"Fight! For Everlasting Peace!"
I've been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with Sam, and it's an awesome show. (Well, after season 1 ends, it's an awesome show.)
Flipping through channels feeding Sam the other day, I caught that the Sci-Fi channel was showing Mobile Suit Gundam 00.
Having fond memories of watching Gundam Wing on Cartoon Network back in the day, I decided to give it a try; I DVR'd the three episodes that were on.
I watched the first one, and these were my thoughts:
--Man, there are lot of characters and a lot of talking.
--It's episode 17, so I have no idea what's going on or any emotional connection to anyone.
--OMG GIANT ROBOT FIGHTS AWESOME!!!1!!1!
That third point outweighed the first two, so I decided to watch the other two episodes.
I really wasn't feeling the show much until I got to the end of the third episode I'd recorded, or the 19th episode of the series.
The whole time, the Gundam pilots have been talking about how they're fighting people in order to put an end to war.* And then there's this scene with the three major pilots in the jungle, and they have a conversation about how what they're doing is a contradiction: they're FIGHTING TO END WAR! It's violence to stop violence!?!? What?
And the protagonists all basically said: This is a total contradiction, but it seems to be working, so we're going to try it anyway.
And I thought that was an awesome idea to examine, so I'm going to have to watch more of the show. (Also, I'm aware of the big twist between series 1 and series 2, so I want to watch everyone react to it.)
* As a footnote for those of you not well-versed in anime, the various Gundam shows are generally war stories that carry strong anti-war themes. Also, they have strong "giant robots fighting is awesome" themes, so there's some friction between the themes of the show.
Flipping through channels feeding Sam the other day, I caught that the Sci-Fi channel was showing Mobile Suit Gundam 00.
Having fond memories of watching Gundam Wing on Cartoon Network back in the day, I decided to give it a try; I DVR'd the three episodes that were on.
I watched the first one, and these were my thoughts:
--Man, there are lot of characters and a lot of talking.
--It's episode 17, so I have no idea what's going on or any emotional connection to anyone.
--OMG GIANT ROBOT FIGHTS AWESOME!!!1!!1!
That third point outweighed the first two, so I decided to watch the other two episodes.
I really wasn't feeling the show much until I got to the end of the third episode I'd recorded, or the 19th episode of the series.
The whole time, the Gundam pilots have been talking about how they're fighting people in order to put an end to war.* And then there's this scene with the three major pilots in the jungle, and they have a conversation about how what they're doing is a contradiction: they're FIGHTING TO END WAR! It's violence to stop violence!?!? What?
And the protagonists all basically said: This is a total contradiction, but it seems to be working, so we're going to try it anyway.
And I thought that was an awesome idea to examine, so I'm going to have to watch more of the show. (Also, I'm aware of the big twist between series 1 and series 2, so I want to watch everyone react to it.)
* As a footnote for those of you not well-versed in anime, the various Gundam shows are generally war stories that carry strong anti-war themes. Also, they have strong "giant robots fighting is awesome" themes, so there's some friction between the themes of the show.