Mospeada and 08th MS Team (SPOILERS)

[Mafty]

Maybe this is overthinking it, but did anyone else think there are more than a few similarities between Gundam the 08th MS Team and Gensis Climber Mospeada? For example we have the setting as being a long, gritty ground war in the Jungle (SE Asia in 08thMS and South America in Mospeda), where the characters largely make do with limited and modified mech supplies. The main character has a black and white view of everything until he falls in love with an enemy pilot (Aina in 08th MS, and Aisha in Mospeada). Several characters seem like expies (Jim is a traumatized veteran who has deep regret from his past just like Terry, Mint is the plucky redheaded tag a long, just like Kiki, Yellow is a long haired musician, just like Eledore).

Again maybe I'm overanalyzing this , and these are hardly and exact match story wise, but what does everyone else think?

[Seto Kaiba]

You are definitely overthinking it.

There's no long, gritty, ground war in the jungle in MOSPEADA. There's like... one, maybe two, episodes in the South American jungles. Most of the series main plot takes place in North America, with the final arcs occurring in New York and then Michigan. Stick Bernard's band of rebels fight a bunch of little skirmishes with Invit patrols on their way to the main Invit hive of Reflex Point. Only three of the six man band are actual soldiers - Stick, Yellow, and Jim - while the others are locals who've simply gotten roped up in their business for one reason or other. Aisha isn't a pilot either, and Stick's band has good reason to have their view of the Invit given that the Invit are literally-faceless mooks indifferent to casualties who invaded Earth without any kind of attempt to communicate, obliterated most of civilization, and left the outsystem colonies so swamped with refugees that they devolved into a totalitarian hellhole just to be able to feed their people.

At no point do the characters in MOSPEADA make do with modified mecha. They are conspicuously well-equipped simply by recovering the gear ignored by the Invit after they wiped out pockets of resistance from the previous landing operations.

[Chris]

If anything, 08th M.S. Team bears more of a resemblance to VOTOMS' Kummen arc for the jungle combat. They both kind of have that feeling of "Vietnam but with mecha." I don't really see anything that connects 08th thematically to Mospeada.