Originally Posted by Demongod86
You say it's about execution, WD, which is where I'll bite...however:
Yes, Kira was basically untouchable. And what the hell were the Meisters when they had the element of surprise? They completely cleaned house and you know it. In fact, it wasn't until they got completely WTFOHNOES outnumbered that they really more or less came to the gates of heaven...but what about that space battle? Once again, Tieria surprised with Nadleeh, and then Hallelujah surprised by waking up Kyrios. In fact, so far, the gundams, dare I say it, are EVERY FUCKING BIT AS UBER as anything before the Freedom or the Wing Zero was. In fact, IT'S THE MEISTERS THAT SUCK. If it was Heero and Kira and Amuro and hell, let's even say SHINN for shits and giggles in those Gundams, they'd be dodging those 800 and weaving to a quick retreat and leaving those 800 looking like idiots.
The fact is that this "presentation" is simply a result of the current Gundam pilots possibly being the absolute worst in franchise history, when you can have Ali Al Sarges hop into the Zwei and then GGPWN Johann, who was acquainted with Eins for who knows how long, when Ali only saw Zwei for several minutes!
Your presentation isn't the grunts being necessarily good, WD. It's the gundam meisters that suck horribly, and we've been having that shoved down our throats since moment 1--that all the time, they were winning because of two SIGNIFICANT factors:
1) Surprise
2) Technology
Now that the powers have GN-Xs and are hunting down both Thrones and the original Meisters, they're lucky to survive from episode to episode not because their opponents are necessarily THAT GREAT--but because THEY ARE BAD. If you recall, Heero Yuy in Wing was an ace to end all aces except Zechs, since Zechs had more or less a VERY similar background.
Similarly, in SEED, Athrun was the TOP ace of ALL of ZAFT. He was number one in just about EVERYTHING (I think except gunning when he had the flu and came in 2nd to Yzak), while Kira was so smart that he knew MSes inside and out. Kira may not have originally been the greatest PILOT when the show set out, but A) he taught himself by sitting in the Strike's cockpit 24/7 when he realized only he could pilot it, and B) he was so fucking smart that he could figure out Strike, AND Freedom (and I assume SF is more of the same) in seconds.
So let's see:
In GSD, Kira had:
1) Surprise
2) Tech
3) SKILL
4) A specially custom-designed Gundam
5) Lacus Dust
To say that OMG MEISTERS VULNERABLE KIRA WAS GOD GSD SO STUPID is being a hypocrite in judgment! Yes, I'll give you this: the reused animation made me SICK. It was a travesty, plain and simple. But aside from the horrid animation, if you're going to judge Goddess and God on the same line you're going to judge the meisters, then I expect nothing LESS than complete dismemberment of any and all enemies. Kira has far more skill, far more brains, and far superior technology than the meisters do, with the same amount of surprise until he was called out in SF (at which point he had an ARMY behind him).
And you can't really call out Kira for not getting touched...Strike got thrashed around quite a bit when he piloted it, Freedom got nearly decimated by the Providence and then of course, we all remember the travesty that was GSD 34. And speaking of which, why do people say "OMFG EVERYONE ELSE SUCKS THAT'S WHY KIRA WINS" when Athrun specifically asked him "Why did you get shot down?" and Kira answered "Oh, I wasn't trying". People cheered that and when Kira DID try "OMFG THE CREATOR IS A KIRA FANBOY HE MADE KIRA GOD WAAH WAAH".
Just as G00 is trying to hammer into us that the Meisters are completely outclassed in piloting by the nations' best (Soma, Sergei, Graham, Ali), then I don't think GSD could have done any more to hammer it into us that Kira A) resigned himself that he's Lacus's sword and B) since accepting that, decided to become the best damn pilot in the world.
In the end though, it doesn't matter. No amount of "THIS PILOT IS GOD INCARNATE" pounding would ever convince people that the protagonist is untouchable, simply because no matter how good the protagonist is, people want him to take hits anyway, no matter how ridiculous it seems, which is why GSD 34 was such a cop-out to me...and hell, it was a cop-out to the director himself which was why Kira said "I'm not trying" and then when everyone said "BS, you were trying", he went and OWNED Shinn at Orb, and then Gruntified Rey in space.
And furthermore, if you're Patrick Zala, and you want to END THE WAR NOW, you have the enemies' most advanced technology, are you going to just one-up them with Strike Mk.II? No. You're going to build the most powerful Gundams you possibly can. Hence Freedom and Justice and Providence. And then, if you're LACUS CLYNE, and you KNOW these pilots PERSONALLY, KNOW how they function and care for them, are you going to make suits that are just slightly better than the rest for fun and fingernail-biting edge-of-your-seat battles, or are you going to make the best most powerful godlike gundams you can?
Time and again, there has been justification for a pilot being damn good. Time and again, there has been justification for an MS so powerful existing (and inevitably finding its way into the hands of that ace of aces) that it can decimate entire fleets alone. Hello...the Wing Gundam Zero was SO powerful that it was deemed to be TOO POWERFUL TO BE BUILT.
The bottom line is that there was always justification for protagonists being next to godlike, which is why on a good day, only their rival themselves can lay a hand on them (okay, fine, there's also giant inanimate rocks just to deal with your pesky jedi newtypes without cannons of doom). There have always been justifications for doomsday weapons built into sparkly gundams (okay, though I don't know why all of the doomsday gundams have to be built in these gleaming blues and whites).
Of course, NONE of that matters to people that say OMG G00 IS GREAT. All that matters is that the protagonist is VULNERABLE, which makes absolutely no sense in terms of the universe. Shit, for a real life example, just look at the F-22. That thing has every single bell and whistle built into it that'll simply be mind-boggling if one ever gets shot down when F-15s and F-16s suffered more DOMESTIC TRAINING CRASHES than they've EVER been shot down (in fact, neither F-15 nor F-16 have ever lost an air-to-air engagement if I'm correct).
Frankly, I buy into "only a gundam can beat a gundam", since gundams are AT HEART designed to be like F-22s--with every single feature known built into them to make them the ultimate fighting machines. If a gundam can get gruntsmacked, then it fails as a gundam. Why put in all of those resources to build this sparkly "soopa-robot", when for a fraction of the resources, you can have three "real robos" that pwn this shiny soopa robot?
And as for vulnerable meisters, yeah, they are...but not because the grunts are any better. I can basically assure you that for all of their fancy formations, the Wing Zero's WTFENORMOUS BEAM BLAST OF DOOM would wipe them out every bit as nicely, as would Kira's "spam every single direction you can possibly move while spamming your general direction" freedom fireworks. The meisters suck. The meisters suck. I do not know how long I have to reiterate this.
If you call trashy piloting "good presentation", then I say it's far more a cop-out than good piloting.
|