Mecha Talk

i just finished up Victory Gundam and call me stupid but for the life of me what was Katejina's reason for going down the so called "dark side" path in victory? I mean she had people who cared and loved her then she throws it all out the airlock! Any in depth reasoning will help alot, thank you.

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"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalks us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again."
--Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: Generations

She is an insane woman who was looking for love and she took sick sadistic pleasure in that fact that BOTH Chronicle and Uso were fighting over her. Also she obviously started to have feelings for Chronicle after her undercover spy thingy went too far...besides she kind of let herself get captured and turned. She never really believed in the League Militare as far as I could see and only really cared about herself and few others.

Also she liked the attention playing both sides got her. Honestly she was just a immature woman who wanted things to go exactly the way she wanted and when they didn't, she would have a tempter tantrum and react badly. I recall her trying to stab Uso with a knife when she could have shot him with her mobile suit, just because she wanted to watch him die and she wanted to play with his emotions a little more (I won't even talk about the women in underwear attack scene...).

Honestly, she has one of the most satisfying endings ever in Gundam History. That was really the one redeeming quality of Victory Gundam's unnecessarily bloody final (which, according to the mahq reviews of the show, means it is INSTANTLY GOOD).

Now, Tomino didn't give us obvious reasons for her betrayal exactly, but if you read between the lines and see where Katejina is coming from, it makes sense in a really unsympathetic way. So yeah, hope that helps a little.

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"I am the bone of my sword, steel is my body and fire is my blood. I have created over a thousand blades. Unknown to death, nor known to life. Many times I have withstood enormous pain to create thousands of weapons and yet those hands that have braved so much will never hold anything.
So I pray and call forth UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS!"

Thank you Soma it helps alittle and I agree with the krama pays her back in kind. Anymore info would help.

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"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalks us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again."
--Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: Generations

A major root of her problems probably comes from her family. Look at her dad in that one episode he appears in.

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Something tells me that Tomino had some horrible experiences with women as a young man.

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Sacrosanct (man as microcosm)
Four temperaments (fuse) - statuesque entity
The fortitude of a pristine creature
Transcend tyranny- Quintessential Power

Her developement is illogical, from both what she had gone through and what we are supposed to think...

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The space is much the same with the sky, just with the ground removed.

Real people aren't as logical as they like to believe either. She obviously had some deep seeded issues, it also makes sense that she figured that the LM fight was pointless and just creating chaos and would not succeed,after all their ace pilot was a 13 year old, and they hardly had a standing base.

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Sacrosanct (man as microcosm)
Four temperaments (fuse) - statuesque entity
The fortitude of a pristine creature
Transcend tyranny- Quintessential Power

I liked Katejina. She was a strong newtype antagonist in the Haman Karn mold that has barely been seen again in the franchise since Victory Gundam's conclusion. Katejina I believe had issues with her family and when she hooked up with the League Militaire, was against their methods, particularly in using a child as a pilot (Uso). Then she is captured by Chronicle and claims to be acting as a double agent but then turns on them instead since she fell in love with him. She may have been devious then, but she truly began to turn demented when she became a follower of Maria. She became a deranged zealot, and though it was not stated, what I believe made it worse was that it was also about that time that her newtype abilities spring up. This is what I believe led to her psychotically dangerous behavior in the last few episodes.

Apart from that, Soma Taozi hit the nail on the head, except that I don't think Katejina was insane from the getgo, just a woman with serious issues that she was burying, which became a million times worse when she fell into the hands of the Zanscare zealots.

Thank you again, what indepth dicussion and this info helps alot for my college paper I'm writing. Thanks again and srry for the miss spell. Just need a little more info please for different points of view.

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"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalks us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again."
--Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: Generations

Katejina had absolutely zero investment in the League Militaire, so she really didn't betray anyone, aside from Uso. Even in her short time with them, she argued bitterly with them over how they were handling Uso, and once she was kidnapped by Chronicle she never looked back.

Illogical behaviour is acceptable characterization if the character is in circumstances that would render them unstable. The unfortunate bit that people can't swallow is that so much of Katejina's character development is only implied, not outright stated. However, once you start looking at the little hints here and there you can see her downfall coming a mile away.

For starters, her selfishness and stubborness is something that most people agree on. The way she argues with the LM about their use of Uso (in spite of him actually being their only option for mere survival) displays that she's stubborn and naive.

Her willingness to betray the LM and switch sides likely stems from her family's history of infidelity. Her mother betrayed her father to be with another man. When we see Katejina's speaking with unguarded bitterness to her father on the night of the Woowig assault, it's pretty clear that she comes from a broken home. As for her father's infidelity, consider this...while no implications are made that he's cheated on his wife, he's certainly betraying the Earth Federation by trying to get in bed with BESPA to save his own skin. They owed the Federation everything. When you consider that Woowig was a special population reserve for people allowed to live on earth, it becomes clear why the Spacenoids in BESPA took such delight in bombing the area...because these people are the rich and powerful elite. Katejina grew up in a spoiled, elitist environment and had an unhealthy home life.

She was probably so fed up that she recognized the fight of the LM as pointless and when Chronicle captured her, she fell in love with him and the ideals of his cause. Katejina was young and impressionable, and all that "double agent" talk was probably an excuse to shift any sort of blame away from her, because at that point she still cared what Uso thought of her. Her increasing compliance with and fondness for Chronicle might also be no small degree of Stockholm syndrome.

Maria's ideals were just something Katejina could latch onto. She had no home to go back to, no family, no evident driving ambition in life, and she was looking for solid ground. The notion of a matriarchal society ruled by a miracle-working mother no doubt seemed like a wonderful, enthralling new idea to Katejina. She clearly didn't have much love for her father, or show even the slightest concern for his unknown fate at Woowig. BESPA's idealism must have given her a sense of purpose, whereas growing up in the population reserve with a bunch of spoiled Federation elite never likely enamoured her to the Federation.

While some might say Katejina is underdeveloped or makes illogical changes in character, I'd argue that I think we're shown just enough to wonder how it happened. I think the point is that we're supposed to take those clues and speculate with them. There was clearly something terribly broken in that psyche of hers, and the viewers are likely intentionally left in the dark on what combination of circumstances led her down that dark road.

That's just my take on the character, though. I think it might have better served more viewers if Tomino had simply spelled out some of her development more explicitly, but personally I like the subtle hints early on.

A major theme of Victory Gundam (and to various extents Tomino's other Gundam works) was the immaturity of adults, which ran parallel to Tomino's presentation of the immaturity of war. Victory Gundam in particular explored the role of motherhood in this theme, and Katejina was the most pure embodiment of the antithesis to motherhood. That and she was just a friggin psychopath.

Remember that Tomino was going through his divorce at the time of making Victory. This series is perhaps the most hazarous Gundam for women, right shrike team?

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Aun cuando mil millones de personas acepten una idea absurda, sigue siendo absurda.
Although a thousand million people accept an absurd idea, it still is an absurd idea
-Henry I. Miller

http://www.tropicalgunpla.com A blog on spanish for making gunpla in Central America

Katejina seems to be an extreme version of Reccoa Londe she not only had an war destroy her life she was raised in an very screwed up home. she was ripe for the brainwashing.

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