Forum - View topicINTEREST: Tokyo Plans to Build Statues Honoring Gundam and Zaku
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Levitz9
 Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
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I bet if they build a red one, it'll attract three times as many tourists
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Banjo
Posts: 798 |
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eww at least build something cool
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the-antihero
 Posts: 726 |
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Agreed, I really don't get the fascination with Zaku. Like most pass-produced MS, it's an ugly pile of junk. Couldn't they have gone for Hyaku Shiki since it played a big part in the series? It wasn't a Gundam but it was still awesome |
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Banken
Posts: 1281 |
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The Zaku is recognizable, and a symbol of the show. The Hyakushiki is just...gold.
Also, correction to the article, 5.5 million yen is only ~53,000 dollars. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Could they refrain from building a symbol of fascism? Because that would be nice.
And the Zaku wasn't even that strong; for the most part it was just cannon fodder. If you're going to build a fascist MS then at least honour Ramba Ral and his Gouf. |
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Banken
Posts: 1281 |
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It's not a symbol of fascism... You people seem to be missing the point. People see an RX-78 or a Zaku and they think Gundam. If you're going to talk about interesting characters/designs you might as well spend $53,000 on a Gyan...
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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The Zeons were unarguably genocidal fascists, and the Zaku is perhaps the most famous (or should that be infamous?) MS from their side of the One Year War. Hence, it is entirely reasonable to call the Zaku a symbol of fascism.
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Banken
Posts: 1281 |
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It's a cartoon. Fiction. It would only be a symbol of fascism if they built a statue of Hitler or Mussolini. Gundam is one of the most significant cultural exports of Japan in the last fifty years, so I think it's fair to say that matters more than the fact that Zeon (which is arguably more popular than the EF) are the bad guys (from one point of view) is irrelevant. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Fine. A fictional symbol of fascism. Still a symbol though; within the context of the franchise it is no different than how the ME-109, MP-38 or V-1 are in real life.
Is it really irrelevant? The Zaku is popular, yes, and so are the Zeons. I accept that. What I'm saying is that it's appalling when the genocidal fascist maniacs are more popular than the good guys and their main mass-produced weapon is more popular than the good guys' hero robot. And you say the Zeons are only bad from one point of view? That's nonsense; they are indisputably unambiguously evil full stop. There is absolutely no excusing their actions. The Zeons slaughtered billions of innocent civilians without warning or because they wanted to. It's abhorrent. |
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Banken
Posts: 1281 |
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Wut?
The Messerschmidt and Fokker-Wolfe are CLASSIC airplanes, and if you're going to talk about guns, the American M60 machine gun and virtually every hunting rifle on the planet is a copy of the MG42 and Mauser rifle respectively. The Zero is also a beautiful airplane, and the katana is a weapon for killing, yet we don't consider them the be symbols of Japanese militarism... we appreciate them for their beauty and function. |
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the-antihero
Posts: 726 |
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As stated earlier, before the topic got too political for a science fiction cartoon, it, like all fictionally mass-produced MS, wasn't even that strong. It's not even a cool-looking suit and when RX-78-2 appeared (which was the first episode), it was demoted to 'just a random suit'. It's just as boring and dull as Leo for example.
Regardless of its fictional history, I find it odd that that pile of scrap is an icon to the point here one of Build Fighters characters had to be wasted on a red Zaku instead of giving him something more special. Personally, I'd have made him pilot Tallgeese or at least something decent like G-Bouncer. |
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Banken
Posts: 1281 |
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Oh, sorry, my bad. I just realized I was arguing with children. Now I feel really silly.
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WeskerGriff
 Posts: 89 |
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Without getting into a long and tiring nerd spiel, you are dead wrong here. The Zaku has a lot of similarities to the Japanese Zero. The Zaku, like the Zero dominated the war in the beginning stages, only to be outclassed in the final stages. The Zaku was the main reason that Zeon won the Battle of Loum which was the biggest space battle in the history of Gundam. Of course come the end of the war, the Zaku was outclassed to the newer Federation models and the Gundam, but that still doesn't take away from the way it made Zeon a powerhouse in the OYW till September. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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^
In terms of mobile suits the Zaku was absolutely weak, hence my objection to it and the point about the Gouf. I mean, the Japanese want to build statues of mobile suits, not Balls and Magellas, and the Zaku was only strong compared to those. So why don't they build a statue of a strong Zeon mobile suit from the One Year War? Choosing the Zaku over the Gouf or Dom would be like honouring the Hawker Hurricane over the later and far superior Supermarine Spitfire or de Havilland Mosquito. I do get your point about the Zaku being based on the Zero (even the model numbers are similar), and so not surprisingly many of the issues that made the Zaku weak also were relevant to the Zero. Although strong for a few months, the Zero had major issues and was hopelessly outdated halfway through the war. Much of that early success was due to surprise and elite pilots rather than the Zero's inherent qualities. Once Japan lost its elite airmen at Midway and Allied pilots devised tactics to counter the Zero, it stopped being a threat and was simply fodder. This can be seen in the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, where it was annihilated by the hundreds. Looked at in relation to the entire four-year Pacific war and not just 1942, the Zero was not even close to the monster that people claim it was. Same goes to the Zaku; great at the Battle of Loum, okay in the invasion of Earth, useless planes only around to give Allied pilots target practice from then on out. The only thing the Zero and Zaku represent is a brief period in their respective wars when their nations held the ascendancy before getting trounced. That's not an impressive legacy by any standard. Given that the Gelgoog was extremely powerful and that Char even piloted a variant, the continued love affair for the Zaku amongst Gundam fanboys is bizarre. |
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Banken
Posts: 1281 |
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You clearly don't know your WWII aerial combat history.
The Zero was an awesome plane. At had a massive kill ratio advantage over US planes for years. The reason it was eventually outclassed was because: 1. The Japanese ran out of experienced combat pilots (they were killed) 2. They weren't able to build quality engines any more (we blew up the factories) 3. The US planes did not suffer from either of these problems, and developed tactics to leverage high engine power and climb speed over agility (boom and zoom). Most of these tactics relied on teamwork, which required a lot of training, which the Japanese couldn't afford late in the war. |
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