James Boren wrote: > Not so much on grand plotting, but to me, Tomino excels in characters > and setting. I love his little aside with the characters, that don't > serve the plot, but bring the characters to life. I'm reminded of a > scene where the crew of the Zelana are having dinner.
If something brings the charas to life, that IS serving the plot. I was watching To Kill a Mockingbird the other day and while some scenes were out-of-date (kids speaking lines that are too obviously written by adults) there are some examples of lost art of film making. The cut of Gregory Peck sitting on the porch saying nothing is the kind of things you don't see any more. Tomino can do it well, from time to time. I don't know the scene of Zelana crew at dinner, but I can well imagine it. It's perhaps just as good as the scene(s) of the White Base crew imprisoned on Luna II. I kept referring to the "acting" of the charas like Mirai and Bright. Both are good at telling a whole story without saying a word, or even without moving a muscle. But Tomino had done it badly too, from time to time. I consider Four and Camille's shopping and enjoying an ice cream one of the low points of Gundam. I know what Tomino wanted to do with the scene and I think it could be done well, but he screwed it up in execution. I might even go as far as saying Four's arc was plagued by a lack of subtlety. > With shorter time to work with, Tomino has to cut the subtle > character and setting stuff and the work feels confused and rushed as > a result. Perhaps you are right. But I have to wonder out loud, perhaps the studio's decision to cut short 0079's season was A Good Thing. Tomino got his acts (literally) together and made the last third of the tv series a masterpiece. > Aura power users can sense and identify the aura of others which is a > common newtype power as well. Aura power maybe the power and Both are somewhat supernatural abilities that gifted individuals can sense and/or manipulate. If that's all you need to lump them together, then won't you also include SW's Force, X-Men's mutant power, ST/B5's psychics, and many of "real" life's chi gong, psychics, paganism, etc? To put on a "scientific approach" to look at Aura and Newtype, I would argue that NT is (or should be) a form of signalling or communication. As if NT's are able to exploit the "hidden variables" in Schrodinger's wave function (another way to say it that NT's can exploit the EPR paradox). http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/HiddenVariables.html Whereas Aura is a new form of energy or energy-analogue. A way to think of this is infrared radiation. All living things give out IR radiation (by being warm) but we can't control it or exploit it. Many animals use it to detect or locate prey, plants sense it and adapt metabolically. What if some small minority of humans has a heightened sense of IR and can control their IR emission? Won't they be very similar to Aura users? That explains also the human-machine interface. In real life, we do make a lot of IR sensors and emitters. We even make IR goggles so "normal" humans can see in the dark. > ammunition of Aura Battlers on paper, but in practice it seems like > it is Newtype power raised to extreme levels. I must honestly admit your argument is irrefutable. As NT power did in fact become extreme in many post-OYW series. I have certain theories about NT powers as seen in Zeta that may still be consistent with my "communication" hypothesis. But when it get to ZZ/CCA, all bets are off. -- Dr. Core -------------------------------------------------- The Gundam Mailing List MK-II [email protected] Archives: http://www.gundam.com/gml Help: Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this in the BODY: help list
