Well, I finally got to finish Gundam X the other night,
and I totally enjoyed it! And I got to thinking about the GW story, and
how they're different. This probably counts as an essay, but it's really
just a random bunch of thoughts I tried to string together. ^_^;;
Ok, lets see if I can explain this...
and this may contain
spoilers!!!!!....I'll try to keep the worst ones out, but if you've not seen GX or GW, you
may not get some of this....and you may have GX spoiled for you....fair
warning!!
if you look at GW, it's actually rather hard to pick out the plot the first time
you see it through. There's so much symbolism and twists that the lines been
good and evil are much more blurred. You're left toward the end trying to
decide who the bad guys really are. That's part of the reason Quatre went
insane in the Zero system. And Heero too, at first, if you think about it.
For example, take Treize. At first, he's the bad guy. He's the one in
the shadows pulling the strings to get the world to do what he wants, or at
least what he thinks is right. But
after he resigns from Romefeller, he's basically powerless. He realizes that
the world has simply changed to much to really accept his ideals. He should
have been born in a century where wars weren't just for control or power, but
were ways to test one's skills. Think about it, back in the Middle Ages,
before wars starting using guns, every battle was hand to hand. Warriors had
deep respect for each other, and defeating an enemy on the field of battle was a
sign of that respect. If you could defeat an enemy in battle, not only were
you proving that your skills were better, you were giving them a noble send off.
That's almost like the way Treize feels, if you think about. Think
about how he reacted to the mobile dolls. In his mind, (and I have to admit in
mine), using the mobile dolls was reducing wars to computer games. That's
against everything he believes in. And at the end, he leads his army into
battle against the mobile dolls. That's why he has such a high respect for the
Gundam pilots, especially Wufei. Because even though they all do want peace,
they realize that fighting with mobile dolls turns wars into games. They've
spent all this time fighting, so they have a very high regard for human life.
And to use the mobile dolls really does cheapen that regard. It's
like Romefeller is saying humans aren't necessary anymore.
I guess the point I was making is that the plot of GW makes you think. You have to
see it a couple times through before you can start to pick out exactly what's
going, and can appreciate the little intricacies of the plot.
Now, in GX, the plot is a bit simpler. Don't get me wrong, I still loved
it. But it was more of an action/adventure series than a drama. The lines
between good and evil are more clearly defined. For example, the Frost
brothers. You can tell they're the bad guys from the beginning, even if you
can't figure out what they really want. (I didn't realize that until the
end) And you call tell Jamil isn't a bad guy after the first couple of
episodes. I didn't really think he was a bad guy at first, but the first
time that Tifa registers the GX so it can use the Satellite Cannon, I realized
that he was a good guy. I mean, he tried to stop her because he knew it was a
mistake. He knew it would hurt her, and that the blast would kill so many
people. And he tried to stop her. (That's when I started to kinda like
him) Once Garoad settles in, the Friedan and it's crew becomes his home.
And after that, you can tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys
are soon after we meet the characters. (It's actually an interesting thing
with this series. Garoad and Tifa end up changing several people for the
better. And you can really see this happening) The real thinking points
don't happen until the last couple of episodes. Where you realize that
everyone has a different concept of Newtype, and no one has it right. And you
start to wonder for yourself. (Which I'm not going to go into because there's a
really big spoiler in that)
Anyhoo, if you have any comments, feel free to contact me and we can discuss it. I think it'll be interesting to see what others think about this after they've seen both episodes. ^_^
