The Politics of Gundam | War in a nutshell?

Oof. Well ... so I was cooking up this topic, thinking that I'd come home today and I'd write a bit to do have mental space for some coding, but then my mind first wandered off somewhere and returned with a bucketload of other things before I remembered what I "was going to do" today. sigh ...


Anyhow ... . So, after watching Season 1 of Iron Blooded Orphans I had a hard time finding somewhere to stream Season 2 - only found Japanese without dubs or subtitles on Crunchyroll - then got stuck on Rising Impact and now I'm watching Gundam Seed and I've basically caught up to where I initially was.
In between I also saw Gundam I and II - so I see how Gundam Seed is in some sense just a retelling of that; But I guess I'm also at the point where the two plots diverge. And with that, we're also in the middle of some Gundam Controversy.

I've learned that there's this thing called "Don't do that cool thing" - which is where a movie or something like that has a message like "war is bad" - but the cool part of the whole thing is ... the bad thing.
That's also kind of what a Gundam is. The cool thing that we should hope we'll never need.

Anyway. Pretty much all that I've seen so far has certainly been worth my time - and coming from Witch from Mercury to Iron Blooded Orphans to OG Gundam to Gundam Seed ... I've been having a great time!
Which is maybe where it's like the other thing - did I ever slap a label on it? - uh, anyhow ... where ... some might have a hard time coping with the idea that we watch tragic war-stories for entertainment.


It's however one of those things. Though we all inhabit the same planet, the standards of living are so vastly different from place to place, it's like ... straight from one of those ... err ... "Horrifyingly Sad Anime". Maybe if it weren't for that, if we had less distractions to occupy ourselves with, we'd be more engaged in making the world a better place. It's a hard maybe, because at the end of the day ... we're living the dream and the tragedy is that it's somehow ... a privilege. And not the Norm.

We in turn also have to come to terms with the world we live in. And unlike how reddit portrays some employers, healing doesn't happen on command. It takes time.

But anyhow. There's not much use in Lamenting over things ... if we could actually do better.


So, the first actual thing for me to write about here, is this thing with people that somehow don't get the plot of a story. More specifically, fascists (or likeminded individuals) that enjoy a medium that is in and of itself a satire or parody or at any rate vastly critical of their ideology/ideologies.
But the answer is rather simple.
One simple statement to that end is, that in reality - conflicts aren't won by your feelings or "the power of friendship", your wishful thinking or any of that crap. But more so by who pulls the trigger. So they think at least. And seeing us yap about "the message" of a particular medium ... is maybe the trigger for them to see us as brainwashed. And that also goes beyond media. Like here in Germany we tend to lock ourselves into the kind of open minded tolerance that has worked well for us so far - while all those right-wing dipshits tend to think that this is nonsense!

What they miss is ... the part where we'd speak of harmony - or, sure, the 'true' power of friendship. It's usually all there in plain text; Though what sours it would be the various moments that are there for sake of tension or drama or such. I mean ... which of the recent Turtles movies was it ... where three(?) of then were captured in a lab and had their blood drained from them. This is what we could describe as a Game Over situation. And movies and shows - and even games - are full of them. Situations the protagonist(s) should have survived - at least in the normal world it'd been pretty much done; And still ... somehow the Ukraine is still there.

But yea. You know what I mean. The power of friendship or whatever turns the Game Over into a W - somehow - in more or less believable ways - and that could arouse the idea that it's bullshit.
On the other side, well. While watching Gundam Seed I had to wonder: How much of the Plot did I actually catch up on the first time I was watching it? Because I was sure I hadn't remembered most of it. The whole experience was tucked away in some dark corner of my mind; And if at all it only had a subconscious effect.
I hadn't even remembered the Gundams and the fights. But I guess that's just ... what happens when you for the most part don't actively care much about either side of the story. So, it kind of defeats the point I was trying to make - but I'm sure it's not a stretch to assume, that here and there the flashy robots are what maintains presence in someone's mind. Which is how we come to the cool thing.

See ... the protagonists usually don't get to do all the cool thing. Not in a setting like Gundam at least. It's like ... in an action game. Any mission that requires you to avoid colateral damage is like ... annoying. So yea, you want to blow shit up. Like ... indiscriminately. You want to have a clear mission objective, possibly a good team by your side, and the permission to see it through, whatever the means.
So, naturally that side is headed by some smartass that's too good to ever not be in right place at the right time and just happens to have that sense of how to squash the opponents hopes and dreams. The kind of person that's too great to be overestimated, and you being the cock he's pushing down other people's throats.


And that's basically it. I'd argue. I mean, I guess we could go deep into how Call of Duty is essentially brainwashing the kids into a kind of group-think that's easily mobilized into actions against all that isn't "like that" - which is possibly one reason why we get all that oafish toxic masculity blown our way whenever "the gamers" think they have a battle to win. Someone should drop them a hint, that that kind of behavior isn't gonna give them what they want. Like ... have they ever consumed "that kind" of media as done by "one of them"? I mean, that's for the most part where 'we' are coming from. Who do you think makes the stuff you like? But maybe that's leaning a bit far out.
I mean, I sure wouldn't put my hand into 'that' fire!

But ... generally speaking, I guess; For better or worse media is coated in that woke/progressive messaging - whether they're genuine about it or not ... is like ... I guess left to our imagination.
Or ... James S. Sterling.


The nuance of it all ... probably doesn't matter all that much.
I mean, sticking with Gundam Seed, I've pretty much been vibing with it until the end of Season 1? I think once they arrive on earth that's Season 2 because the intro changed. But ... I don't know. Anyway. With Kira more seriously committed to piloting the Strike, the ... theme or tone shifts. Maybe just slightly, maybe really hard. Because ... from there on out we're no longer seeing war as from the sidelines. But now ... "we" have chosen a side. And what side is that?

Well, I guess I'll have to stick around to find out - but ... so far; Uhm ... it seems to be one of those more consistent themes or plotpoints within Gundam, that the "water is muddied". What I mean by that is that for once the show starts while the conflict has already begun or is even about to come to a dire close. That means that there's history - and that history is usually one where either side is guilty of (a) war-crimes. So, each side has some reason to justify their hate against the other - ish. At any rate is the part where the enemy soldier will be really mad about one of their allies dying while they're actually the aggressors ... one I've seen a couple of times so far; And it's always ... triggering me somehow. Like "What the fuck do you think would happen you Dipshit!?". Ah right ... crush without clap-back!

And I guess that's one of those beats that ... just needs to be there. I mean, in seed, we learn that the Coordinators have very legitimate reasons to be racist against Naturals; And yet we're introduced to them as the aggressors. Blowing up Heliopolis basically just for the shits and giggles. I mean, Gundams. But that's the next step. Paranoia - or ... yea, the justifications. They want to end the war, so they need to prevent the enemy from having superior weaponry. And sure, those weapons wouldn't be built just for fun; But also ... it's what you do in a war that you don't want to lose. And ... that ultimately does I think cut to the essence of what war is really like.


It's an endless cycle where each action either side can take is the next thing the other side has reasons to swear vengeance over. I mean, that's like the conflicts around Israel in a nutshell.

And maybe it all just started as a misunderstanding. Maybe jealousy, maybe some cultural disagreements - maybe something really bad that lead to a really bad response that then ... yea, spiralled into whatever. By now, plenty of reasons for either side to hate the other have probably come and gone - people don't know where it really started, either side tells stories of how it started - or not - who knows? But then they're so far in the past, no-one really feels accountable ... and that's just that.


And then there's the other kind of war. The war of those above those emotions.


And I think that's it for today.