"We're bringing back MILFs *and* inflicting violence on a minor in the same episode? We are so back!" - Hayley on Episode 8
"Connie deserved to live the longest because she realised women shouldn't say more than one line per episode if they wanna survive this." - Hayley on The Shrike Team
"This show is so Normal about women." - Hayley at least once per episode.
"Wheels AGAIN?!!" - Hayley when a water dragon mobile armour started rotating.
"I'm kind of mad this show's giving me intense baby fever" - Hayley, again once per episode.
Let's traumatise a 12 year old for 50 episodes straight.
Alright let's get to the business side of things first: corporate sponsour and model kit manufactruer Bandai purchased Studio Sunrise during this show's production and started making ludicrous demands. These lead to some hilarious results like too many helicopters and battleships modelled after motorbikes but also a demand to reorder the first four episodes. Thus, we start with episode 4 then flash back to the first three episodes until we're back up to speed. This was all to ensure our new Gundam is in the first episode lest it harm kit sales. It's such a dumb idea because these first few episodes do more to make you want to buy an enemy model kit than anything this side of Elpeo Ple piloting a black Qubeley did seven years prior.
We're doing Federation vs Not Zeon again but this time with a French Revolution flair. Yeah we're watching the fucking Napoleon III of Gundam.
The problem with the Universal Century as a setting is there's really only three ways you can take the setting after ZZ:
Fascist Uprising Of the Year
Chronicle the collapse of the Earth Federation into warring states
Explore how a revolution would overturn the world and possibly build something better
The second option is complicated to write and the third would run contrary to the demands of a for-profit model kit manufacturer who's funding these robot fight shows, so we've just gotta keep mashing the Option 1 button until the label wears off.
Even so, you can feel the creaks and gaps in the world. Side 2 is the section of Space in revolt this time and they're not very far from Earth at all. The Federation still has a military but it's clearly using aging equipment and can't even be bothered to stop a ground force landing. Not even when that ground force starts firebombing European cities and literally beheading opponents with a guillotine.
Our motley crew spend the first 15 or so episodes engaging in guerilla warfare. Sure they've build a Gundam but it has to be moved around in pieces since nowhere's safe to maintain a hangar. There simply isn't enough gear to wage a full-scale resistance. These early episodes are filled with some of the most creative storyboarding we've seen in a Gundam to date. Hell even when we gain a signature battleship for the crew it's through them stealing one of their enemy's rather than receiving a Federation one!
The purely orchestral soundtrack is tense, sad and carries the mood so damn well. We can't even afford synthesisers, the sound of the future anymore. It's all collapsing around us.
Not every Gundam has been allocated a full 50 episodes but Victory was. Somehow this isn't enough time to really give its cast characterisation. There's glimpses of personality but this isn't Zeta, where the thrust of each episode is interpersonal conflict. The main character of this show is the Horror of War itself and it's misery all the way down.
You can glean it from Hayley's quips at the start of this piece but this show is completely insane about women. While 0083's misogyny is fairly obvious, Victory is in an incredibly weird space. It wants to say affirming things about us and its heart seems to be in the right place but man, this is not how you do it
Even then, there's some merit to Victory in a big picture sense. A matriarchal fascist movement is still fascist. You don't resolve the cruelties of men who've learned nothing but violence by putting women in charge. You do it by ensuring men learn some respect and by keeping them from positions where they can harm others if they have none.
Perhaps the most frustrating character in the entire show is Duker Iq though. This fucking guy:
Obviously we're doing some aggressive compliance with Bandai's demands but the first real shocker is his stupid idea of "motorbike-shaped battleships" is actually used in quite an emotionally affecting way. We made gigantic rollers and we'll just grind the earth and its people beneath our feet. It's even less subtle than usual for Gundam but that doesn't stop it being horrifying. Cruelty as a slow inevitability.
Duker Iq's even greater crime is his final episode. One of his subordinates sketches a cute ocatgonal log cabin. He asks what she's doing, hears her explanation then smoothly asks
"Is there room for me to share it with you?"
then offers her a pendant which is an heirloom from his late mother. Not only has nobody pulled off a pickup line so effortlessly in prior Gundam shows, this moment happens in one where two other men have somehow scored with the line "I want you to bear my child". I hate that this asshole has so much game. It's not fair.
Do we need to talk about Katejina Loos? Of all the deranged ways this show writes women and punishes them with death if they speak too much, I think she makes perfect sense. Why would a woman from a town which was firebombed at the start wind up siding with the oppressors and climb their ranks? Because she's a small business owner. She's got the sort of brain that American Jet-Ski dealership owners have where she identifies more with those who have power than her fellow humans. That she manages to live to the end in a jumbled, blind haze is both a beautiful act of kindness on Shakti's part and haunting.
This is the end of the Universal Century. Sure we'll have new additions over time but they're all interquels. As far as a setting from which new stories can be told with new ideas, and the development of older ones, this is it. It shall no longer look to the future past this point. Given how much everything is crumbling, and how tired seeing yet more stories of motley crews taking the fight to the latest fascists while those in charge do nothing, it's clearly time to move on. Time for something different.
But how different should Gundam become?
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