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But first, an important Gundam Wing announcement:
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yhlee and I will be watching the show from the beginning, starting this Saturday. If you were thinking of checking it out, now will be a good time, as she will be posting non-spoilery (except for those episodes, of course) recaps and hopefully hilarious screencaps. Join in the fun! And please comment if you post your own commentary!
This disc which I am about to recap contains a startling plot development which I had been partially spoiled for back when I didn't think I would watch the show, and which I had been waiting for with great anticipation. The execution of this plotline so surpassed my expectations that I can only imagine the joy it would bring to someone who was completely surprised by it. Therefore, if you haven't yet seen the series and there's even the slightest chance that you might, DO NOT CLICK ON THE CUT-TAG.
However, I know some of you have been enjoying the spoilery recaps, so rather than completely deprive you of your GW fix for the day, I will post an important psychoanalytic insight I had about Heero above the cut. Since it involves recurrent patterns of behavior rather than specific incidents, I don't think it's too spoilery.
I was watching an episode over the phone with Oyce last night when we had the following exchange:
Me: "Why is Quatre suddenly embracing Heero?"
Oyce: "He's not hugging him, he's helping him walk... Heero must still be weak from getting beat down in the last scene."
Me: "What, again?"
It was then that I remembered the theory that when a person exhibits a certain pattern of behavior which elicits consistent reactions from others, there is a good chance that subconsciously, even if the behavior overall is quite destructive, there is something about the reactions that is gratifying and encourages them to repeat the behavior.
When Heero gets injured, he consistently receives admiration for his courage and stoicism, expressions of affection and concern, tender physical contact, and offers todo his chores fight the bad guys for him. And he gets all of this gratifying caring and proof of love without ever having to ask for it or verbally express unmanly neediness: he falls over or clutches his bleeding arm, and others spring to his side without him having to say a word!
Even more significantly, Heero hardly ever turns down or even makes a token protest to any of this. Contrast that to your typical shounen hero, say Ichigo Kurosaki, who reacts more like this: "Let go of my arm, I'm fine!!" (Falls over.) I suspect that Heero was raised by the mad cyborg hand scientist and was deprived of normal expressions of love as a child. If he dared to say that he wanted a hug, he probably got a new Gundam with an extra-cushiony interior.
So while I do think that Heero is genuinely suicidal, I think he's also getting something out of his failed attempts that makes him keep trying way past the point when he must realize that he's unlikely to succeed. For Heero, even a sprained ankle can be its own reward.
On to the spoilers! Seriously, don't click if you don't already know!
If anyone knows what in the world was wrong with Quatre that made him need to get rescued from dying in the shuttle, please tell me. He seemed fine when he jumped out of Sandrock, then he was inexplicably dying. It is driving me crazy that I don't know.
Quatre wakes up, being tended by a doctor who reveals that she is one of his clone-sisters. They are like Bujold's sister-clone-doctors, the Durona Group! An uncharacteristically helpful narration explains that Quatre's father is a pacifist. Uh-oh. This can't end well. Quatre and his father have the following exchange:
Quatre (reasonable and mature): "I know you don't agree, but I became a Gundam pilot because I believed it was the right thing to do."
Winner Senior: "I give you everything, and do you appreciate it? No! You just had to go to Earth as a terrorist in a mobile suit!"
OZ or maybe Romefeller takes over the colony. Winner Senior opposes the colonists' desire to give in because he's a pacifist. Or something. From the spaceship they're inexplicably on, Quatre and his clone sister watch a viewscreen in horror as the colonists blow up his Dad-- the inevitable fate of non-Relena pacifists in the Gundam-verse. Their ship is hit in the backlash, and the sister is thrown into a wall. She closes her eyes: dead? unconscious? fainted from grief? Who knows?
Quatre, quite reasonably, screams, "NOOOOOOO! DAAAAD! NOOOOO! I'm gonna get you for killing my Dad!!"
Then there's a disturbing little pause. Quatre's face takes on an expression of utter raving lunacy. He proceeds to laugh the single most maniacal laugh I have heard in thirty-four years of watching TV, movies, and anime, and also of knowing real-life crazy people. The maniacal laugh goes on and on. And on. The editors cut away from Quatre and show random images of planets. He's still laughing insanely. Finally, realizing that he could go on indefinitely, they cut him off by cutting to the next scene.
Meanwhile, Trowa is still in deep cover as an OZ pilot. He gets them to let the captured Heero pilot for them by having them give Trowa remote control of Heero's self-detonate button! Trowa is so awesome.
Zechs shows up, randomly fights Heero and Trowa, then goes off to be a peace ambassador (!) under the name of Milliardo Peacecraft. Every single person he meets recognizes him as Zechs anyway. Guess the bird mask was totally useless!
Treize is still crazy and pompous. He and Une have a long conversation about destiny and the future. They said "mirai" and "unmei" so many times that I began to flash to X/1999. Treize tells Zechs that Une developed split personalities because she loved Treize. This actually sort of makes sense. Treize begs Zechs to save her. Zechs agrees, and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing useful in that regard for the rest of the disc.
Some underling of Lady Colonel Une's stages a coup. I think he's going to destroy a colony because Zechs is on it, and to prove that war is bad. Wu Fei, adrift without weapons or fuel, sensibly allows himself to be captured on the theory that they'll repair his Gundam and then he can escape in it. Trowa continues to be awesome, having conversations with Lady Colonel Une that remind me of Death Note in their layers of secrecy and manipulativeness.
Duo goes to the lunar colony to blow up a mobile doll factory. Great action sequence here. Unfortunately, he runs into the five mutant freakish cyborg scientists, who are secretly repairing his Gundam and Wu Fei's Gundam. To preserve their secret, he lets them beat the hell out of him and turn him over to the enemy. He is flung into a cell with Wu Fei and Heero. From the floor, he makes a long, rambling speech. Every time he paused, I expected him to pass out, but every time, he collected himself and kept on going. Heero and Wu Fei stare in incredulous silence until Duo finally runs out of gas.
Quatre reappears with Zero, a super-Gundam which he built from a blueprint. He is totally raving out of his mind. He is so crazy, he is crazier than the sum of the craziness of every other character up to this point. (I had known he went crazy, but had mistakenly thought it wasn't him going crazy, but that his Gundam had been upgraded with Vista or something and he got affected by it. Not really, he was not in it when he laughed the CRAZY LAUGH.)
The vocal performance here is fantastic: he sounds almost like he always does, still soft-spoken and gentle, but with a slight underlying edge of TOTAL INSANITY. It's genuinely creepy.
Quatre transmits a blueprint of his Gundam and his intention to blow shit up. He blows up a research station. Then he blows up a colony! Trowa goes to the cell to get Heero to go fight Quatre with him. Duo protests that he wants to go. Trowa tells him he's still not recovered from his beat-down. Duo argues. Trowa decks him!
In their Gundams, Trowa explains to Heero that if Quatre's Gundam is powerful enough, they'll rebel then and there; if not, they'll fake a fight and bide their time. It does not occur to Trowa that Quatre is a raving maniac. It does occur to Heero.
Quatre goes to a colony and stomps on a playground! Then he goes to meet Heero and Trowa.
Quatre: "The soul of outer space told me to kill you all."
Trowa: "Quatre, I don't think I heard you right. Can you repeat that?"
Trowa has a very hard time accepting what's going on, and tries to reason with Quatre. Heero decides to kill Quatre. Quatre fires a deadly beam at Heero! Trowa jumps his Gundam in front of Heero and takes it for him!
Trowa's Gundam is now about to explode. Rather than bailing out, he stays in, desperately trying to talk Quatre down. He's gentle and reasonable and sounds very much like a therapist. Then his Gundam blows up. He ejects at the last minute and floats in space in a spacesuit.
Quatre comes to his senses. He expresses this by trying to commit suicide: "Kill me quickly, Heero, so you can go rescue Trowa!" But Heero is already wounded and passes out in his Gundam.
Meanwhile, a Romefeller guy has staged a coup and cut off Wu Fei and Duo's oxygen. Wu Fei sensibly tries to conserve his in the hope of a rescue. Duo, who has apparently reached his breaking point, gives up and flops over to die. But Une gets there in time and saves them! But woe! She is shot by the Romefeller guy! Duo and Wu Fei grab their Gundams and run, never knowing who saved them. Woe!
Quatre pulls Heero out of his Gundam, cradles him in his arms, cups some water in his hands, and tenderly feeds it to him. See my theory above about Heero's hurt/comfort complex.
Gundam status: Zechs has Tallgeese. Trowa's Heavyarms is still MIA. Trowa's new Gundam blew up. Heero's new Gundam is damaged. Heero's first Gundam is still on Earth. Zero is intact. Shenlong and Deathscythe are being repaired. Sandrock is being repaired on Earth.
Suicide attempts:
Trowa: Hard to say. I vote for no, since he had an overriding goal and he did eject at the last minute.
Quatre: 1. ("Kill me, Heero!")
Heero: None, wow!
Duo: Um... not really, but he sure wasn't very proactive about not dying, either.
Wu Fei: Still none, in the whole series!
yhlee and I will be watching the show from the beginning, starting this Saturday. If you were thinking of checking it out, now will be a good time, as she will be posting non-spoilery (except for those episodes, of course) recaps and hopefully hilarious screencaps. Join in the fun! And please comment if you post your own commentary!This disc which I am about to recap contains a startling plot development which I had been partially spoiled for back when I didn't think I would watch the show, and which I had been waiting for with great anticipation. The execution of this plotline so surpassed my expectations that I can only imagine the joy it would bring to someone who was completely surprised by it. Therefore, if you haven't yet seen the series and there's even the slightest chance that you might, DO NOT CLICK ON THE CUT-TAG.
However, I know some of you have been enjoying the spoilery recaps, so rather than completely deprive you of your GW fix for the day, I will post an important psychoanalytic insight I had about Heero above the cut. Since it involves recurrent patterns of behavior rather than specific incidents, I don't think it's too spoilery.
I was watching an episode over the phone with Oyce last night when we had the following exchange:
Me: "Why is Quatre suddenly embracing Heero?"
Oyce: "He's not hugging him, he's helping him walk... Heero must still be weak from getting beat down in the last scene."
Me: "What, again?"
It was then that I remembered the theory that when a person exhibits a certain pattern of behavior which elicits consistent reactions from others, there is a good chance that subconsciously, even if the behavior overall is quite destructive, there is something about the reactions that is gratifying and encourages them to repeat the behavior.
When Heero gets injured, he consistently receives admiration for his courage and stoicism, expressions of affection and concern, tender physical contact, and offers to
Even more significantly, Heero hardly ever turns down or even makes a token protest to any of this. Contrast that to your typical shounen hero, say Ichigo Kurosaki, who reacts more like this: "Let go of my arm, I'm fine!!" (Falls over.) I suspect that Heero was raised by the mad cyborg hand scientist and was deprived of normal expressions of love as a child. If he dared to say that he wanted a hug, he probably got a new Gundam with an extra-cushiony interior.
So while I do think that Heero is genuinely suicidal, I think he's also getting something out of his failed attempts that makes him keep trying way past the point when he must realize that he's unlikely to succeed. For Heero, even a sprained ankle can be its own reward.
On to the spoilers! Seriously, don't click if you don't already know!
If anyone knows what in the world was wrong with Quatre that made him need to get rescued from dying in the shuttle, please tell me. He seemed fine when he jumped out of Sandrock, then he was inexplicably dying. It is driving me crazy that I don't know.
Quatre wakes up, being tended by a doctor who reveals that she is one of his clone-sisters. They are like Bujold's sister-clone-doctors, the Durona Group! An uncharacteristically helpful narration explains that Quatre's father is a pacifist. Uh-oh. This can't end well. Quatre and his father have the following exchange:
Quatre (reasonable and mature): "I know you don't agree, but I became a Gundam pilot because I believed it was the right thing to do."
Winner Senior: "I give you everything, and do you appreciate it? No! You just had to go to Earth as a terrorist in a mobile suit!"
OZ or maybe Romefeller takes over the colony. Winner Senior opposes the colonists' desire to give in because he's a pacifist. Or something. From the spaceship they're inexplicably on, Quatre and his clone sister watch a viewscreen in horror as the colonists blow up his Dad-- the inevitable fate of non-Relena pacifists in the Gundam-verse. Their ship is hit in the backlash, and the sister is thrown into a wall. She closes her eyes: dead? unconscious? fainted from grief? Who knows?
Quatre, quite reasonably, screams, "NOOOOOOO! DAAAAD! NOOOOO! I'm gonna get you for killing my Dad!!"
Then there's a disturbing little pause. Quatre's face takes on an expression of utter raving lunacy. He proceeds to laugh the single most maniacal laugh I have heard in thirty-four years of watching TV, movies, and anime, and also of knowing real-life crazy people. The maniacal laugh goes on and on. And on. The editors cut away from Quatre and show random images of planets. He's still laughing insanely. Finally, realizing that he could go on indefinitely, they cut him off by cutting to the next scene.
Meanwhile, Trowa is still in deep cover as an OZ pilot. He gets them to let the captured Heero pilot for them by having them give Trowa remote control of Heero's self-detonate button! Trowa is so awesome.
Zechs shows up, randomly fights Heero and Trowa, then goes off to be a peace ambassador (!) under the name of Milliardo Peacecraft. Every single person he meets recognizes him as Zechs anyway. Guess the bird mask was totally useless!
Treize is still crazy and pompous. He and Une have a long conversation about destiny and the future. They said "mirai" and "unmei" so many times that I began to flash to X/1999. Treize tells Zechs that Une developed split personalities because she loved Treize. This actually sort of makes sense. Treize begs Zechs to save her. Zechs agrees, and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing useful in that regard for the rest of the disc.
Some underling of Lady Colonel Une's stages a coup. I think he's going to destroy a colony because Zechs is on it, and to prove that war is bad. Wu Fei, adrift without weapons or fuel, sensibly allows himself to be captured on the theory that they'll repair his Gundam and then he can escape in it. Trowa continues to be awesome, having conversations with Lady Colonel Une that remind me of Death Note in their layers of secrecy and manipulativeness.
Duo goes to the lunar colony to blow up a mobile doll factory. Great action sequence here. Unfortunately, he runs into the five mutant freakish cyborg scientists, who are secretly repairing his Gundam and Wu Fei's Gundam. To preserve their secret, he lets them beat the hell out of him and turn him over to the enemy. He is flung into a cell with Wu Fei and Heero. From the floor, he makes a long, rambling speech. Every time he paused, I expected him to pass out, but every time, he collected himself and kept on going. Heero and Wu Fei stare in incredulous silence until Duo finally runs out of gas.
Quatre reappears with Zero, a super-Gundam which he built from a blueprint. He is totally raving out of his mind. He is so crazy, he is crazier than the sum of the craziness of every other character up to this point. (I had known he went crazy, but had mistakenly thought it wasn't him going crazy, but that his Gundam had been upgraded with Vista or something and he got affected by it. Not really, he was not in it when he laughed the CRAZY LAUGH.)
The vocal performance here is fantastic: he sounds almost like he always does, still soft-spoken and gentle, but with a slight underlying edge of TOTAL INSANITY. It's genuinely creepy.
Quatre transmits a blueprint of his Gundam and his intention to blow shit up. He blows up a research station. Then he blows up a colony! Trowa goes to the cell to get Heero to go fight Quatre with him. Duo protests that he wants to go. Trowa tells him he's still not recovered from his beat-down. Duo argues. Trowa decks him!
In their Gundams, Trowa explains to Heero that if Quatre's Gundam is powerful enough, they'll rebel then and there; if not, they'll fake a fight and bide their time. It does not occur to Trowa that Quatre is a raving maniac. It does occur to Heero.
Quatre goes to a colony and stomps on a playground! Then he goes to meet Heero and Trowa.
Quatre: "The soul of outer space told me to kill you all."
Trowa: "Quatre, I don't think I heard you right. Can you repeat that?"
Trowa has a very hard time accepting what's going on, and tries to reason with Quatre. Heero decides to kill Quatre. Quatre fires a deadly beam at Heero! Trowa jumps his Gundam in front of Heero and takes it for him!
Trowa's Gundam is now about to explode. Rather than bailing out, he stays in, desperately trying to talk Quatre down. He's gentle and reasonable and sounds very much like a therapist. Then his Gundam blows up. He ejects at the last minute and floats in space in a spacesuit.
Quatre comes to his senses. He expresses this by trying to commit suicide: "Kill me quickly, Heero, so you can go rescue Trowa!" But Heero is already wounded and passes out in his Gundam.
Meanwhile, a Romefeller guy has staged a coup and cut off Wu Fei and Duo's oxygen. Wu Fei sensibly tries to conserve his in the hope of a rescue. Duo, who has apparently reached his breaking point, gives up and flops over to die. But Une gets there in time and saves them! But woe! She is shot by the Romefeller guy! Duo and Wu Fei grab their Gundams and run, never knowing who saved them. Woe!
Quatre pulls Heero out of his Gundam, cradles him in his arms, cups some water in his hands, and tenderly feeds it to him. See my theory above about Heero's hurt/comfort complex.
Gundam status: Zechs has Tallgeese. Trowa's Heavyarms is still MIA. Trowa's new Gundam blew up. Heero's new Gundam is damaged. Heero's first Gundam is still on Earth. Zero is intact. Shenlong and Deathscythe are being repaired. Sandrock is being repaired on Earth.
Suicide attempts:
Trowa: Hard to say. I vote for no, since he had an overriding goal and he did eject at the last minute.
Quatre: 1. ("Kill me, Heero!")
Heero: None, wow!
Duo: Um... not really, but he sure wasn't very proactive about not dying, either.
Wu Fei: Still none, in the whole series!
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From:
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Basically, in all Gundam series: there are space colonies. There is a war between the colonies and Earth. And there are-- well, in different series they're called different things; the original name is Newtype. Newtypes are humans who have been genetically enhanced. They are faster, stronger, smarter, better at synthesizing and integrating situations on the fly. And they have freaky-weird-random powers, such as telepathy, empathy, astral projection, the ability to leave a really bitchy and vengeful ghost, and suchlike. Also each show depends on Mobile Suits for combat, for the reasons
Gundam Wing's particular angle of the AU is to de-emphasize the genetics aspect. There's only one Newtype in the entirety of Wing, and that's Quatre. (See above re: freaky-weird powers). This means that, unlike in all the other series, the colonies do not automatically have an even shot in a war. In Gundam Seed, for example, twenty-four million people spend large portions of the series kicking the asses of six billion.
Treize, as
A separate brief Gundam note-- another series tradition is the mysterious masked leader, who is brilliant, charismatic, hiding a politically disadvantageous identity, etc. Char Aznable is the prototypical Gundam masked man. If you combine Zechs and Treize, you get Char; it's unusual in a Gundam series for the role to be split this way.
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Newtypes: What about Heero? He is clearly enhanced physically (bends bars with his bare hands, is unaffected by electric security grid, takes a licking and keeps on ticking) but has not yet exhibited any non-physical powers. Unless you count his vision of Relena and Quatre's ability to do psychic... stuff to or with him.
I am not sure yet at this point whether Heero was genetically enhanced, or is genetically normal but was physically altered later, like Wolverine.
Side note: I have been told that when Sally Po is looking at Heero's specs, what's actually onscreen is the Adobe Acrobat user's manual, with which Heero was apparently programmed. That explains so much.