Gundam Wing eps 25-30
Jan. 6th, 2008 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreSomewhere in here, I think it was made canon that yes, the scientists did deliberately drive all the pilots insane.
I have to say...as much as I'm enjoying this, and as much as I've enjoyed a few other mecha series(particularly Samurai Seven and Full Metal Panic...though, does Ghost in the Shell count?) I still don't understand why anyone would like mecha on the basis on the mecha itself. Probably because it practically ruined Escaflowne for me(WHY??? WHY WAS IT THERE??? THEY HAD THIS GREAT STORY AND MYTHOLOGY AND RUINED IT BY HAVING EVERYONE STOMP AROUND IN GIANT UGLY ROBOTS!!!) (Well, the mecha and Allen...he was far too much his character type and far too little anything else for me to more than passingly like him, and then they made half the series about him instead of the two leads and bizarrely had the girls mooning over him through most of the series, despite the blatantly superior love interests the girls had right there with them...)
Spoil me and Trowa will make you self-destruct.
In space, everyone hears you go insane if you cackle like a supervillain. Quatre tries to turn Heero and Trowa to his side...the colonies have turned on them! All of space has gone insane! It must be eliminated! The colonies have joined OZ so they must all die! Trowa gives a very sane and rather inciteful speech about how, ultimately, the gundam pilots are all no more than soldiers in a war. Their leaders have made a choice and the pilots have become redundant, and have no choice but to abide by their decision, like all soldiers must do. (We'll ignore the fact that in the last episode, he was talking about how they'd all rebel if Quatre's new gundam was strong enough. That was before he learned his little buddy went loonie.)
During this, we come to one of the major flaws of shonen anime and manga: the main hero must have the dramatic fight. While Trowa is struggling to digest the fact that the little blond guy who was chasing after him to be BFF a while back was going around destroying colonies now, Quatre and Heero started fighting. Now, all we're supposed to see there is that they're protagonists! They should be friends! Buddies! Not fighting each other! All I could think was that Heero and Quatre met once for 5 minutes but were acting like they were soulmates, while Trowa, arguably the closest pilot to Quatre(actually, remove the arguably) stood on the sidelines, because...Heero's the main character and Trowa isn't. *sigh*
Anyway, Quatre is blasting at Heero! QUATRE IS ABOUT TO KILL HEERO! BUT TROWA'S LOVE FOR HEERO IS TRUE! (Uhm...I'll go on the record right now that if I were ever going to understand anti-canon slash, it'd probably be Trowa/Heero...except that, on Trowa's part, I consider it to be canon.) HE THROWS HIMSELF IN FRONT OF HEERO! TROWA'S GUNDAM BLOWS UP! WITH TROWA IN IT! NOW HEERO GOES NUTS! BUT QUATRE GOES SANE AGAIN! TROWA FLOATS AROUND SPACE IN A SPACE SUIT WHILE THEY FIGHT! The following scene goes something like this:
Quatre: "What have I done! We have to save Trowa!"
Heero: "He made his choice! You're insane and have to die!"
Quatre: "But Trowa might be alive!"
Heero: "Die!"
Quatre: "THEN KILL ME FAST AND GO SAVE TROWA!"
Meanwhile, Treize is asks the Romefeller foundation to declare him a traitor and remove him from power. He thinks this will make him more powerful. This splits the Romefeller foundation and creates a faction of Treize supporters. In the chaos, Une rescues Wu Fei, Duo and the scientists but gets shot in the process, and Quatre and Heero get arrested.
At this point, Duo, Wu Fei and Trowa are MIA for the next five episodes, Une's fate is left hanging, and Zechs is nowhere to be seen.
When Quatre sees Trowa's gundam he blew up, he beats up a couple guards and runs to it to angst. Heero beats up several more so they'll let Quatre angst. The guards then recall that these are handcuffed teenaged boys who they have permission to kill, but the boys are saved by treize followers, who take them to the crazy scientists.
At this point, the scientists REVEAL THAT THE NEW GUNDAM IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE THE PILOT GO CRAZY SO HE'LL KILL MORE!!! Which doesn't fully account for Quatre, but it rather explains that mass murdering spree he went on there. Naturally, Heero wants to try it out. And goes crazy. And tries to kill everyone. This makes the scientists giddy.
Quatre...randomly develops psychic powers and calms Heero down. Heero falls out of the suit, glowing. As he passes out, he sees Relena's face. He looks as confused about that as I am. Quatre...absorbs the glow into his heart. No, I'm not kidding. Somewhere in here, Quatre realized Heero is originally from Earth or something, and says he and Heero have to go back to Earth. I would like to point out that this is the same boy who went "Let's go into space and blow a lot of things up so everyone will join us" a while back. They crashland in a desert and Heero randomly finds a pineapple or something (IN THE DESERT!) to help Quatre bond with dogs. Or something. They're arrested, but escape because their captor is nice and they don't want to cause him trouble. (This is Gundam Wing. I didn't make that up because I don't have to make things like that up.)
Meanwhile, Sally knows where a gundam is and Noin wants it. THEY BOND! THEY TALK! I GOT TO HAVE THE TWO BEST FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE SERIES BONDING AND BEING COOL AND BADASS TOGETHER! I WAS SO HAPPY! They also talked about the Gundam pilots they knew, and about how what sweet boys they were. Clearly, they're a bit out of date with their info.
I admit, I couldn't follow what was up with Heero and Quatre for a little while after that. Quatre goes off and bonds with some village people, while Heero starts spouting crazy talk and joins another army. I was kinda confused until Heero, other pilots and some mobile dolls(which the Romefeller organization is using to take over the Earth) were in battle in the town Quatre was in and Quatre was yelling at Heero to stop. Heero went more batty and started taking out the mobile dolls and other troops, but was on the losing end. Just as I was getting ready to scream at Quatre to JUST DO SOMETHING ALREADY...HE LITERALLY KICKED A PILOT OUT OF HIS SUIT AND TOOK IT AND SAVED HEERO! YAY!
Then, in one of the best scenes in the series, Noin shows up and saves their butts by dropping the beam cannon from Heero's old gundam for them to use. I love you Noin.
Somewhere in here, we have two flashback episodes. The first one is Relena reminiscing about her romance with Heero...unless you think that's the best thing ever, just skip to the next episode. The other is Treize...it's more worthwhile because it explains his philosophy, and has random bits of new material throughout. He also has a memorial for Une...both Unes. Except...Une is there with him. Or he's delusional. Or he cloned her. Or she's a twin. I don't know.
Back in Sanc's, Relena is preaching pacifism and bending the world to her faulty robot logic. She has a conversation with delegates that goes something like this:
Sane person: "Why on Earth should we obey some snot nosed brat whose family got killed for being ridiculously pacifistic?"
Relena: "I'm sorry I'm a snot nosed brat with a superiority complex who's bossing you around, but you liked my father so you must love me."
Everyone: "YOU RAWK!"
Relena is also attending and all girls school and teaching all the students pacifism. It eerily reminds me of the school in Revolutionary Girl Utena, only more surreal and with no magic or duels. There is a new, slightly demonic looking student named Dorothy who was raised by Romefeller. Dorothy loves war and violence and shouts things like "START A WAR ALREADY!" anytime she sees a plane go overhead. Relena is perfectly fine with this. At the end, Relena shows up at the airport to moon over Heero when Noin brings Heero and Quatre to Sanc. Heero's face seems to reflect my opinion.
Incidentally, I just want to say that neither Heero nor Quatre is displaying NEARLY enough guilt or angst over Trowa's apparent death. Not only are both arguably fairly close to him, but Quatre destroyed his gundam while trying to kill Heero and he was hit saving Heero, and then they were too busy fighting each other to save him. I DO NOT FIND THIS APPARENT LACK OF GUILT OR ANGST TO BE ACCEPTABLE!!!
During this, we come to one of the major flaws of shonen anime and manga: the main hero must have the dramatic fight. While Trowa is struggling to digest the fact that the little blond guy who was chasing after him to be BFF a while back was going around destroying colonies now, Quatre and Heero started fighting. Now, all we're supposed to see there is that they're protagonists! They should be friends! Buddies! Not fighting each other! All I could think was that Heero and Quatre met once for 5 minutes but were acting like they were soulmates, while Trowa, arguably the closest pilot to Quatre(actually, remove the arguably) stood on the sidelines, because...Heero's the main character and Trowa isn't. *sigh*
Anyway, Quatre is blasting at Heero! QUATRE IS ABOUT TO KILL HEERO! BUT TROWA'S LOVE FOR HEERO IS TRUE! (Uhm...I'll go on the record right now that if I were ever going to understand anti-canon slash, it'd probably be Trowa/Heero...except that, on Trowa's part, I consider it to be canon.) HE THROWS HIMSELF IN FRONT OF HEERO! TROWA'S GUNDAM BLOWS UP! WITH TROWA IN IT! NOW HEERO GOES NUTS! BUT QUATRE GOES SANE AGAIN! TROWA FLOATS AROUND SPACE IN A SPACE SUIT WHILE THEY FIGHT! The following scene goes something like this:
Quatre: "What have I done! We have to save Trowa!"
Heero: "He made his choice! You're insane and have to die!"
Quatre: "But Trowa might be alive!"
Heero: "Die!"
Quatre: "THEN KILL ME FAST AND GO SAVE TROWA!"
Meanwhile, Treize is asks the Romefeller foundation to declare him a traitor and remove him from power. He thinks this will make him more powerful. This splits the Romefeller foundation and creates a faction of Treize supporters. In the chaos, Une rescues Wu Fei, Duo and the scientists but gets shot in the process, and Quatre and Heero get arrested.
At this point, Duo, Wu Fei and Trowa are MIA for the next five episodes, Une's fate is left hanging, and Zechs is nowhere to be seen.
When Quatre sees Trowa's gundam he blew up, he beats up a couple guards and runs to it to angst. Heero beats up several more so they'll let Quatre angst. The guards then recall that these are handcuffed teenaged boys who they have permission to kill, but the boys are saved by treize followers, who take them to the crazy scientists.
At this point, the scientists REVEAL THAT THE NEW GUNDAM IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE THE PILOT GO CRAZY SO HE'LL KILL MORE!!! Which doesn't fully account for Quatre, but it rather explains that mass murdering spree he went on there. Naturally, Heero wants to try it out. And goes crazy. And tries to kill everyone. This makes the scientists giddy.
Quatre...randomly develops psychic powers and calms Heero down. Heero falls out of the suit, glowing. As he passes out, he sees Relena's face. He looks as confused about that as I am. Quatre...absorbs the glow into his heart. No, I'm not kidding. Somewhere in here, Quatre realized Heero is originally from Earth or something, and says he and Heero have to go back to Earth. I would like to point out that this is the same boy who went "Let's go into space and blow a lot of things up so everyone will join us" a while back. They crashland in a desert and Heero randomly finds a pineapple or something (IN THE DESERT!) to help Quatre bond with dogs. Or something. They're arrested, but escape because their captor is nice and they don't want to cause him trouble. (This is Gundam Wing. I didn't make that up because I don't have to make things like that up.)
Meanwhile, Sally knows where a gundam is and Noin wants it. THEY BOND! THEY TALK! I GOT TO HAVE THE TWO BEST FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE SERIES BONDING AND BEING COOL AND BADASS TOGETHER! I WAS SO HAPPY! They also talked about the Gundam pilots they knew, and about how what sweet boys they were. Clearly, they're a bit out of date with their info.
I admit, I couldn't follow what was up with Heero and Quatre for a little while after that. Quatre goes off and bonds with some village people, while Heero starts spouting crazy talk and joins another army. I was kinda confused until Heero, other pilots and some mobile dolls(which the Romefeller organization is using to take over the Earth) were in battle in the town Quatre was in and Quatre was yelling at Heero to stop. Heero went more batty and started taking out the mobile dolls and other troops, but was on the losing end. Just as I was getting ready to scream at Quatre to JUST DO SOMETHING ALREADY...HE LITERALLY KICKED A PILOT OUT OF HIS SUIT AND TOOK IT AND SAVED HEERO! YAY!
Then, in one of the best scenes in the series, Noin shows up and saves their butts by dropping the beam cannon from Heero's old gundam for them to use. I love you Noin.
Somewhere in here, we have two flashback episodes. The first one is Relena reminiscing about her romance with Heero...unless you think that's the best thing ever, just skip to the next episode. The other is Treize...it's more worthwhile because it explains his philosophy, and has random bits of new material throughout. He also has a memorial for Une...both Unes. Except...Une is there with him. Or he's delusional. Or he cloned her. Or she's a twin. I don't know.
Back in Sanc's, Relena is preaching pacifism and bending the world to her faulty robot logic. She has a conversation with delegates that goes something like this:
Sane person: "Why on Earth should we obey some snot nosed brat whose family got killed for being ridiculously pacifistic?"
Relena: "I'm sorry I'm a snot nosed brat with a superiority complex who's bossing you around, but you liked my father so you must love me."
Everyone: "YOU RAWK!"
Relena is also attending and all girls school and teaching all the students pacifism. It eerily reminds me of the school in Revolutionary Girl Utena, only more surreal and with no magic or duels. There is a new, slightly demonic looking student named Dorothy who was raised by Romefeller. Dorothy loves war and violence and shouts things like "START A WAR ALREADY!" anytime she sees a plane go overhead. Relena is perfectly fine with this. At the end, Relena shows up at the airport to moon over Heero when Noin brings Heero and Quatre to Sanc. Heero's face seems to reflect my opinion.
Incidentally, I just want to say that neither Heero nor Quatre is displaying NEARLY enough guilt or angst over Trowa's apparent death. Not only are both arguably fairly close to him, but Quatre destroyed his gundam while trying to kill Heero and he was hit saving Heero, and then they were too busy fighting each other to save him. I DO NOT FIND THIS APPARENT LACK OF GUILT OR ANGST TO BE ACCEPTABLE!!!
I have to say...as much as I'm enjoying this, and as much as I've enjoyed a few other mecha series(particularly Samurai Seven and Full Metal Panic...though, does Ghost in the Shell count?) I still don't understand why anyone would like mecha on the basis on the mecha itself. Probably because it practically ruined Escaflowne for me(WHY??? WHY WAS IT THERE??? THEY HAD THIS GREAT STORY AND MYTHOLOGY AND RUINED IT BY HAVING EVERYONE STOMP AROUND IN GIANT UGLY ROBOTS!!!) (Well, the mecha and Allen...he was far too much his character type and far too little anything else for me to more than passingly like him, and then they made half the series about him instead of the two leads and bizarrely had the girls mooning over him through most of the series, despite the blatantly superior love interests the girls had right there with them...)
Spoil me and Trowa will make you self-destruct.