Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam

[Freakzilla]

Originally Posted by -=Masakari=-

Why would you buy a bootleg set of Z Gundam when Anime-Gundam has fansubbed the entire show...? Ditto with ASS's cleaned up HK rips of ZZ Gundam.

Who knows.....:) Some people just like owning bootlegs I guess for whatever reason..... I know people over at macrossworld who buy the Macross Zero bootleg DVD's just because they want a version on DVD, they know it isn't coming out commercially any time soon with English subs on it, and they'll put up with the bootleg even if the subs aren't as good as the fansubs.

I don't get it myself, but I think maybe there's something that some people like about being able to have something tangible, regardless of how legit it is.

I think some people also sometimes just prefer to be able to watch something on their TV.

-Freakzilla

[greektornado]

Episode 1

The artwork here is incredible; old-style yet magnificent.
The fact that Kamille got that pissed because someone made a joke of his name strikes me as odd. I'm guessing there is a back story. (Which would also explain why he snapped and assaulted that guard).
Char reappears (at still i think it's Char) and flashes his mad piloting skills
I wonder when the old crew from MSG0079 will appear. It was weird seeing them all-grown up in the opening.

Episode 2

Kamille establishes himself as a hot-headed raging badass. He steals a mobile suit in front of the soldiers, and uses it to jerk around the guy who struck him. He even attempts an evil laugh! I'm starting to like this kid.
I guess the Titans are the villains in the show, and the AEUG and Bright's crew are the good guys.
But damn it was harsh seeing Bright get beaten like that

Episode 3

The Titans do NOT joke around. Using a runaway teenager's parents as ransom. Woah.
Emma sees the darker side of the Titans, one more reason for her to defect.
And Kamille's reasons for fighting are increased by watching his mother die.
I find it difficult to differentiate between AEUG's Rick Dias and the other suits. Also for some reason the Titans' mobile suits are styled like Zeon's low-level suits. Confusing...

Episode 4

Emma pulls off the old switcharoo and gets two more mobile suits for AEUG. Score one for the good guys! (At least i think they are good...)

Episode 5

Scumbag father on the frontlines. Screws everyone just to play around with mobile suits. He will not be missed.
But damn he destroyed Char's red suit! Now what will he ride?!

Episode 6

Not much to comment. Kamille seems to have a teenage crush on Reccoa, simillar to Amuro in 0079

Episode 7

So the Titans also destroyed a space colony on the fear of their inhabitants becoming Newtypes. Where do these guys stop?
Kamille gets his first kill, which also gives the blond guy another reason to fight against him.

Episode 8-12

Lots of action. I noticed that unlike other installments of MSG, in this one the Gundams are not horibly over-powered compared to the other suits. Which is good i guess.
Story-wise, i'm not getting much, but that's usually the issue with MSG in the first few episodes.
The crew from 0079 is making it's way into the main cast. Kai with a white suit and a lasso was priceless...

Episode 13-18

Amuro becomes the center of attention for this portion of the show. The guy is rusty after 7 years of his "captivity" in earth, and not too eager to step into space again.
He slowly regains his confidence and even find himself a girlfriend. That's our hero!
We also have two occurrences of Cyber-Newtypes, which i'm guessing is a lab-grown Newtype (like the ones in 00).
I liked the episodes in Honk Kong. And dayum, that's one big-ass Gundam

[starsmine]

AHG watching ZZ gundam after I finished zeta... FUCK THIS SHIT IS BAD.
ok parts of it are bad, episode 1 and 5 was so god damn awful.

Just finished episode 5, Fa was a god damn DECENT pilot WTF happened to her. all the sudden this is her first time in a mobile suit. Stupid line after stupid line.
"you showing your ass at me to turn me on?" or some shit like that when the zeta did a tactical retreat.
I knew going in this show was not going to be as well done as zeta but holy mother of god.

And to the damn intro, yes this is an anime, stop saying its not -.-


"Is the boss some fag with a rose?" Fuck that line. -.-

anyone able to tell me it gets slightly better?

[Funkgun]

If you make it about half way, it does get better... not a lot better, but better.

[CBrown]

I have to say, getting this off my chest, that having seen Zeta, I honestly don't know why people like this show. AND having ZZ I do not understand where the hate is coming from. Now, I acknowledge that people have different opinions and as such I normally don't get involved in discussions like this but this is just one case where I honestly don't understand the other side, especially not since it seems to be practically universal.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to persuade people otherwise but rather trying to understand what people see in it. Let's be honest here, you're not going to persuade me otherwise nor am I going to be able to persuade you.

So, to be fair, why do I dislike Zeta so much (I'm going to avoid using the word hate and settle for disliking it intensely)? Well, much of it boils down to the characters being completely unlikable. There were only a handful of characters I hoped would come out alive and I can promise you that Kamille was very much... not one of them. I have never... EVER come across a main character so completely unlikable, utterly unrelatable and without charisma. 95% of the time he acts like a complete entitled, spoiled baby and worst of all he is a complete hypocrite who thinks of no-one but himself. He continuously endangers everyone around him to run off on his tantrums then he has the balls to chastise others for killing when he himself is the source of conflict most of the time. Every time he was punched or otherwise suffered I cheered and did a little dance. I want to make this clear that I have NEVER felt so much contempt for a character... ever. When I found out that you could dislike characters on this site, he was one of my first picks.
It really doesn't stop there and I could go deep with how I simply don't understand most of the characters in this series. Their motivations seem to shift about as often as I blink and very few manages to endear themselves to me at all and character deaths that are supposed to be dramatic and meaningful are practically moments of joy for me.

So my biggest gripe about this series is definitely the characters. If I went on a "Dislike Character" spree then I imagine most of the Zeta's cast would end up on the list.

But there are also other things, like how the pacing is completely off and most of the time I felt completely lost as to what was going on, more or less just grasping the bare essentials. They went places, fought, went some other place, fought a little more, Kamille had a tantrum, everyone is surprisingly understanding rather than booting the little ****** out the airlock, they go some other place, fight, rinse, repeat, why am I still watching this? This couples with me not understanding anyone's motivations at all which just makes me doubly lost. And no, I didn't see some poor bootleg with shitty subtitles.

Now, I'm not going to go into why I like ZZ since this topic is for Zeta (though to be fair, they're more less the same story since all Zeta did was set up Haman for ZZ in my eyes) but the short of it is: Judau is far more charismatic and enjoyable, the cast is far better rounded, ZZ Gundam is a far cooler mech that Zeta, the plot makes a lot more sense and it has a couple of themes going strong throughout.

So... what did I miss that makes Zeta so good? I'd not care so much was it not because my opinion is more or less the exact opposite of everyone else's.

[Funkgun]

I sure hope the last aim of hate for ZZ was not aimed at me after telling someone they should stick to it and finish the show. I am not sure I have ever spewed hate for this series.

So why do I like Zeta?
Short answer = Zeta has Char Aznable.
But seriously,

I am a mecha fan. Can you Wow me with a war, politics and machines?

It's complex web of who is now the bad guy was cool to me. The introduction of internal factions like the Titans taking too much control and the fact the war was messy, I liked a lot better than an easy 2 sided war.

So why else do I enjoy it?

Fantastic mecha designs.
The Zeta itself is a complex, and detailed machine. It's rifle, placement of beam swords, and transformation ability is great.
I even own it.

For kicks I used to own a mini version of ZetaZaku, you should know what I mean there ;)
The other machines were stellar too. Haman Karn's crazy like looking Qubeley.

Character designs are by one of my favorites. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko if any one knows me well here, knows I am a fan of Crusher Joe and the Original Dirty Pair, in which he also penned.
He left after Zeta leaving it up to the man who did Moldiver to do the designs, and I did not like them nearly as much. Bulbous eyes and lack of creativity in my book.

Great battle sequences. Sure it is old now, but if you look at the raw detail of the machines, and the movement it still looks pretty cool at times even today, Which leads me to quality of the animation. It still can be considered decent after all these years.

Great music. It had orchestral music that made the entire series feel epic. Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam OST 2 Z-Gundam - YouTube

But Zeta was a soap opera from the start which I felt was more akin to the original series which I probably liked the most.
Zeta is not a happy series, not happy at all, Dark. And therein lies the problem, When I first tried watching ZZ it felt like the show took a 180 going the opposite direction in tone. That threw me.
Did I like ZZ, yes I did. But, I would suggest not watching ZZ right after Zeta, or like I told Star, keep watching it picks up (especially at the end).I would not suggest someone keep watching if it never got any better
This happened to me after I stalled the show and someone else on another forum prompted me to finish it saying, get past that first half, and he was right.

In fact I would skip ZZ for a bit, watch Char's Counter Attack for a trifecta of the Amaro vs Char timeline, then go back to ZZ.

Going back to Zeta.

As for characters...
I like Evangelion, I hate almost all the characters.
To me I do not always have to love characters to be compelled to see what happens to them.
That said I did dig some of the cast. And I did not hate Kamile, I felt he was super complex and a hell of a pilot.

Obvioulsy these are my opinions, and not that of everyone. But I do echo a mecha fan's appreciation to things that should also be important to a mecha show... Action.

Now are you the only person on an island who did not particularly care for Zeta? I guess you never read the official review here on the site. I often thought VivisQueen was going to get on a plane and fly over to the states and stab me for this show. this was after i told her how much I liked it.
She did not particular like how the characters were written in the show either, and I can now see after all these years the major pitfalls, and lackluster creation of female characters.

But even still I still find it a fantastic series. But then again, I love a lot of 80's mecha titles. LGaim, Votoms, Ideon? Yes Please.

[CBrown]

Originally Posted by Funkgun

Tons and tons of stuff

First off, no, nothing I said was directed at anyone for any particular reason. I just know that as a general rule people tend to dislike ZZ (a lot).

With that said, I can't really respond to everything you wrote and there's no real need to either since most of it is just different opinions. Taste in music and design preference do no match and I figure we'll just agree to disagree on certain things.
I'm also including characters here because as I've said, I really came away disliking most of them and not just in the sense of "I don't like that guy" but I rather found them bewilderingly poorly written. But to each their own.

But one thing I often hear that people praise Zeta for is how it doesn't have a clearcut villain and that it's often very difficult to root for any singular side. And I also concede that this was the first time Gundam did this. HOWEVER, in my case things are not so easy because I'm watching the UC timeline in chronological order, I'm currently watching Victory so I'm more or less at the end of the official timeline, I think. Which means that I saw things like MS igLoo, War in the Pocket and 08th MS Team before Zeta and in my opinion they do a far better job at blurring the line between any "good and evil" side. In fact I'd go as far as to say War in the Pocket is one of my favorite anime of all times.

So in that sense, Zeta wasn't breaking any new grounds for me.

But there's also the fact that I found the Titans almost cartoonishly evil at times. Sometimes they seemed to be evil for the sake of being evil. And having seen Stardust Memory and how they came to power, that feeling was just further enforced. Haman was also obviously "evil" as was Scirocco and they were never given any sort of real depth. Now, Haman was further explored in ZZ and didn't have as much time in Zeta but Paptimus remains practically unexplored in terms of why outside the fact that he thinks maybe women should rule or something. I'm not sure if that was his intention or if he was just using it to lure over women with insultingly low standards or self esteem (seriously, to this day Reccoa makes no sense to me).

The way I saw it, in the end, the Federation are assholes and cowards, the Titans are for a lack of a better word evil, Axis wants to bring back the Zabi and create a superstate and Scirocco wants to... sleep with a lot of women, I guess (he'd feel right at home in Victory).

And I know I'm not the only one. I have read the review but I also read the comments about Zeta being the greatest anime ever and that she was wrong for giving it the score she did. I do agree that it was very well made though I was never very fond of opening themes and I can't really comment on the music since it didn't really stick with me. But that's the sort of thing that I can easily file under "Personal Opinion" and happily agree to disagree about.
I also think a lot of my disinterest in Zeta comes from the fact that I never needed more Char or Amuro in my life. If neither of them never showed up again I'd be fine with it. The only character from the original series that I enjoy seeing time and time again is Bright who just keeps ending up with the Gundams somehow. He also put Kamille in his place which makes him my favorite instantly.
And no, I didn't particularly care for Char's Counterattack either. Mostly because at that point, especially after Zeta, I thought Amuro and Char were done. But nope, here they are again. Then you had characters like Quess and Hathaway that brought with them all this petulant, childish behavior that I just cannot stand, blaming everything on adults as if becoming an adult automatically makes you an asshole. I also disliked how powerful Amuro, Char and pretty much every other Ace pilot had become because it's all about the funnels or whatever and they're practically untouchable to the point where I just don't fear for anyone's life. The writing also made it painfully obvious in a Tomino sort of way who was going to die and who was going to live. Basically, I just found Char's Counterattack unnecessary and their over-reliance on Funnels make the combat incredibly dull to me. And this isn't just with Zeta or CC, ZZ did this too and I hated it just as much there. It worked in the original because it was new, refreshing and sort of interesting but they've definitely worn that to a bloody stump.

I'm also a pretty big fan of mechas but even then Zeta scores pretty low on my list. Several other entries in the Gundam franchise were far more impressive, Vifam is one of my all time favorites and Votoms is pretty darn good too. I also sort of like Macross, at least until they start singing and Mospeada took me by complete surprise, I have to admit.

[Funkgun]

Well, you can put your mind at ease that I do not dislike ZZ (alot)

Originally Posted by CBrown

With that said, I can't really respond to everything you wrote and there's no real need to either since most of it is just different opinions. Taste in music and design preference do no match and I figure we'll just agree to disagree on certain things.

...And a whole lot more...

Exactly why I did not quote you a bunch either. It is a matter of taste. I mean honestly I can see merit in the initial response. And where things differ.

When talking about why I liked the series, Zeta that is why I listed the reasons.

I was not comparing other gundam series save for ZZ because it was brought up.

If it were to compare it to Gundam 08th Squad or War in the Pocket I would reach for 08th in a heart beat. As for War in the Pocket? Fantastic, once again a favorite character designer who did the original Macross, Salamander and High Speed Jecy...
As for Gundam 08th, I am not sure if here, or on another forum I consistently list that as my first or second favorite depends on which I have seen last.

But that is it, I am going off of why people might like Zeta ,myself included, when I saw it which I believe was a question. I listed I enjoyed battles, political intrigue, music, character, and Mecha designs.

So maybe chronological can damn a series. I for one do not like to watch a series in the order of timeline, I like to watch it as it was released.

I had not seen any other Gundam outside of the Gundam movies of 1, 2, 3(condensed Mobile suit)
So I did not say, oh, hey I think such and such was a better Gundam. Oh, they are doing rehash here. No, I said, damn I love this rivalry. And Zeta got a whole lot better when Amuro was more in it.

I could not get enough of Char. Nor could many other Gundam fans, or there would not be Char clones in many of the other Gundam series. This is a case in point as to how dull Glemy is till they make him scarce for a bit and rewrote him in later making him more compelling.
Ahhh, CounterAttack...

The funnels did not bother me, in fact just the opposite, they required a lot of skill to operate.
Story wise it is a great way to show the strengths of the newtype.
I will try not to drag Char's talk here too far, but the incredible frame per cel ratio of the knock-down drag out fight they had while the latest Gundam was fun to watch, rewatch or slow down. Also, the fact I hate it when you get hardly any combat for a final fight, instead this one went on for quite a while, for me it felt fulfilling.

Now, did someone say Macross?

a bit more of a Macross fan than Gundam any day. (but then again, I like the singing ;)
Vifam I never found a great sub of in the day. I imagine there is one out there now.

[starsmine]

watched episode 9 of ZZ gundam, http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instanc...x/23517668.jpg
This show is just.

Really why is everyone a bumbling idiot. I mean everyone.

"The asteroids are fake just run through them." The entire MS team promptly crashes into asteroids.

[Funkgun]

Originally Posted by starsmine

watched episode 9 of ZZ gundam, http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instanc...x/23517668.jpg
This show is just.

Really why is everyone a bumbling idiot. I mean everyone.

"The asteroids are fake just run through them." The entire MS team promptly crashes into asteroids.

lol, the show was supposed to be more lighthearted to the dire-ness of the end of Zeta. When your make lighthearted in the 80's it ends up with characters seeming to be goofy.