Warning, incoming multi-quote storm (sincerest apologies, I missed a days worth of discussion because I had to finish something from work all day yesterday).
AmuroNT1 wrote:
We ARE talking about the franchise where a couple threw their love at a bad guy in the form of a gigantic pissed-off King of Hearts, aren't we? And the one where rage (and a retconned psychic power device) caused a standard laser sword to grow a mile long? And the one where unified willpower exerted enough force to pull an asteroid out of Earth's gravity well?
I think that it's a matter of execution, meaning/purpose, and proportion. Yes, we had those supernatural moments in other Gundam series, but those didn't hog the spotlight, and they were used with discretion. Battle dynamics weren't defined by those supernatural elements. It wasn't like Char and Amuro had a psychic duel that lead to push Axis away. They had a normal, intense, physical brawl, and circumstance lead to that supernatural component.
Furthermore, a lot of those moments, used sparingly, also had a thematic or narrative point to them, so they weren't just empty displays. When Kamille generated his super beam saber, a huge point of that moment was the accentuation of the concept of newtypes as a state of materialized heightened emotions and passions, and their power and dangers. That was one of many moments in Zeta that built on an idea that eventually had severe dramatic impacts, like the inordinate amount of trauma most of the characters in Zeta experienced, which Kamille himself became a victim of. Tomino propped up the idea of Newtypes to explore whether people could find peace through understanding, and all that supernatural stuff in Zeta was ultimately meant to make a case that understanding wasn't the barrier to peace, and that being able to get in each other's heads and understand each other could cause even more pain and despair rather than hope and solidarity.
The Psychoframe stuff in Unicorn was a materialization of the idea of possibility and hope. Gundam UC worked very hard to set up the payoffs to demonstrate how if we could change a few assumptions about reality miraculous events could change the minds and ways of those who are rightfully cynical about the world, and even then a strong case could be made that they overreached with the supernatural stuff and went too far in the anime. (The novel was much more reserved and deliberate, which is partially what made it better). Even G-Gundam, which shakes more of that former critique, had a narrative and thematic point going for it. That's what made the totem spirit battling in Try somewhat empty IMO.
AmuroNT1 wrote:
I keep explaining this, but nobody seems to listen: With Full Cloth, it's a matter of CONSTANT high-volume particle expenditure. There's a difference between a machine firing a single giant beam, and a machine that uses large amounts of energy for everything it does. Machines like Wing Zero and the Gundam X do expend a lot of energy with their giant main guns, but aside from that they're really no different from ordinary MS. Full Cloth has very powerful thrusters, four I-Field generators (at least one of which is always on), a sword that puts out the power of 14 beam sabers simultaneously, AND the Peacock Smasher.
I have a hard time believing that blowing up a colony and then vaporizing a huge chunk of the Earth uses up less particles than "Full Cloth has very powerful thrusters, four I-Field generators (at least one of which is always on), a sword that puts out the power of 14 beam sabers simultaneously, AND the Peacock Smasher."
Maybe it's believable for you, but I wasn't sold.
AmuroNT1 wrote:
Regarding the power situation, there's something you have to consider. In standard Gundam shows, an MS has multiple power sources: the main reactor/battery, the beam rifle's e-pacs, the beam sabers' e-caps, etc. In Build Fighters, there's only ONE energy source for all of that. My point about Full Cloth is, all its systems operate off of that same source at the same time, and do so at a high level. There's a difference between a machine that operates at normal levels and can throw out a huge attack once or twice, and one that operates at very high levels constantly. One problem is, there's no quantified measure of particle usage; we don't know how much it costs to fly for one minute, or to use a beam saber, or to fire a hyper launcher-class weapon (and if we did, that'd probably just open an even BIGGER can of worms).
Also, I really don't get this idea we've been seeing that Lukas was a terrible fighter simply because he didn't destroy any of Celestial Sphere's Gunpla. Is that some sort of ironclad measure of badassery now? He still held off three world-class opponents at the same time, by himself, and managed to severely damage all three. That's pretty impressive in my book. Also, he DID deal crippling damage to the G-Portent; saying it doesn't count just because Shia had a repair system that nobody knew about is nonsense.
I think the problem a lot of us are bringing up isn't so much that you can't find reasons to explain these problems and discrepancies away, but that the writing was poor enough to create these problems in the first place. Similarly the criticism about the Lucas fight isn't so much about Lucas himself (and how good or bad a builder/battler he is), but about how flat the fight felt because they hyped up Lucas to be some terror in the battlefield, and his performance didn't live up to the hype. The problem isn't with Lucas the character, but the way they wrote Lucas's part of the story.
Amion wrote:
I didn't like the fact it blew up the world, though. That was poor DBZ choreography just for the sake of it. I'm glad other viewers enjoyed it but it for me sums the total for everything I disliked in TRY: its attempt at seriousness. The tone of this series was intentionally less comedic than the original, replacing it with a childish solemnity common to shounen. Without the self-deprecating humor or meaningful character development it just falls flat.
Thank you!
Just saying a series like TRY is excused for its flaws simply because of its genre fails horribly as an excuse for bad writing when a show of the same genre accomplishes more with the same basic material.
...and thank you!
BF really won me over when they took jabs at Tatsuya's own self seriousness for becoming the masked man trope in Gundam, and most of the show's interactions were littered with that whimsical meta-humour. BF was that fun love letter. Try had none of that, which definitely created a vacuum in the list of good qualities.