Nice.

Nice.

It feels like the edits are a lot closer to Ganondorf in Hyrule Warriors or Ocarina of Time (which I’m personally a huge fan of), while the canon ones are taking more after Twilight Princess.

The new design also reminds me a helluva lot of Demise from Skyward Sword (though since they basically are Ganon, in a sense, I suppose that’s to be expected).

edited the new artwork of totk ganondorf too so heres both :)

(remember, this is not saying 'fixing it' or 'i replace canon', just a fun lil edit)

here are the canon ones for comparison

i think the first one is purely and illustration, the second one feels like it was the actual model painted over due to the subtle difference in design and dynamic

Just realised that part of the appeal of units using the Rodi frame in Iron Blooded Orphans (besides them looking like little potatoes/dumplings/buns with guns) is that their design resembles the old prototype Zaku unit built by the Principality of Zeon

(I’m specifically referring to the Man Rodi, Landman Rodi, Monkey Rodi and my personal favourite, the Labrys)

With them appearing as exaggerated versions of the following:

The Zaku prototype units (in some sources called “crabman”)

Which were then replaced with the Mobile Worker and subsequently the Waff in Gundam: The Origin.

It’s just neat spotting common design themes with the Zaku-esque suits.

There’s a scene in The Clone Wars that I find pertinent to this.

Count Dooku’s replaced Ventress as his apprentice, and is in the process of training Savage Opress as a replacement.

It’s very similar to Yoda and Luke’s training, just with added motivation (IE force Lightning). Dooku is trying to get Savage to lift the stone pillars, and Savage Tells him it cannot be done. Dooku replies:

“The task is only impossible because you have deemed it so”.

It’s essentially exactly what Yoda tells Luke in Empire Strikes Back, and reinforcers the fact that Dooku was once Yoda’s apprentice.

Not me being mad today about people over exaggerating the "do or do not there is no try" and hating on the Jedi for it as if it's not an idiom about always trying your best and giving it your all (and considering things when you do them) instead of literally saying don't try if you can't succeed. :/

I've always understood "do or do not, there is no try" as "ultimately, you will either have done or not done" - it seems like it's about focusing on the outcome instead of the process.

(As a recap of what exactly happens in ESB: Luke is doing a handstand trying to lift stones with Yoda perched on his leg when the ship suddenly sinks further into the water. It breaks Luke's concentration and his rocks fall, along with him, and Yoda. Luke laments they'll never get the ship back, Yoda laments that Luke always thinks things are too hard to be done, Luke says lifting stones is different, Yoda says it isn't, and Luke agrees to try, which is when Yoda has his iconic line.

And critically, after Luke does try and fail, Yoda gives him a great speech about the nature of the Force and how it binds everything together and Luke despondently says that it's just impossible. Upon which Yoda lifts the ship out of the water, of course, and Luke exclaims that he can't believe it, to which Yoda answers that that's why he's failing.)

Obviously you won't always get things right the first time, and that's precisely what Luke is frustrated about in the scene. And because he's disappointed that he's not getting things right, he doesn't even want to try anymore - his first instinct is to give up because he thinks the situation is beyond fixing.

So the critical point about the quote is that this Yoda shifting the focus: he tells Luke to stop thinking about what he's doing and concentrate on what he wants to do.

This is because of Luke's current state of mind, because Luke is currently associating his own efforts with failure, it's not just a random thing he's saying to make him feel bad.

Everything Star Wars tells us about the Force is that it's used through both intuition and confidence:

That's why the Jedi train so hard from such a young age - you can't doubt yourself or second-guess the Force, or you will get your ass kicked by both the universe and your potential opponents. You have to be able to trust your instincts because you have to rely on them - hence the need to either instill good Force-oriented instincts in kids, or in Luke's case relearn his own base sentient instincts. You can't learn to categorize the material world as 'too heavy,' 'too far,' 'not possible' - you have to focus on the Force, not the physical nature of the objects or your own limitations.

Luke thinks and feels the way a non Force-sensitive would: 'heavy things = can't be lifted.' He was doing okay lifting stones upside down, but he was using his muscles to stand upright, not the Force (hence why he was struggling to stay up and why he fell so easily). His concentration was clouded by material concerns (the loss of the ship and his own powerlessness) so he couldn't maintain it. He sees success as depending on his own conscious efforts but that's just not the way it works, he has to let go because his mind is just not wired right yet and so his efforts are necessarily counterproductive. It's that materialism that Yoda is responding to.

That's the point of Yoda's lesson imo - it's not so much about the technicalities of 'giving it everything you've got,' it's about something much deeper. He is trying to get Luke to radically change his mindset and entire worldview (the 'luminous beings, not this crude matter' quote is from this scene too), because Luke is never going to succeed if he thinks in terms of 'trying.'

If Luke could visualize the starship out of the bog and focus on that, the starship would be out of the bog. If he's focused on trying to lift it out of the bog, then he'll fail because everything in his mind tells him he can't.

Which is exactly what happens.

And the fact is, we know Yoda is 100% right with his advice and that everything he says and teaches in that moment is endorsed by the narrative - because he easily succeeds where Luke kept failing.

Story-wise, it couldn't be clearer that Yoda's advice is good, because it's immediately proven that not following it doesn't yield results, but that following it does.

Like most Jedi maxims, "Do, or do not. There is no try," is circumstantial advice and I'm pretty sure it doesn't show up again in Star Wars canon, be it the movies or TCW (until Rebels that is, when Kanan quotes it to Ezra like it's a rote thing that Yoda used to say all the time and it's kind of 'ah ah' moment because neither of them can figure out what it means). Which is why it kinda bugs me that it was elevated to a Yoda proverb like it's something he says constantly and not just something Luke needed to hear in that moment. It's a banger of a quote though.

Joe Jusko

It’d be kinda neat to see a Gundam series where the Gundam gets damaged every so often - like where the original Rx-78 gets it’s arm shot off, or the Gold Frame has to leave behind its arm, or even where Aerial gets its legs wrecked, and then a new part is salvaged from the battlefield.

So by the end of the series/season/arc, the unit’s essentially been ship of theseus’d, so it’s unclear if it’s still “The Gundam” with different parts of it being left on different battlefields. It’d be quite an effective way to symbolise the pilot losing their “innocence” as it were, with the original Gundam being swapped out for parts necessary to the situation at hand, perhaps even salvaging from particular kills as necessary. It’d show the conflict weighing on them in a very real sense, as the mobility of the unit might be reduced due to all the weight or the support of parts it simply wasn’t designed for.

Heck, it might even be a way to tie it in with loss of identity, the main character losing a lot of what makes them who they are as the mobile suit does, ending up this formless, shapeless thing, using whatever means and weapons necessary to get the job done.

A perfect, eternal soldier.

That said, it would be kinda neat to see from a modelling perspective. The basic Gundam’d be the starter kit, with the parts being add-ons or upgrade packs, kinda like how the HG IBO line sold its kits with the bare basic equipment and the rest was add-ons. It’d also encourage a bunch of kitbash options, which’d be pretty cool.

I do really like the whole mythic aspect that Iron-Blooded Orphans brought to the table. Not just in regards to the Gundams or mobile suits specifically (though those are wonderful), but just the world in general.

Tekkadan being enshrined as “The Devils of Mars”, and Gjallarhorn’s naming convention having so much influence from Nordic legends and mythology. It really sells the world as not only believable, but where these things have power.

Where a legend can make or break something.

And the mobile suits exemplify this.

I really like the Gundams being these forgotten, almost revered machines. The legendary warriors that ended a war over three centuries ago. The relics of a bygone age, taken up by modern peoples for their own, comparatively petty, causes. That mystic aspect works really well, since it is a setting built on myth, with Kudelia’s Maiden of Revolution and Julieta’s knight imagery.

Gjallarhorn as a whole has a lot of knightly imagery in its mobile suits and it’s aesthetics. Gjallarhorn is the organisation that saved the world from the calamity war after all, so they project that image with their dress and mobile suits. Even Lieutenant Crank and Ein are emblematic of a knight and squire, with Gaelio and Ein only furthering the comparison

Ein’s is a squire, who’s knight is slain by bandits. In desperation he pledges himself to another knight in hopes of avenging his lord, eventually giving up his life to protect his new knight, who gave him that chance. He rises again as a black-armoured murderer, who is lost to his vengeance, focusing only on that single goal, being slain by the very bandits he sought to avenge himself on. Years later, his “memory” is carried by the knight he saved, which is used to give him a chance against his foe.

It sounds like a classical story, and that’s just Ein. It only touches on Gaelio, but he undergoes his own arc, intertwined with Ein. There’s a bunch of imagery like that, particularly with Gjallarhorn. One example would be railguns.

They’re fairly common weaponry, but they’re wielded so much like lances. Iok seeks to use one to slay Hashmal, so even though they’re ranged weapons in a world defined by CQC, they don’t seem out of place, because they still seem like a comparatively simple weapon. Dainsleif’s looking like bows and being employed en mass a la archers would be another example. It even adds to the knightly theme, since one of the main downfalls of knights was the invention of the longbow, a bow capable of piercing armour.

So you have this setting built on all this, where even Tekkadan, who don’t even pay lip service to the idea are part of this grander mythology.

And then Rustal shows up and completely upends it.

It just all works really well.