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]
Based on what I've read about Tomino and from what I've seen in his works, I've come to a conclusion. I think he was unexpectedly trapped by Gundam's success, and very quickly the franchise grew into a mammoth beast. When you have a franchise like that, the commercial pressure is to keep doing the same thing over because proven formulas work and generate profits. Tomino is not that kind of director, and you can see how stories that are seeminly the same can be vastly different. You raised a good example with the role reversals in Zeta. I won't mention ZZ because I see Tomino's involvement in that series as being peripheral. In Victory, there's a moral question that comes up many times throughout the series. Although the League Militaire are ostensibly the "heroes" of the story, there's a question raised about their intentions. After all, as even they themselves note, they're forcing very young children to fight on the front lines of their guerilla war. The Zanscare Empire, for all the things they do throughout the war, never did that. Victory also explores the Zanscare's philosophy, and how people get caught up and blindly devote themselves to ideals that are a blend of fascism and religion. But that could be a topic for another thread. In Turn A, Tomino leaves a central question deliberately unanswered. The Earth/Moonrace conflict parallels that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the moral questions aren't so easy to answer. Is the Moonrace justified in invading a world they abandoned several millennia before, even if the Moon can't support them anymore? Are the Earth forces justified in risking themselves and their citizens in a hopeless battle against an enemy who is so vastly superior technological? These are the kinds of issues that Tomino hides underneath the surface of the old "Earth vs space" stories of Gundam.
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.
Some great points here, Core. I've usually viewed 0083 is something disconnected from Zeta, but your comments make me think about it in a new light. To be sure, Stardust harmed the Earth, and the Federation is justified in wanting to prevent terrorist attacks like that from ocurring again. However, those honest intentions are perverted by a group of officers (Jamitov and Bask) who want to use the terrorist attacks as a pretense for their power grab. At the end of 0083, we see almost all of the Albion crew suiting up as Titans. Although their characters didn't get explored too deeply in the series, most of them don't seem to be the typical power-hungry Yazan Gable-type Titans we most commonly think of. It's probable that they really believed in the original mission of the Titans, but we see things didn't stay that way. I don't want to get off topic into modern politics, but there certainly some parallels between the political climate of 0083/Zeta and the current world situation.
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