PointBlankSniper

First of all, I double checked google to make sure I'm not tripping:

Quote

 

Are protagonist and main character the same thing?

 

What Is the Difference Between a Protagonist and a Main Character? The main character (sometimes called “principal character”) and the protagonist are both two central characters, but the protagonist drives the plot forward while the main character is impacted by the plot.

MasterClass

 

Nyan had all the agency. She choses to cuck, and choses to kill. She decided to run away on foot when the gundam was in her hands, and choses to join a political faction for a scholarship. The only decision Machu makes is to continue to stick her neck into danger for the sake of the story continuing, otherwise, Everything she only ever does involves escaping mortal danger by the guidance of someone else.

IBO was not heavy at all. It was absurdly shallow, and I rate it the absolute worst of Gundam. The main story was Mikazuki fights crazy frog guy, and learns from him that he likes killing people. The rest of the story is him living this out by gaslighting Orga into sending all their friends to their death. Everytime Orga tries to give up on their stupid suicide quest, Mika tells him to question himself until he's ready for war again. When Orga gives in and plans to send their friends to their deaths, Mika gasses him up with feigned indifference as support. Any character that comes to their senses and tries breaking away from their suicide quest gets to die first. Rinse and repeat. The underlying story, is Mcgillis wants to be king, so he starts by pissing and killing off his most loyal followers in order destroy his own chances. We are told that to be the boss, you just need to steal the Bael. Had he started with that move, while he was still loved, nobody would have opposed him, and he would have instantly succeeded. To access Bael's hangar, all you need is for Vidar to kick the ceiling in. We also know Gaelio would have unconditionally done that for Mcgillis had he not been betrayed. This could all have been done on day 1 and the whole pointless Tekkadan story could have been avoided. Basically, the plot was a big roundabout nothing burger.

My favorite part was when Juilieta debuted by eating a butterfly to show how she was a psychotic genius child. By the end, she became more and more stoned so that a random evil engineer could expose the whole plot to her for no reason, without her interjecting. And then she became a normal person and lived happily ever after with Gaelio. 10/10 consistent and deep character development writing.

I'm still wondering what the inspiring speech Kudelia gave to the parliament at the end of s1 entails to this day. All I got was that she made an opening statement, and then the random nobody Ein from ep1 came to be the s1 final boss for no reason so that the writer could skip the speech. Rustal was drummed to be the greatest strategic genius too, but all a saw was the writer recycling Iok's idiotic plan on a greater scale, and then attributing it to Rustal's success.

While I'm at it, lets not forget the designated 3 eps of talking heads on panning still backgrounds, into a battle previews, where the battle then happens at the last minute of the ep, and then gets resolved in the opening minute of the next ep, while all the notable choreography was already shown in the previews. Also, most of the fights involve top right entrance, bumping the enemy away towards the left. Almost as stock footage as seed. The show was so predicatble that it was basically clockwork.

By the end, it was actually cathartic to watch Julieta and Gaelio put and end to the deplorable trainwreck writing. I couldn't believe how much I ended up liking them for McDuffing up the misserable attempt at reskinning Macbeth in a gundam setting.

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The role of a main character is to be the perspective the audience views the story through as well as the driving force behind the story's progression as they navigate the conflict central to the plot. 

The first half of that statement is true. The second half, not necessarily. You can have an entire story follow an observer or victim with no agency, just esperiencing the powers that be running their course.

The real mistake of the show is framing the main trio, with its promotions and opening theme, as a trio central to the plot, with agency in their actions. In reality, Shuji is not a character. He is a mysterious plot device. Nyan is the one with some agency, which amounts to denying Machu's ability to have any agency, while her own character is poorly explained, if at all. I suspect she will continue to derail the whole story much like how Slaine Troyad derailed Aldnoah. Machu has so far been just an observer to the cosmic powers, and I think would have been fine, if only they didn't spin her has the chosen one, as that burden comes default with a gundam protagonist. The real fatal flaw with her though, are reasons the writer gives her to subject herself to such extraordinary events, when it is all out of her depth and needs. Her setup and the world building required to make it work is entirely absurd. Then she is given the illusion of agency through excessive handholding by other actors and powers that be, and doesn't seem to acknowledge it. Intended or not, that kind of writing just makes her an insufferably entitled child. She's currently basically in the role of the annoying news host, when all we need out of her is a cameraman to watch the world to unfold through. Maybe she is a slow cooking character that will change, but that is a big maybe. The trend these days is to put those character changes in a time skip between split cours or seasons. So things don't look good for her writing regardless, but that's just my guess.

IMO good Gundam writing died after the original Build FIghters season. Everything from all the follow up Build titles, to G Reco, IBO, and WfM, has all been nonsensical slop with poorly reasoned character writing and screenplay. Even the totally-not-gundam Kyoukai Senki is just more of the same. The mega budget UC milking that comes on the side is just pretentious grandeur that often makes as little sense as the rest of the slop tbh. It's been that way since the latter half of Unicorn.

Yall are expecting too much out of the cash cow slop machine tbh.

Hear me out. Char died in the last shooting. Zeknova sama isekai'd Challia's boyfriend. Which means Quattro is...

I don't think any anime has gone past 24-26 eps in a single season for the past decade, without being never ending holdovers from the era before that. Modern Gundams just follow that trend, so the best you are gonna get is a split cours of 12 eps that's half a year apart, with some disjointed pacing and character building.

Zeknova is turning out to be code for truck-sama lol

Seems like twitter did something weird and signed everyone off while randomly hiding months of tweets while leaving a sporadic few to be visible between the time skips to people not signed in. I guess these happenings are just another day under their king.

Anyway, a bit disappointing the brace is back, but it's expected I guess. Still hoping the joints are tightened like Ozma's though, or that's gonna further nuke the reputation of the mold and design, and kill my chances of having Michael's Tornado even further lol

Seems like it's not selling very well tbh. Probably from same unit fatigue, and maybe lack of faith in Bandai's quality after the last few 25 revivals. Only Ozma's Armored has been tightened up, but maybe those fixes aren't so well known, since its a web exclusive.

Or maybe everyone prefers Michael's version like me, and we are all torpedoing its chances of happening by having Bandai learn the wrong lessons again lol.

The show is living up to its name.

Little girls getting high on LSD and murder, while mutually cucking each other, only for big red to swoop in and assert dominance as the original spouse. Definitely GCucks alright.

Plane towing the container would be topkek rad 🤪

Anyway, I wonder if Bandai got insider info and realized they needed to compete against this mouth, teeth, and tongue. 🙃

4 hours ago, hyp36rmax said:

Anyone have this issue with plastic part of the side leg come off, probably due to the pressure of transforming. What glue do you recommend to fix?

If you are asking about glues, I assume you aren't a moddeler with supplies.

I recommend starting with white kiddie crafting glue. Given an extremely long time, they become fairly hard and secure. If it doesn't go well, at least it's still easy to clean and remove, and you will have not done anything destructive to othe plastic.

Any other glue probably begins to enter the destructive or permanent modification territory, and you would have to start being careful. I'd say hot glue with a light touch and fast hands as to not melt anything would be the next safest. At least it's also removable, and melting is probably unlikely lol.

And then we enter toxic fumes territory, starting with basic hobby cement with the clear resin, such as the Tamiya yellow capped bottles. It minimally damages the ABS plastic as those are solvents that target PS in model kits instead. But once you apply it, the goopy resin could get stringy and messy, and can't really be cleanly wiped off without using the corresponding pure solvent cement. It will take from hours to a day to cure while you pray it doesn't run into the joints. I have used pure solvent to break the cured resin before, even on dissolvable PS parts, but lets just say, you don't want to go there.

Next would be acetone based ABS hobby cements. Works the same as above, but stronger, because now, with the correct solvent, your pieces will dissolve to fuse together. But that means your contact points with the cement become gooey, so you have to be extremely careful with alignment before it cures, or improper force will cause the pieces to smear, smudge, and sink inside each other, while sliding and squirming out of alignment.

The final boss is probably the dollar store super glue. Dissolves and corrodes everything it touches, so the plastic may also become brittle. Same for your skin, and maybe even metal parts, and rapidly fuses them all together in 2 seconds. So you can permanently be part of your toy if you wish. Most people would go this route out of dollar store convenience and a quick job I guess.

I do wonder if caulking might be a reasonable choice lol.

Absolute insanity. Seeing that they gimped it of all the fiddly bits presumably to deactivate it from being a displayable unit, yet didn't bother to just yank the fin out and mail it for cheaper is crazy.

Anyway, I'm guessing that they threw in the extra canopy despite all that because they know it's made of the latest iteration of explodium.

19 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I think the only thing that would stop them from doing just that is purely Bandai's unquenchable fetish for doing things that don't make any sense.  

In that case, even the test flight version as a regular release is on the cards...

5 hours ago, sh9000 said:

Yep.  Nin-Nin-Game must be scalpers.  

Sure these are months, and years old respectively, and out of stock. But you can see for yourself how their pricing is automated to behave. This is not regular retailer behavior.

https://www.nin-nin-game.com/en/metal-build/139288-metal-build-mobile-suit-gundam-00v-gnt-0000fs-00-qan-t-full-saber-tamashii-nation-24-limited-bandai-spirits-.html

https://www.nin-nin-game.com/en/gundam/21906-mobile-suit-gundam-seed-astray-powered-red-150-gerber-straight-power-option-set-limited-edition-metal-build-.html

20 hours ago, grogall said:

Well not exactly bought the High Metal-R Scopedog ATM-09-ST (AT) from Mandarake at 25,000 yen, Which is a Tamashii Nation Exlusive and would have cost 25,300 yen from them since tax is always a given from P-Bandai, will be delivered Monday - Purchased yesterday... 

Not exactly sure what this comparison is alluding to. Mandarake is 2nd hand store, TNE is not retail. This only speaks well of Mandarake, so I'm not making the connection of how this is contrary to my view of Nin-Nin being shadier than 2nd hand stores, exactly such as Mandarake.

3 hours ago, rsvictor1976 said:

I've only really shopped there for pre-orders, but so far I've seen Nin-Nin have one of the lowest prices on recent Macross pre-orders like the Arcadia SDF-1, HMR VF-19 & VF-2SS, and the DX VF-19. But man, it sounds like you've had problems with them before and have issues dealing with them again. I can relate to that. 

TBF, I have never had any personal issues in dealing with them. They do as expected and you get what you pay for.

I just have been looking at their prices of things outside of freshly opened POs, and how their prices change on slightly older low stock items, until its priced out of being desirable at all, and then the single unit's price drags on into museum worthy price tags months or years later. If you order from them right when PO opens, and never browse for things you missed, you will never notice the pattern of their pricing. They do also have clearance sales on random items that they somehow deem less scalpable. But once you look at the more collectible items, or some very drawn out preorders, they stop looking like a retailer and more like an artificially self fulfilling antique store. Any other japanese toy retailer I've seen tends to stick to their lane as a retailer, and don't meddle with artificial scarcity and pricing.

Their warehouse policy is just one of the more rigidly inflexible and short term ones. Nothing particularly foul, but is another factor to consider.

19 hours ago, rsvictor1976 said:

I don’t get it. Isn’t this what happens with most collectibles that have a limited run? 

No. Normal retailers sell retail products close to MSRP, especially during launch period. They don't scalp at launch or even during preorder period, and start antique pricing while it's still available at other retailers and second hand stores, just because their own stock is low but not clearing out. On the contrary, most other retailers would lower prices or put on sales to clear inventory instead.

I've said in some other thread before. Nin-nin are scalpers. Their prices are automated to go up exponentially as stock goes down. And then continues to go up over time at the last unit or two. It's a promised future extortion if you don't buy now. Basically they are coersion scalpers, so I avoid using them if they aren't the last choice left, or significantly lower priced during PO, and I have to not have anything I want to combine for shipment, because their policies for that are not really to your convenience either.

10 hours ago, Big s said:

the clown colors on what they’re calling the “White Gundam” don’t they do it any favors. But the head on the 01 looks a lot better as well 

Now that you put them together, even the 01 is distinctly more white than the "white gundam" lol

27 minutes ago, Big s said:

I was also thinking that. And like you, was actually disappointed that they skipped those two even though they had the big fights in that second episode. And I was even more disappointed to see that they’re making both of those ugly legged gelgoogs instead of either of the Gundam 01 or Guncannon into kits 

The gelgoogs are a literal headscratcher and strange product planning. They look pretty lame, but the red one by itself at least could've been understandable for its place in the story. The black (dark navy?) one getting a kit is kind of nonsense. It's just a palette swap that belongs in p-bandai, and even then, it would have been too insignificant to get a kit.

Meanwhile the 01 is also primarily a palette swap, just with a new face and a couple more weapons, yet somehow has an absolutely different presence. Its nearly just as easy to make as spamming those gelgoogs, and would have been their cash cow based on the general reception i'm hearing

9 hours ago, Big s said:

I almost like the standard Guncannon and the Gundam 01

Literally me. Those are the only two designs that almost look good to me, and had the most impactful action sequences at that. They're what I look forward to seeing in model kit form most, just to make a final decision on whether I like their designs or not lol. At the same time, it seems like those are exactly the two units getting skipped for kits... Somehow even the Light Guncannon that only showed up to get tossed by an explosion for 2 frames is getting a kit before them... Maybe they are saving those two for P-Bandai 2 years after the show ends 🤡

Bandai being nonsensically wasteful seems fairly common.

I've just encountered it yesterday, while fitting crotch armor on the Ozma, trying to understand why there are two armored crotches. Following that, wondered why the battroid stand adapter that caused the former to even need to exist, when the non armor battroid adapter already works with the armor.

I was also rememinded a few days ago, that bandai pumps out a whole dedicated mini runner for what is akin to a single zaku's eye lense on their 30MM line. It could have just been a small area of that color, tacked onto a larger runner. For what they wasted, they could have put 20 duplicates chained into a single stick, to split the risk of damage and loss, for not having all the protection and identification that comes with a full runner, and still saved materials while handing out spares.

8 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

The knee gap is a consequence of needing to compress the legs for battroid, and stretch them out for fighter.  Otherwise, you get the long skinny legs on the DX YF-19. Since the Fire Valk generally gets a lot more time and attention to battroid mode, the fighter just gets the short end of the stick to make the legs look appropriately chonky.

The YF-19 got the opposite treatment, and while it leaves the battroid looking more lanky than it should, I'm not even slightly interested in them redoing it.  All that will accomplish is giving us another giant knee gap like the Arcadia version has.  We've got the Arcadia for a good animation battroid, and I'm fine letting Bandai keep its more fighter-focused take.  (Though I would love to see them make that stupid gray thigh hinge match )

We'll see how he price works out though.  Inflation (and other potential increases) aside, the exhange rate has still kept things fairly consistent on the import end for the US.

I'm really not sure that neck cover is going to be an improvement though.  They're trying to hide it with camera angles, but it looks like he's wearing a neck brace.

I suspected it was for the fighter engine length reason. But for the amount of morphing proportions, It seemed to trivial a reason to make a weird fix for... and they could have did an extension with some hidden panel magic like they did with the YF. I guess it was easier to just copy precedence of every toy having a black hold there at this point lol

I have a feeling the neck cover can be gotten away with on the 19S, with the bundle of head lasers as distraction, and their turret base matching and breaking up part of the cliff.

It seems like the misalligned fuselage issue is still kind of there. The piece that holds the canards, with the vent slits. On my YF, its totally buckled up over the piece behind it. I could press it in, but then the belly panel under the cockpit would then shoot out. Through careful squeezing balancing of tensions, it can be hidden for some time until anything gets bumped, I'm seeing that same two panels slightly stepped up here as well, although to a much smaller degree.

I don't understand the knee gap. It's not even there in battroid or gerwalk, and as far as I can see, neither is it in various fighter mode art. It's literally only there in toy depictions, and only in fighter mode, through an intentional extention showing the gerwalk joint that is collapsed and hidden in other modes, and bandai is cranking it up to 11 here.

Anyway, seems like the landing gear hubs are painted white.

Seems like mega inflation for a barebones valk to cost more than the 25 Tornado...

That looks and sounds like a lot of work to get this shot

After looking at the images closely, I have concluded that only the top of the chest is the same mold. And maybe the forearms. I'm sure its safe to assume the sliding thruster spine is probably the same too, but that seems to be as far as common parts go, if you don't count the metal bits.

3 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

i posted the same about the mouth and came over here and saw you posted it too. 

It seems my misplaced reply and your reply to it got moved here. 

I feel like I've seen an AMV recently where there was footage of the yapping mouth used as Basara's megaphone.