Question regarding Heavy Metals

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Omega
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Question regarding Heavy Metals

as the title says, I'm curious... how do the mecha of L-Gaim work?

The reveals of updated L-Gaim kits has me curious...

IK some have beam sabers, but are they actually common, or is it more a later thing?

And I assume the beam guns on them are like buster rifles in a way?

Also, the D.Sserd is basically a mass production version of the title mech?

Sorry for stupid questions if any are here, just trying to make sense of it
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Omega wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:59 pm as the title says, I'm curious... how do the mecha of L-Gaim work?
Can you be more specific about the nature of your query?

Omega wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:59 pm IK some have beam sabers, but are they actually common, or is it more a later thing?
As I recall, pretty much all of the humanoid Class A and B Heavy Metals have at least one saber... some of the more advanced units carry multiple sabers, like the Auge. The non-humanoid Heavy Metals tend to be armed only with a laser launcher and/or missiles.

Omega wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:59 pm And I assume the beam guns on them are like buster rifles in a way?
So... "yes and no". There are two different kinds of beam gun in L-Gaim.

The normal beam gun is called a power launcher, and it's just a high-powered laser cannon that draws its power off a Heavy Metal's solar generator.

There's a heavier weapon called a buster launcher, which is a massive beam cannon bigger than a Heavy Metal which requires either the full power output of a Class A Heavy Metal or a group of Class B's to fire, but offers much greater damage sufficient to cripple or destroy ships. It's kind of like the Hyaku Shiki's Mega Bazooka Launcher in that sense. (When the setting concept was further developed into Five Star Stories, buster weapons got a further power boost to the level of the largest class of buster weapons being able to destroy planets while even the smallest were WMDs able to vaporize ships and cities with ease.)

Omega wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:59 pm Also, the D.Sserd is basically a mass production version of the title mech?
Sort of? Because it's not possible to reproduce the technology of a Class A Heavy Metal for mass production at the Pentagona system's modern tech level, the D.Sserd is more like an economized version of the L.Gaim similar to the GM's relationship to the original Gundam. The expensive or difficult-to-replicate bits were stripped out in favor of more economical substitutes, so despite sharing 80% of its parts in common with the L.Gaim and being a copy of a Class A Heavy Metal its lower performance makes it a Class B Heavy Metal (albeit on the high end of Class B). The first trial production D.Sserd used by Gau Ha Lessy had better performance than the standard type, and the later super prototype Nouvelle D.Sserd was Class A.
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Omega wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:59 pmas the title says, I'm curious... how do the mecha of L-Gaim work?
If you mean 'how are they powered', the answer is sunlight. Heavy Metals are armored with something called... Genepla I think they called it. It's able to absorb solar energy that can power the unit.
Seto Kaiba wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:35 pmsome of the more advanced units carry multiple sabers, like the Auge.
And then there's the Original Auge which carries, like, fifty. :D
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Omega
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

How they work like what powers them for sure, and what are their cockpits like? Other than that TY you guys, this actually helps quite a bit in understanding them
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Omega wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:05 pm How they work like what powers them for sure, and what are their cockpits like?
As Arsarcana noted, they're powered by solar energy... the outer skin of the heavy metals is a solar collector which captures sunlight for power generation.

The cockpit is fairly roomy, very reminiscent of the Mobile Suits c. Zeta Gundam with the panoramic monitors and linear seat... except instead of a chair, on several of them incl. the titular L-Gaim it's more like a motorbike's seat with a motorbike-esque control yoke. On at least one or two, the controls are actually a separately operable hoverbike.
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Seto Kaiba wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:42 pm
Omega wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:05 pm How they work like what powers them for sure, and what are their cockpits like?
As Arsarcana noted, they're powered by solar energy... the outer skin of the heavy metals is a solar collector which captures sunlight for power generation.

The cockpit is fairly roomy, very reminiscent of the Mobile Suits c. Zeta Gundam with the panoramic monitors and linear seat... except instead of a chair, on several of them incl. the titular L-Gaim it's more like a motorbike's seat with a motorbike-esque control yoke. On at least one or two, the controls are actually a separately operable hoverbike.
Luckily they do not operate on Earth.
Because a MS sized humanoid has at most 200m^2 surface area and will have approximate 200kW at the equator during peak sun hours at almost 100% efficiency.

They must have a really strong sun, strange they don't have darker skin(and a much more hellish environment, very little green house gases, I guess?). Well, I guess they aren't really human so may work differently on skin colour and UV exposure.
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

MythSearcher wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:16 pm Luckily they do not operate on Earth.
Because a MS sized humanoid has at most 200m^2 surface area and will have approximate 200kW at the equator during peak sun hours at almost 100% efficiency.

They must have a really strong sun, strange they don't have darker skin(and a much more hellish environment, very little green house gases, I guess?). Well, I guess they aren't really human so may work differently on skin colour and UV exposure.
As with Mamoru Nagano's later work, Five Star Stories, it's not exactly solar power as we understand it... it's converting photons into something else and producing way more power than should be possible with the light of the sun. One of those areas where the science of the Pentagona system is beyond modern understanding.

Its more developed version in FSS was the ezlaser semi-perpetual photon conversion engine.
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Seto Kaiba wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 11:20 pm As with Mamoru Nagano's later work, Five Star Stories, it's not exactly solar power as we understand it... it's converting photons into something else and producing way more power than should be possible with the light of the sun. One of those areas where the science of the Pentagona system is beyond modern understanding.

Its more developed version in FSS was the ezlaser semi-perpetual photon conversion engine.
So, basically magic.
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

MythSearcher wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 9:06 pm So, basically magic.
Yup... Mamoru Nagano gets a LOT of mileage out of Clarke's Third Law in his original works.

Heavy Metal L-Gaim is a lot more subdued about it than its more successful derivative Five Star Stories, but it still prominently features several "sufficiently advanced" technologies. Super-efficient solar power is still on the low end too, with the cake being firmly taken by Oldna Ppossoidal's bio-relation system. That was a perpetual motion machine that served as a source of unlimited energy, conferred eternal youth and immortality, and various other benefits.

(Which isn't as over-the-top as the seemingly magical psychic abilities that the descendants of the Super Empire's genetically engineered super-soldiers had in FSS... or any of a hundred other things FSS did that were sufficiently advanced technology.)
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Seto Kaiba wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 9:50 pm Yup... Mamoru Nagano gets a LOT of mileage out of Clarke's Third Law in his original works.

Heavy Metal L-Gaim is a lot more subdued about it than its more successful derivative Five Star Stories, but it still prominently features several "sufficiently advanced" technologies. Super-efficient solar power is still on the low end too, with the cake being firmly taken by Oldna Ppossoidal's bio-relation system. That was a perpetual motion machine that served as a source of unlimited energy, conferred eternal youth and immortality, and various other benefits.

(Which isn't as over-the-top as the seemingly magical psychic abilities that the descendants of the Super Empire's genetically engineered super-soldiers had in FSS... or any of a hundred other things FSS did that were sufficiently advanced technology.)
Oh well, I can accept Magic Knight Rayearth, so FSS isn't really much of a problem.
I just rather he focus more on the plot. FSS had less density than Hunter X Hunter.(There's more settings book than actual manga volumes since 20 years ago)
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

MythSearcher wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 10:05 pm Oh well, I can accept Magic Knight Rayearth, so FSS isn't really much of a problem.
I just rather he focus more on the plot. FSS had less density than Hunter X Hunter.(There's more settings book than actual manga volumes since 20 years ago)
One of Mamoru Nagano's favorite themes that he explores heavily in both Heavy Metal L-Gaim and Five Star Stories is an "after the end" type scenario in which humanity is in the midst of its terminal decline, with modern humans living in the distant aftermath of the collapse of our masterpiece civilization.

In Heavy Metal L-Gaim, Ppossoidal's power is in no small part built on relics of lost technology like the Class A Heavy Metals and the biorelation system... though no real specifics are given about what that ancient civilization is like.

In Five Star Stories, humanity's advanced technology is either a surviving example of the advanced technology developed by the Super Empire Farus Di Kanon that ruled the galaxy in the AD Era or an inferior reproduction of the Super Empire's technology. Even most of the characters technically count, since their powers are inherited genetic abilities from the Super Empire's various breeds of superhuman that've diminished with time due to their bloodlines being diluted with baseline human DNA.
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Nerem
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

This isn't quite right. Nagano had little to nothing to do with L-Gaim's plot and characters and mecha beyond the design of their looks.

However, he became obsessed with L-Gaim, which is why he wrote Five Star Stories, to be HIS version of it so he can add all the details and stuff he liked.
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Nerem wrote: Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:06 am This isn't quite right. Nagano had little to nothing to do with L-Gaim's plot and characters and mecha beyond the design of their looks.

However, he became obsessed with L-Gaim, which is why he wrote Five Star Stories, to be HIS version of it so he can add all the details and stuff he liked.
No, it's correct... it's well attested-to that Mamoru Nagano went to extremes when he was working on L-Gaim, and developed his own setting materials to go with and justify a lot of the design choices he made while developing all the character and mechanical designs. That (unasked-for) material ultimately went largely unused in the series, and after the dust settled on L-Gaim and his frustration over its reception and creative differences with Yoshiyuki Tomino, it became the seed of his own version of the story: the Five Star Stories.
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Nerem wrote: Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:06 am This isn't quite right. Nagano had little to nothing to do with L-Gaim's plot and characters and mecha beyond the design of their looks.

However, he became obsessed with L-Gaim, which is why he wrote Five Star Stories, to be HIS version of it so he can add all the details and stuff he liked.
L-Gaim is basically Nagano's creation.
He was assigned to design basically everything before Tomino even involved, kinda like the team planning for Gundam was formed a year prior to the show(April 1978) but Tomino wasn't even involved until after Sep 1978.(but the first proposal already listed his name proposing to let him be the director.) and Tomino's involvement likely was minimal even after Sep 1978 because he was directing Daitan 3 at the time and the show ran until Mar 1979, just a week before the airing of Gundam. Similarly, Tomino was working on Dunbine at the time when they are planning for L-Gaim. And Tomino was basically pulled from the production because they made him direct Zeta Gundam, which began planning even before L-Gaim started to air, and they prioritised Zeta Gundam over L-Gaim.(In which Tomino himself commented "that L-Gaim was a semi-disposable before Gundam" on the Zeta Gundam LD notes.)
Yes, the story is mainly based on the script written by Watanabe Yuji, but that doesn't mean Nagano has nothing to do with it, or at least involved enough that he doesn't think he wasn't.

Nagano himself is also still really proud that he was basically given almost complete freedom and rights to the project and worked pretty much like a director. (Whether this has anything to do with many others in Sunrise hating him is entirely another matter)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarde ... 476b646733

"At the end of July, Bandai gave Sunrise the go-ahead for L-Gaim but the only staff on the project at that point was just me. This meant both Yamaura and Ueda had to figure out a way to make this happen in terms of the staffing. They initially found someone that would do the direction and the working title for L-Gaim was going to be "Explorer", so they told me to get to work.
From that point on, say around August, it was all go and I was to build on the planning as well as do rewrites. Not to mention also having to do drawings for the toys. Then suddenly in September, I was called into the Sunrise headquarters and told that Tomino was now going to direct this series."

Seto Kaiba wrote: Sun Nov 14, 2021 3:30 pm No, it's correct... it's well attested-to that Mamoru Nagano went to extremes when he was working on L-Gaim, and developed his own setting materials to go with and justify a lot of the design choices he made while developing all the character and mechanical designs. That (unasked-for) material ultimately went largely unused in the series, and after the dust settled on L-Gaim and his frustration over its reception and creative differences with Yoshiyuki Tomino, it became the seed of his own version of the story: the Five Star Stories.
It seems like at least his relation with Tomino isn't bad. He still worked in Sunrise during Zeta, ZZ and CCA. He got to design Gundam Mk-II as the lead MS and at least submitted designs for Zeta(which became Hyakushiki) and he still designed for ZZ and CCA and probably only rage quited after the higher ups in Sunrise rejected his designs.(After Tomino accepted them.) And I would guess Sunrise also screwed Bandai on the ZZ design because Bandai already made a prototype model and featured it on a TV commercial.

This page has Nagano's ZZ design and the model at the bottom 3 pictures. The reason given may sound reasonable at the face of it(it is too complicated for the toy) but completely illogical if you think about it.(they switch to an even more complicated 3 part combination design at the end.)

From what I gathered from Nagano's own version and what happened, it seems like a lot of people in Sunrise likely think of Nagano as the arrogant youngster that disrespects people with more experience and just went to please Tomino, Okawara and Yasuhiko to get more attention(especially with Yasuhiko because he wasn't really Sunrise specific and Sunrise had to respect his rquests. Nagano knew about this very well.), in Nagano's own terms he was only being polite and respects his superiors unlike the others, and his "superior" mechanical design skills only came his "superior" observation and using his brains to imagine how things work. They likely took down Nagano's Zeta design so that the other mecha designers won't flip the table, and it sounded suspiciously like the others almost started a revolution during ZZ to take down Nagano's designs. And in CCA's mechanical design Tomino first insisted on using Nagano's designs but then bulged likely because of the dissatisfaction of the other designers and the higher-ups had to intervene and reject Tomino's proposals.

Now that I think about it, the parody character AE's Dr. Nagano in Zeta who was supposed to have designed Hyakushiki having the titles like "Top Genius in History" might have taken as a compliment by Nagano but more like sarcasm by the other production crew. (Notice Nagano was still using words like "there is no one more knowledgeable than I am about these matters" during his interview with Forbes in 2019.)

From the above linked Forbes interview, you can still see his arrogance about it.
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Nagano's designs certainly are different from what you usually see in Gundam, they actually kinda resemble some of the Mechs from the video game Quo Vadis(which Nagano didn't actually work on), particularly the MK 2 design. Also does anyone else think that though many of the designs weren't used, the Grey , White and Red color scheme seems to have been reused on the Zaku III?
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Mafty wrote: Mon Nov 15, 2021 10:32 am Nagano's designs certainly are different from what you usually see in Gundam, they actually kinda resemble some of the Mechs from the video game Quo Vadis(which Nagano didn't actually work on), particularly the MK 2 design. Also does anyone else think that though many of the designs weren't used, the Grey , White and Red color scheme seems to have been reused on the Zaku III?
Nagano claims Fujita Kazumi was assigned to assist him during Zeta, and he praised Fujita saying he could really draw. That likely had some influence in both of their styles.
As you can see, Nagano has a few style changes over time, probably reflecting his life changes and such.

And the pictures in the link aren't the original designs at the time and was his later renditions, likely after quite some time in FFS as you can see a lot of FFS specific designs.

At the time of Zeta his designs are more like the ones at the bottom of that page(ZZ) bulky, strangely proportioned(likely designed to be movable in mind like he said and also have to cater for making toys with the technology at the time) This is also reflected in L-Gaim's designs. The ones we see in anime and now are actually much more refined than his original.

Also, he kept saying how he think of how the things will move.
Looking at the ZZ design I can hardly think how that skirt armour isn't blocking the legs' movements.
https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/MSZ-010_ ... esigns.jpg
If you look at it the design haven't fixed the problem from Okawara's FG designs, the skirt armour looks like it is linked to the middle crouch armour and blocking the legs. Even the transformation sequence he drew next to it didn't show the skirt armour making way for the legs at all.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gunda ... 0417124902
And his Zeta Gundam design, which later redesigned to be Hyakushiki(the line art for it), at least made the skirt armour look like it is not obstructing the legs.
While Fujita's cleanup on Nagano's design: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gunda ... 0706025315
clearly showed that he made the skirt armour detached from the crouch armour.(Notice Fujita also did the cleanup of the final version of Hyakushiki)
The style change from Zeta to ZZ likely came from him trying to mimic Okawara's drawings(from the standing pose and proportions) as that fits pretty well to the story where he was basically demoted from main mecha designer when the company called back Okawara to design the Mk-II. He likely shifted his styles to try to make things work, but at the time it was likely already too late since it is no longer his design styles that are having problems but personal conflicts that are causing a lot of other designers grudge. If you look at the period anime magazines, the company tried to cover up saying they held an in-company design competition to select ZZ, and didn't even include Nagano's design in the sample pictures.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gunda ... 0706025556
From right to left are the steps of the design flow claimed. The right most ones are supposedly the early design concepts, without Nagano's design. The only included the refined design by Fujita in the middle picture and didn't even show Nagano's original and claim that is used for the design competition. (If that is the case, I can hardly imagine why his design was made into a model in the Bandai commercial)
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

And in CCA's mechanical design Tomino first insisted on using Nagano's designs but then bulged likely because of the dissatisfaction of the other designers and the higher-ups had to intervene and reject Tomino's proposals.
My understanding is that the sponsors forced Tomino to reject Nagano's designs as the model kits based on his designs weren't profitable enough (either due to low sales or being over complicated and hence costing more to produce).
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Quiddity wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 11:17 pm My understanding is that the sponsors forced Tomino to reject Nagano's designs as the model kits based on his designs weren't profitable enough (either due to low sales or being over complicated and hence costing more to produce).
Which would not be possible for ZZ because the sponsor went all the way to make a prototype of ZZ and used it in a TV ad and after the design competition that came later, they used an even more complicated model of it.

The sponsor seems to have little problem with Nagano's designs, but the other designers do, and the higher ups in Sunrise didn't like that.
You can see from Nagano's own words that his relationship with others aren't really that great, and he isn't really hiding that fact, and this is from his point of view, possibly with some silver lining. I'd imagine the others would be much more dissatisfy with him than he put it.
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Re: Question regarding Heavy Metals

Also it's worth noting that some of Nagano's designs made it into the sequel series as well. The Hambrabi is never seen again; however both the Hyaku-Shiki and Qubeley see prominent use in the next series, with the Qubeley even seeing two more units and mass production. If there was an issue with the design they'd probably have replaced the units with other designs in the sequel; they may even retcon the designs like with Endless Waltz, in fact Iczer 1 changed the design of the main Mech between all three episodes without it being explained.

Also is there any footage of the commercial with the original ZZ design?
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