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juushikaThe show
I just did a Gundam Wing rewatch for the umpteenth time and these are some thoughts in approximate liveblogging fashion (such long, so many, everything is spoilers and nothing hurts):
When Heero breaks his leg after failed suicide attempt the … uh, second?, after he sets his own bone, he splints it with wrenches. Wrenches.
I’d forgotten how formative this show was for adolescent Juu; in particular, it’s a dreamscape of “no one understands me but you.” Watching the five pilots vacillate between loner freaks failing at impossible tasks and uneven, fluid pairs and compatriots still sunders me. Heero can’t socialize to save his life, but when Duo breaks him out of the hospital they do a synchronized duck and cover, their shared training and skills making them a natural team; and when Trowa nurses him back to health Heero volunteers unexpected, honest advice. Quatre is a perpetual outsider, only son and estranged from a huge family, separated from the Maganac Corps by socioeconomic rank, a pacifist fighting a war, but he is the first of the pilots to reach out and is also the best at it. Quatre and Duo disappearing to talk, quoting each other’s missions, immediately and obviously not alone. Wufei and Trowa, silence and coffee. The way they, all five, divvy up targets, responsibilities; fall into natural teams in the field: they are of a kind. The pilots also form intimacies with the female characters, but it’s not the same “no one understands me but you” (although it tends to lead to more valuable character growth), and that particular trope is my whole heart, entire. Quatre, space empath, explicitly sees them as alone, together: they came to earth alone, the colonies also reject them, but they five are fighting the same fight and that’s enough.
1x2 and 3x4 was the gospel of my adolescence, but look at the ridiculous perfection that is Trowa and Heero’s interactions, these two stoic boys engaging in intimacy: “dying … hurts like hell,” “the only way to live a good life is to act on your emotions,” “normally we wouldn’t let others touch our own mobile suits.” The combination of deadpan and honesty is a delight, that they simultaneously acknowledge the intimacy (Trowa’s rare laughter) and as easily push it aside, “then you’d better hurry up and get to know [Heavyarms].” Trowa plays foil to Heero with surprising non-passivity. He narrates his Heero-feels out of Heero’s earshot, but then reflects those internalized messages publicly; he’s content to let Heero take the lead but is more engaged than he seems, assuming an active role exactly when Heero needs him to. But also Trowa studies Heero, seeing Heero is the best of them, wondering how far can he go? what does that mean for the others?
My maturity can be tracked by my reactions to Relena. I hated her at 15, because I was entrenched in fandom’s practice of highlighting male characters and reviling female characters. (Tellingly, I didn’t have so strong a negative reaction to any other female GW character–because fandom didn’t provide strong hate for me to reiterate.) I love her now. What used to read as hilarious over-emotion (screaming Heero’s name into the ocean) is only in line with the tone of the show, with Heero’s suicide attempts and Treize’s bubble baths and Quatre’s supernatural empathy. Relena forces herself into a story, and then discovers that she belongs there.
All of therhythm emotion could be ridiculous, and some things are (I’ll talk about Heero’s death drive in a bit, but see also: rose-scented bubble baths), but the heightened emotions make more sense when I recognize the scale of the battles. It’s hilarious that they once edited out the blood (and not because of that part in the hospital escape where Heero reaches a hand to Duo and Duo stares, shocked, at … his normal, non-bloodied hand), because the body count is astounding. As suits are replaced with dolls, still the killcount stays high because colonies and bases are destroyed, and atop that is the climbing financial cost. The scale is vast.
My favorite side characters of anything and all time are Alex and Mueller. (Again, telling: adolescent Juu intrigued by violent and sadistic narratives far before her time.) When Lady Une grows recklessly violent, Treize condescendingly corrects her; but he forgets that he’s not babysitting every soldier in his army, and while he has lofty philosophical goals the fallout is destructive. Zechs is his pet project, a pacifist turned solider, proof of Treize’s philosophy. But when Zechs sees the fallout of Treize’s leadership, he both condemns that wanton violence and engages in it. My heart is in the power dynamics all through this episode–Alex and Mueller’s cocky assumptions, Zechs’s appearance of subordination, the inverted ranks, the reveal of who truly holds power–but its reflections of series’s larger issues are just as good.
Really though, the incredible number of times that Heero tries to die in the first half the show. (Suicide bomb after washing up on the beach. Falling after escaping the hospital. Non-response to enemy attack after destroying the alliance shuttle. Self-destruct when Une threatens the colonies. Giving surviving Alliance pacifists the opportunity to revenge-murder him and that particular to-do list appears to have eleven names.) Gosh golly gee, says Trowa in particular: now that’s what I call a role model!
I love the way that Heero treats death asjust wild beat communication. It’s how he acknowledges Relena, it’s how he plans to say thank you to Zechs, it’s how he responds to Quatre’s breakdown, and when he’s killing people in the field he actually emotes. It becomes his major interaction with the ZERO System: death as system projection, combat potential, possible future, deciding action.
The return to space is a turning point for the pilots, an affirmation of their unity–literally, verbally, with Quatre at the center. I love the reverberations of unity that follow: Heero showing up to silence Duo and saving him instead, Heero and Trowa’s silent communication when Heero breaks in to destroy the new suits. They are all independent agents, but able to predict and trust each other’s agency. (Trowa, certain that Heero will take care of the Duo problem in his stead.)
Heero, Duo, and Wufei imprisoned by Trowa/OZ has always been and will always be the best thing in the series because it is the height of competency and implicit/explicit communication: Heero wordlessly surrendering to Trowa; Duo recovering from the heartbreak of losing Deathscythe with stubborn aplomb; the stoic camaraderie in the cells; the fluidity of Trowa’s deception, finding virtue in his studied lack of affect and capacity for violence. These episodes are at the core of my memories of fandom, not because they contain traditional pairings (they mostly don’t) but because they are the pinnacle of that distinctive atmosphere: alone together, intimately united in strange circumstances and dangerous ways. (And because of all that psuedo-privacy and time to kill, natch.)
Oh my god the heartbreaking love that Trowa has for Quatre; the way his face softens, the pure trust he shows. And! that faith! is rewarded! (Here, also later with Quatre’s “You saved my soul, Trowa.”–this is the ship in which I am least invested, but it is so pure, so true.) The way these dynamics intertwine is amazing: Trowa’s trust in, sympathy for, reliance on Quatre’s compassion; Quatre’s willingness to harm the other Gundam pilots as the clearest sign of his breakdown, clearer even than the destruction of a colony; Heero’s violence-as-communication, his simple acknowledgement of and certainty in the face of changing times; Trowa brokering that communication, able to convey their position and possible reactions to Quatre, the most sensitive to this change.
I love seeing the boys in non-Gundam mobile suits; it makes the story less power fantasy, gives counterbalance to the Gundam upgrades/glory shots/porn; emphasizes that these pilots are not part of an institution, but are instead independent and isolated, even from the forces they fight to protect; evidencing their ruthless, educated competency and drive.
Okay so Duo, hyper-social talkative ever-present never tell a lie Duo, pilots a stealth Gundam, which is a phenomenal bit of internal conflict; I love his role in battle, how his banter becomes brutal, his actions active not reactive, denying interplay, almost more violent than Heero’s forthrightness or Trowa’s such many bullets.
Juu who’s your favorite non-pilot character? Dorothy, that’d be Dorothy. Maybe the reason I so love Dorothy is that I am Dorothy; I think Relena’s pacifism isn’t tenable, and conflict as social and personal betterment is sort of the theme of the show, but! in a cast where the core characters inspire unflagging loyalty, Relena is queen (possessing pyramid loyalty, in the same way Zechs benefits from Noin’s loyal soldiers), and her message is the most needed and most difficult to advocate; to be captivated by her, even while in argument with her, is logical. Likewise Zechs and his untenably bold final-war strategy. Dorothy is audience surrogate, sitting herself at the eye of the storm so she can witness the spectacle, delight in it, fear it.
And Dorothy possesses a spectacular ability to engage both in political machination and authentic displays of emotion; the way she manipulates Relena combines with her overt admiration to read as a compliment, the ways she manipulates her grandfather never seems in conflict with her familial relationship or grief. #lifegoals
(also did you know there’s a scene where she flips her eyebrow)
Dat Rhythm Emotion!! Just Communication is a great song, but the opening credits that accompany it are a mess; Rhythm Emotion’s are sleeker, and the change in opening also marks the tail end of the show wherein Shit Gets Real(er).
A moment to respect Sally Po. Noin’s dedication to the Gundam pilots is similar, but borrows from (and is ultimately trumped by) her love of Zechs, which I find more problematic. Sally’s trust in, and aid to, the pilots is unwavering but never uninformed; she easily reads their flaws, yet operates with a surety that then reflects back to them. She never feels subservient, slavish, or unpleasantly feminized (compare, again, to Noin) by this; she’s powerful and empowering.
My memories of the show are largely character- and relationship-driven; in rewatch, I have to remember to be patient and expect politics. But there’s too much politics. Everything in the show is a bit too big, the emotions and scale, so the politics should be too; but perhaps not so big that characters need start summarizing recent events in dialog. I was wondering if perhaps I’d only managed the first half of this show on my last rewatch, because my memories of the third quarter in particular were muddled–but no, I remember the last few episodes remarkably well: it’s purely that the third quarter is a muddled mess.
How perfect is Heero giving Quatre the ZERO System, how perfect is Heero’s knowledge of his role, of Quatre’s abilities, how perfect is Quatre, this pale fragile boy, assuming command, how perfect is it that he is best suited for it because his empathy is a form of knowledge. These endgame battles are cumulative discussions about implicit/explicit just wild beat communication, working independently/as a team, and I love them. And!! how offensively perfect is that teamwork once established, even after Quatre uninstalls the ZERO System, these rapidfire callouts that put their early series mission teamwork to shame.
I have a lot of feelings about the pilots hanging out in the mess playing chess; about Wufei totally not paying attention until he interrupts with the perfect chess move; about Duo asking Heero a question and Heero not hearing him over his intense contemplation of the middle distance, and Duo and Quatre exchanging this synchronized look; I just–Alone Together: A Series, about weird boys who have been badly socialized and speak largely in war metaphors who have found an imperfect but perfect comfort with other weird boys.
tbh we’ve just reached the point in the show where I have a lot of feelings about everything
Heero and Relena’s competitive “no, you’re the most powerful and inspiring!” is adorable. I don’t ship them romantically, likely because I’m allergic to compulsory heteronormativity, but the soulmate vibe is intense. It’s not a companionship/equality like Heero has with the other pilots; it’s a sameness of spirit. No wait, what am I talking about–it’s chivalric, different strengths held in different ways, pledged and bound to one another, a soldier’s martial strength in tandem with a monarch’s political strength, the desexualized and politicized intimacy of a knight and queen.
Quatre/Dorothy I totally ship tho, if only because Dorothy’s aggression at least fudges the heteronormative standard. I love how many of these final battles are duels–the meta-duel between Zechs and Treize pushes the show to its philosophical limits, and Zechs’s late-game motivations are a little unbelievable, but the other duels feel inevitable, Wufei’s honor-bound trial by combat, Zechs and Heero’s ongoing competition, Dorothy and Quatre with literal fencing foils pitting Zero System vs humanity and war-as-tool vs war-as-necessary-evil.
Oh god I had not realized the intense similarities between this and how I engage with Fate/Zero; that I am not as invested in a single pair of inter-character dynamics as I am the way that each dynamic plays against the rest: Treize’s respect for, proclaimed friendship with, Wufei, but thinking of Zechs at the end; Trowa searching for Quatre as Quatre is engaged in battle-dialog with Dorothy; the way that Heero weaves in and out of other people’s dynamics, how Trowa learns from him, how he forces Quatre to grow, how he and Relena mirror, how he and Zechs mirror. F/Z also explains some of my frustration with GW’s lategame politics, because it manages a similar twisty talky large philosophical scale with tighter writing, refusing to grow muddy even as it grows bold.
Quatre could feel the heart of outer space and the heart of outer space was sad and the heart was Heero, you guys
Whew, okay, that’s the TV series! I’ll be going through the rest of the GW media soon; hopefully I’ll follow through and also write about it.
Operation Meteor
On this rewatch I discovered that Gundam Wing: Operation Meteor OVA was a thing, and was like !! new content!!!, but, no, it’s a recap OVA.
About Gundam Wing.com has decent episode summaries and screencaps for the OVA; the caps for the new content are exhaustive. So, that’s convenient.
The only new content is brief transition/intro scenes showing the pilots immediately after the events in episode 49. Everyone flies back from battle; Heero lands Wing Zero in a hanger where all the pilots are there getting out of their Gundams; Heero does his cryptic socially-distant-but-watching-over-everyone thing and then adjusts the neck of his suit [screenshot here, once upon a time! a pretty one!] which is one of those flawless throwaway details that adds nothing except to make him more real and human, and, I just–bless. Later, Duo goes in search of glasses & non-alcoholic champagne while Trowa checks in on Catherine, Quatre is in hospital, and Wufei does his my-only-love-is-my-Gundam thing. At the end, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre have a toast.
I’m fond of Endless Waltz because I love after-the-climax narratives, to see what it really means for life to go on, to see that resolutions actually resolved very little; details that complicate and humanize finales (and EW is a climax in itself, and that’s cool, but not what draws me). Meanwhile, I loathe epilogues. But, Juu, aren’t they the same thing? Not really: an epilogue ties shit up with a neat bow, implying that things went on just as expected, that the resolution resolved things, that, Harry Potter epilogue-style, a happy ever after is tenable, rewarding, or realistic, none of which is true.
The Operation Meteor OVA is somewhere in the middle, mostly on account of scale. It has the feelgood vibe of an epilogue, but doesn’t overstretch itself; the way it calls back to previous scenes (Duo proposing the post-battle toast, Duo providing the post-battle toast) is a cutesy bookend, but the views of the debris of the window and the physical/social separation of the pilots is counterbalance. And how perfect are the small, human touches of those moments, Heero’s suit collar, Duo trying to carry too many bags in low/no gravity, providing the humanizing detail that pulls a climax back down to scale.
But none of that really matters; what does matter is Trowa’s new nickname, as featured in the title cards, he is now and forever: Trowa Barton: Cool Machine.
Endless Waltz
Time for Endless Waltz which was so singularly enjoyable guys lemme tell you
Seeing the final battle again, with better budget and more detail (even with the suit retcon redesigns insisting that Heavyarms has always been green), is amazing–it so much better conveys the scale and destruction.
Noin and Une talk about how peace is harder to maintain than attain, and here are these women doing that, in the Preventers, in politics; there’s commentary to be made her about emotional labor, about men doing showy physical things and then leaving women to do the daily maintenance which is equally complex and difficult but socially under-valued.
So this is an instinct I’ve never been able to explain: why is it so satisfying to see a character you love in a new outfit? (or with similar identifiable change of appearance.) Trowa’s shirtless suspenders and casual violence reads as fanservice, but so too does Heero’s jeans and Duo’s red turtleneck. Because of my face blindness and general inability to visualize, I have a lot invested in anime-style character design with identifiable hair styles and/or dress–these are the same markers I look for in real life and can rarely find, so being able to reliably parse characters is, honestly, a relief. But it’s equally satisfying to see that design iterated: different but logically connected hairstyles (Sailor Moon and PMMM both do this beautifully); cool weather, warm weather, festival outfits, especially if united by identifying features (my ineffable love for Persona 4 Yosuke’s v-neck tshirts, under his uniform jackets, under his work apron, as his casual wear). I guess it’s that it makes the characters dynamic while keeping them identifiable–and I benefit from the latter, and am a sucker for the former, for small, frivolous, human detail, glimpses of intimacy and personality, reminders of physical bodies.
A thousand million trillion feelings about these bits of backstory; like, I know I have Episode Zero still to read, but as a direct continuation of the anime this is so deep and satisfying. Likewise, the “same, but more” of the dialog, where everything feels turned to 11, from Duo’s banter into Heero’s silence, to Quatre’s inevitable profound guilt. Sequel stories are prone to sequelitis in their attempts to reiterate what made the source material successful; this has the same intent but better success, that feeling of more, of exaggerated, of indulgent–but productive.
Duo: “Hey, I know this style of combat! The one where they stand stationary with a machine gun pointed at the enemy and fire continuously until all the bullets are gone! Trowa’s in that suit!” and to be fair he’s not wrong.
In my adolescence I was a 1x2 shipper, and tbh my rewatch of the show made me wonder why because their dynamic is great but it’s really only in the first quarter; EW explains it, because Duo is on fire in this movie and his interactions with Heero are a delight. But I’ll be damned if the dynamic between Heero and Trowa doesn’t continue to be the highlight of this film, as with this series; and it works even better set against Heero’s dynamic with Duo in the hacking scene. Violence as communication, implicit communication, Trowa’s propensity for undercover work and aliases, Heero’s instant decision making, and Duo in the middle, simultaneously driven, brilliant soldier and comic relief/chatterbox/fall guy.
I’ve had a lot of feels about the increased production value, because this whole thing is beautiful, and profound, and sleek, and devastating in its violence; but the single most important thing is the sequence of Heero boarding Wing Zero in space; every yen spent on his fingers flying over the controls is worth it, ahhhhh yes good.
Duo’s hair is literally full of secrets.
Remember what I sad about that production value, well, I was lying, because no one on this green earth needed to see Heavyarms do Trowa’s signature circus flippy twirly thing.
This movie is better written than the show. It has the same over-sizedness, but is less muddled in message. It also has complications, but they’re given clearer voice–Wufei, in particular. (Zechs is better here, too, less overblown, more convincing.) I like the way that the maintenance of peace is democratized enough that I can forgive the literal happy ever after/epilogue vibe of the aftermath.
At first blush, it feels an oversight that Heero isn’t involved in most of the climactic battle–he’s our protagonist, shouldn’t he be central? But I love beyond words his role in this movie. I love how physically present he is, on the roof with Duo with his shirt tugging in the wind; as he collapses and Relena catches him. He’s proactive and tactical, deciding the course of every action up to the climax; his communication is, perhaps unexpectedly, superb, from the silent agreement with Trowa to the verification that the Brussels base is secure. He’s in active debate with Wufei, and thus with Treize and Zechs, asking what peace offers a soldier. He’s in active debate with his past, asking why war demands soldiers. He’s intensely vulnerable, despite his competency and mobile suit, with sharp clavicles and bare arms and frequently closed eyes. It could feel predictable to make the best, coldest warrior so broken-hearted, just as it could feel disappointing to make him absent from a major battle. It doesn’t. This is ultimately Heero’s story, and I love him here more than I do anywhere else.
Episode Zero! (I’ll be reading the manga we have in the house in publication order; I probably won’t exhaustively hunt down the whatever we’re missing, although I may check out this fabled Frozen Teardrop thingy because it was after my time and I legit know nothing about it.)
I’m a sucker for identifiable character design, and I’m a sucker for design reiterated, and I’m a sucker for design origin stories like How Duo Got His Braid. I am on the other hand mildly allergic to the overuse of catchphrases, because I think it wears them thin and turns a character caricatured.
This, from Duo’s summary page, I will just leave here: “Duo descends to Earth after G’s proposal; however… Later, he gets caught and beaten, and generally has an awful time.”
Wait, hold on, Noin is 19 in the series, which makes her 12 in Episode Zero??? Oh god the wiki confirms this: Treize hand-picked her as an actual infant (10 years old) to be part of the Specials. Treize as 17 in Episode Zero works, esp. given Mariemaia’s imminent conception, but starting the Specials at 15 or being 24 in the events of the series is less convincing. My rule for anime is “when in a state of wtf, age everyone up by 10 years.” My headcanon(/canon is just wrong so I ignore it) puts Treize in his early or mid 30s during the events of the series, youthful enough by military standards to possess a wealth of charisma, but mature enough to be educate and conniving. Zechs reads as early/mid 20s, the confusion and anger and self-actualization–so 19 works, I guess. Only the 15 year old pilots seem entirely correct to me: battle savants, impossibly young and impossibly capable, in adolescence both literal and metaphorical, their battles as bildungsroman.
Of all pilots, it makes most sense, thematically, for Heero’s backstory to be inexplicably, coincidentally tied to the political events that lead to Operation Meteor. Doesn’t change the fact that I still hate kind sort of narrative.
Since Trowa’s story is doing it too, allow me to expand: that thing where everyone’s backstories overlap bugs me because 1) it depends on coincidence, and nothing spells quicker narrative death; 2) it makes the world seem too small; 3) when repeated, it undermines itself–because the trope can work, interconnected history can make things profound, but not when everyone just happens to be everyone else’s long lost something-or-other; finally, 4) it undermines contemporary emotional growth or character interactions. Trowa, in particular: his relationship with Catherine is both what he fights for and what humanizes him, legitimizing but also balancing his identity as soldier. It is also something he self-discovers and chooses, his personal journey within a larger landscape of war. To make them biological siblings removes the aspect of found family and choice. It has its own messages (he always had a name, identity, and interpersonal connections), but these oppose his arc in the series & EW (that he was a no-name child solider who discovered/built his name, identity, connections).
babby Zechs possesses shorter hair, sunglasses, and my heart
Sigh Quatre’s backstory jives almost not at all with his contemporary personality/character growth (although it’s nice to have more background to the why of test tube babies), and his natural, immediate leadership on the battlefield undermines his process of learning to lead in the series.
Wufei’s backstory, on the other hand, has always convinced me. Not because I enjoy the fridging–I don’t–but because he’s the type of person to martyr himself on another person’s pain, and I like the contrast it introduces to his character. He seems the most distant and ideological and impersonal of the pilots; giving him the most explicitly human and intimate of their backstories is an interesting move.
The Operation Meteor chapter is almost entirely perfect, though. Well cut, to prevent redundancy. Doesn’t reach so far, so can’t constantly overdo things. And I’ve always loved the twist of what Operation Meteor originally was, and the way various powers and plots keep coming back to the issue of dropping colonies: large action versus rogue specialty teams, folllowing orders versus following one’s heart, bids for power versus dismantling power, and the irony of being manipulated into going rogue and then discovering you’re not alone.
The Preventer 5 teaser is just so bad, dang.
So: a mixed bag, moreso than I remember. Episode Zero is the most canonical of the manga because it’s written by series writer Katsuyuki Sumizawa, and that’s nice; I still disregard lots of it. In summary, most of the stories work–but seeing them written out, they’re surprisingly flat. It’s probably on account of scale: distilling entire angsty backstories into 30 manga pages means taking a lot of shortcuts.
Blind Target
The Gundam Wing revisit now brings us to the Blind Target manga, which I am almost certain I’ve read before but can in no ways remember.
Remember when I said that EW’s Heero was the most beautiful Heero; well, I was lying, because Sakura Asagi’s art turns him into a creature composed entirely of clavicles and bare arms, and, I just. vulnerable! strong! so physically present!
These (Viz-added and -written, I presume) remix/recap things are generally awful as well as redundant, but I bring you again from a profile of Duo: “Duo may feel his friends are suckering him sometimes. [Lots of examples, canonical and from this manga, all totes valid.] So, is he really a worrywart and a sucker, or is he using his wits: how does a lonely orphan best keep his new–and only–family together and safe?” Okay but that’s surprisingly insightful and also, ow, my feels.
Trowa: “I can’t recover my lost past, but I can create my future.” See! this is what I was talking about re: Episode Zero’s interconnected backstories undermining contemporary character growth! important, significant character growth!
Blind Target is stupidly good. Its only but perhaps inescapable flaw is putting the band back together, both because it overlooks how often (and well, and fluidly) the pilots work independently and in random pairs in the series; also because getting all five together is supposed to be a big deal and constantly reuniting them (here, in EW) undermines that.
sequels means Juu talks about “undermining” a lot but tbh that’s what sequels do
But!! everything else is magical. It benefits so much from scope, a reasonably-sized crisis (and timeline) with thematic implications, nary an over-reaching mess to be seen. My greatest pleasures of GW are twofold: small-scale competency porn (hands on Gundam controls rather than distance views of Gundams making things explode; pilots infiltrating, hacking, repairing their Gundams) and surprisingly intimate conversations, and in Blind Target those things happen together! constantly! It’s disgustingly in-character and private and ideological and intimate and human.
I love love love the epilogue, which is really just the direct precursor to EW, all about the pilots and their relationships with their Gundams and with peace, and beautifully engages Wufei’s choices, and the pages where everyone is with their Gundams, in dialog, in farewell, it’s just, it’s so beautiful.
Ground Zero! (and with it, the last manga I have on hand.) This one seems a bit more familiar.
This art style, ehhhh; everyone’s bobbleheads make them look so young, and while I’m all for reminders that the pilots are actually fifteen, here they read as children. Also never a fan of chibi reaction shots and just … anything comic or stylized, and there’s a lot of that here.
I am not sold on Heero’s internal monologue and I am honestly unsure why. (Maybe an issue of tone? The tone of this whole thing is ridiculous. Maybe it’s that I think the show benefits from the distance it keeps from Heero’s thoughts; he’s simultaneously inscrutable and a weathervane–we benefit from seeing his drastic actions and hearing his honest opinons more than we would from listening to him process everything all the time.)
Eyyyyyy time for serious criticism is over because nothing about this warrants it! What a mess. Untenably complex machinations with a humorous edge do not an interesting or remotely convincing narrative make, and I find caricatures of the pilots’s personalities to be dismissive rather than engaging. Under the stupidity, I guess what they have to say about the soldier in peacetime thing is thematically apt, and I like that Wufei is already working with Mariemaia, but I’m about 95% “that’s nice, don’t care” with this manga.
The Relena chapter is significantly less offensive but also not awfully profound, despite the heavyhanded conceit.
But, like, dang this is bad.
Frozen Teardrop
This is most likely the end of the Gundam Wing revisit! New Mobile Report Gundam Wing: Frozen Teardrop Picture Drama–A New Battle or, as I know it: wait wtf they’re still making more Gundam Wing??
The answer is dang am I glad I didn’t go into this with any pretense of completionism, aka yes: there are more spin-off stories from the era of the show’s release, and stuff that started in 2010 and is ongoing, and I never knew about any of it! (A moment to appreciate the restricted information dissemination of year ~2000 internet and the fact that, formative fragment of my adolescence that this is, I honestly never considered that the expanded universe could be ongoing.)
Frozen Teardrop is an ongoing light novel about war on Mars 20-30 years after the series, with a cast consisting of GW core characters and their offspring. I watched the picture drama, which looks like it covers some early (but post-prologue) chapter(s).
Actually beautiful static illustrations, actually fantastic voice acting, surprisingly strong dialog; and hilarious character design for the second generation cast–but I get the feeling that that’s consistent with the entire novel. I understand the inclination to create weird hybrid child clones that are obviously reminiscent of well-loved characters in the same way I understand the sequelitis: more of what worked before seems like a good idea, but is as often clichéd and ridiculous.
But it’s intriguing to jump so far ahead in time, to imply significant changes for the core cast (and to see what still hasn’t changed); the interpersonal elements are hamfisted but in an endearing way, and the dialog! is so good! that I can forgive a lot just for the radio conversation between Heero and Relena.
If this were complete and fully translated, I would be willing to put aside my better judgment and read the whole of what feels like official GW fanfiction; but as it is neither, I am content to have gotten a glimpse of it and move on.
srsly great quality picture drama tho; I have never delved into the Great Drama CD (and Other Spinoff Media) Realm, because my disinclination to completionism is actually a defense mechanism against a tendency towards obsession (aka I legit dun wanna start or I’ll never stop), and also because I assume the quality is hit and miss–but this was great, production-wise
I just did a Gundam Wing rewatch for the umpteenth time and these are some thoughts in approximate liveblogging fashion (such long, so many, everything is spoilers and nothing hurts):
When Heero breaks his leg after failed suicide attempt the … uh, second?, after he sets his own bone, he splints it with wrenches. Wrenches.
I’d forgotten how formative this show was for adolescent Juu; in particular, it’s a dreamscape of “no one understands me but you.” Watching the five pilots vacillate between loner freaks failing at impossible tasks and uneven, fluid pairs and compatriots still sunders me. Heero can’t socialize to save his life, but when Duo breaks him out of the hospital they do a synchronized duck and cover, their shared training and skills making them a natural team; and when Trowa nurses him back to health Heero volunteers unexpected, honest advice. Quatre is a perpetual outsider, only son and estranged from a huge family, separated from the Maganac Corps by socioeconomic rank, a pacifist fighting a war, but he is the first of the pilots to reach out and is also the best at it. Quatre and Duo disappearing to talk, quoting each other’s missions, immediately and obviously not alone. Wufei and Trowa, silence and coffee. The way they, all five, divvy up targets, responsibilities; fall into natural teams in the field: they are of a kind. The pilots also form intimacies with the female characters, but it’s not the same “no one understands me but you” (although it tends to lead to more valuable character growth), and that particular trope is my whole heart, entire. Quatre, space empath, explicitly sees them as alone, together: they came to earth alone, the colonies also reject them, but they five are fighting the same fight and that’s enough.
1x2 and 3x4 was the gospel of my adolescence, but look at the ridiculous perfection that is Trowa and Heero’s interactions, these two stoic boys engaging in intimacy: “dying … hurts like hell,” “the only way to live a good life is to act on your emotions,” “normally we wouldn’t let others touch our own mobile suits.” The combination of deadpan and honesty is a delight, that they simultaneously acknowledge the intimacy (Trowa’s rare laughter) and as easily push it aside, “then you’d better hurry up and get to know [Heavyarms].” Trowa plays foil to Heero with surprising non-passivity. He narrates his Heero-feels out of Heero’s earshot, but then reflects those internalized messages publicly; he’s content to let Heero take the lead but is more engaged than he seems, assuming an active role exactly when Heero needs him to. But also Trowa studies Heero, seeing Heero is the best of them, wondering how far can he go? what does that mean for the others?
My maturity can be tracked by my reactions to Relena. I hated her at 15, because I was entrenched in fandom’s practice of highlighting male characters and reviling female characters. (Tellingly, I didn’t have so strong a negative reaction to any other female GW character–because fandom didn’t provide strong hate for me to reiterate.) I love her now. What used to read as hilarious over-emotion (screaming Heero’s name into the ocean) is only in line with the tone of the show, with Heero’s suicide attempts and Treize’s bubble baths and Quatre’s supernatural empathy. Relena forces herself into a story, and then discovers that she belongs there.
All of the
My favorite side characters of anything and all time are Alex and Mueller. (Again, telling: adolescent Juu intrigued by violent and sadistic narratives far before her time.) When Lady Une grows recklessly violent, Treize condescendingly corrects her; but he forgets that he’s not babysitting every soldier in his army, and while he has lofty philosophical goals the fallout is destructive. Zechs is his pet project, a pacifist turned solider, proof of Treize’s philosophy. But when Zechs sees the fallout of Treize’s leadership, he both condemns that wanton violence and engages in it. My heart is in the power dynamics all through this episode–Alex and Mueller’s cocky assumptions, Zechs’s appearance of subordination, the inverted ranks, the reveal of who truly holds power–but its reflections of series’s larger issues are just as good.
Really though, the incredible number of times that Heero tries to die in the first half the show. (Suicide bomb after washing up on the beach. Falling after escaping the hospital. Non-response to enemy attack after destroying the alliance shuttle. Self-destruct when Une threatens the colonies. Giving surviving Alliance pacifists the opportunity to revenge-murder him and that particular to-do list appears to have eleven names.) Gosh golly gee, says Trowa in particular: now that’s what I call a role model!
I love the way that Heero treats death as
The return to space is a turning point for the pilots, an affirmation of their unity–literally, verbally, with Quatre at the center. I love the reverberations of unity that follow: Heero showing up to silence Duo and saving him instead, Heero and Trowa’s silent communication when Heero breaks in to destroy the new suits. They are all independent agents, but able to predict and trust each other’s agency. (Trowa, certain that Heero will take care of the Duo problem in his stead.)
Heero, Duo, and Wufei imprisoned by Trowa/OZ has always been and will always be the best thing in the series because it is the height of competency and implicit/explicit communication: Heero wordlessly surrendering to Trowa; Duo recovering from the heartbreak of losing Deathscythe with stubborn aplomb; the stoic camaraderie in the cells; the fluidity of Trowa’s deception, finding virtue in his studied lack of affect and capacity for violence. These episodes are at the core of my memories of fandom, not because they contain traditional pairings (they mostly don’t) but because they are the pinnacle of that distinctive atmosphere: alone together, intimately united in strange circumstances and dangerous ways. (And because of all that psuedo-privacy and time to kill, natch.)
Oh my god the heartbreaking love that Trowa has for Quatre; the way his face softens, the pure trust he shows. And! that faith! is rewarded! (Here, also later with Quatre’s “You saved my soul, Trowa.”–this is the ship in which I am least invested, but it is so pure, so true.) The way these dynamics intertwine is amazing: Trowa’s trust in, sympathy for, reliance on Quatre’s compassion; Quatre’s willingness to harm the other Gundam pilots as the clearest sign of his breakdown, clearer even than the destruction of a colony; Heero’s violence-as-communication, his simple acknowledgement of and certainty in the face of changing times; Trowa brokering that communication, able to convey their position and possible reactions to Quatre, the most sensitive to this change.
I love seeing the boys in non-Gundam mobile suits; it makes the story less power fantasy, gives counterbalance to the Gundam upgrades/glory shots/porn; emphasizes that these pilots are not part of an institution, but are instead independent and isolated, even from the forces they fight to protect; evidencing their ruthless, educated competency and drive.
Okay so Duo, hyper-social talkative ever-present never tell a lie Duo, pilots a stealth Gundam, which is a phenomenal bit of internal conflict; I love his role in battle, how his banter becomes brutal, his actions active not reactive, denying interplay, almost more violent than Heero’s forthrightness or Trowa’s such many bullets.
Juu who’s your favorite non-pilot character? Dorothy, that’d be Dorothy. Maybe the reason I so love Dorothy is that I am Dorothy; I think Relena’s pacifism isn’t tenable, and conflict as social and personal betterment is sort of the theme of the show, but! in a cast where the core characters inspire unflagging loyalty, Relena is queen (possessing pyramid loyalty, in the same way Zechs benefits from Noin’s loyal soldiers), and her message is the most needed and most difficult to advocate; to be captivated by her, even while in argument with her, is logical. Likewise Zechs and his untenably bold final-war strategy. Dorothy is audience surrogate, sitting herself at the eye of the storm so she can witness the spectacle, delight in it, fear it.
And Dorothy possesses a spectacular ability to engage both in political machination and authentic displays of emotion; the way she manipulates Relena combines with her overt admiration to read as a compliment, the ways she manipulates her grandfather never seems in conflict with her familial relationship or grief. #lifegoals
(also did you know there’s a scene where she flips her eyebrow)
Dat Rhythm Emotion!! Just Communication is a great song, but the opening credits that accompany it are a mess; Rhythm Emotion’s are sleeker, and the change in opening also marks the tail end of the show wherein Shit Gets Real(er).
A moment to respect Sally Po. Noin’s dedication to the Gundam pilots is similar, but borrows from (and is ultimately trumped by) her love of Zechs, which I find more problematic. Sally’s trust in, and aid to, the pilots is unwavering but never uninformed; she easily reads their flaws, yet operates with a surety that then reflects back to them. She never feels subservient, slavish, or unpleasantly feminized (compare, again, to Noin) by this; she’s powerful and empowering.
My memories of the show are largely character- and relationship-driven; in rewatch, I have to remember to be patient and expect politics. But there’s too much politics. Everything in the show is a bit too big, the emotions and scale, so the politics should be too; but perhaps not so big that characters need start summarizing recent events in dialog. I was wondering if perhaps I’d only managed the first half of this show on my last rewatch, because my memories of the third quarter in particular were muddled–but no, I remember the last few episodes remarkably well: it’s purely that the third quarter is a muddled mess.
How perfect is Heero giving Quatre the ZERO System, how perfect is Heero’s knowledge of his role, of Quatre’s abilities, how perfect is Quatre, this pale fragile boy, assuming command, how perfect is it that he is best suited for it because his empathy is a form of knowledge. These endgame battles are cumulative discussions about implicit/explicit just wild beat communication, working independently/as a team, and I love them. And!! how offensively perfect is that teamwork once established, even after Quatre uninstalls the ZERO System, these rapidfire callouts that put their early series mission teamwork to shame.
I have a lot of feelings about the pilots hanging out in the mess playing chess; about Wufei totally not paying attention until he interrupts with the perfect chess move; about Duo asking Heero a question and Heero not hearing him over his intense contemplation of the middle distance, and Duo and Quatre exchanging this synchronized look; I just–Alone Together: A Series, about weird boys who have been badly socialized and speak largely in war metaphors who have found an imperfect but perfect comfort with other weird boys.
tbh we’ve just reached the point in the show where I have a lot of feelings about everything
Heero and Relena’s competitive “no, you’re the most powerful and inspiring!” is adorable. I don’t ship them romantically, likely because I’m allergic to compulsory heteronormativity, but the soulmate vibe is intense. It’s not a companionship/equality like Heero has with the other pilots; it’s a sameness of spirit. No wait, what am I talking about–it’s chivalric, different strengths held in different ways, pledged and bound to one another, a soldier’s martial strength in tandem with a monarch’s political strength, the desexualized and politicized intimacy of a knight and queen.
Quatre/Dorothy I totally ship tho, if only because Dorothy’s aggression at least fudges the heteronormative standard. I love how many of these final battles are duels–the meta-duel between Zechs and Treize pushes the show to its philosophical limits, and Zechs’s late-game motivations are a little unbelievable, but the other duels feel inevitable, Wufei’s honor-bound trial by combat, Zechs and Heero’s ongoing competition, Dorothy and Quatre with literal fencing foils pitting Zero System vs humanity and war-as-tool vs war-as-necessary-evil.
Oh god I had not realized the intense similarities between this and how I engage with Fate/Zero; that I am not as invested in a single pair of inter-character dynamics as I am the way that each dynamic plays against the rest: Treize’s respect for, proclaimed friendship with, Wufei, but thinking of Zechs at the end; Trowa searching for Quatre as Quatre is engaged in battle-dialog with Dorothy; the way that Heero weaves in and out of other people’s dynamics, how Trowa learns from him, how he forces Quatre to grow, how he and Relena mirror, how he and Zechs mirror. F/Z also explains some of my frustration with GW’s lategame politics, because it manages a similar twisty talky large philosophical scale with tighter writing, refusing to grow muddy even as it grows bold.
Quatre could feel the heart of outer space and the heart of outer space was sad and the heart was Heero, you guys
Whew, okay, that’s the TV series! I’ll be going through the rest of the GW media soon; hopefully I’ll follow through and also write about it.
Operation Meteor
On this rewatch I discovered that Gundam Wing: Operation Meteor OVA was a thing, and was like !! new content!!!, but, no, it’s a recap OVA.
About Gundam Wing.com has decent episode summaries and screencaps for the OVA; the caps for the new content are exhaustive. So, that’s convenient.
The only new content is brief transition/intro scenes showing the pilots immediately after the events in episode 49. Everyone flies back from battle; Heero lands Wing Zero in a hanger where all the pilots are there getting out of their Gundams; Heero does his cryptic socially-distant-but-watching-over-everyone thing and then adjusts the neck of his suit [screenshot here, once upon a time! a pretty one!] which is one of those flawless throwaway details that adds nothing except to make him more real and human, and, I just–bless. Later, Duo goes in search of glasses & non-alcoholic champagne while Trowa checks in on Catherine, Quatre is in hospital, and Wufei does his my-only-love-is-my-Gundam thing. At the end, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre have a toast.
I’m fond of Endless Waltz because I love after-the-climax narratives, to see what it really means for life to go on, to see that resolutions actually resolved very little; details that complicate and humanize finales (and EW is a climax in itself, and that’s cool, but not what draws me). Meanwhile, I loathe epilogues. But, Juu, aren’t they the same thing? Not really: an epilogue ties shit up with a neat bow, implying that things went on just as expected, that the resolution resolved things, that, Harry Potter epilogue-style, a happy ever after is tenable, rewarding, or realistic, none of which is true.
The Operation Meteor OVA is somewhere in the middle, mostly on account of scale. It has the feelgood vibe of an epilogue, but doesn’t overstretch itself; the way it calls back to previous scenes (Duo proposing the post-battle toast, Duo providing the post-battle toast) is a cutesy bookend, but the views of the debris of the window and the physical/social separation of the pilots is counterbalance. And how perfect are the small, human touches of those moments, Heero’s suit collar, Duo trying to carry too many bags in low/no gravity, providing the humanizing detail that pulls a climax back down to scale.
But none of that really matters; what does matter is Trowa’s new nickname, as featured in the title cards, he is now and forever: Trowa Barton: Cool Machine.
Endless Waltz
Time for Endless Waltz which was so singularly enjoyable guys lemme tell you
Seeing the final battle again, with better budget and more detail (even with the suit retcon redesigns insisting that Heavyarms has always been green), is amazing–it so much better conveys the scale and destruction.
Noin and Une talk about how peace is harder to maintain than attain, and here are these women doing that, in the Preventers, in politics; there’s commentary to be made her about emotional labor, about men doing showy physical things and then leaving women to do the daily maintenance which is equally complex and difficult but socially under-valued.
So this is an instinct I’ve never been able to explain: why is it so satisfying to see a character you love in a new outfit? (or with similar identifiable change of appearance.) Trowa’s shirtless suspenders and casual violence reads as fanservice, but so too does Heero’s jeans and Duo’s red turtleneck. Because of my face blindness and general inability to visualize, I have a lot invested in anime-style character design with identifiable hair styles and/or dress–these are the same markers I look for in real life and can rarely find, so being able to reliably parse characters is, honestly, a relief. But it’s equally satisfying to see that design iterated: different but logically connected hairstyles (Sailor Moon and PMMM both do this beautifully); cool weather, warm weather, festival outfits, especially if united by identifying features (my ineffable love for Persona 4 Yosuke’s v-neck tshirts, under his uniform jackets, under his work apron, as his casual wear). I guess it’s that it makes the characters dynamic while keeping them identifiable–and I benefit from the latter, and am a sucker for the former, for small, frivolous, human detail, glimpses of intimacy and personality, reminders of physical bodies.
A thousand million trillion feelings about these bits of backstory; like, I know I have Episode Zero still to read, but as a direct continuation of the anime this is so deep and satisfying. Likewise, the “same, but more” of the dialog, where everything feels turned to 11, from Duo’s banter into Heero’s silence, to Quatre’s inevitable profound guilt. Sequel stories are prone to sequelitis in their attempts to reiterate what made the source material successful; this has the same intent but better success, that feeling of more, of exaggerated, of indulgent–but productive.
Duo: “Hey, I know this style of combat! The one where they stand stationary with a machine gun pointed at the enemy and fire continuously until all the bullets are gone! Trowa’s in that suit!” and to be fair he’s not wrong.
In my adolescence I was a 1x2 shipper, and tbh my rewatch of the show made me wonder why because their dynamic is great but it’s really only in the first quarter; EW explains it, because Duo is on fire in this movie and his interactions with Heero are a delight. But I’ll be damned if the dynamic between Heero and Trowa doesn’t continue to be the highlight of this film, as with this series; and it works even better set against Heero’s dynamic with Duo in the hacking scene. Violence as communication, implicit communication, Trowa’s propensity for undercover work and aliases, Heero’s instant decision making, and Duo in the middle, simultaneously driven, brilliant soldier and comic relief/chatterbox/fall guy.
I’ve had a lot of feels about the increased production value, because this whole thing is beautiful, and profound, and sleek, and devastating in its violence; but the single most important thing is the sequence of Heero boarding Wing Zero in space; every yen spent on his fingers flying over the controls is worth it, ahhhhh yes good.
Duo’s hair is literally full of secrets.
Remember what I sad about that production value, well, I was lying, because no one on this green earth needed to see Heavyarms do Trowa’s signature circus flippy twirly thing.
This movie is better written than the show. It has the same over-sizedness, but is less muddled in message. It also has complications, but they’re given clearer voice–Wufei, in particular. (Zechs is better here, too, less overblown, more convincing.) I like the way that the maintenance of peace is democratized enough that I can forgive the literal happy ever after/epilogue vibe of the aftermath.
At first blush, it feels an oversight that Heero isn’t involved in most of the climactic battle–he’s our protagonist, shouldn’t he be central? But I love beyond words his role in this movie. I love how physically present he is, on the roof with Duo with his shirt tugging in the wind; as he collapses and Relena catches him. He’s proactive and tactical, deciding the course of every action up to the climax; his communication is, perhaps unexpectedly, superb, from the silent agreement with Trowa to the verification that the Brussels base is secure. He’s in active debate with Wufei, and thus with Treize and Zechs, asking what peace offers a soldier. He’s in active debate with his past, asking why war demands soldiers. He’s intensely vulnerable, despite his competency and mobile suit, with sharp clavicles and bare arms and frequently closed eyes. It could feel predictable to make the best, coldest warrior so broken-hearted, just as it could feel disappointing to make him absent from a major battle. It doesn’t. This is ultimately Heero’s story, and I love him here more than I do anywhere else.
Episode Zero! (I’ll be reading the manga we have in the house in publication order; I probably won’t exhaustively hunt down the whatever we’re missing, although I may check out this fabled Frozen Teardrop thingy because it was after my time and I legit know nothing about it.)
I’m a sucker for identifiable character design, and I’m a sucker for design reiterated, and I’m a sucker for design origin stories like How Duo Got His Braid. I am on the other hand mildly allergic to the overuse of catchphrases, because I think it wears them thin and turns a character caricatured.
This, from Duo’s summary page, I will just leave here: “Duo descends to Earth after G’s proposal; however… Later, he gets caught and beaten, and generally has an awful time.”
Wait, hold on, Noin is 19 in the series, which makes her 12 in Episode Zero??? Oh god the wiki confirms this: Treize hand-picked her as an actual infant (10 years old) to be part of the Specials. Treize as 17 in Episode Zero works, esp. given Mariemaia’s imminent conception, but starting the Specials at 15 or being 24 in the events of the series is less convincing. My rule for anime is “when in a state of wtf, age everyone up by 10 years.” My headcanon(/canon is just wrong so I ignore it) puts Treize in his early or mid 30s during the events of the series, youthful enough by military standards to possess a wealth of charisma, but mature enough to be educate and conniving. Zechs reads as early/mid 20s, the confusion and anger and self-actualization–so 19 works, I guess. Only the 15 year old pilots seem entirely correct to me: battle savants, impossibly young and impossibly capable, in adolescence both literal and metaphorical, their battles as bildungsroman.
Of all pilots, it makes most sense, thematically, for Heero’s backstory to be inexplicably, coincidentally tied to the political events that lead to Operation Meteor. Doesn’t change the fact that I still hate kind sort of narrative.
Since Trowa’s story is doing it too, allow me to expand: that thing where everyone’s backstories overlap bugs me because 1) it depends on coincidence, and nothing spells quicker narrative death; 2) it makes the world seem too small; 3) when repeated, it undermines itself–because the trope can work, interconnected history can make things profound, but not when everyone just happens to be everyone else’s long lost something-or-other; finally, 4) it undermines contemporary emotional growth or character interactions. Trowa, in particular: his relationship with Catherine is both what he fights for and what humanizes him, legitimizing but also balancing his identity as soldier. It is also something he self-discovers and chooses, his personal journey within a larger landscape of war. To make them biological siblings removes the aspect of found family and choice. It has its own messages (he always had a name, identity, and interpersonal connections), but these oppose his arc in the series & EW (that he was a no-name child solider who discovered/built his name, identity, connections).
babby Zechs possesses shorter hair, sunglasses, and my heart
Sigh Quatre’s backstory jives almost not at all with his contemporary personality/character growth (although it’s nice to have more background to the why of test tube babies), and his natural, immediate leadership on the battlefield undermines his process of learning to lead in the series.
Wufei’s backstory, on the other hand, has always convinced me. Not because I enjoy the fridging–I don’t–but because he’s the type of person to martyr himself on another person’s pain, and I like the contrast it introduces to his character. He seems the most distant and ideological and impersonal of the pilots; giving him the most explicitly human and intimate of their backstories is an interesting move.
The Operation Meteor chapter is almost entirely perfect, though. Well cut, to prevent redundancy. Doesn’t reach so far, so can’t constantly overdo things. And I’ve always loved the twist of what Operation Meteor originally was, and the way various powers and plots keep coming back to the issue of dropping colonies: large action versus rogue specialty teams, folllowing orders versus following one’s heart, bids for power versus dismantling power, and the irony of being manipulated into going rogue and then discovering you’re not alone.
The Preventer 5 teaser is just so bad, dang.
So: a mixed bag, moreso than I remember. Episode Zero is the most canonical of the manga because it’s written by series writer Katsuyuki Sumizawa, and that’s nice; I still disregard lots of it. In summary, most of the stories work–but seeing them written out, they’re surprisingly flat. It’s probably on account of scale: distilling entire angsty backstories into 30 manga pages means taking a lot of shortcuts.
Blind Target
The Gundam Wing revisit now brings us to the Blind Target manga, which I am almost certain I’ve read before but can in no ways remember.
Remember when I said that EW’s Heero was the most beautiful Heero; well, I was lying, because Sakura Asagi’s art turns him into a creature composed entirely of clavicles and bare arms, and, I just. vulnerable! strong! so physically present!
These (Viz-added and -written, I presume) remix/recap things are generally awful as well as redundant, but I bring you again from a profile of Duo: “Duo may feel his friends are suckering him sometimes. [Lots of examples, canonical and from this manga, all totes valid.] So, is he really a worrywart and a sucker, or is he using his wits: how does a lonely orphan best keep his new–and only–family together and safe?” Okay but that’s surprisingly insightful and also, ow, my feels.
Trowa: “I can’t recover my lost past, but I can create my future.” See! this is what I was talking about re: Episode Zero’s interconnected backstories undermining contemporary character growth! important, significant character growth!
Blind Target is stupidly good. Its only but perhaps inescapable flaw is putting the band back together, both because it overlooks how often (and well, and fluidly) the pilots work independently and in random pairs in the series; also because getting all five together is supposed to be a big deal and constantly reuniting them (here, in EW) undermines that.
sequels means Juu talks about “undermining” a lot but tbh that’s what sequels do
But!! everything else is magical. It benefits so much from scope, a reasonably-sized crisis (and timeline) with thematic implications, nary an over-reaching mess to be seen. My greatest pleasures of GW are twofold: small-scale competency porn (hands on Gundam controls rather than distance views of Gundams making things explode; pilots infiltrating, hacking, repairing their Gundams) and surprisingly intimate conversations, and in Blind Target those things happen together! constantly! It’s disgustingly in-character and private and ideological and intimate and human.
I love love love the epilogue, which is really just the direct precursor to EW, all about the pilots and their relationships with their Gundams and with peace, and beautifully engages Wufei’s choices, and the pages where everyone is with their Gundams, in dialog, in farewell, it’s just, it’s so beautiful.
Ground Zero! (and with it, the last manga I have on hand.) This one seems a bit more familiar.
This art style, ehhhh; everyone’s bobbleheads make them look so young, and while I’m all for reminders that the pilots are actually fifteen, here they read as children. Also never a fan of chibi reaction shots and just … anything comic or stylized, and there’s a lot of that here.
I am not sold on Heero’s internal monologue and I am honestly unsure why. (Maybe an issue of tone? The tone of this whole thing is ridiculous. Maybe it’s that I think the show benefits from the distance it keeps from Heero’s thoughts; he’s simultaneously inscrutable and a weathervane–we benefit from seeing his drastic actions and hearing his honest opinons more than we would from listening to him process everything all the time.)
Eyyyyyy time for serious criticism is over because nothing about this warrants it! What a mess. Untenably complex machinations with a humorous edge do not an interesting or remotely convincing narrative make, and I find caricatures of the pilots’s personalities to be dismissive rather than engaging. Under the stupidity, I guess what they have to say about the soldier in peacetime thing is thematically apt, and I like that Wufei is already working with Mariemaia, but I’m about 95% “that’s nice, don’t care” with this manga.
The Relena chapter is significantly less offensive but also not awfully profound, despite the heavyhanded conceit.
But, like, dang this is bad.
Frozen Teardrop
This is most likely the end of the Gundam Wing revisit! New Mobile Report Gundam Wing: Frozen Teardrop Picture Drama–A New Battle or, as I know it: wait wtf they’re still making more Gundam Wing??
The answer is dang am I glad I didn’t go into this with any pretense of completionism, aka yes: there are more spin-off stories from the era of the show’s release, and stuff that started in 2010 and is ongoing, and I never knew about any of it! (A moment to appreciate the restricted information dissemination of year ~2000 internet and the fact that, formative fragment of my adolescence that this is, I honestly never considered that the expanded universe could be ongoing.)
Frozen Teardrop is an ongoing light novel about war on Mars 20-30 years after the series, with a cast consisting of GW core characters and their offspring. I watched the picture drama, which looks like it covers some early (but post-prologue) chapter(s).
Actually beautiful static illustrations, actually fantastic voice acting, surprisingly strong dialog; and hilarious character design for the second generation cast–but I get the feeling that that’s consistent with the entire novel. I understand the inclination to create weird hybrid child clones that are obviously reminiscent of well-loved characters in the same way I understand the sequelitis: more of what worked before seems like a good idea, but is as often clichéd and ridiculous.
But it’s intriguing to jump so far ahead in time, to imply significant changes for the core cast (and to see what still hasn’t changed); the interpersonal elements are hamfisted but in an endearing way, and the dialog! is so good! that I can forgive a lot just for the radio conversation between Heero and Relena.
If this were complete and fully translated, I would be willing to put aside my better judgment and read the whole of what feels like official GW fanfiction; but as it is neither, I am content to have gotten a glimpse of it and move on.
srsly great quality picture drama tho; I have never delved into the Great Drama CD (and Other Spinoff Media) Realm, because my disinclination to completionism is actually a defense mechanism against a tendency towards obsession (aka I legit dun wanna start or I’ll never stop), and also because I assume the quality is hit and miss–but this was great, production-wise
