Gundam Wing, eps 1-4

[meganbmoore]

Gundam Wing is a part of the super duper extra massive Gundam franchise.  I know little about the franchise as a whole except the it has 100 or so series, and it'a all mecha.

Now, to be blunt:  I don't like mecha.  I think it's ugly.  It holds no appeal to me.  I do not understand why it's massively popular.  The only mecha I have ever liked is the mecha in Samurai Seven, where the mecha exists to get chopped up by men with swords.  Outside of that, I occassionally tolerate the mecha as a necessary evil in something I otherise enjoy.

The general plot of Gundam Wing is as follows: 200~ years in the future.  Space colonies are being repressed by Earth, and as a rebellion, they send 5 teenaged boys with mecha to take out the evil government and fight the evil mecha with their superior mecha.

Clearly, I was not sold on this for the plot.

No.  I was sold because I was promised clinically insane, suicidal, emo angstmuffin badass pilots who like to try to blow themselves and other people up.

Like our hero, Heero(well, he seems to marginally be the lead).  He started the series off by trying to blow himself and his mecha up.  Then, when he realized he survived, he tried to activate his suit's self destruct sequence, but it didn't work.  Then, for some bizarre reason, he enrolled himself in high school and announced to his classmate, relena(more on her coming) that he wasgoing to kill her.  Then he tried to destroy his gundam AGAIN and ended up floating facedown in the water.  Then he was put in a military hospital and was busy making himself bleed all over to get free and kill himself when he was rescued by Duo(more later).  Then, for some reason, he didn't eject his parachute when he and Duo jumped off a very high place, and after he did, he decided to release it and just bounce down the cliff face.  Unfortunately for him, he seems to be immortal.

Then there's Duo.  As compared to everyone else in the series so far, he seems rather nice and cheerful and sane.  Please note the "as compared to everyone else in the series so far" part.  So far he has rescued the crazy girl from the crazy boy and gotten chewed out for it, rescued the crazy boy and received no thanks, and generally been cool.  He also seems to spend a lot of time talking about how he can't take much more of heero's insane suicidal emo(and yes, he regularly refers to Heero as suicidal.)  Naturaly, he is my favorite.

I haven't got much of a feel for the other characters, yet.  Quatre is a sweet seeming blond, but I'm not sure he's very bright.  He seems to be bonding with Trowa, who has utterly lethal bangs.  At first I though Trowa was kinda cool and analytical, but I suspect now that he was just reciting a manual he read when I thought that.  There's also Wu Fei, who hasn't done much except manage to be stoically insanely badass to military guys.  He has a braid so tight, it has to be giving him a migraine.

And those are the pilots.

On the other side, there's Zechs.  Zechs(and yes, it's pronounced the way it looks) is a commander on the other side.  He seems rather arrogant and overly proud of his mecha.  I don't have a lot of opinion on him yet, but suspect he's one  of those who will end up not really bad in the end.  And he has a funny helmet.  Zechs is the pet subordinate of Trieze, who is also very arrogant and probably the main bad guy. Zechs has a friend-ex-something named Noin, who seems to be pretty cool and supposedly trains ace mecha pilots.

And then...there is Relena.  Relena moves, acts and talks rather like a robot.  But one with faulty programming.  After her father comments on the fact that it will be her birthday soon, she goes off on her own and asks why he doesn't realize it's her birthday soon, then comments that regular girls would probably make a big deal about it.  She then finds a crazy boy(Heero) unconscious on the beach and calls an ambulance.  While this seems to be normal behavior, the boy then tries to blow himself up, beats up the medics, and steals the ambulance.  Her response was to hold out her hand and introduce herself to the empty air.  This firmly convinced me that she was a robot, and that a programming malfunction did not process that he did not introduce himself as humans are supposed to do.

When Relena sees the crazy boy who tried to blow himself up at school the next day, Relena invites him to her birthday party.  His response is to tear up the invitation and say "I'll kill you."  I believe Relena's malfunctioning programming interpretted this as "I like you, let's go out."  This is reinforced by Relena's worrying when Heero does not show up at her party, then going off to find him, and then chewing Duo out when Duo stops Heero from shooting her point blank in the head.  Yes, she yelled at the nice boy who saved her from the crazy boy.  Later, Relena dramatically stood on a cliff and shouted "Come back and kill me, Heero!" As this took place while Heero was busy plummetting to his death, and that as she yelled it, he opened his eyes and released his parachute, I assume this means they are the main canon pairing.  I am well schooled to such clues.

I know fear.

As the end credits are nothing but Relena, we are clearly expected to madly love her.

Here is 

rachelmanija's "gundam wing" tag.  These are the posts that made me want to watch.

Note:  to my knowledge, Relena is not canonically a robot with faulty programming.  But thinking of her as such explains ever so much...