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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

by arjie 11mo ago

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 establishment, playing the establishment role. And spoiler spoiler spoiler, spoiler spoiler spoiler the establishment wins, the charismatic double-role leader dies trying to fulfill the prophecy which isn't real, the stoic soldier is cut apart in the final battle, and the remainder of the loyal band either gets their people rights in parliament or gets picked off in violent engagements over time in the denouement. Fantastic story. You don't see that kind of thing very often. 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".

TeMPOraL 11mo ago
> 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".
- neaden 11mo ago
  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.
  - Supermancho 11mo ago
    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.
    - neaden 11mo ago
      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.
      - kibwen 11mo ago
        As is most any other show where the protagonist works for the government, e.g. James Bond or Ghost In The Shell.
  - elcritch 11mo ago
    A favorite tidbit I learned years ago was that the Chinese invented Law and Order genre pretty much before anyone else. Very much an establishment wins genre. Here’s the Google summary: > Early Chinese detective stories, known as gong'an ("court case") fiction, emerged from oral tales and plays during the Song Dynasty (960-1127), featuring incorruptible magistrate-detectives like Bao Zheng (Judge Bao) and Di Renjie (Judge Dee) who used clever deduction, forensic logic, and sometimes supernatural elements to solve crimes.
  - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
    Didn't watch Law and Order much (my wife is a fan though, so I'll ask). Most of the cop shows/procedurals I saw have some kind of "corrupt mayor" arc as a substantial part of their plot, but I guess if you go one level up, it's still "the establishment wins". But then anything where civilization doesn't collapse would be that.
- arjie 11mo ago
  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.
- krapp 11mo ago
  We just call that "propaganda."
exhumet 11mo ago
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.
- expedition32 11mo ago
  Yeah original Gundam is about a never ending war in which the protagonists are just cogs in the machine. And it turns out every side is led by immoral scumbags.
  - hibikir 11mo ago
    Yep, and splatter around some talk about the horrors of being a combatant in those wars, as if you don't fight, your loved ones die anyway. You can see how Evangelion is doing a lot of riffing on Gundam. In some ways it's not Jane Austen, it's Full Metal Jacket, or Rambo: First Blood. The different series might have giant robots all over the place, but there aer serious stories barely hidden underneath. Even when a story starts as mostly lighthearted adolescent fare (see, The Witch of Mercury), it tends to end in trauma, injustice and many war crimes.
aseipp 11mo ago
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.
- exhumet 11mo ago
  war in the pocket is the best of them imo
rKarpinski 11mo ago
> 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" This probably has more to do with the type of content you are consuming. If you watch things for young adults, it will probably follow "the Heroes Journey" - wether it is LOTR, Harry Potter, Star Wars etc. (the West) or Naruto, Pokemon, Dragon Ball/Journey to the West (the East)
- arjie 11mo ago
  That's the point. AFAIK Gundam is a mecha-anime for young adults - the same audience as Marvel movies or the average Oscar winner. It's not East of Eden or The Remains of The Day.
  - kibwen 11mo ago
    I think this erases some interesting nuance. The original Gundam is unabashedly a toy commercial--ostensibly marketing to children in the exact same vein as the OG Transformers--except apparently nobody told the director, so it's an extremely emotionally mature show (more so than nearly all YA fiction) where the main character, a teen soldier, is narrowly escaping death, is killing people, is watching everyone around him be killed, is suffering the effects of PTSD, is being openly used as an expendable tool by his superiors, is on the run for his life being hunted by half the world, is coming to terms with the costs of war and the throngs of innocent bystanders being reduced to burning ash for the sake of cruel and ambitous men, and did you know you can buy his cool robo-flail accessory at Toys 'R Us today?
    - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 11mo ago
      It's not that nobody told the director. It's that the director knew nobody cared what was actually in the show as long as the end product moved units on the shelves. It's part of the reason the names are so wild. He was actively pushing the envelope with outrageous names during pitches to see how far he could go before producers would stop nodding along without paying attention.
isk517 11mo ago
The subversion of tropes goes back all the way to the original Mobile Suit Gundam, though a little more subtle due to the studio wanting to make a show to sell toys and the director wanting to make something with a actual message. It has: -a 'good army' that could easily be the 'bad army' in a more optimistic show -the protagonists dealing with callus military leadership -sympathetic enemy soldiers dealing with their own incompetent and callus leadership -the war taking a huge psychological toll on the protagonist and all of them end up worse off for having been a part of it
- brendoelfrendo 11mo ago
  And to your first point, the "good army" did become the "bad army" by the time of the sequel, Zeta Gundam. Once they're no longer on the back footing, the "good army" becomes a ruthless occupying force, operating almost entirely without oversight and under the direction of officers who are all too willing to cover up war crimes. But it still makes sense because you can see over the course of the show how such shift could happen in the inter-war period between the One Year War and the Gryps Conflict.
underlipton 11mo ago
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 strategically breaking taboo (but only once he's certain to have the political backing to do so). On the other side, the rebels are >driven by the circumstances the establishment has forced them to contend with for the entirety of their short lives (they're all child soldiers, btw) >are only able to find their successful path by rejecting establishment and forging what seem, at the time, to be canny ties with other groups on-the-margins >...right until they follow that path off a cliff. The "heroes" and "villains" remain who they are at the end not just because of affinity bias (having spent more time with the rebels than the establishment), but because there's a tangible disconnect between the former feeling forced into the poor decisions that they make, and the latter's rather cold, and unforced, determinations. Spoiler So when Shino almost takes Rustal's bridge out, I am, of course, cheering, even while I know I'm watching him commit a war crime and sign his own death warrant. When Rustal orders atmosphere-braised pilot skewers, it still feels incredibly unfair, even when I know why he made that decision. They threaded the needle.
- arjie 11mo ago
  Couldn't agree more. I particularly enjoyed the ruthless exploitation of the symbolism that McGillis Fareed was attempting, only to be met by a similarly ruthless exploitation of political systems from Rustal Elion. This time this one won, and it was ultimately a close thing, but it could have gone the other way. Overall, a very sophisticated show - on its own and definitely for its genre.
  - exBarrelSpoiler 11mo ago
    If you like IBO, you might enjoy this essay, which analyzes its sociopolitical content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNRjwktvPV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNRjwktvPV8
- 11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
bsder 11mo ago
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'Henry or Roald Dahl would qualify. I hit them in 7th grade and liked them very much, too.
- _carbyau_ 11mo ago
  > 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.
Full_Clark 11mo ago
> 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.
- arjie 11mo ago
  I do love The Wire and just recently ended up watching Generation Kill with my dad. That's another amazing one from David Simon. Very real. Cpl. Ray Person still talks about his experience in the actual unit portrayed there on Reddit as /u/plasmata.
dluan 11mo ago
You have to be more specific because "Eastern" here does not include Chinese thematic tropes. https://x.com/xlr8harder/status/1962768298153521202 https://x.com/xlr8harder/status/1962768298153521202 Sun Wukong is the original "normal guy who grinds to greatness", which was the original plot of Dragonball before it turned more into Harry Potter (you are the chosen one).

by arjie 11mo ago

TeMPOraL 11mo ago

> 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".

neaden 11mo ago
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.
- Supermancho 11mo ago
  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.
  - neaden 11mo ago
    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.
    - kibwen 11mo ago
      As is most any other show where the protagonist works for the government, e.g. James Bond or Ghost In The Shell.
- elcritch 11mo ago
  A favorite tidbit I learned years ago was that the Chinese invented Law and Order genre pretty much before anyone else. Very much an establishment wins genre. Here’s the Google summary: > Early Chinese detective stories, known as gong'an ("court case") fiction, emerged from oral tales and plays during the Song Dynasty (960-1127), featuring incorruptible magistrate-detectives like Bao Zheng (Judge Bao) and Di Renjie (Judge Dee) who used clever deduction, forensic logic, and sometimes supernatural elements to solve crimes.
- TeMPOraL 11mo ago
  Didn't watch Law and Order much (my wife is a fan though, so I'll ask). Most of the cop shows/procedurals I saw have some kind of "corrupt mayor" arc as a substantial part of their plot, but I guess if you go one level up, it's still "the establishment wins". But then anything where civilization doesn't collapse would be that.
arjie 11mo ago
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.
krapp 11mo ago
We just call that "propaganda."

exhumet 11mo ago

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.

expedition32 11mo ago
Yeah original Gundam is about a never ending war in which the protagonists are just cogs in the machine. And it turns out every side is led by immoral scumbags.
- hibikir 11mo ago
  Yep, and splatter around some talk about the horrors of being a combatant in those wars, as if you don't fight, your loved ones die anyway. You can see how Evangelion is doing a lot of riffing on Gundam. In some ways it's not Jane Austen, it's Full Metal Jacket, or Rambo: First Blood. The different series might have giant robots all over the place, but there aer serious stories barely hidden underneath. Even when a story starts as mostly lighthearted adolescent fare (see, The Witch of Mercury), it tends to end in trauma, injustice and many war crimes.

aseipp 11mo ago

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.

exhumet 11mo ago
war in the pocket is the best of them imo

rKarpinski 11mo ago

> 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" This probably has more to do with the type of content you are consuming. If you watch things for young adults, it will probably follow "the Heroes Journey" - wether it is LOTR, Harry Potter, Star Wars etc. (the West) or Naruto, Pokemon, Dragon Ball/Journey to the West (the East)

arjie 11mo ago
That's the point. AFAIK Gundam is a mecha-anime for young adults - the same audience as Marvel movies or the average Oscar winner. It's not East of Eden or The Remains of The Day.
- kibwen 11mo ago
  I think this erases some interesting nuance. The original Gundam is unabashedly a toy commercial--ostensibly marketing to children in the exact same vein as the OG Transformers--except apparently nobody told the director, so it's an extremely emotionally mature show (more so than nearly all YA fiction) where the main character, a teen soldier, is narrowly escaping death, is killing people, is watching everyone around him be killed, is suffering the effects of PTSD, is being openly used as an expendable tool by his superiors, is on the run for his life being hunted by half the world, is coming to terms with the costs of war and the throngs of innocent bystanders being reduced to burning ash for the sake of cruel and ambitous men, and did you know you can buy his cool robo-flail accessory at Toys 'R Us today?
  - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 11mo ago
    It's not that nobody told the director. It's that the director knew nobody cared what was actually in the show as long as the end product moved units on the shelves. It's part of the reason the names are so wild. He was actively pushing the envelope with outrageous names during pitches to see how far he could go before producers would stop nodding along without paying attention.

isk517 11mo ago

The subversion of tropes goes back all the way to the original Mobile Suit Gundam, though a little more subtle due to the studio wanting to make a show to sell toys and the director wanting to make something with a actual message. It has: -a 'good army' that could easily be the 'bad army' in a more optimistic show -the protagonists dealing with callus military leadership -sympathetic enemy soldiers dealing with their own incompetent and callus leadership -the war taking a huge psychological toll on the protagonist and all of them end up worse off for having been a part of it

brendoelfrendo 11mo ago
And to your first point, the "good army" did become the "bad army" by the time of the sequel, Zeta Gundam. Once they're no longer on the back footing, the "good army" becomes a ruthless occupying force, operating almost entirely without oversight and under the direction of officers who are all too willing to cover up war crimes. But it still makes sense because you can see over the course of the show how such shift could happen in the inter-war period between the One Year War and the Gryps Conflict.

underlipton 11mo ago

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 strategically breaking taboo (but only once he's certain to have the political backing to do so). On the other side, the rebels are >driven by the circumstances the establishment has forced them to contend with for the entirety of their short lives (they're all child soldiers, btw) >are only able to find their successful path by rejecting establishment and forging what seem, at the time, to be canny ties with other groups on-the-margins >...right until they follow that path off a cliff. The "heroes" and "villains" remain who they are at the end not just because of affinity bias (having spent more time with the rebels than the establishment), but because there's a tangible disconnect between the former feeling forced into the poor decisions that they make, and the latter's rather cold, and unforced, determinations. Spoiler So when Shino almost takes Rustal's bridge out, I am, of course, cheering, even while I know I'm watching him commit a war crime and sign his own death warrant. When Rustal orders atmosphere-braised pilot skewers, it still feels incredibly unfair, even when I know why he made that decision. They threaded the needle.

arjie 11mo ago
Couldn't agree more. I particularly enjoyed the ruthless exploitation of the symbolism that McGillis Fareed was attempting, only to be met by a similarly ruthless exploitation of political systems from Rustal Elion. This time this one won, and it was ultimately a close thing, but it could have gone the other way. Overall, a very sophisticated show - on its own and definitely for its genre.
- exBarrelSpoiler 11mo ago
  If you like IBO, you might enjoy this essay, which analyzes its sociopolitical content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNRjwktvPV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNRjwktvPV8
11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

bsder 11mo ago

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'Henry or Roald Dahl would qualify. I hit them in 7th grade and liked them very much, too.

_carbyau_ 11mo ago
> 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.

Full_Clark 11mo ago

> 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.

arjie 11mo ago
I do love The Wire and just recently ended up watching Generation Kill with my dad. That's another amazing one from David Simon. Very real. Cpl. Ray Person still talks about his experience in the actual unit portrayed there on Reddit as /u/plasmata.

dluan 11mo ago

You have to be more specific because "Eastern" here does not include Chinese thematic tropes. https://x.com/xlr8harder/status/1962768298153521202 https://x.com/xlr8harder/status/1962768298153521202 Sun Wukong is the original "normal guy who grinds to greatness", which was the original plot of Dragonball before it turned more into Harry Potter (you are the chosen one).