Boaz MyTurnASpace wrote: > > The Dakar arc, together with the key bits of 0083 story arc, could > > have, should have made a compelling backdrop to the many "people" > > stories that Tomino wanted to tell. Without the backdrop, the people > Seems like interesting concept. Mind evaluate further?
Ok it's partly trying to get into Tomino's head, partly my personal outlook (actually one version of several). First peeking into Tomino's head. Put yourself back in 1984-1985. The UC world was pretty simple: Fed = Good, Zeon/Zabi = Bad. Both Fed and Zeon had internal factions with variations in ideals (ends), methods (means), personal ambitions (powers) and relationship/vendetta (politics). But essentially it's a good vs. bad outlook, with nuisance. In 999 out of 1000 cases, the sequel would have the defeated bad guys revived and pose a new (but identical) threat to peace and harmony and the good guys have to come up with a hero (perhaps with a new face) to save the world once more. In Zeta, this could easily have been Haman's role and Zeta could simply be a retread of 0079, the fans would be happy, the studio would be happy, the toy makers would be very very happy. But not Tomino, he turned it UPSIDE DOWN. Now Fed~>Titans becomes the bad guys and Zeon~>AEUG becomes the good guys. The audience got confused, and the characters themselves (good example is Bright) got confused. Why did Tomino do that? It's a very difficult question and I leave for another day. [end peeking into Tomino's head] Immediately the question arises "How did the good guys become the bad guys?". It wasn't answered until 0083 was made. In 0083 (forget for now that I hate Kou and Nina and all the main characters) we learn that Titans was created in response to the last ditch desperation WMD attacks by the remainants of the bad guys. So I think the main concept of 0083 (minus the annoying characters) is essential to the Zeta story: In order to protect the people, society, civilization from extreme measures by the bad guys, you need to empower some good guys with matching "firepower", i.e., Ends and Means. But Powers and Politics get intertwined with the Ends and Means and out of the "cure" rise the new "disease". This confusion in who's good guy and who's bad guy makes moral choices by the characters difficult. THIS, I think, is the intention of Tomino. Making moral choices sometimes means abandoning your loyalty and friends and join the enemy. Bi-directional defections (along with the new sport of Gundamjacking) became a new theme in Zeta and persist in almost every UC/AU series down to Seed. But, we the audience need to participate in that moral decision process. We need to share the personal choices. When we saw Camille leaving the Fed/Titans we said, 'ok, the kid has some issues, but I can understand why he did that', when Camille refused to join AEUG formally, we also understand that (somewhat). Turning against Titans was a easy choice, but AEUG hasn't earned his trust yet. Defection the other way is obviously a tricky issue, but if one believes that best possible world is to put the most intelligent, focused, hard-working and capable individuals in charge of the big issues like government and law and order. These people are quite likely to be attracted to the Titans. Many personal stories are therefore driven by the question: are the Titans good guys or bad guys, and how to deal with it. So we need to see Titans, Fed, AEUG, Zeon/NeoZeon from the POV's of Bright, Jerid, Emma, Jamitov etc. The big scale historic events like the colony drop in Op. Stardust, the nuking of Kompei Island set up Titans' power concentration and gaining popular support. And Titan's attack on Dakar (before that, Jaburo too) set up their fall from public grace. In between the two sets of events there are plenty of room for the characters to develop personal interactions. [reading Chris' review of Ep. 37 Day of Dakar] He asked "what's with all these nice people like Addis and Emma in the Titans?" The answer was in 0083, nuclear attack and colony drop makes nice people really mad and to fight evil they joined Titans. Without 0083, Titans would have no redeeming value and personal stories like Emma's would seem senseless. At Dakar, some Titans think that anything, even a direct attack on the government, can be justified in order to stop the "terrorist" propaganda. And that very same thinking and action is in fact the trigger for people like Addis to see that fighting evil can also be a evil act. So Dakar is a watershed, not for Titans itself, but for the characters' perception of Titans. The Dakar arc is so powerful that it's copied and redone in many Gundam series, Wing, iirc, had use the same theme twice in the same series. -- 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
