Although it’s not pertinent anymore, I wanted to write down my thoughts about GQuuuuuuX. I would’ve gotten started sooner, but I finished up Zeta Gundam at approximately the same time, and that immediately made me realize I should probably watch through all ZZ and very likely sit myself down for one more watchthrough of Char’s Counterattack before I really talk about it.
And, now, after finishing those, I really have to question why I got that idea in the first place:
Not really because my view of the whole series is incomplete, it’s that the deeper I get, the more I’m disappointed by what little GQuuuuuuX does especially in regards to anything remotely original. Sure, it’s an impressive set of references. It really seems to show that it knows a lot of Gundam (Century), but it doesn’t really know for sure if it wants to do anything with any of that and I feel like it’s dubious whether or not it knows actual Gundam. Yeah, it gets some details and puts them up on the forefront for the viewer, but in a few others it sometimes feels like it absolutely doesn’t, and misconstrues ideas in ways that subtract more than they add.
Seriously, how can you make a series about newtypes and completely misunderstand and misrepresent them like this?
It would probably be absolved of its sins if it decided to do anything but I’d be damned if I felt like anything really happened even at the end. In fact, I think I’d probably prefer whatever the climax was to have not happened, really.
Social Medea
Before I really start saying anything I want to say that since I’ve made the mistake of exposing myself to social media and engaging with it loosely in the form of consumption that I’ve gotten a good handle on what it is and I’m not going to be dishonest or disingenuous about it, it’s for the best to begin to say that ‘your feed’ is ‘your feed’ because it’s a reflection of who and what you engage with.
So if you start saying that Japanese Twitter and Western users disagreed on whether or not they’d liked it, I’ll tell you that if you probably just saw ‘Japanese posters’ who were ‘positive about it’ or ‘Western posters’ who ‘weren’t’ and any combination of the two or vice versa is because that’s what the algorithm fed you. It’s because those types of posts are the ones you interacted with the most. If you try to operate under the assumption that, somehow, the things you see on social media are representative of the whole, well, you seriously need to check yourself.
So, coming from that I will say 100% that the sentiment that ‘in [Japan] there’s a sentiment that there’s a lot of [takes] on Gundam and that they’re all just something to be experienced’ is not really authentic at all because there are totally pieces of Gundam media, like for example, one of my favorite games, that got put on blast for their relative inability to ‘fit into canon’. So if this really were the case, we’d see more things like Gundam Senki 0081, but instead we get whatever the hell Gundam Battle Operation is, and I say that liking it.
That said, there are a lot of takes on (Universal Century) Gundam, even within the media produced for it, and they don’t necessarily agree with one another. I don’t think that 08th MS Team, War in the Pocket, or Stardust Memory really fit in that fully. The original Gundam, Zeta Gundam, and ZZ Gundam, all most definitely have a specific vision, and of the other Universal Century Gundams (the shows), the same goes.
In fact, there’s a specific phrase I’ve noticed on Japanese twitter: [Series] damaging [the original]. This has been employed, especially, in the case of Gundam the Origin, which very obviously (for reasons I won’t discuss in this article because I can go on for quite a bit) damaged the presentation of the original Gundam and its story.
And since auto-translation is such a convenient feature on things like twitter these days, I’d go ahead and say, talk with some Japanese folks: respond to their tweets. Immediately you’ll start seeing an entirely different side of the world as your feed adjusts – especially if you don’t often post yourself. I guarantee you that not everyone will fit the generalization, and not just because har har, it’s a generalization sucker, but because you’ll see… Actual people having an actual discussion.
Obviously, not everyone is happy about what they got.
(What) Characterization
I would say the opening three episodes of GQuuuuuuX are its strongest, although one of them (the one which sets the basis of the ‘what-if’) feels like a waste of run time. If it, and the rest of the One Year War parts, were all a separate piece, it would’ve made for a much stronger bit of material by separating out most of the elements which make Char seem like one of the main characters of the show, while maintaining their presence. I say that mostly because, I’m fairly certain somewhere around the cutting room floor there’s enough material of whatever story they were telling that they just didn’t include.
Bothering to do anything with that rather than hone in on a Char for the main material was a mistake.
I understand the obsession with the character, but I think one of the problems that comes with Char specifically, less so his clones but when he comes up in non-Tomino works, is that he hardly feels like Char. He’s more of a romanticized, Flanderized ‘cool manga character’ guy. It’s almost like the aspects of his costume become him in his entirety: he doesn’t really have any notable traits besides being the ‘Red Comet’ and that cool enemy pilot. For as much as I despise Fukui for his misconception of newtypes, I have to make an open admission: I’ve never seen anyone other than Tomino or him write a good Char.
If I could find something substantial to talk about regarding the actual main characters of the series, I would, but the problem is that they’re so much cardboard cut-outs that the only real undertakings you’ll see are in the opening episodes. Otherwise, they’re just there. Things only happen to them, but as a result, nothing really changes about them, most of their motives are only so deep that they already evaporated by the following day.
And then there’s… Whatever contempt for the audience that that was. Shuji can just… Teleport? An entire mobile suit? How come this is never touched on? No one even says anything about this they all just go about their lives afterward. In a show about giant robots, where the mecha have very clearly well defined capabilities, why on earth would you write yourself into such a corner when there’s already more than one example of standard issue Newtype bullshit getting Amuro out of similar situations without having to resort to…
*teleports behind u kid*
White Devil the Details
The designs are most certainly divisive, and while I think that probably seems to go for most Gundam shows when they try to do something different, I think there are fair and unfair criticisms. I won’t attack the completely unfair ones, I simply won’t give them space here, but I do think the most ‘unfair’ one does have its own value: these designs are terribly EVA-like to the point they’re indefensible with the GFred matching Unit 01’s color scheme.
I was pretty accepting of it myself until it got to that point and I just had to check out: I actually thought the white Gundam and the Gelgoog were cool, especially given the background knowledge I have: that the Gelgoog in GQuuuuuuX is just a GM is pretty neat. But therein lies the problem.
“Nah, man.”
That’s all it is: I have the sneaking suspicion that this mobile suit is more GM than it is Gelgoog which logically makes sense, but begs the question why Zeon would swap over their previous Gelgoog programs for this one: by the time the Gundam is being Char-jacked, the real Gelgoog should have been in production, its beam weaponry would have been what was delayed.
That doesn’t really make sense: why would you arm your troops with a machine that’s likely worse in every mark than the original machine, with the exception of, perhaps, operating time given the significant number of visible helium core units spread across the GQuuuuuuX Gelgoog, and pretend it’s good enough? Zeon obtaining the Gundam should have been a wake-up call and this is demonstrated in the Dom’s, god, I wish I was trying to make some corny joke here but literal third leg that Zeon should have had… Some reaction to the Gundam and tried to produce a machine with better overall specifications. Not shelving your already made suit.
Technically, they almost back this up with the most correct choice: given that the head is very clearly a real Gelgoog head with GM stylings, if the suit had real Gelgoog legs, it probably would’ve not only earned a pass on this front, but an A+. That being said, the legs – and the fact they don’t have the projections intrinsic to Gundam-types – tell me that the Gelgoog is more GM than Gundam.
…So why wouldn’t you go ahead and just mass produce the Gundam’s beam rifle for your already made mobile suits that have a full production line already setup and ready to go…? Especially when you have a suit that can do… Everything and more?
An Incorrect Century
Ah, but that’s just being an armchair general and… Not even scratching the messed up scale and proportions. Really, there’s another problem I have with the whole thing and how it presents its material, and that’s newtypes. I’ll take the general misconception Kycilia says regarding newtypes in peacetime: that seems to just be her conflating correlation and causation. Newtypes show up in wartime, they definitely aren’t born at any time or anything like that, oh no. Her thinking being poorly reductive is fine. What I don’t like, though, is Challia explaining away those ‘newtype moments’ and hinging everything on Minovsky Particles.
That really doesn’t align with what we see in the show and neither does it align with Gundam. Espers are just that: espers. Having that stupid ‘battle anime’ moment where the character standing by has the need to explain some phenomena, and here they go and explain it poorly, sucking the life out of things. The worst part is I know exactly what it’s basing this on, and I don’t think I should speak for something that’s been translated before I’ve read it because that means it’s passed through more than one hands and say ‘I know better’ but in this case I do feel that what this is based off of, is kind of both really old and I don’t think a completely correct reading, it’s just a conflation of some adjacent words.
So for as much as they do like to puff up Challia Bull, it’s strange they go ahead and do… This.
If I had to guess exactly where this all comes from, judging by the timing, I would say that the only real reason why these things came up has less to do with GQuuuuuuX being a genuine love letter to Gundam, and probably (judging by the dates of production) have more to do with someone on the writing team seeing these:
And deciding that they too should make a bunch of obscure Gundam Century references.
Universal Century canon has changed significantly over the years. Especially in what is determined by Sunrise to be canon. The rule used to be only film. Then it became only animation. And now? It’s a little bit less clear. And for the record, Gundam Century is full of really, really cool tidbits of information… A lot of which have been superseded by animation, or just…
…Not trying to sci-fi handwave a justification into place. Pseudo-science can be entertaining, but someone’s grasping at straws for a justification.
In ZZ, Elle Vianno makes a crucially important statement regarding newtypes: very casually explaining away the phenomena of having a feel for another person, regardless of the distance between them. “It’s an ability people used to have, before [people became further interconnected by technology].” She says it simply, as if it’s commonly understood knowledge for your average person living in a colony.
If everything hinges on Minovsky particles – that is, if newtype awareness is based off of signals detected via the medium of Minovsky particles – this type of statement would make absolutely no sense. But, in the same respect, this statement underlies a fundamental flaw with the premise of newtypes: that they’re even new or people who are more adapted to space.
In real life, there’s a rabbit hole of consciousness, which the further you go down the more you realize that you’re in bed with a consummate liar every time you lie down – whether you’re alone or with someone else. That liar paints a picture of the world that you experience – and it’s different than the one that your body is actually experiencing – that liar, of course, being your conscious mind. The best place to start research on this subject is probably on saccadic movement: this mostly just establishes you shouldn’t trust your head, while also explaining… Exactly a number of very crucially important things your brain is doing to process the world around you that are amazing, unbelievable… And in some respects, downright literal precognition. What good, really, is a simulation of the past at affecting the future? From within the simulation? …Given the evidence of our current existence, quite remarkably good, actually.
As a part of the Cold War, a good amount of research was done on the subject of, essentially, psychic information gathering through processes like remote viewing. I’m paraphrasing that pretty hard, but, roll with it, eh? Now, while it’s very easy to write off as a way of trying to track leaks, the thing is that today, there are several people who I certainly wouldn’t call your average ‘transcendent’ thinker who seriously consider the subject to be real and authentic, and it’s hard to view the Gateway Process document as anything other than an earnestly written piece.
Now, I could probably write a whole article just on newtypes and newtype phenomena and some of the places that we may find basis for that in the real world and start to dip off into that, but for here and now, I’ll keep things short, quick, and simple: consciousness is nothing short of a multitude of small, but impressive miracles other slight ‘impossibilities’ that are certainly, absolutely, very much possible.
It’s only the sad and pathetic that don’t realize the miracle of the self.
Shinji-Coded
I know that people like to flip-flop on whether or not Anno hates otaku, and honestly, I think while the jury may have been out prior to GQuuuuuuX, now that we have it, it’s fairly obvious that Anno and Tsurumaki hate mecha and hate the characters involved and hate their audience. If they don’t, they should’ve done a better god damned job: the pathetically poor parody that Shinji is of characters who are infinitely more tolerable him becomes tremendously obvious, and really, the only thing carrying Evangelion is the fact that most people are tourists, and GQuuuuuuX’s actual characters don’t feel much better, either.
All the religious symbolism in Evangelion has more to do with the fact that Christianity is, to Japan, a very strange religion that is barely practiced at all, not necessarily that it is actually proper religious symbolism, or that it even understands it. It’s not that it was well-researched or thought out, it was just a matter of stuff that seems cool.
And there is nothing wrong with that in and of itself. The only problem arises with the people who think it isn’t. Which, well, is why Evangelion fans get things like the End of Evangelion: Anno hates you because you don’t get that he was lampooning mecha the first time around. Tsurumaki hates you too because he started drinking Anno’s koolaid instead of doing stuff like FLCL. Both of them… Probably totally hate Gundam or something because I really can’t come up with a single reason that the end of this twelve episode series ought to have been ended by the RX-78 showing up, turning white and giant and into Rei, before getting its head cut off.
Given that, the two of them have at least shown they have a distaste in their mouth. We could sit here and say that sure, that last episode is all some really impressive meta commentary about how Gundam and mecha has become ‘larger than life’ and that something new needs to be done with it so that it can be enjoyed by a modern audience… But meta commentaries suck, and this is the prime example of why: making a statement that you don’t think you can make a good statement is so Shinji-coded, so pathetically get-in-the-god-damned-robot, that it’s unbearable. It’s the admission of a personal failure, projected upon every other living being:
“I can’t see myself doing anything better, and neither can any of you!”
Those are the words that GQuuuuuuX screams at the top of its lungs as a proxy for these two, and it’s absolutely abhorrent: somebody needs to correct Anno for whatever the god damned hell he did to Tsurumaki. And then Tsurumaki, too, for letting it get done to him.
And for the absolute love of god, none of this would have ever happened if SRW just let Char pilot a red EVA unit. IT’S ALL YOU HAD TO DO BAMCO, JUST TREAT ANNO A LITTLE NICER.
