CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Why did S1 of Gundam 00 get so much hate? Is sunrise so desperate about getting good ratings or whatever that they go back to the drawing board everytime the fans are even the least bit displeased in order to satisfy their viewers?
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

From what I understand, S1 got so much hate because it wasn't "Gundam" enough in their eyes.

Which kinda goes back to my point about certain Gundam shows getting so much vitriol from the fans because they aren't what those fans thing Gundam should be. And with the caveat that as far as I've seen, among Western Gundam fandom, it's only the hardcore fans who are still so pissed off about SEED and DESTINY.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

It's interesting though, now we've taken up G'00 too, how my feeling is that many people liked SEED and G'00 S1, but not GSD or G'00 S2. Maybe it shows, then, when they're trying too hard to match an expectation? For example, my understanding is that S1 is liked because it was gray in tones of morality with the protagonists more so than in the past; CB is not immediately likable and actually has a tough time explaining their rationale in the show (and to the viewer).

With A-LAWS and Memento Mori (x2) most of that flew right out the window. Similarly with GSD I remember looking at the plot develop and wonder where the heck were they going with it. It's own moment of unambiguous evil was the Destroy, followed by Shinn turning into an exceedingly irrational character to make way for Yamato and the others. I think it's a change in tone that feels a little unfounded that throws people off, and it most certainly does when you're glued to the seat waiting for your weekly fix and feel like you've been shortchanged. :)

It all eases with time; I bought GSD actually, despite its flaws, and still dream about the movie that they'll never going to make for it. As to Japanese fans, I have a hunch they'll willing to play with G'00 a little more, but their eyes are on new prizes now. You have to remember that Gundam is fanatically advertised in Japan, so perhaps the Japanese fan moves on faster than us Westerners do. It's not as ever-present here; once they build a life-sized Gundam in downtown Helsinki I'll gladly eat those words. ;)
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

ShadowCell wrote:I left this one open because it didn't have the overt "Cosmic Era sucks balls, who's with me? WHO'S BLOODY WELL WITH ME?" tone that the last one had, but then that tone wound its way in here anyway, so, uh, yeah. Probably should've known.

Guys, instead of telling us once again how much you totally hate Gundam SEED DESTINY because it shot your parents one night and so you became the Gundam fan version of Batman or something, let's just leave the decayed remains of that horse alone and talk about the actual question of this thread: why do North American Gundam fans hate these shows so much and Japanese fans don't.

Here, I'll go first. I think it's safe to say that DESTINY was rewritten halfway through to accommodate Japanese fans' desires to see Kira and Lacus back in the saddle. So DESTINY was rewritten. Of course the Japanese fans like it; they got what they wanted.

The other idea I have is that it's mostly the hardcore Western Gundam fans who have so much sand in their vaginas over SEED and DESTINY, and it's been my observation that they actually hate Gundam--at least when it hearkens back to the spirit of shows like Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta, and they would rather have it hearken back to the spirit of the OVAs, like 08th MS Team and 0083. Take a look at the "what would you want in the next Gundam series?" thread on this forum, for example, and then compare that to shows like Zeta and SEED, and you'll see what I mean. SEED and especially DESTINY don't do that. In the spirit, tone, pacing, and structure of their stories, they are far more similar to MSG and Zeta than they are to 08th MS Team or 0083. That's cool for Japanese fans, because they like those shows; but the hardcore Western fans, um, don't. Despite their claims otherwise, evidently. After all, it's those two OVAs that they hold up as what Gundam "should" be.

I suppose that's sort of to be expected, since it was the Gundam TV shows that for the most part did so badly in the US and that's where the lion's share of the fans are, and the OVAs did the best. And it's not as though it's illegitimate to take your Gundam with what the OVAs are cookin' over the TV series. But it does, I think, explain why there's so much vitriol from the hardcore Western fans over SEED and DESTINY, when those shows are so popular in Japan: SEED and DESTINY are the antithesis of what those hardcore Western fans want Gundam to be.
I don't fully agree with your analysis, especially when it comes to Zeta and MSG. I think the main reason why those shows did badly in the US isn't because of its storyline, rather, it was the quality of the animation that did them in. It will be extemely difficult to get a large fanbase to watch over forty episodes of outdated animation per series, I'm sure that if they were released twenty years ago, it would have been an entirely different story. Gundam Wing is regarded as the most successful Gundam series in the US, but if it had MSG's animation, no one would be talking about it. Even if you take the Zeta movies into acount, they still used plenty of the original animation, and they can't be fully enjoyed or understood without watching the tv series. I'm not saying that the animation counts for everything, but it is definitely where the interest in a series starts. If its not pleasing to the eyes, it will be a tougher sell.

However, that does not mean that animation alone counts for everything, which is where Seed gets in trouble. It's story follows a similar path to MSG until it goes its own course halfway through, but that was not what did it in. A cast of characters that are bland and are hard to care about, the overuse of clip shows that put a big lull in the progression of the story, an abuse of stock footage that led to too many uninteresting battles and a plot that at times seemed was decided at the flip of a coin are what made this series unpopular.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

You're missing my point. My point isn't that the UC OVAs were the most commercially successful; it's that hardcore Western Gundam fans tend to look at the UC OVAs as what Gundam "should" be, and shows like SEED and DESTINY are nothing like them--hence the hatred. That Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta did so poorly in the US market, thanks to old animation and poor marketing, more than likely has much to do with that perception of the UC OVAs as what Gundam "should" be.

That and I really question your claims as to why SEED is unpopular. For one, I question just how unpopular SEED really is in the Western anime market and among Gundam fandom--especially after all the pains I took to distinguish hardcore Western Gundam fans from others. And while you can hate SEED all you want, you can't really deny that it was handled terribly by Bandai and Cartoon Network. Airing one poorly-edited episode once a week in an ever-shifting timeslot unsuitable to your target audience will kill just about any show, and that has nothing to do with Gundam SEED's story or stock footage or anything else.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

A Question for you Mr. Shadow Cell. How do you explain such things as this one guy's

Code: Select all

[url]http://appliedphlebotinum.wordpress.com/[/url] blog
dedicated to tearing Seed apart or the numerous comments on Youtube Gundam videos attacking Seed and the fans who liked it?
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Zeino wrote:A Question for you Mr. Shadow Cell. How do you explain such things as this one guy's

Code: Select all

[url]http://appliedphlebotinum.wordpress.com/[/url] blog
dedicated to tearing Seed apart or the numerous comments on Youtube Gundam videos attacking Seed and the fans who liked it?
Angry geeks being angry. For some people it's not enough to just dislike something.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Zeino wrote:A Question for you Mr. Shadow Cell. How do you explain such things as this one guy's

Code: Select all

[url]http://appliedphlebotinum.wordpress.com/[/url] blog
dedicated to tearing Seed apart or the numerous comments on Youtube Gundam videos attacking Seed and the fans who liked it?
Uh, pretty easily.

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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Talk is cheap on the Internet.

For a non-Gundam example, let's look at New Super Mario Bros. Wii. If you listened solely to blogs and editorials, you'd think the game was absolutely reviled as a lazy port of a DS game. Yet, it sold 15 million copies and remained on the top ten charts for over a year. The facts do not support the opinions.

Since talk is so cheap, we need other criteria to judge these things. I think you'll find that, in spite of the vitriol the SEEDverse receives on the Internet, it sells better than UC Gundam, and that's all the truth in the world.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Kenji wrote:Since talk is so cheap, we need other criteria to judge these things. I think you'll find that, in spite of the vitriol the SEEDverse receives on the Internet, it sells better than UC Gundam, and that's all the truth in the world.
I still remember photographs of bulkload of CE gunpla, with more than 50% discount, on toy shelves in Japan. And since Gunpla is heart of Gundam, so no :mrgreen: .

Seriously, I don't think your statement is true in Japan, where Gundam is subculture. Else Bandai won't keep releasing new UC Gunpla and even revive dead horse by picking short description in MSV and elaborate it into MSV-R. You don't think they will ever release new variant of GINN or ZAKU, do you?

Well, that's story in Japan. Now lets this topic go back to America...
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Considering the topic title, I didn't think I'd have to specify that I was talking about America, where television ratings and DVD sales, not Gunpla, are the engines of franchise profit.

In America, all SEEDverse animated materials (sans the SD and fanclub stuff) have been localized. Meanwhile, half of the UC television shows remain unlocalized. This is because Bandai Entertainment thinks UC is a riskier venture. Yes, part of that is older animation, but older animation is partially why UC is unappealing relative to SEED to the American market.

In Japan, SEED's popularity owed itself to its resemblance to UC, as Bandai's strategy is to use the newer series to funnel fans to UC. SEED's popularity was truncated due to that movie never materializing and 00, which by S2 also came to resemble UC and effectively replaced SEED. The Gundam fandom in Japan is completely different from that in America, and far more profitable (which is why Bandai listens to them and not us).

That said, Bandai Entertainment's behavior shows that SEED is still more profitable than UC, even in America. Therefore, I say again, while loud fanboys are loud, they don't necessarily represent what the majority of the consumers actually think.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Kenji wrote:Considering the topic title, I didn't think I'd have to specify that I was talking about America
Oop. Just realised I must be confise by "...all the truth in the world." part, sorry.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

In Japan, SEED's popularity owed itself to its resemblance to UC, as Bandai's strategy is to use the newer series to funnel fans to UC.
That's pretty much the core of my distaste for Seed/Destiny- it looked like the UC for a new generation (and, dissidents aside, it was), but having already seen the UC installments beforehand, the parallels it drew between itself and its UC equivalents simply felt shallow.

Some of my major gripes can be highlighted simply by holding up the two "core women" of Seed and MSG, Lacus and Lalah. Both characters are pure at heart, love (and are loved by) the series hero, and border on being "flawless" lovers for the protagonist to adore and admire. Lalah was undoubtedly a static character, whose only lasting impact can be boiled down to solidifying the Char/Amuro rivalry as personal and having a psychic acid trip with Amuro, yet she plays her role far better than Lacus.

I had always assumed that, having been a child prostitute before becoming a child soldier, Lalah was so emotionally bruised that by the time Amuro met her she had given herself entirely to being a newtype/represented the "mystical" element of newtypes yet unexplored. Thus, while her time with Amuro was brief and their love somewhat baffling, she served her purpose well and showed that newtypes (and thus humans) could acheive the same mutual understanding she and Amuro did, driving him to keep faith in humanity up until his death.

The difference is that Lalah and Amuro's "romance" was based on the newtype element, and without it, Lacus' character comes off as if she was simply born with the soul of an angel, or at worst just naive.

I guess that's what I'm trying to say about the parallels being shallow- they attempt to replicate the characterizations and themes from MGS/the UC, but end up leaving out some of the elements that made them important in the first place. I don't hate Seed or Destiny, I just think they could have done better, even in terms of being a "new UC".

That doesn't really speak to why American fans in general hate Seed/Destiny, but that's my gripe and I'm assuming other Americans might have felt the same way when they watched it. Probably depends on how old you were when Seed originally aired: if your last experience was Wing and/or you had only ever seen Gundam through Cartoon Network, you probably liked it. If you were a little more acquainted with UC, though, American fans might have felt it just didn't live up the same feeling the UC had, despite the similarities.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Certain CE kits didn't sell well. In general the SEED franchise sells well enough that it's made up almost the entirety of the PG line for years now. Strike Freedom is evidently a license to print money.

I'd say one of the things that heavily works against GSD in particular is that it's right at the beginning of a more united English speaking internet Gundam fandom. /m/ spun out of SEED, but Destiny was the first series people really had it and GOUF to all get together and be angry on the internet together. It colours perception heavily if you aren't used to internet hate. Even a series like 00 which was initially well received eventually gathers enough trolls to tarnish its reputation heavily. Hell at this point MSG is goofy crap, Zeta is melodramatic crap, ZZ is goofier crap, CCA is characters acting crazy crap, 0080 is boring crap, 0083 is poorly written crap, F91 is unfinished crap, Victory is depressed crap, G is super robot crap, Wing is just Wing, 08th is not as real as it's supposed to be real overrated crap, etc. but the people who hold on to their older individual opinions are large enough to keep the overall rating of the show high. There's also an admitted desire, that if something you like isn't as popular as you want, to do whatever you can to dismiss anything new to make it look better. Back in the day, some of the shows before SEED *coughGcough* weren't nearly as well regarded in general as now.

Most of the people I know who watched the CE shows in isolation don't have a big problem with them, even if the latter is a significant downgrade given the production problems and pacing and clipshow issues they caused. I'm under the impression it was proportionally much more popular in Canada, where the circumstances of its airing were much, much better. (SEED ran nearly 3 times! In primetime! With guns!)
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Zeino wrote:Why are Gundam Seed and Seed Destiny such a "love it or hate it" series among American Gundam Fans? In Japan, it pretty much revitalized the frachise which had been in something of decline in the late 90s and is still pretty popular there to this day, while in America for the most part, it was not very well received by the fandom and probbly gets the most hate of any Gundam series on the internet. The question is why does it inspire such animosity in great deal of American fanbase?
Indeed the franchise was somewhat dead till SEED came along but i would say the reason why it didn't revive it over in the states was mostly due to CN mis handling it and shafting it with a crappy time slot. And like everyone else said the heavy editing of the Guns and whatever made it seem pretty dumb imo.

Another thing that didn't help is the extreme bias most American fans had. A fairly good chunk of them were still waterlogged Gundam Wing fans that were so blatantly irrational and didn't want to give the other/new Gundam shows a chance. They basically blew everything off after 1 episode and proclaimed that as "A ripoff of Wing" or hated the older shows cause of the old animation.

But yea in short, i wouldn't ever expect to see Gundam's popularity in America to increase or be as it was when Wing was on in 2000. It would be extremely surprising if one does become more popular than Wing but it would be like a real long shot. Which is why i wasn't surprised to see 00 not even make a dent over here nor was i surprised to here the usual "lame Gundam Wing rip-off" speeches they give.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

BloodSport wrote:Some of my major gripes can be highlighted simply by holding up the two "core women" of Seed and MSG, Lacus and Lalah. Both characters are pure at heart, love (and are loved by) the series hero, and border on being "flawless" lovers for the protagonist to adore and admire.
What? Lalah recieved relatively little characterization, but most of what's there portray her as rather selfish. She knows that both Char and Amuro have feelings for her, and that they hate each other -- rather than choosing one over the other, she tries to keep them both, and gets killed for her trouble. Even in CCA, she's still trying to get Amuro and Char to kiss and make up (Amuro, naturally, is having none of it).

On Lacus' end, I think there's evidence to suggest that she's a surprisingly shrewd politician rather than the naive teenager she's presented as. She presents a sweet and innocent face to the world, because that's what the world wants to see of her -- but how does she act in private? She steals one of ZAFT's most powerful weapons and gives it to a known enemy of theirs (but who views her sympathetically), and persuades a loyal ZAFT soldier to defect with another. All this while assuming control of her assassinated father's power base and dodging government hit teams herself. These are not the actions of a vapid teenage idol singer. (And that's not even getting into the fact that a few years later she ends up with near-total power in the Earth Sphere.)
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Raiden wrote:
Zeino wrote:Why are Gundam Seed and Seed Destiny such a "love it or hate it" series among American Gundam Fans? In Japan, it pretty much revitalized the frachise which had been in something of decline in the late 90s and is still pretty popular there to this day, while in America for the most part, it was not very well received by the fandom and probbly gets the most hate of any Gundam series on the internet. The question is why does it inspire such animosity in great deal of American fanbase?
Indeed the franchise was somewhat dead till SEED came along but i would say the reason why it didn't revive it over in the states was mostly due to CN mis handling it and shafting it with a crappy time slot. And like everyone else said the heavy editing of the Guns and whatever made it seem pretty dumb imo.

Another thing that didn't help is the extreme bias most American fans had. A fairly good chunk of them were still waterlogged Gundam Wing fans that were so blatantly irrational and didn't want to give the other/new Gundam shows a chance. They basically blew everything off after 1 episode and proclaimed that as "A ripoff of Wing" or hated the older shows cause of the old animation.

But yea in short, i wouldn't ever expect to see Gundam's popularity in America to increase or be as it was when Wing was on in 2000. It would be extremely surprising if one does become more popular than Wing but it would be like a real long shot. Which is why i wasn't surprised to see 00 not even make a dent over here nor was i surprised to here the usual "lame Gundam Wing rip-off" speeches they give.
The Gundam series was starting to die off before Seed. CN was definitely not the reason why Gundam died out in the United States. Wing was also edited as well, yet Wing did phenomenal in the United States.

After reading many interpretations on why Wing was so successful and why all other Gundam excluding G Gundam to a certain extent failed, I'm starting to think that it is just attributed to four words: right time, right place. Gundam came out in the era of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and DBZ. Gundam came out in the era of Toonami and a Cartoon Network that actually showed *gasp* cartoons. Cartoons were popular back then. Kids wanted animated shows, and they got animated shows. Gundam Wing just rode the wave that made Powerpuff Girls, Ed Edd and Eddie, Pokemon, and Dragon Ball Z household names. These days, there is a reason why Miley Cyrus and her clones get a ton of attention and Cartoon Network is shifting towards more live-action programming: kids don't want stuff like Gundam Wing anymore. Shows like Yu-Gi-Oh and DBZ still get attention, but they have clearly outlived their prime. The only people that really want anime in the United States is an ever shrinking group of kids who cling to networks like CN and Disney XD that bring more and more live-action shows and us: the fanboys. Seed failed hard not because it sucked, but because kids just didn't want anime anymore. You cannot blame CN or whatnot for giving kids what they want.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

vindKtiv wrote:Seed failed hard not because it sucked, but because kids just didn't want anime anymore. You cannot blame CN or whatnot for giving kids what they want.
I can agree with some of what you're saying, but not this. CN and Bandai had a revenue sharing deal for Gundam toys. By the time SEED was about to air in the U.S., Bandai decided to stop selling Gundam toys in America. With no revenue incentive, CN did hardly any advertising for SEED, and halfway through the show's run they moved it to a late Friday night death slot. So no, it's not at all that kids didn't want anime, because other anime that aired at the time were popular, ie Inuyasha. It's that they didn't buy Gundam toys and thus give CN a reason to be enthusiastic about promoting the show. As to why Gundam toys stopped selling here, there's plenty of culprits that can be blamed, but that's for another thread.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

CN and Bandai had a revenue sharing deal for Gundam toys. By the time SEED was about to air in the U.S., Bandai decided to stop selling Gundam toys in America. With no revenue incentive, CN did hardly any advertising for SEED, and halfway through the show's run they moved it to a late Friday night death slot
I remember that! When I was younger, I remember seeing some Gundam Wing toys (and bought a couple too), but I watched Seed too...I couldn't find any toys for the show...it was a shame because I really wanted a Strike Gundam. I also distinctly remember talking to some of my friends about Gundam and asking if they watched Seed and they all gave me blank looks. They didn't even know it existed at that point! Which makes me wonder if America would have liked Seed more if it came to the states before Gunda Wing/08ms team/and 0083 did...

I guess it really all comes down to nistalgia in the end. Most people will look fondly on the shows they watched when they were younger, then the shows they watch when they are older and more cynical. I personally think Seed just had some really bad timing when it was in America.
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Re: CE Gundam and the American Gundam Fanbase.

Brave Fencer Kirby wrote: What? Lalah recieved relatively little characterization, but most of what's there portray her as rather selfish. She knows that both Char and Amuro have feelings for her, and that they hate each other -- rather than choosing one over the other, she tries to keep them both, and gets killed for her trouble. Even in CCA, she's still trying to get Amuro and Char to kiss and make up (Amuro, naturally, is having none of it).

*scratches head* Um, Lalah picks Amuro over Char. This plot point is discussed throughout the three series and CCA and is one of the catalysts to Char's and Amuro's personal hatred for each other. She got killed saving Char who almost killed his sister and left himself open for an attack by Amuro (which was the death blow). Trying to stop Char and Amuro from fighting was never an issue and something she didn't try to do while alive at least.

Edit: Two series.
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