heerogf
12-11-00, 10:10 PM
ok, i posted this thread after i saw "why the %^#@& Gundam" thread by heart_havok
it's a review on GW by this guy name christopher (he give GW only 1 star), i found it at http://www.mediajunkies.com
this review bash GW a lot so if you're a very sensitive GW fan, i suggest you don't read this
it's really long, but i think it'll be worth reading
After colony 195 a new war is one the horizon, one of glamorous provincial royalty, big space battles in giant robot suits, and hours of complete theoretical nonsense. The Gundam series had been highly touted as one of the longest running and consistently popular series in Japan. Gundam Wing is only a fraction of the complete series. Although Gundam Wing is superficially cool it suffers horribly from prolonged theoretical discussions about the future of war and peace that offer the viewer nothing but self-indulgent circular logic and frustration. There is so much potential in this series that is wasted and diffused, it makes even the featured Gundam robots themselves barely worth the effort to see. This series is unfortunate at best.
Gundam Wing is a fractional continuation of the expansive Gundam universe. The story begins during a shift of power following a significant historical event. Foreseeing a loss of political freedom rebels from Earth space colonies wage a covert campaign to stop power hungry politicians from taking control of the government. Giant Robot suits called Gundams are sent to earth to wage this war and vindicate those who live under the control of the Earth Sphere Alliance. As politicians and nations position themselves to take power in the new world order the Gundams begin to cut through their forces.
It is clear from the start that the writers of this series were trying to create an epic tale of glamour and intrigue set before the supposedly glorious background of a burgeoning war. At first the story seems potentially intriguing by pitting professionally single-minded warriors against a power hungry bureaucracy. Unfortunately this is to little avail because eventually everyone gets lost in pointless discussions about theories of society and peace. This type of discussion in itself wouldn’t be bad in itself but the writers go nowhere with it by beating down the same trite and self-indulgent points that eventually prove abysmally unrewarding.
I can see the direction in which they were attempting to head with this. They were trying to incorporate classic samurai warrior logic into a modern political conundrum. The gundam pilots were of course the samurai, the Earth Sphere Alliance was supposed to be the various nobles that occupied Japan before WW1, and the Romafeller Foundation was supposed to be the newer centralized national government that we are more or less familiar with today. This story plays off of incidents in Japanese history where the samurai were essentially disbanded in lieu of a new unified standing army. Gundam Wing tries to mimic this by having the Gundams (samurai) pitted against the Romefeller foundation (new nationalist government). The main characters of this story fall appropriately into their respective historical roles. The Samurai, knowing only the life of the professional killer, do what comes naturally and fight this change on in the most direct way possible, an outright fight of skill.
One of the big points being made during this time revolves around the fact that samurai shouldn’t be allowed to act independently and that all armies and fighting men should to be unified under one command. In the context of Gundam Wing this is similar to the insurrection by the Romafeller foundation to gain control of all of the political factions under the earth sphere alliance and subsequently eliminate any competition. But, the whole impact of this similarity is lost as characters discuss all of the unenlightening theory behind their intentions while rarely accomplishing anything. This story could have been told with far greater success if they had limited the duration of the series to a fraction of its current length. As a result the writers would have been forced to streamline much of the dialogue and the story may have felt like it was actually going somewhere.
For all of you would be storywriters out there let me give you a few words of advice. Write about characters, not about the universe in which they exist. Real people make decisions and then do something about it. Their environment may contribute to a decision but as with real life a given environment is mealy a backdrop to the actions of characters. Action is always far more interesting than talking about the theories behind a given decision, regardless of how exciting those theories may seem on paper. There are ways to share your social views without lecturing. Let the reader discover your views through well-developed characters by seeing how those characters react to the situations that make up their life.
Now don’t get confused by my use of the word action. I’m not necessarily talking about giant robot space battles here. I mean any action, from picking up laundry at the dry cleaners to racing in the Indianapolis 500. Action is always interesting.
When you read or watch anything that is well written you will see that a character will only speculate on things when they relate directly to something tangible in their lives. They will never outright tell the viewer what to think, only imply it through…you guessed it, ACTION. All of this should be orchestrated through the careful construction of situations and character interaction. Gundam is a perfect example of a story that lost its character focus early on and tried to fill in the gaps with dissertations on theories and the human condition. The result is that it eventually tumbles off into self-defeating rants and nonsensical logic, which utterly destroys a viewer’s enthusiasm for the characters. That sort of rambling should be saved for things like research papers and opinion columns (I bet you were waiting for that one).
After all of that criticism you are probably wondering why Gundam even got one star from me, let alone any. Well there are some momentary flashes of light that somehow kept me watching. When the story did finally stop preaching there were some downright cool things going on. First of all, any fan of giant robots has to got to love the Gundam’s themselves. They are huge, fast, meticulously rendered, and can really wipe out the bad guys. Another highlight was how the first couple of episodes of the series really got me excited about what would happen next. The first episode was one of my favorites when the first Gundam made its appearance in an intense firefight between the pilots Hiero and Sechs in the atmosphere high above earth’s surface. Other highlights for me included most of Hiero’s incidents in the high school on earth and Cattra’s descent into madness at the controls of the Wing Zero.
So there are some things I did like about the series. But, in the end there were just too many faults to stomach. I’ll have to view some of the other Gundam series and see if they hold up to their reputation.
I have to say this is not the first review on gw that i have read, i surf all over the net and try to read as much gw review as much as possible, and 99% say that gw is a bad show, it's really hard to find a good review on gw since most of the critics hated this show
so please, give me your feedback and tell me what you think?
it's a review on GW by this guy name christopher (he give GW only 1 star), i found it at http://www.mediajunkies.com
this review bash GW a lot so if you're a very sensitive GW fan, i suggest you don't read this
it's really long, but i think it'll be worth reading
After colony 195 a new war is one the horizon, one of glamorous provincial royalty, big space battles in giant robot suits, and hours of complete theoretical nonsense. The Gundam series had been highly touted as one of the longest running and consistently popular series in Japan. Gundam Wing is only a fraction of the complete series. Although Gundam Wing is superficially cool it suffers horribly from prolonged theoretical discussions about the future of war and peace that offer the viewer nothing but self-indulgent circular logic and frustration. There is so much potential in this series that is wasted and diffused, it makes even the featured Gundam robots themselves barely worth the effort to see. This series is unfortunate at best.
Gundam Wing is a fractional continuation of the expansive Gundam universe. The story begins during a shift of power following a significant historical event. Foreseeing a loss of political freedom rebels from Earth space colonies wage a covert campaign to stop power hungry politicians from taking control of the government. Giant Robot suits called Gundams are sent to earth to wage this war and vindicate those who live under the control of the Earth Sphere Alliance. As politicians and nations position themselves to take power in the new world order the Gundams begin to cut through their forces.
It is clear from the start that the writers of this series were trying to create an epic tale of glamour and intrigue set before the supposedly glorious background of a burgeoning war. At first the story seems potentially intriguing by pitting professionally single-minded warriors against a power hungry bureaucracy. Unfortunately this is to little avail because eventually everyone gets lost in pointless discussions about theories of society and peace. This type of discussion in itself wouldn’t be bad in itself but the writers go nowhere with it by beating down the same trite and self-indulgent points that eventually prove abysmally unrewarding.
I can see the direction in which they were attempting to head with this. They were trying to incorporate classic samurai warrior logic into a modern political conundrum. The gundam pilots were of course the samurai, the Earth Sphere Alliance was supposed to be the various nobles that occupied Japan before WW1, and the Romafeller Foundation was supposed to be the newer centralized national government that we are more or less familiar with today. This story plays off of incidents in Japanese history where the samurai were essentially disbanded in lieu of a new unified standing army. Gundam Wing tries to mimic this by having the Gundams (samurai) pitted against the Romefeller foundation (new nationalist government). The main characters of this story fall appropriately into their respective historical roles. The Samurai, knowing only the life of the professional killer, do what comes naturally and fight this change on in the most direct way possible, an outright fight of skill.
One of the big points being made during this time revolves around the fact that samurai shouldn’t be allowed to act independently and that all armies and fighting men should to be unified under one command. In the context of Gundam Wing this is similar to the insurrection by the Romafeller foundation to gain control of all of the political factions under the earth sphere alliance and subsequently eliminate any competition. But, the whole impact of this similarity is lost as characters discuss all of the unenlightening theory behind their intentions while rarely accomplishing anything. This story could have been told with far greater success if they had limited the duration of the series to a fraction of its current length. As a result the writers would have been forced to streamline much of the dialogue and the story may have felt like it was actually going somewhere.
For all of you would be storywriters out there let me give you a few words of advice. Write about characters, not about the universe in which they exist. Real people make decisions and then do something about it. Their environment may contribute to a decision but as with real life a given environment is mealy a backdrop to the actions of characters. Action is always far more interesting than talking about the theories behind a given decision, regardless of how exciting those theories may seem on paper. There are ways to share your social views without lecturing. Let the reader discover your views through well-developed characters by seeing how those characters react to the situations that make up their life.
Now don’t get confused by my use of the word action. I’m not necessarily talking about giant robot space battles here. I mean any action, from picking up laundry at the dry cleaners to racing in the Indianapolis 500. Action is always interesting.
When you read or watch anything that is well written you will see that a character will only speculate on things when they relate directly to something tangible in their lives. They will never outright tell the viewer what to think, only imply it through…you guessed it, ACTION. All of this should be orchestrated through the careful construction of situations and character interaction. Gundam is a perfect example of a story that lost its character focus early on and tried to fill in the gaps with dissertations on theories and the human condition. The result is that it eventually tumbles off into self-defeating rants and nonsensical logic, which utterly destroys a viewer’s enthusiasm for the characters. That sort of rambling should be saved for things like research papers and opinion columns (I bet you were waiting for that one).
After all of that criticism you are probably wondering why Gundam even got one star from me, let alone any. Well there are some momentary flashes of light that somehow kept me watching. When the story did finally stop preaching there were some downright cool things going on. First of all, any fan of giant robots has to got to love the Gundam’s themselves. They are huge, fast, meticulously rendered, and can really wipe out the bad guys. Another highlight was how the first couple of episodes of the series really got me excited about what would happen next. The first episode was one of my favorites when the first Gundam made its appearance in an intense firefight between the pilots Hiero and Sechs in the atmosphere high above earth’s surface. Other highlights for me included most of Hiero’s incidents in the high school on earth and Cattra’s descent into madness at the controls of the Wing Zero.
So there are some things I did like about the series. But, in the end there were just too many faults to stomach. I’ll have to view some of the other Gundam series and see if they hold up to their reputation.
I have to say this is not the first review on gw that i have read, i surf all over the net and try to read as much gw review as much as possible, and 99% say that gw is a bad show, it's really hard to find a good review on gw since most of the critics hated this show
so please, give me your feedback and tell me what you think?