Game was awful at launch and it took years of patches + an expansion to end up in a somewhat acceptable state

Yeaaaah… the pool of possible returning characters is uh… kinda small…

In this house, we stan Tatsuki Fujimoto.

Chainsawman is unironically this generations Evangelion. My man’s goated with the sauce, and he has decent politics (which, to be fair, every author his editor publishes has like baseline decent politics so I’m gonna credit Shuhei Lin for cultivating that environment)

If you’re looking for more of Director Oshiyama’s work, he’s also did an anime original magical girl show called Flip-Flappers, if you want to check out more of his animation

I think UC Gundam is weighed down too much by the weight of Charmuro to do much more than this show did.

To be fair, it kinda is a small miracle we got this show in the first place, and that the show succeeded in addressing Lalah’s fate by re-centering it on her place in the universe quite literally (even if that success came at the expense of, I dunno, a cohesive independent story)… I’ll take it.

Amuro VA

Probably keeping him around for Hathaway 2, which just got announced. Bleh. And I was looking forward to that movie too.

Guilty as charged

(I’m halfway thru ZZ now lol)

Damn, I’ve never been more owned

This show’s writing is basically the same as your average fanfiction

I mean, it’s a fix-fic to unfridge Lalah Sune and create a timeline where Char doesn’t become an asshole

As Liberallia Bull proved, you just need the right people in power!

Don’t slander my man, he didn’t say that, he just said that Char can’t be placed in power, and my dude obviously watched Char’s Counter-Attack cos he’s right.

Besides, Chairwoman Artesia Zum Deikun and Premier Ramba Ral will lead the People’s Principality of Zeon to Fully Automated Newtype Luxury Space Mobile Suit Communism under the watchful guidance of Challia Bull’s Space K.G.B. Newtype Corp.

(Ok real talk, I need a Gundam Double QuuuuuuX just for all The Man in the High Castle alt history stuff, because now I need to know if Sayla libs it up as badly as Minerva does in the main timeline, how much of a menace Scirocco becomes, the fate of the Plu’s… there’s still so much left to explore past once we get past Char and Lalah. Ironically, this universe where Zeon “won” has the best shot at the Earth Sphere becoming socialist!)

Also, Mr. Sex Pest shows up in a VA cameo. Not too surprising tbh, but still awkward.

Char and Lalah’s original VA’s returning: Based, good.

Amuro’s VA returning:

I was hoping they’d take the opportunity to recast him but I guess that’s asking too much of Bandai execs.

The best thing about the show is probably that it got a lot of people to go back and rewatch the original, I’m glad you enjoyed it

The original term came from Adorno, but there in theory it’s just a boring term for people subject to a post-mass communications era, and a theoretical exploration of the kind of social changes that can be expected to come about from that. The important idea that sorta carries over is of a kind of ego-less “New Type” of human being capable of new forms of social relations.

Tomino using Newtype ideology in the original show was him using a flashy sci-fi allegory to depict historical materialism- everyone who goes to space will eventually become a Newtype, because human material conditions have changed and that in turn forces humans to adapt, but then the Zabi family takes that idea and debases it for their own political ends. “Everyone” instead becomes “the chosen few”, and fascism is reborn.

A Newtype’s superpower isn’t in being ubermensch, but in having an increased capacity for understanding and empathy. The idea is that they’re the harbingers of a Communist future, where people are better able to understand and work together towards common goals, and the recurring tragedy of U.C. Gundam is that that future keeps being thwarted by Newtypes being held back by the ideologies of the Oldtypes, whether that’s the Earth Federations capitalist liberalism or Zeon’s fascism.

But also, you started getting awfully eugenics-y around there, Machu.

Er, I think the intent is more feminist here than anything fashy.

Kinda why I consider Origin non-canon, because Casval makes more sense as a poor kid in over his head just opportunistically going with the flow because he’s out of options, rather than some Machiavellian schemer playing 4D chess.

I mean, this is the same idiot whose best plan for assassinating space hitler involved joining the space Wehrmacht, so him taking “unlimited genocide on the first world” to it’s logical extreme should’ve been very unsurprising in retrospect

Too slow, old man.

It’s ok, like Challia I simply long for a world where Newtypes can post as Newtypes

Kycilia leading herself into an ideological funnel towards CCA Char is one of my favorite ideas of this show.

Right?! The show has so many really neat ideas (the writer’s subverting things by Chekov’s gun going off on Kycilia was just ) that I wouldn’t say no to more, although from what I’ve read in interviews I think the 12 episodes we are getting are more a self-imposed creative limitation Studio Khara decided on rather than something enforced by either executives or the market.

That picture of Amuro with the basketball goes hard.

Amuro Rey will never be ballin’

(The basketball is Char’s escape pod from the end of CCA lol)

This Char also hasn’t been through the events of Zeta and ZZ (AEUG eventually being co-opted into the Federation) to get to the point where he decides the only path forward is yeeting a rock at Earth.

I mean, he almost dropped a rock on Granada and it was literally postmodern author-as-God fiat that stopped that from happening

And then his solution to being trapped in this timeline for being too beloved by the author/audience stand-in Lalah is to “disappear” (the) God (of this world), so he’s not ideologically out of the anti-hero woods yet, but yeah this Char is closer to Quattro Bajeena given what he says to Kycilia about Newtypes. Which is really interesting, since Zeta’s probably the one time we see the character at his best, fumbling attempts at mentorship and revolution and all.

It’s kinda interesting how few gunpla kits we’ve gotten from this series. GWitch had a hell of a lot but there are only a handfull for gquuuuuuux.

For some reason they’re widely spacing out the kit releases. Probably to avoid spoilers for the show while it airs, but last I heard they’re selling ok.

The underage smoker childhood friend lol

I’ve been very “wait and see” with Shuji because in FLCL there’s a character just like him whose actions can only be contextualized after watching the whole show, but also I understand how not fun it is to have a blank cipher of a character while watching week-to-week. Usually they do a better job making the character compelling by way of mystery but I don’t think it worked quite so well here in this show.

Nuuuuuu you can’t just steal my thread from me nuuuuuu

(I’m kidding post away. I’ve been waiting 24 hrs to make the threads after the show each week since that seemed about when people had watched the ep, but we’re getting to the end and if people want to react immediately that’s fine too. Also, like it could be WW3 soon so…)

The final confrontation with Kycilia happening on a theatre stage was a forceful, but still pretty good visual symbolism.

It’s a recreation of a scene in the last episode of Zeta Gundam, with the exact same setup of people debating ideology while pointing guns at each other. Just that it’s Kycilia instead of Haman this time, I guess.

What’s kinda weird/interesting here is that Kycilia is spouting off rhetoric that’s almost word-for-word Char’s Counterattack Char, to Char, and Char’s having none of it. The scene only works as Gundam interrogating itself as meta-text, because it’s about the futility of fascist death-cults misinterpreting historical materialism and the dramatic irony of the same people making the same mistakes over and over and over again no matter how many times they get a do over… and then the punchline is this Loony Tunes ass FLCL moment

because as much as the old smothers the new, the new has the energy to bring something new to the table.

Char getting subconsciously magically dressed into his uniform by Lalah was utterly hilarious and blatantly a “hey guys its me, the guy from the merch” moment.

Ginga Bishonen Char Aznable

Char saying what y’all have been thinking for the past 6 episodes

However, the ending was just awful imo. If that is Amuro in the graffiti man’s soul, or inside that Gundam, then any conflicts from the G-Spam universe become completely meaningless.

Last ep isn’t going to (just) be Amuro in Gramps vs. Char’s Red Gundam, it’s going to be Machu fighting for the right for her timeline to exist, because the point of multiverse stories is that no matter how bad things get, a better world is always possible. After all, : “In the dark times, should the stars also go out?”

and also as tribute/send-off to U.C., and a creative statement that the new doesn’t have to be beholden to the old.

Also as the target audience Beyond the Time is the sickest beat drop ever to give a character who came from “the other side” so I forgive all GQuuuuuuX’s many failings and will be buying the merchandise.

(For real I’ll leave my real criticisms till next week, provided we’re not nuclear dust)

Edit: The title for next episode is a quote from Tomino’s autobiography: “That’s why I am… on the path to Gundam.”

Oh yeah that’s fair, Zeon definitely has that war criminal vibe to them.

I think in this case it’s more a what-if scenario of if the Cold War went hot. Iirc The Man in the High Castle (which this show is kinda blatantly cribbing off)