UC elitist fans...

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Kyuzo Aoi
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UC elitist fans...

I have no choice but to write this article.

I admit I foamed by mouth when I saw this comment.

"
The only Gundam is the "True Saga" of Yoshiyuki Tomino, not any of the bandai approved modal kit toy commercials disguised as television created by hacks and corporate shills. The only thing conceivably worse than bandai Gundam would be disney Gundam
https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/02/ ... star-wars/

I do not want to tar the people with the same brush as this fellow [who happen to be an Ideon fan], but how come that many UC Gundam fans have this mentality and contempt for AU Gundam series? Was it because Bandai or Tomino did not give them what they wanted? Or because jealousy?
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Re: UC elitist fans...

First of all, Bounding into Comics is a garbage pro-ComicsGate site, so of course their comments section is going to be a cesspool. As to UC elitists, this is nothing new, not just for Gundam but also every long-running franchise. You can look at anything like Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel/DC, etc, where a certain group of fans proclaim that only a specific series is the TRUE story or that something only counts if the original creator is involved. It's never going to go away, so best to just ignore that kind of comment and keep enjoying the things you want to enjoy.
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Kyuzo Aoi wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:23 pm I have no choice but to write this article.
FactCheck says: Mostly False.


Kyuzo Aoi wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:23 pm "
The only Gundam is the "True Saga" of Yoshiyuki Tomino, not any of the bandai approved modal kit toy commercials disguised as television created by hacks and corporate shills. The only thing conceivably worse than bandai Gundam would be disney Gundam
I do not want to tar the people with the same brush as this fellow [who happen to be an Ideon fan], but how come that many UC Gundam fans have this mentality and contempt for AU Gundam series? Was it because Bandai or Tomino did not give them what they wanted? Or because jealousy?
So, to be brutally frank - because that's my favorite way to be - this is just something that comes with the territory when a previously single-creator work evolves into a "shared universe" with multiple creators collaborating on it.

When stewardship of a beloved IP passes from the hands of its original creators to a new generation of creators as a result of losing interest, retiring, being forced out, dying, or any of a hundred other causes, there will inevitably be some subset of the fanbase that resents the new staff and will insist with increasing vehemence that the ONE TRUE <blank> is that which was created by the original author, even if said author opened that work to others entirely of his/her own accord. The reasons vary widely. One of the most common is the vague and nebulous indictment that sequels and spinoffs by other creators in some way violate the original author's intent for the property, especially if the original creator was forced out or not invited to return or in some way comments that the new project doesn't follow some plan he/she had for it.

The highest-profile instance of this kind of thing in recent years was the Star Wars sequel trilogy, which some (many) die-hard Star Wars fans loudly condemned for several interrelated reasons including:
  • Disney not inviting George Lucas onto the project in an advisory/supervisory capacity, something they saw as an affront to him as the creator of Star Wars.
  • Disney disowning/decanonizing the Star Wars Expanded Universe, which they saw as disrespectful to those many writers who collaborated on it (even though they had previously been engaged in viciously arguing what parts of that deserved to be called "real" Star Wars) and as a waste of good material.
  • George Lucas mentioning that he had provided an outline for a sequel trilogy that Disney decided to ignore, the fans having seemingly forgotten that they were previously outraged over George's terrible writing in the prequel trilogy.
  • Disney writing new characters and stories that displaced or changed the significance of existing, established characters.
Almost any franchise that gets big enough experiences this to some degree, and if they're around long enough they will get to experience it several times over.

For instance, Star Trek has had at least SIX separate bouts of "new Trek is not real Trek" over the franchise's 55 year history... the most vehement being the first (TNG), fifth (J.J. Abrams reboot movies), and sixth (DSC).

Macross, my main mecha passion, had a very vocal group of incredibly toxic fans who used to troll all kinds of different fan forums and chatrooms hating on the OVA Macross II: Lovers Again because Shoji Kawamori didn't have any involvement in its development or production. To them, that made it "not real Macross, though we got a happier ending when that group was publicly shot down by no less than Shoji Kawamori himself, who insisted that Macross II was just as valid as any other Macross story. Even more unusually, that group has more or less abandoned its toxicity and become reasonably upstanding members of the fan community. We're seeing a lesser form of it with Macross Delta, but only because the series was such a letdown, being a mediocre and kind of poorly-paced TV series that followed the franchise's biggest-ever smash hit.

The mecha franchise that has it the worst is probably Robotech. Every serious attempt to continue the TV anime has been met with fan outrage over perceived slights to "Carl Macek's vision" even though Macek himself openly admitted he never had any vision for the series, and there were multiple competing camps of fans which argued venomously over what school of post-cancellation print media was "real Robotech", followed by the fans outright rejecting the new creative staff that took over after Macek finished flying the brand into the ground c.2000.

Gundam inevitably gets shades of that same problem because the Universal Century is Gundam's main source of merchandising income and the part of the franchise that's marketed to die-hard fans. This is somewhat compounded by several factors like:
  1. The executive meddling in Victory Gundam in preparation for Sunrise's pending sale to Bandai, which was a source of frustration for Tomino.
  2. That Tomino's plans for the next UC Gundam series were thrown out as a result of Victory flopping and Sunrise's subsequent shift to an alternate universe story (G Gundam).
  3. That Tomino was not invited back for the AU stories or subsequent UC stories until the Zeta compilations and the mediocre-at-best Reconguista in G.
  4. The admittedly very blatant increasing emphasis on gunpla sales that led to Gundam's most recent major ongoing AU property being a literal gunpla commercial.
So I guess you could say a big part of it is likely that they're salty about the way we ended up with the AUs in the first place being something you could interpret as a betrayal of Tomino's professional trust and their respect for him as the franchise's creator. Of course, the next most likely large part of it is that they simply don't like those AU stories for reasons of personal taste which cannot be objectively weighed. I confess I can sympathize with at least some of it WRT the Gundam Build AU, since that is so blatantly merchandise-driven that I simply can't stomach it because it feels like a barely-there excuse plot wrapped around a toy commercial as was common with kid's shows in my own youth (e.g. Transformers and GI Joe).
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Hmmm, let's see, Tomino gave the idea of G Gundam by saying "maybe a stage fight will be good" (Ignoring his mental status at the time) So, G Gundam is also a creation of Tomino more or less.

The fun thing is, Tomino wasn't involved that much in First Gundam albeit what most people think.
The planning stage started in April 1978, where Tomino isn't involved at all (The plan has a FEMALE Red Meteor character) because he was busy in Daitarn 3's production.
Even Okawara was involved before him, yes, Tomino had no credit in the series using MS nor the original powered armour concept, Gundam Genesis fooled people into believing Gundam was Tomino's legitimate son, but the truth is, it isn't. (See Gundam Archive for it)
Studio Nue suggested Starship Troopers as a reference, not for its powered exoskeleton but for its conflict theme, Sunrise's project team liked the powered exoskeleton better.
Granted, the series may not have been successful without him, but the same goes to all the other production team who laid all the foundation for him to get on and direct after he finished with the work of Daitarn 3. In fact, if the script of Tomino wasn't changed, the series likely would have no impact like it does now.

So no, Tomino isn't the franchise creator. He is a VERY good codifier and promoter(to the point of propagandist), but not the creator. The basic background of Earth vs Zeon(original concept as an alien race), MS, WB, core fighter, etc. are all not created by Tomino.
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Whose idea was the principal outline of Gundam anyway? I'd heard before that the outline was written before Tomino joined the project. So who was the original writer(s)? Granted the Sunrise group pseudonym Hajime Yatate can kind of make it hard to find out who did what.
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Re: UC elitist fans...

MythSearcher wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 4:35 am The fun thing is, Tomino wasn't involved that much in First Gundam albeit what most people think.
[...]
So no, Tomino isn't the franchise creator. He is a VERY good codifier and promoter(to the point of propagandist), but not the creator.
Yes, we know... the same is basically true for all of the "creators" that I listed in my post. Often, the director of an influential property gets a lot of misattributed credit for creative decisions they had little or no involvement in. All that is beside the point, however.

Public perception is that they're the creators of the properties they're most associated with, and thus the fan groups who are inclined to lean on arguments based on authorial intent tend to gravitate towards what they say and lash out at the property when they perceive it as deviating from that authorial intent or disrespecting that "author" somehow.

That's where OP's problem comes from.
Spoiler
Yoshiyuki Tomino was, yes, a relative latecomer to Mobile Suit Gundam but he's still credited as being the "father" of the franchise because he directed the original series and some of its most influential sequels like the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam series.

Likewise, Shoji Kawamori pitched the original concept for Macross and did about half of the mechanical design work for it. Fans often forget that his involvement in the writing was minimal and the other half of the design work, including the iconic titular ship, was done by Kazutaka Miyatake instead. He's directed most of Macross since, but fans often exaggerate his input to comical levels. I personally had to shut down an argument on MacrossWorld where fans were blaming Macross Delta's writing on Kawamori even though he was involved in exactly zero of the screenplays.

George Lucas is credited as creating Star Wars even though all he did was originate some of the concepts the story had and pen some early story treatments so heavy with purple prose that Harrison Ford famously told him his work was impossible to act to. He had a small army of staff working to keep his ideas from being realized... until he banked on that misattributed credit and got full control over the prequel trilogy.

Same for Gene Roddenberry, who was a notoriously awful writer who created some of the original concepts for the Star Trek original series but had to have a substantial staff restraining his excesses as the show's producer... especially with regard to things that wouldn't meet broadcast standards. DC Fontana arguably did more to create Star Trek than he did, but he's forever remembered as Star Trek's creator because he managed to get himself credited as such.

And, of course, Carl Macek didn't create anything... but invented the idea that he had created Robotech and told a series of escalating lies about his involvement in its creation that eventually saw him claiming to have been the original creator of the Japanese shows who had merely paid Studio Nue, Artmic, and Tatsunoko to realize his vision. So Robotech fans, being the gullible sort, ate that sh*t up and cling to the idea that he was the true creator of Robotech even decades after his claims were exhaustively debunked.
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Mafty wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 1:24 pm Whose idea was the principal outline of Gundam anyway? I'd heard before that the outline was written before Tomino joined the project. So who was the original writer(s)? Granted the Sunrise group pseudonym Hajime Yatate can kind of make it hard to find out who did what.
Gundam Archive had it covered.
While in April 1978, Tomino wasn't involved, the draft proposal already has his name listed, that is likely why he got even more credit that he is the original author of the show, while the truth is, he wasn't really involved at the time.
Here is the crew list of Gunboy's first draft, p2:
Title: Space Combat Group Gunboy
Author: Hajime Hayate, Tomino Yoshiyuki
Character Design: Yasuhiko Yoshikazu
Mechanical Design: Studio Nue, Kunio Owara(sic) (Likely a typo of Okawara, the middle kanji is missing, yes, those days Japanese typos are pretty hard to fix)
Format: 30 min single ending episodes, 52 episodes(Also include a few 3~4 episode ending serials)
Presentation: Colour Animation
Target Audience: From infants to higher primaries as main to everybody
Project Production: Nagoya Televi, Japan Sunrise

This proposal was developed by the then Project Department Manager of Sunrise, Eiji Yamaura(山浦栄二, who was basically the actual person behind the name Hajime Hayate in early 80's by multiple accounts); Script Writer, Hiroyuki Hoshiyama(星山博之); Project Planner, Masao Izuka(飯塚正夫). The draft is about a non-robot, Two Years' Vacation in space type of story. Then Yasuhiko Yoshikazu and Kunio Okawara are commissioned to be the designers, but in Fall 1978, the sponsor Clover requested this to be a robot(mecha) show, thus the MS designs started to pop up in Sep 1978. Tomino also joined around this time.(Fall 1978)

Just a fun side fact: https://criesinnewtype.wordpress.com/20 ... -creation/
You can see the 78' Summer, Sunrise Project Meeting illustration by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu below Tomino's photo. Notice Tomino wasn't drawn into the picture, because he wasn't involved at the time, but Yoshikazu was.
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Seto Kaiba wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 4:20 pm Stuff
and this is why i dont really fanboy over directors/seiyuu/what nots and could care less about who works on what. if it entertains me that enough. knowing who directed/voiced/drew whatever is for trivia time. does this also apply to those Sakuga addicts? i have never been into using that word.

those YT channels covering the current route of star trek always say Gene Roddeberry's vision. and I've only seen one bloke who actually said that Gene's vision is actually a detriment to the shows.

as for the UC elitist. i started with the AU WIng, G and X. it was during the early days of anime and internet that i discovered the UC timeline. and again i never developed the mindset that this timeline is superior.

on a video game note, this is the same case as Megaman's Keiji Inafune....
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Thankfully, the combo of Inafune shot himself in a foot with Mighty No.9 and Capcom released Rockman 11 seem to get people over it by now.
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Henyo wrote: Sun Feb 14, 2021 6:53 am and this is why i dont really fanboy over directors/seiyuu/what nots and could care less about who works on what. if it entertains me that enough. knowing who directed/voiced/drew whatever is for trivia time. does this also apply to those Sakuga addicts? i have never been into using that word.
Eh... it's understandable to a certain extent, since in Japanese media a lot of information about a new TV anime or film comes in the form of interviews with the most senior members of the production staff who will drop details on the setting, continuity, characters, etc. and even offer details above and beyond what's in the show. Your standard casual viewer won't care, but the die-hard fans eat that up since those senior production staff tend to get the last word on various aspects of canon, continuity, setting, etc., so they're naturally inclined to see those staff as highly authoritative sources.


Henyo wrote: Sun Feb 14, 2021 6:53 am those YT channels covering the current route of star trek always say Gene Roddeberry's vision. and I've only seen one bloke who actually said that Gene's vision is actually a detriment to the shows.
In an unusual twist, they often have a demonstrably valid point...
Spoiler
One of the ways Star Trek differs from the other properties I used as examples is that Gene Roddenberry did in fact have a very specific creative vision for the series when development started and which he stuck with even after it matured into a franchise. Gene was very attached to the idea of doing high-concept sci-fi and allegorical exploration of modern societal issues, and one of the things he absolutely insisted on to facilitate that was that a far-future human civilization circa 2265 would have long since resolved all of its internal strife and established an open and equal utopian society where everyone could contribute and everyone's needs were met. Otherwise, the characters exploring modern humanity's folly as allegorically expressed via the aliens of the week would come off as hypocritical. He absolutely, doggedly insisted on that point throughout his entire tenure on Star Trek and Star Trek: the Animated Series. Admittedly, once he wrangled full creative control over the franchise when Star Trek: the Next Generation was in planning he went overboard with it to the extent that the writers got sick of him and threatened to quit and he was eventually ousted by the studio heads because of the other issues he'd been causing. Even then, he was so attached to that core concept of a better, brighter future that he went apesh*t several times and sued several later Star Trek productions over what he saw as excessive militarism and the like (e.g. Star Trek II and Star Trek VI).

Even after he passed away, and the Star Trek showrunners who'd taken over for him after the first season of TNG had a totally free reign, the franchise still continued to pay homage to that central vision he had for it, even while they sometimes explored the gaps in that ideology (like Deep Space Nine did).

So, of course, with the current crop of showrunners not paying heed to that anymore in favor of making grimdark action-friendly sci-fi full of space wars, death, sex, and profanity, the fans actually have a valid point in saying it goes against Gene's vision of a future of diplomacy, mutual understanding, and enlightenment.

Henyo wrote: Sun Feb 14, 2021 6:53 am as for the UC elitist. i started with the AU WIng, G and X. it was during the early days of anime and internet that i discovered the UC timeline. and again i never developed the mindset that this timeline is superior.
Most western Gundam fans started with one of the AU shows... mostly New Mobile Report Gundam Wing or Mobile Suit Gundam SEED.

However, the AUs are meant to be a new audience's introduction to Gundam. They're not bogged down with decades of continuity and hundreds of works the way the Universal Century is. They're meant to be ambassadors to viewers who aren't Gundam fans. The Universal Century exists for the hardcore Gundam fans, who are willing to put in the effort to watch, read, and play thousands of hours of material. It's only natural that the pseudo-intellectual snobbery in the fanbase would mainly emerge there.
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Mafty
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Re: UC elitist fans...

So exactly what part of Gundams ongoing storyline were actually Tomino's ideas? I know he wrote some of the music under a pseudonym. Also if Eiji Yamaura was the main creative force behind the Hajime Yatate pseudonym, does that mean the main character of Layzner was named after him?
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Mafty wrote: Mon Feb 15, 2021 11:07 am So exactly what part of Gundams ongoing storyline were actually Tomino's ideas? I know he wrote some of the music under a pseudonym. Also if Eiji Yamaura was the main creative force behind the Hajime Yatate pseudonym, does that mean the main character of Layzner was named after him?
No idea, we will never know any of these.
Tomino's involvement is about half a year late into the project, which at the time saw quite a lot of change(like Clover requesting the addition to giant robots) we have no way to identify specific items contribute to whom because they will all be discussing in meetings and even when they kept some kind of minutes, it is highly unlikely to be detailed to the point of who said what.


Eiji Yamaura being the main person behind Hajime Yatate seems to be referenced by many, but Eiji is a pretty common Japanese name(especially a lot of homophone kanji)
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Re: UC elitist fans...

I've had the privileged of dealing with this type of fans in the Star Wars, Gundam and Castlevania fandom, which like you guys have spoken above, all have this common thing of the person thought to be the "creator" of that franchise only has pretty limited creative involvement with that franchise from the start--like Koji Igarashi wasn't even the creator of Castlevania, and a lot of things in Symphony of the Night had already been developed before he took the reins.

Then there is the fact that these "creators" needed someone to keep them grounded and their visions realizable, such was the case with George Lucas's ex-wife or Yasuhiko. And when these people left, you could see the projects broke down, such was when Yasuhiko was hospitalized during Gundam's original airing or Marcia Lucas was not there for the prequel trilogy.

The worse type of Gundam fans in my opinion though are the Nazi who idolize Zeon. Thanks god that they usually keep to themselves! You can still search for some of their groups on Facebook though.
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Yeah, I noticed that in many Zeon fan pages.

Don't forget, AU fans can be rabid too as well, not to mention the Relena haters *cough* *cough*, and some IBO fans because "muh realism" and "grit".
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Re: UC elitist fans...

False Prophet wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 8:35 am The worse type of Gundam fans in my opinion though are the Nazi who idolize Zeon. Thanks god that they usually keep to themselves! You can still search for some of their groups on Facebook though.
Can't say I've seen any Zeon fan groups or fan pages that are in that part of the real world political spectrum... but it's not altogether surprising there are Zeon fans out there, especially given how Sunrise's writers have walked Zeon back towards being only a slightly darker shade of grey than the Federation over the years.

IMO, you can credit a lot of that to OVAs like Gundam UC, Origin, War in the Pocket, the 08th MS Team, Stardust Memory, and MS IGLOO painting some of the Principality's troops in a less unflattering light.

You could argue that Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ started it with the characterization of Mashymre Cello in the first half of the series. He was presented as a basically honorable, decent human being who had the misfortune to have fallen head-over-heels for the UC's craziest chick Haman Karn.

Then, of course, you had Bernie in Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, who was a very sincere, very genuinely kind person who befriended Al and Christina and honestly didn't want to fight. He died trying to prevent his own side from destroying Libot with a nuclear missile, albeit utterly in vain as he didn't know the ship meant to carry out the attack had already been intercepted. He even had the decency to leave a video message for Al that implored him to not hold a grudge against the pilot of the ALEX or the Federation, arguing that they were fighting for their beliefs just as he was.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Stardust Memory also introduced a semi-sympathetic Zeon group in Cima Gaharu's pirate force. Her troops were deceived into committing a war crime, scapegoated by their commanders for it, and Zeon's brass appropriated their home colony to be the solar ray and relocated all their families without keeping records of where they sent them.

Mobile Suit Gundam: 08th MS Team had Aina Sahalin, who was portrayed as an all-around decent person who opposed her brother's insane vendetta against the Federation, and also Norris Packard who'd raised the Sahalins by himself and volunteers to draw the Federation's fire so the troops from his base could evacuate.

Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO's first two OVAs featured a genuinely decent engineering unit that was made up at least partly of conscripts, who really didn't want anything to do with the war but were forced to carry out experimental weapons testing and were shown to be frankly horrified by the excesses of the Zabi regime (most notably Lt. Cadillac's horror at the use of child soldiers under axe-crazy fanatic Herbert von Kuspen. Jean-Luc Duvall and Oliver May were both presented especially sympathetically, with Duvall being a humiliated test pilot because of internal politics and intel leaks to the Federation from his company's rival, and Oliver May being an ordinary guy who gets forced into combat at the end and reacts with predictable and completely understandable pants-crapping terror.

Honestly though, the two biggest walkbacks were Unicorn and Origin. Unicorn's entire plot was basically revolving around the idea that Zeon was right all along. The Federation really had promised spacenoid independence and autonomy, and Newtypes were not only real but meant to take a lead role in governing things. Basically, it made the Federation the real villain of the One Year War, if only on a technicality.

Origin's own alternate take on several key things also made Zeon less overtly villainous. Zeon Zum Deikun was reimagined as a mentally unstable firebrand orator who was planning to call for war against the Federation himself. The matter of his assassination was left muddier than in the original TV series, with Jimba Ral being a paranoid and fanatical old man with a very overt grudge, and was at least partially framed as possibly being an effort by Degwin Sodo Zabi to prevent Side 3 from launching itself into an unwinnable war. The general decency of Ramba Ral is played up even further than in the original series, and Garma is presented as being a naive but kind boy who desperately wants to live up to the high standard set by his (psychotic) oldest siblings. Dozle ends up depicted as a tough-but-fair father-to-his-men type who loves his siblings even while he's VERY concerned about the morality of their decisionmaking. Even Degwin himself gets a villain downgrade when it's depicted that General Revill's great "Zeon is exhausted" speech came from a candid discussion he and Degwin had about what a complete crapshoot the war was. When all was said and done, Zeon's cast was left a good deal less blatantly antagonistic except for the three oldest Zabis (Gihren, Kycilia, and Sasro) and Char/Casval. Plus the series played up the Federation jackassery that made Zeon feel war was inevitable at the same time.

The worst of Zeon's characters are still portrayed as overtly and clearly villainous... but nowadays it's not a black-and-grey morality so much as grey-and-also-grey morality going on between the Federation and Zeon since they've leaned more heavily on the idea that war is hell and both sides are rife with arseholes.


Kyuzo Aoi wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 1:45 am Don't forget, AU fans can be rabid too as well, not to mention the Relena haters *cough* *cough*, and some IBO fans because "muh realism" and "grit".
In all fairness, I have never seen ANYONE attempt to seriously defend Relina as a character.

She's just too annoying, and she only wins out in the end because her naive self-absorption is so intense it warps the very fabric of reality. :lol:
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Seto Kaiba wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 4:50 pmDozle ends up depicted as a tough-but-fair father-to-his-men type who loves his siblings even while he's VERY concerned about the morality of their decisionmaking.
I wouldn't say Origin makes all the Zabis uniformly less villainous, especially Dozle. I'd agree with you about him up until Operation British, when he shoves aside his moral anguish and commits some amazing mental gymnastics to convince himself that what they did was right because the colonists were too weak to stop them, so it was their own fault for being killed.

You cited examples of past OVAs depicting individual Zeon characters in a better light, and I think that's fine. I think the biggest early offenders in depicting the nobility of Zeon as a cause (or rather, a lost cause) were 0083 and IGLOO, both directed by Takashi Imanishi. Even with the "truth" behind Laplace's Box revealed in Unicorn, which is a bunch of hogwash, we see that there are still people in Neo Zeon too dedicated to old vendettas to be able to rise up and be those space adapted humans that the "real" charter seeks to give deference to.

Even after all these years, it still annoys me about this "real charter" of the Federation being the big secret, because in reality there's no way it would've (or could've) been a secret. Governing documents aren't printed only on one solid slab, and there would literally be a whole document trail (printed and digital) showing the development of the charter that you wouldn't be able to just cover up.
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Seto Kaiba wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 4:50 pm IMO, you can credit a lot of that to OVAs like Gundam UC, Origin, War in the Pocket, the 08th MS Team, Stardust Memory, and MS IGLOO painting some of the Principality's troops in a less unflattering light.


The worst of Zeon's characters are still portrayed as overtly and clearly villainous... but nowadays it's not a black-and-grey morality so much as grey-and-also-grey morality going on between the Federation and Zeon since they've leaned more heavily on the idea that war is hell and both sides are rife with arseholes.
It was actually already pretty grey and grey in first Gundam.
With Ramba Ral being one of the more decent persons in Zeon, Garma Zabi isn't really bad in most senses.
You also get Doan who deserted from Zeon, and the bunch that came to compliment Amuro for his great job in disarming the bombs.
All of them aren't evil, while not heroic(maybe Ramba is kinda heroic), they are at least just doing their jobs.
EF depiction in Unicorn(novel) and Igloo are just much more to the idiotically evil end of the spectrum though, raping a whole colony and did a complete cover-up? seriously? Decpicting the EFSF attacking AFTER the cease fire order?
Things just doesn't makes sense in these events but only done to show how evil the EF is, while the rest of the series none of the fractions had a completely evil group of soldiers, but only individual psychopaths or bureaucratic evils that made full use of their power to maintain their own advantages.
Helping the cover-up of raping a colony isn't helpful to any of the higher ups, I see no cause for them helping to do the cover-up, especially it is after the war, the military had done their job, now that it is of lesser use, picking out the bad apples surely help your political position, especially when a lot of EFF generals seems to be heavily involved in politics after the war, the cover-up just risks their political career.
Slaughtering the surrendered opponent is pretty similar here, I know similar things have been done in real life, but usually you at least have some people put some sense in by trying to stop others from doing it, even if just in a weak tone of speech and completely futile attempt of doing so, at least you have SOME level of resistance showing not everybody lost their minds. The Igloo scene have none of the EFSF side soldiers doing so, well, pretty much understandable because the director is a Zeon fan boy who is known to be extreme right wing that have been showing EFSF ships talking to each other in the tones of motorcycle gangs in previous episodes...
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Chris wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 9:16 am I wouldn't say Origin makes all the Zabis uniformly less villainous, especially Dozle. I'd agree with you about him up until Operation British, when he shoves aside his moral anguish and commits some amazing mental gymnastics to convince himself that what they did was right because the colonists were too weak to stop them, so it was their own fault for being killed.
True... though I didn't say it made all of the Zabis less villainous. It just brought the family's average villainy down a few levels by playing up the decency of the less horrible members of the family. Gihren is every bit as evil as he was in the original series, and if anything Kycilia is actually slightly worse since we find out she murdered her own brother with a car bomb and blamed the Rals for it.

Chris wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 9:16 am You cited examples of past OVAs depicting individual Zeon characters in a better light, and I think that's fine. I think the biggest early offenders in depicting the nobility of Zeon as a cause (or rather, a lost cause) were 0083 and IGLOO, both directed by Takashi Imanishi.
For my money, MS IGLOO definitely stands out the most because Oliver May and the 603rd only get what you'd call a "Zeon villain" character right at the end of Apocalypse 0079 when Herbert von Kuspen came aboard and brought a team of "elite" child soldiers to pilot the hacked-together Oggo... and the 603rd made no secret of being disgusted with him on pretty much every level.

Chris wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 9:16 am Even after all these years, it still annoys me about this "real charter" of the Federation being the big secret, because in reality there's no way it would've (or could've) been a secret. Governing documents aren't printed only on one solid slab, and there would literally be a whole document trail (printed and digital) showing the development of the charter that you wouldn't be able to just cover up.
Yeah, it wasn't a great plot overall... but it's noteworthy in that it further reduced the perceived villainy of Zeon's side by technically putting them in the right, which made the Zeon fanboys a bit more vocal.




MythSearcher wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:30 am It was actually already pretty grey and grey in first Gundam.
With Ramba Ral being one of the more decent persons in Zeon, Garma Zabi isn't really bad in most senses.
You also get Doan who deserted from Zeon, and the bunch that came to compliment Amuro for his great job in disarming the bombs.
All of them aren't evil, while not heroic(maybe Ramba is kinda heroic), they are at least just doing their jobs.
Eh... I disagree. Garma never really got enough character development before his death in the original series to establish himself as more than a moderately debonair leader of the Zeon occupation force who was only slightly less of a scumbag than the average Zeon soldier because he seemed to be genuinely into Icelina.

Ramba Ral was basically the "Token Good Teammate" on the Principality's side of things until he died, and Lalah also briefly took up that mantle until she died.
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MythSearcher
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Seto Kaiba wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 12:33 pm Eh... I disagree. Garma never really got enough character development before his death in the original series to establish himself as more than a moderately debonair leader of the Zeon occupation force who was only slightly less of a scumbag than the average Zeon soldier because he seemed to be genuinely into Icelina.

Ramba Ral was basically the "Token Good Teammate" on the Principality's side of things until he died, and Lalah also briefly took up that mantle until she died.
Well, maybe let me put it this way, Garma didn't have enough screen time to display his evilness, so benefit to the doubt that he is not "bad" per se, not saying he is "good".(He definitely showed the more arrogant and your typical depiction of a uncaring noble that knew little about how much suffering and poverty his subjects are in and still enjoyed luxury life. Well most of the other party goers that are likely EF politicians are in the same light.)

I still think those bomb planters who came to compliment Amuro can be considered "good" though. They did their suicidal mission, fought for their country as best as they can, but still can come and compliment the enemy's skills for its worth.
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Re: UC elitist fans...

Its also worth noting that 0080 was actually a bit more even handed in its depiction of the sides, you could argue that BOTH Zeon and the Federation as armies look bad, but the individual soldiers vary. For instance Bernie is individually very sympathetic, the rest of the Cyclops team vary some what. (SPOILERS) For a start some are willing to shoot a child to prevent their secret from getting out. Then we have Kaminsky; he causes the death of over 250 people by launch the Kampfer into a “neutral” civilian colony, making no attempt to minimize damages or casualties. Zeons top brass has Col. Killing who shoots his own subordinates and attempts to nuke Libot.

On the Federation side we have Christina and Prof. Lunland. Christina is very sympathetic and likeable; she opposes fighting in a colony and is disturbed by the civilian deaths, furthermore she and Bernie lead the final battle away from a populated area. Prof Lunland sees his work as a necessary evil in order to end the war. The rest of the Federation opens an R&D division on a neutral colony, and leaves them to fend for themselves when a battle erupts, only caring for the Alex.

So it really is a mix of grey.
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