Harshin' the MS Igloo Buzz

[toysdream]

It's not surprising that one might get the same kind of vibe from MS Igloo as from Gundam 0083, since they're by the same director. However, once you draw that comparison, I think MS Igloo comes out looking a little better. Rather than spouting ridiculous propaganda about liberty and justice and purity, as Delaz and Gato do in Gundam 0083, the MS Igloo characters are constantly having their noses rubbed in the grandiose ambitions and political infighting that come along with fighting for a dysfunctional fascist dictatorship. Both series draw a similar Zeon-Nazi parallel, but MS Igloo doesn't go overboard celebrating it.

-- Mark

[J-Lead]

...but Nazi-like tendancies have been around ever since MSG...

I'm so tempted to contest this, as I often do when somebody makes the claim that distinct Nazi parallels were around in original series, but I fear I'll be shoving this thread far off topic.

Gihren? His own father compared him to Hitler, and his speeches really justify the comparison more than anything, not to mention the Zeon flag, which looks like someone photoshopped the Swatstika out and put in the Zeon Emblem, and those are only a few examples. While I suppose "tendancies" may be the wrong word to use here, it certainly gives them room for comparison.

[Mark064]

Except the Zeon flag was not seen in First Gundam from what I remember the first time we saw the Zeon flag was in the opening to Gundam 0083. Gihren was pretty much the only Nazi tendenacy of First Gundam, but that doesn't turn the whole organization into a Nazi organization.

[J-Lead]

Except the Zeon flag was not seen in First Gundam from what I remember the first time we saw the Zeon flag was in the opening to Gundam 0083.

Was it really not shown? I must have been thinking of some game footage then...

[Mark064]

Game footage has been throwing it in for quite a while stuff like Gihren's Greed so it wouldn't be surprising.

[Kishiria]

Except the Zeon flag was not seen in First Gundam from what I remember the first time we saw the Zeon flag was in the opening to Gundam 0083.

Was it really not shown? I must have been thinking of some game footage then...

The Zeon flag was seen once in the original series/set of movies. If you watch Garma's funeral, you see a number of soldiers carrying an unfurled flag with the Zeon crest on it. The flag...is pink.

Except for the use of the word "sieg" and Giren's conversation with his father about Hitler, there isn't a whole lot of Nazi imagery in the first series, and all of it connected with one member of the Zabi family.

[Chris]

It's not surprising that one might get the same kind of vibe from MS Igloo as from Gundam 0083, since they're by the same director. However, once you draw that comparison, I think MS Igloo comes out looking a little better. Rather than spouting ridiculous propaganda about liberty and justice and purity, as Delaz and Gato do in Gundam 0083, the MS Igloo characters are constantly having their noses rubbed in the grandiose ambitions and political infighting that come along with fighting for a dysfunctional fascist dictatorship. Both series draw a similar Zeon-Nazi parallel, but MS Igloo doesn't go overboard celebrating it.

-- Mark

I'll agree that substantively, IGLOO is less Nazi-rific, because the crew of the poor old Jotunheim is constantly having their lives put at risk for the sake of useless propaganda that accomplishes nothing. However, visually, IGLOO goes way overboard, whether it's the aforementioned Zeon flag with Oliver's face superimposed, or every single second of screentime that's devoted to Herbert "I Wish I Was a Nazi!" Von Kuspen.

[wing zero alpha]

Both series draw a similar Zeon-Nazi parallel, but MS Igloo doesn't go overboard celebrating it.

I'm not sure if I'd say that. Despite the storyline in MS Igloo and how the Jotunheim crew is constantly screwed over by the REMFs of Zeon, there was never any real negativity shown toward Zeon's role in the war. In fact, here the Zeons are almost represented as a righteous army that's sticking it to the corrupt Federation: the Zeon flag waving in the background, Oliver's little montage during the final episode about the glorious final fight (reminds me of an old propoganda movie on Wake Island), not to mention the lack of any references to the atrocities Zeon had committed during the war such as how they never showed nukes being used at Loum, or hell, nobody even mentioned why there was a Battle of Loum in the first place.

Really, aside from the likes of Herbert Von Kuspen and how the Jotunheim is constantly being put under, a first time Gundam fan would likely think that the Zeon are the "good guys" in the One Year War. And for whatever reason the Nazi undertones add onto the "coolness factor" of it, thus reinforcing the idea.

[toysdream]

I'll agree that substantively, IGLOO is less Nazi-rific, because the crew of the poor old Jotunheim is constantly having their lives put at risk for the sake of useless propaganda that accomplishes nothing.

And more to the point, the ways in which they get screwed over - political infighting, nationalistic propaganda, vainglorious wastes of time and energy - are characteristic of real-world dictatorships. Most of the incidents in MS Igloo seem to be inspired by the historical follies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and I think they do a pretty good job of illustrating why fascist dictatorships tend to lose their wars.

However, visually, IGLOO goes way overboard, whether it's the aforementioned Zeon flag with Oliver's face superimposed, or every single second of screentime that's devoted to Herbert "I Wish I Was a Nazi!" Von Kuspen.

The flag scenes didn't bother me - they're generally accompanied by Oliver's musings about his latest pointless propaganda exercise, so if anything the note of nationalist patriotism seems like a deliberate irony. It's not like the flag-waving is a backdrop for a Gato-style rant about liberating oppressed spacenoids with his big throbbing sword of justice.


As for Herbert von Kuspen, I haven't seen the final episodes, so I don't have a first-hand reaction to that plot element. However, I'd note that the notion of a Zeon SS was implicit in the original series, which established the existence of a Zeon "royal guard." The Japanese term 親衛隊 is used interchangeably for the Nazi SS, the Roman Praetorian Guard, the U.S. Secret Service, and so on. MS Igloo evidently decided to model the Zeon royal guard on the SS, depicting them as meddling political officers with a direct line to the ruling dictatorship. Since the Principality of Zeon is a dictatorship, that seems like fair game.

-- Mark

[Mark064]

The Zeon flag was seen once in the original series/set of movies. If you watch Garma's funeral, you see a number of soldiers carrying an unfurled flag with the Zeon crest on it. The flag...is pink.

Do you happen to have a screenshot of this or something? I tried to find it through episode 12 but had no luck. I don't have the movies on hand so can't check that but the scenes should be the same.

[flamingtroll]

I'm not sure if I'd say that. Despite the storyline in MS Igloo and how the Jotunheim crew is constantly screwed over by the REMFs of Zeon, there was never any real negativity shown toward Zeon's role in the war. In fact, here the Zeons are almost represented as a righteous army that's sticking it to the corrupt Federation: the Zeon flag waving in the background, Oliver's little montage during the final episode about the glorious final fight (reminds me of an old propoganda movie on Wake Island), not to mention the lack of any references to the atrocities Zeon had committed during the war such as how they never showed nukes being used at Loum, or hell, nobody even mentioned why there was a Battle of Loum in the first place.

I think thats just nitpicking honestly. The targeted the audience would have been people that have seen MSG, so there is no point in showing Zeon with the same perspective that is a common knowledge. And it's not like they didn't show the horrible things Zeon did. They did show the colony drop. Just because Zeon is "evil" doesn't mean everybody working under it would be "evil". I am pretty sure there are plenty of average people in the ranks of Zeon that just want everything to be over quickly like most people on Jotunheim. As Mark pointed out about flag and how they show the Zudah propaganda as a parody to WWII propaganda, I am pretty sure it is far from trying to glorify Zeon. It has more to do with the story of the average nameless Zeon officer than anything else.

For a show that was originally just something to play at the Bandai museum for entertainment, most of you guys are way too picky about it. I guess I can expect a review for Gundam: The Ride soon as well . I personally found IgLoo to be a lot of fun as a brainless MS CG animation. The fight scenes are more exciting than most Gundam series.

[wing zero alpha]

The targeted the audience would have been people that have seen MSG, so there is no point in showing Zeon with the same perspective that is a common knowledge. And it's not like they didn't show the horrible things Zeon did. They did show the colony drop.

I know the targetted audience would have been people that have seen MSG, I used the phrase as an example to show how one-sided the series was; to me it even surpassed Gundam 0080 and 0083 in terms of the "Sieg Zeon! Hell yeah!" element. As for the colony drop, okay, I grant you they showed that. However, when they did show it it was in passing, a "horrors of war" kind of thing almost like it was an accident; they never showed that it was the Zeon that dropped the colony, and I'm sure there's more than enough people that would love to wipe that little segment out of canon.

Just because Zeon is "evil" doesn't mean everybody working under it would be "evil". I am pretty sure there are plenty of average people in the ranks of Zeon that just want everything to be over quickly like most people on Jotunheim. As Mark pointed out about flag and how they show the Zudah propaganda as a parody to WWII propaganda, I am pretty sure it is far from trying to glorify Zeon. It has more to do with the story of the average nameless Zeon officer than anything else.

Dude, are we even watching the same series? The whole series was practically about glorifying the central cause through the eyes of the "nameless soldier" and how far they were all willing to go for their own beliefs and the associated Glory of the Cause (TM), just like any propoganda movie. Just because the protagonists get screwed over by the REMFs off and on doesn't make it any less; in fact, it only drives them further into combat, thus giving viewers the feeling that what they're fighting and dying for really is noble and just. I've seen that kind of formula used more than once in real life propoganda films, so I like to think I can pick it out when I see it.

You use the Zudah propoganda as an example of the series showing the flaws in Zeon. I guarantee that Jean-Luc "109 Pilot Wannabe" Duvall's stint at the end of the episode completely overrode that and now people hold the Zudah as another reason why Zeon is so cool. The other episodes were much the same way; the series did generally show that Zeon High Command are a very questionable bunch in terms of tactical warfare, but not once did it show Zeon as a whole as the "evil army" that it was in MSG and all the way up to the OYW OVAs where it got changed over to the "misunderstood good guy faction". Sure, there are always "good soldiers" that make up any military, but that shouldn't be used to discourage the fact that the said military was a facist organization and what they did during their respective war far outweighs any level of evil that their enemy had committed.

If this was all centered around a real world event, I'd be tempted to chalk it up there with Holocaust Denial and the attempts to rewrite history to show that Nazi Germany and Japan were entirely justified with their actions in World War II.

The fight scenes are more exciting than most Gundam series.

That much I'll agree on. The Battle of A Bao A Qu in CG alone almost made me think the series was worth slogging through, although I wish they didn't stick Oliver in another "mecha of the week" and just gave him a regular Bigro. Then again, I also wish they didn't bother with the mecha of the week formula at all, but that's asking for alot.

[Kratos]

Personally, I think you're making Zeon out to be a little more evil than they actually are. Yeah, they're a military dictatorship. That does NOT automatically put them on the same level as the Nazis, at least not as far as I'm concerned. Zeon did not engage in the systematic genocide of "inferior races". Sure, Gihren spewed on and on about the superiority of Spacenoids, twisting Deikun's Contolism to his own needs in the process, but he didn't go around purging Side 3 of all Earthborn citizens. Obviously, their atrocities cannot be ignored (it seems a bit moot to say that Operation British and all the initial gassings and nukings and such were apparently attempts to end the war through early overwhelmings of the Federation's forces, as that hardly excuses them), but notice that the atrocities were far less once WMDs were outlawed by the Antarctic Treaty. MS IgLoo doesn't show Operation British in any great detail probably because any Gundam fan even remotely familiar with the UC series knows all about it, and not because the show's writers have some insidious agenda of erasing that event from canon.

I think it's important to note that Zeon has parallels to Nazi Germany, and that they aren't (and were probably never meant to be) a society of evil on the same level. What's wrong with showing the common soldier fighting for his homeland, even in the face of great adversity coming both from without and within said homeland? I don't think IgLoo says anything about the "greater cause" of Zeon. Hell, I don't think any of the soldiers in the series were fighting for some greater cause. It seemed to me like they were just fighting for the sake of their homeland, like many of the grunt soldiers in any number of dictatorships throughout history. Gihren's spacenoid propaganda isn't even MENTIONED in IgLoo; how can the series be about "how far [Zeon soldiers] were all willing to go for their own beliefs and the associated Glory of the Cause (TM)" when the so-called Glory of the Cause (TM) isn't even brought up?

So yeah, I wouldn't call Zeon an "evil army". They're very obviously the bad guys, but they're far from being an evil that MUST be defeated if peace and liberty and justice are to persist in the world (ala Nazi Germany).

[wing zero alpha]

@Kratos

I don't want to turn this thread into a "what's evil about Zeon" argument, but I can't ignore your post either. You're right, Zeon can't be compared to the Nazis, as they're a fictional race. However, I can honestly say if whatever they did was real, then they'd be a helluva lot worse.

You also seem to downplay the atrocities Zeon had committed: they did purge the citizenry of Side 3, albeit of Daikun supporters rather than Earthborne citizens, they gassed and nuked Sides 1, 2 and 4 in the first week of the war alone (the One Week War to be exact), then they finished up with 5 during the Battle of Loum, and then there's the colony drop itself that killed numerous populations and caused irrepairable damage to the Earth (ironic considering Daikun valued the Earth healing itself). Even after the Antarctic Treaty, which they violated at least twice during the War, they still managed to do their share of damage, and the inventions of things like the Colony Laser certainly doesn't help their image as a whole, plus you had Gihren's plans for after Zeon had won the war. So if Zeon isn't the "evil army", then tell me, what is?

And yeah, I do have a problem with the "the common soldier fighting for his homeland" depending on the context it's used in, specifically when it involves invading and attempting to subjugate a planet; that'd be like saying the soldiers fighting in Iraq were "just fighting for their homeland", so simplifying it to that explanation seems so ignorant of the big picture. As for the soldiers themselves, for the most part they were fighting for whatever pet project they were assigned to: the Jormungand guy was fighting for the sake of his big cannon, the tank driver was fighting to prove the Hidolfr (sp?) could have been as effective as any mobile suit, and Duvall was fighting to prove that the Zudah was more badass than everyone gave it credit for. Again, this isn't an uncommon practice in propoganda movies, a la soldiers going above and beyond the call of duty for whatever their beliefs are, and even indirectly it all goes toward showing how the faction they're in is a good one that's worthy of the effort. The lack of Gihren's speeches or any of the Zabis appearences for that matter especially bothered me as well, because it felt like another effort to downplay how truly bad Zeon was (and since the director is the same guy that did 0083, where the Zeon used nuclear warfare and a colony drop and still came across as the "misunderstood good guys", I'm not surprised).

[Kavik Ryx]

How about this, it's a perspective piece. Like if someone made a movie about Nazi soldiers, and left the politics out of it, and focused on the battles and why they lost.

[domtropen]

Ryer in 08th MS Team did want to blow Zeon base up by "accidental" nuke, but he happens to misunderstand how Minovsky's fusion reactor work. Then in Zeta we have Bask who is willing to gas and beam anyone dare opposing Titans [through the treaty is void by that time it is still the use of wmds against the whole population with full intention].

[VentZX]

Ryer in 08th MS Team did want to blow Zeon base up by "accidental" nuke, but he happens to misunderstand how Minovsky's fusion reactor work. Then in Zeta we have Bask who is willing to gas and beam anyone dare opposing Titans [through the treaty is void by that time it is still the use of wmds against the whole population with full intention].

I don't see how that applies here. No one questions that Bask and his Titans were evil. What WZA is saying is that people try to downplay Zeon's atrocities and show them in a good light. It's not properly shown in the original series, but Zeons campaign threatened the human race with extinction. I think that's pretty evil.

[toysdream]

Gihren's spacenoid propaganda isn't even MENTIONED in IgLoo; how can the series be about "how far [Zeon soldiers] were all willing to go for their own beliefs and the associated Glory of the Cause (TM)" when the so-called Glory of the Cause (TM) isn't even brought up?

This is why MS Igloo strikes me as far less Zeon-glorifying than, say, Gundam 0083. Both series are full of Nazi and fascist imagery, but in Gundam 0083 this is accompanied by endless speechifying and applause-generating propaganda; in MS Igloo it's accompanied by object lessons in the stupidity of the Zeon leadership and the dysfunctional nature of military dictatorships. MS Igloo, in other words, seems like a (mild) critique of fascist armies rather than a celebration as 0083 did.

Not to mention that the soldiers who die in battle in MS Igloo generally do so for their own petty personal reasons, not as sacrifices for the glory of the fatherland. All the "guest test pilots" are driven by their own grudges and agendas, and as far as I remember none of them died shouting "Sieg Zeon!"

-- Mark

[flamingtroll]

And yeah, I do have a problem with the "the common soldier fighting for his homeland" depending on the context it's used in, specifically when it involves invading and attempting to subjugate a planet; that'd be like saying the soldiers fighting in Iraq were "just fighting for their homeland", so simplifying it to that explanation seems so ignorant of the big picture.

And what can the common soldier do within a big picture that they can't change? Steal a prototype Gundam and defect? Most of the crew on Jotunheim besides Monique doesn't even seem to be subscribing to any political ideal other than just trying to do their assignment

As for the soldiers themselves, for the most part they were fighting for whatever pet project they were assigned to: the Jormungand guy was fighting for the sake of his big cannon, the tank driver was fighting to prove the Hidolfr (sp?) could have been as effective as any mobile suit, and Duvall was fighting to prove that the Zudah was more badass than everyone gave it credit for. Again, this isn't an uncommon practice in propoganda movies, a la soldiers going above and beyond the call of duty for whatever their beliefs are, and even indirectly it all goes toward showing how the faction they're in is a good one that's worthy of the effort.

Notice how, with the exception of Monique's brother, they are all portrayed as either nuts or psychologically disturbed people that ended up dead in the end? Sure the show is trying to show them in a more sympathetic light, but that is far from glorifying them. The impression I got from watching them is that they are nuts that truly believed in whatever they are doing, but that doesn't make them any more heroic than most mentally ill people. If you think people would truly start thinking that "ZOMG ZEON IS SO COOL" from watching them act, you are seriously undermining the intelligence of the average viewer.

And you really have to show how showcasing these people will

" and even indirectly it all goes toward showing how the faction they're in is a good one that's worthy of the effort."

If anything they just show how they got screwed over by Zeon by putting them is crappy prototypes and send them out anyway without a thought.

The lack of Gihren's speeches or any of the Zabis appearences for that matter especially bothered me as well, because it felt like another effort to downplay how truly bad Zeon was (and since the director is the same guy that did 0083, where the Zeon used nuclear warfare and a colony drop and still came across as the "misunderstood good guys", I'm not surprised).

That's hilarious. If they show his speech, it would be adverting Zeon ideology to you. If they don't, they are trying to cover Zeon's ass to you. So to you, any attempt to show Zeon as anything but evil will be inclined toward advertising for Zeon?

[domtropen]

Ryer's and Bask's motive simply show that at least some of the fed's soldiers are willing to kill all opposition regardless of the treaty [Ryer is in OYW so Antarctic Treaty applies] or morality, so they are more or less as bad as Zeon in term of the will to commit mass murder. The ridiculous inactivity and the readiness to bow down to threatening forces unless someone [Revil, Bright, etc.] show up to rally for the fight is just another form of evil. Also after just a few moments we have the fed allowing the whole city to be colony dropped [ZZ] with one of the reasons is so that there will be less people on Earth... If Zeon is needed to be reminded as evil all the time then the viewer should be reminded that the fed is not the perfect good guy too.