Meta: Gundam Wing: Chang-Wufei - Why it's Easy to Hate Him
Title: Why it's Easy to Hate Chang-Wufei
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Warnings/Triggers: N/A
Character(s): Chang-Wufei
There is no question that Wufei’s character is easy to dislike. If you are a female viewer, his continuous remarks about weakness and women, often within the same context, pushes some serious buttons. Aside from the misogyny, however, Wufei is generally an asshole to the other pilots and every other character that he has any interaction with. However I have come to the understanding that it’s easy to hate Wufei’s character because he was incredibly marginalized throughout the series.
There are only a handful of episodes that feature Wufei, and none of them are particularly flattering. It is only in the episode where his home colony is destroyed that we can get any understanding for his rage during battle and his need for justice of any sort. I don’t think it is fair to say that his attitudes towards women have anything to do with his culture. There is clearly something - or someone - in his past that has influenced his perceptions of women, war, and appropriate justice. In Endless Waltz we get the back story of the five pilots, but they are not altogether informative, and are generally repetitive of what is already known information.
I have not read the manga (not yet anyway), and so I don’t know if there is any explanation for his attitudes beyond what is presented on screen. Yet because we know so little about Wufei, because we are given so little information, it is incredibly easy to look at his character and disdainfully label him as a misogynist, a sexist, an asshole, whatever.
I think of the five pilots, Wufei was the most childish of them all; he was full of unrestrained bravado, allowed himself to be lead by his emotions (think of his attempted assassination of Treize and why it failed, and how that became his only focus until the very end), and he never really accepted the other pilots as allies, not fully. So much of his character is dictated by foolish pride and his tempestuous childish anger.
There is always a lot of discussion about how the women are marginalized (something to discuss in another, much long piece of meta), as we know very little of their personal stories, but Wufei, more than anyone, received the least amount of attention. This is not to say that knowing more of Wufei’s back story would necessarily change my general opinion of his character, but it might.
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Warnings/Triggers: N/A
Character(s): Chang-Wufei
There is no question that Wufei’s character is easy to dislike. If you are a female viewer, his continuous remarks about weakness and women, often within the same context, pushes some serious buttons. Aside from the misogyny, however, Wufei is generally an asshole to the other pilots and every other character that he has any interaction with. However I have come to the understanding that it’s easy to hate Wufei’s character because he was incredibly marginalized throughout the series.
There are only a handful of episodes that feature Wufei, and none of them are particularly flattering. It is only in the episode where his home colony is destroyed that we can get any understanding for his rage during battle and his need for justice of any sort. I don’t think it is fair to say that his attitudes towards women have anything to do with his culture. There is clearly something - or someone - in his past that has influenced his perceptions of women, war, and appropriate justice. In Endless Waltz we get the back story of the five pilots, but they are not altogether informative, and are generally repetitive of what is already known information.
I have not read the manga (not yet anyway), and so I don’t know if there is any explanation for his attitudes beyond what is presented on screen. Yet because we know so little about Wufei, because we are given so little information, it is incredibly easy to look at his character and disdainfully label him as a misogynist, a sexist, an asshole, whatever.
I think of the five pilots, Wufei was the most childish of them all; he was full of unrestrained bravado, allowed himself to be lead by his emotions (think of his attempted assassination of Treize and why it failed, and how that became his only focus until the very end), and he never really accepted the other pilots as allies, not fully. So much of his character is dictated by foolish pride and his tempestuous childish anger.
There is always a lot of discussion about how the women are marginalized (something to discuss in another, much long piece of meta), as we know very little of their personal stories, but Wufei, more than anyone, received the least amount of attention. This is not to say that knowing more of Wufei’s back story would necessarily change my general opinion of his character, but it might.