Gundam SEED After Phase - !!!!SPOILERS!!!!

[MrBrown]

Originally Posted by brightman

No. Tomino and others have time and time again confirmed what is the idea behind the "Turn A Bang" theory.

Where? I've never read him saying that. The majority of gundam fans 'in-the-know' (that is, people who follow Japan's news&rumors on gundam and so on) don't seem to sign this theory either (not that I've taken polls or anything :P ).

Originally Posted by brightman

He's said that Turn A is meant to unite all of Gundam (that's the whole meaning of the Turn A symbol)

The big band theory aside, I always had the impression that Turn A meant that the meaning of the machine was turned upside down (from a machine of destruction to peace-keeping) while Turn X can't change.

[brightman]

Originally Posted by MrBrown

Where? I've never read him saying that. The majority of gundam fans 'in-the-know' (that is, people who follow Japan's news&rumors on gundam and so on) don't seem to sign this theory either (not that I've taken polls or anything :P ).

He is frequently quoted as saying such. For example in issue 1 of Newtype USA whch has an article featuring SEED. And it is mentioned what Turn A is meant to do there. Also in a recent interview with Fukuda he mentioned Tomino being upset about SEED because they made another AU right after he "united all of the AU's". That's all I can think of for now, but I happen to be one of the people who follows Japan's news & rumors on Gundam after all

The big band theory aside, I always had the impression that Turn A meant that the meaning of the machine was turned upside down (from a machine of destruction to peace-keeping) while Turn X can't change.

In logic notation, "∀" is the "universal qualifier"... So literally "∀ Gundam" means "For all Gundam". Therefore the meaning behind this is that it "unifies" Gundam. What you stated is the meaning behind "Turn X", since Turn A, E, F, G, J, L, M, etc would all have that same idea anyway.

[MrBrown]

Originally Posted by brightman

He is frequently quoted as saying such. For example in issue 1 of Newtype USA whch has an article featuring SEED. And it is mentioned what Turn A is meant to do there. Also in a recent interview with Fukuda he mentioned Tomino being upset about SEED because they made another AU right after he "united all of the AU's". That's all I can think of for now, but I happen to be one of the people who follows Japan's news & rumors on Gundam after all.

I think we need to make it clear what both of us mean by 'Big Bang Theory' at this point

The BBT I keep hearing about says that TAG means to actually combine all the timelines, meaning everything happened in the past of TAG. This is also the one I'm talking about.

I think it's quite obvious to anyone who's seen TAG that it tries to draw some kind of symbolism between the past Gundam series' as a whole, and itself. Like I said, my view of this was that Tomino makes them the "Black History" and TAG the new, 'brighter', Gundam; but it does not try to imply that all the settings/timelines are connected somehow.


As to actually answering your post...

You might be referring to an interview that can be found (a translation of it anyways) here:

Q: Any SEED production stories?
A: The plan was set in August. The plan went to Mr. Tomino in December. When I was working on SEED, the president told me, "Mr. Tomino won't be involved." The president told me to go greet him anyway so I visited him during the New Year's holiday. Tomino was enraged, "I made Turn A to unify Gundam!" He later said, "Don't trust Bandai" and recommended the book "Cure of Turn A".

I think Fukuda gives alot of interviews like this, so he might as well have said it in some other one.

If your a proponent of the BBT as I described it, then I'd say you're reading too much into it.

[brightman]

Originally Posted by MrBrown

If your a proponent of the BBT as I described it, then I'd say you're reading too much into it.

Excerpt from the Newtype article that I referred to:

"I'd like people to watch this with Gundam: Turn A in mind," said director Yoshiyuki Tomino to Fumikuni Furusawa, producer for the upcoming Mobile Suit Gundam SEED.

"With Turn A, director Tomino set forth the concept of collecting all the Gundam apocrypha into one single story," Furusawa went on to say. "That being the case, our story becomes one more part of that apocrypha. What we have to do is plant the 'seed' of our story in the context of that history and have it grow into an excellent piece of work that won't soon be forgotten."

From Newtype USA 1, page 11

The BBT I keep hearing about says that TAG means to actually combine all the timelines, meaning everything happened in the past of TAG. This is also the one I'm talking about.

That's the one I am talking about, and that should pretty much be what Tomino means by "unifying Gundam".

Anyway, check out this thread for what other "Gundam fans" have to say about this topic, since I think we're going OT here: http://www.gundamboard.com/forums/in...showtopic=1315

[MrBrown]

Originally Posted by brightman

Excerpt from the Newtype article that I referred to:

From Newtype USA 1, page 11

That's the one I am talking about, and that should pretty much be what Tomino means by "unifying Gundam".

Apocrypha, huh. Couldn't he have picked up a more confusing word.

Seems like all the official quotes are like that, using wacky terms but not saying what they mean in effect. I'd say I still stand by my earlier claim that if there's a unification, it's a thematical one, not a concrete one.

Originally Posted by brightman

Anyway, check out this thread for what other "Gundam fans" have to say about this topic, since I think we're going OT here: http://www.gundamboard.com/forums/in...showtopic=1315

(I knew Mark064's name would show up eventually... He's one of the big proponents of BBT I know and vocal about it.)

In any case, I think that thread pretty well shows what I dislike about the BBT... Using rumors and half-canon to try to fit all the timelines together, concretely.

[brightman]

Originally Posted by MrBrown

(I knew Mark064's name would show up eventually... He's one of the big proponents of BBT I know and vocal about it.)

In any case, I think that thread pretty well shows what I dislike about the BBT... Using rumors and half-canon to try to fit all the timelines together, concretely.

Yeah Mark064 happens to be a big fan of Turn A too, and he seems to know quite a bit about it. Of course, since Tomino left this wide open at the end of Turn A, I don't think you can blame people for using rumors and "half-canon". The same applies to the whole Newtype theory in UC after all. It was full of "half-canon" back in those days too.

But anyway, even Mark Simmons (if he's the one who wrote the descriptions) partially acknowledges the Bang theory on Gundamofficial (though it's dismissed as "confusing" I think). So there we go. And the Newtype article's just a translated version... I'm thinking that the original Japanese article would be a bit clearer, but since I've never seen it, I have no idea.

[MrBrown]

Originally Posted by brightman

Yeah Mark064 happens to be a big fan of Turn A too, and he seems to know quite a bit about it.

Yeah, but he doesn't know Japanese and I do, so me > Mark. :fingers:

Originally Posted by brightman

Of course, since Tomino left this wide open at the end of Turn A, I don't think you can blame people for using rumors and "half-canon". The same applies to the whole Newtype theory in UC after all. It was full of "half-canon" back in those days too.

True. There was a couple of straight mentions about newtypes here and there (as in something like "newtypes are blah blah"), but nothing conclusive, IIRC.

Anyways, my point was that the BBT is mostly fan made (ok, so I did say 'completely' :> ). If the director leaves something open in the series, it generally means there's no point in trying to analyze it further...

[dreamless]

I don't think the BBT is fan-made, Tomino himself half-admitted it in the interview mentioned above, and the Black History records shown in the series itself has various scenes from the previous Gundam series. And "Black History" is not just a "thematical" history for TAG, in the anime the Black History record is the record of the real past history of the TAG universe.

[Panon]

Originally Posted by dreamless

I don't think the BBT is fan-made, Tomino himself half-admitted it in the interview mentioned above, and the Black History records shown in the series itself has various scenes from the previous Gundam series. And "Black History" is not just a "thematical" history for TAG, in the anime the Black History record is the record of the real past history of the TAG universe.

Turn-A unifying the series and having other series events as historical fact in it's past is not in dispute. It's something that is not defined and is meant to be taken at face value.

The Turn-A Bang Theory, where people overanalyse and try to invent some kind of timeline and order in which the series supposedly occur is completely fanmade and misses the point totally.

[brightman]

Originally Posted by Panon

The Turn-A Bang Theory, where people overanalyse and try to invent some kind of timeline and order in which the series supposedly occur is completely fanmade and misses the point totally.

Yup exactly. I am definitely NOT a proponent of trying to find some kind of timeline to fit all the Gundams in (IMO that would take away from each timeline if they are set in stone like that). The fact that the different universes are united is all that I am really concerned about.

BTW how did a topic about the SEED OVA evolved into a topic about the Turn A Bang theory?