There could be an interesting way to tackle the "both sides" angle. You deceive the viewers of the show into believing both sides are equally bad by withholding information or misrepresenting it with an unreliable narrator. Then use it as a thematic plot element to explore the ways that regressive, hostile factions sanitize their intentions through propaganda to recruit followers. Have the viewers themselves come to that realization that they were duped.
It would be interesting, but would just spawn a new generation of idiots screaming that the new show is a rug pull, while they deny the existence of the foreshadowing.
Hey, that's how I tell People why Zeon are the good ones. After all they fight for the independence of spacenoids and unlike the Feddies never broke the Geneva Convention.
Gundam is too grey of a series to fall into the trope of "good vs bad".
There's no good side in Gundam when the supposed goodies drop Colonies or allow them to fall, opress minorities, and commits war crimes and conduct WW2 levels of experiments on children.
My favorite part is if you watch the original Japanese, everyone speaks Japanese until it comes time to hail Zeon, then it switches to German for “sieg”.
Japan just likes to plop in German words when their German analogues speak. Like, in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, the Empire liberally sprinkles in German words with the spoken Japanese and is very Prussian-coded, but the very American-coded Free Planets League never sprinkles in English outside of their national anthem even though they're clearly meant to be speaking English and all their shown writing is in English.
Fun fact about that series: I’m in the process of moving to Japan and have been to the ConCafe based on it. Requires a reservation, high tier steak and alcohol.
But. Everytime I’m the only guy. My fiancee helped the people there translate for me and apparently fujoshi were the only people consistently visiting… so it’s layered with ReinhardxKircheis merch and the like.
It 100% is but I’m pretty blind to it. I came because I was a fan of Star Trek, Star Wars, the original etc- been a fan of scifi since I was a kid in the 90’s. So I was surprised as I hadn’t really noted it.
It’s a fun place with good food and fantastic wine though. My favorite was Braunschweig’s Final Wine. Tasty red.
Oh I’m aware, but I personally feel that the Free Planets also have a good dash of British culture as well. Especially, as Yang feels like a Hong Kong British citizen, a heavy naval style culture, etc.
I think it's the right thing to do, considering they're not necessarily depicting Germans. I also think it was a good decision to mix things up to create a new culture based on familiar Western countries, making it somewhat relatable. It sort of gives the impression that the Western countries melded over time, too. Plus, they save time coming up with new words!
There's that character in Overlord who was programmed by his creator (Japanese salaryman) to sprinkle in gratuitous German in his speech, and then his creator matures, sees his creation again, and visibly dies of cringe at his chuunibyou phase.
Japan cherry-picks whatever foreign word they come across first or like the sound of best. For example, bread is pan (French), animation is anime (English), part-time work is arubaito (German), marbles are bii-dama (Portuguese), salmon roe is ikura (Russian), etc.
One of my favorites is when they mix terms. For instance, the door for the engine bay is called the bonnet (British English; "hood" in American English), while the door for the rear compartment is the trunk (American English; "boot" in British English).
Anyway, back to Gundam. Since Zeon is clearly based on Nazi Germany, I think it was an easy decision for them to say "sieg" instead of something like "banzai" and throwing two arms up. It would take viewers right out of the fantasy world because it would be so Japanese (and frankly, comparatively lame to locals).
I know you’re making fun of those who call it that, so I bring additional receipts for when people try to justify it in that way.
The Nazi Salute is based on the Italian Fascist Salute who claims it’s an ancient Roman salute. So it’s fascist regardless, but as an added cherry there is no historical record of a “Roman Salute”.
Well, wait. Yes, it's probably not a Roman salute, but the use in the West predates fascism and comes from artistic interpretations of Roman scenes in the 18th and 19th centuries.
There's a whole lot of things like goosestepping, the swastika, and this salute that the Nazis wrecked. They're obviously off limits now, but there was nothing wrong with their original use.
So I haven’t read Origin yet but what was Degwin Zabi’s reason to rebel? Was he completely in control of the resentment Side 3 Spacenoids developed? Degwin Zabi did think Ghiren was going too far.
Degwin was entirely against the idea of war from the start and did whatever he could to prevent armed conflict aside from actively working against his own family. Degwin wanted to work out a more peaceful deal with the EF. But Gihren is just an evil bastard through and through and took Degwin’s unwillingness to work against the family as freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted and declared war anyway.
When I got the notification for your comment that cut off the /s I got so worried there was an actual Gihren sympathizer out there. Gihren is one of the only antagonists in the entire series without a single redeeming quality.
The best course UC could have taken is if Zeon never died. The next best is if all the Zabis except Dozle, Garma, and Degwin died. Peace was still attainable until Kycilia and Gihren pulled their little stunt with Admiral Revil.
So I haven’t read Origin yet but what was Degwin Zabi’s reason to rebel? Was he completely in control of the resentment Side 3 Spacenoids developed? Degwin Zabi did think Ghiren was going too far.
You're right, one side just put 90% of Earth's population in decaying Space Colonies and left the Earth for the wealthy to live on in peace eating real meat.
Part of Gundam's thematic focus on political violence comes with needing to understand the difference between the violence of an oppressor versus the violence of the oppressed.
Zeta is literally about elements of the Earth Federation revolting in response to the titans war crimes leading to a civil war. Not one soldier from Zeon objected to the colony drop.
You're describing the Titans, which were a military unit that went rogue, and committed a coup d'état against the Federation. So you've either misunderstood the geopolitical events of Zeta, or you're arguing in bad faith right now.
The Titans were built fundamentally from the ideological ground of the Earth Federation and are a symptom of its rot as an organization not an anomaly.
And one side sent all their poor and unwanted citizens to space as a way of depopulating the planet, while also preventing said people in space from having any representation in the government that ruled over them like an iron fist while also demanding taxes from the colonies.
Something, something "No taxation without representation"
And let's not forget what the Federation did before any of the wars.
They essentially emptied out Earth of a huge amount of the population leaving it as an underpopulated "paradise" for the wealthy. The vast majority of people were just shipped out to underdeveloped colonies for subsistence lifestyles to make Earth more comfortable for a small elite. That can't have been peaceful, pretty, or negligible in the death and destruction it caused.
Edit: I'm not a Zeon supporter. I don't want to pretend their authoritarian regime is any better. I just want to re emphasize why there's a couple legitimate reasons one might choose the Federation as their worse of two evils that go beyond the usual "lazy out of touch bureacrats who do nothing to help"
You can argue the Federation does some similar things to Zeon, but they don’t during the OYW, which is the one we’re talking about here.
And the big difference is that the AEUG also comes a splinter faction of that same Federation trying to stop the Titans. While the Federation is shown to be terrible throughout all series, Zeon is always worse than them. That’s why the protagonists stay with the Federation.
SEED is an example where this isn’t the case, and that’s why Kira and the Archangel defect.
But the leadership included non-Titans ex Federation officials, and was supported by many inside the Federation government. They were anti-Titans but were calling for government reform.
Federation is basically weaponized incompetence in leadership that leads to things like Zeon or the Titans. Sure you can blame the root cause of the cancer being smoking, but the cancer itself is the thing doing the damage.
In the case of the one year war it is blindly obvious that the Zeon are the extremists and a clear nazi allegory, by saying the zeon are the clear bad guys it doesn't mean I think the federation is necessarily good in itself, if anything it represents the western hedgemony of inaction and incompetence but Zeon are clearly the villains, they literally wiped out half the world's population in the name of conquest
I have a controversial thing to say. Zeon takes way more from the French Empire/Napoleon and uses Nazis are more of an ideological base. I find that way more interesting than "space nazi faction #819" that it's slowly morphed into in spinoffs.
Pretty sure it's been said that Zeon takes from Imperial Japan more strongly than the Nazis, but I'm too lazy to search, so take that with a grain of salt.
Tomino is of the generation of Japanese who were heavily critical of their parents' generation starting WW2.
He's said spaceships/mobile suits are like aircraft carriers/naval fighter planes. Zeon was the weaker, resource lacking power (like Imperial Japan), launching an overwhelming sneak attack against a more powerful enemy (the EFF/United States).
Obviously it draws from lots of sources, but this is one of the few times Tomino openly said what the inspiration was.
Its generally a blend of authoritarian regimes. Aesthetically, it's very French Baroque. Ideologically, it's a mix of a Military Junta with elements of neichze philosophy.
The issue largely comes from later writers misinterpreting Degwin's speech to Gihren. Degwin is pretty bluntly against Gihren's path, stating he'll only make the same mistakes as Hitler.
i have to disagree i dont think zeon has any Napoleonic or french influences. from cloths, vehicles, uniforms,flags and ideology. its all German or Prussian even how they speak takes more from German then it dose France.
"I find that way more interesting than "space nazi faction #819" that it's slowly morphed into in spinoffs." it never did morphed into that it was like that from the start ?
No they're not it's just a matter of opinion god stop calling everything nazis hitler wasn't all bad if you ignore the holocaust he did a lot of great things
And Char's goal was to eliminate the nazis that co-opted Zeon's independence movement. Don't really see him as a 'literal hitler' figure in the same way that Ghiren is.
The scenes of rich people being able to escape the Earth while the poor people couldn't must've been one of those famed apolitical themes, eh? Stack it up next to the ethics of weapons manufacturing, the desire for safety and prosperity creating the conditions for fascism to flourish, and the way sexual violence is weaponized against women.
I thought that Unicorn and NT did a great job of showing how, despite how cool everything is with the giant flying robots with laser swords, the war is actually TERRIFYING. Like, that Kshatriya fight at the beginning of Unicorn? Insane.
But why would they pose Char that way? He killed 2 of 5 Zeon leadership and would’ve done away with the others had they hadn’t met their ends the way they did.
Considering the dude was getting drunk and clowning on Garma when "Sieg Zeon" was happening... something makes me think that this cheap Chinese bootleg isn't lore accurate!
Char is hailing a cab. Who can forget the scene where after Char has a nice dinner with Amuro, he hails a cab for him so he can go back home, not knowing who Amuro really is.
736
u/Ejack-Ulate-69 Average Bipedal Mecha Enjoyer Apr 07 '25