The Killer of Heroes wrote:Victory is more boring than anything else. Like there's a lot of stuff that sounds crazy on paper like the Bikini Death Squad or whatever but its mostly just kind of a tedious slog of a series.

Yea, in my opinion Victory isn't any darker than any other Gundam series... it's probably tamer than most. There have definitely been moments in other series that have left me more melancholy or whatever. The series is about war, so people die and suffer mentally, but I don't think it's done in poor taste and it's certainly never been grim dark. When I went into V I knew all about its reputation and the whole time I was waiting for something really bad to happen and it never did. I can understand people not liking it and Tomino not being happy with his work, but it supposedly being too dark shouldn't ever deter someone from watching it.

That being said, if one had trouble staying interested in MSG or Unicorn, chances are one wouldn't like Victory very much, which is fine. There's plenty of the more popular annimay franchises out there that don't interest me very much.

Finished up Unicorn; movie 5 onwards finally became reasonably fun to watch. Didn't care too much for the excessive space magic shenanigans at the end, but that was both to be expected and explicitly known to me that it would happen.

Overall 6/10, nothing to write home about

^Did you watch NT, which serves as an epilogue?

Not yet, I'm having some Dark Lunch™ and after that I'll decide if I watch NT now or do something else
EDIT: Watched NT. It was..... not good.

Blockio wrote:Not yet, I'm having some Dark Lunch™ and after that I'll decide if I watch NT now or do something else
EDIT: Watched NT. It was..... not good.

The only good thing about it was the Phenex, but maybe I'm just biased

There's a new Hathaway trailer out (with subs) on GundamInfo's channel. Still no release date attached, though.

It looked like all ships and even most Gundams were CG. I don't like that at all. 2D mecha series barely even come out, if Sunrise stop doing it in their Gundams then it'll be even closer to death.

On a more positive note, the rest of the trailer looks cool, and there's lots of stuff one can do with that character, so I'll remain hopeful.

I thought this would be interesting to share:

tweet-body

— twitter-user (@username) date

I found this today as I was looking for something else. Apparently, this photo was taken when Mortensen was promoting The Two Towers in Japan in 2003. This article goes into more detail. Hope it brings a smile to your faces.

I want to get into Gundam. I really do. But I have to ask one thing: is it true that Tomino is a blatant mysogynist?

I mean, I’ve heard that he’s one of those woman-hating, “stay in the kitchen” types. All the heroic women in his works are submissive to men, and all the independent women are maniacal bitches that get put in their place by big strong men.

Is that true, or are people just trying to slander him? I watched the first few episodes, and I didn’t see anything wrong with them, but I really don’t want to watch a series created by a mysogynist woman-hater.

I've also heard that a lot, but frankly I never noticed that, and I've seen(and liked) all the Gundams he directed. Some women are pretty wild in his anime, but so are men. And plenty of women fight and have relevant roles in his anime, be they villains or not. Victory can perhaps give that idea, but even there it's a stretch.

But I'm sure many disagree with me so wait and see what other people here say, maybe?

I never got that impression from Tomino before, interesting. If anything, from what limited material I have seen it's usually the teen male pilots who get constantly bitch slapped by the authority figures.

BusterMachine4 wrote:I want to get into Gundam. I really do. But I have to ask one thing: is it true that Tomino is a blatant mysogynist?

I think its more noticeable in some of his stuff outside of Gundam where there's less plausible deniability. Like The Wings of Rean lets you know a woman is evil by having her threaten to get an abortion to blackmail a guy into leaving his wife for her. Brain Powerd is about how women joining the work force instead of "being mothers" ruined society etc.

Honestly though the bigger argument against Tomino is that his stuff is formulaic as hell for the most part and that gets mad boring after a while. Like I enjoy the original Gundam and Zambot 3 still, but I really can't imagine myself ever revisiting much else that dude directed.

I wouldn't say mysoginistic as much as "can't write a female character to save his life". The only time (in the shows that I have seen) where a female character didn't betray her side for no reason other than "uuh she's a woman I guess, don't those do that all the time?" was in Turn A, which incidentally is also far and away the best Tomino Gundam in my opinion, and the only one where the other problem that TKoH mentioned doesn't apply.

If you want to get into Gundam, I recommend starting with an AU, those are meant as new entry points and don't require having seen 40 year old shows. My personal recommendations as first show are Iron-Blooded Orphans, After War Gundam X, G Gundam and the aforementioned Turn A (despite what some people will tell you, you do not have to have seen "all of Gundam before it" to understand it, that's a late series meta-subplot that barely matters to the show itself)

Blockio wrote:the aforementioned Turn A (despite what some people will tell you, you do not have to have seen "all of Gundam before it" to understand it, that's a late series meta-subplot that barely matters to the show itself)

It's not about understanding, it's about it working as a sort of thematic conclusion to the whole series. Sure, you can understand everything without watching Victory or Zeta or etc. but I feel like many scenes get far more impact from knowing what happens before.

Okay, thanks for your insights. I had previously been watching starting from the original, but I'm reconsidering it now.

I think I might start with Wing. It's an AU, Tomino didn't make it, it was the first Gundam series to be brought to my native country, and I always kind of liked late 90's anime.

Do. Not. Watch. Wing.

It is awful.
There's two camps of people for Wing pretty much; those who absolutely love it, and those who did not watch it on Toonami growing up.
If you want late 90s, watch Gundam X or Turn A

Is it really that bad? I thought it was actually received fairly well. I mean, there’s got to be a reason why it kickstarted the US Gundam obsession. If it really sucked that much, it would just be forgotten among Toonami’s better material.

And I’m still reluctant to watch Turn A. From what I heard, it’s somehow a sequel to every Gundam series until that point, so I feel like it would be better served if I watched some of the previous shows beforehand.

I’m going to stick with Wing for now. If it really does suck, I’ll watch some other Gundam series. But watching it makes sense to me.

I watched Wing back on Toonami, and I did like it. I rewatched again a couple of years ago, and I came to the conclusion that while it is not as bad as the haters say it is, it is not as good as nostalgia was teliing me. I wrote a post on this thread detailing my rewatch experience from that time. I still hold it high regard as it did get me into the franchise.
As every Gundam series ever made has some official release in North America compared to back in the year 2000, I would have to agree with Blockio that perhaps X and Turn A would be a better fit for a late 90s Gundam show. If you want something more recent, go with Iron Blooded Orphans.

I wouldn't call myself a hater of Wing; it certainly has its merits, but I do think that it is a very poor introduction to the franchise. The characters are quite honestly idiots for the most part, and a concerning amount of their agendas (in a lot of cases verbatim) just boils down to "My Gundam told me to do it, so I did". There are certainly worse shows than Wing out there, but quite frankly I'd rather rewatch the ever-infamous Seed Destiny than rewatch Wing.

As for Turn A: That is exactly what I was talking about. It is *technically* a sequel to all of the other shows, but that really only ever matters if you want to get anal about the metaplot (which is a shitshow for the most part anyway, so who cares) and the show itself really does not give a fuck about what exactly came before it in detail; it lists "all of the Gundam shows before it" during a crucial moment not because it matters what exactly was in there, but rather because that was just all that existed at the time. It doesn't matter what exactly was before it, all that's important is that something else was there; as long as you understand that, you will have the full experience even if you've never seen a Gundam show in your life before

Blockio wrote:I wouldn't call myself a hater of Wing

Your previous post made you seem like one, though:

Blockio wrote:Do. Not. Watch. Wing.

It is awful.

But I feel like I’m getting a consensus: Wing is a decent show, although flawed, but it’s not a great “first Gundam.” I’ll have to think about what I’m going to watch instead.