My take on the matter is that while the Gundam design paradigms make for
a powerful marketing and sales image, the flipside is the aforementioned
repetitiveness. I seriously think that Gundam can never go away from the
headspikes and mecha samurai look, since it's so iconic. One solution,
the way I see it, is to probably hire a new mecha designer who has an
out-of-the-box take on the whole gundam design, at the same time keeping
the style within the iconic boundaries. Another would be to simply just
concentrate the symbol to one basic thing, like perhaps the headspikes.
As for the red...well...I think the red MS motif was somewhat revised
for the Seed franchise - whereas in the old UC, it was Char, they've
transferred the motif to Aslann. I don't know if there is a deeper
underlying meaning, but to be honest, I think it's just marketing
imagery - same as the whole rx-78 imagery.
What the Gundam franchise is facing now are questions that come up in
any long-running series or body of work: how do you not repeat yourself?
If you will repeat yourself, how do you do it well? If you go in a new
direction, how do you keep the same feel for the series? I don't envy
the position of the people in charge of Gundam right now, since it's at
this point (when one has old and new generations of fans to please at
the same time) that all moves are crucial.
Joseph Riggs wrote:
Did SEED really uphold this 'tradition'? The only red units I
remember from that series were the Aegis and the Justice. The former
was questionable about whether or not it was a villain mobile suit and
only existed in the first half of the series. The latter definitely
was NOT a villain mobile suit.
Ra La Cruesette (almost certainly mispelled...) actually piloted a
white mobile suit in that series, and he's the ultimate villain.
I can't think of anything in Destiny that fills the role, either, but
I didn't see much of that series so it wouldn't be a surprise if there
was a red mobile suit I wasn't aware of.
junior
---------[ Received Mail Content ]----------
*Subject : *RE: Derivative Mecha [was]Re: [gundam] Upcoming releases]
*Date : *Thu, 4 Jan 2007 15:11:31 -0600
*From : *"Reynolds, Jason M." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*To : *"'[email protected]'" <[email protected]>
Case in point is the recent "red villain Gundam" that started with
the Epyon
in Wing. It then got carried in to X, Seed, and Destiny. While
their flash
is different, there are a LOT of similarities. It was cool at
first but got
old after a while.
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