Rustal Elion - Tumblr Posts
Alright, considering I spent the last two points gushing about how much I like Mcgillis, I should probably do a post on the other great power in Gjallarhorn.
Rustal Elion, the Man Who Rules the Moon.
And I’m gonna pick apart that title before anything else. He is in charge of the Arianrhod fleet, in charge of directly safeguarding Earth, which obviously affords him a lot of power. Him being “the man who rules the moon” also puts him in the same league as Nobliss Gordon and McMurdo Barriston “the man who rules Jupiter”. It also shows his, at least at first, disconnection with the other events going on around him. Or rather the fact that he essentially just shows up, this massive power unrelated to much of the others going on around him, like he’s come down from another world. Which is fairly accurate.
His tactical excellence really goes without much saying, but the recent Iron-blooded orphans MSV has revealed a new detail I want to talk about.
ASW-G-48 Gundam Haagenti, the Gundam frame owned by the Elion family, currently stored at Vingolf with (presumably) the rest of the Seven Stars Gundam frames (which is a topic for another day).
Now we know that members of the families are able to take out and deploy Gundam frames, as Gaelio does with Kimaris, so why wasn’t the Haagenti deployed? It would have surely been a great boon to their forces, and even might have been able to match Barbatos.
Rustal even has a pilot for it in the form of Julieta Juris, so why was it just left in Vingolf?
Because Rustal chooses not to. The Gundam frames are legendary relics of a bygone age, and Rustal wishes to crush Tekkadan and Mcgillis without using them. He could even risk playing into Mcgillis’ hands by using the same “power” that Mcgillis does. So instead he uses the Reginlaze Julia.
He rejects the ancient power of the calamity war, instead choosing a machine based off the brand-new Reginlaze frame. He embraces the future, while Mcgillis and Tekkadan wield weapons of the past.
(Okay yes he also uses Dainsleif’s, but those don’t have as much of a mythic aspect in-universe as Gundam frames do).
It just adds to his character, with him possessing the power needed to enact change, but also the wisdom to recognise that some powers he probably shouldn’t use.
(And yes I know the out-of-universe explanation is “well it didn’t exist yet, so of course he couldn’t have used it”, don’t @ me.)
Also (less relevant to the above points but I just want to kinda gush about Haagenti (and Gamigin) for a bit) ever since we saw the hangar in Vingolf in episode 43, I’ve really been looking forward to seeing what the other Seven Stars Gundam’s are. Haagenti and Gamigin are utterly gorgeous, but I’m particularly interested in the Issue, Kujan and I suppose Fareed families (I always forget that the Fareed family exists as a separate entirety to Mcgillis, since he was adopted into it).
Huh, actually that does throw Mcgillis’ plan in a new light, since he (presuming it’s still around) essentially already had a Gundam as his birthright as head of the Fareed family, but still went for Bael. Maybe the colour didn’t match or something, I don’t know.
Anyway, I’m reasonably sure that the Kujan family Gundam’s no longer around, since you just know Iok would’ve deployed it, Rustal or no. But that still leaves the Issue, Fareed and Baklazan families still to go.