JoJo said:
my own two cents that you can find a character type interesting without necessarily endorsing what's happening to them.
If my implication was that you must endorse something in order to enjoy it, then I worded myself poorly. I expanded upon my opinion in the other forums. The criticism isn't so much that it features something controversial at all, but rather that
1) the show doesn't do much with it, and more importantly,
2) the audience doesn't do much with it.
What's interesting is that the show itself DOES seem to want to talk about the subject matter. It explicitly brings it up as a motivator for one of the characters. But it doesn't go much further beyond that until well into the series, and even then the way it's handled is... heavy-handed, or not at all. It doesn't help that the main character himself isn't very interesting. Or, rather, he could be but nothing is done with him. He's a side character who gets pushed to the forefront simply by nature of his being The Gundam Pilot (the same way Heero Yuy was in Wing, and he was just as insufferable). It feels like the writers are stifled by the Gundam universe, like their best efforts at sharp, smart writing are being thwarted by having to adhere to the Gundam "formula."
Why audience reaction concerns me (well, it's more so an intellectual curiosity) is because the majority of fans, young and old alike, seems to really love the main protagonist, but there's a seeming lack of self-awareness to all the praise they throw at him. His Gundam looks so cool! He's such a cold-hearted badass! Did you see the way he shot that dude in the face?
Did YOU? I can understand a kid getting it in their heads that that's so cool and whatnot, but why are the adults among us adding their voices to all that praise and implicitly telling other kids that it's "badass" to act the way that he does?
It feels a little bit like unintentional propaganda. The creators designed the show to be 20-minute long toy commercials, and so far it has succeeded spectacularly in that regard, but there has been zero attention paid to the other effects it may or may not be having on anime-viewing audiences. Said anime-viewing audience sees the spectacle, gets distracted by the slick action and the cool mecha designs, and they miss the way the underlying messages of the show seep into their collective consciousness. They buy the merchandise, they do the free advertising, the creators design more 20-minute long toy commercials with potentially dangerous subliminal advertising, and so on and so forth.
Scarim Coral said:
Kio (Gundam AGE) and Banagher (Gundam Unicorn) were part of the trope "accidental pilots" and kicked ass for having little training compared to a proper pilot. What's worse is that they hesistate which can cost them alot in the long run.
Say what you will about either of them, and I can say a whole lot about Banagher, but isn't that to be expected from children in their positions?
Beside with the complain made against him, have people forgot Heero Yue from Gundam Wing who pretty much stayed the same cold soldier throughtout the series.
Actually, I think he's the one fans have been comparing Mikazuki to the most, and for good reason. They're very similar, and the worship of them and their robots is similar. And I have very similar criticisms of both of them. Their robots are cool. They're not. The only reason they persist is because Gundam is following The Gundam Way.
Also you pretty much have to be stupid to think children will emulate the whole children soldier or children in combat like Naruto. I mean the whole point of tv, anime, game and book etc is to escape from fantasy.
Thanks for the insult?
When Satoshi Kon was interviewed about his anime movie Paprika, he said, "In Japan not just children but adults in their 20s and 30s will chose anime and manga as a means of escape from their real lives, but I think there is a danger too. If you go into that world, it is very vivid and colorful and seductive, but there are big traps within that, particularly if you let your real world deteriorate as a result."
What I think he's getting at is a sort of cultural overindulgence in anime. It gets to the point where the expectations you have for anime begin to bleed into the real world, not just in one person here and there, but entire communities and indeed entire nations. He was worried about the effects of excessive anime/media consumption on Japanese society. Paprika is entirely about the dangers of fantasy being superimposed upon reality.
I mentioned the suicide epidemic, which is apparently especially prominent among teenage males (ie those directly targeted by mainstream shounen anime), and one of my questions was how/if a culture of anime consumption, unaware of the unconscious effects it has on its audience, relates to this phenomenon.
Again, it's nothing more than a thought exercise at this point, a stray hypothesis. But it's one I think is worth exploring.
Beside ain't the whole mature theme in children show in Asia is their way of toughen the children up or at least to get them think about the morality of it all (that what I read when I was making an origin of anime essay due to the event of the Atomic Bomb).
I can't say much on this regard, but I do know that America tends to be, compared to the rest of the world, far more prudish and far more protective of our children, and that kind of attitude has its benefits and disadvantages.
As for the origin of anime, it has very little to do with the atomic bomb. World War II certainly steered anime down a certain path, the same as it did much of Japan's culture, but anime, depending on how strict you are in defining it, existed long before a nuke ever did.
