*The Following Post Contains Spoilers Fro Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans Urdr Hunt, Episodes 1-22*

*The following post contains spoilers fro Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans Urdr Hunt, episodes 1-22*

As a follow up to my previous post about Urdr Hunt:

Wistario Afam.

Wistario just doesn’t really….. grab me, as a protagonist. And I’m not sure why, but I do want to extrapolate a little. I like that Wistario has a solid, defined Goal, which is to win the Urdr Hunt, and use the prize money to buy and do up the Radonitsa colony.

Gjallarhorn making a play for Katya upends this - not completely mind, but it causes Wistario to pivot to protecting Katya at the expense of the Urdr hunt. This makes sense, he’s able to recover data from the Urdr hunt without directly collecting it himself since he knows and is friends with roughly 3/5 of the other participants (4/5 if we count the Zan brothers). This is a good decision, but it does still cause him some grief, since he knows he doesn’t have the resources to take on Gjallarhorn.

Then he meets Londo Bron, and makes a steadfast declaration of protection/marriage proposal to Katya. This is where he sorta loses me.

It’s not a bad choice, and I understand it’s borne out of his desire for family, which has been slowly building in the background as the series goes on. Thing is….. him and Katya haven’t really interacted other than collaborating on the Urdr Hunt. Honestly, the only person he’s interacted with enough that I would genuinely believe a proposal would be Range. So when I first heard it, I genuinely thought he was bluffing Londo, but then as things progress he’s serious about it, and I just can’t really fathom why, because they just haven’t interacted in any capacity that I feel would lead to romance. What I’m getting at is that Wistario’s wish to buy Radonitsa and do it up to improve the lives of people on Venus feels like the thing that keeps him “tethered”, I suppose. So I kinda lose him when that gets taken away. I don’t disagree or fail to understand his actions, it’s just that it’s such a big part of his personality that I struggle to parse him without it.

Part of this could be a bigger issue of certain characters not being explored enough - I like Range, Katya and Denmer, they’re all either explored enough for me to like them and understand their actions or have enough going on that I can fill in the blanks myself. But Wistario and Korunaru kind of aren’t, and this wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t ostensibly the main characters. I like Korunaru, but she suffers because I believe her character could have been combined with Katya without losing much in the process, and I seem to recall the marketing pushing her as important.

I’d like to stress that if there’s some sort of Bio section in-game, or some extra side conversations that flesh them out then that sounds great, but I don’t have those in front of me so I can’t really account for them. Wistario’s just fairly obvious since he’s the protagonist, so he kind of needs to have a defined (though not necessarily strong) character.

However, I do rather like his design. It’s got a youth and energy to it that I think goes well with his desire to re-invigorate Venus’ economy, and his clothing’s functional without looking drab, so it’s believable that this is something he lives and works in. His childishness (at least comparatively. Honestly it comes and goes) and friendliness also illustrate that he’s a positive spirit and force for change in a negative environment (read: basically all of Post Disaster).

Happy 45th Birthday to Ralph Bakshi‘s Lord of the Rings. Art by Tom Jung

Thought: I wonder if Gundam 00’s focus on True Innovators is sorta in response to Newtypes in UC not really going anywhere.

(Tomino changed his mind about them when making Victory is the explanation I normally hear).

I felt like writing something short today, so let’s talk about the New Gundam Seed Freedom trailer (it was either this or a quick review of SD Gundam CROSS RAYS).

I think I’m gonna genuinely struggle to take this movie seriously.

Now I’ve already done a few posts about my feelings on the Cosmic Era (and I’ll probably do more at some point), but in brief; I like both SEED and SEED Destiny. I like Destiny more because it feels like they had more freedom (ugh) with what they wanted to do, as opposed to vaguely retelling the original series, but I think SEED’s a bit more coherent.

(Stargazer’s a decent little yarn about Phantom pain pilots, I’d say it’s almost the cosmic era in miniature)

And I know it’s because it’s a scene taken out of context from the trailer, but-

Lacus: It’s my wish as well

Kira: UWA!?

Lacus: to fight alongside you

Kira: UK-GHA?!

He can emote, ladies and gentlemen!

Speaking of emoting, maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen Cucuruz Doan’s Island, but everyone seems to be really pushing that facial animation in this. Like, in another scene, Lacus turns around, looks faintly disgusted, then moves right along to joy. And I misread Shinn’s expression something like twice when rewatching the trailer (is it horny rage, or is it anguish?). It was odd.

Though I will say the new music (op? Inset song?) sounds really good, though I find the Cosmic Era’s always had good music.

Even though we have another moment of unintentional parody, where the music lulls and Kira says dramatically “I can’t see an end to this war, all I can do is……” (soundtrack) FREEDOM. And my mind immediately went to “metal gear protagonist”.

Admittedly while I don’t think I’ll be able to take it seriously, I do think it’ll be fun to talk about. But all the same, I was feeling oddly cynical. Not really sure why.

Unrelatedly, there was another announcement today, Mobile Suit Gundam Silver Phantom. A, uh, virtual reality narrative interactive experience as one news site has dubbed it. Gonna be honest, I feel the the top comment on the YouTube video sums up my thoughts “I was hype until the meta quest appeared”. Anyway, we know basically nothing about it, so I’m going to indulge in some baseless speculation for the moment. Presumably it’s a spin-off, I don’t think they’d make a whole new AU just for this. So then as a guess I’d say it’s likely either a Universal Century sidestory or SEED (since we got Gundam Seed Eclipse a little while back). But I did see one interesting theory while browsing earlier:

It could be this “Silver Phantom”. Unlikely, I think, but a neat theory.

*The Following contains spoilers for Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans Urdr Hunt*

The *other* follow-up point to my prior Urdr Hunt Post.

Okay, so the Gundam Marchosias was apparently scary enough to give a mobile armour PTSD.

That is RAD AS HELL.

Let’s analyse that, shall we?

So the Gundam Marchosias was apparently able to beat Harael, a Mobile Armour from the Calamity War that is programmed to kill humans and has no brain, will or personality of its own, badly enough that when it sees the Hajiroboshi 325-ish years later, it instantly recognises its killer and has a flashback to the Calamity War, leading to it desperately trying to kill the Hajiroboshi (which for its part seems to recognise its victim).

Absolutely fantastic.

Me: oh hey, I can totally use the like function on tumblr to earmark posts to look at later, I don’t like that much stuff.

Also Me: Now where’s that Char post I liked a couple months ago - oh fuck.