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

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

#31

Post by exhumet »

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…

gundam is probably one of my favorite pieces of media ever created, and yeah id say you nailed it! BUT this is pretty much true for almost every gundam show. They will usually end with a "but at what cost" or with 75% of the main cast dead and the protag in a worse position then they started. but yeah what you said rings true, it really is a special piece of media that is more than the genre/anime its made in but can only exist with anime if that makes sense.

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

#32

Post by aseipp »

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…

War in the Pocket is also pretty good, if you haven't seen it. A bit dated now but I always thought of it as a "Business as usual" war story when I was young.

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

#33

Post by Starlevel004 »

> A friend recently asked how to get started watching Gundam, and as I tripped all over myself, equal parts excitement and not wanting to sound like a lunatic, I fumbled around for a good answer.

But there is a good answer. It's Gundam 79. That's not hard.

There are few forces in the world as strong as somebody seeing a long-running Japanese series and twisting and turning themselves into how to avoid release order.

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

#34

Post by bawolff »

jerf wrote: post #6

In the end, almost everything has a soap opera in it somewhere. People have a hard time processing stories that don't have a soap opera in them somewhere. For some people it's just impossible. There's really only a minority of people who are interested in stories that have no personal relationship stories in them at all. That's not to say that the parts that aren't soap opera aren't meaningfully different. I disagree…

> I use soap opera as a bit of shorthand for things focusing on human relationships a lot.

I don't know if that's really fair. I don't think that's really what most people think the term soap opera denotes, and if you broaden it to mean any work that has any sort of relational elements, its almost a tautology that all fiction will meet the standard.

More to the point, i think its an unfair response to the article, as the author is not claiming that the similarity between these two works is merely that they have relationships in them.

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

#35

Post by nemomarx »

Starlevel004 wrote: post #33

> A friend recently asked how to get started watching Gundam, and as I tripped all over myself, equal parts excitement and not wanting to sound like a lunatic, I fumbled around for a good answer. But there is a good answer. It's Gundam 79. That's not hard. There are few forces in the world as strong as somebody seeing a long-running Japanese series and twisting and turning themselves into how to avoid release order.

The memes around Fate were especially annoying for this. Anything but a "dated" entry, I guess.

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

#36

Post by gabriel666smith »

"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 even underrated as a craftsperson at the sentence level. My favourite trick that I believe she invented is slipping from prose into a soft Iambic pentameter, essentially unnoticed. Lots of people have copied that from her.

And class-pressure narratives will never not be relevant to people's lives. She's a very very humane storyteller in that respect.

I am slightly biased - she's my great aunt (x 6). Used to find that embarrassing but now I feel quite proud.

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

#38

Post by Supermancho »

neaden wrote: post #28
TeMPOraL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". What's sorely missing is the very rare theme of "the establishment wins, and for a good reason, and it's actually a good thing".

Isn't that basically every cop show for instance? Like an episode of Law and Order is this person does something bad, the establishment finds and punishes them hurray.

LaO doesn't always follow that forumula. In some LaO the trial is botched or the law doesn't protect the victims or the perps escape justice due to political influence, et al.

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

#39

Post by neaden »

Supermancho wrote: post #38
neaden wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that basically every cop show for instance? Like an episode of Law and Order is this person does something bad, the establishment finds and punishes them hurray.

LaO doesn't always follow that forumula. In some LaO the trial is botched or the law doesn't protect the victims or the perps escape justice due to political influence, et al.

Still, cop shows generally are about the "the establishment wins, and for a good reason, and it's actually a good thing" which the other commentator said is a theme that is sorely missing.

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

#40

Post by arjie »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25
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". What's sorely missing is the very rare theme of "the establishment wins, and for a good reason, and it's actually a good thing".

SPOILER

There is actually a little bit of that in this. While the charismatic leader has some points about how the establishment has gotten weak and corrupt, overall it seems pretty par for the course. To be honest, it's better he didn't win. He was a bit demagoguey.

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