Jagtmirage said:Alexeon said:Its not that I don't like Zeon being humanized, but the tone of the show/manga is very "look at these heroic, poor Zeon fighting against these Feddie assholes." Remind me again who started this war by committing mass murder of innocent civilians using WMDs again?
I'm just saying, there are good guys on both sides, but not in this manga. In this manga, Almost the entire Feddie side is painted like a bunch of bully frat kids, partying it up between battles (especially after the war is over) and bullying member states while Zeon is still valiantly fighting the good fight.
well if we really want to go back who started it, I'd put that firmly in the corner of the feds by treating the spacenoids like second class citizens. There's only so long people will be oppressed before they rise up in arms. Yeah Giren is a bloody insane tyrant, but Zeon didn't start with the Zabis, they started with Zeon Daikun. I think most would agree history would've turned out much different had he lived. The real conflict is not Zeon vs Feds, but Spacenoids vs Feds.
Playing the historical blame game is goin to be just as biased and partisan here as it is in real life. When our conclusions are based on an assortment of contradicting and vague materials, it's pretty hard to argue for a one true canon when it comes to the Universal Century. Do we really know to what extent Earth elites conspired to oppress the Spacenoids? Do we really know what level of poverty and dispossession the colonists experienced? Even Zeon himself is an unclear figure - just look at Yasuhiko's take in the Origin, where an overworked and fanatical Deikun compares himself to Jesus and seeks complete war against the Federation. Is this his true self, a result of his poisoning, or a fringe and dismissible alternate depiction by a mangaka who was had a direct hand in the original anime?
UC fans are welcome to their own headcannon, but it's important to realise that there is no absolute universe that all these works adhere to.
It can be a heap of fun to delve into the fictional world and treating it with the serious measurements of reality - (it's surely a part of Gundam's expansive appeal) - but the point is that we can draw meaning from the series in ways that are ever changing. The real conflict isn't Feds and Zeon, Spacenoid and Fed, nor Newtype and Oldtpye; it's man against itself - in war, against history, amongst ourselves, between generations.
Jagtmirage said: As for the manga being pro-Zeon, it's not surprising as Zeon fans greatly outnumber Fed fans in Japan, as can be easily witnessed visiting any anime show there. I actually had a Japanese friend who characterized that Feds = US, and Zeon = Japan. Personally, I think humanizing Zeons in the actual anime production is far more uncommon than the reverse (as opposed to managa which is more even), as there are only really a few anime productions which tells the story from the Zeon perspective, 0080 and MS Igloo being really the only ones. So I agree with the other poster that I would welcome more attempts to present a more balanced view.
Well I don't think you have to make a side the protagonist in order to humanise them. From the very beginning, Gundam has given Zeon a fair share. Was not Char a cunning and Machiavellian foe? He was no outright villain. For all his pride and naivety, was not Garma a pleasant fellow? Rambal Ral and Hamon are surely the most goodie Zeons ever seen. And let's not forget the countless small part roles where the Zeon soldier was shown - not a fanatic, but doing as soldiers do. I suppose you could argue those small roles as cartoonishly unreal - deprived of the fanaticism, trauma, and callousness we are so familiar with in war stories.
And even aside from 0080 and Igloo, we have 0083's loyal (politicised) soldiers, the competent of 08th and even a faction-transcending lover.
Factional-wise, you could argue for an even hand ever since Zeta's release. Zeon has had a fair go right up to Unicorn.
But to begin with I should have addressed Thunderbolt. And I think the completed answer to Alexeon's post is not just that both sides are responsible and dirtied, but that the serries itself was clearly about the brutality and vicious violence of soldiers against soldiers fighting battles so lost in meaning from a wider war and its haughty causes. Each side destroys each other however they can - using whatever means they can (children, amputees) - for powers perhaps uncaring (the Moore Brotherhood, callous researchers, and Zeon's leadership.) The footsoldiers suffer incredibly - they aren't righteous. They aren't heroes. Zeon's cripple soldiers wantonly throw themselves on the fire; the Federation uncaringly passes materiel around in a political game.
Daryl and friends are hardly held up in a truly positive light - perhaps as symbols of the toughness of people, but they are half-life pawns of a larger war. They are not shown admirably staving of a foreign invasion. At the last, Daryl has fallen, intoxicate by power, and dismembered by his trials. He tried to bring an end the hell of battle and escape his ruined body, but that's to no avail - except ironically in his butcher's machine. Confronting his fated foe at the end, Daryl perhaps realises that he too has become a mad dog poisoned by war. |