You know Char's plan in CCA is actually kind of stupid.

[EscapeArtist]

One of the interesting things about Char's overall character arc, from MSG to CCA, is the fact that he never blames anyone but Amuro for Lalah's death. He doesn't blame himself, either for putting her on the battlefield in the first place or for needing to be rescued (she intervenes in order to save him from Amuro, after all). He doesn't blame Lalah for choosing to sacrifice herself for his sake. He blames Amuro alone, despite the fact that Amuro was clearly just as horrified (if not moreso) by her death than Char was.

Really, I think the main thing about Char by CCA is that he's tired. He's spent his entire life trying to live up to his father's ideal, and trying to prod people into doing the same, despite the fact that he never really wanted to. He seems to do it more out of a sense of obligation than any actual belief in his father's ideals. After things have crumbled around him again and again (largely due to his own internal conflicts, but hey), he's really just tired of trying. But rather than just giving up, he decides to go out with a bang. That's why he gave Amuro the tools to stop him -- he didn't really want to win, he just wanted to go down fighting.

I have an alternative theory to propose- Char blames Sayla for Lalah's death. In the flashback to Lalah's death in CCA, Char laments "If only my sister Artesia hadn't been there..." At the end of the fight with Amuro, Nanai signals for Char to retreat, and Char responds "Don't interfere in a battle between men!" It's the interference that really bothered Char, and he's itching for a shot to reenact RX-78 vs. Gelgoog, this time taking the battle to completion.

The ending of the Nu Gundam vs. Sazabi battle seems to parallel the RX-78 vs. Gelgoog battle. In the rematch, without the outside influences, Char still loses an arm and consequently the battle. All Char's scheming to set up the rematch, and the outcome wasn't any different than the first time around. It's the true defeat of his character, proof that Amuro was always his better.

[HalfDemonInuyasha]

I have an alternative theory to propose- Char blames Sayla for Lalah's death. In the flashback to Lalah's death in CCA, Char laments "If only my sister Artesia hadn't been there..." At the end of the fight with Amuro, Nanai signals for Char to retreat, and Char responds "Don't interfere in a battle between men!" It's the interference that really bothered Char, and he's itching for a shot to reenact RX-78 vs. Gelgoog, this time taking the battle to completion.

The ending of the Nu Gundam vs. Sazabi battle seems to parallel the RX-78 vs. Gelgoog battle. In the rematch, without the outside influences, Char still loses an arm and consequently the battle. All Char's scheming to set up the rematch, and the outcome wasn't any different than the first time around. It's the true defeat of his character, proof that Amuro was always his better.

You also notice that it seems to be the opposite gender that causes him a lot of (perceived) grief.

Sayla interferes several times in MSG.

Lalah's death pushes him along to antagonize Amuro.

Kycilla Zabi (to me anyway) feels like the "final" Zabi antagonist to Char in MSG (especially given how she figures out who he is and she's the last one to be taken out by him.

Haman became who she is in Zeta and ZZ in part due to their short fling on Axis and causes problems.

His rejection causes Reccoa to defect from the AEUG and cause later problems for them.

Nanai is like some semi-mother hen to him.

And Quess clings to him obsessively.

[MythSearcher]

so politicians lie, except Federation politicians...?

Federation politicians do lie as well, in Unicorn novel they are shown to be lying to the whole population about their own constitution, and the people simply don't even care much about it.(no more spoilers, but I share the same view as Shuichi Ikeda, just saw him today, hope the anime have a different ending.)

The problem is who is lying, and why.

They don't really need to lie about the sustainability of the colonies, if they want to stay behind on Earth, have they nice lives, and see spacenoids as lower class, they can do that without having another 2 billion people with them.
And they don't really need to lie about this anyway, they built all those colonies, if they want to have control, what's the simplest way to do so? make the colonies not self sustainable.
So, logically, if they lie, they should lie about budgeting or technology limits stops them from doing so, and they can both take the money to install cheaper stuff, and have the spacenoids in control.

If you try to see things the government sees, you can also understand that a bureaucratic government will always do things the way that causes least budget in big projects, since doing it in other ways will cause people's dissatisfaction. Politicians of different party will come out and start to question the decisions and such, so most of them are more willing to pay maintenance fees that ended up more than replacing the old parts with better new parts, since their budgets are limited to annual maintenance fees but not a single year overhaul.
I don't see why a bureaucratic extreme example, the Earth Federation, will be any different.

On the other hand, Char and Full Frontal do not really need to lie, they themselves don't necessarily have that kind of knowledge, we are not talking about common sense here, most people are ignorant of everyday life technology, the more advance the civilization gets, the people in it are less in touch with the actual principles, since they are built from a lot of different fields.
Char just simply show that he did not care about human lives by dropping Lunar 5 and Axis on Earth.
Full Frontal labelled himself as an empty container, but in fact this container was simply a shell used by an extremist politician, and his ideal of ignoring the EF is not even bought by Minerva, and the so called self sustainability issue part is obviously not well thought out, which, Full Frontal claimed in his speech, Earth cannot sustain its current 2 billion population's economy by itself, but, come on, we have a population of 6.5? 7? billion nowadays? and at a single point of time, there's like 9 billion in UC! Minerva even immediate pointed out that the Earthnoids can develop their own sustainability back and fight the spacenoids.
So, Full Frontal showed that he is just completely ignorant, in the anime, without even any other supporting sources backing that up, Minerva pointed out his ignorant in the show.
And all he can say in return is that he is an empty container and all he does is to do what the people want, not even defending his own theory about how Earth is not self sustainable.

Why believe him, a person that can't even make sense in his own speech, and is rebutted by another character, in the same anime?

[ShadowCell]

so, because for some reason you want to believe that the space colonies are not self-sufficient, even though the anime and the source you keep citing do not back you up on that, you have arbitrarily decided that the Federation isn't lying in this case. because obviously, even though the Federation lies to its citizens about its own constitution, it would never lie about whether the space colonies are self-sufficient or not. not even when you consider why it was the Federation lies to its citizens about its own constitution!

i think at this point you might as well just stop, because no one is going to believe your tortured logic and deceptive use of sources that don't support you. i certainly don't. nor am i going to believe you if you try to point to some page in Gundam Officials that you claim backs you up.

[domino]

No point in replying to him Shadow. I gave up long ago earlier in this thread when I started to debunk his claims. Mark has since utterly destroyed them by showing that the official books that he references also do not support his claims. Case closed in my opinion - he's just trolling now...

Also, I really like this analysis of Char. He wanted to judge the Earth and all of the Earthnoids but could not bring himself to first judge himself and accept that he has also been ruining lives for his selfish agendas. Even Amuro moved on and that must've been difficult since he spent years fearful of being in space since Lalah haunted his dreams (probably due to the fact that they had a mind-merge newtype sex).

[Kratos]

Again, though, you really have no grounds to assume that Char or Full Frontal are ignorant, except to suit your particular theory. Which is fine, but accept that the other side (ie, they know what they're talking about) is equally as valid.

...and his ideal of ignoring the EF is not even bought by Minerva [...] Minerva pointed out his ignorant in the show [...] Why believe him, a person that can't even make sense in his own speech, and is rebutted by another character, in the same anime?

Watch the episode again. Mineva calls him out on his plan because it's not actually breaking the UC cycle, just perpetuating it further with reversed roles. She wants a better life for humanity, not just Spacenoids; her opposition has nothing to do with the actual feasability of his plan.

...and the so called self sustainability issue part is obviously not well thought out, which, Full Frontal claimed in his speech, Earth cannot sustain its current 2 billion population's economy by itself, but, come on, we have a population of 6.5? 7? billion nowadays? and at a single point of time, there's like 9 billion in UC!

The Earth can't sustain the 7 billion people that it currently has - not naturally, anyways. It's only modern infrastructure that allows it to do so, and even then just barely. By 0096, the Earth's environment has only gotten worse, a major food production zone has been wiped out, and it's taken hits from at least four stellar objects. It's entirely possible that an economic collapse brought about by Frontal's plan would hit what remains of the Earth's the sustainability pretty hard.

Minerva even immediate pointed out that the Earthnoids can develop their own sustainability back and fight the spacenoids.

Yes, and that's another part of the reason she's opposed to the plan: it just recreates the situation that led to the emergence of Zeon in the first place. Even if everybody was on board with alienating and deserting a chunk of humanity's population, thereby hypocritically doing precisely what Frontal accuses the Federation of doing to the people that he's a supposed "vessel" for, it's only a short-term solution.

I just fail to see how this highlights that Frontal doesn't know what he's talking about (in regards to sustainability).

[Andrew_Graruru]

so politicians lie, except Federation politicians...?

Federation politicians do lie as well, in Unicorn novel they are shown to be lying to the whole population about their own constitution, and the people simply don't even care much about it.(no more spoilers, but I share the same view as Shuichi Ikeda, just saw him today, hope the anime have a different ending)

Whoa!

Dude, you can't just make a statement like that without providing context!

My interest is piqued, is it something Ikeda said at a premiere interview?

[Kratos]

Based on his track record, I wouldn't read too much into that. This is like his Masters degree and NASA employment claims from a page or two back - he's likely just trying to give his claims more weight.

You know there are spoiler tags, right, MythSearcher? Don't hold back. Right now, you need all the verifiable evidence you can get if you want any source material claims you make to be taken seriously.

EDIT: This is likely what he was talking about. No word about a hope for a different ending, mind, but still an interesting interview.

[Tangerine]

I cannot find the logic.

If earth need to sustain the colonies to the point of daily breathing, eating and drinking, might as well just let them be on Earth, building oceanic colonies or giant underground facilities. It's just not making any sense to move billions of people into space and then sent air, water and food from Earth regularly. It'll take more resources since you'll need to launch them into space daily. The numbers of mouth need to be feed is the same number, just another gargantuan extra cost just to send them into space.

For a colonization to be successful, the Colony itself need to be self sustainable. Take a look at history if you wanted some real evidence of it. To support migration without the foreseeable plan to make them self-sustainable is suicide in the long run. This is not some offshore oil drilling platform where small group of professional workers being send and resupplied regularly. This is an immigration where the entire communities are present.

In UC any notion of Colony dependency to earth is likely about raw resources exclusively found on Earth or other resources abundance in earth or is cheaper to get from earth rather than producing it themselves on the Colony. Rubber, oil and their derivatives. Jewellery, leather, paper, tissues. Heck, even social stuff like music, tv shows, etc.

[toysdream]

Speaking of the resources available to the space colonies, I should note that there's apparently huge amounts of oxygen in the lunar soil (technically, "regolith") - in fact, oxygen makes up 40% of the moon's soil, and mechanisms for extracting it have been thoroughly studied.

Of the vital elements for human survival, carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen are apparently the hardest to find in space. Hydrogen would be helpful for generating water, and nitrogen both for agriculture and for creating a non-flammable, breathable atmosphere. Your best bet there is to locate asteroids that happen to have a lot of these elements, and tow them into the Earth sphere as resource mines. Since they do this in every Gundam series, I guess they were able to find them!

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

In ZZ Haman orders the asteroid Lamune to be connected to the Core 3 colony. If said asteroid was rich in the elements Mark pointed out, could this have been an attempt to make Core 3 completely independant?

[Amion]

In ZZ Haman orders the asteroid Lamune to be connected to the Core 3 colony. If said asteroid was rich in the elements Mark pointed out, could this have been an attempt to make Core 3 completely independant?

Well, it was a mine and had people tasked with defending it, so it would make sense if they considered the mine important. Logically, it would be very smart for a colony to latch onto an asteroid in this manner, so it would not have to mine aforementioned elements from distant asteroids at the Earth Sphere and bring them back. So in a siege, the colony would be independent, in a sense.

[toysdream]

The asteroid was actually called Cicero, not Lamune. Most likely they just wanted it for metals and stuff, so they could build a bunch more ships and mobile suits; at this point Haman already controls Side 3, so there's no particular need to tie its resources to one particular colony.

As a side note, it appears that the earliest colonies in each Side were generally smaller, with the size increasing over time. So low-numbered colonies like Zum City, Mahal, and Shangri-la tend to be relatively small compared to their newer neighbors. I don't know about Core 3 - I'm kind of unclear on what its back story is, but its population of 5 million (as per ZZ episode 43) puts it on the low end of Side 3 colony populations. I wonder why Haman chose it as her base of operations?

-- Mark

[BrentD15]

The asteroid was actually called Cicero, not Lamune. Most likely they just wanted it for metals and stuff, so they could build a bunch more ships and mobile suits; at this point Haman already controls Side 3, so there's no particular need to tie its resources to one particular colony.

As a side note, it appears that the earliest colonies in each Side were generally smaller, with the size increasing over time. So low-numbered colonies like Zum City, Mahal, and Shangri-la tend to be relatively small compared to their newer neighbors. I don't know about Core 3 - I'm kind of unclear on what its back story is, but its population of 5 million (as per ZZ episode 43) puts it on the low end of Side 3 colony populations. I wonder why Haman chose it as her base of operations?

-- Mark

Cicero....I can't stop think of that Skyrim character.

About why she chose Core 3: Supposedly, it was the colony where Zeon originated.

[toysdream]

About why she chose Core 3: Supposedly, it was the colony where Zeon originated.

But what does that mean? It wasn't the capital of the Principality - that would be Zum City, which is a different colony...

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

Despite demanding control over all of Side 3, wasn't Haman given control only of the Core 3 colony?

Tigerbaum seems to be considered a neutral colony, which wouldn't make sense if all of Side 3 had been given to Haman.

As for Core 3's mention of being where Zeon originated, maybe it is the first colony built at Side 3?

On the other hand, maybe Core 3 is a name Haman gave the colony after it was given to her in order to indicate that it would be her base of operations.

[Chris]

I don't know about Core 3 - I'm kind of unclear on what its back story is, but its population of 5 million (as per ZZ episode 43) puts it on the low end of Side 3 colony populations. I wonder why Haman chose it as her base of operations?

I would think her reasons for basing her operations out of there are strategic. Wars need resources, so why not take over a colony that has a mine? I also figure she maybe wanted it under her direct control because by this point she was distrustful of Glemy and didn't want him to get his hands on it to use for his impending rebellion.

[Cybaster]

I don't know about Core 3 - I'm kind of unclear on what its back story is, but its population of 5 million (as per ZZ episode 43) puts it on the low end of Side 3 colony populations. I wonder why Haman chose it as her base of operations?

I would think her reasons for basing her operations out of there are strategic. Wars need resources, so why not take over a colony that has a mine? I also figure she maybe wanted it under her direct control because by this point she was distrustful of Glemy and didn't want him to get his hands on it to use for his impending rebellion.

IMO, the low population is exactly one of the reasons why Haman selected Core 3 out of every other colony she could've picked --- in fact, I'd have to applaud Haman for being far more farsighted than any of her predecessors if that was the case. Axis, after all, is just an asteroid, and much of its actual habitat facilities are centered on Moussa, IIRC --- it likely gets crowded there in a generation or couple. Considering that Haman already has one population of refugees hiding out in Axis for years that'd she'd have to find new homes for on a proper colony, why not pick one that has more living space for both new and old families and that would need less resources to be passed around, until Haman has everything consolidated self-sufficiently as an independent spacenoid nation?

Also, I imagine Haman didn't outright pick Zum City as her base of operations because of the government and bureaucracy already in place; With the Earth Federation's incompetence as a precedent, Haman herself likely has very little patience for the 'old politicians' already in place in the Republic of Zeon --- most who would, yes, likely believe anything Glemy told them about him being Gihren's cloned son, and some others of which who, if Gihren Ansatsu Keikaku is to be believed, are basically just holding out and waiting for Char to return as Casval Rem Daikun and take over everything again --- and would pretty much oppose her and Mineva every step of the way (out of disdain and spite, if not outright fear of the Earth Federation and AEUG coming back to finish what Jamitov and the Titans nearly started). Ultimately, in that regard, Core 3 gives Haman a lot more flexibility to work with both resource and politics-wise, especially in a place which is generally a blank slate for Mineva to regain her Principality from.

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

It does seem likely the Haman would deliberately snub Zum City to avoid having to butt heads with the local head honchos. It's much easier to ignore someone if you're not trying to base your operation out of their offices. That said, your reasoning for why the Zum City officials would oppose her is backward. The Republic of Zeon government hated the Principality remnants; the RoZ actually throws its lot in with the Titans during the Gryps Conflict, and it's likely that it was at least as much because they were terrified of a proper return of the Principality as they were afraid of the Titans themselves.

The Republic has any number of reasons to loathe the Principality. For one, the Republic officials probably like being boss, and the first thing the Principality would do when they returned would be to take back control of Side 3. For two, the Republic are the people who abandoned the glorious Zeonic cause and lived the high life as the Earth Federation's lap dogs while the true Zeonites were off suffering and planning their comeback tour on Axis -- at least, that's how the people on Axis would see it. So as soon as the Principality folks took Side 3 back, the Republic leaders could probably expect to be shot as traitors just on principle.

[toysdream]

Some of the Japanese fan sites claim that Core 3 is Zum City, and they just changed the name after the war, but I'm a bit dubious. Quite honestly, none of the publications seem to explain anything about Core 3; the ZZ novelization just says it's located in a central position within the Side.

-- Mark