now that's some serious long overdue

[kaigou]

While CP was out of town, I was especially bored, at points -- you can only scrape popcorn off the ceiling for so long before you have to do something that doesn't require your hands over your head. After rewatching a few comfort-zone shows, I got bored enough that I figured maybe I'd try and actually finish Gundam 00. Took some doing, since I never d/l past ep 11 in S2, but Shinsen-subs comes through, and...

Dude. Is there like some kind of compulsive obsession with saying everyone's entire name? Is it a cultural statement, maybe? Some kind of logic behind why Setsuna has to always always always say out every character's entire name (including his own). Hell, I make it to S2 ep20 and get a first-name only and want to cheer. For crying out loud.

I've seen enough dog whistles to remove any last traces of doubt as to whether 00 is really Wing v2.0 -- there are just too many nods to very specific fannish favorites from Wing, but then on the other hand... my brain follows it and then breaks. Because if I can line up nearly all of them as analogues, does that make Saji the analogue for Duo Maxwell? Because if so, someone shoot me now and save me from the last five episodes. That's just freaking sad, ignoring that I've spent the last twenty episodes grinding my teeth over the fact that a) Saji just can't seem to fucking grow a pair, and b) no one will shoot him and save me from having to listen to him whine.

Yeah, I'll slash with the best of them, even randomly at that, and with a few notable exceptions any pairings I support are often mutually contradictory and all over the map. Except Saji. He's like the poster boy for unslashability. With any gender, including the third rail of dual-gender characters in this series. He's just... no. He has, like, zero sex appeal. Negative, even, and I'm firmly convinced this is because he has absolutely no spine. He is limp like jellyfish, and if that's not an unattractive visual for bedroom fun, I just don't know what is. So, yeah, Duo Maxwell analogue, please oh dear lord let's please say it ain't so.

Although I guess it doesn't really matter, since it's already canon that Tieria loves Veda, and Setsuna loves Gundam. I was about to snark about threesome fics with Grant, Setsuna, and Gundam, but I'm sure they've already been written. And if not, only because most fanficcers don't usually waste their time on canon pairings, and that's a canon threeway if I've ever seen one, baby.

Anyway, back to Saji: obviously these are screenwriters without a single ounce of mercy. If they had any at all, they would've cleared out Saji in S1 ep1, turned Louise into Char*, I mean, uhm -- damn it. Whot's-his-name. The crazy one from Wing, with the VA who always does one-half of any most slashable pairing (I swear the guy has like slash radar or something). Not Treize. Other guy! With the HAIR! OMFG, I cannot remember. He's the mini-Char, and my brain halts. Whatever! Louise should've been the mini-Char, not the Virgo-obsessed whot's-his-face** who's pretty much done a lot of posturing and a whole lot of absolutely nothing. I mean, talk about an homage that does nothing but reveal just how pointless the trope is by now, unless it's meant to be a smokescreen and the real Char-type-role is fulfilled by Livonze/Ribbons*** -- I still think it would've been far more intriguing to have Louise as that role, but she's as much a pawn as the rest.

Also, wow, I didn't think a VA's voice could annoy me enough to actually MUTE his lines, but the VA doing Sergei's son, Nikolai? oh, hell if I know -- man his voice annoys me. I thought Alleluia's voice was annoying at first, but it grew on me. Sergei's son's voice grows on you, sure, like one of those fungi you have to see the doctor and get ten shots to get rid of. A seriously bad, itchy, kill-it-now kind of growing on you. If he didn't sound like he's got a stuffed-up nose thanks to having nostrils plugged with tissues after being punched square in the nose, I'd be willing to punch him myself, but obviously someone tried that already and it didn't make him quit the role -- because I swear it sounds like his nasalness has gotten worse. It's like nails on a freaking blackboard.

Last, giant mecha version of Too Stupid to Live: never ever ever tell someone you love them right before battle. Surefire absolute without a doubt fastest way to end your relationship, usually by death, and if not your own, then your beloved's plus with a twist of betrayal. Just keep your trap shut and tell them you're in love, after the war is over. If you tell them sooner, you won't live long enough to see the war's end, anyway.

* APPLESAUCE.
** I can't take him seriously, ever since his reappearance with New Fancy Suit... with BUNNY EARS. Who needs Twin Drive when you've got the best reception on your block for the weekly Gundam v ALaws Cage Match? No tinfoil required.
*** Okay, am I the only person who starts humming old Elton John songs whenever someone says that guy's name? Livonze wears his war wound like a crown / He calls his child Jesus / `Cause he likes the name... / And he shall be Livonze / and he shall be a good man...

*is bricked*

Comments

[hokuton_punch]

... Zechs Marquise? Koyasu Takehito does his voice and he is indeed in everything slashable... (Or - wait, Midorikawa Hikaru's in it as Heero Yuy and he has the spiky hair of doom...)

[kaigou]

Koyasu Takehito. Righto. I see his name in an upcoming production, and I think: ahah, that's the character Most Likely To Be Slashed. My theory on Zechs is that Takehito expected the series' big pairing to be Zechs/Heero (as it probably looked to be from the first two or three episodes), and then was stymied by the sudden explosion of 1x2x1 fans among the fangirls. Total miscalculation on his part, and possibly one of the mitigating factors in why Zechs goes crazy later, because his VA was being deprived of fangirl attention. Righto.

But anyway. Uhm. Yeah. Him. Mini-Char: Zechs.

[hokuton_punch]

... that was probably the best comment I've ever read about Koyasu Takehito ever. XD Possibly because it is TRUE. (The Sekis Tomokazu and Toshihiko fill in when he can't! Or are just the other half of the slash pairing. Even odds.)

[kellicat.livejournal.com]

This gives me a perverse desire to watch 00, especially since if it's ripping off of Gundam Wing and not the original series. I could understand if they were playing off the original series, but ripping off Gundam Wing would be a spectacular failure of imagination.

Damn. Now I want to watch both the original Mobile Suit Gundam and 00 just to see where 00's ripoffs/homages come from. It can't be any worse than attempting to watch Gundam SEED Destiny. Then again, I would rather try to re-read The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb than watch that series.

[kaigou]

If you can watch Gundam SEED, you are a far more dedicated fan-critter than me. I made it two episodes, no, two and a half, and pretty much pitched SEED across the room in disgust. Ignoring the strongly-CLAMP-influenced designs, the utter -- well, I won't get into it. Let's just say I DNF'ed it and leave it at that.

00 I nearly DNF'ed just because I was getting bored, and things were getting bleak. I mean, yeah, there's "put the characters through their paces" and then there's "kill off every blooming character like some twisted version of Survivor". In that sense, 00 is going back to Gundam's roots, after Wing's no-one-really-dies (and as I understand it, SEED was pretty close, or at least had minimal death rate).

What makes 00 worth watching in a completely different way is how topical it is, and how much more of a political commentary it is, like the original Gundam series (and what the later series seemed to get away from, IMO). More than a few times I come close to wincing, because I'm looking at an SF view of the world from a culture so opposite my own, and its views of the rest of the world are bleeding into the storyline. Ripped from the headlines isn't just a cliche for American TV, after all. (While no one could've predicted the current US president when the series was in production, it still makes from some incredible irony at times.)

But yes, there are subtle Wing homages, though some may argue that those were in turn homages to the original series -- what I'm mostly glad of is that at least this time around, the whole absolute-pacifism crap that got trotted out in Wing and in SEED isn't a prevalent part of this series. It's presented more as a personal preference by some of the characters, but not as a political view let alone one that's admirable. (In fact, there seems to be a bit of a slant that those who choose pacifism are weak, or at the very least badly naive.)

Meanwhile, I still can't get that damn Elton John song out of my head. *heddesk*

[kellicat.livejournal.com]

I only watched SEED (not Destiny, just SEED) in the first place because my ex lent the TV-movies to me and told me that they were good in their own way. I liked it at first, but when I started to think about it, I started liking it a lot less. I still liked two or three of the characters by the end, but the rest could all fall off a cliff for all I cared, and as for the "hero" Kira, I'd throw him off the cliff myself. The fact that Kira was a bishonen straight out of shoujo with purple eyes whose voice actor couldn't recreate crying noises to save his life did not help. SEED did have some meaningful deaths, but apparently Destiny reversed the most important and best-done death in SEED ( One reason I refuse to watch Destiny).

00 still sounds interesting. Maybe I'll get around to it after I've tracked down a copy of Rubyfruit Jungle and finished my papers for the term.

[starlady]

Yeah, you've definitely inspired me to dig through my CDs of burned anime and check out 00. Topical politics? Sign me up!

Plus, you know, Wing homages.

[dogemperor]

Re the topicality of stuff--this is pretty much THE original reason I wanted to embrace Gundam 00 (to rip off a phrase from Mister Gunpla Obsession Himself); all manner of RL conflicts and such that are actually directly mentioned in the series (everything from RL conflicts-with-terrorism like the Troubles and the Real IRA, the Sri Lankan conflict and the LTTE, narcoterrorism and funding of insurgencies in Colombia/Venezuela, even the use of blood diamonds and "blood titanium"/"blood mineral mining" to fund insurgencies in sub-Saharan Africa, etc.).

(Yes, it helps here that I did get familiar with a lot of stuff like this, thanks to having had a teacher early in my history studies who was not only an Amnesty International member but was huge on World Conflict Awareness in general. I probably was one of the very few people either pre- OR post-apartheid who could tell you who Mangosuthu Buthelezi is--partly because, among other things, the history teacher not only taught about the main conflict going on in South Africa but the politics between, say, the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (Buthelezi's branch). This pretty much led to a lifelong love of learning the "rest of the story"; said teacher was also largely instrumental in a lot of other things too, and is one of the few people I honestly owe a life-debt to (for personal reasons).)

[chibidrunksanzo.livejournal.com]

APPLESAUCE!!!

[kaigou]

*just scared the hell out of the dogs with laughing so hard*

OMG, woman, you freaking SLAY me.

I guess I really should get off my duff and explain the APPLESAUCE to the denizens on this list who haven't heard the story, eh?

[dogemperor]

YES, YES YOU SHOULD. :D

[chibidrunksanzo.livejournal.com]

I made the icon just to reply here. So you know. XD

[dogemperor]

1) Crazy mini-Char = Zechs, who frankly was one of my favourite characters in Wing. (And there IS quite a lot of 6x1 if you know where to find it, heheh. Of course, I'm also in for WEIRD pairings--where is the 6xWalker, damnit? (And don't tell me it doesn't exist. They have shitloads of Graham Aker x Billy Katagiri in the 00 fandom. :D) Then again, I liked the OZzies in general better anyways...then again, it also helped that the first time I saw the series was a good five years after the US fandom hit its peak :D)

2) Re fansubs of 00--actually, rather than Shinsen I'd recommend getting Menclave's subs for at least first season, BSS for the second (I'd say Menclave all around, but Menclave has STILL not subbed past season 2 ep 12 and it is driving me friggin' mad).

I note this as apparently Shinsen (and ESPECIALLY friggin Nyoron~) had some...accuracy issues re the translation of some things, whilst Shinsen is decent as a speed-sub group in general, there's better subs out there.

3) Yes, I know pretty much 00:Wing::Seed:Zeta (yes, Seed and...urgh...Seed Destiny were supposed to essentially be reimagings of Zeta and Double Zeta respectively). Perhaps I'm a sucker for Season 1 having references to all manner of RL conflicts (like the Real IRA, the LTTE, insurgency groups in northern South America funded by narcotraffic, etc.) but I tended to be more impressed (at least with season 1) with 00 being a generally more "realistic" series than Wing was. (Of course, season 2 turned cracktacular with Evil Amuro Treize, LOL.)

4) I do encourage you to watch the last three eps, and preferably rewatch season 2 via the BSS subs (or Menclave IF THEY EVER GET THEIR ARSE UP AND SUB THE REST OF THE SERIES DAMNIT). Pretty much nearly everything gets wrapped up, in ways you don't quite expect.

5) Is there a Char in this series? I'm not sure there's a clear-cut Char. (The person one would logically expect to BE the Char, aka the CRAZY MOTHER IN THE MASK, is possibly the most un-Char-like series!Char I've seen; other people, like Louise et al, do seem to be Char-esque. I vote for Multiple Chars :D

6) I'd disagree with Saji being the Duo Maxwell of the series. (As odd as it sounds, I'd put the Lockons in that category; Al/Hal I see as pretty much the crazy bastard offspring of the Quatre Slot and the Trowa Slot.) Saji...I'm not sure there is a good Wing analogue for Saji; then again, I pretty much wanted to Bright Slap him during most of season 2, so that's my own prejudice speaking :D

7) Another character I could compare Louise to from Wing--of all things, Lady Une. With much more crazy. (I'd dare say Louise is actually a double shout-out--maybe a touch of Une, but also a shout-out to the various artificial "newtypes" in UC, and the "druggies" and the Al Da Fraga clones from Seed/Seed Destiny.)

8) Ali Al-Saachez is another I have a hard time fitting a good Wing analogue to. Maybe Dekim from Endless Waltz? Pretty much he's completely mercenary and seems to fight just for love of fighting and sowing chaos--if anything, he MIGHT be a shoutout to the incredibly obscure Gundam X (which is one of the few series out there that had flat out *mercenary* characters that were remotely close to a Major Series Baddie).

9) And there's shoutouts to other Gundam series if you look; Tieria's infamous crossdressing scene is a dual tribute to Wing (I can SOOO see Treize with the ballroom stuff :D) AND to Turn A Gundam (Loran Cehack's infamous crossdressing as "Lora" :D).

[kaigou]

2. Shinsen was one of the few with a) any speed in their torrent, b) all of the eps bundled already, and c) at least somewhat reliable compared to other groups. Doesn't mean they're always the best, but at least I knew I wouldn't run across any really egregious grammatical nonsense. But most importantly, they had a working S2 torrent that didn't require me to wait for three weeks. Me, patient? Oh, yeah, SURE.

5. It's one reason I like this series: it takes a lot of current-day political structures and warps them, moreso than the previous Gundam series (which often seemed to focus so much on off-planet that it's only vaguely analogous to modern issues). The other reason is that it seems to take the constants of Gundam and toss them together, taking what sticks.

So, frex, Relena (GWing) gets tossed with all the other feminine leads, but this time she lands half on Zechs, taking on some of his Char-like qualities, while her obsessive streak (and Heero's responding obsession) gets transferred to Saji, who himself is a mix of the pacifist Kira who's also brilliant with computers & tech, and with Heero's obsessive side, which means the Everyman role this time around (almost always played, far as I've ever seen at least, by whomever is in the angelic/lead Gundam: Amuro, Heero, Kira) just might be pre-empted by a non-Gundam pilot, unless we count Saji's back-seat driver role to be a kind of Gundaming. Uhm.

6. I was being partially facetious, and riffing off the fact that the 01, 02 friendship is one of the stronger ones in the GW series, but hardly the only one. If anything, Saji is an amalgam of Wufei and Quatre, with his reluctance to fight and his skill with engineering and his inability to sit still while there's tech to be done.

Thing is, Saji is playing a role that's both masculine and feminine: the distant lost love whose once-beloved has turned to the dark side and is fighting for all the right reasons in the wrong way. Meanwhile, Saji agonizes over whether it's okay to fight at all, given he also has reasons yet can't bring himself to do it, and most of his actions count either as a pawn, as the too-stupid-to-live bimbo wrecking things and yet strangely never once strangled for it (would Heero have put up with such incompetence!?), or as the helpless supporter and/or bystander who's just been caught up and is flailing along. All of these are normally girl-roles, in Japanese animanga.

In that sense, Saji is possibly a closer analogue to Relena than he is to Duo Maxwell, or maybe he's the bizarre love-child of Relena's ambitious side (which Marina seems to lack, mostly) and Heero's human side. Frankly, I'm not really sure what he is, other than extremely annoying at best and worthy of strangulation at worst. Cripes.

But that leaves the door open so Louise can play the boy's role, in some respects. Not all, but helluva lot more than she would've gotten if her name were Relena, or even Flay (whom I still think was an English-speaker's best attempt to make a name out of what was meant to be Fillet, bloody hell).

Same way the fact that Allie is a bit of a pushover with Marie leaves the door open for Marie/Soma to tell him she's taking the field, and Allie is left to either watch her go or agree to be her backup. Not really a normal progression when you look at it within Gundam's overall track record -- so in that sense, it makes for an intriguing halfway point. Not as whacked as the older series when it comes to women and women's roles, but still not there yet. None of them are Zoe Walsh, but they're a long way from the helpless maiden set, all the same.

8. I think Ali Al-Saachez isn't a Gundam analogue at all: I think he's a direct analogue to the damage done by mercenaries in the here-and-now, specifically Afghanistan and companies like DynCorp, the Omega Group, and the notorious Blackwater. The series toyed with the notion of PMCs in S1, but by S2, Al-Saachez appears to be embodying the metaphor all by himself, with his parallel metaphor being whot's-her-face (the sister of the three siblings from S1, uhm... Trinity? Tina? Whatever!) and her mercenary work that still pivoted on and betrayed because of personal loyalties (which Al-Saachez appears to lack).

9. Speaking of gender roles (as if I ever stopped, hah), I find it intriguing that the opening segments show female characters looking helpless and save-me-ness, but Soma isn't among them, and then we get the same treatment (apparently naked, scared/anxious expression, hair flowing, hands reaching out) for only two of the male characters, Tieria and Setsuna. Uhm. Just what is the message we're supposed to be taking home, from that contrast, I ask.

[dogemperor]

2) Ah, well and truly understood then. :D (Yeah, the one problem with BSS's subs is that the torrents do take forever. SO SRSLY MENCLAVE YOU NEED TO GET YOUR ARSE IN GEAR KTHX. :D)

(If I had a way to send 'em to you, I'd make copies of the DVDs I'd burnt of the Menclave and BSS stuff and send 'em your way, seriously)

5) I DO agree with your analysis re Saji being pretty much the "Regular Guy of the series"--and, to be honest, one of the things I do like about 00 is (at least in first season) we DO get to see pretty much how Regular Folks deal with all the craziness going down (including OMFG MOBILE SUIT TERRORISM).

(As it is, honestly, I see Heero, Loran Cehack, and Setsuna as probably the three most realistic "kids in Gundams"; in Heero's and Setsuna's case, you have kids literally trained up as child soldiers (and even given a bit of "super soldier" treatment in Heero's case--oh dear, does this mean the Haptisms are a weird mix of Heero, Quatre AND Trowa with a bit of Lady Une-esque split personality thrown in? :D) whilst Loran Cehack was pretty much essentially "anthropologist living among the natives" in prep for what was to be a mass invasion of Earth by the "Moon Men" (I won't go into too much more if you've not seen Turn A--it's actually an EXTREMELY fascinating series, probably my favourite next to 00 in fact, but in some ways a very un-Gundamish Gundam series :D--I think you'd like it in particular). I have a rather harder time buying the "geek jumps into a mobile suit" types like Amuro and Kira. :D)

6) I can also see the Relena-esque bits on Saji (I think Miliena may have actually been meant more as the explicit "Relena ref"--but showing how it can go horribly wrong and how there ARE in fact practical limits to "total pacifism" as a strategy)--all I know is I wanted to Bright Slap the guy at times. (Then again, to be honest, I wanted to Bright Slap AMURO when watching the MS Gundam movie for the first time--kid, war is hell, deal with it and get in the damn mobile suit. Your name is not Shinji Ikari and this is not essentially a primal scream psychotherapy session set to anime.)

...and now that you mention it, I *can* see a bit of Flay in Louise, at least post-break/sim!Innovator bits. (Actually, I shouldn't say sim!Innovator, but that's also a fairly major spoiler in the last five eps of Gundam 00. One of the bits where the series does get good in Season 2, IMHO.)

Re Alle and Marie (and regarding the Haptism/Pieres/Parfacy Chain in general :D)...I DO like how Soma/Marie is a strong lady, and oddly I can see the two complimenting each other (and am I the only one who sometimes gets a vibe that Alle especially sees Marie in a sort of sister complex thing?).

8) I can definitely see this. Honestly, that's the best impression I've been able to get at all--that he's pretty much a symbol for mercenary warfare like Blackwater/Xe, and even (to an extent) even leaders of coercive groups who are horrid hypocrites even by their own supposed theology but are more than happy to manipulate others. (I myself saw the latter in part because...well, aside from not shooting my own parents, I did have a childhood in a coercive religious group ("Jesus Camped" rather than being recruited as a child muhajeddin, but there IS a similar strain of extremism, especially when you count the whole Al Quaida stuff from one end and the Army of God domestic terrorists on the other end). Setsuna IS actually a pretty decent portrayal of what someone who would be a walkaway from such a group would be like, up to and including the social broken-ness.)

9) In regards to Setsuna, it does make sense eventually (pretty much in the last five eps, and particularly the last two).

Tieria...oh gods, Tieria. :D Tieria is a very interesting one to me, as pretty much from the get-go he pretty much explicitly defied set gender roles (completely aside from the crossdressing: his first Gundam is literally a "drag king" suit that opens up to show the most feminine-looking mobile suit since Noble Gundam in G Gundam (aka "Look here, we secretly replaced the standard Gundam formula with the plot for 'Super Street Fighter II Turbo'. Let's see if anyone notices")--which is NAMED FOR THE DINÉ TERM FOR TWO-SPIRIT PEOPLE (and if you know about this at all, you know how this...tends to be a bit of a giveaway on how much Tieria breaks gender concepts :D Kind of like a certain medicine seller, at that...)...and his second mobile suit essentially *gives birth to itself* for its alternate form. We won't go into how he tends to wear colours and clothing styles generally associated with effeminate men, either. :3)...and re Tieria, again, a lot makes much more sense (aside from the genderbendy stuff) in the last two or three eps. (I will warn you, though--be prepared to weep.)

...I'd also argue in a sense that both Tieria and Setsuna are in a similar boat of trying to learn how to trust and how to essentially be human (Setsuna as a walkaway from a literally murderous coercive religious group which he found out was set up by a completely amoral mercenary--and finding out his supposed saviour was also just manipulating him; Tieria in a much more literal sense, which again will be especially poignant in the last three or so eps). This is also especially ironic in Setsuna's and Tieria's cases due to their ultimate fates (which I will not spoil for you as you've not seen the last five eps, but TRUST ME, IT IS RELEVANT).

[dogemperor]

On a much lighter note--no, you aren't the only one who thinks of Elton John when thinking of FUCKING LIVONZE/FUCKING RIBBONS. (And it will become extremely apparent in the last two episodes in particular WHY he is known by THAT particular term to me. :D)

That, or the Vienna Boy's Choir. A very, very androgynous Vienna Boy's Choir. :D