About Epyon using Vulcans in the final duel inside Libra...

[balofo]

http://imgur.com/BM8XVwJ

This text from GPF claims White Fang customized Vulcans on the head(though from that angle if they fire they'll tear the antennas...).

Fan wank much?

[Wingnut]

Some people just can't live with an animation error.

[ShadowCell]

unless it was Zechs passive-aggressively striking back at Treize

"neener neener i'm dishonoring your noble and pure close range combat Gundam and all the ideals that come with it by adding projectile weapons to it nyah nyah nyah"

...maybe it was Dorothy's idea, come to think of it

[Deacon Blues]

The vulcans are clearly outside the lines of the antenna. What's the big deal? 0_o;

[Dark Duel]

What's a bigger deal to me is how absurdly small those are. If the alleged vulcans are supposed to be those minuscule little things up near the top of the head, they look ridiculously small compared the head vulcans on any of the others. Comparing that to the shoulder-mounted vulcans on the Wing Zero is like comparing a Beretta Bobcat to a Desert Eagle.

[balofo]

The vulcans are clearly outside the lines of the antenna. What's the big deal? 0_o;

Look again

[battletech]

Maybe the line art is wrong. The vulcans would be better if they where a little lower and closer to the face.

[AmuroNT1]

The lineart isn't wrong because there ARE no vulcans on Epyon's head; it was designed with no ranged weapons and the lineart reflects that. Like balofo said in the initial post, the GPF is just trying to fan-wank an explanation for the "phantom vulcans" from Gundam Wing episode 49.

It's what TV Tropes calls a "voodoo shark" - an attempt to patch a plothole that just raises further questions. Pretty much everyone had already accepted it as a continuity error at this point (tho I remember some trying to claim it was Heero's own bullets ricocheting back at him...that'd be a hell of a trick, wouldn't it?).

[battletech]

I was trying to give another reason besides fan wank for the placement of the vulcans. They just accidentally put them to high. Like I said they would work if placed differently. If placed differently it would be more believable.

[AmuroNT1]

There IS no other reason. It was repeatedly established that Epyon had absolutely no ranged weapons because it went against Treize's philosophy. GPF is trying to explain a single continuity error and doing a very poor job of it.

This debate is really nothing more than the "Can a swallow carry a coconut?" bit from Monty Python; all this talk about "those little dots could be vulcans" is just the Gundam version of "Maybe it could grip the husk?"

[Raikoh]

There IS no other reason. It was repeatedly established that Epyon had absolutely no ranged weapons because it went against Treize's philosophy.

Though apparently that didn't stop Treize from using a Dober Gun with the Tallgeese II.

[battletech]

OK Lets look at this from a different perspective. Are vulcans ranged weapons? They don't do much damage and at longer range they are very inaccurate. So they are almost only ever used at close range. They are pretty useless at long range.

[AmuroNT1]

Though apparently that didn't stop Treize from using a Dober Gun with the Tallgeese II.

Like I said, Epyon was his ideal. The man was idealistic but he wasn't an idiot.

OK Lets look at this from a different perspective. Are vulcans ranged weapons? They don't do much damage and at longer range they are very inaccurate. So they are almost only ever used at close range. They are pretty useless at long range.

Short-range maybe, but they still attack opponents outside of melee range. It's been stated over and over that Epyon's only weapons are the beam sword and heat rod.

Maybe the Monty Python thing wasn't quite accurate; this debate reminds me more of the kind of fanwank that occurs with Star Wars' expanded universe. The kind of thing where because Han Solo said "I'll see you in Hell!" in ESB, a dozen authors feel the need to write stories explaining that he didn't mean the Christian fire-and-brimstone Hell but instead the afterlife of some obscure religion from the third moon of Dantooie or something, while a person who wasn't so invested in their fandom would just shrug and say "It's a movie, whatever".

[Evex]

Something that just crossed my mind while reading this topic. We all agree or most of us agree that the epyon firing vulcan's in that scene is an animation error. Though what if we consider the following. During the Final Duel the other gundams are trying to destroy libra from the inside. From the looks of the final duel Heero and Zechs were moving all over libra's interior. What if the "Vulcans" came from one of the other gundams ? For instance their fire going through a wall with out them realizing heero and zechs were in the area.

[ShadowCell]

there weren't any other Gundams in there, though. and if it came from some off-screen Gundam in a different room, then that means there was some other Gundam hanging out in just the right spot where it could fire through a wall just as Wing Zero and Epyon were passing through in just such a way as to look like Epyon was shooting back with Vulcans it didn't have in some spectacular series of coincidences that stretch suspension of disbelief far more than even Gundam Wing would typically dare. all to explain an animation error.

[HalfDemonInuyasha]

Like I said, Epyon was his ideal. The man was idealistic but he wasn't an idiot

And not like he made Epyon with the idea of himself as the pilot anyway.

He even said himself that he saw the Gundam pilots as much more fitting for that ideal, and Heero just happened to stumble across him, and while Heero does demonstrate that he was more than capable of utilizing Epyon effectively, he ended up trading with Zechs for the Wing Gundam Zero simply because he couldn't understand Trieze and his ideals, figuring Zechs, as Trieze's (former) friend, would make better use of it.

One also needs to remember that the Tallgeese II wasn't the first time Trieze used ranged weapons either. He used a Leo with a machine gun to destroy other Leos that were being used to test and demonstrate the Mobile Doll System too to convey his hatred and disgust of it.

[Toxicity]

IIRC, the only time Trieze is ever shown to use ranged weapons is when he's fighting mobile dolls. Anytime he's fighting an actual human opponent like Wufei, he uses strictly melee weapons. Even if he doesn't particularly care for the dobergun he understands that it is better to use it so that he can defeat mobile dolls as quickly as possible so his own soldiers aren't losing their lives.

[HellCat]

Call me an idiot, but I don't see the problem. We have an animation error and a source offering a semi logical story fix for it. Gundam has more than its share of clumsy retcons but for an apparent production error like this, I can think of some sci-fi franchises which would have offered far worse (Doctor Who for one)