Gundam Show Thread - MSG thru GQuuuuuuX

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Big s said:

Although I do think that one of the biggest problems with the overall show is that it’s more about everything else and not much about the main character. Kinda like a main character that would be fine in a three episode quickie that somehow got a bigger series and now just kinda reacts mostly to the more interesting stuff going on in what normally would be the background. kinda like the background and foreground are reversed 

For me, that's exactly the part that makes the series so disappointing.

GQuuuuuuX seems to be painfully uninterested in its own main characters and, at times, its own main story.

Machu, Nyan, and Shuji are supposed to be the main characters, right?  Not only has the story generally avoided any kind of character development for Shuji or Nyan, the actions of the main trio are never more than peripheral to the course of the show's story.  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.  None of that is really happening with Machu, Shuji, or Nyan.  It's really clear that the story of those three is not the story the writers care about telling.  Nothing the main trio do has done has meaningfully affected the course of events in the story and the writers of the series keep having other characters like Challia and Kycilia remind us that the real story is something else entirely that's going on behind the metaphorical curtain where we're not allowed to look.  It's kind of frustrating because not only does that other story sound WAY more interesting, but it's like... why not just show us that story instead of this one you're clearly not feeling?

More than anything, I show up to Gundam for the character writing.  It's a franchise that's had some of the strongest character writing in the industry.  GQuuuuuuX could have been something really interesting, but the character writing in it is so thin that it's barely there at all.  Engage with the characters and let us see what makes them tick, y'know?

[PointBlankSniper]

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.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, PointBlankSniper said:

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

Honestly, I was expecting far less. I thought there was a good chance I’d totally hate the show. I still enjoy it and have fun with it despite its flaws so far.

[pengbuzz]

7 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

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.

Expected nothing, was still disappointed.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

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.

Call me a huge literary nerd if you want, but the actual literary definition of a main character/protagonist is the character whose actions are central to the plot and move the story forward through their interaction with the antagonist(s) via the story's central conflict.

What you're describing there is a POV character.  You can have multiple of those, and they need not be the story's main character, but in general at least one of them spends their time in the story observing the main character whose actions move the plot forward.  To give a Gundam example, Reconguista in G shows events through the perspective of Bellri Zenam, Luin Lee, Noredo Nug, and others... but it's principally the actions and views of Bellri that move the story forward making him the Main Character.

 

 

6 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

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.

Framing Machu, Shuji, and Nyan as the show's main characters definitely looks like a mistake at the present time.

Shuji, I agree, he's a walking plot device not a character.  He has no personality.  He's had no real character development.  What little we've seen of him suggests that he's basically a sockpuppet for the disembodied consciousness inhabiting the Alpha Psycommu of the Red Gundam and getting raptured out of the frigging story two episodes ago didn't really change anything about the story.

Nyan, no... if any character is totally lacking in agency it's her.  She is just kind of involuntarily caught in Machu's orbit from the get-go because Machu was sharp enough to notice Nyan had slipped the black market installer device into her bag and spot the tracker on it.  The only time she ever really takes action is when Machu can't... when Machu's stuck in that locker with Xavier and will miss their Clan Battle while Shuji's sick, or when Machu needs to rob the Pomeranians to fund their escape to Earth.  She only goes to Zeon when things go pear-shaped because Xavier insists on it and she only becomes a test pilot for the GFreD because Kycilia insists on it.  She only ever reacts to what other characters do around her, never moving on her own.

Machu... well... Machu's problem is just a lack of character development that leaves her actions feeling knee-jerk or motivationless a lot of the time.  She's making decisions, but because the writers are much more interested with the background drama surrounding the Zabi family power struggle, the choices she makes don't really influence the story in any meaningful way.

Not that Komori or Xavier are any better off than Nyan, really.

 

 

6 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

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.

I'd have to disagree with you there.

I don't think good Gundam writing is dead.  Gundam: Reconguista in G had an unusual story that went in a very different direction from usual Gundam stories, but in many ways it was a refreshing change of pace and it brought some engaging and likeable characters like Bellri.  Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin was a retread of old ground, sure, but it had its fair share of extremely powerful moments especially surrounding its depiction of Operation British.  I remember watching the episode where Iffish is prepared for the drop over a lunch break at work and being disturbed by it the entire rest of the day because it was such an unflinching display of Zeon's willful malice.  Iron-Blooded Orphans was so heavy I completely understand why people dropped it because of its unrelenting grimness, but it had a lot of powerful moments in its writing that I think make it more than worthy to be counted among the great Gundam shows.  Hathaway's Flash Part 1 was pretty solid too, just like the novel.  The only thing wrong with Cucuruz Doan's Island was that they took a story meant for a 23 minute TV episode and stretched it 5x longer than it was meant to be so it feels thin as a result.

I think we've had a couple of lazy titles in the last few years... but nothing that was unfixable with a little polish.  The Witch from Mercury's had solid, if unremarkable design works and an interesting premise.  Its main flaw was just that its protagonists were so wealthy and so privileged that the writers struggled to come up with believable conflicts for them, ending up repeatingly creating and then breaking arbitrary rules in the setting to inject tension.  SEED Freedom was a lazy rehash of Destiny, but even that could've worked if they'd picked a new direction to go in with the characters.  Requiem for Vengeance may have been a glorified tech demo, but the only thing really holding its story back was the way that the writers inexplicably decided to awkwardly dance around the fact that Zeon were 100% the Bad Guys in the One Year War.  Making Iria Solari a villain protagonist or having her struggle with the demands of country vs. her morals would've made her a much more interesting character.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: Urdr Hunt has the same writing team as the main series, so I have a pretty good feeling about that one.

[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.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

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.

Does she?  This is just my read of it, but she doesn't seem to do anything voluntarily.  She gets involved with Machu because Machu tracks her down.  She gets involved with Shuji because Machu attaches herself to him.  She hangs around Shuji because he's Machu's partner.  She pilots the GQuuuuuuX only because Machu isn't available.  She supports the plan to rob the Pomeranians and flee to Earth because it's what Machu and Shuji want.  When that goes to pot thanks to the Titans and Shuji ghosts her by rapturing himself and the Red Gundam away to parts unknown, she accepts Xavier's invitation to go to Zeon only because she's a wanted criminal with nowhere else to go.  She becomes the pilot for Kycilia's GFreD not because she wants to, but because that's the assignment Kycilia gives her and it's currently the only way she can earn any kind of a living for herself.  She's a passenger in her own story, for the most part.

The first thing I think she really does for herself is activate the GFreD's Omega Psycommu from outside and vaporize Miguel with a bit's beam cannon... though even that is only because he's actively trying to murder her.

 

8 hours ago, PointBlankSniper said:

IBO was not heavy at all.

To each their own, I suppose... it's clear you have some very strong feelings on the matter.

I quite enjoyed IBO, but I'm in no denial that it was a very polarizing title.  A lot like G-Reco, which I know a LOT of Gundam fans didn't like but which I enjoyed.  (Kinda suspect that my liking that one borders on a "hear me out".)