Gundam Show Thread - MSG thru Witch from Mercury

[Seto Kaiba]

29 minutes ago, azrael said:

Just so people understand my absolute, utter revulsion at the person doing the SEED  lineart, I will post these gems, courtesy of 4chan.

To be honest, I'm still not seeing it... the angle the line art is drawn at makes them look chunkier than they are because you're getting the front and the left side and the design itself is awfully busy, but the proportions look pretty close to what's in the animation IMO.

The line art definitely doesn't make them look impressive, but then again the pose can be the difference between a mediocre shot and a great one.

(Is farting clouds of theatrical glitter just a thing all Gundams do now?)

[twich]

4 hours ago, azrael said:

Just so people understand my absolute, utter revulsion at the person doing the SEED  lineart, I will post these gems, courtesy of 4chan.

  Hide contents

  Hide contents

 

for infinite Justice Gundam 2.0, it looks like they took an Incom T-65B X-Wing Fighter and attached beam weapons to go in between the engines and the wingtip laser cannons and stuck it to the back of Infinite Justice......I kinda liked the old Green Goblin thing that Justice and Infinite Justice had.....

Twich

Edited January 29 by twich
spelling

[pengbuzz]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

To be honest, I'm still not seeing it... the angle the line art is drawn at makes them look chunkier than they are because you're getting the front and the left side and the design itself is awfully busy, but the proportions look pretty close to what's in the animation IMO.

The line art definitely doesn't make them look impressive, but then again the pose can be the difference between a mediocre shot and a great one.

(Is farting clouds of theatrical glitter just a thing all Gundams do now?)

Yes; Taco Bell Gundam began that trend.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Yes; Taco Bell Gundam began that trend.

He always was a trend setter 

[lechuck]

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Touched a nerve, did I?  Oh dear.  In all seriousness, the lack of visually distinct designs is one of the most common criticisms leveled at Cosmic Era titles in general, not helped at all by both sides using Gundams.

Not at all, but the notion that there is no distinctiveness in designs reads like a construed argument for the purpose of putting SEED on the gallows. Ginn isn't Zaku, Murasame isn't Windam, Justice isn't Destiny, Destroy isn't LaGOWE etc. There is plenty of different types of mecha to be had in SEED. But if we entertain your line of argumentation for a moment, then the question is still open: Why does the supposed mecha templating affect SEED negatively for you, but is seemingly not an issue for Macross – what's the difference here?

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I can't recall a point in Macross where painting a VF different colors was enough to give it a different model number, for instance.  (Like Cagalli's MBF-02 Strike Rouge, a GAT-X105 Strike Gundam painted pink.)

It's MBF-02 because Strike goes kaputt and Orb then takes it in to give it a complete rebuild. Seems natural to me that Orb will give it their own model code naming - I don't see a problem with that? The GAT-X line of MS is mostly Orb technology anyway. And just because Macross does their naming convention in a certain way, doesn't mean SEED/Gundam has to follow the same approach. But if it is naming consistency you are looking for, then there is GAT-X105E Strike Noir Gundam as an example.

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Come to that, the many different versions of Kira and Athrun's signature Gundams aren't terribly distinct from each other either.  I've watched SEED and SEED Destiny multiple times and I couldn't for the life of me tell you the difference between the Freedom, Strike Freedom, Rising Freedom, Mighty Strike Freedom, etc...

I've watched SEED/Destiny exactly twice, back then and just recently, not really an issue to discern them. For the Freedom – different backpacks, hip-railguns, one has the beam cannon in the abdomen and can use DRAGOONs, one transforms, the other has a white backpack etc. The intent behind the thematic similarity is because the creators want to show a progressive lineage/evolution here and associate it with certain characters. I see this as being no different of a problem then say YF-19 and VF-19 Advance, or YF-21 and VF-22, or VF-31J/F/S and VF-31AX? It's the same idea – a similar base structure/silhouette and then making tweaks and changes to show a progression. Again, why is this bad for SEED, but not for Macross?

On 1/28/2024 at 7:35 PM, azrael said:

FYI, SEED Freedom premiered on Friday.

Yep. Whomever is doing the lineart for SEED, please fire and ban them from ever working on a Gundam production. I'm sure these designs will look much better on screen or on promotional artwork that isn't lineart. 

If I'm not mistaken then the lineart seems to be coming from the main Gundam guy himself – Kunio Okawara.

https://gundamnews.org/veteran-designer-kunio-okawara-unveil-freedom-gundam-and-justice-gundam-real-type-colors
https://gundamnews.org/original-gundam-designer-kunio-okawara-designs-tatsu-gundam-for-chinese-new-year

Edited January 29 by lechuck

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, lechuck said:

Not at all, but the notion that there is no distinctiveness in designs reads like a construed argument for the purpose of putting SEED on the gallows. Ginn isn't Zaku, Murasame isn't Windam, Justice isn't Destiny, Destroy isn't LaGOWE etc. There is plenty of different types of mecha to be had in SEED. But if we entertain your line of argumentation for a moment, then the question is still open: Why does the supposed mecha templating affect SEED negatively for you, but is seemingly not an issue for Macross – what's the difference here?

A fair question that deserves a serious and straightforward answer.

In short, while there are a variety of mobile suit and mobile armor designs in the series the conflict generally revolves around both sides using Gundams.  This is something of an issue for visual storytelling when neither side has a particularly distinctive visual aesthetic as a result.  Prior Gundam titles had a pretty good understanding of the need to have a consistent design aesthetic for the "hero mecha" and another for the "enemy mecha".  That's why, despite being Federation elite forces, the Titans of Zeta Gundam use a blatantly villain-coded mecha like the HiZack and why every time the Zeon side actually gets a Gundam (save for the stolen GP02) they inevitably retool it to match their aesthetic like the Sinanju and Gerbera Tetra.  With both sides using Gundams, the action can become confusing much more easily because it's not immediate apparent who's on what side and to have so many variations on the same basic design leaves them all feeling a bit samey... not just in terms of the stolen ORB Gundams but also the various upgrades that the two main characters get that seem like the same mobile suit but with ever increasing amounts of wing pieces attached.

 

7 hours ago, lechuck said:

It's MBF-02 because Strike goes kaputt and Orb then takes it in to give it a complete rebuild. Seems natural to me that Orb will give it their own model code naming - I don't see a problem with that? The GAT-X line of MS is mostly Orb technology anyway.

Yeah, it's Orb technology... but why redesignate it when it's something Orb basically developed and there's nothing actually different about it except for that they made the phase shift armor pink?

 

7 hours ago, lechuck said:

And just because Macross does their naming convention in a certain way, doesn't mean SEED/Gundam has to follow the same approach. But if it is naming consistency you are looking for, then there is GAT-X105E Strike Noir Gundam as an example.

I'm familiar with it... though Gundam as a whole typically follows the same real-world-inspired designation conventions used in Macross and many other mecha titles.

(Goodness knows I've waded through enough of it while fielding questions on other Gundam titles... the wild rabbit holes you go down trying to find answers to questions like "Where is the Zaku II B?".)

 

7 hours ago, lechuck said:

I've watched SEED/Destiny exactly twice, back then and just recently, not really an issue to discern them. For the Freedom – different backpacks, hip-railguns, one has the beam cannon in the abdomen and can use DRAGOONs, one transforms, the other has a white backpack etc. The intent behind the thematic similarity is because the creators want to show a progressive lineage/evolution here and associate it with certain characters. I see this as being no different of a problem then say YF-19 and VF-19 Advance, or YF-21 and VF-22, or VF-31J/F/S and VF-31AX? It's the same idea – a similar base structure/silhouette and then making tweaks and changes to show a progression. Again, why is this bad for SEED, but not for Macross?

Vaguely different equipment, sure... but both appearance and performance-wise they're not really distinct.  It doesn't really feel like a different design... so much as they went back and made the wings busier each time, like Katoki-san was offering design advice.

It's possible to show that kind of evolution while giving each successive model its own particular flavor and make them immediately distinguishable.  Like Amuro's RX-78-2 vs. his Nu Gundam.  Or Char's Zaku, Gelgoog, and Rick Dias.  Uso's Victory and Victory II.  The Exia and 00.  The Wing Gundam and Wing Gundam Zero.  You get the idea.  (I wonder if this is why SEED Destiny's gunpla sales slipped so much compared to SEED?)

The examples you're citing from Macross don't really fit the issue for the most part... the YF-19 and VF-19ADVANCE are a bit of blink and you'll miss it fanservice explained as a weirdo deliberately customizing a VF-19EF to look like the much older YF-19, YF-21 and VF-22 are a prototype and its production version so they're meant to look alike.  I'll give you the VF-31AX... that is a fair example, since the outwardly discernable differences are limited to the shape of the wings and some other minor details and it was meant to be an upgrade.  (Though the one book to talk about it spends most of its time taking the piss out of it, so maybe TPTB realize it was some weak nonsense?)

Edited January 30 by Seto Kaiba

[no3Ljm]

Looks like in the movie, Justice sans X-Wing backpack came out from...

Spoiler

 

[kajnrig]

Eh, Gundam in general has a stupid habit of appending distinct model numbers to the most minor of modifications. The very first thing that comes to my mind is the Exia Repair, which managed to get an official spot in the lineage of the Exia despite literally just being a beat-to-crap Exia jury-rigged into barely working order. Imagine your Honda Civic gets totaled, you straighten out its frame, duct tape some flashlights and hand mirrors, and replace the wheels and the front hood from an old Fiat 500 that happened to be lying around, and you call it the Honda Civic Kai. No, wait. You dangle a worn cloth from the missing passenger-side door that billows coolly in the wind, and THEN call it the Honda Civic Kai.

In that sense, I don't see anything particularly offensive about these new revisions upon revisions upon revisions of the Strike Gundam. I still can't tell any of them apart from one another, but then I was also never going to be a fan of this show that wasn't aimed at me anyway, so oh well. I'm sure the people who are meant to like it will like it well enough.

Some of the Zeon-inspired designs look alright, though. The Z'Gok is kind of mid, like a worse attempt at the Amazing Z'Gok from... Build Fighters...?, but it's not bad.

Also, not shown in the magazine scans, but there's apparently a Gyan Storm, which doesn't look bad. IIRC that backpack is taken from like a Zaku or Gouf variant, right? The shape of it looks familiar, anyway.

[Big s]

6 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Eh, Gundam in general has a stupid habit of appending distinct model numbers to the most minor of modifications. The very first thing that comes to my mind is the Exia Repair, which managed to get an official spot in the lineage of the Exia despite literally just being a beat-to-crap Exia jury-rigged into barely working order. Imagine your Honda Civic gets totaled, you straighten out its frame, duct tape some flashlights and hand mirrors, and replace the wheels and the front hood from an old Fiat 500 that happened to be lying around, and you call it the Honda Civic Kai. No, wait. You dangle a worn cloth from the missing passenger-side door that billows coolly in the wind, and THEN call it the Honda Civic Kai.

In that sense, I don't see anything particularly offensive about these new revisions upon revisions upon revisions of the Strike Gundam. I still can't tell any of them apart from one another, but then I was also never going to be a fan of this show that wasn't aimed at me anyway, so oh well. I'm sure the people who are meant to like it will like it well enough.

Some of the Zeon-inspired designs look alright, though. The Z'Gok is kind of mid, like a worse attempt at the Amazing Z'Gok from... Build Fighters...?, but it's not bad.

Also, not shown in the magazine scans, but there's apparently a Gyan Storm, which doesn't look bad. IIRC that backpack is taken from like a Zaku or Gouf variant, right? The shape of it looks familiar, anyway.

Yeah, the build fighters Z’Gok looks like slightly better garbage.

I like the legs on the gyan and the arms aren’t offensive, but the chest has a weird lazy Lego brick kinda look and the head looks like an odd transformers design reject from the season that came after the movie.  Overall though, it’s rather ugly 

[Seto Kaiba]

20 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

Looks like in the movie, Justice sans X-Wing backpack came out from...

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Wait... so it was wearing the Z'Gok like a mascot suit?

[no3Ljm]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Wait... so it was wearing the Z'Gok like a mascot suit?

Based on the clip I've seen scattered in Youtube, yup. I was surprised to see it actually. There's a scene where Z'Gok is wearing the X-Wing backpack too.

The only good thing I stumbled on watching those clips is Lacus wearing that sexy space suit.  

[no3Ljm]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

For anyone who missed it while it was on YouTube, Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative is now available on Crunchyroll both dubbed and subbed.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

For anyone who missed it while it was on YouTube, Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative is now available on Crunchyroll both dubbed and subbed.

I kinda wish I had missed it

[Seto Kaiba]

21 minutes ago, Big s said:

I kinda wish I had missed it

That bad?

[Big s]

4 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That bad?

It just feels weird and more of a toy commercial than anything before. The story felt slapped together as well. It’s like if Unicorn was the first film of the Star Wars sequels where there was promise of something great with great visuals, but a little lacking in other spots and Narrative was hopefully the last because it was a jumbled mess. It also just adds to the mess of the universal century that I feel I was better off without seeing. I love the designs from the unicorn era of stuff mostly, but really hate it story wise 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Big s said:

It just feels weird and more of a toy commercial than anything before. The story felt slapped together as well. It’s like if Unicorn was the first film of the Star Wars sequels where there was promise of something great with great visuals, but a little lacking in other spots and Narrative was hopefully the last because it was a jumbled mess. It also just adds to the mess of the universal century that I feel I was better off without seeing. I love the designs from the unicorn era of stuff mostly, but really hate it story wise 

To be honest, that's more or less how I'd describe Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn.

My feeling on Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn was that its story was a jumbled excuse plot that was mostly built on fanservice.  The main conflict between Banagher and Full Frontal was a repeat-by-proxy of Amuro and Char's final conflict in Char's Counterattack, and everything leading up to it was a meandering and largely unnecessary sightseeing tour that'd be unnecessary if anyone in the story had a functioning brain (Laplace's box is "hidden" in plain sight on Laplace station FFS) and was liberally infested with MSV designs that did not have official gunpla yet.  The whole affair felt like it was written by the marketing department, even if I knew in advance it was adapted from a light novel.

I have to admit, I do see where you're coming from on Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative though.  It's Unicorn again, but worse in every way and they're not even putting in the effort to pretend otherwise.  It's REALLY blatant on the Neo Zeon side thanks to...

Spoiler

... Zoltan being a washout from the program that created Full Frontal, piloting ANOTHER Sinanju and with access to another Neo Zeong.

It just takes the worst aspect of Unicorn and makes that the whole plot.  Namely, psycoframes are just straight-up magic.  The Axis Shock was one thing, since that was supposedly the collective will of humanity acting on the psycoframe.  Unicorn and Narrative have just made Newtypes into wizards.  It's not surprising the ending has Mineva saying that it's her life's work to put the genie back in the bottle because these developments don't fit with any of the works set after UC 100.  Banagher's cameo is also completely unnecessary.  This movie really doesn't contribute anything meaningful or interesting to the story of Gundam Unicorn or to Gundam's Universal Century as a whole.  More than anything, where Unicorn felt to me like a toy commercial... Narrative feels like a fanfic.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It just takes the worst aspect of Unicorn and makes that the whole plot.  Namely, psycoframes are just straight-up magic.  The Axis Shock was one thing, since that was supposedly the collective will of humanity acting on the psycoframe.  Unicorn and Narrative have just made Newtypes into wizards.  It's not surprising the ending has Mineva saying that it's her life's work to put the genie back in the bottle because these developments don't fit with any of the works set after UC 100.  Banagher's cameo is also completely unnecessary.  This movie really doesn't contribute anything meaningful or interesting to the story of Gundam Unicorn or to Gundam's Universal Century as a whole.  More than anything, where Unicorn felt to me like a toy commercial... Narrative feels like a fanfic.

I didn’t really dislike Unicorn until it started getting towards the end. I actually had hope things were going somewhere and everything just felt more and more pointless as it went on. The stupid box everyone was fighting for didn’t even seem like anything worth all the trouble.

Narrative just didn’t seem to have a glimmer of hope from the start. No characters to care about and the mobile suits were all just the same stuff we just saw.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, Big s said:

I didn’t really dislike Unicorn until it started getting towards the end. I actually had hope things were going somewhere and everything just felt more and more pointless as it went on. The stupid box everyone was fighting for didn’t even seem like anything worth all the trouble.

Ah, yeah... all things considered, it was always an obviously foregone conclusion that Laplace's Box was going to be a massive nonevent in the Universal Century's history.

The Federation's status quo was still very much in place for titles set after UC 0096 like Hathaway's Flash, Gundam F91, or Victory Gundam and there was zero chance they'd cut half the timeline loose for Unicorn.  So a lot of the drama surrounding it falls flat because the audience went into it knowing there wouldn't be an Earth-shaking revelation at the end and that the world greeted the news with a collective "So what?".

 

15 hours ago, Big s said:

Narrative just didn’t seem to have a glimmer of hope from the start. No characters to care about and the mobile suits were all just the same stuff we just saw.

Yeah, I gather it drifted rather far from the original light novel it was based on... though since that was a part of Unicorn's tangled story I doubt it's any better than what we got.

[pengbuzz]

On 2/10/2024 at 10:22 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

To be honest, that's more or less how I'd describe Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn.

My feeling on Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn was that its story was a jumbled excuse plot that was mostly built on fanservice.  The main conflict between Banagher and Full Frontal was a repeat-by-proxy of Amuro and Char's final conflict in Char's Counterattack, and everything leading up to it was a meandering and largely unnecessary sightseeing tour that'd be unnecessary if anyone in the story had a functioning brain (Laplace's box is "hidden" in plain sight on Laplace station FFS) and was liberally infested with MSV designs that did not have official gunpla yet.  The whole affair felt like it was written by the marketing department, even if I knew in advance it was adapted from a light novel.

I have to admit, I do see where you're coming from on Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative though.  It's Unicorn again, but worse in every way and they're not even putting in the effort to pretend otherwise.  It's REALLY blatant on the Neo Zeon side thanks to...

  Reveal hidden contents

... Zoltan being a washout from the program that created Full Frontal, piloting ANOTHER Sinanju and with access to another Neo Zeong.

It just takes the worst aspect of Unicorn and makes that the whole plot.  Namely, psycoframes are just straight-up magic.  The Axis Shock was one thing, since that was supposedly the collective will of humanity acting on the psycoframe.  Unicorn and Narrative have just made Newtypes into wizards.  It's not surprising the ending has Mineva saying that it's her life's work to put the genie back in the bottle because these developments don't fit with any of the works set after UC 100.  Banagher's cameo is also completely unnecessary.  This movie really doesn't contribute anything meaningful or interesting to the story of Gundam Unicorn or to Gundam's Universal Century as a whole.  More than anything, where Unicorn felt to me like a toy commercial... Narrative feels like a fanfic.

Starting to wish they'd get away from newtypes... too much potential for what's happening here ("wizards").

[no3Ljm]

 

[electric indigo]

Ok I like the Zeta-ish Gundam head (Mika Akitaka is on board), but is this on Meta Quest only?

[Black Valkyrie]

 

 

 

[lechuck]

41 minutes ago, Black Valkyrie said:

 

I'll certainly watch this, but to be honest the whole Zeon view point certainly dampens my excitement.

I just can't bring up enough sympathy for that side to care, it's also why 0080 doesn't rank so high with me.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, Black Valkyrie said:

 

 

 

Just saw this last night. I think the Gouf looks cool from the short time it’s shown 

[Old_Nash_II]

3 hours ago, Black Valkyrie said:

 

 

 

From the series of "I made a bad series, we're going to make an animation from the original universe to make up for the money we lost"

[Seto Kaiba]

Ech... yeah, it looks pretty.  Shame that it's from the Zeon perspective... being veteran foot soldiers of the bloodiest and most evil regime in Gundam's human history is Nightmare difficulty for making your protagonists relatable or sympathetic or anything other than arsehole victims when the Gundam comes calling.