Last edited by Marik; Mon, 03-16-2009 at 12:58 AM.
episode 23 is very, very, very good
Regene was such a complicated and meaningful character! And s/he went down in such a beautifully well done scene! It brings tears to my eyes!
Wow, Ribbons has a space fortress. and he's going to have a show-down with Tieria! shocking!
Ali fights Lockon, but nobody dies! Surprising!
They clone Graham, they clone his mobile suit, they give them all Trans-Am. And then they launch the mobile suits at the enemies like kamikaze missiles. Brilliant!
Patrick "sacrifices himself" (i believe nothing until we see a body or have a funeral) to save Kati! Unexpected use of throw-away minor characters!
Half the episode is spent fighting an unmanned, ancient space-station with state-of-the-art technology, and trying to protect the Ptolemy until it can get close to the enemy fortress so that it can... ... ... make Sumeragi and Billy meet face to face! AWESOME!
This was the best episode EVER!!!!
/sarcasm
Humans are different from animals. We must die for a reason. Now is the time for us to regulate ourselves and reclaim our dignity. The one who holds endless potential and displays his strength and kindness to the world. Only mankind has God, a power that allows us to go above and beyond what we are now, a God that we call "possibility".
Man I watched gg subs, its really pissed me off.
I only have one question, what was the point for ribbons to go through all the cloning trouble and mobile suit that apparently serve no purpose other then a regular missile with trans-AM? correct me if I'm wrong but did they do anything of impotence other then kill patrick with four trans-AM MS? Get haro in 1000 suit and believe me they'll do better then those clones.
The main thing I'm looking forward to in the next eps is billy and kujo little reunion plz god don't let them mess it up. This is about the only thing that intrigues my curiosity. Everything else in this show imo is no more then washed up story.
oh btw does anyone know wuts the rating in japan for this series? did it beat gundam seed/destiny or any previous gundams?
There certainly were very few surprises here, and the trans-am mecha missiles were pitiful beyond reckoning (why weren't they carrying warheads at all? Their destructive power was nonexistent and thus they were total waste), but otherwise I enjoyed this episode well enough. Perhaps because by now my expectations were appropriate. There could be a few deaths coming in the next eps, which is something I'm looking forward to.
Well, actually Patrick's apparent death was something of a surprise. I thought that miracle survivor would have made it through it all. But who knows, we didn't actually see his body.
Wow... the Trans-Am missile spam was about the lamest thing I have ever seen in supposedly high tech scene . I REALLY wish I wasn't sure there was going to be a model kit for those stupid ass Gaga things but I'm sure there will. It'll probably even show how they have weapons which the clones promptly forgot all about in favor of ramming themselves headlong into things. I sort of liked how they added scenes in this that almost exactly mirrored one of the final eps of Gundam Seed. The whole revealing of the huge invisible superweapon thing and the giant beam of doom being powered by a successive line of GN drives was rather reminiscent of the G.E.N.E.S.I.S superweapon's inviso field ominous line of successive reflector arrays.
true, but in that series they also had Freedom and Justice using METEOR alone to destroy an entire station....so the level of absurdity is still far worse there (unless they plan to mirror that here making 00 even MORE powerful).
I thought the AI-powered missile swarm looked really cool...until I too remembered they were actually supposed to be piloted, and there's no automation involved.
But what really got me was Billy's "Give Everyone Trans-Am" crap. I still don't believe that he figured it thanks to his long-dead professor, or that he did it entirely on his own. Come on. Maybe I can see him giving it to his long-time friend, and maybe I can see him rolling it out into the Innovator suits, but to give it to the missle swarm? Bullshit. Wasn't the entire point at the end of last season that only true GN drives could do it? No matter how many fake drives Alejandro shoved into his Narcissist Gundam, he couldn't employ the same level of output.
I'll accept that Graham's suit could have a simulcrum of Trans-Am. Again, only if the suit drops like a rock afterwards, which Graham seemed to indicate it might when he had to flee the first time he used it at the elevator. So...I suppose it makes sense that the kamikaze suits could have it, for whatever purpose missiles couldn't duplicate.
But the Innovator suits are running perfectly normally after they knock out Tieria. What the hell is that?
The whole episode was one facepalm after another.
The red drives have a finite supply of energy. It was also demonstrated by the mega cannon of death. It inserted a loaded red drive and emptied it in one shot, thus ejecting a dead one. So, if you use trans-am with a fake drive, you have to be mindful of the comsumption because like with a jet on afterburner, it probably consumes the fumes really fast and if you don't turn it off soon enough you won't be able to fly back to the base. The real drives just turn off the trans-am and then you can still fly with reduced capabilities until you have accumulated enough reserves to again trans-am (or just fight normally). I don't think there's anything strange here.
Did either of the Innovators (Revive and Hilling) go back to base and get a new one? It didn't look like it. So yeah, I do think there is something strange here.Originally Posted by Kraco
Hilling and Revive didn't replace their GN Drives after they went Trans-Am. And, the show has really stopped trying to balance out Trans-Am with any kind of aftereffects. I remember them saying that even the true GN Drive Gundams were supposed to have some kind of drop in performance after they uses Trans-Am. But they've thrown all that out the window.
Also, I didn't think the "evil space fortress de-cloaking" or its relatively tiny laser cannon were anything but standard "evil bad guy space fortress shit". Hell, that puny thing they call a cannon doesn't even look like it could do a tenth of the damage a good old fashioned colony drop would...
I agree with Ryl that the episode was wave after wave of "this is such suck", but I don't agree about Billy not being motivated to giving out GN-Drives like candy. The guy was just walking hand in hand with the kill bots. He doesn't care about anything anymore except getting revenge for his pitiful, wounded heartache. Of course, the fact that he inexplicably has the ability to make it so is complete baloney
Humans are different from animals. We must die for a reason. Now is the time for us to regulate ourselves and reclaim our dignity. The one who holds endless potential and displays his strength and kindness to the world. Only mankind has God, a power that allows us to go above and beyond what we are now, a God that we call "possibility".
So, you guys are saying that if the CB folks use trans-am for three seconds, they still will have an equal period of low performance compared to running trans-am until the system itself runs out of fumes and forces you out of it.
Sounds like total bullshit if you don't mind me saying so.
I don't see anyone saying anything like that except for you Kraco. But by the nature of Trans-Am I think it might be plausible if you can use particles fast enough. If you go back to the episode 17 where 00 Raiser uses the giant beam sword there is what seems to be a GN particle counter or something at 09:49. The inner tracks seem to measure the performance of the Twin Drive power generation system. However the outer tracks seem to measure stored particles. After Saji "activates the Raiser System" the outer counters start charging up rather quickly then, then at around 10:16 it hits complete and setsuna goes Trans-AM and swings his Shining Finger Sword, which lasts maybe 45 seconds at most (possibly shorter if you assume the guy on Memento Mori detected the beam almost immediately after it was emitted). Then at 11:07 you see that the particle counters on 00 are down from 100 to around 3.5 or so and falling after the sword beam sputters out. 00 Raiser seems to fall out of the sky at about this time. But in the time it takes to fall from around half way to Low Earth Orbit to the altitude of the debris shooting gallery it's back in fighting shape again.
What I think masa is saying and something I an inclined to agree with is they seem to have more or less marginalized the 'performance penalty' Trans-Am is supposed to extract to just be an excuse not to use it immediately. Anytime someone has activated Trans-Am recently the fight has either ended right after for one reason or another or has been cut away from. Near the end of ep22 00 Raiser uses Trans Am to quickly close in on the A-LAWS flagship and blast it with a doom laser, after which it's still in the middle of a huge fight with other Gundam level mobile suits, but it doesn't seem any worse for the wear making the 'penalty' seem rather meaningless.
Last edited by Yukimura; Wed, 03-18-2009 at 10:00 AM.
I fail to see your point. If you use trans-am for an extended period of time (this might very well be a number straight from the script writer's hat suiting each scene individually), the suit will drop out of trans-am and can't perform for a while until the genuine GN drive has reached some critical particle density again. However, if you use trans-am for a few seconds to quickly get somewhere, there is no imaginable reason why you couldn't drop out of it willingly and still easily possess enough particle density to fight normally. In fact, any sensible pilot would do that if there's a risk enemies still remain around. Even more so if you are flying with a fake GN drive with no regeneration ability.
Trans-am is, fortunately, one of the aspect of this show that is not 100% tied to metaphysics, so I don't see why it can't be used in an intelligent and systematic manner. All in all the general trend right from the beginning has been to have new technological gimmicks in each successive battle. Trans-am is already an old trick in the show, so why worship it anymore?
i had typed up about half of a long post, somewhat like yuki's, but then realized that we're sitting here bickering about the Super Saiyan ability of new mecha.
the bottom line is this: Trans-Am makes the mechs look "powerful", gives the writers some leeway to have the good guys kick some ridiculous ass, allows for an "oh no, look at the enemy has it too!" paper tiger tension creator. that's it. it's supposed to look cool. that's it.
we could sit back here and debate Trans-Am until we're blue in the face, but we'd just be wasting our time. it doesn't make any sense. it's a generic anime "power-up". there are supposedly disadvantages, but they get glossed over whenever glossing over is beneficial to the bottom line, which it usually is.
and, kraco, i do think you have a decent arguement about stopping using Trans-Am in time to have enough GN energy to fight. but we have never gotten enough non-bullshit information on the GN Drives (real or fake) or Trans-Am. so trying to calculate "compare that one time that Setsuna used Shining Finger Sword with the time he freaking teleported to-and-fro around the battlefield" or ponder "what do they do to get those Red GN powered mobile suits back up and running after a battle?" is a mute point. it's like an adult arguing with a child about his imaginary pretend world. when the kid is asked, "but why do the magical chocolate pokemons always come when you want them to make you dessert after special delicious pizza paradise buffet is brought to your house?" the boiler point answer is "because!"
Humans are different from animals. We must die for a reason. Now is the time for us to regulate ourselves and reclaim our dignity. The one who holds endless potential and displays his strength and kindness to the world. Only mankind has God, a power that allows us to go above and beyond what we are now, a God that we call "possibility".
Well masa said it a lot more bluntly than I. Trans-Am is the SEED mode of Gundam 00, at the end of the day it's job is simply to make the user better at looking badass. While I haven't seen any reason why you couldn't trans-am for a quick speed burst (kind of like Ptolemy randomly did) then turn it back off, we haven't seen anyone use it like that either so it's rather speculative.
Normally I would take the fact that no one uses it like that as an indicator that maybe it doesn't work that way, but this is a Sunrise production and I have been trained well to believe that their technology works exactly the way it is supposed to in order to move their plot along. Maybe they don't use Trans-Am in burst mode because it wouldn't work, maybe they don't because they are simply stupid, or maybe they don't because the creators think it would reduce the badass factor, but ultimately does it matter which one any of us choose to believe? It's true purpose is not to make technological sense within continuity, but to give a handwave excuse for battles between disproportionate numbers of similarly classed mecha seeming so one sided while also adding visual appeal. If you want realism and more of a semblance of technological consistency I would suggest checking out the 08th MS Team. Characters actually run out of bullets and mecha sometimes break down due to environmental conditions.
Last edited by Yukimura; Wed, 03-18-2009 at 10:02 AM.
If I wanted flashy, I could always watch more G Gundam. What disappoints me is that the majority of the first season and at least a fair amount of the second season were going for a more realistic approach to Gundam. The Anno Domini Universe was supposed to be more a real-world approach to Gundam. Some semblance of plausibility at least. They achieved it with the political angle, the three major alliances and the Middle East an abandoned shithole were a pretty good representation of one possible future.
While things like the solar furnaces (real GN drives) were exceptional, they were also exceptionally rare, quantity of just four. The pilots were also mediocre, relying on their technology rather than being a genius tactician as well as a pilot. Sumeragi and Kati's role, separating the strategists from the pilots as leaders made more sense too. Pilots with actual skill were able to threaten the Gundams, often forcing them to retreat despite the technological advantage. Scenarios were plausible as well. Terrorists, copycats, and frauds everywhere as a response to what CB was doing with the interventions. The 30 hour battle in the desert taxing the pilots mental and physical endurance, etc.
I could even give a pass to the copycat drives and while I didn't like it, even Alejandro's Fantastical Fabulous Machine of Multi-Functionality. The difference there was Alejandro's suit crammed 8+ fake-GN drives into it to surpass the same functionality as a Gundam. The Thrones had powerful suits, but their true advantage came from Nena's battery-turned-mobile suit high-capacitance drive, and that's all it did. Hers was otherwise horrible, and in the end they were all owned by a superior pilot/terrorist/mercenary-come-tactician.
What threw that all out the window wasn't Trans-Am's existence alone, but Billy somehow re-creating what made super rare, super-special drives special. After everyone had it, a ten to fifteen-second time limit followed by a severe drop in performance couldn't work anymore. Now it always had to last longer and longer, to make fights more than struggles until the pilots were finally forced to use their last resort and destroy their enemy in 5 seconds. The tactical viewpoint vanished, and it becomes an arms race to the flashiest ability. Tactics gone, there's no point, might as well have everyone have it, unlimited use and no ill effects until it is convenient for the plot or creating false tension.
I guess if I want a little more realism in my mecha nowadays, I'll have to go back to the original series, hope for some more FMP (where rare fantastical functions are kept rare), or just stick with Macross (excluding 7).
Last edited by Ryllharu; Wed, 03-18-2009 at 03:50 PM.
Oh, well. I dropped those thoughts by the end of the first season. I believe I said back then the first season setting would have been bloody perfect for a really good war series - without the Gundams. Just the three world factions with their various and quite believable suits. Now, that would be a series I'd love to see...
For some reason Romance of the three kingdoms came to mind.
"Be sure to take this piece of $#!t(meant sheet)" - My dynamics professor(heavy japanese accent)
Sig and Avatar by Lucifus
Current Games: League of Legends(Fuck, its got me hooked again -_-)
Why has this show become such shit?
I think that Ribbons' denying Tieria access to Veda was a function that had to be constantly maintained by Ribbons. Once Setsuna did the 'GN Burst' stuff, it disrupted Ribbons connection through the quantam brainwaves and allowed Tieria to regain access. Though this doesn't explain why Tieria and Regene could speak through quantam brainwaves and access Veda while the other innovades were being distrupted.
Another theory could be that since Regene and Tieria share their conciousness to a certain extent, that they could use each other to access Veda together. Regene was never said to have lost access to Veda, and Tieria was right next to Veda. They could have used each other to complete the missing pieces needed to regain access.</theorycrafting>
tl;dr, creepy talking corpses are creepy.
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