One of the most confusing and annoying thing about this is what Harima Kenji mentioned: The various factions lose their meaningfulness when people are free to travel between their ships/bases unhindred, more or less, and nobody gives a shit. They are even allowed to take gundams with them, which are the most importants tools of power in this show. It's certainly also true that half of the thing the characters have done so far has been 100% scripted on the spot, relating to no personal motivation or a larger picture. They just do random stuff to keep the weird beyond measure plot going on.

Otherwise I think the larger picture is slowly revealing itself.

  1. Mankind nearly destroyed itself in the past, and thus a portion of mankind took off to the space taking advanced technology, especially energy technology, with them. They went to Moon (Towasanga) and Venus (globe).
  2. Weird religion was founded on Earth with a monopoly to the energy distributed from Venus via Moon in limited amounts. The religion also created the technology taboos meant to keep history from repeating itself. Break them and lose the energy supply, I reckon.
  3. Somebody from the space came back to Earth a couple of decades ago not satisfied with the frozen situation. Caused some big incident. He apparently brought technology with him.
  4. The aforementioned still has sympathizer in Venus (G-IT).
  5. Towasanga (Dorett) wants to maintain the current situation, even by using force, including the fact no Earthling must ascend higher than the top of the space elevator.
  6. Venus officially wants to maintain the status quo as well.
  7. Earth has a couple of military factions (Capital Army, Ameria) who want to be equal to the space folks, which makes them also compete with each other.
  8. The unofficial Venus side faction G-IT plans to reclaim Earth, that's the reconguista.
  9. Megafauna does whatever the hell it wants (that's being a pirate, alright), although one would guess they would sympathize with Earth.


Feel free to correct any of my interpretations.