Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway's Flash Anime - News & Discussion

[Tactics]

Mind that mental torture / abuse can only be properly done after profiling.

I think Rambo: First Blood (1982) is good example for movies that noted this application. The policemen first try to looking for who Rambo is, if he have any friends, families & relatives as they planned to intimidate him through them to assert dominance. When they can only learned he's war veteran, what he got is physical torture; expecting his attitude will quickly fall, giving up due to PTSD.

Another movie also by Stallone IIRC, where he's framed and mentally tortured. The whole process of mental torture took 1 month.

There's also this movie I forgot the title, its about investigation to terrorist. In this movie, the deuteragonist (an investigator) higher-ups pressured him for quick result so the deuteragonist made call to kill the terrorist family (the family not even know one of their family member is terrorist) as he only able to learn the terrorist is someone who loved his family based on how the terrorist put temporary works with high payment exclusively to his poor relatives. One by one, after the terrorist's brother shown 'splattered' on screen, the terrorist cried and begging for physical torture but the investigator told him its his own fault involving his family on first place that physical torture now can only be done once the military run out of "practice target".

While all of it are fictional example, conclusion pretty much what Kenneth did is not fall into "unbelievable because debunked".
Without going to meta reason like "movie duration", gotta think how long it took if he resort to mental torture. One of reason Kenneth promoted to take lead is because of his aptitude; a building destroyed, casualties significant enough, the military put him there as solution to the whole issue not to enjoy Saturday night in a bar with Gigi.

[Tactics]

Char Counterattack is currently airing on official Gundam YouTube channel.

Either they planned this before or they notice on how more experienced audience will always suggested to watch CC to understand Hathaway better.

Nice move anyway.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Tactics

Char Counterattack is currently airing on official Gundam YouTube channel.

Either they planned this before or they notice on how more experienced audience will always suggested to watch CC to understand Hathaway better.

Nice move anyway.

Not sure if it will do much. I mean, people are watching HF via Netflix, and Netflix itself already have CCA anyway. It's just a couple of clicks away from HF

Also, is it just me, or suggesting newcomers to watch CCA first before HF will only confuse them? Heck, plenty of UC fans were confused when they watched CCA for the first time since the beginning of the movie felt like a second-act already .

Obviously, both HF & CCA are not the ideal starting point for following UC timeline. But if I have to choose between the two, I'd recommend newcomers to directly jump into HF. It's a lot easier to follow.

[Tactics]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

Not sure if it will do much. I mean, people are watching HF via Netflix, and Netflix itself already have CCA anyway. It's just a couple of clicks away from HF

Also, is it just me, or suggesting newcomers to watch CCA first before HF will only confuse them? Heck, plenty of UC fans were confused when they watched CCA for the first time since the beginning of the movie felt like a second-act already .

Obviously, both HF & CCA are not the ideal starting point for following UC timeline. But if I have to choose between the two, I'd recommend newcomers to directly jump into HF. It's a lot easier to follow.

I'm not saying "Should watch CCA first before Hathaway" though but "Watch CCA to understand Hathaway better".

From live chat at premiere itself one can guess the audience ratio roughly 50:50.
Half already knew about UC beforehand, half come from either Hathaway or Unicorn, so its good enough to met balance where some audience willing to explain events before CCA.

Live chat, despite mostly Korean audience, is a blast with memes like lolicon Char or Hathaway and Gyunei treated as example of bad simp (LOL), especially Hathaway after he killed Chen (which shocked several people coming from Hathaway Flash and Unicorn).

Watching CCA again after Hathaway Flash made me wanted to praise HF again as its precision made CCA looks like a prequel movie you never knew you wanted.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Tactics

I'm not saying "Should watch CCA first before Hathaway" though but "Watch CCA to understand Hathaway better".

I'm not necessarily talking about you but there are plenty of UC fans & even reviewers out there suggesting to newcomers to watch CCA on Netflix first before watching HF. I personally think it's a mistake and a real bad idea. I imagine plenty of newcomers will either 1) be put off by CCA due to its so-fast-pace story & wall-to-wall action and decided not to watch HF thinking they'll get more of the same or, 2) being excited after watching CCA's wall-to-wall action only to be disappointed by HF's lack of action quantity.

Either of those result can't be good for newcomers. Of course, there is a 3rd possibility that newcomers will just enjoy both CCA & HF and eat them all up but I think only those with very-open-mind will react that way.

Originally Posted by Tactics

Live chat, despite mostly Korean audience, is a blast with memes like lolicon Char or Hathaway and Gyunei treated as example of bad simp (LOL), especially Hathaway after he killed Chen (which shocked several people coming from Hathaway Flash and Unicorn).

Yeah, Hathaway killing Chan was the absolute libido-driven dick move. Although, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the T-shaped Psychoframe & her death helped Chan to ascend to Newtype-relm helping Amuro pushing back Axis. Also, for all we know, Chan's T-frame is still flying in space looking over humanity, just like the Phenex .

Originally Posted by Tactics

Watching CCA again after Hathaway Flash made me wanted to praise HF again as its precision made CCA looks like a prequel movie you never knew you wanted.

HF movie (at least this first one) is a the result of a dynamite duo of Yasuyuki Muto (Unicorn OVAs writer & Re:Rise savior) & Shouko Murase (Ergo Proxy, Argento Soma, Genocidal Organ, etc). So I knew they'd do a good job adapting the (first) novel. They even trim some unnecessary fluff like the tired (pun intended) car chase in the novel.

[LG-MAX 2.o]

Lol

The movie's BD has sold almost 100,000 (or more, since the last update is more than 1 month old.), in movie theaters, but it has now come out on amazon and is already the most wanted.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B09...EHMWQD0T1K8DVP

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

It's curious that Netflix keeps adding some extra materials for Hathaway in the last few days:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/HZj6PTVtdAs

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YouTube

https://youtu.be/8YN9SbAZhek

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YouTube

https://youtu.be/LUlHSwivLdw

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[Tactics]

Yeah, Netflix going all out with Hathaway is ... interesting.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/1PcdwYyrwhg

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[Ragashingo]

Finally got around to remembering to watch this. I'm not a big Gundam fan. I don't dislike Gundam. It just means... I just haven't seen a lot of Gundam. I'm super ok with giant robots and space politics and all that stuff. Just never really turned my attention to Gundam for whatever reason beyond somehow watching all of Gundam Wing back in the day. So I come to this movie with a fairly thin knowledge of Gundam's mainline history.

On one hand, I was fairly pleased. For a few reasons:

• The tone of the movie was great. The way it did a sort of intrigue-based almost spy thriller kind of thing was really interesting.
• The combat was very pretty, and the way they showcased it, especially the first big combat scene above / around the city, was really good. I really enjoyed the feeling of the mobile suits as giant flying tanks. I like the verticality and ability to hide among the trees they demonstrated. I also liked the sorta "less is more" approach they took where you often saw explosions in the distance or only got a glimpse of a beam saber being activated, or only got a close up or ground level shot of two mobile suits in combat.
• I like how they showed how the destruction a fracas between multiple giant flying tanks would impact the people on the ground. Spent magazines dropping out of the sky like busses. Bullets and energy beams missing and destroying buildings. Deflected shots dropping molten slag onto the environment and starting large fires. This movie maybe did the best I've ever seen at that kind of ground level depiction of destruction.
• I found all three main characters interesting in their own ways.

That said, overall, I was not impressed by the movie.

• Maybe the core reason I ended up not liking the movie was... despite its neat mistrusting spy-movie feel, I never understood why anyone suspected Hathaway of being Mafty. That he fought well on the plane could apply to a huge number of mobile suit pilots. And, yes, I get that Gigi probably had some extrasensory Newtype powers so it was much more than a random guess for her... but still...
• And that leads into my not understanding why Hathaway acted so stupidly throughout the movie. As far as anyone in charge knew, he was just a noteworthy oddity of a one time mobile suit pilot who was in the right place to foil a kidnapping. He would have been asked a few questions about the incident on the plane and been free to go on his way in a few days. So... why did he agree to stay in Gigi's hotel suite instead of the one provided for him? Why did he arrange for the attack on the hotel and then not slip out during the chaos when he had multiple chances?
• The only thing I might have maybe missed is... were the hotels targeted as a diversion to let Hathaway get away... or were all the leaders from the plane staying at those hotels? If that was more an assassination plot than a rescue Hathaway plot then maybe all the destruction was somewhat justified from a rebel's point of view. But if not, then the whole attack on the city made no sense.
• Beyond that... as pretty as the mobile suit battles were, they also felt... uninteresting. In the attack on the city... very few mobile suits were destroyed, I'm thinking one Mafty pilot was shot down and the other was captured. And there wasn't much of a... battle. Very little combat strategy or clever maneuvers, or special tricks to outwit the opponents... by either side. So, the whole city battle felt like a big, visually impressive, load of nothing.
• The battle between the two Gundams felt even worse. Like much, much worse. They traded some long range beam blasts. They exchanged a few missiles. Basically neither party got hit until the very end. And we barely knew anything about the Penelope's pilot, so I hardly cared about him.
• Even worser, the end of the battle between the Gundams was confusing! Hathaway told his crew that he got the drop on the Penelope by letting go of his beam rifle while firing it so the recoil shot it in a different direction as a distraction. I watched that scene a couple of times and... I don't believe that was actually shown! Sounds like a neat tactic... would have been neater if they'd animated it...
• The story from Lane Aim was even more bewildering... He fired a beam at what looked to be the enemy and saw what he thought was his target hit the water. If that was just Hathaway's beam rifle, that's cool... except then Hathaway was beside the Penelope and let loose a ton of missiles which Lane Aim countered with point defense machine-gun fire which was overwhelmed. His Gundam took a few missiles and crashed into the water. So far so good... except he escaped his cockpit and looked around for Hathaway's Gundam saying he was sure he got in a fatal hit. The hell was he thinking?! Did he not see the Hathaway's Gundam spit a good twenty or thirty missiles at him?! He never fired more than his close range guns at the missiles. When, exactly, did he think he got a fatal hit in?? Wasn't it obvious that Hathaway's Gundam hadn't crashed... because it was flying right there beside him shooting him with missiles??
• I didn't like the role Gigi played in the story. I kept waiting for her to be more interesting. To be something more than a beautiful woman hanging around for no apparent reason. Hathaway kinda wondered if she was a spy. I wish she had been! Or been someone on his side. Or been someone with power and influence who could be convinced to back one side or the other. Instead... all she ever was confirmed to be was a mistress to some old minister or something. Felt like a big waste of an alluring character. That she sorta flip-flopped between extremely insightful and extremely ditzy was annoying, as well.

Just, all in all, I thought there was a lot of good ideas and good scenes in isolation here, but also a whole lot of wasted opportunity to tell an actually good story or have actually compelling characters or show actually interesting battles. If I had to choose, I'd take Macross Zero over this in terms of story, character motivations, and combat. Heck, I'd take Aldnoah.Zero, and its notable flaws, over this. I didn't hate this movie... but it also didn't leave me with much more than a shrug...

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

That said, overall, I was not impressed by the movie.
Maybe the core reason I ended up not liking the movie was... despite its neat mistrusting spy-movie feel, I never understood why anyone suspected Hathaway of being Mafty. That he fought well on the plane could apply to a huge number of mobile suit pilots. And, yes, I get that Gigi probably had some extrasensory Newtype powers so it was much more than a random guess for her... but still...

Kenneth is a sharp & smart dude. But he never really suspected Hathaway before they took out Gawman coz there was no reason to really suspect him. But when Gawman was captured, Kenneth noticed a strange gesture from Hathaway. He deliberately look away when he saw Gawman being escorted out of his Messer and being arrested. That gesture is telling that Hathaway doesn't want to be associated with him. It's pretty subtle actually. And then when Kenneth interrogated Gawman, he noticed a reaction when Hathway's name was mentioned. After that, when Gigi mentioned that Hathaway was avoiding her, the lightbulb on Kenneth's head went off and then he straight up asked Gigi what she sensed from Hathaway and looks like she told Kenneth about Hathaway off-screen. The rest is history. Paired with all the evidence that Hathaway went aboard a suspiciously-private boat despite telling the authority that he will travel by ferry, now Kenneth realized that Hathaway is at least a member of Mafty if not Mafty himself.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

And that leads into my not understanding why Hathaway acted so stupidly throughout the movie. As far as anyone in charge knew, he was just a noteworthy oddity of a one time mobile suit pilot who was in the right place to foil a kidnapping. He would have been asked a few questions about the incident on the plane and been free to go on his way in a few days. So... why did he agree to stay in Gigi's hotel suite instead of the one provided for him?

That's rather easy to explain. Now that Gigi knows who he is, Hathaway wants to stay close to Gigi during the questioning period to make sure that she's not a Fed spy.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

Why did he arrange for the attack on the hotel and then not slip out during the chaos when he had multiple chances?

Have you seen Char's Counterattack movie? Hathaway has this deep trauma of losing a girl that he loved named Quess who ran away from him and went with Char's side. And then she died protecting Hathaway in the climactic battle in CCA. And in this movie, Hathaway saw a lot of Quess in Gigi after their interactions. So, it triggered his instinct to protect Gigi from harm during the hotel raid, but he also didn't want to get Gigi involved with Mafty coz that means the Fed will go after her and ruin her life. That's why Hathaway avoided Emeralda's extraction team during the chaos. You can say that his feelings for Gigi was Hathaway's Achilles heel until later in the movie when he finally cut ties with Gigi and everything that happened in Davao.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

The only thing I might have maybe missed is... were the hotels targeted as a diversion to let Hathaway get away... or were all the leaders from the plane staying at those hotels? If that was more an assassination plot than a rescue Hathaway plot then maybe all the destruction was somewhat justified from a rebel's point of view. But if not, then the whole attack on the city made no sense.

Assassinating the corrupt Fed ministers were always the priority. Rescuing Hathaway was also important but it was a step below the assassination mission.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

Beyond that... as pretty as the mobile suit battles were, they also felt... uninteresting. In the attack on the city... very few mobile suits were destroyed, I'm thinking one Mafty pilot was shot down and the other was captured. And there wasn't much of a... battle. Very little combat strategy or clever maneuvers, or special tricks to outwit the opponents... by either side. So, the whole city battle felt like a big, visually impressive, load of nothing.

This HF1 movie is like the 8th major entry in the UC timeline and not counting the many side-stories that it has. At this point, the previous UC entries have done all of the things that you wanted above multiple times. So, this HF1 movie intentionally went the other way by not focusing too much on the MS battles. To keep things fresh, it focuses more on the impact that MS battles have on the surroundings during the hotel raid because the MC that we're following is Hathaway who was runing around on the ground, not Gawman who was piloting the Messer.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

The battle between the two Gundams felt even worse. Like much, much worse. They traded some long range beam blasts. They exchanged a few missiles. Basically neither party got hit until the very end. And we barely knew anything about the Penelope's pilot, so I hardly cared about him.

This is only an appetizer battle between Xi & Penelope. There will be more in next movies. You really don't need to know more about Lane aside from his humongous pride, arrogance & immaturity at this point. After all, the real antagonist of the movie is Kenneth. Lane is more like his henchmen.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

Even worser, the end of the battle between the Gundams was confusing! Hathaway told his crew that he got the drop on the Penelope by letting go of his beam rifle while firing it so the recoil shot it in a different direction as a distraction. I watched that scene a couple of times and... I don't believe that was actually shown! Sounds like a neat tactic... would have been neater if they'd animated it...

At 01:35:28 mark in the movie after Lane said "He's fast!" you can see a light blasting away to the right direction which Penelope then shot down and it exploded. That was the beam rifle distraction that Hathaway talked about. When Penelope closed in to inspect the debris, Xi came & attacked from the side.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

The story from Lane Aim was even more bewildering... He fired a beam at what looked to be the enemy and saw what he thought was his target hit the water. If that was just Hathaway's beam rifle, that's cool... except then Hathaway was beside the Penelope and let loose a ton of missiles which Lane Aim countered with point defense machine-gun fire which was overwhelmed. His Gundam took a few missiles and crashed into the water. So far so good... except he escaped his cockpit and looked around for Hathaway's Gundam saying he was sure he got in a fatal hit. The hell was he thinking?! Did he not see the Hathaway's Gundam spit a good twenty or thirty missiles at him?! He never fired more than his close range guns at the missiles. When, exactly, did he think he got a fatal hit in?? Wasn't it obvious that Hathaway's Gundam hadn't crashed... because it was flying right there beside him shooting him with missiles??

That's just Lane being arrogant and in denial. After all, there is a reason why Kenneth wanted to assign the Penelope to Hathaway instead of Lane early in the movie. Kenneth can read the gap in skills & experience.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

I didn't like the role Gigi played in the story. I kept waiting for her to be more interesting. To be something more than a beautiful woman hanging around for no apparent reason. Hathaway kinda wondered if she was a spy. I wish she had been! Or been someone on his side. Or been someone with power and influence who could be convinced to back one side or the other. Instead... all she ever was confirmed to be was a mistress to some old minister or something. Felt like a big waste of an alluring character. That she sorta flip-flopped between extremely insightful and extremely ditzy was annoying, as well.

Well, this is something that we'll have to follow together in this trilogy. Also, Gigi didn't hang around for no apparent reason. She was confined in Davao for questioning after the hijacking, remember? She originally wanted to go to Hong Kong. You can see that she finally left at the end of this movie after all the bereucracy is done.

Originally Posted by Ragashingo

Just, all in all, I thought there was a lot of good ideas and good scenes in isolation here, but also a whole lot of wasted opportunity to tell an actually good story or have actually compelling characters or show actually interesting battles. If I had to choose, I'd take Macross Zero over this in terms of story, character motivations, and combat. Heck, I'd take Aldnoah.Zero, and its notable flaws, over this. I didn't hate this movie... but it also didn't leave me with much more than a shrug...

I think this movie did great for a first part in a three-parter story. Enough plot to stand on its own, but also a lot of setup for next chapters in the story.

[Twi]

I don't know. I know the Federation are corrupt, but Hathway shot a hotel to kill a couple of guys. Yeah, the guy stating that he hopes those who are about to die could forgive them but still I really found it hard to not really fault them for using him as a meat shield...

Not that I approve of them shooting down on their city, and the fight in itself was terrifying from a civilian point of view.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Twi

I don't know. I know the Federation are corrupt, but Hathway shot a hotel to kill a couple of guys. Yeah, the guy stating that he hopes those who are about to die could forgive them but still I really found it hard to not really fault them for using him as a meat shield...

Not that I approve of them shooting down on their city, and the fight in itself was terrifying from a civilian point of view.

I & others already had a discusion on that in the previous page. You can go back and read it. No hassle.

Also, the hotel that mafty shot housed much more than "a couple of ministers".

[wissenschaft]

Originally Posted by Twi

I don't know. I know the Federation are corrupt, but Hathway shot a hotel to kill a couple of guys. Yeah, the guy stating that he hopes those who are about to die could forgive them but still I really found it hard to not really fault them for using him as a meat shield...

Not that I approve of them shooting down on their city, and the fight in itself was terrifying from a civilian point of view.

Honestly, Hathway is hardly a hero here. Such methods for removing corruption are extreme and brutal and civilians are going to get killed in the process. But thats UC Gundam for you, both sides of a conflict are shown to have their own dark sides.

[wissenschaft]

Originally Posted by Tactics

I'm not saying "Should watch CCA first before Hathaway" though but "Watch CCA to understand Hathaway better".

From live chat at premiere itself one can guess the audience ratio roughly 50:50.
Half already knew about UC beforehand, half come from either Hathaway or Unicorn, so its good enough to met balance where some audience willing to explain events before CCA.

Live chat, despite mostly Korean audience, is a blast with memes like lolicon Char or Hathaway and Gyunei treated as example of bad simp (LOL), especially Hathaway after he killed Chen (which shocked several people coming from Hathaway Flash and Unicorn).

Watching CCA again after Hathaway Flash made me wanted to praise HF again as its precision made CCA looks like a prequel movie you never knew you wanted.

I think its important to know that Hataway's flash novels are based on the novel "Beltorchika's Children" which is a novel version of Char's Counterattack with some very key differences. In the novel, during the battle between Amuro and Quess, Hataway fires at her α Azieru presumably to disable it to get her out of the fight. Unfortunately, his shot punches right through her cockpit. Needless to say, Hathaway is traumatized by the fact HE KILLED the girl he loved. The fact that he killed an enemy mobile suit, especially one as big a threat as the α Azieru is why Hathaway is acquitted of charges. This is why we see glimpse of Amuro vs Quess Side in the movie. Note: Chen is replaced with Beltorchika - the spy girl that had a thing for Amuro in Zeta Gundam. Hathaway doesn't encounter Beltorchika in battle. The story just makes more sense within the novels than trying to make HF canon to UC gundam. That said, I am still happy its canon.

As for why Hathaway is using such extreme terrorist methods now, that requires some info that is shown in the movie but not gone into detail.

Spoiler:

In the novel it is explained that its the earth federation’s policy of forcefully moving the Earth population into space (for what basically amounts to forced labor) while leaving the elites and those of high social standing to remain on Earth. As a result, many people try to sneak on to Earth to escape the oppression in the colonies. This led to the earth federation unofficially forming a task force known colloquially as ‘Man Hunters/Hunters’ that would hunt "illegal immigrants" (the victims actual status often being irrelevant) and send them back to space. Which in turn led to anti earth sentiment causing Mafty’s rise to prominence, with the goal of eliminating the very government officials that were responsible for the Hunters. The big Fed meeting that Mafty is trying to stop is where the Fed ministers will enact legislation making the Manhunters a legal official force and enabling them to declare anyone on earth an illegal immigrant (even if they were born on Earth) and forcefully deport them to space for what amounts to indentured servitude.

I hope that gives better context to movie and why Hataway feels the need for such extreme terrorist tactics. I still wouldn't call him a hero or even an anti-Hero. Hes more of an anti-villain at best but hopefully his actions make more sense now. Also, I hope its clear now that the Earth Federation in this movie is A LOT more corrupt and cruel than we've seen before in UC. The Fed by this point has become a lot more oppressive even to those living on Earth.

P.S. I should clarify why Mafty wants humans off the Earth. After the One Year war and all the colony drops on Earth in the UC timeline (I believe 4 in total that were successful), the Earth has been heavily environmentally damage. Despite this the Federation is continuing to heavily pollute the Earth making the planet's recovery unlikely. Its possible in time that the Federation exploitation and abuse of the Earth will render it uninhabitable. Keep in mind that how much damage has been done. Among the vast damage, Australia was devasted and the bread basket midwest of Amercia wiped out all by Colony Drops.

[tsunade666]

I finally got the watched the movie. breathtaking visuals. loved it but a bit bulky gundam. that's my take on the designs. smart and suave fed commander and a terrorist mc. he has doubts and he wavers at first but he pushes through. with no way out of the current government, force is needed. the heroine of the story is crazy. she remind me of that crazy girl in gundam wing the long blond hair and design gives me that feel. though she's a bit innocent too when the fighting starts, unlike that girl in gundam wing which is really crazy.

loved the movie and recommend it.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

This is one of the best-edited Gundam reviews out there:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/-dpvLGiCHJs

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It also helps that the reviewer actually understand the UC anime well to point things that some viewers might miss.

[Ghostfriendly]

According to Tomino, Gundam is still very relevant because 'the real world hasn't progressed and may even have regressed'. I can well believe this, watching a film that glorifies neo-fascist terrorists in the ignoble tradition of Battle Royale II and the May 15th incident (Do remember everyone, Char Ansible was a fascist lolicon). Where the 22nd century heroine is a prostitute and sexualised trophy rather than a head of state, with vomit-worthy feminine intuition, while the action centres on a miserable chauvinist and a plank in a blazer. Even the female pilot is presented as a fragile, sobbing ninny. The Gundam wiki explicitly says she's not skilled enough to be a regular pilot; this is simply unacceptable.

Sympathetic prostitute/mistress characters need a good reason for their job, usually the historical period, which Gigi absolutely lacks. They absolutely need to be physically brave and tough; Helena from Eden or Luca from Berserk would have stood up to a Gundam on foot rather better than Hathaway, or his abusive, foolish father. Code Geass understood that sympathetic terrorists, real or fictional, must strictly confine themselves to liberating their homeland from recent invasion by an absolute tyranny. Schnitzel's aide even reminded him at the end that fighting for power rather than a people is 'only terrorism'. However corrupt the Earth government is, assassination is not a means of political change, unless reactionary. Certainly not by a group with a supervillain-worthy political program revering the memory of Char, whose clear presentation as a fascist was one of the better things about Gundam. One of the worst is the abiding Japanese idea that any motive is noble if sincerely believed in; a sick joke that is certainly no longer funny in the age of Trump. No one who wasn't absolutely desperate, deficient or immoral would actually support Mafty, and this film absolutely fails in its duty to remind the public of that.

Of course, this is all from a novel written in the 1990s. Of course, it is still profitable for filmmakers to regurgitate chauvinist rubbish from the 1990s, if they're not making new series like IBO and 86 which are just as bad, because some people haven't changed.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Ghostfriendly

No one who wasn't absolutely desperate, deficient or immoral would actually support Mafty, and this film absolutely fails in its duty to remind the public of that.

And there's a lot of people within that category in UC timeline. Desperate people, poor people & various shades of grey morality everywhere. So by your own standard, the movie did a good job.

Also yes, things like Trump government etc proved Tomino that the world may even have regressed. Making the corruptly powerful (yet incompetent in certain parts) EF government looks even more horribly realistic than when the novel was written.

The novel was actually written from 1989 to 1990.

[Ghostfriendly]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

And there's a lot of people within that category in UC timeline. Desperate people, poor people & various shades of grey morality everywhere. So by your own standard, the movie did a good job.

The novel was actually written from 1989 to 1990.

I know, we've all read the wiki article. I'm being approximate, and you're ignoring the serious issues I posted about; the gender roles in this film are as toxic as its politics, and tedious as its characters.

Political assassination and terrorist bombings are not grey morality, which is a contradiction in terms; there certainly isn't as much of it as people prepared to romanticise terrorism think, in a franchise about fighting space Nazis. Hathaway's puerile ideas are presented seriously, and his supporters are presented as reasonable, thoughtful persons who never leave a man behind and (hypocritically) pray for their victims' rest before they blow them up - when these are people whose cause and methods are as morally bankrupt as Al-Qaeda's. Plenty of poor and desperate people in the real world think of Al-Qaeda as the good guys, sticking it to those horribly rich and corrupt Westerners; that does not justify Al-Qaeda's existence. The film fails because it fails to absolutely condemn this kind of terrorism, give any voice to victims of terrorism, or show the support of such terrorism for any reason as insupportable. I explicitly said in my last post that the problem was not that the Maftists were supported, but that their support and supporters aren't condemned as blinded by poverty and insensibility into following an evil cause, or as evil followers of an evil cause.

Although the Earth government are deporting persons to the colonies, that isn't worth mentioning next to Carol and Tuesday's anti-Trump satire. You'll remember that it's Trump supporters who are violently threatening the 'corrupt Washington elite' in the same way as the Maftists, with as much morality. By even suggesting that assassination is a justifiable response to political corruption, the film condemns itself. This is not a debatable case where media can present an open question, but where it has a social responsibility not to romanticise terrorists or repeat their lies.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Ghostfriendly

I know, we've all read the wiki article. I'm being approximate, and you're ignoring the serious issues I posted about; the gender roles in this film are as toxic as its politics.

Political assassination and terrorist bombings are not grey morality; a franchise about fighting space Nazis doesn't actually have a lot of grey morality. Hathaway's puerile ideas are presented seriously, and his supporters are presented as reasonable, thoughtful persons who never leave a man behind and (hypocritically) pray for their victims' rest before they blow them up - when these are people whose cause and methods are as morally bankrupt as Al-Qaeda's. Plenty of poor and desperate people in the real world think of Al-Qaeda as the good guys, sticking it to those horribly rich and corrupt Westerners; that does not justify Al-Qaeda's existence. The film fails because it fails to absolutely condemn this kind of terrorism, give any voice to victims of terrorism, or show the support of such terrorism for any reason as insupportable. I explicitly said in my last post that the problem was not that the Maftist's were supported, but that their support and supporters aren't condemned as blinded by poverty or insensibility into following an evil cause, or evil followers of an evil cause.

Although the Earth government are deporting persons to the colonies, that isn't worth mentioning next to Carol and Tuesday's anti-Trump satire. You'll remember that it's Trump supporters who are violently threatening the 'corrupt Washington elite' in the same way as the Maftists, with as much morality. By even suggesting that assassination is a justifiable response to political corruption, the film condemns itself. This is not a debatable case where media can present an open question, but where it has a social responsibility not to romanticise terrorists or repeat their lies.

The movie portrayed one socialite who has a sugar-daddy and one pilot who panicked during one moment and you cry "toxic gender roles"?

Also, instead of comparing Mafty to Al-Qaeda, Mafty is actually more comparable to the Rebel from the Andor show. The people here hate EF just as much as the people on Andor hate The Empire. Don't forget that the corruption of the EF goes way back from treating their own Earthnoid subjects like shit from the UC 0079 calendar to being responsible for the TITANS who gassed colonies killing millions which is much worse than what the Nazi did. They then became more or less totalitarian government from around UC 0090s to UC 0105 during Hathaway's event, not only deporting the people they deemed "unworthy of living on Earth" but also killing them when they see fit. Their forces was not named "Manhunter" for nothing. Hence the UC people's hate for EF government has much much much stronger base than Al-Qeda's hate for the "US of A".

Also, say what you want, but I like that Gundam simply portray "terrorist" organizations like AEUG & Mafty as simply something that exist. They left the judgement for the audience to decide. They just show you the people inside said organizations & how they work. AEUG & Mafty do not kill civillian/non-EF higher-ups willy nilly like Al-Qaeda killing innocent civilians. They killed innocent civillians by way of collateral damage (which they didn't want to happen). Hence, it's more than natural to see members of such organization feeling guilty of said collateral damage and offer them some prayers. That's simply because no rebel effort or revolution can be done without collateral damage to innocent people. That's just the reality of it.