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The Gundam Plot Coherency Scale

Turn A where if Guin hadn't decided to keep the Moonrace's impending arrival a secret (for no clear reason), you wouldn't have a show because there's hardly a reason for any conflict at all.

The Laplace Box reveal in Unicorn is impressively stupid. spoiler[The idea that the nations of the world would spend however much time they spent hammering out this multilateral treaty -- and if current events haven't already made this clear, negotiating a multilateral treaty is typically a very long and contentious process even when the treaty doesn't create a global Federation to which your country will be ceding its sovereignty -- and then, I don't know, forget that they included this provision once the original version (and, for some reason, a monument is apparently the legally-effective document?) was lost, might be the single most ludicrous plot point in all of Gundam.]

zaphdash wrote:

The Laplace Box reveal in Unicorn is impressively stupid. spoiler[The idea that the nations of the world would spend however much time they spent hammering out this multilateral treaty -- and if current events haven't already made this clear, negotiating a multilateral treaty is typically a very long and contentious process even when the treaty doesn't create a global Federation to which your country will be ceding its sovereignty -- and then, I don't know, forget that they included this provision once the original version (and, for some reason, a monument is apparently the legally-effective document?) was lost, might be the single most ludicrous plot point in all of Gundam.]

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but spoiler[it wasn't forgotten so much as taken away to use as some sort of black mail. I also remember there being an assassination or explosion during the unveiling of the "document'/monument, which may explain why people didn't question the omission - because they never knew it was there in the first place.]

That being said, it's been a while since I saw Unicorn, and I wasn't a big fan of it, spoiler[including the fact that while Laplace's box is a neat idea, it's stupid to assume that unveiling it would change anything.][/spoiler]

Stuff

Not exactly sure what this is supposed to mean, and the main article tries to make a similar point about how the conflict "could be resolved if everybody got together and just talked it out." A people who have been away for thousands of years try to return and resettle their ancestral homeland, but the current inhabitants are totally against it and won't accept their return kinda sounds like the core of one of the most intractable conflicts currently afflicting the real world.

I'll say this about Reconguista in G: it works much better if you marathon it, and my stance on it changed a lot after I rewatched the whole thing on Blu-ray over 3 days or so. Yes, there are too many ideas and developments in it for a 26-episode show, but I'd still rank it well above ZZ and V when it comes to both quality and plot coherency.

Second, I can't agree with G-Gundam being incoherent because of its setting. I think its basic concept is incredibly simple, "Win the tournament, rule the world." This just happens to include the usual travelling to meet the next opponent, meeting civilians and gaining allies/rivals, training for the finals. If anything, the confusing part comes in with the Devil Gundam, Master Asia, and their backstories (or lack of for Master Asia).

zaphdash wrote:

Not exactly sure what this is supposed to mean, and the main article tries to make a similar point about how the conflict "could be resolved if everybody got together and just talked it out." A people who have been away for thousands of years try to return and resettle their ancestral homeland, but the current inhabitants are totally against it and won't accept their return kinda sounds like the core of one of the most intractable conflicts currently afflicting the real world.

But Turn A soon establishes that the Earth is sparsely populated, so there's little reason for any sort of conflict since there's plenty of wide open uninhabited areas. Maybe there'd be some conflict if conditions had deteriorated on the Moon, so there'd be some sort of time crunch factor at work. But the show eventually gets to the Moon - and turns out life there was going just fine. So the Moonrace deciding to return was just some arbitrary thing that they could've called off if they wanted to.

I just can't rate Turn A very high on the plot coherence scale when it spends so much of the series unable to nail down what the big problem is.

Regarding Unicorn, I found the spoiler[big reveal regarding Laplace's Box to be a pretty good twist] toward the end, considering how long they make you wait for it. It never came across as dubious writing to me personally, but that's just me. I found it to be an enjoyable Gundam from start to finish.

As for Turn A Gundam, it definitely could have been written a bit better. Some parts of the story became a bit like scrambled eggs at times, but I wonder if the quality of the subtitled translation may have been the problem (it definitely seemed like characters were changing their tune too often during simple back and forth exchanges). The major antagonist was also a humongous disappointment and it didn't help that he had a terrible Japanese voice (I'm sure a dub could have fixed that much).