Char Aznable - Tumblr Posts

"Don't talk to me or my son ever again"

I ran into a creative wall painting my player character for Lancer, so I decided to take a break and revisit gunpla. I love the Zaku, and I'm glad I did research on all the different available kits before buying a couple. This is the High Grade kit for Chars Zaku ii from the Origin movies, which has a much more detailed chassis than previous High Grades.

Oh, I also 3D printed a new eye ring, since the one you get is just flat and you slap a sticker on it, lame.

I have the Real Grade Chars Zaku ii as well, which I'll be painting in his colors, so for this one I went with the classic green. This was fun and relaxing, and much easier than my first attempt at gunpla

I went ahead and did up the heat hawk as well for some posing fun. The kit also comes with the bazooka and the huge anti ship rifle, but I intended this to be a pretty bog standard grunt so I'm saving the extra kit for Chars

Absolutely GORGEOUS image of Alpha Azieru & Char for the Char’s Counterattack prologue in the 1/1988 issue of Newtype. Illustrated by Hideyuki Sato.

Char Aznable during the Battle of Loum

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack - illustration by Haruhiko Mikimoto (‘Cellu Works’, 1991)

Series: Gundam Artist: Kitazume Hiroyuki Publication: ‘Light Pink - Hiroyuki Kitazume Art Collection’ (03/1988) Source: Scanned from personal collection

While I do agree with your points about suletta and miorine, particularly their contrasting arcs at the minute, I must confess I’m somewhat lost on your last point.

Maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen Gundam Wing in quite a while, but while Char and Zechs are quite different:

In Aesthetics

In personal connection to the main villains - Zechs and Treize being old friends vs. Char haveing been gunning for the Zabi family since essentially day one.

In the precise details of their nobility - Char being concerned primarily with revenge for the death of his father, whereas Zechs seems to have ambitions to restore the Sanc Kingdom to its former glory, he just thinks that he really isn’t the right guy for the job.

In their arcs- Char goes from Rival to Friend to Villain, whereas Zechs goes Rival to Villain to Friend.

They’re generally pretty similar other than that (A young man heir to a kingdom joins the military in disguise in order to avenge the deaths of his family, rivalling the Gundam pilot and meeting someone else he comes to truly care about in the process).

There’s probably a comparison to be made about Char taking control of Neo Zeon and perpetrating the axis drop, versus Zechs/Milliardo leading White Fang and heading up Barge, but for the life of me I can’t remember why Milliardo does that.

My point is, while Char and Zechs are different enough that the change is noticeable, I’m not really sure how the differences between them apply to Prospera.

I just don’t see what Zechs brings to the table that Char doesn’t.

(I should probably mention that when I talk about Char here, it’s primarily a mix of the cunning manipulator presented in the Original Series and the Origin, and the World-weary charisma machine from Char’s counterattack. While I do very much like Quattro Bajeena, I just don’t think he’s relevant here).

I’ve been wondering just who or what was going to be the Caliban of this show. It’ll be interesting to see just what will happen to Suletta now that she has to rely on her own skills as a pilot, and all the stress it entails. Permet scores and all.

It’s also in character for her to come to terms with who and what she is after all that has transpired. Which is a relieve because I would hate to see it dragged out. Miorine, on the other hand, needs her tanuki, ASAP. And a tomato in these trying times.

Prospera going full steam ahead on crimes is strangely artful. That whole scene with her activating Quiet Zero and annihilating the Assembly fleet gave me chills, and also reminded me of later parts of Gundam Wing. Forget Char, she’s more like Zechs.

Came across this neat looking CCA poster that I'd never seen before

Damn, Gundam 0079 has done real good dub work. Kai and Ryu are excellent, but even little things like how Char sounds ever-so-faintly sarcastic in his interactions with Garma, or just some of the Zeon Soldiers.

It’s just really nice.

How to get into Gundam

Because fuck it, I was gonna do one of these sooner or later anyway.

So you want to know what this Gundam thing’s about, maybe you like the mecha design, maybe you caught part of an episode one time and want to catch up, or maybe you saw a nice piece of Chamuro fanart and want to go to the source.

But there’s so many shows and timelines that it can be quite daunting on first look, so this guide is intended to give a rough overview.

I would however like to stress two four things beforehand however:

This guide is not intended as “The One True Way” or anything. There’s no harm it coming into it a different way, and these are only my own opinions.

There’s nothing stopping you from just watching one show and leaving it there. You don’t have to watch every single show going, even I’ve only seen most of these, not all. Gundam typically has variations on similar themes - it’s very nice watching multiple shows because they complement one another, but it’s not necessarily required.

I am very much an insider looking out here, so let me know if there’s any details I’ve missed.

I’m not gonna recommend these on a “if you like X, then watch Y basis”, mostly because I don’t personally find genre recommendations helpful, so I’d recommend picking based on promotional material (vibes, if you will).

I’ll be using this chart, supplied by the excellent@l-crimson-l, to illustrate everything.

Gundam as a whole can principally be divided into three sections: Universal Century (or UC), the Alternate Universes (AU’s) and the Build Series.

The AU’s are below the light blue line, near the bottom of the Chart, the Build Series is within the bright green line at the top-right corner of the chart and UC is the big line in the middle. We’ll talk about each of them individually.

The AU’s

The Alternate Universes were conceived as a way to get away from the continuity-heavy nature of Universal Century and provide an easy jumping-on point for new fans. The AU’s are standalone and require no prior knowledge, and are thus an excellent place to start. Honestly, I’d recommend quickly searching some promotional materials (like posters) and just going with the one you find most appealing based on that. They are (in production order):

Mobile Fighter G Gundam (1994)

New Mobile Report Gundam Wing (1995)

After War Gundam X (1996)

Turn A Gundam (1999)

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (2002)

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (2007)

Mobile Suit Gundam AGE (2011)

Gundam: Reconguista in G (2014)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans (2015)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (2022)

There’s side series and movies and other things besides, but these are the mainline shows, if you will. I have specific notes on a few of them:

Witch From Mercury - It’s of a shorter length than is usual for mainline shows, so consequently it’s a much smaller time investment than the others.

Mobile Fighter G Gundam - While undeniably rad as hell, I would recommend watching another AU first. G Gundam differs from its stablemates in a few key areas, and I find it helps to have a contrast to fully appreciate those differences.

Gundam AGE - is probably the only one I wouldn’t recommend. I didn’t like the art style and the technical explanations just got on my nerves, so I stopped watching.

Turn A and G-Reconguista are technically part of UC as well, but it’s not really crucial information so don’t feel like you have to watch UC first (I’m only including this detail for completionism).

I’ve found all the AU’s I’ve seen to be pretty good, so I’d say that which one you start with really just comes down to personal taste.

The Build Series

Is just kind of doing its own thing. The Build series is basically Buy Our Toys: the series. It’s got a far lighter tone, and I’ve had cause to compare it to pokemon prior. It’s also chock full of references and in-jokes to the other series.

Build Fighters and Build Fighters Try are the ones I’d recommend - they’ve got actual stakes and the fight scenes are really good.

Build Divers and Build Divers Re:rise I can’t recommend - I just find Build Divers aggressively boring. Build Divers Re:Rise is just okay - neither standout good or particularly bad. Its main flaw is that it’s a sequel to Build Divers.

The OVA’s are pretty much bad across the board - I’d particularly recommend avoiding Gundam Build Metaverse.

Universal Century

Universal Century is the big main timeline of Gundam, and is the timeline the original Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979 takes place in. There’s a tendency among certain fans to place UC as the one-above-all of Gundam, but I wouldn’t really go that far. It’s all pretty good, but I wouldnt really say one timeline is better than another (save personal preference, anyway).

Because UC is so big, it can be subdivided a couple times. The primary division is “Mainline” UC versus everything else. Basically there’s four-five shows in Universal Century from which everything else flows. As long as you know roughly what happens in these shows, then you can watch basically anything else in UC and have a good idea of what’s going on. These are (in order):

Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) - sometimes called Mobile Suit Gundam 0079.

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985)

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (1986)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (1988)

With Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (2010) as a nominal fifth (honestly I feel like you could argue either way).

The rest of the shows are:

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (1989 Three-Episode OVA)

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991 Movie)

Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (1991 Thirteen-episode OVA)

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (1993)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (1999 Twelve-episode OVA)

G-Saviour (2000 Live Action Movie) - nobody ever talks about or acknowledges this one, it’s just here for completionism.

Mobile Suit Gundam MS Igloo (2004-2009 Three OVA’s with three Episodes each)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (2015 Six-Episode OVA, adapted from the Manga of the same name)

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt (2015 Eight-Episode Series, adapted from the Manga of the same name)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Twilight Axis (2017 episode, adapted from a light novel of the same name. Later rereleased as Gundam Twilight Axis Red Trace, with additional footage)

Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative (2018 sequel movie to Gundam Unicorn)

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway (2021 ongoing movie series, very much adapted from the novel Hathaway’s Flash)

Most of the other series relate to events in the aforementioned “mainline” shows in some way, but a lot of the sidestories set during the One Year War require very little introduction (Thunderbolt, 0080 and 08th MS Team). Similarly, works set in “Late UC” (F91 and Victory Gundam) carry on from the other series thematically but don’t have any plot connections, so they can all be watched without any background knowledge of the rest of the Universal Century.

Compilation Movies

Just a quick note here - many of the Gundam series have compilation movies, where either a whole series or part of one are compressed down into a movie. While each movie compares differently, they usually boil down to this: Compilation Movies usually have worse pacing, but really nice animation.

One of the great things about Gundam is that different shows offer variations on themes, so seeing how different characters react to similar situations, or how different settings change their approaches can make it incredibly rewarding.

I haven’t seen enough of SD Gundam to make any sort of recommendations there, and Manga is something I might touch on another day.

EDIT: Oh hey also: You can watch a good chunk of these on YouTube, for free, officially. The Official Gundam.Info YouTube channel rotates the series shown on its channel periodically. I think it’s got F91 and SEED on there currently? But it’s had Wing, 00 and Witch From Mercury before. Also all of the Build Fighters series are there.

So yeah, that’s a thing.

It could be that they’re based on different art pieces I think? So depending on the source depends on the colour.

Or it could be different dye prices for the plastic, so one becomes cheaper based on the prices at the time they were made?

It could just be overall colour compliments, but that doesn’t feel likely.

Hey Gunpla nerds, I have a question, if anyone is willing to shine some light that would be awesome!

Recently I’ve taken to trying to collect every single Char Custom suit, by that I mean one of each per available grade (i.e. a HG, RG, MG, PG, and Mega Size Zaku; a HG and MG Gelgoog; a HG Nightingale; etc)

After finally cleaning off a shelf to put the collection near each other I’ve noticed something… something rather odd.

For some reason each Char suit has one of two different color pallets.

Exhibit A. The Zaku II Brothers

Now my lighting isn’t great but I think this displays my point quite well. The RG and MG Zaku both have a light pink-salmon as their main color, with a saturated crimson for their vests and skirt armors. The HG on the other hand, is starkly more… well red. Granted that was also hot off the runners, the red has cooled to a salmon color, but still not as pink as it’s more detailed counterparts

Exhibit B. The Z’gok Brothers

Here the Z’goks have almost the exact opposite issue. The MG and HG have the redder salmon color, while the RG is a lighter pink. Of course the colors are everywhere with the RG so I am just referring to the upper body

Finally Exhibit C. The HG Rick Dom and HG Gelgoog

Now the lighting is worse here because they’re both on a lower shelf, but as you can see by their baggy leg armor thats right next to each other, the Gelgoog is, again, a darker salmon compared to the pink Rick Dom

I had noticed these differences while doing work in my room and absolutely not while drifting off, staring at and thinking about my model kits

One last piece of evidence I have come across is the age of the kits. The youngest 2 red salmons are from 2023 (Zaku Revive) and 2006 (Gelgoog) while the oldest Pink suit is from 2007 (MG Zaku II 2.0), And even the Rick Dom is actually from a 2015 kit. Assuming the Revive is simply replicating the plastic color of the original 2000s kit, so…

What’s up with that? Why did Bandai just decide to make Char’s suits more saturated in 2007? This is the question I have been pondering for a while…

And yes it’s kinda petty to look this far into “why my plastic different?” But at the same time it’s just a bizarre and petty change too. Why not keep the red? Why switch plastic colors after 2006 and only switch them back for recreating older kits? It’s so mind boggling …

art by Kazuhisa Kondo

Char and Sayla reuniting at Texas Colony. Illustrated by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Gundam UC + The Onion Headlines

card with Garma and Char's zakus

I feel the need to mention that this particular image is from the part of Zeta where he publicly admits that he is, in fact, Char Aznable when addressing the Earth Federation Parliament on live television.

Which makes this even funnier.

Rin. Are you a Char Aznable introject?

people always seem a little surprised when I tell them I'm just one person and I'm not even an actual kinnie of any sort. I really like char and think it's fun to ham up acting like him sometimes, but I am not, in fact, char aznable