The Gundam F91?

[Seto Kaiba]

You can actually see the issue with the size of the Military in Late UC works. It takes a lot of effort and money to patrol the Earth Sphere, and that's why things begin to fall apart.

Not so much, no...

Put simply, the Earth Federation spent the last twenty or so years of the Universal Century's first hundred years on a near-constant war footing as it dealt with the fallout of Zeon's defeat in the One Year War. Spending on defense was already quite excessive and it was driven to greater excesses by the anti-spacenoid paranoia fueled by Zeon's war crimes and the terrorist activities of the Neo Zeon movements. That, of course, led to disasters like creating the phenomenally corrupt Titans and so on. Once the last few Neo Zeon groups burned themselves out and there was something very much like peace in the Earth Sphere, the Federation couldn't justify continuing to spend vast sums of money keeping the EFF ready for war at the drop of a hat. So they scaled back their spending to a more reasonable peacetime level.

Between reduced defense spending and a few decades of peace, the Federation's rank-and-file troops in colonial garrison forces were now green recruits who'd never fought a proper war. They were blindsided by the rise, and sudden aggression of, Cosmo Babylonia in UC 0123. Past that point, as the colonies decided to start shooting at each other, the Federation took a "fine, you do you" attitude to it since their previous attempts to maintain any semblance of order in the colonies (e.g. the Titans) had been kind of disastrous overreaches and granted colony governments more autonomy in preparing their own defenses instead.

The tech (Aside from the Gundam's) becomes hopelessly outdated, and the grip the Federation has on the Colony Sides becomes all but non existent by the time of the Zanscare War, to the point some manga focus upon the era of the Warring States in space.

Again, not really... the Federation scaled back its defense spending to focus on multipurpose, upgradeable, highly versatile Mobile Suits instead of trying to replace hundreds of mobile suits every few years like they were buying a new iPhone. Their tech wasn't outdated, they were focusing on cost performance instead of dumping gargantuan amounts of money on unviable "prototype" mobile suits like Gundams.

It's also worth noting that the F91 is one of the last Gundam's the Federation actually makes, when you consider the fact that the Victory series is actually made by the League Militarie, and the G-Savior by the Illuminati. That being said the F91 is quite a powerful unit and the EFF does see the practicality of limited mass production(really the F91 is probably the best Gundam to try and mass produce), something that may have given the League Militarie the idea to limited mass produce it's own Gundam.

Basically, it's the last hurrah for the massive waste of money that Gundams had been up to that point.

The League Militaire's Gundams aren't really Gundams in the traditional sense. The Victory is just a relatively high performance mass-production mobile suit borrowing the Gundam visual aesthetic and name.

[Kuruni]

Funny, at this point I think G-Saviour only named so since it was developed after F-Saviour (which got its name from being modified Freedom). And while they skip H, the next two Saviour series are I and J. Of course, they also give the I-Saviour nickname Illusion, so G-Saviour might be called Gundam in-universe but we'll never know...

[Mafty]

Late UC seems to have kinda a weird thing about not using Gundam names. Gaia Gear (yes I know it's not considered canon) didn't use the terms Mobile Suits (they were called Man Machines) or Gundam (it was Gaia Gear Alpha) for some reason. I haven't read the story in it's entirety , but maybe it's supposed to suggest the passage of time, caused people to forget those terms. It doesn't seem to be a copywrite issue, as the UC history and Char himself are mentioned.

As for the F91 and Victory the process does actually make sense. The F91 is powerful, yet also relatively easier and cheaper to mass produce. As for the Victory, Seto seemed to suggest that the suit was a highly powerful unit, that was modified to look like a Gundam(likely to follow the Gundams historical significance). Given the relatively lower funding of the League Militarie this make a lot of sense.

That being said would the V2 Gundam be considered a Gundam in the more traditional sense? Its more of a singular unit (aside from the side story manga, and they often don't follow the exact timeline anyway) and seems considerably more powerful.

[Seto Kaiba]

Late UC seems to have kinda a weird thing about not using Gundam names. Gaia Gear (yes I know it's not considered canon) didn't use the terms Mobile Suits (they were called Man Machines) or Gundam (it was Gaia Gear Alpha) for some reason. I haven't read the story in it's entirety , but maybe it's supposed to suggest the passage of time, caused people to forget those terms. It doesn't seem to be a copywrite issue, as the UC history and Char himself are mentioned.

Gaia Gear is not in continuity with the rest of the UC, but the aversion to using "Gundam" was partly an issue of intellectual property rights. Strictly speaking, at the time it was written, Gaia Gear was an unauthorized spinoff written by Yoshiyuki Tomino without Sunrise's consent. It was partly justified in-universe as a product of a century or more of temporal distance between its story and Char's Counterattack, but a fair amount of the reason that new terms were introduced was to avoid legal trouble.

As for the F91 and Victory the process does actually make sense. The F91 is powerful, yet also relatively easier and cheaper to mass produce.

Again, no... the F91 is powerful, but like every other true Gundam in the UC it's stupidly expensive to the point that it's effectively impossible to mass-produce economically, so only a few units were built.

As for the Victory, Seto seemed to suggest that the suit was a highly powerful unit, that was modified to look like a Gundam(likely to follow the Gundams historical significance). Given the relatively lower funding of the League Militarie this make a lot of sense.

Not modified to look like a Gundam, it was designed from its inception to look like a Gundam... but instead of being a super-"prototype" with overwhelming specs, it's just a relatively high-performance mass production mobile suit which leans on the reputation of "Gundam" as a way to rally opposition to the Zanscare forces.

That being said would the V2 Gundam be considered a Gundam in the more traditional sense? Its more of a singular unit (aside from the side story manga, and they often don't follow the exact timeline anyway) and seems considerably more powerful.

It's vastly more powerful than its predecessor, though the record is somewhat unclear on whether it was truly meant to be a unique unit or whether the war ended before the Victory 2's production could begin in earnest. Given that at least two core fighters were delivered for it during the series, it seems possible that it was intended as a next-generation mass-production MS.

[Mafty]

I'd often wondered if Gaia Gear was like that due to legal reasons, but I could never really find evidence on it (I actually posted a question about this last year).

It would actually make sense that the V2 might have been intended for at least limited mass production. The Victory Gundam was the League Militarie's trump card, with most of the cast at the end of the series piloting modified Victory units.

However the war itself wasn't very long (it lasted for basically the spring of UC 153) and the League Militarie had lost several of their terrestrial bases in the early days of the war, which could probably explain why they only ended up with one unit(two if you count the manga side story).

[Underrated GM Custom]

The V2 likely would have been a limited run model since all of its tech advancements would make it much more expensive compared to the Victory, I can't see them handing it out to the regular soldiers. V2 is a lot like the Zeta where it was worthwhile to produce an incredibly expensive but powerful machine because you were giving it to the top ace of the war.

A 2nd V2 makes sense if they planned on another pilot besides Uso (perhaps Marabet) or simply a backup in case Uso totals the first one. In 'what if' continuity you can get a 2nd V2 in SRW and put Katejina in it if you like .

[Kuruni]

It's spaculated that Ishigaki give the Shokew two antennas (while Rig Shokew only has one) to make it look more like Gundam since it's Usso's first MS, but nobody mention it in the show. This become irony since Shokew become Zero Gundam in Shin SD Gundam Gaiden.

[MythSearcher]

The V2 likely would have been a limited run model since all of its tech advancements would make it much more expensive compared to the Victory, I can't see them handing it out to the regular soldiers. V2 is a lot like the Zeta where it was worthwhile to produce an incredibly expensive but powerful machine because you were giving it to the top ace of the war.

A 2nd V2 makes sense if they planned on another pilot besides Uso (perhaps Marabet) or simply a backup in case Uso totals the first one. In 'what if' continuity you can get a 2nd V2 in SRW and put Katejina in it if you like :lol:.

Consider the most powerful thing on V2 is the M drive, and that is on its core fighter, as long as we don't see a significant number of core fighters it is not mass produced.
while the proto V2 depicted in the V Gundam SS by Hasegawa which was only used to test the combination mechanism and without a M drive, you do get the Second V in the novels which is a V Gundam equipped with M drive and it seems like they are trying introduce it in more recent years like in G Gen Overworld and GBD.

In the current manga spin off by Hasegawa Crossbone Ghost which is almost as much as a mess as TB, they have a great retrogression in tech and a lot of colonies even lost the technology for space travel and you have some sort of Mad Max in space scenario that makes very little sense.(colonies don't have resources, they need to go out and gather resources, so keeping them confined in colonies is stupid as a dictator. Also a few loose nuts or a canister of pure nitrogen replacing the air can kill a dictator that keeps using a MS) And the M drive used by Ghost/Phantom in that story is flawed.

So whatever the original production plans are for V2, League Militia probably don't have the budget to produce them and they no longer have the means to produce more of it in the currently only depiction after the events of V Gundam.

[Mafty]

Wow the spin off does seem wild, and also contradictory. Setting after Victory Gundam might have made more sense, especially if their going to turn every colony into Moon Moon. It's a shame really because that was quite an interesting premise(i.e., sides and colonies and independent states warring with each other), plus it was something you saw in Victory Gundam(The opening narration talks of the fighting between Sides, Zanscare is able to take over most of Side 2, Macedonia shows what an independent Colony would look like.) also it doesn’t make sense how someone who lives in space, could lose the ability to travel in space, and again it's contradictory because inter-colony space travel is possible in Victory Gundam with Arti Gibraltar being an active Space Port. That being said it seems like a lot of the Crossbone spinoffs went into kinda a odd direction plot wise.

Also Gundam is rather vague at times on how many of a given unit are produced; several times there will be a seemingly one off unit, then later an MSV or some other merchandise related thing will add more units ( case in point a big deal is made in SEED over the loss of the five prototype Gundams, later many of the prototypes are remade and updated, and nobody ever though of trying to add them to the Archangel during the war).

As to the in Universe reason as has been said before the League Militarie is not exactly well funded. As Chris point out in an episode review, the AEUG was in a much better position during the Gryps War. The AEUG had sponsors with deep pockets and were able to field new powerful mecha ( The Zeta Gundam, Hyaku Shiki, Rick Dias, G-Defenser and probably a few Methuss's). Plus multiple new ships (they started by stealing the already newish Salamis Kai, the had the Irish and Argama built. The League Militarie makes do with largely mothballed older ships with some modifications, and understandably spends more time focusing on the mecha aspects.

Really the Gundams are the turning point of almost any conflict. It does seem like they at least tried to even their odds by the end of the war, by adopting the Victory Gundam more so. Most of the characters have modified Victory units (making an already powerful unit even more powerful). That being said giving modified Victory units instead of Mass Producing the V2 is probably down to the cost of the unit and the skill of the pilot.

Like most Gundams the V2 works better with a Newtype pilot, and Uso is really the strongest Newtype in the League Militarie next to Shakti. The other characters have some level of Newtype ability, but not really as much as Uso. So it seems likely the main Gundam wasen't really made with any one pilot in mind (keep in mind Uso's mom Myra built the unit, and she didn't know her son was the pilot) and was just meant for the most powerful pilot(like in most Gundam series really, for example who was the ZZ's pilot supposed to be originally?).

As for the Shokew-Gundam thing, that again makes sense. Often a character will find themselves in control of a mecha/ship that seems made for them , even if it wasn't originally( Ie Kira's stolen Freedom Gundam looks like the Strike, Lacus ends up in charge of a Pink Ship, etc).

[Seto Kaiba]

Also Gundam is rather vague at times on how many of a given unit are produced; several times there will be a seemingly one off unit, then later an MSV or some other merchandise related thing will add more units ( case in point a big deal is made in SEED over the loss of the five prototype Gundams, later many of the prototypes are remade and updated, and nobody ever though of trying to add them to the Archangel during the war).

Well, it all depends on the unit too...

MSV's canonicity varies wildly from design to design and moment to moment, but Gundam is also rife with tons of minor variations that are not necessarily more expensive or complex and are only rare because the designs were/are a field modification, improvised design, or variant conceived under unusual circumstances for one specific unit. It's only the Gundams that are really too expensive to indulge in that with, and in those cases it's often unclear if the MSVs and later add-ons are additional units or existing units that were refurbished to a new variant specification.

As to the in Universe reason as has been said before the League Militarie is not exactly well funded. As Chris point out in an episode review, the AEUG was in a much better position during the Gryps War. The AEUG had sponsors with deep pockets and were able to field new powerful mecha ( The Zeta Gundam, Hyaku Shiki, Rick Dias, G-Defenser and probably a few Methuss's). Plus multiple new ships (they started by stealing the already newish Salamis Kai, the had the Irish and Argama built. The League Militarie makes do with largely mothballed older ships with some modifications, and understandably spends more time focusing on the mecha aspects.

Basically, the difference is that the League Militiaire came along in an era where the rampant, corrupt, overspending on defense was no longer a thing. The Anti-Earth Union Group, Karaba, and even the later Crossbone Vanguard benefitted quite a bit from the defense industry's greed and corruption. They were able to receive state of the art mobile suits and other equipment from Anaheim Electronics and the Strategic Naval Research Institute in part because they were willing to look the other way about the fact that they were technically supporting illegal weapons testing by providing the data from their combat operations to the manufacturer to aid in development of new models for the military.

By the time of Victory Gundam, defense spending had been curtailed considerably and so the manufacturers were not as willing to hand out free mobile suits in exchange for black operations live combat tests.

[Kuruni]

Wow the spin off does seem wild, and also contradictory. Setting after Victory Gundam might have made more sense,[...]

Well, CB: Dust set in UC 0169. It's also focus on small factions without big army. Then again, I don't really care about the plot when it come to Crossbone (except the first series) and only focus on mech.

[JEFFPIATT]

As for the Victory, Seto seemed to suggest that the suit was a highly powerful unit, that was modified to look like a Gundam(likely to follow the Gundams historical significance). Given the relatively lower funding of the League Militarie this make a lot of sense.

Not modified to look like a Gundam, it was designed from its inception to look like a Gundam... but instead of being a super-"prototype" with overwhelming specs, it's just a relatively high-performance mass production mobile suit which leans on the reputation of "Gundam" as a way to rally opposition to the Zanscare forces.

Like with the AEUG before them having a Gundam is a powerful political asset. it was one of the reasions they were wanting to capture the MK II from the Titans.

It's spaculated that Ishigaki give the Shokew two antennas (while Rig Shokew only has one) to make it look more like Gundam since it's Usso's first MS, but nobody mention it in the show. This become irony since Shokew become Zero Gundam in Shin SD Gundam Gaiden.

BESPA was basically the SNRI Side 2 that was taken over by Zancare. its likely some of there MS started life as F series suits with Gundam style armor but got moved to the Bug look.

[MythSearcher]

Well, CB: Dust set in UC 0169. It's also focus on small factions without big army. Then again, I don't really care about the plot when it come to Crossbone (except the first series) and only focus on mech.

Because Hasegawa is famous for his randomness in stories.
The original Crossbone was actually adapting Tomino's plot so it was still readable.
Any story more than 3 volumes by Hasegawa is strange and makes little sense even if you don't think hard about it, more so if you think hard...
I've read his non-Gundam stories like MAPS, the story flow is simple and you can get what's going on, but if you put the whole thing together it makes little sense at all.

[Mafty]

Looking into MAPS (which actually came from the same defunct Nora manga magazine that Venus Wars did) shows the plot to begin with is kinda wild. So I guess that explains the rather off beat nature of his manga's, evidently it works if he is still able to sell them.

As for the BESPA thing, it actually makes sense that they would have seized(or bribed the researches into giving them) the Blueprints to Federation Mecha. SNRI would still have made test types, even if they couldn't budget for full scale mass production. Zanscare could have more easily put these designs into full scale mass production in order to fight the Federation with better technology and force of numbers.

Granted nothing is written about this anywhere but it makes sense,and it is stated the Zanscare took over BESPA in Side 2, as well as other facilities, some of these are mentioned in the series, while others seem to be from side materials(some of these are listed on the Gundam wiki, which is fan edited, but I can't find any more info elsewhere,).
BESPA has facilities in

-The Amelia colony where the the first BESPA MS were made. The Zoloat, Tomliat, Shokew, Contio, and Zollidia were all manufacture in Amelia (this is actually shown somewhat in the Anime as we see the Contio being tested and pilot training occurring here, plus it make sense the capital would have most of the production facilities.)

- Super-Psyco Research Institute, basically the Newtype Labs , it's location is not specified, but It seems the novel has some scenes set there. It is where the Zanneck, Gengaozo, and Rig Contio were manufactured.\

- Neo Cartagena, a Lunar city whose facilities were taken over by Zanscare, they made the Recarl, Abigor, and Doggorla.

- Largane, the main facility on Earth which was actually a major airport prior to be seized and modified. The Zolo Godzorla, Galguyu, and Memedorza were all built here.

So it seems that BESPA had multiple bases in the Colonies, The Moon and Earth, which would explaine how they were able to field such a huge army. Sorry for using the Gundam Wiki , but it did seem like the sources were take from elsewhere (like model kits or side materials), and some of this information is in fact conveyed in the Anime itself(The captured bases, BESPA's Side 2 take over and the fact they have some kind of Newtype Labs).

Also it's possible like JEFFPIATT said that they modified some designs for their own purposes( many of the suits honestly look more like they were meant for space use over earthbound use).

[Underrated GM Custom]

BESPA was basically the SNRI Side 2 that was taken over by Zancare. its likely some of there MS started life as F series suits with Gundam style armor but got moved to the Bug look.

You know it would be pretty funny if beneath the Bugfaces there was a Gundam face, kind of like the old Dijeh kits.

[PowerdGNFlag]

BESPA was basically the SNRI Side 2 that was taken over by Zancare. its likely some of there MS started life as F series suits with Gundam style armor but got moved to the Bug look.

You know it would be pretty funny if beneath the Bugfaces there was a Gundam face, kind of like the old Dijeh kits.

I don't remember that happening...? The closest I can think of is having the option to put Gundam eyes alongside the regular monoeye in the HGUC. Or maybe you were thinking about the GNZ line from 00, which all hide Gundam faces under their visors.

[Kuruni]

You know it would be pretty funny if beneath the Bugfaces there was a Gundam face, kind of like the old Dijeh kits.

In contrast, I always want to see Gundam mask broken and reveals Brave-style human face...

[MythSearcher]

Looking into MAPS (which actually came from the same defunct Nora manga magazine that Venus Wars did) shows the plot to begin with is kinda wild. So I guess that explains the rather off beat nature of his manga's, evidently it works if he is still able to sell them.

Oh, people love it.
I actually like MAPS when I read it, but later just figured out it was just piecing together a lot of Sci-fi concepts given during the time it was serialised. Like torch ships using the power of a star, silicon based lifeforms, etc.
But hey, that is why people like it. You get a lot of sci-fi concepts from it, and especially when you have limited exposure back in those days, especially if you can't read English works(which Japanese people usually can't) and you don't get a lot of translated literature for sci-fi.

[Kuruni]

There's also Dai-Sword and it's pretty good. Although I only read it to the point that the hero got separated from the Dai-Sword and his friends. Since many plot points emerge just before then (and Hasegawa only continue it years later), I won't surprised if it got more confusing afterward.

[MythSearcher]

There's also Dai-Sword and it's pretty good. Although I only read it to the point that the hero got separated from the Dai-Sword and his friends. Since many plot points emerge just before then (and Hasegawa only continue it years later), I won't surprised if it got more confusing afterward.

Basically Hasegawa just add in whatever he thinks is cool at the moment and keep the story ongoing. This is actually quite common in Japan and he is not the only creator doing so.
A few doing this I can think of are Tomino of Gundam, Yūichi Sasamoto of Airel and Miniskirt Space Pirates, Yukiru Sugisaki of The Candidate for Goddess and Ascribe to Heaven and Yasuo Ohtagaki of Moonlight Mile and Gundam TB. Tomino and Sasamoto does it pretty well, the others, well, nope.