Forum - View topicANNCast - Gundam Wing
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2700 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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While I wasn't at the Wing panel at Otakon that Lauren went to, I did go to the Right Stuf panel later that day, which also acted as the 2nd part of the Wing panel, & Sumizawa was just so up front about how loose the original director was with this series. For example, the Gundam Boys' names came about literally because the director just told Sumizawa that he thought of them as "Boy 1, Boy 2, etc." & told Sumizawa to give them names. Sumizawa, in turn, decided to play around with the director's laziness, & named them after numbers in various languages. Also, he & the Sunrise producer there outright stated that Gundam Wing's bishonen aesthetic was directly influenced by Saint Seiya, which is often stated to be the main inspiration that lead to creation of yaoi, so Zac is 100% right when he called the various Heero/Duo a case of market conditions.
As for Gundam Wing itself, I'm one of those bizarre people who actually didn't see it when it aired on TV. I got into Toonami in 2002, when G Gundam was airing, so I've never really had any real urge to ever watch Wing. I do find it weird that, considering how successful it was to some extent, Wing was never given the compilation movie treatment. Quite honestly, I'd probably would have been willing to give Wing a watch if it had compilation movies. Also, now I'm wondering if Wing's crazy plot could even compressed into two or three movies, without making even less sense than it already seems to be. |
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Codeanime93
Posts: 599 |
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I think the Operation Meteor OVAs are the the only thing you'd get close to as far compilation movies are concerned. Those were released on the set with the Endless Waltz OVA/Movie recently. That was 4 OVAs basically an hour each that sums up the show as a whole and recaps it with some added footage taking place after the show ends. So the series got a compilation OVA series then. |
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GMArcturus
Posts: 56 |
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Jeez, I just have to get this out of my system but for people discussing the merits of Gundam Wing they sure don't get a lot of plot points correct (Treiz is Releena's brother? really?) or even pronounce names correctly. Another thing that is brought up at around 59 minutes is that the story doesn't allow you to understand why Heero would rip up Releena's birthday party invitation and say that he would kill her. Unless I am misunderstanding what that commentator is not understanding, then that plot point is very easy to figure out. Operation Meteor's success was fairly heavily dependent on people not knowing the actual identities of the Gundam pilots. It's why Duo says in a later episode that he has to kill anyone that he fights.
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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My intro to Wing was I was in high school, and my friends all thought it was amazing. I was already well into anime at that point (it was probably 2005-2006 or so?), but had already cut my teeth on things like Outlaw Star and Robotech and loved those. But my friend had the Legends DVD sets so he lent me them. And I was really disappointed that I didn't see what they saw in the show and really couldn't follow along much when they were discussing the various Gundams and characters and stuff. I remember being mostly confused and bored, but that was high school, back in the days where just marathoning a ton of anime in a week wasn't out of the realm of normal for me (I sometimes wish it could still be, I must admit). But later on, I learned that it seems like most of the reason people like it is nostalgia and that I effectively had none, so hating it was actually completely normal, woohoo! But Wing was also so bad that I didn't watch any Gundam series for years (I'm still not big into Gundam though, give me Ryosuke Takahashi any day! I did enjoy Turn A, 0080, and G Gundam for its extreme campiness, just for anyone curious)
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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When did anyone say Treize is Relena's brother? That sounds like someone clearly misspoke. And yeah we probably mispronounced some names. I've decided to forgive myself. The second half here I have to take issue with - just because it's justified in the story somehow doesn't mean it suddenly makes sense. These boys are blowing up half of Earth and then remaining incognito somehow over and over again to the very people hunting them, to the point where they are almost all actively recruited by those people and they handwave it with "welp looks like his background check cleared!" even though by now they should be the most famous kids on the planet. OK sure I GUESS they wouldn't recognize them or pick up on Heero's code name at all, but come on! That's my attitude. It's a result of the show's crazy soap opera plotting, not an actual "plot hole", it's also a completely subjective complaint. The plot stuff connects, but it's sped past and contrivances are kinda sloppily painted over or excused rather than fleshed out. That's how I felt, anyway. |
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Raneth
Posts: 271 |
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I'm looking forward to listening to this. I've tried on multiple occasions to watch the show, and each time I've given up due to either boredom or frustration. I think a lot of its popularity years ago (in my circles it was big when we were all in middle school) was due to the attractive male character designs and the fact that it was framed as being more intelligent and complete than its contemporaries at the time, which were things like DBZ and Pokemon. Trying to watch it in college and beyond, though, after already seeing other tightly plotted 26 and 52 episode shows, makes it apparent that it really doesn't hold up.
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4633 Location: New York |
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Wing was a show that was a definite shock to the system back in 1997/98, when the other shows in its genre were what, Exo-Squad? Voltron the Third Dimension? But yeah, by today's standards, and with two other AU's doing the "UC Gundam Abridged" thing, it really does not hold up anywhere near as well as you'd think. It also doesn't help that as far as AU shows go, other than X, it doesn't really stand out as much as it used to. G is completely and utterly insane (in the best way) SEED and SEED Destiny cover a lot more UC story, and 00 does the "Team of Gundam pilots" thing a lot better. Wing just doesn't hold up given that what it does has been done better.
Still like the mecha designs though. |
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1261 |
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That's the thing that seems to separate whether people can get into Wing or not these days: Whether or not one can accept the "mode" this show operates in, where it takes itself seriously enough, but only gets into details up to a point because that's not its focus. I still like it because I think it manages not to overstep the line, which it felt like later Gundam shows had trouble with (where they both wanted to be simple and ridiculous, but also get credit for undercooked social commentary). |
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db999
Posts: 347 |
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I've only ever seen Gundam Wing one time around 7 or 8 years ago, but from what I remember of the show it's probably my least favorite full-length 26-52 episode Gundam show, other than Reconquista in G and IBO Season 2, both of which I never finished. While I think that both Age and SEED Destiny are worse, Wing was just the least interesting show and I mostly just remember being bored by the show. I only remember really liking the first 10-12 and the last 10-12 episodes of the show, and I don't really remember much of what happens in the middle of the show. However, listening to this episode finally convinced me to go back and rewatch the series. I hope that I like it at least a little bit more this time.
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Codeanime93
Posts: 599 |
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Actually I'm watching Double Zeta and it's worse than Seed Destiny but not as bad as IBO season 2 though. Just so much unfunny comedy, characters that are too silly to be taken seriously. Haman Khan's Neo-Zeon movement is filled with boobs basically. Judau Ashta's friends are partially annoying backstabbing idiots and the other half just annoying. And Bright Noa has to suffer the embarrassment and indignity of this whole thing. And don't get me started on the moon moon thing. Seriously Seed Destiny is looking better and better. |
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TexZero
Posts: 592 |
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There was many times where people got lost in statement during this cast playing the noun to pronoun game. But that's fine Gundam Wing has a weird ensemble cast that can be hard to keep up with in the moment of discourse. However, what got me was that there's moments that seemingly were either just wrong or exaggerated beyond what even the show itself did. It might have just been my expectations being wrong but when i found myself listening to this podcast i felt it was the first time it was done not out of passion for something that was loved but almost out of a desire to showcase how silly everyone was as a kid for finding enjoyment in the show. |
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rizuchan
 Posts: 980 Location: Kansas |
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Re: why there's so much shippy Heero/Duo key art...
A lot of it was probably just marketing, but I remember reading somewhere one of the animators for Gundam Wing was a doujinshi artist that was into Duo x Heero. So there's a lot of art out there that *looks* like key art but is actually doujin art done by that animator. If that explanation is a load of crock, I would guess they did a feature for a girls magazine (rather like some of the Code Geass stuff) or something, because there's some really shippy stuff of Heero and Duo if you go digging. |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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As far as I can recall, Heero's main motivation is just carrying out his mission. He wants to basically just be a machine and block out his emotions, but he finds that he can't chase them away, and his actions betray his feelings. Setsuna F. Seiei from Gundam 00 is somewhat in his mold, except Setsuna feels one overpowering emotion that deadens his full range of feelings (barely repressed anger), so it just seems like he's robotic, but the two of them have different needs (Heero is lonely but doesn't want to admit it, Setsuna worships the symbol of Gundam because he feels any other higher power has abandoned him).
Quatre, on the other hand, cares passionately for everything, but he exhausts himself, and when he feels his compassion has led to nothing but pain, he cracks for a bit. I think because of his overwhelming compassion, he (and Relena) sees that Heero is shutting himself out because he's lived his life as a tool and it's more comfortable for him to pretend he'll always be one. I actually find Duo's motivation to be more amorphous than the others'. He's very sociable, outgoing, and willing to help out his comrades, but I think, like Heero, he may have kind of a morbid drive to throw himself into no-win situations, almost suicidally. But I'm not entirely sure what the endgame was for him, except just trying to minimize the damage to innocents. Trowa, of course, is the one with an identity crisis, being somebody without a real name or home, and so he's somewhat nomadic and thus adapts to a given situation easier than some of the others. He doesn't connect much with human beings, but not out of fear or angst, mostly just because he can't identify on a personal level with most of them (Quatre being an exception). He can, however, understand Heero's drive, and they are the two that are the most alike, though Heero is more often around Duo. Wufei has a complex code of ethics informed by a culture that shuns any weaknesses. There's a child-like naïveté in his desire to shoulder the burden of all outer space, with the belief that he can do that, because he's the strongest. It makes him hesitate to team up with the others, and he seems like he's just looking for a good battlefield to die on a lot of the time. But like I said, this is just what I can recall. It's been a little while since I've rewatched it. Honestly, and probably true of even some my favorite Gundam entries, Gundam Wing is too long. It feels like the last eight or nine episodes, basically the whole White Fang arc, just feels tacked on to give us a more climactic final threat and enemy. I think they could have easily folded in the Endless Waltz stuff into that instead (though I imagine EW wasn't written until later). The show itself beats you over the head constantly with its hamfisted idealogy, overdoing the "philosophical speaking while fighting" that's usually used with better economy in other Gundam entries. I end up wanting to tell them to shut up, already. It may be an important milestone in my anime fandom as a whole, but it doesn't really hold up that well. There are far better Gundam anime to spend your time on. Like Turn A. |
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YakumoHaku
Posts: 2 |
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I found Wufei's angst weird until I read Episode Zero, although it could very well be a production afterthoughts
spoiler[He was forced into arranged marriage, and they didn't get along. But just when he realized his wife was a pretty nice person and they might be alright, she got killed off (probably for plot reasons...). The entire colony self-destructed later on (probably also for plot reasons). ] |
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mabber36
 Posts: 73 Location: georgia, usa |
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Jake is right
Wing is so boring I rewatched it a couple of years ago, and it took me a whole month to get through it |
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