Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 - Tumblr Posts
An absolute treat.
Suletta and Miorine in 79's Gundam style
Things modern Gundam has robbed us of; part one -
Look how fucking malevolent the bridge of the Musai looks. It’s a giant grinning demon and that is rad as hell.
For reference the outside of the ship looks like this, but I want more command decks that look absolutely possessed by hostile forces.
Me: Hey, I should do some short posts on the SD Gundam series designs, since I won’t have much to say on them.
Also me: I should do a post on the Great Zeong.
The MSN-03-2 Great Zeong was an upgraded version of the MSN-03 Zeong, a sister unit to the MSN-02 Zeong which was used by Char at a Baoa Qu. Though a veritable improvement on the Original Zeong, the Principality of Zeon lacked both the resources or technological know-how to build it. A prime example of the latter would be that the Great Zeong was designed to split into seven independently functioning parts, all controlled by the Newtype pilot, compared to the original’s comparatively simple wired hands and detachable head for use as an escape system. The Great Zeong is armed with a scattering mega particle gun in the chest which can also function as a “standard” Large Mega Particle Gun, a 5-barrel Mega Particle Gun in each of the arms (the arm is essentially built around the gun) which can of course be detached through the psycommu system. The Great Zeong is also armed with a mega particle gun in each leg, and another one in the head. There is yet another small Mega Particle Gun behind the front skirt, typically used when the lower body is detached. Moving on from beam-related weaponry, there are two Anti-ship missiles contained within each shoulder binder and finally each leg mounts a heat claw on its underside. In addition to all this, the Great Zeong mounts an I-Field Barrier Generator (presumably in the chest) and a Minovsky Craft System for atmospheric flight. Just as with the original, the head could also be used as an escape system. Interestingly, each of the separate parts mounts a mono-eye system when separated, including a secondary head mounted inside the upper body, akin to the Apsalus or Zaku II (I wonder if that’s any benefit to the pilot, or it’s just a design thing) . The design would be later developed into the NZ-000 Queen Mansa/Quin Mantha.
Before I get into talking about the design, I want to give a quick run-down on my feelings towards the better-known Zeong’s:
The Original MSN-02 Zeong is absolutely gorgeous. Legless, murderous, kingly, terrifying. It’s a fantastic design and its lack of legs adds charm, especially since it replaces them with thruster bells, granting it great speed and manoeuvrability. The wired hands are uniquely effective, heartening back to Gundam’s super robot roots, but also being supremely effective in combat. The head has a sort of grim expression to it, and the thrusters on each side give it a noble look- appropriate for a suit bearing the name of Zeon itself. I will admit bias here, since GBO2 gives it the sort of move-set where it can continually throw beams at something while managing to dodge with little trouble, but I do still like the Zeong itself. It feels like an appropriate final threat to cap off the series, without going overboard.
The Perfect Zeong is the Zeong with legs. Solid, makes for some cool poses, and I like how they just make it look more imposing.
I said during my Build Metaverse review that I don’t really like Mobile Armours that are just a bunch of fancy weapons and systems crammed on. The Neo Zeong is that. I like both Gundam Unicorn and Gundam Narrative, the series they’re from, and I think that they’re utilised well, but they don’t really grab me design-wise (if you need four I-fields for cover, and it still doesn’t cover the entirety of the Mobile Armour, then your MA is too large). Though I will admit that I’m probably down on them because I really like the Sinanju, which is used as their control unit. The Psycho Shard Generator does make for some cool visuals, but it’s probably the absolute limit of Newtype tech in U.C.
Also, I’m probably not gonna get the opportunity to bring this up again, but it’s stated that the Neo Zeong II is built using spare parts from the original. If you have enough left over to build a completely new unit of something as big as the Neo Zeong, I’m not sure that can be classed as a “spare” anymore.
As a successor to the original Zeong, I genuinely prefer the Great Zeong to the Neo Zeong, simply because it’s still a mobile suit, albeit a beefy one. The Neo Zeong is just a block of armour and Newtype tech, though I’ll admit this is just the design since I enjoy its use in the series. I just like how imposing the Great Zeong is, and it feels like an excellent evolution of the Zeong’s design. The Zeong’s an unfinished prototype, albeit a strong one, the Perfect Zeong is that prototype completed and the Great Zeong is just the Zeong but more, with it’s arsenal of mega particle cannons and additional weaponry. The fact that it can split into seven feels like the designer took the Zeong’s wired arms and just ran with it, which is fun, and the heat claws are a nice addition. I also like the shoulder binders, since they give it a gorgeous silhouette but they’re also used for the anti-ship missiles and Minovsky Craft System. I like the subtle change to head, it gives it a more aggressive feel when compared to the grim expression of the original.
Ok but do tell us abt the Italian dub lore, please.
ok so. ahfkajd maybe lore is a big word but its a series of facts that are HILARIOUS to me and my boyfriend lmfao. this is going to be long I Think
so! fun fact! italy is the first country that aired gundam 0079 outside of japan! in 1980 i believe. so we have this generation of boomers who grew up watching gundam and other mecha shows who are constantly complaining about Today’s Cartoons Being Bad. which is. okay whatever. but also…! i am pretty sure that the television channel who bought gundam had no idea what it is about. and so the translations feel very off and more often than not theyre wrong or just. its impossible to understand what is happening!
for example, out of curiosity i watched the first episode of vintage dub edition (which is on amaz*n prime. they removed the original series in japanese and left vintage edition there. ok whatever. explode).
i get to the first sayla and char meeting scene and. nothing about their interaction leads you to believe that theyre brother and sister. char calls her “blondie”. its just. what. i remember even seeing italian comments under gundam videos going like: “oh i recently rewatched gundam in japanese with subtitles and so many things make sense now! i had no idea char and sayla were related!”
and its funny to me. because as i said earlier this generation of mostly Men in their 50s believe everything thats not gundam or their other old mecha shows is shit. but they had no idea of what was happening in the show!!! i guess the message about war still came across but idk. its funny
the other funny thing is that italian television channels used to do this thing in the past where they would completely change characters name if they felt like they were too difficult for ita viewers. and thats how… we got Peter Rei! commander of the robot! (i’ll get to this quote in a bit.)
yes. amuro is peter. and char is scia (which is cute and kinda a pun bc scia means trail and comets leave trails!). sayla is pronounced seira like in japanese. mirai is flammet (???). fraw is mirka. haro is pallina!!!!! (little bouncy ball…….)
the dub is really bad. peter amuro sounds like an old guy. chars voice is kinda cute and fitting but everything else is a mess. but we got………… gundam italian opening!!!!! which is kinda a banger despite the lyrics being so. ???
heres the opening
the lyrics, translated:
“here we are, we are you friends,
and my name is peter rei!
there they are, assaulting us, never be afraid!
because there’s someone here who will think of you!
(gundam gundam gundam etc)
my friends, here i am, peter rei,
commander of the robot!
i am the guy who says No! to the enemies,
because no one else can!
(no one can defeat…. gundam!!!!!!)”
there’s also a longer version with other insane lyrics like Oooh here comes the indestructible guntank!!! which is. lol
ok, one last thing also
the episodes names are hilarious.
“gundam flies!” “garma dies!”
“good job flammet(mirai)!” ????
(theres some episodes missing obviously, but these are the names of the last episodes and its so funny)
gundam must win!
gundam wins again!
gundam is invincible
gundam’s enemies
BRAVO GUNDAM!!!!
no one is stronger than gundam….
lmfao really feels like grandpappy gundam is giving itself a pep talk for motivation. cmon gundy u can do it…
ok i think im done LMFAO SORRY maybe this is all irrelevant but its funny to ME
Damn, Gundam 0079 has done real good dub work. Kai and Ryu are excellent, but even little things like how Char sounds ever-so-faintly sarcastic in his interactions with Garma, or just some of the Zeon Soldiers.
It’s just really nice.
The Gundam MS Era artbook has such a haunting feeling to it. These static images captured in the times of the OYW.
Some Kycilia's from over the years
My understanding of Johnny Ridden is that he’s a blonde One Year War ace Zeon pilot that uses a red Zaku who gets VERY upset if you confuse him for the OTHER Zeon ace pilot that uses a red Zaku
art by Kazuhisa Kondo
I'm not gonna pretend I have anything super new or innovative to say about Mobile Suit Gundam. It's one of the most-analyzed anime ever, and I pale in comparison to some of the people who *have* analyzed it, but here I am, thinking about it regardless.
For context, I am watching this as part of a---as she called it---"comet swap" with my good friend @charaznablespeteevee, where I watch a mecha anime she is obsessed with (Gundam) and she watches one I am obsessed with (Code Geass). I'm not sure if I'm going to write a big long post like this about every episode (since I'm going to *try* to watch at least one per day, that would get quite exhausting), but I am liveblogging it more informally over on the worst website on Earth, if you're willing to put up with that Nazi-infested hellhole long enough to read some posts from yours truly.
In any case, Gundam and Code Geass. are many differences between these, the main ones being that Code Geass is more recent and also not widely hailed as a masterpiece of its form. It does *draw* notably from Gundam though despite having very different artistic aims and a different tone, so watching this makes sense in a way. I spent way too much of my teenagerhood obsessed with Lelouch, and now I'm watching the anime that his archetypal grandfather came from. (Goddess have mercy on my soul.)
My experience with Gundam as a franchise prior to this is very limited, but I do have some. For reference, I have seen all of:
Gundam 00, back when it aired on the SyFy channel when they had an anime block many years ago. I really liked this as a teenager but I don't remember it super well.
The Witch From Mercury, lesbian space combat, with a notable Code Geass staff connection. WFM was not perfect or anything but I loved it a lot and Suletta is very dear to me. I actually bought an Aerial gunpla a few months ago that is currently sitting unassembled in my closet.
the first Gundam 0079 compilation movie. Now, it might seem weird that I've seen this and am now going back to watch the TV series. But, while I remember the general outline of what happened, I was SUPER sick when I watched it, and I only remember what happened really, really vaguely. While I have some idea of the general outline of what's to come, I'm mostly going in genuinely blind.
like 4 or 5 episodes of Victory Gundam, which I liked but kind of fell off of. So we're giving the franchise a proper second go here.
I'm a mecha fan more generally, and I'll get into some of that as I write these, but for now that's the relevant stuff.
Anyway, my main impression of 0079's first episode is actually a structural one. It's REALLY well put together. We introduce the setting, we introduce our main characters, and we introduce the main conflict, all very economically and with a lot of style---more style than some shows with significantly less room to work with manage, in fact---and I'm immediately invested in the fate of our main character, Amuro Ray.
From what I gather here (and a little bit from outside information), my impression is that of a kid who loses his innocence very, very rapidly over the course of this story. Here, the space-hab-thing he lives on is attacked, and he ends up in the cockpit of an experimental superweapon called a Gundam (maybe you've heard of them?). I LOVE how the Gundam is framed here, like some kind of genuinely scary war machine. It's an intentionally othering effect i mostly associate with later mecha anime, especially those with outright monstrous mecha like Evangelion or even The Big O, so to see it here in such a comparatively early series in the genre is impressive.
The episode's climax sees him kill two soldiers from the enemy nation of Zeon, but it's not a triumphant thing, really. He's portrayed as kind of not really knowing what he's doing, flailing around inside this gigantic walking tank / mechanical war god. But then when he *does* figure things out, well, he has to deal with the fact that he just killed two dudes. Going by the cliffhangery ending here, it doesn't seem like his troubles are over, either.
Hoo boy, it was a mistake to play Ace Combat 7 before watching this.
I could probably just leave it there honestly. But I’m going to explain this.
Quick review of Ace Combat 7 - it’s not great. I really enjoyed Ace Combat - Assault Horizon when I was younger, so I bought 7 a little while after it came out and I just found it lacking. Half the missions seem to have you more at risk from environmental dangers than actual enemies, plane selection’s rather lacking unless you grind up some of the few enjoyable missions to unlock new ones (the lightning II is particularly guilty of this) and I was forced to rely on dlc planes for a good chunk of the game (there’s only three dedicated ground attack planes in the base game, all of which need to be bought, one of which is terrible). I will say that the base attack missions - get a certain amount of score within a time limit - were absolutely wonderful, some of my favourite missions in the game (especially the Snider’s Top mission), but because they’re also the easiest way to grind up currency, you have to play them over and over and over again, so the appeal wanes somewhat.
And the story…. Okay. Why are Erusea and Osea at war? Anyone know? Because I sure don’t. Yeah, I’m sure it’s explained in some backstory or other, but I would really like someone to just mention it. Because literally all the intercepted chatter is whatever the opposite of humanising is, because none of them express anything except a hatred for the enemy and a desire to attack them. So why are we fighting? Ace Combat’s cutscenes seem to think that they’re incredibly mature and weighty, but all they seem to be is people just staring at the sky and saying “what does it mean….. to fly” “what does it mean…… to fight”. Forgive me if I’m used to more than that.
I will say though, I actually really like how your wing-mates in 777 “spare” squadron are characterised (Mage Squadron just kinda sucks, moreso that you just never see them again after mission 3), I honestly wish we had more time with them because they’re just such a treat to listen to and fight alongside, since they very much don’t want to be here and are quick to remind us of that (I’m genuinely toying with plucking High Roller for use in Lancer). Also the voice cast is genuinely excellent, any fan of Persona 5 will feel right at home here, and it also led to the absolute wonderful feeling of assaulting an enemy base, and going “Lelouch Vi Brittania, is that you!?”.
Anyway, why did I feel the need to bring it up before talking about the new Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance trailer? Because it feels like it’s around the same ballpark. If I didn’t already know *why* the Federation and Zeon were at war, it’d feel like the whole independence thing would be swept under the rug.
“Why do we fight?” “Because those are our orders” - hey, wouldn’t it be more interesting to characterise someone as actually a true believer in spacenoid independence? Wouldn’t it be interesting to have them talk about what spacenoid independence actually means to them? Wouldn’t it be interesting to engage with the propaganda told to the population of Side 3 to motivate them to war? Wouldn’t that be relevant to an audience living in a world where the media is all-pervasive, and “alternative facts” are rife? Oh, the main character doesn’t believe in Newtypes and has a “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do” attitude to proceedings? Alright then. It just feels like a missed opportunity. Were I feeling especially uncharitable I might even call it cowardly.
To be honest, I think the main thing that’s bothering me here is just the line delivery for the Pink-Haired Character and the Doctor - they’re just so flat, and their lines are just blindingly obvious. “The Federation’s new mobile suit. This could turn the tide of the war” - it’s not foreshadowing if you just state what’s going to happen. “The Feds you save will just come back and kill my people, Doc!” - yeah, but you’re under the Antarctic Treaty, governing the treatment of POWs in wartime. Leaving them to die would likely constitute a war crime (I know Zeon’s got a lot of those, but still). It just feels like baby’s first moral dilemma. Also when Iria Sorari’s giving an explanation on newtypes, she just sounds bored, like she’s reading from a cue card. Y’know, it’s only one of the central precepts to the war for independence, don’t sound too passionate or anything.
Lastly - and I’m aware these are super nit-picky - when the Zaku slashes the shell in the last part of the trailer, it should have just flown off and penetrated anyway. It doesn’t lose all momentum just because you cut it in two. Also, I get that Japanese-to-English is never gonna be a 1:1 translation or anything. But Gundam’s had a bunch of series translated prior that can act as a cheat-sheet for pronunciation and finer details, so it’s really annoying to catch slip-ups here.
Right, now that’s all the negativity done with, what did I actually like?
Mobile suit designs are still top-notch, I really like the Gouf Custom and Guntank designs (it’s an Igloo-style Assault Guntank) in the new trailer, and I really like the new GM design - it feels like it extrapolated out what a GM based on the new Gundam would look like, and also remembered that the Federation’s mobile suits were derived from captured Zaku’s, hence the visor resembling a monoeye - it’s a really good way to take the design is what I’m getting at, and I fully expect we’ll see a model of it. However, it is just very odd seeing the more modern Zaku design side-by-side with the older Gouf Custom and Guntank designs. They had to model them anyway for the new engine, so why not go the extra mile and give us a greebled Gouf Custom or Guntank? (Yeah I know it’ll be a cost thing, and you *could* argue that a more “modern” Guntank would be the Assault Guntank, but come on) I really liked seeing the new Zaku I design also, I just don’t have an awful lot to say on it - it’s nice.
I do expect that we’ll get models of the new Zaku I and GM, but I couldn’t say on the Gouf Custom or Assault Guntank.
EDIT: Okay, so I posted this and had two immediate realisations:
Iris’s Zaku appears to have been repaired in several scenes in the trailer, so it’s likely it’ll get trashed at some point (there may also be another kit of it).
The reason the Gouf Custom hasn’t been given the greebling treatment like nearly every other mobile suit is likely so they can just make a coulor variant of its existing high grade kit, rather than having to make entirely new runners (plus they’d likely feel compelled to completely update the internals too, which would be rather expensive). It’s likely that the new Zaku II (boy I wish this thing had a proper name) will be at least partially based on the most recent Zaku II hg kit internally, again as a cost-saving measure (and a practical one too, come to think of it).