Forum - View topicINTEREST: Gundam Creator Yoshiyuki Tomino Offers Thoughts on Ongoing Wars
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The_Outsider
Posts: 135 |
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This is the major problem of so-called "anti-war media", because they always end up glorifying the very thing they condemn (the "wow cool robots" meme isn't a thing for nothing). The fact Zeon as whole was more popular than the other factions also meant the producers of later series had to whitewash them and demonize the Federation, which means we end up getting the very questionable "hey maybe those genocidal fascists had a point maybe?" Gundam Origins and Requiem for Vengeance are flagrant examples of this.
And yet one of the recurring plot points across all UC shows was the presence of the posthuman übermenschen who were considered objectively superior to normal humans and who were consistently regarded as the "solution to all our problems". |
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EmeraldSaucer
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Neither of your examples do what you claim they do, and also from the very beginning the whole point was that neither Zeon nor the Federation were good (first Gundam postulating a kind of newtype communal living as represented through the found family of the White Base as an alternative with the potential to move past these oppressive structures, although later entries would critique this more naïve way of viewing things). Likewise, from first Gundam a point is made that there were legitimate grievances against the Federation on the part of Zeon, which were then co-opted by the Zabis as part of their own grabs for power. That is not something that bubbled up later, nor is it a sign of glorifying fascism or whatever you're trying to apply to Gundam's approach to realpolitik
This also isn't the case, pretty much every UC Gundam which depicts newtypes emphasizes that they aren't this idealized next step in human evolution that Zeon Deikun's Newtype Theory speculated about and that pretty much no problems are solved by them |
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Kicksville
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Wow, I hadn't heard they'd compiled these. It'd be awesome to see more of them translated, although I am grateful for the entries we've got like this one. Watch G-Reco, everyone! |
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Zased
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Tomino himself throws up the one armed "ZIEG ZEON"s salutes and leads chants at his public events along with the rest of the fans so I'd say he's aware of how popular Zeon is among the fans. I think it's ultimately just a paradox of life. Even if you claim to be against war you still have to go to war to protect people or your land otherwise you'll just get wiped out. An anti-war show has to make money to stay on the air and that means making the giant weapons cool and ensure people want to buy the model kits. I don't think any of that means people missed the point though. It's like saying anyone who plays Grand Theft Auto wants to go out and actually kill and rob people. You can just have some escapist fun to lean into fantasy. |
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Kougeru
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He's never been wrong on this topic
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tintor2
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If there is something about Tomino's writing that might give people the wrong idea is Char Aznable. Unlike Amuro who was written to be the average man, Char is both a charismatic man and wild card that always goes a bit far with his violence and thus became the most popular character. The way he is written in Counterattack might be divisive to viewers as he has discarded all character growth. Basically, Char is Vegeta.
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Fluwm
Moderator
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Worth pointing out that Tomino’s novelization went much harder in this direction than the anime, with (iirc) spoiler[White Base defecting from the Federation (a move Gundam Seed would later replicate) and teaming up with Char to depose the Zabis (with Char basically “replacing” Amuro as the big “hero” of the war).] But that said, there is a conversation to be had here about anti-war fiction seldom being effective in conveying that message. Subtext, in general, doesn’t really work on people who aren’t already receptive to the message — they’ll see what they want to. It shouldn’t be surprising that so many people go to Gundam because they want to see a cool mech action show, and leave thinking that’s all it was. Such is life, such is media literacy. But there’s also another conversation here about how effective any given Gundam work is at conveying those anti-war themes, because hoo boy, some of ‘em are pretty good, others downright terrible. The worst, for my money, is the Gundam Seed stuff (though these issues are by no means unique to Seed) — on account of conveying the “war is bad” idea primarily through characters shouting “war is bad” at the audience. Meanwhile the heroes answer to war being bad is to… magically become extremely good at war, while simultaneously fighting bloodlessly, embracing the extremely harmful myth of a “bloodless war.” Contrasted with something like Gundam Wing where a major plot plowing is the heroes accidentally murdering civilians (which is not a onetime thing), being broken by guilt, and the ultimate answer “war is bad” being to either unite around false symbols for a temporary peace (original) or the more fantastical, and ultimately kinda bleak “everyone has to just say no” (Endless Waltz). I’ve often just wondered why some approaches to this theme in Gundam can seem so… immature compared to others, and I think it’s gotta be due to more than just a failure of imagination, or clumsy writing. I think sometimes it may be a generational thing — Tomino grew up in the immediate aftermath of WWII. He didn’t need to have been a soldier to know that war was destructive and bad, he needed only look around. His earliest memories would’ve been of Japan at war, followed by the reconstruction and occupation (I think he would’ve been around 10 or 12 when the occupation ended). He knew first-hand what the effects of war on civilians look like, and I think he demonstrates that in his work. And I think this is true of many other creatives of Tomino’s generation, like Ryousuke Takahashi, which may (in part) explain just what made that “golden age” of mecha anime in the 80s just so golden. Though there’s yet another conversation here about the constant tension in commercial works that exists between conveying themes audiences may not be super receptive to versus being entertaining. For my money, Tomino’s one absolute masterpiece is Turn A Gundam, but I don’t think it’d be a controversial take to say Turn A is much more on the “entertaining” end of that spectrum. When it comes to his work that most effectively delivers those crucial anti-war themes, I think Victory Gundam and F91 take the cake. The former I regard as a masterpiece second only to Turn A, and absolutely the equal of the last Gundam show I’ll mention in the next (and last, promise) paragraph, but it *also* rubbed audiences the wrong way by being relentlessly bleak. Meanwhile the latter project was a mess, but featured some spectacular animation and was able to very clearly and succinctly demonstrate the horrors of war without so much as a single line of dialogue, just by depicting the Crossbone Vanguard’s invasion from the perspective of the civilians on the ground at the time. There are some utterly horrifying moments, like a woman being crushed to death by falling shell casings (ejected, iirc, from one of the “heroic” Jamesgun units there to defend her. It’s the kind of thing that reminds me of just how great Gundam can be, and just how much Tomino knew what he was doing — and the movie was, ultimately, a failure. It’s barely even coherent on a first-watch, and much like Victory, you’ll only ever very rarely encounter any fans singing its praises. For that, we don’t need to look much further than Zeta Gundam, which I think walks the line between being entertaining and thematically-focused pretty dang well. Zeta does an excellent job depicting the chaos and personal cost of war, while still making it fun, with its increasingly bonkers enemies-of-the-week and peak fanservice for fans of the ‘79 show. And the ending? While divisive, I think it’s pretty inspired: spoiler[where Tomino previously thought to kill off his hero, this time he spared his hero’s life — leaving Kamille in a vegetative state. Thus the hero’s fate is not a single traumatic moment, swiftly concluded and moved on from, but rather a continuous traumatic process. Damage that will affect Kamille for the rest of his life, alongside everyone who cares about him. Like, say, those who emerged from WWII with physical or psychological wounds that would never heal, whom Tomino would certainly have been very aware of in general, if not personally.] |
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egozi14
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I couldn't agree more with this part, and especially in the last part, which I tend use a lot as an example in most topics where people claim that fantasy and reality are the exact same for everything (and keep taking it one step further each year too it's seem >.>), At the end of the day fiction is fiction and one way to escape reality for fun moments; sure, most of it can be based on real events in one way or another but that doesn't mean that if you go and do killing and robbing in some video game, See people do questionable stuff in animes (can name few but scared to have this comment removed, just for the example even if what I would've mentioned is nothing new) Or read about how murderer thinks like in some book, It doesn't mean you will end up going to the street and do these stuff yourself, as 99% of the people can seperate reality and fiction, The same definitely goes for cool-looking mecha wars in animes, We love to see cool stuff in fiction and many of us don't want to think too deeply about how it could be related to or touched by politics. Then again, nowadays we got people giving rights to charas that don't even exist so~ |
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#darkmax1974
Posts: 6 |
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Yoshiyuki sensei has a lot of logic and sense, unlike some of his Gundam fans
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Egan Loo
Posts: 1469 |
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A few years ago, some people online (including a few on this forum) criticized a lawmaker as "hypocritical" or worse, for expressing appreciation for Gundam — despite the lawmaker sharing several of the same political views as Tomino. Given that, the issue may be less that some confuse reality and fiction, and more that some have trouble fathoming that a story like Gundam can come from someone with views like Tomino. (By contrast, many fans of the first Gundam from the beginning might say that someone with views like Tomino is precisely who can create a story like Gundam.) |
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