The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

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The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

Probably the last one of these we'll do.
Brave Fencer Kirby wrote:
excalibur2008 wrote:Which is weird when you remember that it pretty much came out of nowhere in Gundam 0079.

Seriously despite it never coming up once before the Whitebase got back into space suddenly its this major ideology/myth thing thats been around for years.
The first time Amuro exhibits newtype powers is against the Black Tri-Stars, IIRC. It's referenced when they reach Jaburo, as well -- when the White Base pilots get checked out by Federation doctors, Amuro mentions that they did a bunch of brain scans and stuff on him, which none of the other pilots went through. It's not really properly introduced as a concept until Char reappears on the scene with Lalah, but it's not like it was completely unmentioned up until that point.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

@BraveFencerKirby
To put it another way, if you wanted to rewrite Zeta or ZZ without the Newtype Magic, you could without much trouble. Just have Kamille/Judau have their newtype abilities turned up another notch -- they get even more inhumanly fast, accurate, and precise than they already were -- and you're pretty much set. The Newtype Magic seen in CCA and Unicorn can't be explained away like that, though. The things that Nu and Unicorn do are physically impossible -- no amount of narrative handwaving can change the fact that Nu should not have been able to push Axis into a stable orbit, or that Unicorn should not have been able to block the colony laser, but they both did it anyway. That's the defining difference between "regular" newtype magic and psycoframe-level Newtype Magic, in my mind.
Can't really agree here. Kamille freezes mobile suits, becomes impervious to harm, and makes his beam saber insanely huge To the tune of at least several tens of meters. I mean, you COULD rewrite it so he just dodges/shoots/wins better but you can also throw in a line of dialog saying Unicorn and Banshee have a super duper prototype mega colony block beamshield.

I just don't have a problem with the impossible space magic. The stuff in Unicorn doesn't seem out of place to me because there is crazy Newtype stuff in all my favorite Gundam stuff. Zeta and CCA and now Unicorn.
We do? I don't recall that, when does that happen?
I'm presently at work and was out of town for the holiday weekend so I can't give you a specific time/screen shot. But in CCA as I recall Chen(who had a Psycho-Frame sample) takes a direct hit while piloting the ReGZ that completely bends around her leaving her unharmed.

For the difference in level of feats between Amuro/Nu/Char/Sazabi and Banagher/Unicorn/Riddhe/Banshee I think that's pretty well explained by the fact that Unicorn and Banshee are Full Psycho-Frame MS. Now, you can argue and I'd have to agree that they don't give any explanation on to why Psycho-Frame material is capable of such insanity, but since Zeta it's been established that Newtype-whatever can be transformed into Physical energy, CCA it was implied Psycho-Frames are capable of doing this on a larger scale and that the more Psycho-Frames in the mix the more the possibility for Newtype crazy shenanigans.

For me, it seems like a natural progression of humanity's self destruction. We learn there is a New Type of humanity rising, we weaponize them. We learn humans can evolve to communicate across vast distances, we focus on building guns that can receive our thoughts, we witness a miracle that literally saves all life on Earth, and we try to build a weapons system that harnesses that power. So for me it doesn't cheapen the events of CCA and it doesn't really make me think less of the story because it's consistent with the rules it establishes. Those rules are pretty much, Newtypes can do magic under stress, Psycho-Frame resonance amplifies that magic based on how much/how many psycho-frames are in the area, the more Psycho-Frames, the bigger the rabbit that can be pulled out of the hat.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

MaC wrote:
Can't really agree here. Kamille freezes mobile suits, becomes impervious to harm, and makes his beam saber insanely huge To the tune of at least several tens of meters. I mean, you COULD rewrite it so he just dodges/shoots/wins better but you can also throw in a line of dialog saying Unicorn and Banshee have a super duper prototype mega colony block beamshield.

I just don't have a problem with the impossible space magic. The stuff in Unicorn doesn't seem out of place to me because there is crazy Newtype stuff in all my favorite Gundam stuff. Zeta and CCA and now Unicorn.
At least the newtype stuff in Zeta did not go to the lengths the first science then magic pixie dust GN particles did in 00.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

It was just ridiculous in other ways.

Strangely though, Newtype Ghosts rub me more the wrong way than psychoframe magic (even in Unicorn, which of course has both). I think it has to do with there at least being a tangible mental connection in the latter, whereas I'm never really sure where the heck the ghosts come from.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

Kratos wrote:It was just ridiculous in other ways.

Strangely though, Newtype Ghosts rub me more the wrong way than psychoframe magic (even in Unicorn, which of course has both). I think it has to do with there at least being a tangible mental connection in the latter, whereas I'm never really sure where the heck the ghosts come from.
There were newtype ghosts in Unicorn? Which ep did that happen?

And I never minded the ghosts. I thought they added to the show, especially in Zeta and V. Uso's last stand against Katejina is one of my favourite scenes in all of Gundam.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

Final episode had Lalah and Char appear (and Amuro's voice), Kirks' ghost hit up the Shamblo after his death in episode 4, Gilboa and Daguza show up for moral support during Banagher's tethering in episode 5. You might be able to argue that those last ones are more symbolic, though the use of the ghosts before and after leads me to think that they're not.

It's not enough to take me out of things, usually, and they certainly are less ostentatious than the Psycoframe stuff, at least in Unicorn. I just like 'em a bit less conceptually, is all.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

For me, what defines crazy Newtype Magic and Psychoframe crazy Newtype magic is the results. The Nu and Unicorn do amazing things. Kamille did become invincible and lengthen his beam saber, but he did nothing but destroy the Hambrabi, and that's ONLY because Yazan was freaked out of his wits. He doesn't even die from the attack, recall.

Same with Sirocco. As far as I'm aware, Kamille didn't even do anything against The O, that was the spirits' doing, his machine was just a vessel, so I consider that them and not him. Maybe other people see it that way, but it still only accomplishes so much, and he pays for it with his life for all intents and purposes, at least until later on.

And Judau...I don't know. I don't recall all he did or whether or not it reached colony laser blocking level, though I DO remember something about the laser cannon fired at Axis somehow not harming it when Judau shouts. Which if that's how I interpreted, means he did effortlessly without glitter what Banager barely managed to do with help. :D But of course, that's ZZ.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

Kratos wrote:It was just ridiculous in other ways.

Strangely though, Newtype Ghosts rub me more the wrong way than psychoframe magic (even in Unicorn, which of course has both). I think it has to do with there at least being a tangible mental connection in the latter, whereas I'm never really sure where the heck the ghosts come from.
It just got shoehorned with Lalah. Newtypes are psychics and can tap into another spiritual realm. Stop asking. :P
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

But what does one have to do with the other? Newtypes have small-scale telepathy/greater sensitivity to the feelings of others, which becomes large-scale telepathy when technology designed to access the mind is involved, but why would that give access to another spiritual realm? The best explanation I've heard is that the ghosts are disembodied consciousnesses of the dead that get filtered through that mind-tech, and that's as reasonable an explanation as any, I suppose. I still find myself rolling my eyes at the ghosts more than the psycoframe stuff though, even fully knowing that they're both pretty equal stretches of belief.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

My personal theory is that the ghosts are extensions of psychic waves that are tied to the fabric of space time, and that consciousness in UC are patterns of those psychic waves. Newtypes are powerful enough to project those waves outside of their physical bodies, which explains their telepathy and sensitivity, and everyone becomes psychic ghosts when they die because of this, though only Newtypes can sense their presence. The way Newtype Magic has been off handedly explained before is that these psychic waves also attract minovsky particles, which is supposedly what the ability to enhance beam weapons and block beams and the axis shock and psycho-field effects are about. We already know that minovksy particles can and do interact with physical matter when they form an I-Field, so if psychic waves can draw in and influence minovsky particles, then it is reasonable to conclude that a powerful or amplified psychic may be able to manipulate them in a way that allows for the various phenomena we've seen.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

Interesting - I've never really factored Minovsky particles into the Newtype stuff before. Out of genuine curiosity, is that ever mentioned in other works?

I always took the beam-blocking to be actual i-field or anti-beam coating stuff (which only work because beams themselves use Minovsky physics, and the fields/coating use said physics to cancel out whatever effect forms the beam) unrelated to any Newtype tech like Psycoframes or Psycommus.

As for the Axis Shocks, I understand it like this: psycommu functions by transferring pilot brainwaves to a connected piece of tech, whether that be funnels or an MS drive system (Psycoframe). This tech can detect/absorb psychic energy by design, whether that energy be from the natural environment or from other such brainwave devices - that's how you get things like the Unicorn's funnel hijack, and why pilots get a direct glimpse into the minds of those who are connected to one themselves when they get close enough. If enough of this psychic energy accumulates, you get physical effects like the Psyco Field. At its weaker levels, it's just a physical push, like you see when the Unicorn and the Shamblo resonance shoves those cars around or when the Unicorn and Banshee resonate and knock away that poor Anksha; at its stronger levels, it actually somehow responds and reacts to the nature of the accumulated thoughts - pushing away an asteroid or tethering two ships together because those around the receptor want it badly enough, for instance. This energy is cumulative, but probably also has something to do with the size of the receptor itself (so a fully-refined psycoframe MS can potentially create more powerful psycofields than, say, a T-shaped psycoframe sample).

That, then, is why I like the disembodied consciousness concept of the Newtype ghosts: they're just psychic energy floating around themselves, and if a powerful psycommu system can access the thoughts of Joe Zeon in his Geara Doga or some elephant on Earth, then surely it can tap into whatever residual psychic energy exists after death - and that psychic energy is bound to be "stronger" if it's from dead Newtypes, giving them more form and presence when filtered through the psycommu medium.

Whew, that's a ramble! That may not make a whole lot of sense typed out, but it does in my head, and that's how I justify it all. It's kinda neat that the shows that deal with this stuff (and Unicorn in particular) imply that developing weapons tech around something as layered and complex as the mind is utterly unpredictable, fantastic, and dangerous, even as it can help our heroes. I get why it doesn't jibe with people, especially those who prefer harder mechanical sci-fi, and its execution gets a bit Deus-Ex-Machina, but it's kind of a cool theme to include.
Last edited by Kratos on Wed May 28, 2014 3:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

I think it's actually explained somewhat in the novel that the psychofield's physical affects are caused by the accumulation of minovsky particles, but also in other publications related to both CCA and Zeta. One of our more diligent archivists could probably say more on this though.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

I think part of why I like all the space voodoo is too fold. Firstly, I believe in psychic powers and human potential. Secondly, our science isn't stuff we've created from nothing, it's an ongoing understanding of our universe and how it works. There are things we can to do today that would have been impossible and 100 years ago and in turn stuff they could do was impossible 100 years prior. So the idea humanity gets the fringe concept of psyco-frames and such appeals to me. The same with GN particles in 00, where I feel the staff were really creative in what they could do. Doesn't really seem too different to me then how the man on the street can grasp the basic use of something while scientists can push it far further.

For the record, I appreciate all of this is just Gundam dressing up the 'FEEL MY BURNING JUSTICE!!' anime powerup stuff.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

I always thought of the Ghosts as just another extension of the ability for a newtype to fully understand another person. If a Newtype bond is actually being able to completely understand someone, that means not just seeing their memories, but feeling what they feel, understand why they feel what they feel. And if you have a complete understanding of someone, can they ever truly be dead within your memory? If you know them so deeply and so completely that you can understand their motivations and feelings wouldn't you also be able to know how they would react in certain situations?

Of course this is just a fluff silly explanation for the message they are trying to get across, that the people who make an impact on your life stay with you long after they are gone and how powerful that feeling is.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

MaC wrote:I always thought of the Ghosts as just another extension of the ability for a newtype to fully understand another person. If a Newtype bond is actually being able to completely understand someone, that means not just seeing their memories, but feeling what they feel, understand why they feel what they feel. And if you have a complete understanding of someone, can they ever truly be dead within your memory? If you know them so deeply and so completely that you can understand their motivations and feelings wouldn't you also be able to know how they would react in certain situations?

Of course this is just a fluff silly explanation for the message they are trying to get across, that the people who make an impact on your life stay with you long after they are gone and how powerful that feeling is.
That's a pretty good way of putting it. :)
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

MaC wrote:Can't really agree here. Kamille freezes mobile suits, becomes impervious to harm, and makes his beam saber insanely huge To the tune of at least several tens of meters.
True, but that's not really my point. From a narrative perspective -- the consequences of his actions in term of the plot -- all he does is blow up some mobile suits, something that the Zeta is certainly capable of doing without newtype magic. The Nu and Unicorn, on the other hand, do things (stop Axis, block the colony laser) that should be physically impossible. It's only Newtype Magic that allows them to do it at all. It takes newtype magic from being "silly but ultimately unimportant" to "vital plot point you can't ignore".
MaC wrote:For me, it seems like a natural progression of humanity's self destruction. We learn there is a New Type of humanity rising, we weaponize them. We learn humans can evolve to communicate across vast distances, we focus on building guns that can receive our thoughts, we witness a miracle that literally saves all life on Earth, and we try to build a weapons system that harnesses that power. So for me it doesn't cheapen the events of CCA and it doesn't really make me think less of the story because it's consistent with the rules it establishes.
Except that the point of CCA is that humanity isn't inherently evil and self-destructive. Certain warped individuals may be, but humanity as a whole is not. With CCA, the ultimate expression of newtype potential -- the single most spectacular use of newtype abilities in the franchise -- is used to save Earth when all hope seems lost. And then Unicorn comes along and says "oh, and then they turned it from a literal miracle symbolizing hope for the future of humanity into a reliable technology that can be activated on command, and they use it to... make a political statement that ultimately has no effect on anything, because Unicorn is a retconned mess".
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

We can quibble about it being a mess and whether it goes against this hopeful message of CCA, but what, exactly, does Unicorn retcon? It invents stuff, for sure, but what does it do that actively contradicts past works?

And I think the reliability of Psycoframe is being seriously over-stated here. It's shown to be inherently unstable, to the point where pilots can't control their actions and the people who send it into battle worry about unintended resonance effects. Banagher kind of gets it until control, sort of, except that takes him the whole series and often his response is just "keep it deactivated". When the big stuff happens, it's completely beyond his personal abilities.
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

For me, the only major issue with Unicorn is what the charter suggests about Zeon and which the episode directly voices. Did we really need a 'Zeon weren't the real bad guys' retcon after 3 decades of them clearly being an elaborate puppet of a would be dictator?
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

HellCat wrote:For me, the only major issue with Unicorn is what the charter suggests about Zeon and which the episode directly voices. Did we really need a 'Zeon weren't the real bad guys' retcon after 3 decades of them clearly being an elaborate puppet of a would be dictator?
That's not so much a retcon rather than a "shove this point in your face". :evil:
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Re: The Official Gundam Unicorn Anime Thread Mk VII

HellCat wrote:For me, the only major issue with Unicorn is what the charter suggests about Zeon and which the episode directly voices. Did we really need a 'Zeon weren't the real bad guys' retcon after 3 decades of them clearly being an elaborate puppet of a would be dictator?
I don't think that's the takeaway at all. Siam Vist clearly mentioned that the idea of newtypes and the Charter's message itself could be twisted to do terrible things. I thought that pretty clearly alluded to Zeon NOT being right.
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