Zeta Gundam

[Cliffjumper]

Okay, I'm three and a half episodes in and enjoying. Camile is a dick (having killed his mum and hamstring his dad through just being a brat), but then so was Amuro for 43 solid episodes and three entire films. And Bright had better get some serious REWENGAY in or I'm going to burst. The mood isn't quite so perky, the animation is slicker, the music is marvellous at the moment (no mad jazz trumpets in fight scenes! Excellent!) and the whole thing is unfolding nicely.

I do have one question, which I was wondering if there's a spoiler-free answer to. Char's with AEUG for whatever reason, and as Zeon really aren't thought that well of, has some ludicrous assumed name (Quantum Jellybean or something). So he's in disguise, right? So why has he insisted on a red mobile suit so that literally everyone goes "Hmm, that reminds me of the Red Comet". Is there some plot explanation coming up, or is this an I-hear-my-Autobot-counterpart-is-nearby-real-nearby deal?

It's weird getting used to a whole other set of voices too... I watch the original series dubbed, then the movies subbed, and now Zeta dubbed with a different cast to Gundam. Very strange.

[Knightdramon]

Glad you're enjoying the series, haven't watched it but sat through the compilation movies.

You do get to see Char's motives later on and why he has joined with AEUG [don't see a reason why he shouldn't, personally]. No spoiler free answer at this point...

[wolfbolt86]

From what eps I've seen, it is very good. I havent' seen the entier series yet, and debating on gettign the box sets.

The same people from the first series also did Char's Counterattack. It did throw me off that they had changed the voice actors for this series. I don't know if they changed production companies or just hired new actors.

[Cliffjumper]

You do get to see Char's motives later on and why he has joined with AEUG [don't see a reason why he shouldn't, personally]. No spoiler free answer at this point...

Oh, I get a rough feeling why he joined up with the AEUG even at this stage (the frequent comparisons between the Titans and the Zaabi family), I'm just not so sure why he keeps dropping hints that he's Char the whole time - the red mobile suit, bringing Char up in conversation for no apparent reason...

Up to episode 9. Very good so far - Camile is still a dick, but at least everyone's hitting him for it.

[Brave Maximus]

Glad you're enjoying the series, haven't watched it but sat through the compilation movies.

You do get to see Char's motives later on and why he has joined with AEUG [don't see a reason why he shouldn't, personally]. No spoiler free answer at this point...

Oh dear god... Honnestly, the Zeta movies are absolute s**t. Not to mention some of the stuff Tomino does obliterates the Zeta movies from the UC timeline. I want the 7 hours back from "A New Translation" and co....

Yeah, I saw a Gundam thread and thought I'd pop in.
Some things to know: Tomino (director) has started his serious decent into depression. Zeta, right from the start, is a WHOLE lot darker (and Tomino gets worse). Kamille is a prick, Kamille will always be a prick. But, he's not nearly as whiney a prick as Amuro. (Interestingly Fa is just about as irritating as Frau Bau ever was...) Char is just bloody cool in this. I personally think the Gundam fandom's obsession is because of Quatro Baginna and not Char from the OYW.

Anyway: Basic answer: Char hooked up with the AEUG to stick it to the earth forces again, and specifically the Titans - who, amongst other things, gas entire colonies if they don't submit or even look like they might rebel or join Axis/Zeon.

As to the red mobile suit.... no bloody clue. I mean, some of it is psychological warfare. If you're going to see a black and red mono-eyed mobile suit, you're going to think it's char or Johnny Riden, aces from the OYW. On the other hand... no chance of Char hiding. The good news is: The Titans are so arrogant that they don't believe Char is still alive (Bosk Ohm says as much). But when Char gets his hands on the Hyaku Shiki - freakin awesome.

Zeta, to this day, stands up as easily one of the best Gundam series, EVER. Right up there with Turn A and X. You're in for a ride Cliffy - keep us up to date with what you think.

[Cliffjumper]

I'd heard a lot about it being darker, but as yet it's considerably less brutal than Ideon was even at this stage (I'm at about 15... Tomino had already given Cosmo one breakdown by about now IIRC). Char is a lot more interesting so far, not so sure about making the poor chap fly the Piss Gundam or whatever it's called though. Random nitpick: there's a bit at Jaburo where Char and a pair of AEUG Jims are under attack; Char leaps out of the way, leaving the Jims to get blown apart.And yet when Iceman does the exact same thing in the caves, Char is all "He doesn't even care for his men!". Bastard.

I always kinda feel sorry for the Jims. I've yet to see one be anything approaching useful...

[Brave Maximus]

I haven't seen Ideon yet (yeah, I know...) so I can't say how bad it is compared.

Tomino's just warming up though. A lot of the savages he inflicts on the Argama's crew is more psychological than physical (though there's enough death and Bright-slaps to go around).

I assume by "Jims" you mean unknown guys from the AEUG/Karaba. Yeah... it's a bit weird with Char. At times, he seems so concerned with those under him, and other times, they're pawns to be sacrificed as needed. The big thing about Char to remember: he only cares about himself and no one else. If the person is a good soldier/friend, he will care for them to an extent. But if that persons death/downfall serves Char, he will put his boot to their ass without a second though.

And the Shiki really is an awesome suit. The Methuss... is a POS
But then again, it gets totaled every ep (Fa pilots the poor thing) - and they repair it by the next episode

[Energon Hot Shot]

AEUG Jims

Nemos.




I'm 33 episodes into Zeta Gundam. The suit designs are really hit-or-miss so far. The Methuss and most of the Titans' suits are eyesores, while the Zeta, Hyaku Shiki, Nemos, and the MK-II(especially in the Titans colors) are excellent. I'm not going to comment on the story so that I don't spoil it for Cliffjumper, but I like it so far.

[Cliffjumper]

That's the one... is it a different suit, then? Just assumed it was the mass-produced one from MSG in different colours.

And yeh, I'm loving most of the AEUG suits, though the Shiki's colours are a bit... variable. Some of the Titans stuff is bloody horrible though, as you say - I'm never good with names, but the orangey transforming one (IIRC, the one that kills Roberto) is awful... I prefer the plain old Gundam to the Mark II, but the Mark II's still pretty good. Got me one of the 1980s HCM versions, mega fun

[Brave Maximus]

The Nemo's are produced by Anaheim Electronics, and designed to be the counter part to the GMII's the earth federation forces use - though they're actually quite a bit better than the GMII's (which are crap, you look at them wrong and they fall apart, like the GM's from the OYW).

One of the things about the "good guy" mass produced suits in Gundam is that they all look the same/similar, esp in the UC timeline.

GM's, Nemo's, Jegan's, Hardyguns, Gun-EZ/Gunblastors all share very similar design elements.

It's kind of the one falling of Zeta and Double Zeta. About this time, Bandai REALLY had swung Gunpla into full production and was turning out hundreds of kits per show. The "bad guys" in both series fall into the "Villian suit of the week" though at least with Zeta, it's the same pilot usually. But every ep or every other ep, the crew fights a new and different enemy mobile suit, and if it's Zeta era, it usually transforms.

[Sunstreaker2]

I picked up a torrent of a fansubbed version of Zeta. All 50 episodes.

It's supposedly better than the White Base subs, but I heard there's an issue with the subtitles lagging behind the audio...

[Cliffjumper]

Right, I'm about up to the stuff with the Psyco Gundam (Mirai's been taken hostage). Is there any danger of anything, y'know, happening any time soon? The series started off pretty well but it's really bogged down since the arrival on Earth. Hayato is flying a big slow plane around Earth with no-one going to any great lengths to stop him (aren't Karaba an underground force up against the massive military might of the Titans? Why are they attacking the bloody thing with a good suit and a few canon fodder at a time? Either that, or AEUG are seriously exaggerating what a problem the Titans are...).

Amuro's being a bit of a pain in the arse, and Kamille is still deeply irritating... the biggest problem with Amuro and various other White Base veterans turning up (through fairly dubious synchonicity) is that it's shoved Char away from being joint lead, which is a big shame as he's about the only character in it so far. No, but wait, we've got... Letz. Yay.

Plus why was everyone surprised that the Psyco Gundam's pilot is a hawt anime chick? It might be that I've watched the dozen or so episodes so far in a pretty spread-out manner, but I'm pretty sure most of the Titan pilots so far have been chicks with eighties hair and serious personality disorders...

[Cliffjumper]

Okay, it's getting a bit better, mainly though less of Katz (my mistake above, Letz isn't too bad due to only being in it for about three seconds). The plot's moving a bit and Char's at the forefront, which is all good. It's generally better when they stay in space (Kamile and Char have just gone back up there after Dakar). Still fed up with a couple of bits, though: -

- Those damn kids. We get a format which means we don't have to have a few toddlers wandering around (even if I'm secretly quite fond of the Ideon's brats), being mainly on a warship rather than the refugee setup of Gundam/Ideon. So what happens? They bring in a couple of bastard kids anyway. Argh.

- Jared or Iceman or whatever. How the **** hasn't this incompetent fool been killed yet? Same for Fah (sp?) whenever she gets on that ugly yellow thing. It's bloody character armour all over again, especially with Fah, who somehow jumps a load of Nemo pilots in the pecking order for a suit that doesn't suck and survives all these battles despite her lack of skill while grunts are wiped out left, right and centre. And at the other end of the scale, after being nigh-on indestructible, the Psyco gundam can suddenly be taken down by a Beam-Saber to the head?

- Does Char ever hit anything with that comedy bazooka?

[Knightdramon]

Okay, it's getting a bit better, mainly though less of Katz (my mistake above, Letz isn't too bad due to only being in it for about three seconds). The plot's moving a bit and Char's at the forefront, which is all good. It's generally better when they stay in space (Kamile and Char have just gone back up there after Dakar). Still fed up with a couple of bits, though: -

- Those damn kids. We get a format which means we don't have to have a few toddlers wandering around (even if I'm secretly quite fond of the Ideon's brats), being mainly on a warship rather than the refugee setup of Gundam/Ideon. So what happens? They bring in a couple of bastard kids anyway. Argh.

- Jared or Iceman or whatever. How the **** hasn't this incompetent fool been killed yet? Same for Fah (sp?) whenever she gets on that ugly yellow thing. It's bloody character armour all over again, especially with Fah, who somehow jumps a load of Nemo pilots in the pecking order for a suit that doesn't suck and survives all these battles despite her lack of skill while grunts are wiped out left, right and centre. And at the other end of the scale, after being nigh-on indestructible, the Psyco gundam can suddenly be taken down by a Beam-Saber to the head?

- Does Char ever hit anything with that comedy bazooka?

Those damn kids are there in nearly all of Tomino's gundams. I still cry at night when I think about the 50 episodes of Victory I watched.

Psycho gundam's cockpit is in the head, so I'm guessing the beam saber killed the pilot and destroyed the controls instead of doing major damage to the mobile suit. That bit was different in the compilation movies

[Cliffjumper]

The big problem for me is that I can kinda see the rationale in Gundam (I don't say G1, therefore I'm not going to say 0079 ), even if the crew agreeing to them staying on after Jaburo (and various other spots they could drop them off) stretched credibility... Here they had a setup that meant they could ignore all that stuff and we get the little shits anyway.

On a lesser note, Kamile's promotion to Gundam pilot is a little harder to take than Amuro's - you'd have to half-wonder why the people who don't know who he is give an inexperienced teenager the state-of-the-art mobile suit they've just nicked, instead of it going to Char, Apolly or Roberto, experienced trusted pilots. It's very strange that Tomino could come up with an engaging teenage lead for Ideon who's capable of being a prick but has some balance in there, and yet both the Gundam pilots are brats.

I can't get used to Hayato's uber-deep dub voice either... It's odd that they've made a real effort to make most of the characters sound similar to the first series dub, and then there are a couple of random ones that sound nothing like them.

I'm enjoying watching Zeta so far, I'm just not entirely sure why.

[Cliffjumper]

Okay, I finished it... Mildly underwhelming, that - the closest thing to emotional impact was Kamille dying at the end. Apart from the fact he apparently didn't, but ended up in a coma or something. Ooookay.

Too many stupid deaths. Emma? Dies through abject stupidity. Katz? Dies through abject stupidity. Hakkin? Dies though abject stupidity. It's hard to feel much emotion when someone dies because they basically go to such lengths to get themselves killed. I mean, come on, these people have been surviving battles for 50 episodes, and then they all just randomly chuck their lives away within half an hour of each other because, dude, FINALE EPISODE!!! And yet at the same time, we have ridiculous character armour - Hamann and Char both survive a ship blowing up from underneath them, despite the latter being in a totally ruined suit.

I could have done without all the trippy-hippy newtype mind-melding stuff as well. It didn't fit with the earlier gritty militarisitc feel of the first half of the series, and it really felt like they were making things up as they went along. Personally I felt the addition of Axis to the plot was a mistake as well, it muddied the conflict too much and basically shoved the Titans to one side like they weren't a big deal - and if they weren't, why did we have half a series on them? Sloppy.

And could the Titans characters have been any more generic?

[Knightdramon]

Okay, I finished it... Mildly underwhelming, that - the closest thing to emotional impact was Kamille dying at the end. Apart from the fact he apparently didn't, but ended up in a coma or something. Ooookay.

Too many stupid deaths. Emma? Dies through abject stupidity. Katz? Dies through abject stupidity. Hakkin? Dies though abject stupidity. It's hard to feel much emotion when someone dies because they basically go to such lengths to get themselves killed. I mean, come on, these people have been surviving battles for 50 episodes, and then they all just randomly chuck their lives away within half an hour of each other because, dude, FINALE EPISODE!!! And yet at the same time, we have ridiculous character armour - Hamann and Char both survive a ship blowing up from underneath them, despite the latter being in a totally ruined suit.

I could have done without all the trippy-hippy newtype mind-melding stuff as well. It didn't fit with the earlier gritty militarisitc feel of the first half of the series, and it really felt like they were making things up as they went along. Personally I felt the addition of Axis to the plot was a mistake as well, it muddied the conflict too much and basically shoved the Titans to one side like they weren't a big deal - and if they weren't, why did we have half a series on them? Sloppy.

And could the Titans characters have been any more generic?

That is why I like the series more than the compilation movies; I much rather have the ending with Kamille brainwashed than the sappy POS the movie ending was.

As a series, it has its share of deaths near the end [rarely a Gundam series goes without that], but it's typical early tomino crap; women who try their hardest to be better than men pilots, monologue about it and STILL get trashed in battle, women who whine and curse all creation because men are using them-and at the same time, on the opposite camp, said men never even pay more attention than a couple of lines per episode- and then...just die.

It's actually one of the few gundam series I appreciate its deaths [zeta and Seed are the only ones with such intensity in numbers who don't look outright ridiculous]. Then again, after wasting 23 minutes of my life for 50 times during Victory Gundam, any character that has more than 5 lines during the series stays with me when he\she dies. Damn, during Victory, women got naked in bathtubs with a 14 year old prisoner of war...people died before even getting to say a line...

Anyway, the Char\Hamman battle is one of my favourites in the series, I absolutely LOVED how Char\Quattro, an advertised badass, got owned so suddenly and rapidly in a gang-up battle, only to still get the upper hand in that crippled and outdated mobile suit.

The newtype crap was horrific indeed, it was handled poorly in the movie and from what I gathered it was the same footage and dialogue as the series.

Gundam 00 actually does a pretty good job of displaying A-Laws, an organization pretty much in theme of Titans, however late [24 years later, heh]. They too are shoved aside at the end, but there's indeed a higher agenda at stake.

Are you going to watch Char's Counterattack? Awesome 2 hour movie now that you're used to Tomino writing. Just skip ZZ...does not really handle any plot points decently.

[Cliffjumper]

I'm umming and ahhing about ZZ, to be honest. I may just skip straight to Char's Counterattack (from what little I've read, it doesn't seem to need much, if any, extra info from ZZ due to Amuro and Char not being in that series). I'm actually watching the 08th MS Team (DVD was bundled free with Zeta) at the moment, which is rather good fun - kinda reminds me of Patlabor a little in the approach.

On the other hand, I do want to give ZZ a try... it sounds very silly, but it might make me laugh - I personally found Zeta to be rather po-faced and joyless for the most part. Ideon managed to have a very gloomy mood for the most part without forgetting the characters were people, and every now and then there was a laugh out loud joke or some other sweet minor moment... I like the first one because every now and then it was a little bit daffy and you give a toss about the characters (and didn't like the films as much because they took themselves far too seriously).

Char's battle with Scirocco and Hamann was rather well done for the most part, it was just the cliche "wait for the sequel!" conclusion that blew it for me...

The deaths just felt so... orchestrated. It seemed to be Tomino killing people because he was expected to, so they just turn into lemmings a couple of episodes from the end. I mean, Hakkin killed himself and his entire crew during a vital battle because he fancied Emma... Who then dies because she gets out of the cockpit of the Mark II and just floats there in the middle of a pitched battle.

I think I'm more disappointed because it started off pretty well with the Argama against the Titans, with a fairly believable core cast. It lost momentum when they went to Earth and stayed too long, then went back with bloody Katz and his non-developing character, and up against a huge number of hawt newtype chicks, and didn't really get back into it.

As much as I like Bright, what was the point of basically shoving Hakkin to one side for him? By the same token, what was the point of bringing Amuro back, building him back up and then basically ignoring him? Most of the White Base crew were in that vein, actually.

[Energon Hot Shot]

I guess it's safe to post this now:

Read right-to-left.

[Cliffjumper]

Why wait till now? I could have not watched it had I seen that...


I'm very skeptical of any 40-50 episode TV series that can be compacted to three films without the fandom going spare