Gundam Wing: Disc 10 (conclusion); also, request for recs and plot clarification

[rachelmanija]

yhlee wrote up disc 2 here, sadly without screencaps as her computer spat out the disc.

Last four episodes! I am so sorry this series is over. It has been a fantastic ride. I am still obsessed, and look forward to reading and writing fic. And possibly collecting little pilot and Gundam figurines. If there exists anywhere a figurine of Heero self-detonating, I would probably pay a large sum of money for it.

Please post recs for fic and art and meta in comments, if you have any!

poilass already very kindly gave me some fic recs in this comment thread, which has spoilers through episode 40 so beware; the thread also contains an explanation of the sort of things I’d like to read (and avoid.)

I would add that it would be nice to read fic in which Heero is as crazy as he is in the actual series. And that their canonical backstories are quite angsty enough without adding in sexual abuse. And that Duo should not cry. Or make suicide threats. And that fifteen-year-old boy terrorists should not be more emotionally mature and comfortable with extreme intimacy than, say, me. Certainly not all five of them at the same time.

Though the journey turned out to be better than the destination, the problems with the conclusion were not of the sort that would retroactively ruin a series for me. (Neon Genesis Evangelion and Wolf’s Rain, I’m looking at you.) Actually, I had the same annoying but not deal-breaking issues with the end of Escaflowne: some excellent individual moments and there was no trouble figuring out what happened (as opposed to why), but overall rushed, somewhat incoherent particularly in terms of motivation, and emphasizing the elements that irritated me all along over the ones that I loved. Although I bet it made the Trowa/Quatre shippers happy!

rushthatspeaks, did you ever find the discs with better subtitles? I’d love to watch them. I could return them when I'm done. I am very, very curious to see if better subtitles could make Treize and Zechs’ motivations less nutso.



This whole last sequence was pretty incoherent, and there was an awful lot of out-of-character random speechifying. I do not understand why Quatre and Trowa were both sympathizing with Dorothy, given that she was raving insane and had just stabbed Quatre. Perhaps they both recalled their own experiences of being psychotic, and sympathized on that level? I did like Trowa answering Quatre’s (delirious, I hope) plea to leave him and take care of her with “She’s strong, she’ll be fine,” grabbing Quatre, and tossing Dorothy her helmet on his way out.

I lost all respect for Noin when she decided to stay with Zechs rather than fight him, when he was trying to destroy the world. Une and Sally Po are still super-awesome, though. I particularly liked Une arising from her hospital bed, leaving her oxygen mask and IVs dangling, and immediately making her way to the hanger to grab Wing and take off in it!

However, my very favorite moment was when, with none of the pilots currently onscreen, Oyce said, “Hey, what’s the crazy-point status on the pilots now?”

I replied, “I think Wu Fei’s got it all.”

Right on cue, it cuts to a close up of Wu Fei looking absolutely demented.

Classic Heero line: “Life is cheap… especially mine.”

Given how not-insane Zechs was in Endless Waltz, and that no one seemed mad about him trying to destroy the world, I conclude that he actually did die in the explosion, and the person who appeared afterward was his clone. Or else his clone was the insane one, and the real Zechs emerged later.

Though I loved Relena tearing up Heero’s card (and I would have liked her much better if she’d had a sense of humor earlier), I was really not impressed with her sappy romantic music and romantic interludes with Heero. Bleah. I just do not buy them as a couple, and I did not believe him getting her the teddy bear. Again, bleah. (Unless it contains a small bomb.)

Everybody praising Heero, especially for qualities that he does not possess (“kind and gentle,” what?), was really irritating and seemed more like the writers wanting to remind us that he was the main character than anything remotely organic to the story.

Okay, now that I’ve finished watching, can people either explain or take their best guess at the following questions which still baffle me?

1. When Heero goes berserk while testing Wing Zero, falls out glowing with yellow light, and bounces off his head, and Quatre proceeds to take the sparkling light surrounding Heero into his own heart… What was that light, and what did Quatre do with it or try to do with it?

2. Why did Treize try to get Heero to shoot him in the episode where he gives him Epyon?

3. Who was Dorothy’s father, and exactly what happened to him? Or was that her father in the shuttle that blew up? I thought it was her grandfather.

4. Were all of Treize’s weird decisions actually engineered to create a gigantic war that would be so awful that people would turn to pacifism? Did he learn nothing from the fact that rather than WWI being “the war to end all wars,” it merely became # 1? I don’t believe for a second that the Gundam-verse will ever achieve permanent peace.

5. Heero is the soul of the universe?! WTF?! Actually, I have my own explanation for that. Quatre must have been completely loopy from blood loss and battle fatigue when he said that. He will wake up the next day in a hospital, with Trowa and the Maguanacs looming over his bed, and say, “Um… When Heero was blowing up the last bit of Libra, was my radio on?” If they’re kind, they’ll lie and say “No.”

…On the other hand, if Heero is the soul of the universe, that does explain a lot about Quatre!

I note that Wu Fei made it through the entire series without once attempting suicide, and Duo made it through the entire series without once going crazy of his own accord (he did briefly while plugged into the Zero system, but that’s like taking LSD; it would affect anyone—and note that he only tried it under duress.) Let’s hear it for Wu Fei and Duo!