It's a GUNDAAAAAAAAM. Your general Gundam natter thread!

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Sanshain

Sanshain

Avatar? I don't need no stinkin' avatar.
kiwifarms.net
Joined
May 3, 2015
As some people might be aware, I'm a massive Gundam fan. I love giant mecha anime, and recently I've become an avid collector of Gundam model kits. Since this topic isn't really exclusively applicable to the Art & Literature or Games forums, I figured here was the place to put it.

Currently I'm working on two model kits; the NZ-666 Kshatryia High-Grade and the Master Grade Ver. Ka RX-0 Full Armor Unicorn Gundam. If anybody is interested, I'll post pictures when the two are done. These are the first two kits that I've gotten serious about making look excellent as opposed to merely great, primarily by painting them.

My question is if anybody else collects these kits, and what their opinions are on the franchise as a whole. Do you like a certain series more than others? Are you interested but not sure where to start? Is there some dream kit you'd love to get but simply aren't sure how you'd put it together? Stuff like this is always welcome. I'm hoping to put together a compendium of model kit building and painting techniques at some point, so personal experiences and input are all appreciated.

Personally, my favorite series overall is SEED, with 00 and Unicorn coming as twinned seconds. I've always liked the Gundam franchise for consistently delivering an excellent mix of action and mature drama, while remaining diverse enough to provide something to like for virtually any kind of viewer.

As a quick personal note, I try not to get overly intense about the things I like. Feel free to debate points of logic, what series' you like or don't like, and the reasons behind them. I feel that mainstream fandoms are usually way too intense about their objects of affection, which usually results in a ton of mud-slinging and unreasonable aggression whenever somebody brings up a contentious viewpoint. I'm by no means perfect, but I actually enjoy it when people have a good debate over what does and doesn't make a good character, model or show.

For those of you who're interested, Youtube has some good resources for both model builders and fans in general. Gundaminfo is the officially-licensed channel that Bandai uses to promote their upcoming releases and enable subtitled viewing of a few selected series. There's some good stuff there. GuttedWrenStudios also hosts a hilarious abridged series of the original Mobile Suit Gundam show. It only covers the first 25 episodes, but remains an absolute classic and is highly enjoyable even if you haven't watched the source material.
 
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HipstrsGonnaHip said:
This has to be bait, right? No one can be this goddamned retarded.
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Unicorn was "ok" until towards the end when Banana suddenly became the reincarnation of Kira Yamato and that weird ass philosophy battle through space-time. SEED and 00 were cancerous though and mentioning AGE to any aware Gundam fan is proven to cause blood vessels to pop in their eyes.

Also I think a Gundam thread is good, but the OP isn't and this thread probably should be in media.
 
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King n Yellow said:
Unicorn was "ok" until towards the end when Banana suddenly became the reincarnation of Kira Yamato and that weird ass philosophy battle through space-time. SEED and 00 were cancerous though and mentioning AGE to any aware Gundam fan is proven to cause blood vessels to pop in their eyes.

Also I think a Gundam thread is good, but the OP isn't and this thread probably should be in media.
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Unicorn went annoyingly Gainax towards the ending, but overall I thought it got its message across very solidly. As for SEED & 00, I hear a lot of people say that they're bad, but I've never really seen any solid, reasoned arguments as to why. Both shows have basically identical lifespans, with excellent initial impressions (The original SEED, the first season of 00) and disappointing follow-ups (SEED Destiny, season 2 of 00). I have very lukewarm feelings towards Destiny, and consider season 2 of 00 to be slightly above average, but I've never really seen any comprehensive explanations as to why certain people hate them so much.
 
Forever Sunrise said:
Unicorn went annoyingly Gainax towards the ending, but overall I thought it got its message across very solidly. As for SEED & 00, I hear a lot of people say that they're bad, but I've never really seen any solid, reasoned arguments as to why. Both shows have basically identical lifespans, with excellent initial impressions (The original SEED, the first season of 00) and disappointing follow-ups (SEED Destiny, season 2 of 00). I have very lukewarm feelings towards Destiny, and consider season 2 of 00 to be slightly above average, but I've never really seen any comprehensive explanations as to why certain people hate them so much.
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Ah, I thought you meant the SEED and 00 series as a whole. I agree that the first seasons of both series were decent. A lot of the original complaints of SEED's first season was the excessive use of same face and Kira never really developing right like other Gundam protags and staying kind of whiny kid through the whole series. There's the writing with Mu La Flaga or whoever the antagonist was intended to be considered a heartless psycho yet a lot of people consider him sympathetic due to his backstory and how all of his problems amount to humanity on both sides in SEED trying to play god. Also there's the space whale thing that kept getting brought up but is never really expanded on or explained further other than a reason for humans to explore space more.

Destiny is panned because its message is "we can all achieve UNDERSTANDING and we'll achieve it by letting a rich, designer baby pop-star lead us in an enlightened-dictatorship" Also Kira stole the show away from the cast half way through and became the Mary-Sue king Jesus Yamato and everyone that opposed him would either come over to his side or get killed by the end. Plus I think there was at least 3??? filler flashback episodes. The director of SEED series and his wife could also qualify as minor-lolcows as they literally based Kira and Lacus off themselves (further confirming the Mary Sue shit), his wife apparently had a role with SEED Destiny and there were rumors most of its budget went into advertising and sucking up to reviewers to make the show look more favorable. They also got pissed off when one of the SRW games modified the plot of Destiny in its game to make sense. Also there's supposedly been a SEED movie in development hell for over the last 10 years because of different reasons usually involving him or his wife supposedly having illnesses or something.

There's also the un-resolved plot point that coordinators go sterile after the third generation.
 
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King n Yellow said:
Ah, I thought you meant the SEED and 00 series as a whole. I agree that the first seasons of both series were decent. A lot of the original complaints of SEED's first season was the excessive use of same face and Kira never really developing right like other Gundam protags and staying kind of whiny kid through the whole series.

Destiny is panned because its message is "we can all achieve UNDERSTANDING and we'll achieve it by letting a rich, designer baby pop-star lead us in an enlightened-dictatorship" Also Kira stole the show away from the cast half way through and became the Mary-Sue king Jesus Yamato and everyone that opposed him would either come over to his side or get killed by the end. Plus I think there was at least 3??? filler flashback episodes. The director of SEED series and his wife could also qualify as minor-lolcows as they literally based Kira and Lacus off themselves (further confirming the Mary Sue shit), his wife apparently had a role with SEED Destiny and there were rumors most of its budget went into advertising and sucking up to reviewers to make the show look more favorable. They also got pissed off when one of the SRW games modified the plot of Destiny in its game to make sense. Also there's supposedly been a SEED movie in development hell for over the last 10 years because of different reasons usually involving him or his wife supposedly having illnesses or something.
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I'll fully agree that Destiny was hilariously mishandled. It's a real shame, as it had surprising amounts of potential. I watched Destiny just after SEED, which was my first show, and it was an immediate disappointment - reusing animation from the previous series in your first episode is not how you draw in your audience. However, I didn't entirely hate Destiny. Shinn was a good example of how to write a protagonist with a tragic backstory, which is something I feel a lot of Gundam shows didn't really get. I also like Kira quite a lot, and I've made fairly complex arguments for his characterization in the past. He feels like a character who was initially well-written and nuanced, but then became a victim of a narcissistic creator who was far too in love with his own vision to listen to any criticism.

Plus, one of the worst things about Destiny in undeniably the amount of recycled footage. It's just nauseatingly dreadful.
 
Jackass RN said:
Gundam SEED more like Gundam WEED. How else do they get those fucked up eyes.
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The character designer cannot draw faces. Just look at his designs in Fafner and Linebarrels of Iron, they look worse than SEED's. And that's saying something.

And from what I've heard about Destiny and its predicessor, the animators hated working on it with the time crunches and all. Hell, one animator outright refused to take part in it because of that.
 
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Jewelsmakerguy said:
The character designer cannot draw faces. Just look at his designs in Fafner and Linebarrels of Iron, they look worse than SEED's. And that's saying something.

And from what I've heard about Destiny and its predicessor, the animators hated working on it with the time crunches and all. Hell, one animator outright refused to take part in it because of that.
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The sad thing is that despite all that time crunching, SEED and SEED Destiny have the most frequent occurrences of stock footage in the franchise. They even have stock fight choreography. SEED is kind of understandable, since it was a pioneer of the visual style at the time, but by Destiny they should've had the experience and talent needed to pull things off much more reliably. Instead, they do it worse.
 
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Turn A's still got the gayest moustache V-fin ever.
 
On Gundam ZZ i gotta say it's very cool so far.Speaking of Macross i wanna get into it is their a good place to start?What are your guy's thoughts on Gurren Lagann or Big O because i use to love watching those shows as a kid.
 
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