For a longest time I’ve held my moral reservations about the world of Gundam. This reservation has turned something close to aversion to the morals of the franchise triggered when I last went to Japan.
The problem is that, knowing the actions of the Imperial Japan of yesterday, I find Japanese fan’s attraction toward villains of the metaseries to be offensive… but I’m not here to talk about that.
Let us assume that every story have a point to tell. Then what is the story of AoZ? It is this: that actions of the Titans were excusable, just because they had cool looking MS.
That the fascist world order they were building was acceptable because they were following orders, with plenty of sex and machines to go around.
What traversity.
Does AoZ glorify fascism?
Does AoZ glorify fascism?
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
~ Lyndon B. Johnson
~ Lyndon B. Johnson
Well, you'll have to remember that the UC verse is first and foremost the story of a war. In all wars, the bad guys don't always lose- Hitler wouldn't have gotten very far otherwise- and its also important to view the story in context. I guarantee that a Nazi (or Neo- Nazi) would have a very different view of World War II than what we're used to. AoZ is basically the story of what a team of Titans test pilots did during Zeta (if I remember the timeframe correctly) therefore it will obviously give us the Titans side of the story.
Were their actions correct? Were the Titans really good people overall? Definitely not. However, you won't catch a Titans member saying that, just as you'd never have caught a Nazi condemning Hitler- not openly at least. Why then should we expect open condemnation of the Titans in a Titans story?
If, however, we were shown an AEUG member saying that the Titans were actually the good guys then that would be over the line. To my knowledge, however, that did not happen.
As for viewers rooting for the bad guys, lets just say that there are some who get pretty bored of seeing the protagonists rush in and decimate evil with the power of love and friendship. Its twisted, I know, but lets just live with it.
Were their actions correct? Were the Titans really good people overall? Definitely not. However, you won't catch a Titans member saying that, just as you'd never have caught a Nazi condemning Hitler- not openly at least. Why then should we expect open condemnation of the Titans in a Titans story?
If, however, we were shown an AEUG member saying that the Titans were actually the good guys then that would be over the line. To my knowledge, however, that did not happen.
Once again, that might be exactly what a Titans Test Team member might tell you, and I do not see how that can be inappropriate in a story about the Titans Test Team.saneman wrote:That the fascist world order they were building was acceptable because they were following orders, with plenty of sex and machines to go around.
As for viewers rooting for the bad guys, lets just say that there are some who get pretty bored of seeing the protagonists rush in and decimate evil with the power of love and friendship. Its twisted, I know, but lets just live with it.
If you want to get readings of potential Japanese nationalism in anime, you can do much better (or worse, depending on your perspective) than Gundam. I think, saneman, that you are confusing the moral ambiguity that is more common in Gundam (avoiding complete black-white juxtapositioning) for an endorsement for a particular political philosophy, and I am afraid that is not the case.
Recon 5 said:
To veer offtopic slightly, good and bad are so delightful concepts in philosophical terms. Suffice to say that we can all stand to benefit from the realization that there is very little in the way of absolute, incomprehensible evil in this world. Evil acts are usually committed by people, and people are by definition, human. Ergo, there is something fundamentally human about said evil actions. I see it as a bigger problem when people pretend evil is somehow aberrant, because that undercuts the important understanding that regular people are capable of evil acts, have been and undoubtedly will be.
Recon 5 said:
I am willing to say that there is a difference already in Russian-European understandings, as there is in European-US. But that's politics and history.I guarantee that a Nazi (or Neo- Nazi) would have a very different view of World War II than what we're used to.
To veer offtopic slightly, good and bad are so delightful concepts in philosophical terms. Suffice to say that we can all stand to benefit from the realization that there is very little in the way of absolute, incomprehensible evil in this world. Evil acts are usually committed by people, and people are by definition, human. Ergo, there is something fundamentally human about said evil actions. I see it as a bigger problem when people pretend evil is somehow aberrant, because that undercuts the important understanding that regular people are capable of evil acts, have been and undoubtedly will be.
Last edited by Antares on Sun Feb 10, 2008 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-We will not be caught by surprise!
*Almost everyone I've killed uttered similar last words.
-Then I am glad once again that you are on my side.
*They've often said that too.
*Almost everyone I've killed uttered similar last words.
-Then I am glad once again that you are on my side.
*They've often said that too.
AoZ does have Titans as the main characters, but these guys were never the ones who were gassing colonies and kicking puppies and all that. They were simply the test pilots for a whole branch of MS, and probably didn't know about any of that. It's quite similar to how some branches of the Nazi military had nothing to do with the Holocaust and yet still had people coming down on them for it.
And honestly, AoZ doesn't annoy me so much as the rabid Zeon fans who try to mitigate the mass murder as a necessary step to win independence from an evil Earth government, whose most evil act was simply being a bunch of lazy buggers.
And honestly, AoZ doesn't annoy me so much as the rabid Zeon fans who try to mitigate the mass murder as a necessary step to win independence from an evil Earth government, whose most evil act was simply being a bunch of lazy buggers.
Sakuya: "Whatever. Stop lying and give up your schemes, now."
Yukari: (Which lies and schemes are she talking about? It's hard to keep track of them all...)
-Touhou 07.5 ~ Immaterial and Missing Power
Yukari: (Which lies and schemes are she talking about? It's hard to keep track of them all...)
-Touhou 07.5 ~ Immaterial and Missing Power
"Moral reservations"...?
No offense to anybody involved, but generally when I hear that term, it means that counterarguments are pointless, since the one who used that term is usually unwilling to listen to any viewpoints other than his/her own. So, everyone please forgive me if I come off somewhat cynical in my response...
The first thing that pops up in my head is, "have you ever read Advance of Zeta or know anything about it?" Forgive my assumption, but I've had to deal with questions like this, mostly from conservative Christians attacking Silent Hill and Shin Megami Tensei, two much-beloved franchises of mine, for "devil-worshipping." I also have conservative Christian friends who know that this accusation is wholly ignorant, because anyone who has bothered to play Silent Hill knows that it certainly doesn't condone Satanism and is really about a father's devotion to his daughter. So, a knee-jerk reaction to such a broad-based and odd statement is to wonder just how ignorant the speaker is regarding the material.
For starters, the Gundam franchise is about war. Yoshiyuki Tomino had always opted to present war from an ambivalent point of view. Why is this? Consider Japan's position in the Pacific Conflict: director's of Tomino's age group grew up with images of Japanese atrocities, as well as the brutal carpet bombings that their cities were subject to. Tomino, Kurosawa, and many others adopted that imagery into their film and made their anti-war and anti-nationalistic sentiments clear. However, they weren't stupid enough to believe that, if their side had committed heinous deeds, then the other side must be snow-white and pure. The Universal Century is but one of many stories that reflect this ambivalence toward human conflict, painting it under the heading of "the tragedy of mankind" rather than "good vs. evil," and anyone who thinks otherwise is likely missing the point.
I can't speak for the person who brought this subject up, but I know I have no interest in watching, say, a WWII film where the average German soldier is cackling about gassing Jews before his breakfast of streudel and bratwursts. I'd feel like my intelligence had been insulted... and I'd even go so far as to say that anyone should feel that way... and if they don't feel insulted, then maybe they deserve to be. One of the beauties of the Universal Century is that, to a large extent, both sides of the conflict are depicted as having soldiers who all genuinely want to do the right thing... the problem is how to go about it. From what I've read of Tomino's novels, this comes to light even more than in the animation. Subsequent directors of UC stories have also tried to take this approach, with varying degrees of success.
The average Titan soldier didn't get off on oppressing Spacenoids and gassing the colonies. They all had memories of the atrocities committed by Zeon during the One Year War, and wanted to prevent that sort of thing from ever happening again. How many nations in our world use the same ideals? A strong military and centralized control is the hope of suppressing rebellion, whether it actually works or not. The Titans weren't supposed to come off as Saturday morning cartoon villains, though they sometimes would (nowhere near as bad as ZZ's Neo Zeon, though), and we were given characters that we could care about and sometimes sympathize with.
Why? Because they were human. Movements like this, like Nazi Germany, came about because well-meaning people went too far. If we refuse to acknowledge that, then we're only waiting for the day we do it ourselves.
In any case, I find it amusing (and bemusing) that the author of this topic is questioning the "morality" (as if stories were supposed to have morals... sorry, I follow the Oscar Wilde camp) of a franchise that, more than anything, would remind the Japanese people to never forget the horrors of war and why they've since taken their anti-war stance. I don't understand how that can be traced back to "frothing nationalism" or "offensive militarism."
No offense to anybody involved, but generally when I hear that term, it means that counterarguments are pointless, since the one who used that term is usually unwilling to listen to any viewpoints other than his/her own. So, everyone please forgive me if I come off somewhat cynical in my response...
The first thing that pops up in my head is, "have you ever read Advance of Zeta or know anything about it?" Forgive my assumption, but I've had to deal with questions like this, mostly from conservative Christians attacking Silent Hill and Shin Megami Tensei, two much-beloved franchises of mine, for "devil-worshipping." I also have conservative Christian friends who know that this accusation is wholly ignorant, because anyone who has bothered to play Silent Hill knows that it certainly doesn't condone Satanism and is really about a father's devotion to his daughter. So, a knee-jerk reaction to such a broad-based and odd statement is to wonder just how ignorant the speaker is regarding the material.
For starters, the Gundam franchise is about war. Yoshiyuki Tomino had always opted to present war from an ambivalent point of view. Why is this? Consider Japan's position in the Pacific Conflict: director's of Tomino's age group grew up with images of Japanese atrocities, as well as the brutal carpet bombings that their cities were subject to. Tomino, Kurosawa, and many others adopted that imagery into their film and made their anti-war and anti-nationalistic sentiments clear. However, they weren't stupid enough to believe that, if their side had committed heinous deeds, then the other side must be snow-white and pure. The Universal Century is but one of many stories that reflect this ambivalence toward human conflict, painting it under the heading of "the tragedy of mankind" rather than "good vs. evil," and anyone who thinks otherwise is likely missing the point.
I can't speak for the person who brought this subject up, but I know I have no interest in watching, say, a WWII film where the average German soldier is cackling about gassing Jews before his breakfast of streudel and bratwursts. I'd feel like my intelligence had been insulted... and I'd even go so far as to say that anyone should feel that way... and if they don't feel insulted, then maybe they deserve to be. One of the beauties of the Universal Century is that, to a large extent, both sides of the conflict are depicted as having soldiers who all genuinely want to do the right thing... the problem is how to go about it. From what I've read of Tomino's novels, this comes to light even more than in the animation. Subsequent directors of UC stories have also tried to take this approach, with varying degrees of success.
The average Titan soldier didn't get off on oppressing Spacenoids and gassing the colonies. They all had memories of the atrocities committed by Zeon during the One Year War, and wanted to prevent that sort of thing from ever happening again. How many nations in our world use the same ideals? A strong military and centralized control is the hope of suppressing rebellion, whether it actually works or not. The Titans weren't supposed to come off as Saturday morning cartoon villains, though they sometimes would (nowhere near as bad as ZZ's Neo Zeon, though), and we were given characters that we could care about and sometimes sympathize with.
Why? Because they were human. Movements like this, like Nazi Germany, came about because well-meaning people went too far. If we refuse to acknowledge that, then we're only waiting for the day we do it ourselves.
In any case, I find it amusing (and bemusing) that the author of this topic is questioning the "morality" (as if stories were supposed to have morals... sorry, I follow the Oscar Wilde camp) of a franchise that, more than anything, would remind the Japanese people to never forget the horrors of war and why they've since taken their anti-war stance. I don't understand how that can be traced back to "frothing nationalism" or "offensive militarism."
"This is the truth! This is my belief. At least for now."
The Gundam franchise has never glorified any of the evils perpetrated during its run. The Federation was the more heroic of the two sides in the classic Gundam because the Zeons were gassing colonies and following a lunatic with a God complex. Zeta was written in such a way as to make us root for the AEUG because the Titans were bunch of murderous thugs.
I thinkAoZ set out to humanize some of the soldiers who comprised the Titans task force, as they were rather one-dimensional in Zeta. Zeon was much the same. Overall, it needed to be destroyed before they carried out more attrocities, but a lot of the guys on the front lines were decent people fighting for a cause they believed in. It doesn't make up for all the horrible things the Titans did, but it's a reminder there's more to the story than "Raaargh! Titans bad!"
Life isn't black and white. Gundam often reminds us of that fact. Trying to evoke sympathy for a group of soldiers isn't some subversive attempt to make us root for the Titans.
I thinkAoZ set out to humanize some of the soldiers who comprised the Titans task force, as they were rather one-dimensional in Zeta. Zeon was much the same. Overall, it needed to be destroyed before they carried out more attrocities, but a lot of the guys on the front lines were decent people fighting for a cause they believed in. It doesn't make up for all the horrible things the Titans did, but it's a reminder there's more to the story than "Raaargh! Titans bad!"
Life isn't black and white. Gundam often reminds us of that fact. Trying to evoke sympathy for a group of soldiers isn't some subversive attempt to make us root for the Titans.
This space for rent
-
ShadowCell
- Moderator
- Posts: 4716
- Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2006 12:59 pm
- Location: California
- Contact:
I do think there's something to be said for the idea of portraying a conflict through the eyes of someone who's clearly the villain. To go back to the WWII analogy, I think the German film Der Untergang, about the last days of Hitler and his entourage in their bunker, does a good job of this. One critic compared the portrayal of Hitler to a rabid dog--it evokes sympathy in the viewer, but the viewer still accepts that it must be destroyed for the greater good. If anything, it reminds us that evil deeds, be it the Holocaust in WWII or fictional indiscriminate chemical attacks on space colonies in Gundam, are done by human beings, and the potential for such evil exists in everyone--and so, to forget that the ones who propagated such evil were humans is to forget that humans are capable of propagating such evil.
The problem with that is that once you start trying to portray absolute evil as human in spite of its evil, you walk a thin line between "complex and human portrayal" and "outright propaganda."
The problem with that is that once you start trying to portray absolute evil as human in spite of its evil, you walk a thin line between "complex and human portrayal" and "outright propaganda."
how will you define "evil"? when a war starts, both side believe in their cause and their believe is strong enough to take another person life for it. Zeon gases colony because they think its should be done. Titan murder people because they think its necessary. whatever the cause is both side believe they are right, if you know what you are doing is wrong will you continue if given the chance to choose?
SD Gundam Capsule Fighter Online SEA IGN: 8bitNPC