an effective discipline tool. If anything, Athrun's repeated punching and yelling at Shinn for the slightest little thing only made things worse by fostering a resentment of authority.

[T0-burnth1sHeart]

I think TvTropes lampshades that in the bright slap article.

[teslashark]

Honestly, if anything, the written apologies in Evolve 2 and 12 just further reflect the lack of discipline. Kamille's has a cursory apology, then descends into bitching about the AEUG leadership, even calling Quattro incompetent by comparing him to a monkey handling a bomb (and then saying that's an insult to monkeys). Quattro's apology isn't shown long enough to read, but it's very wrinkled as if it had been wadded into a ball and then smoothed back out.

Anyway, like I said way back in Burke's Destiny topic, one of the problems is that Gundam sticks to the classic meme of the Bright Slap - which makes for a funny joke, but is far from an effective discipline tool. If anything, Athrun's repeated punching and yelling at Shinn for the slightest little thing only made things worse by fostering a resentment of authority.

Slapping isn't the most useful either. Zeta actually had 7 minutes (There's a smackdown montage on youtube) of hand-to-hand slapping between pilots and officers, only getting worse every time.