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That One Anime with the Giant Robots and Pretty Boys
I realize how incredibly vague my title is. Well you see, I was minding my own business when this lovely conversation came about in Ventrilo:
And that is how I ended up marathoning all of Gundam Wing in two days. Lovely how that works, doesn't it?
Now my experience with mecha anime is pretty low. I've seen some Gundam Wing as a child, in particular Endless Waltz and I've seen some Gundam Seed from time-to-time on TV. I barely remember any of these and I don't think my interest was very high. Nonetheless GW still holds a little bit of nostalgia within me, so my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to remind my memory what I just watched all those years ago. Plus, even if I did remember scenes from the Anime, I didn't understand a thing of it.
Anyway I walked into the Anime with a pretty neutral mindset. Not as a person who often watched Anime, or someone who even watched much of Sci Fi. All I had with me was a small bit of nostalgia and my absolute love for Gundams as toys. I recall playing with them, the action figure kind, with a boy when I was a kid. He owned the toys and I've always wanted one since. Sadly all I've found is models, or action figures of gundams I didn't really care for. I do have a Gundam SEED model of...the Gundam that Athrun dude piloted, but I assembled it pretty terribly and its arms and wings fall off rather often, lol. I do love the designs and playing with them though.
In fact that's how I ended up with a Lobomon figure because I went to a toy store trying to find Gundams but they only had figures of other mobile suits, so I just went for a Digimon instead. I still wish for a Gundam figure someday, perhaps that experience is why I love collecting figures, be it Negima, Touhou (I VOW TO GET ONE ONE DAY) or even series I don't even care for like my Final Fantasy figures. I suppose that's why I already have the mane six from MLP...oh how I wish they were more accurate to the show but I sadly cannot pull out four hundred dollars for a show-accurate custom made one on Ebay.
Nonetheless, I watched all of Gundam Wing and its movie/OVAs, Endless Waltz. I actually grew incredibly bored in the middle of the Anime. I suppose I'm not much for Anime with plot as its main focus and politics as its main plot. From what memories I had as a child I always thought "THAT DUDE WITH THE MASK" now known as Zechs Marquise was EVIL! But he was quite a cool character for most of the Anime before he...ended up being the THE BIG BAD near the end...I assume dropping a massive battleship on Earth is pretty evil after all, even though throughout the entire Anime EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER SWITCHED SIDES SO OFTEN I HAD NO IDEA WHO OR WHAT TO ROOT FOR ANYMORE.
It is pretty obvious you'd look to the main characters to root for but for a majority of the beginning we had a lot of screentime for other characters and the Gundam Pilots were just there, completing missions, killing people. Not really giving enough precedence for me to root for them. I mean they affected the plot obviously, but we knew nothing about the characters. They were pawns for the Colonies for all we know until we realize they're some sort of separate faction within the colonies attempting revenge for an assassination so long ago and...
Well the plot was interesting and complicated, but not my thing. Maybe I'm a simpleton or something, preferring to watch or read or view shows with a simple premise and a simple plot, but it wasn't like I didn't enjoy it...it just felt rather ridiculous the more I think about it. I guess that's why I'm not much of a Gundam fan at all, considering I wasn't interested in the shows as a child. I always grew rather bored watching Gundam SEED, just hoping for cool giant robot scenes and all. Maybe that's why I'm so bored with Negima since its plot became incredibly political...I just don't enjoy such a genre! I don't enjoy politics!
So not only did Zechs/Miliardo surprise me out of the gate (he was the most interesting character in the entire first half of the Anime), the so-called Big Bad, Treize, surprised me as well. Frankly the more I think about it, none of the characters (except old ugly people no one would care about if they died >_>) were really...completely evil or anything. Some of them took rather brash actions, maybe made mistakes, maybe ended up killing a lot of innocents but they all advocated peace in the end. They were more like well-intentioned extremists and I actually had sympathy for every one of them, no matter what side they were on. I guess in the end all the characters were truly human.
The females of the series did not bother me at all, except the small notion of practically every one of them being in love with one of the main guys. They were strong characters, albeit somewhat bland in a way. Well, Relena was bland, the rest of them were interesting but didn't explode out to me as an amazing dynamic character. They served their role in the story well. I find absolutely no problems with Relena, I just never like characters who seem emotionless, stoic, or really, really serious even if they aren't deep down. I can never relate to these characters. I guess that's why I'm not fond of many of the characters because most of them were emotionless, stoic, or utterly serious. It's inevitable to have characters like so with such a cynical setting of war and death, but I imagine if I did watch a mecha again, Gurren Lagann would be more fitting for my tastes. I heard the characters in that Anime are far more exciting. P:
And so that leads on to the actual main characters of the series, the Gundam Pilots. The ages in this show bother me for some reason. They're fourteen...or fifteen, or some incredibly small number. If I were younger and watched the show maybe I wouldn't have cared about the ages as much. After all I'd probably find the characters more appealing if they were closer to my age group, but this isn't some Anime about some dumb kid saving the world from irresponsible adults...
OR IS IT?
I dunno, I find a serious series would be more fitting in tone if the characters were more realistic, in particular the age. A bunch of kids piloting giant robots already? I question the intelligence of a person deciding to GIVE A TEENAGER A GIANT ROBOT! The ages of the adults were ridiculously young too. That Lady Une woman DID NOT LOOK NINETEEN DAMN YOU. SHE IS NOT NINETEEN. I REFUSE TO BELIEVE SHE IS NINETEEN WHY ARE THEY ALL SO BLOODY YOUNG. It's either REALLY OLD MEN controlling the nation, OR A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL BEING QUEEN OF THE WORLD. SERIOUSLY.
I mean I was already running into age problems after recently watching the movie Up, with the Big Bad being over a hundred but looking like he's in his early seventies or something. Then I see Endless Waltz and some SEVEN-YEAR-OLD is wearing a military uniform and declaring war on Earth. SHE'S FUCKING SEVEN. I don't care if she was being manipulated, DID NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS EVER HAVE A CHILDHOOD? How fucking tragic is the future with giant robots!? MY GOD. (I actually have no idea what the age of Mariamia is, she just looks seven or some young age. She's a kid. THAT IS THE POINT)
And not only that but none of these pilots seem to have had a growth spurt. WHY THE HELL AM I TALLER THAN THEM? I'm as short as they come but I'm like the same size as Trowa, who looks like the tallest of them all. (Those tight pants do create an illusion) It's not like they're all Asian and we have a little bit of an excuse. Duo is American, Quatre is Arabic. WHY ARE THESE KIDS SO BLOODY SHORT!?
Okay well that's my little mini-rant on age and size...about the actual characters, I've had a few surprises myself like with Treize and Zechs. Heero gave me no surprises...he felt like that standard Gundam Pilot lead, with the tall, dark and mysterious...I mean SHORT, dark and mysterious vibe about him. He's that character type lots of people would like, particularly female fans. (Well all of them have their female fans except Wu Fei probably. Bangs are very attractive, often when you don't have bangs does that not help you in your situation though there probably ARE Wu Fei fans...he's also a sexist jerk, so...or you can get ridiculous with bangs like Trowa @_@) I kind of wish Duo had a bigger role in Gundam Wing though.
Duo is a rather refreshing change from all the...seriousness of everything, even if he is willing to kill everything and has his own tragic past (doesn't everyone? Everyone's father is dead. There are zero characters without a tragic history! Why aren't they all too mentally unstable to be in war? Oh wait, THEY ARE mentally too unstable to be in war but they're in war ANYWAY) but I thought he never really got as much spotlight as the other four characters. If he did then his screentime was spread well enough that I didn't see like, one giant part dedicated to him or anything. His so-called "love interest" came out of nowhere (and looks WAY too much like Noin...I'll complain about female character design later) and there wasn't anything INTERESTING between him and her or unique that Heero didn't have or anyone else. He wasn't completely headstrong or lonewolf or a stubborn jerkish asshole like Wu Fei, or that compassionate and kind character who goes insane like Quatre, or the stoic guy without a name who gets amnesia like Trowa...so what did he have? The coolest looking Gundam? The go-to guy to throw in jail? (The number of times he gets captured is almost humorous) I feel like I'm missing something here.
It sounds like I hate Wu Fei or something here, but I don't. He completely and utterly embodies "Arrogant Kung Fu Guy" rather well, and so I don't find him particularly unique. I mean they ALL like working alone, but some are more open to the idea of working with others than...others, such as Wu Fei. ...is Master Long supposed to be a guy? Because he sounds somewhat female and looks kind of female...all those wrinkles really doesn't help, but that dojo colony with the Chinese-like landscape felt rather tacked on. If only his fiance/wife was alluded to some more because I feel like if I didn't know he called his Gundam "Nataku" because of his wife beforehand, I'd have wondered why the hell he would be calling his Gundam Nataku. (I can also complain on why such a young character already has a wife, but let's move on)
So I recall a few years or months...or some significant time back I randomly watched a clip of dub!Quatre laughing insanely, so I already knew he'd go insane before watching. One of my few memories of watching Gundam Wing was that I recall him being shot or stabbed or injured at some point in the series in a really dark place, which turned out to be the last episode when he's confronting Dorothy, the eyebrow lady. I also knew from various comments that a lot of people have a deep hatred for the character and finally, due to finding the sub easier to access than the dub, knew that he had the same voice actress as Max. ALL of this gave me this weird perception that he'd do something utterly horrible in the Anime and that's why everyone hates him. And now that I've finished the Anime, I have no idea where the hell this hate comes from.
Going insane and blowing shit up is not new at all, and as far as I know the colony he blew up was evacuated. There weren't people screaming for terror in the streets. Yes he destroyed a perfectly good colony and killed a bunch of people on that one resources mining rock thing, but otherwise my biggest surprise in the entire series is...
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH CANON HO YAY BETWEEN HIM AND TROWA?
Usually when I see people ship, especially in a series with tons of attractive characters of one gender, many ships come from the smallest of hints or nothing at all. I am so used to being in a fandom like Touhou where Yuuka and Wriggle are shipped despite never having met at all JUST BECAUSE one represents FLOWERS and the other represents BUGS. Wriggle doesn't even have a single thing to do with bees either, she's all about fireflies. I even shipped Hong Kong and Korea who have zero, ZERO interaction in the canon and not too much to do in terms of history either. And even then, most ships I am used to the characters tend to be friends if nothing else, and they don't do anything that makes them closer to each other over any other friends! Or if they do I don't ship it myself, but if they do it's usually because of chronic rival syndrome in shounen Anime. The main character/rival is a crazy popular type of ship. The only other type of ship that's rampant with little hints is a single character shipped with EVERYTHING (See: Marisa and Rainbow Dash) Basically what I'm saying is, any non-canon ship I've seen between characters of the same sex are usually unreasonable, and the characters involved are often either friends, enemies, acquaintances or have nothing to do with each other at all.
And yet here we have Quatre and Trowa, a duo that led to a one of the dubs actually canonizing a relationship. WHAT (Or at least one of them having a crush on each other. This is like THE OPPOSITE of the Sailor Uranus/Neptune situation with dubs!)
You see the two met each other first, out of the other pilots and then Quatre goes crazy, has NO problems with obliterating Heero, but then Trowa gets in the way and he's like OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE and that aspect seems to be so much more emphasized than the colony or the mine resource he destroyed, for some guy he only met a few months or weeks or however long ago. And then he's like I KNOW TROWA IS NOT DEAD (and I will complain about the characters' immortality later) Heero is like YOU CANNOT FIGHT UNTIL YOU FIND TROWA, and then they find Trowa but he has amnesia, and Quatre is all like happy he's alive but like, tears are there 'cause he has amnesia, and then Trowa goes crazy (that Zero Suit, mang) and Quatre is the one who must calm him down, and then in the finale Quatre is caught up with Dorothy and Trowa is like I MUST FIND QUATRE and a million other things and I'm all like "WHAT" (also is this a soap opera or what)
I am not saying it's bad. I'm just rather surprised how much they interacted or cared about each other when Heero is like "I WILL KILL YOU" and Wu Fei is like "I HATE EVERYONE" and Duo is like "WHY AM I NEVER IN THE SHOW".
Well I may be exaggerating about Duo, but still! He does interact with Heero fairly often enough, but Heero had his own problems with Relena and trying to die and such, so there wasn't as much emphasis on the two like Trowa and Quatre. (Also because Heero is the main character) My other surprise is Trowa himself. When I started the series I was wondering what the point of Trowa as a character was, he seemed similar to Heero at first with the emotionless and stoic demeanour and then he joins a circus and turns out to be a pretty freakin' nice guy...and I'm like O_O...
My god.
So I find the character design for the women rather bland which might be part of the reason I find them bland. The anatomy and design and everything is quite realistic in Gundam besides y'know, having all important characters look attractive, but they all have normal hair colours, and their hair (Except Trowa) is styled rather realistically. You know one thing I do love about the design is that they all don't look the same. A race would look like their race, mostly. For example in Anime nowadays (or I am completely wrong, please correct me) an American would have like, a giant nose, incredibly pronounced features and MUST have blue eyes and blonde hair. After all, ALL AMERICANS are BLONDE and BLUE-EYED. The European characters in Gundam Wing actually looked European, like Relena and the Duo wasn't a mandatory blonde guy, etc.
But as always realistic design has its limitations or at least I hope that's the excuse for why Hilde looks like a mini-Noin. I do quite like Noin as a character and she's the only female who looks a little unique, but eh, I guess not only do I like more excitable characters, but I'd probably find a character from something like Gurren Lagann more interesting because of say, bright red hair or cool orange shades.
Also...immortality. As I went through the series I sort of adopted this mindset that all the characters do crazy shit because they know they can't die. After all, NO ONE ever gets scared if a gun is pointed to them. In fact the handgun is probably less dangerous than a butter knife in this series, it doesn't fucking kill anyone except that one old guy in Waltz, but all old men have high mortality rates in fiction. My face when I saw Lady Une still alive after twenty-five or so episodes cannot be described. Seriously, they showed her being shot SO MANY TIMES as a prelude to the episode as if it was driving down a nail that she was dead dead dead because I was constantly wondering if any character can ACTUALLY die in this series, even the supporting ones! She doesn't even have a scratch when she pilots the Wing Gundam into A GIANT LASER BEAM OF DOOM just to save Treize! Speaking of which, Treize became awesome to me because he was mortal. You know how he never even pilots a mecha suit until near the end of the series and is constantly at his rich house acting as the leader without ever fighting, so you think he's a jackass, but then when the war comes to its peak he goes up to the front line and risks his very life? Honouring the rematch with Wu Fei and dying rather spectacularly? Damn. I don't view any one character as more badass as another if EVERYONE is badass, and death never feels like a threat AT ALL. You can float in space forever, no dying. You can fall on your face from fifty-feet, no dying. You can blow yourself up, no dying.
Anyway I found the series mildly entertaining as a whole. The final few episodes were quite exciting and there were parts of the series that were fun to watch, but there were also many parts where I grew rather bored of. I can see why other Gundam series are more popular in Japan, or at least I hope some of the other Gundam series are more entertaining than this one otherwise I can't see why its been a franchise for so long. The Anime is a classic but for my opinions now? I will dub it as OK. If I were watching it like, once a week as how most shows come out, I'd probably have dropped it due to boredom. A majority of the reason of its OK rating is probably due to the genre being not my taste. Perhaps I should try watching Gurren Lagann? One day I will, but not today.
That is all from Spotto! My favourite is Trowa. And my favourite Gundam to play with as a kid was Sandrock. Those blades are so cool. Sorry Deathscythe, but I wanted to steal my friend's Sandrock figure. It was so cool. I loved its colour scheme too.
And that is how I ended up marathoning all of Gundam Wing in two days. Lovely how that works, doesn't it?
Now my experience with mecha anime is pretty low. I've seen some Gundam Wing as a child, in particular Endless Waltz and I've seen some Gundam Seed from time-to-time on TV. I barely remember any of these and I don't think my interest was very high. Nonetheless GW still holds a little bit of nostalgia within me, so my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to remind my memory what I just watched all those years ago. Plus, even if I did remember scenes from the Anime, I didn't understand a thing of it.
Anyway I walked into the Anime with a pretty neutral mindset. Not as a person who often watched Anime, or someone who even watched much of Sci Fi. All I had with me was a small bit of nostalgia and my absolute love for Gundams as toys. I recall playing with them, the action figure kind, with a boy when I was a kid. He owned the toys and I've always wanted one since. Sadly all I've found is models, or action figures of gundams I didn't really care for. I do have a Gundam SEED model of...the Gundam that Athrun dude piloted, but I assembled it pretty terribly and its arms and wings fall off rather often, lol. I do love the designs and playing with them though.
In fact that's how I ended up with a Lobomon figure because I went to a toy store trying to find Gundams but they only had figures of other mobile suits, so I just went for a Digimon instead. I still wish for a Gundam figure someday, perhaps that experience is why I love collecting figures, be it Negima, Touhou (I VOW TO GET ONE ONE DAY) or even series I don't even care for like my Final Fantasy figures. I suppose that's why I already have the mane six from MLP...oh how I wish they were more accurate to the show but I sadly cannot pull out four hundred dollars for a show-accurate custom made one on Ebay.
Nonetheless, I watched all of Gundam Wing and its movie/OVAs, Endless Waltz. I actually grew incredibly bored in the middle of the Anime. I suppose I'm not much for Anime with plot as its main focus and politics as its main plot. From what memories I had as a child I always thought "THAT DUDE WITH THE MASK" now known as Zechs Marquise was EVIL! But he was quite a cool character for most of the Anime before he...ended up being the THE BIG BAD near the end...I assume dropping a massive battleship on Earth is pretty evil after all, even though throughout the entire Anime EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER SWITCHED SIDES SO OFTEN I HAD NO IDEA WHO OR WHAT TO ROOT FOR ANYMORE.
It is pretty obvious you'd look to the main characters to root for but for a majority of the beginning we had a lot of screentime for other characters and the Gundam Pilots were just there, completing missions, killing people. Not really giving enough precedence for me to root for them. I mean they affected the plot obviously, but we knew nothing about the characters. They were pawns for the Colonies for all we know until we realize they're some sort of separate faction within the colonies attempting revenge for an assassination so long ago and...
Well the plot was interesting and complicated, but not my thing. Maybe I'm a simpleton or something, preferring to watch or read or view shows with a simple premise and a simple plot, but it wasn't like I didn't enjoy it...it just felt rather ridiculous the more I think about it. I guess that's why I'm not much of a Gundam fan at all, considering I wasn't interested in the shows as a child. I always grew rather bored watching Gundam SEED, just hoping for cool giant robot scenes and all. Maybe that's why I'm so bored with Negima since its plot became incredibly political...I just don't enjoy such a genre! I don't enjoy politics!
So not only did Zechs/Miliardo surprise me out of the gate (he was the most interesting character in the entire first half of the Anime), the so-called Big Bad, Treize, surprised me as well. Frankly the more I think about it, none of the characters (except old ugly people no one would care about if they died >_>) were really...completely evil or anything. Some of them took rather brash actions, maybe made mistakes, maybe ended up killing a lot of innocents but they all advocated peace in the end. They were more like well-intentioned extremists and I actually had sympathy for every one of them, no matter what side they were on. I guess in the end all the characters were truly human.
The females of the series did not bother me at all, except the small notion of practically every one of them being in love with one of the main guys. They were strong characters, albeit somewhat bland in a way. Well, Relena was bland, the rest of them were interesting but didn't explode out to me as an amazing dynamic character. They served their role in the story well. I find absolutely no problems with Relena, I just never like characters who seem emotionless, stoic, or really, really serious even if they aren't deep down. I can never relate to these characters. I guess that's why I'm not fond of many of the characters because most of them were emotionless, stoic, or utterly serious. It's inevitable to have characters like so with such a cynical setting of war and death, but I imagine if I did watch a mecha again, Gurren Lagann would be more fitting for my tastes. I heard the characters in that Anime are far more exciting. P:
And so that leads on to the actual main characters of the series, the Gundam Pilots. The ages in this show bother me for some reason. They're fourteen...or fifteen, or some incredibly small number. If I were younger and watched the show maybe I wouldn't have cared about the ages as much. After all I'd probably find the characters more appealing if they were closer to my age group, but this isn't some Anime about some dumb kid saving the world from irresponsible adults...
OR IS IT?
I dunno, I find a serious series would be more fitting in tone if the characters were more realistic, in particular the age. A bunch of kids piloting giant robots already? I question the intelligence of a person deciding to GIVE A TEENAGER A GIANT ROBOT! The ages of the adults were ridiculously young too. That Lady Une woman DID NOT LOOK NINETEEN DAMN YOU. SHE IS NOT NINETEEN. I REFUSE TO BELIEVE SHE IS NINETEEN WHY ARE THEY ALL SO BLOODY YOUNG. It's either REALLY OLD MEN controlling the nation, OR A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL BEING QUEEN OF THE WORLD. SERIOUSLY.
I mean I was already running into age problems after recently watching the movie Up, with the Big Bad being over a hundred but looking like he's in his early seventies or something. Then I see Endless Waltz and some SEVEN-YEAR-OLD is wearing a military uniform and declaring war on Earth. SHE'S FUCKING SEVEN. I don't care if she was being manipulated, DID NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS EVER HAVE A CHILDHOOD? How fucking tragic is the future with giant robots!? MY GOD. (I actually have no idea what the age of Mariamia is, she just looks seven or some young age. She's a kid. THAT IS THE POINT)
And not only that but none of these pilots seem to have had a growth spurt. WHY THE HELL AM I TALLER THAN THEM? I'm as short as they come but I'm like the same size as Trowa, who looks like the tallest of them all. (Those tight pants do create an illusion) It's not like they're all Asian and we have a little bit of an excuse. Duo is American, Quatre is Arabic. WHY ARE THESE KIDS SO BLOODY SHORT!?
Okay well that's my little mini-rant on age and size...about the actual characters, I've had a few surprises myself like with Treize and Zechs. Heero gave me no surprises...he felt like that standard Gundam Pilot lead, with the tall, dark and mysterious...I mean SHORT, dark and mysterious vibe about him. He's that character type lots of people would like, particularly female fans. (Well all of them have their female fans except Wu Fei probably. Bangs are very attractive, often when you don't have bangs does that not help you in your situation though there probably ARE Wu Fei fans...he's also a sexist jerk, so...or you can get ridiculous with bangs like Trowa @_@) I kind of wish Duo had a bigger role in Gundam Wing though.
Duo is a rather refreshing change from all the...seriousness of everything, even if he is willing to kill everything and has his own tragic past (doesn't everyone? Everyone's father is dead. There are zero characters without a tragic history! Why aren't they all too mentally unstable to be in war? Oh wait, THEY ARE mentally too unstable to be in war but they're in war ANYWAY) but I thought he never really got as much spotlight as the other four characters. If he did then his screentime was spread well enough that I didn't see like, one giant part dedicated to him or anything. His so-called "love interest" came out of nowhere (and looks WAY too much like Noin...I'll complain about female character design later) and there wasn't anything INTERESTING between him and her or unique that Heero didn't have or anyone else. He wasn't completely headstrong or lonewolf or a stubborn jerkish asshole like Wu Fei, or that compassionate and kind character who goes insane like Quatre, or the stoic guy without a name who gets amnesia like Trowa...so what did he have? The coolest looking Gundam? The go-to guy to throw in jail? (The number of times he gets captured is almost humorous) I feel like I'm missing something here.
It sounds like I hate Wu Fei or something here, but I don't. He completely and utterly embodies "Arrogant Kung Fu Guy" rather well, and so I don't find him particularly unique. I mean they ALL like working alone, but some are more open to the idea of working with others than...others, such as Wu Fei. ...is Master Long supposed to be a guy? Because he sounds somewhat female and looks kind of female...all those wrinkles really doesn't help, but that dojo colony with the Chinese-like landscape felt rather tacked on. If only his fiance/wife was alluded to some more because I feel like if I didn't know he called his Gundam "Nataku" because of his wife beforehand, I'd have wondered why the hell he would be calling his Gundam Nataku. (I can also complain on why such a young character already has a wife, but let's move on)
So I recall a few years or months...or some significant time back I randomly watched a clip of dub!Quatre laughing insanely, so I already knew he'd go insane before watching. One of my few memories of watching Gundam Wing was that I recall him being shot or stabbed or injured at some point in the series in a really dark place, which turned out to be the last episode when he's confronting Dorothy, the eyebrow lady. I also knew from various comments that a lot of people have a deep hatred for the character and finally, due to finding the sub easier to access than the dub, knew that he had the same voice actress as Max. ALL of this gave me this weird perception that he'd do something utterly horrible in the Anime and that's why everyone hates him. And now that I've finished the Anime, I have no idea where the hell this hate comes from.
Going insane and blowing shit up is not new at all, and as far as I know the colony he blew up was evacuated. There weren't people screaming for terror in the streets. Yes he destroyed a perfectly good colony and killed a bunch of people on that one resources mining rock thing, but otherwise my biggest surprise in the entire series is...
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH CANON HO YAY BETWEEN HIM AND TROWA?
Usually when I see people ship, especially in a series with tons of attractive characters of one gender, many ships come from the smallest of hints or nothing at all. I am so used to being in a fandom like Touhou where Yuuka and Wriggle are shipped despite never having met at all JUST BECAUSE one represents FLOWERS and the other represents BUGS. Wriggle doesn't even have a single thing to do with bees either, she's all about fireflies. I even shipped Hong Kong and Korea who have zero, ZERO interaction in the canon and not too much to do in terms of history either. And even then, most ships I am used to the characters tend to be friends if nothing else, and they don't do anything that makes them closer to each other over any other friends! Or if they do I don't ship it myself, but if they do it's usually because of chronic rival syndrome in shounen Anime. The main character/rival is a crazy popular type of ship. The only other type of ship that's rampant with little hints is a single character shipped with EVERYTHING (See: Marisa and Rainbow Dash) Basically what I'm saying is, any non-canon ship I've seen between characters of the same sex are usually unreasonable, and the characters involved are often either friends, enemies, acquaintances or have nothing to do with each other at all.
And yet here we have Quatre and Trowa, a duo that led to a one of the dubs actually canonizing a relationship. WHAT (Or at least one of them having a crush on each other. This is like THE OPPOSITE of the Sailor Uranus/Neptune situation with dubs!)
You see the two met each other first, out of the other pilots and then Quatre goes crazy, has NO problems with obliterating Heero, but then Trowa gets in the way and he's like OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE and that aspect seems to be so much more emphasized than the colony or the mine resource he destroyed, for some guy he only met a few months or weeks or however long ago. And then he's like I KNOW TROWA IS NOT DEAD (and I will complain about the characters' immortality later) Heero is like YOU CANNOT FIGHT UNTIL YOU FIND TROWA, and then they find Trowa but he has amnesia, and Quatre is all like happy he's alive but like, tears are there 'cause he has amnesia, and then Trowa goes crazy (that Zero Suit, mang) and Quatre is the one who must calm him down, and then in the finale Quatre is caught up with Dorothy and Trowa is like I MUST FIND QUATRE and a million other things and I'm all like "WHAT" (also is this a soap opera or what)
I am not saying it's bad. I'm just rather surprised how much they interacted or cared about each other when Heero is like "I WILL KILL YOU" and Wu Fei is like "I HATE EVERYONE" and Duo is like "WHY AM I NEVER IN THE SHOW".
Well I may be exaggerating about Duo, but still! He does interact with Heero fairly often enough, but Heero had his own problems with Relena and trying to die and such, so there wasn't as much emphasis on the two like Trowa and Quatre. (Also because Heero is the main character) My other surprise is Trowa himself. When I started the series I was wondering what the point of Trowa as a character was, he seemed similar to Heero at first with the emotionless and stoic demeanour and then he joins a circus and turns out to be a pretty freakin' nice guy...and I'm like O_O...
My god.
So I find the character design for the women rather bland which might be part of the reason I find them bland. The anatomy and design and everything is quite realistic in Gundam besides y'know, having all important characters look attractive, but they all have normal hair colours, and their hair (Except Trowa) is styled rather realistically. You know one thing I do love about the design is that they all don't look the same. A race would look like their race, mostly. For example in Anime nowadays (or I am completely wrong, please correct me) an American would have like, a giant nose, incredibly pronounced features and MUST have blue eyes and blonde hair. After all, ALL AMERICANS are BLONDE and BLUE-EYED. The European characters in Gundam Wing actually looked European, like Relena and the Duo wasn't a mandatory blonde guy, etc.
But as always realistic design has its limitations or at least I hope that's the excuse for why Hilde looks like a mini-Noin. I do quite like Noin as a character and she's the only female who looks a little unique, but eh, I guess not only do I like more excitable characters, but I'd probably find a character from something like Gurren Lagann more interesting because of say, bright red hair or cool orange shades.
Also...immortality. As I went through the series I sort of adopted this mindset that all the characters do crazy shit because they know they can't die. After all, NO ONE ever gets scared if a gun is pointed to them. In fact the handgun is probably less dangerous than a butter knife in this series, it doesn't fucking kill anyone except that one old guy in Waltz, but all old men have high mortality rates in fiction. My face when I saw Lady Une still alive after twenty-five or so episodes cannot be described. Seriously, they showed her being shot SO MANY TIMES as a prelude to the episode as if it was driving down a nail that she was dead dead dead because I was constantly wondering if any character can ACTUALLY die in this series, even the supporting ones! She doesn't even have a scratch when she pilots the Wing Gundam into A GIANT LASER BEAM OF DOOM just to save Treize! Speaking of which, Treize became awesome to me because he was mortal. You know how he never even pilots a mecha suit until near the end of the series and is constantly at his rich house acting as the leader without ever fighting, so you think he's a jackass, but then when the war comes to its peak he goes up to the front line and risks his very life? Honouring the rematch with Wu Fei and dying rather spectacularly? Damn. I don't view any one character as more badass as another if EVERYONE is badass, and death never feels like a threat AT ALL. You can float in space forever, no dying. You can fall on your face from fifty-feet, no dying. You can blow yourself up, no dying.
Anyway I found the series mildly entertaining as a whole. The final few episodes were quite exciting and there were parts of the series that were fun to watch, but there were also many parts where I grew rather bored of. I can see why other Gundam series are more popular in Japan, or at least I hope some of the other Gundam series are more entertaining than this one otherwise I can't see why its been a franchise for so long. The Anime is a classic but for my opinions now? I will dub it as OK. If I were watching it like, once a week as how most shows come out, I'd probably have dropped it due to boredom. A majority of the reason of its OK rating is probably due to the genre being not my taste. Perhaps I should try watching Gurren Lagann? One day I will, but not today.
That is all from Spotto! My favourite is Trowa. And my favourite Gundam to play with as a kid was Sandrock. Those blades are so cool. Sorry Deathscythe, but I wanted to steal my friend's Sandrock figure. It was so cool. I loved its colour scheme too.