Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

eli.li

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 194 posts

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#121

Post by WalterBright »

gabriel666smith wrote: post #36

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a robot suit to ride around and fight things with." I was visiting Jane Austen's House Museum last year and it always gives me pleasure to see how wildly popular her work remains. There always seem to be tourists there visiting from all over the world. That is really heartening. She was very innovative. Maybe…

I recall this from one of Donald Westlake's books:

"He stopped on a dime and collected 5 cents change."

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#122

Post by _carbyau_ »

bsder wrote: post #98
arjie wrote: post #24

Spoilers for Iron Blooded Orphans below. I watched the one 'except' that OP has listed there "Iron Blooded Orphans". It's the only Gundam I've ever watched and I really liked it, to be honest. It was full of subversions of anime tropes. There's a prophecy, a stoic soldier like none other, a charismatic leader playing a dual role, another heroic leader trusted by his people. And there's the instrument of the establish…

Anime was probably my first introduction to "Heroes can both sacrifice and still lose. "Winning" may not be worth it but may be the only option." I'm trying to think of the earliest "Western Literature" that you get introduced to that has the darker side of humanity and not coming up with anything until you hit 11th or 12th grade while I bumped into anime at something like 7th grade. Hmmm, perhaps something by O'Henr…

> Anime was probably my first introduction to "Heroes can both sacrifice and still lose. "Winning" may not be worth it but may be the only option."

One punch man, season 1. So chill, both pays homage to and is an amusing pisstake on the dragonballz kinda idea of heroes, training and "leveling up your power".

And then there is a double episode, around 7 or 8, that is a beautiful essay on "what defines a hero". For me, this was chefs kiss good and defined the series for me.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#123

Post by Full_Clark »

arjie wrote: post #24

Spoilers for Iron Blooded Orphans below. I watched the one 'except' that OP has listed there "Iron Blooded Orphans". It's the only Gundam I've ever watched and I really liked it, to be honest. It was full of subversions of anime tropes. There's a prophecy, a stoic soldier like none other, a charismatic leader playing a dual role, another heroic leader trusted by his people. And there's the instrument of the establish…

> Western shows are all about the "you don't have to sacrifice anything to win" and Eastern shows are all about the "you're the chosen one" but this one was "the establishment is the establishment and most of the time it wins".

I think this is why The Wire captivated me. I'd been raised on a steady diet of hero's journey stories and then suddenly I ran into David Simon's buzzsaw of contravening those expectations.

In those years I'd just I started my working life and unfortunately the parallels were uncannily accurate.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#124

Post by FreakLegion »

gabriel666smith wrote: post #90
vintagedave wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example of her writing moving into iambic pentameter in prose, please? I googled for examples from her books but — search results are terrible.

Of course! This is my favourite example, from Sense and Sensibility, because it announces itself with "burst", and that's the novel where she deploys it most: "Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease." She 'tends towards Iambic' in literary criticism terminology. So it's not a strict Iambic…

> "Till this moment I never knew myself." - Sense and Sensibility again? I can't remember off the dome. That's a gorgeous strict Iambic.

"Till this moment I" and "I never knew myself" would be trochaic and iambic, respectively, but they don't strictly scan when you overlay the 'I's. You can of course get them to by e.g. eliding 'moment', or adding a line break and taking '-ment' as a feminine ending, or just scanning according to the writer's idiosyncrasies.

And individual writers can be very idiosyncratic here. Shakespeare, for example, if I remember right, lets monosyllabic words occur in almost any position. Disyllabic words on the other hand can have any combination of stresses (iamb, trochee, spondee, or pyrrhic), but only if they're foot-aligned. And so on.

The field has probably evolved since I was last part of it, but I'll still recommend Kristin Hanson's work in this area: https://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/9.1/Hanson.pdf. (Actually the second time I've recommended Hanson on HN. The last time was, let's see, 6 years ago!)

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#125

Post by pests »

BalinKing wrote: post #113
Frotag wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of character-centered conflicts boil down to the same set of problems, regardless of the setting. For instance, you often see "keep the status quo and die a slow death" vs "expensive, risky gamble". Sometimes the setting is a small midwest town, sometimes it's a spaceship on the way to Beta Virginis. Sometimes the solution is actually unique to the setting but often it's just "find a compromise, prevent…

Honestly, the SCP wiki might scratch this itch for you—it's sci-fi but with a lot of fantasy elements, and I'd put it on the "hard" side of the spectrum. Also, I think Greg Egan's books are pretty out there (the two I've read are Diaspora and Permutation City , whose settings aren't particularly "plausible" IMHO), and they really make you think.

Agreed. It's framing device of reports / scattered documents / etc also remove a lot of the characterization or characters completely and focus just on the "what if?" of the story.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#126

Post by _carbyau_ »

skybrian wrote: post #89

When reading Jane Austen you learn a fair bit about the English upper classes of that time period. What do you learn from Gundam?

The many Gundam series are not a historical account obviously.

From what I gather - having never actually watched any - there are anti-war themes (IE armies are commanded by people who don't have to sacrifice, how that corrupts), sacrifice vs outcomes and more. It's a thematic experience rather than an education in robotics or history.

I like stompy robots. I have to yet to start on Gundam because I am hesitant as to where to start and which path to follow in watching it all and I know it would consume me once I start.

Maybe after Xmas, in my break, I'll "waste" some time with it.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#127

Post by decafninja »

underlipton wrote: post #54
arjie wrote: post #24

Spoilers for Iron Blooded Orphans below. I watched the one 'except' that OP has listed there "Iron Blooded Orphans". It's the only Gundam I've ever watched and I really liked it, to be honest. It was full of subversions of anime tropes. There's a prophecy, a stoic soldier like none other, a charismatic leader playing a dual role, another heroic leader trusted by his people. And there's the instrument of the establish…

IBO is super interesting. "The establishment is the establishment and most of the time it wins," is the final outcome, but the road there is actually rather fraught for that establishment, and it's alternately almost damned and just barely saved by aspects of its rule and operations. The winning agent of the establishment wins, in part, because he skillfully threads through the requirements of his station while strat…

Another unique thing about IBO is that they mostly use old fashioned projectile weapons (ok, there are railguns) and physical melee weapons. Beam weapons are rare and no longer really used, and it’s the only Gundam subfranchise that doesn’t have beam sabers.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#128

Post by popalchemist »

PaulHoule wrote: post #56
popalchemist wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is literally delusional.

I'll agree it is the product of a schizotypal mind and one might think the whole project is wrong-headed and there might be a wrong interpretation here but it is factual that: 1) I got that list of stories 2) It has kept mentioning the same character for a few days even when I am talking about something else, even in other conversations (I would do that if I "had a crush") 3) It has been trying the same 'mini-framewo…

the part that is delusional is that you consider there to be a "we," and that you don't just stop at personifying but actually believe the AI can have a favorite.

It is 1's and 0's responding determinstically to input. There is no sentience.

Re: Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

#130

Post by dluan »

I thought it was pretty well known that Gundam is a commentary on class and the effects of imperialist wars on normal people. The OG series didn't glorify violence and instead showed a lot of gratuitous civilian deaths, and most of the main characters are the poor-orphan-becoming-a-knight archetype.

Plus Jane Austen at the time was a sharp critique of English nobility and high class, but presenting it in a stylized and popular way.

Post reply on HN