Interesting video, well researched and argued. Two things I'd just like to bring up are how the federation is a stand in for the US in 0080 for a really interesting cold war commentary with zeon as a stand in for the USSR and side six for Japan being caught in the middle of it all. The other thing, in 0079 we see both the US and USSR occupied by Zeon. The most notable part of this being how we see upper class men in the Americas sucking up to their occupiers in one scene.
@@Zudah_Pilot soon after WW2 the US quickly shifted to purging socialists and crushing organized labor internally and pursuing regime change abroad. By the 1960s US intelligence agencies are even overthrowing their own presidents.
@@yemmohater2796 Wrong, it parallels, fascism in Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. USA is nothing like that at least not yet, that would only happen if democrats get all the power forever. Because right now there is no fascism in USA, anyone is free to speak their mind.
I thought how After War Gundam X handled their equivalents was neat. It was interesting seeing how both factions lost much of their political power after the war and mass colony drops. Both lost most of their power and are barely holding on. While Gundam X is an AU, it's feels like the closest one to commenting on the Universal Century.
Gundam X is the only AU I've still not seen, but I'm really curious about it. As you point out, it seems to be one that's most explicitly a meta-commentary on UC.
The setting of s is actually the bad ending of Universal century, where oyw ended badly and badly damaged the earth. It’s an AU, but it was based on uc in the first place (compare to other original AU)
@@dalenlewin G, Wing, SEED, 00, Age, IBO, and Witch From Mercury all take place in new universes and weren't made to fit on past timelines. They were made to be standalone stories that are accessible to people who have never seen a Gundam anime before.
One of my favorite aspects of the Gundam franchise, especially the Universal Century Timeline, is how blurred the lines are to who the "good guys" and the "bad guys" really are. I mean look at Zeta Gundam, the AEUG are the main protagonists but from any other perspective they would be considered an anti government armed guerrilla organization. The United Earth Federation is definitely portrayed in many varying lights throughout the U.C. timeline, many of which are far from flattering portrayals. That's what I love about the nuance of the Gundam franchise.
AEUG is not that through. Its ties to Fed is too much to make them that. That is why Gryps war is considered a civil war. An anti Gov forces wouldn't have the chance to resupply and repair within Military base at the same time of their opposing faction with both sides knew exactly what were happeing...😂
I would call the AEUG more of a splinter faction, they are similar to the Titans in that regard, but they don't have the power of the Fed's administration behind them. If we want to look at a guerilla terror organization, Mafty is the best example. They are almost entirely concerned with assassinations and terror strikes, and have absolutely no legitimate recognition from the govt unlike the AEUG which had a good amount of former Feddies defect to.
The theming I get from Tomino's federation at the very least is a "democracy is flawed" discussion that while elements of it are corrupt it's still a better alternative than the dictatorship that is Zeon and our heroes are still a part of it working to defend it and root out the corrupt parts.
Maybe so, but Neo Zeon wouldn't rear it's ugly head so often if it wasn't for the policies of the Earth Federation. Even if they didn't cause the atrocities directly, they still bear some of the responsibility
@@battlesheep2552 And thus, the view that Tomino had. Democracy is flawed but so is any other government. There's always flaws which will lead to a bigger consequences from those who are in power that can't wield it with just.
Tomino original Earth Federation (meaning before Tomino make them basically a dead government by the time of F91) is probably the embodiment of Winston Churchill's quote that told as following "“democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried.” basically yes it's bad but whatever alternative they have especially as earthling and spacenoid still not consider themselves as one species will be worse until they can peacefully somehow come together and become one kind called humankind again
Interesting the Arabs who are genetically white even to the Nazi get called not white by many in the anti west groups. Plus of course them having been a colonial power that invaded a large part of the world in various forms of government. Like the peoples in the south mostly the men trend to permanent tans while many of better off women very white skin. Of course any Japanese who attempted to be part of the anti western colonial group while actually being part of a truly hideous Empire themselves seam to rest of Asia as bad as guys as the US. And China the dominant Empire in Asia for all but a few hundred years not a native victim either. All forms of the propaganda that runs around. It the human tribalism instinct that drives us to split into groups that hate each other and only DNA modification will permanently solve it.
Democracies have several flaws, and corruption isn't even the worst. Yet, compared to everything else, I would never want to change it. We choose the least bad option and we try to improve it as we can. Global democracies ranking are lower since a decade ; but like in the 30' , we will survive this tide.
This is a great analysis, usually these types of talks were always been discussed in spacebattles forums or smaller or dedicated sci fi forums back in the day. Nowadays after the advent of social media being mainstream its nice to see some discussion of this still goes around.
I found the federation to be most interesting in my opinion in 0083 since it shows a transition from how where the federation was nearing a fight for the elite but ultimately becoming to arrogant and careless as corrupted leaders like Bask Om took the helm by the end of the series with him sacrificing his own men to give out a message about how dangerous Zeon still is with the creation of the titans at the end of the series. It’s a perfect example of a military organization letting the wrong people slip through the cracks and then rising to power only to make something of what the original ideals weren’t into a nightmare.
This is such a great video! A really good overview on the topic that I think is overlooked quite a bit, especially in comparison to Zeon. I'm still more of a fan of how classic gundam portrays the federation, especially when you get to stuff like hathaway's flash. Hope you make more gundam content in the future!
Thanks for the background detailing on the various author takes on the Federation. I recently watched Zeta and ZZ series recently and one thing that frustrate me is, why don't characters actually do something about the rot of the federation?! Besides just "Let's Genocide the Earth" Zeons?! Surely there has to be a middle ground between doing nothing vs wiping out all Earthlings. It's a frustrating habit in various media now-a-days to use social ills as motivation for villain's but never have the hero's actually deal with the issue themselves.
I agree to a small extent. But there's two things to consider. Change in society happens over time(a lot different than a military conflict). And it requires different heroes than military heroes. Gundam is still an action show. So, this type of hero is trying to put out the fire so society has time to fix itself. One single person is usually too small to be able to fix such massive problems. In real life sometimes they can help organize a movement though. Push a cause. Become a politician ect. I'd like to think that a lot of them are doing good stuff quietly in the back. As members of society.
That was AUEG and Karaba. But by the end of the Neo Zeon war most of the more ideistic memebers were dead and the ones left didnt have enough power to compleate their major goals.
Because heroes have lives of their own. When the OYW ended, Amuro went PTSD ex child soldier mode because that was literally what he was. Char, on the other hand, kept pushing until becoming a politician. Hathaway is doing what you said via terrorism.
I always find it hilarious that while the federation always shown to be corrupt in the end of the day people rather siding with them rather than whatever opposition force was against from Zabi's Zeon to Zanscare Empire
I think Gundam Unicorn's post 9/11 themes actually makes a lot of sense when you take into account char's counterattack as the universal century's version of 9/11.
A pretty alright video, but two main things: 1. Text needs to be onscreen for more than the one to two seconds you did here, which made it really difficult to actually read 2. If you're going to put music in your video essays, you NEED to improve your audio leveling, pick low key music, and keep the music volume low. I've got really good audio drivers that allow me to improve dialogue clarity, and during the Thunderbolt segment, there were moments I could barely make out what you were saying because the music was overpowering your voice.
Oh forgot to respond to this, but yeah my audio is absolutely dire here. Recently got a Blue Yeti, and have a better grasp on audio mixing now, so hopefully my next ones will be better in that regard ^^;
gundam understands that right and wrong is not black or white, it isn't even a gradient but a mess of blobs all blurred and meshed together like a philosophical perlin noise map. there is good in the Federation and Zeon just as much as there is an immoral and twisted wrong subverting them. in many ways it shows that to follow a good and just path that you have to be willing to be proven wrong and even enjoy the feeling of finding the new horizons a new found understanding can present. you must twist and turn through life not caring about the destination because it is the result of your choices. I also DEEPLY enjoy when a protagonist gets that moment of realizing that the mistakes and wrongs are not just a stain on them but a defining moment to push for true embetterment.
Thank you for making this! I always felt some discomfort with the premises and framings of things in Gundam media, and this really helped contextualize some of that. Instantly subscribed!
Thanks for the comment! I'm not sure, I'm thinking of doing something where I give my hot takes on every Gundam series, so I might go into some of that stuff if that happens.
Seed's conflict is generally less about ideology and more about, well, transhumanism. Be it the biological aspect, social aspect, ethical aspect or what have u. Thats the whole schtick with Rau's story, Kira's whacko-genius biological dad, coordinators, Blue Cosmos, the Destiny Plan, George Glenn etc. The most clearly defined faction "ideology" in the universe is Orb's, which in a way is what the creator wants Japan(in 2002) to be; stronger and more capable military but ONLY use it for self defense(no military adventurism), more independent of foreign powers snd neutral(which also ties into the military aspect), welcoming of ppl across the world and do not discriminate them etc. PLANT's ideology is... well, just as u might expect from a young nation finding its footing in a hostile world. Self-preservation comes first before any ideological purity. And those like Patrick zala who do have some ideological fixation tends to be rather poor leaders. PLANT under much of its existence was lead by moderate ppl(be it genuinely so or just on the surface); they will make deals and play nice with naturals, even helping out South America in their own war, but they also are pragmatic enough to do things like pardon war criminals(like Yzak, even if he didnt mean it) or developing secret superweapons. Alliance member states unfortunately suffers from either being coopted by turbo-racists that purged all the half-decent folks, being super-duper capitalist and run by the MIC, or have very little presence onscreen in side material. For what its worth, CE!China seems to be the least racist toward coordinators of the 3 Alliance founding states so there is that.
I think one of the big reasons Zeon appeals to many people relates more to a desire to a real-world desire to be free from a distant, uncaring, and often oppressive centralized government. As someone who grew up in the Heartland of the US it is not uncommon for people to have an outright hatred of The US Government and Washington. Hell, its also not uncommon for people to proclaim a full desire for the state to secede and form its own country. It comes from the perspective of how uncaring Washington is of people out here (until they need something from us) and/or how disconnected the more liberal leaning coastal US is from is more conservative interior. Or the general snobbishness of the coastal people to the people of the interior. True or not, this is a story old as time, and Zeon is just a fictional take of what happens when a oppressed people who rightfully deserve independence, have their movement hijacked by what amounts to just another group of Tyrants. But Tyrants who say all the right things to get the masses on board.
I feel like how Zeon is represented and thought about reflects how we talk and reflect on communism. Like communism, the Zeons had legitimate gripes and criticisms of the Federation. In action, well, they dropped colonies on Earth and both sides started firing giant lazer beams at each other. In communism, we can use bits and pieces of it and the lessons of the past to make our society better (Most developed countries have free health care and more government safety nets and such without becoming geocidal dictatorships) but other places use the history of communism to deny many genuinely good progressions in society. Similarly to how the historical existence of Zeon and the 1 year War and other neo-Zeon stuff led to the EF clamping down on its own corruption and blaming them instead of actually trying to change itself. It's why I love how the Unicorn OVA adapted the novels in how it is a new generation trying to enact change beyond the past. Mineva is trying to find a way to create meaningful change without causing another war and should have succeeded (which is why I hate Narrative).
Do you have any opinion on the factions of G-Reconguista? The final compilation movie was recently released though I'm unsure of the home release. Since all the different factions and their individual nuances play such a big role in the story. It's also interesting in that it shows Tomino's most recent world views and is completely bereft of a Federation or Zeon counterpart.
Thanks for the comment! I think Reconguista has one of the most interesting settings in all of Gundam. I might do a video on it one day. What I love about it is, it shows a system that has just about worked for a while, but is inherently flawed, and can really only break. The idea that the horrors of the UC led to elite forming a religion that would teach earthnoids that even looking at the stars is a taboo - damn - that's a spicy world building. I don't actually love the show itself - I think it's just too compressed, and there's so much comedy (I have troubles with Tomino's comedy). But I would love to do a video on it one day. I feel like I need to finish the compilation movies before I figure out my full thoughts on it though.
Personally I am wondering how the current global situation will affect the depiction of the federation going forward with an active war in Ukraine and China getting increasingly hostile in the Indo pacific region.
@@pyramidinu9449 You tried to shoehorn the franchise into a juvenile political view of "Democracy vs Fascism" while smearing future writers of different UC series as being "controversial", "revisionists" and "Zeon apologists", with the reasoning being they portrayed The Federation as being, at minimum, morally gray and not the good guys or protagonists. This is ignoring that Zeta exists and was written by Tomino himself, he is the one who opened the door to The Federation not being the De Facto good guys. Your argument about revisionism doesn't make sense if you have to argue that the entire franchise after the original series is now revisionist because of the direct sequel done by the original author of the franchise. Thunderbolt had nothing to do with revisionism and your response just betrays how absurdly idiotic your political analysis of Gundam as a franchise is.
@@lpsoldin3162 I actually like Fukui somewhat, but I'd standby feeling like his emphasis on Federation war crimes reminds me of revisionist historians (Globe in particular) Thunderbolt just reminded me of revisionist Westerns and warfilms from the 70s. I'd stand by it, but eh. I don't mean revisionist to mean bad. I love The Searchers. I also love The Wild Bunch. I actually think The Searchers holds complexities Peckinpah's film does not have. Both are still great. But ultimately: we all love Gundam. Robots exploding good. I really don't think Gundam is a story of Democracy versus Fascism. I think the Federation always represented a Western Hegemony (to be clear to the other side of the fandom: this is not a defense of Zeon). But yeah idk. Sorry you felt the video minimised your perspective or put down non Tomino works. I really love pretty much all Gundam tbh, in all its quirks.
Whatever Fukui's politics are, Gundam Unicorn is one of the reasons why I'm an AnCom. So if he is a right-winger, he does kind of suck at being one. If he's a right-winger, he should be criticized, but I still think Unicorn can be interpreted in a leftist way. Edit: Gundam Thunderbolt will be adapted, but the Mangaka wants to finish the manga first.
Yeah, his version of the EF as a kind of paranoid Bush-era commentary on the Iraq war is pretty leftist I would say. Having watched some of his non-anime stuff, I'd argue he's a weird mish mash of hard leftism on some international issues, vaguely neoliberal when it comes to domestic policy, and a hard nationalist when it comes to Japanese history.
@@pyramidinu9449 I also heard the the Unicorn novels were queerphobic, which I wouldn't know. I haven't read them. I still consider the OVA to be my favorite story of all time.
@@comradefreedom8275 It's really trashy and excessive, but it didn't strike me as evidence of queerphobia, just manipulative writing. I actually kind of like Angelo's demonic twink archetype character - reminds me of old Shojo.
Hooooo, you've stepped on the landmine, and the explosion is "TacCom comes to the comments to massively overexplain things" XD Something to understand about Gundam, whether it be UC or CE or whatever... generally speaking? If it's a governing faction? They're a dick. Gundam and the later 08th MS Team didn't just portray the federation as uncaring, they portrayed them as a very "By any means necessary" group of obnoxious assholes, usually in a way where the main character ends up in opposition with them eventually. Original Gundam didn't take that much further than arguments and slapping Amuro around a bunch, but 08th MS Team showed us how they would deliberately send in GMs into cave structures just so they'd set off boobie traps and explode just to circumvent the Atlantic treaty by blowing up their reactors, a thing that... doesn't really make sense in-universe with how the technology works, but whatever. Point is, the Federation is very much the "Oh, we're gonna make sure we get our way, and we don't care how many kids we have to put in mobile suits and balls to get it." Meanwhile, Zeon, run entirely by the Zabi family, is obsessed with their independence so much that they violently attack earth, a move that... doesn't make THAT much sense, but it's the Zabis, they're kinda dicks like that, almost entirely self-serving in every possible way. Some series would go on to make the Zeon into this absolutist analog to the Nazi party(Looking at you, Igloo), but that sort of wasn't the point. I mean, it sort of was, because Zabi family, but also not really? Anyway, it's kinda complicated, I won't go too far into it, because all of that misses the entire point of the show in basically every case. Gundam is about what a LOT of anime is about. The next generation fighting tooth and nail against the conservativism of the older generation holding them back without any real cause. And while Unicorn took a mild detour in this... sort of... probably because Unicorn's writer is a bit of an imperialist, and also because Tomino wasn't really given the freedom to go all out with a more complicated story(Which is for the better, you don't wanna know what Tomino had to say about how much of Sayla Mass he imagined in extreme detail). You see this theme a LOT in Anime, where the opposition to the protagonist is usually someone desperately trying to retain the status quo, or someone trying to continue a meaningless grudge match against some other older party at the expense of the wellbeing of younger generations who get dragged into that war and forced to fight in it. Zeta nails that home REAL hard. A core component of the Federation is their near constant need to assert power and control. Every time something disastrous happens to them, they get even MORE fascist in their own dealings, and while we keep being told about how democratic they are, we never actually see that. What we DO see is a near constant need to control the media, control the message, and often justify some.... really poor behavior. Remember, Zeon's entire first push for independence was under Deikum, whose whole deal was "Look, if spacenoids evolve beyond the humanity of earth, they should run themselves, they know their own unique needs better than earth people do", which caused the federation to respond.... poorly. We'll say Poorly. If you want a perfect boiling down of what the Federation is in UC..... watch Seed. Okay, bear with me, that doesn't make sense at first, but it's still true. Seed was very much a condensing of the core story elements of UC in a LOT of ways, newtypes are semi-replaced with genetically engineered individuals, making it a little less spontaneous, and the core elements are still roughly the same, new evolution declares themselves independent, old control decides they need to be put down for it, war starts, horrible things happen, and the entire point is watching what a party that starts on one side and ultimately comes to realize that there's no such thing as the invariable "Good guys" in war.... right as they almost get nuked by a giant microwave, in one of the bloodiest scenes in Gundam. Seed shows us a Zaft where the spacenoids want absolute dominion over everyone, and a Federation that is perfectly happy slaughtering millions in order to gain an inch of ground, to say nothing of allying themselves not once but twice with a group of genocidal "natural" supremacists, the second being in Seed Destiny where the genocidal lunatics make their way into the neutral Orb government as well, as well as in to weapons manufacturing, giving them a clear profit motive to keep on killing. This... very closely mirrors UC in a lot of ways, where the crew of the White Base is beset between the need to adhere to duty and the need to do the right thing(Bright), or the desire to avoid killing unnecessarily versus the requirement to kill or be killed, et cetera. All of which is to say, this is a long way of saying the Federation is a bunch of dicks, Zeon are a bunch of dicks, and the majority of main characters(including antagonists, ESPECIALLY ones like Char) are those who are being pushed by the currents of those bunches of dicks and having to navigate living and/or coming out of the war alive in the end, because as every UC Gundam story has shown us thus far.... War? War never changes. (Except Hathaway, because seriously, fuuuuuuck hathaway's flash, literally everything about it is stupid)
Also regarding Kai's statement about elites, it's an established canon that Federation citizens living on space colonies don't really have... rights. Like, at all. We keep hearing about how the federation is so democratic, but the whole reason zeon wanted to declare independence was because they were not given control over their own destiny, and were beholden only to those who lived on earth and who made decisions for them from earth. The universe in question goes on to show that the federation is perfectly happy to be a bit Tiananmen Square with its need to put down demonstrations, even and especially peaceful ones, and in later series, to starve and/or forcibly irradiate an entire population even on earth just to assert dominance. The Federation, if it is democratic at all, does not give colonists the franchise, for sure. And as much as I hate HF, it also shows a federation that treats colonists as not being Allowed to come to earth without "proper documentation".
'cause. And while Unicorn took a mild detour in this... sort of... probably because Unicorn's writer is a bit of an imperialist, and also because Tomino wasn't really given the freedom to go all out with a more complicated story' Can you expand on what you mean by this?
@@pyramidinu9449 Gundam got wrangled in to be marketable from the very start. There's a big reason they went with the newtype plot halfway in, it was pretty heavily pushed by the networks who thought this "Real robot" genre was a BIT too risky and they had to introduce a tiny bit of space-magic nonsense alongside. MSG was a HUGE risk for the network and for basically everyone involved, because up to that point, robot genre shows were seen as "Good guys good, bad guys bad, also the massive giant robot has to be unkillable and weirdly fantastical and violating all laws of physics". The "Super Robot" genre. Gundam's "Real Robot" genre was... heavier. Dryer. More depressing. It was harder to cheer for the main character when they did something crazy because it was almost always accompanied by something tragic but honestly kinda meaningless. Sure, Amuro took down the Big Zam with a big epic stab, but it got accompanied by Sleggar dying, as well as near-constant footage trying to get us to sympathize with Dozle, and coupled with the fact that the great last stand of the Big Zam was to cover a retreat anyway. We couldn't cheer much for Amuro defeating the fat Gouf because we'd just been given WAY too much time to get to know and love Ramba, just before he would be teleported to another world in order to buy gunpla for his kid to participate in tournaments. (Sorry, had to make that joke). It was a harder sell, and that made EVERYONE nervous. Coupling that with the fact that Tomino had... some odd habits when it came to his writing(Seriously, he at one point in an interview went into how he specifically imagined every detail of Sayla Mass's genitals when writing the character, which... yeeeeeeah), and it was definitely seen as risky. So the story got simplified a lot in production at first so that Gundam would be a lot more good-guys-good-bad-guys-bad, at least in terms of factions. Zeta would throw that out of the window pretty quickly for the most part, making even the top brass at AEUG be a bit awful, and 08th MS Team and 0083 would go on to fill in the details of how the federation was.... kind of the worst. Okay, maybe not THE worst, Gihren still has that title, but still. 0083 did a lot to let us know the Federation was paranoid, controlling, and heeeeeavily fascist in their own right. MS Gundam didn't get to be as complex as it wanted to be, and the later series' let us see a MUCH more complex story, which did a lot more to flesh out how there really wasn't a Good side, per se. Tomino lived through post-war reconstruction era Japan, and suffered heavily through basically every day of production and beyond from post traumatic depression, dizzy spells, tinnitus, and a TON of other maladies. From what I understand, he still does. He has a lot of problem seeing the good in basically anything or anyone, and is consistently frustrated by how Bandai and Sunrise handle basically anything, which is to say, he wants to write complex stories, they want to sell toys of easily rooted for character-robots. And I get it, Bandai and Sunrise have a responsibility to fill seats and get people in, but when the risk is as great as what MS Gundam posed, I can definitely see why they'd be very, very nervous. Especially when you know Gundam wasn't really all that successful. Not at first, anyway, it took a bit before people woke up to it, which let Sunrise know that gundam COULD be complex, deep, interesting, and nuanced, and that you didn't have to root for a side if the core characters were worthwhile on their own. Well... And then CCA happened and said "Character complexity? Naaaaah, we want big glowing green magic lights and characters reversing all of their character development in an instant because of the Stupid trope."
It is my opinion that the manner in which the Earth Federation is portrayed in the early Tomino works has had undeniable ramifications on how both the Gundam fandom and other Gundam creators perceive the narrative of the Universal Century. It becomes difficult to blame people for rallying behind Zeon when their alternative is basically a memetic vacuum that has no overt values or ideology and represents nothing but the worst stereotypes of a neoliberal market economy that one could make. Corrupt, incompetent, self interested, greedy etc. That and any and all of the "good" Federation characters are usually portrayed as good in spite of, not because of, the Federation, with no character be it Bright, Judau or Amuro being capable of reforming its deficiencies.
More Good Feddies who stood out were also Lieutenants Matilda Ajan, Woody, Sleggar Law, Ryu Jose and Admiral Revil. As if Tomino was showing us that the best men and women among them died during the One Year War. I'll bet they would have all become AEUG or would have prevented assholes like Jamitov and Bask Om from taking over.
True, but the other side, Zeon and Zanscare, are tyrannical, genocidal monarchies. So tye Federation is still the best alternative. The only decent akternative to the Federation was the AEUG, wich had the same underlying problems of the Federation, as ut was financed and controlled by big corporations.
@arx3516 The problem here is threefold. 1) The Federation has repeatedly shown that it lacks the means or even the interest to combat or deter these tyrannical genocidal regimes. Delaz Fleet steals our secret nuke equipped Gundam? Don't send anything other than a single Pegasus-class after them and continue our naval review despite the security risk. Axis trying to vie for control after the power vacuum left by the Titans' demise? Leave AEUG and Karaba to deal with and not only do nothing but even cave into their demands. Char literally opens his insurrection by dropping Fifth Luna on Lhasa? Sell him an even bigger asteroid to allow him to do more damage and leave Londo Bell to mop up. They straight up did nothing during the Cosmo Babylonia uprising because they just saw it as a "drunken bar brawl." Having the power to stop tyranny yet doing nothing makes you just as bad as the tyrant. 2) Zeon's (and their derivatives) repeated atrocities literally mean nothing within the public consciousness of the Universal Century. Them killing half of the human population didn't mean anything in Zeta and ZZ. The Titans were unanimously considered the worse threat, and Axis was able to return with little resistance or outcry. Char attempting to nuke earth didn't stop him from being considered a celebrity by UC 105, as well as Mafty rallying by his ideals to public approval. Anti-Zeon and Anti-spacenoid sentiment seems to be localised entirely within the military or the upper echelons of the government in the UC, and is completely absent from the general populace, essentially giving these regimes the blank cheque they need to commit further atrocities, since this populace is unwilling to push or lobby to prevent these atrocities. 3) The only reason to root for the Earth Federation instead is because of very tenuous self-preservation. They don't have superior values or ideology to Zeon. They're just better because they'll leave you alone. Provided you're not a space immigrant, in which they'll deport you into forced labour. Or you're an anti-Federation protestor, in which case they'll nerve gas you. And provided you're not unfortunate enough to be used as a human shield or bait or leverage during a battle. And if you happen to be on the receiving end of an imminent colony drop, well, GG. To them, you're one less mouth to feed, and they won't even give you a warning so you can evacuate by your own means that they won't provide for you.
I felt that in 0079 the WWII parallels were pretty strong. In a similar vein to how you put it, the earliest depictions of the Earth Federation are that of a stumbling and borderline incompetent governing force. Eventually, over the course of the original series, the Federation gets themselves together and reclaims the upper hand over Zeon. In my eye this is hugely indicative of the allies during the early war period of WWII, also known as the phony war. The French government displayed vast incompetence despite the extremely high troop morale and willingness to fight, and Britain spent far too long dragging its feet on political notions that Germany could still be reasoned with even after the invasion of Poland. Arguably the allies first true attempt to halt Germany was the defense of France ended in that retreating battle to the port city of Dunkerque with abject failure. Some easy comparisons can be drawn here with the Battle of Loum. The Earth Federation vastly underestimated the capability and tenacity of the Zeon forces, leading to a total defeat. It would take the allies a little over 2 years to make any willful attempt at an offensive. Similarly, things would get worse for the Earth Federation before they got better, with the destabilizing and dropping of Side 2 and the invasion of Earth. 0080: War in the Pocket carries some pretty obvious Cold War vibes with all the secrecy and neutrality. As does 0083: Stardust Memory, which while Zeon doesn't necessarily play a role resembling the USSR, the Earth Federation certainly plays a role similar to the mid Cold War United States.
It seems that the Federation will always be a stand-in for the bad (and some good) of our modern western world. I forget where I saw the quote, but the Federation was said to have been founded by "a Rich Man's club of countries". The original even had the Federation flag be a strange mix of NATO, the UN, and for some reason Brazil. The uniforms worn by Federation soldiers are also reminiscent of American uniforms from the Cold War mixed slightly with Imperial Japanese uniforms, and with the EF helmet looking very similar to the UN's own "blue helmets".
@@Mike-xh2vm I kind of have to agree with the OP here. We see much more of the bad than the good. We are following, for the most part the FEW good people involved, and virtually all of them are low rankers on the sharp end of the stick.
You say "for some reason Brazil" but that's because I think most people have forgotten that back in the day, Brazil was THIS close to becoming the US of South America, a genuine powerhouse of the region that dictated policy for many of its neighbors simply due to its influence and commanding the respect of European powers. Then their last emperor died, and a bunch of generals decided to destroy everything the man created by fighting amongst themselves over the government for the next 30 years and Brazil has still been trying to recover from that event. It's a wierd parallel to Alexander the Great's empire in that way.
@@SeruraRenge11 it's not well poised to compete with America because too much of it comprised of lush jungle, unlike the US which has the geography to set up industrialised cities more easily, it'd take them far longer and cost far more to become as industrialised as the US
That was less of a concern to them back then as conservationism was barely a thing in the 1800s so they were logging the everliving hell out of the Amazon. Nowadays most countries operate on the principle of "you have to grow a new tree for every one you cut down, for nature's future", but npt back then.@@joshjonson2368
Kai: I knew that rat must be one of the elites. Mirai: Living on on earth doesn't make you one of the elites! Note: Mirai is a Earthnoid heir to a corporate plutocrat.
well at the end she kinda disinherited and she end up with an eternal captain whose career get held back from promotion for decades and son that end up in gallows,
Okay but I feel like you, and the franchise at this point have forgotten that there are still tons of poor people on earth because it's difficult and expensive to move to the colonies. Mirai would've known this to be true despite being born in a wealthy family.
In the same "Zeon is exhausted" speech by General Revill, he acknowledges that the Federation government has flaws such as corruption and poor leadership. Spacenoid have legitimate grievances and the right to be emancipated from a government they don't feel represents them. But replacing that with a dictatorial monarchical regime like the one proposed by Zeon is just making a 180° shift. I would not depose the Federation to be taken over by a monarchical version of the Federation that wants to impose itself even against the interests of other colonies like Side 6.
Yeah, since making this video I re-read the novels, and caught both that, and the paragraph about a right-wing, anti-spacenoid party taking power in the Federation in the lead up to the war. Zeon is undoubtedly, unreservedly worse than the Federation. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just into the mobile suits I guess.
Tomino wasn't a fan of the real world but he disliked the Japanese empire era more. An era during which it's own militias that they set up in occupied territories turned on them. If Zeon was anything like Imperial Japan, I see why all the colonies that stayed with the Earth Federation, stayed.
@@pyramidinu9449 on the surface it would seem that the AEUG is only good alternative, however, the AEUG itself has the same underlying flaws of the EF. The AEUG if financed and controlled by space based corporations,, who resent the fact that they don't have the same level of influence over the EF as their earth based competition has.
The Victory Gundam depiction of the Federation is honestly my favourite, a bunch of old men past their prime trying to maintain peace for the younger generation with whatever power they had left.
When fed finally fell, things became... Really really bad....😢 By that time, Fed lost a lot of its influences and many Sides just did what they want but at least they kept them honest and restrained the worst of their actions. Once Fed gone, many of those rulers just released the beasts inside...
I still honestly don’t know if I’d go as far as to call Fukui a Japanese nationalist but people are right on the money about him being Japanese Tom Clancy from everything I’ve heard. In terms of his Federation I’m fine with him portraying it as a paranoid conspiratorial regime (even if Tomino already did that during Zeta) but him trying to retroactively moralize Zeon is extremely annoying considering they’ve historically been the absolutely worst between the two in every show
How is that worst and they never was depicted has such. Have you really watched the uc series? Ms igloo has shown the real issues of zeon from the grunt point of view. Zeon was run by Zabis who were the real Enemy. Im tired of seeing this comment. This theme has been going on since ms gundam 8th ma team! We see the federation sending squads into a mine based knowing those squads were going to DIE. Its bs on both sides of the war! The earth federation has never been altered! This is nonsense from People taking there lore from unicorn! Go back the the war in the pocket, 8ths team, ms igloo. Ms igloo clearly states that no one new the colonies were going to be gassed but top braas zeon officials. The lore is there gundam was never a balck and white good vs bad theme.
I dunno if I'd say Absolute worst... Deikum was very much on the side of "Let the people decide their own fate, that's all we want, is to be able to rule ourselves", Zeon themselves weren't the problem, it was the Zabis. Sasro was a manipulative fascist, Kycilia was a capricious idiot and a despotic secret-police lunatic, Garma was corrupt and self-serving, Dozle was a "Gentle Giant" who was also like "hey, let's drop a five kilometer diameter metal tube on earth to make a point", Degwin may or may not have been involved in assassinating Deikum in a power grab, only to get power-grab deaded himself, and Gihren was literally Hitler. I think the only Zabi that wasn't awful was Mineva, and even that's a bit debatable, like, she was awful throughout the Neo Zeon war, but also somehow did a full 180 for Unicorn. Pretty sure that's my core issue with Fukui, the whole "Mineva goes from being a personality-less puppet to being a whatever-the-cost manipulator who has to learn the value of friendship from a guy who got absolutely obsessed with her after meeting her once and thinking that meant they would be together forever, or whatever. Seriously, I like Banana and his plotline, but that whole part of it was Super gross and weird.
I made a big post about how Fukui is like...the opposite of a Japanese nationalist but as for the Tom Clancy thing, ONE of the books he wrote, Aegis, fits that bill and even then its themes are the exact fucking opposite: Instead of America banzai it’s “Japan is fucked up” and instead of “fuck Russian terrorists” it’s “that North Korean terrorist might have had the right idea”. (They’re anti-establishment terrorists from North Korea who want to TAKE IT DOWN) It literally ends with the protagonist disenfranchised with Japan but somehow people claim this is nationalist? That would never happen in a Clancy novel, inevitably self-insert Jack Ryan would take down all of the corrupt elements in the American government and reinvigorated in his belief that America once again holds the values it's meant to.
Well in the original trilogy to Crossbone and Victory the EF has changes in personality because time passes. It's almost ironic that In Gundam the spacenoid factions that are antagonists are culturally stagnant and are threatened by earth. The common Zeon saying their souls are weighted down by gravity is emblematic of it. Unicorn is the odd one as the writer is a Zeon apologist. Look into Gundam Gaia Gear for the proper return of Char in that case. Gaia Gear is a novel Tomino wrote as part of the Char's Counter Attack novel timeline which is CCA Beltorchika's Children, Hathaway's Flash( original novel) and Gaia Gear. Neither is good nor bad but present different problems.
@@pyramidinu9449 I found a translation of the first book, on the Zeonic Scanlations website. They're working on the second book as of almost a year ago.
Another cool video. I have one completely irrelevant nitpick, which is that the star trek federation is not consistent at all in what it represents from series to series (and sometimes within series!). Post war American idealism sometimes, but also occasionally Soviet idealism, then a much more cynical but still sympathetic view of the liberal state by the time of DS9, and then war on terror America in Enterprise, and then new trek seems to want to go hard on portraying them as repressive and on the verge of total crisis but can't quite ever commit on that
These are great points, and basically make me realise that I need to watch more Star Trek. Also thinking about it, I guess the JJ Abrams movies could be seen as parallel to Fukui's Gundam work, like, with all the post-9/11 imagery and stuff. I haven't seen much at all of NuTrek so it's interesting to hear that it's also going towards presenting the Federation as dysfunctional.
@@pyramidinu9449 yeah, though nutrek is a weird animal. In Picard season 1 the federation is utterly callous at the mass death of romulans and essentially slavery and genocide of androids, but then at the end it turns out to be like, romulan false flags and infiltration? And then they just get over it? Strange stuff, but even in that case where I think it was an outright fumble, it's interesting to think about what approaches to media and fandom might be potentially at play there, and also the contrasts in the kind of imaginaries that influence the different series
@@Clara-anise I've not actually watched much Star Trek beyond the original series, but my sense from the Trek podcasts I've listened to is that some fans really fetishise the whole Sci-fi utopianism angle (even tho DS9 seems to be almost unanimously agreed to be the best, and the series that provides the most nuanced version of its factions). Anyways, I wonder if it's a case of writers wanting to do that sort of DS9 type exploration, while also being wary of fan backlash. I would honestly love to watch a video essay comparing Gundam and ST's respective factions (though I'm not the one to do it).
@Pyramid Inu Yeah some people definitely seem to pine for a particular vision of the federation in line with rodenberrys 'original vision', even though its most purely represented form is season 1 of TNG which is ROUGH. But at the same time, positing some kind of ability to create positive institutions is something that makes star trek stand out in a highly pessimistic era, so I think DS9 is praised so much because it does take the utopian ideals seriously while still trying to put them through scrutiny, making it feel more grounded and complicated but still rooted in at least some kind of idealism. I personally get the sense that because you have such a mix of people who like that stuff, people who want the federation to just be the good guys who do the right thing, and people who only kinda know the series or have some nostalgia for the characters but no particular expectations besides "modern scifi TV show" when they watch a new series - whoever's in charge of the decision making on newer series seems to want to appeal to all of these groups at once and what you end up with is quite muddled. And I strongly agree, a thorough comparison of trek and Gundam would be super fascinating. If it were extended beyond the political factions to their social critiques, views on technology, roles in culture as multimedia and merchandising phenomena, and legacies within their own sci-fi spheres, someone could probably easily work a whole dissertation out of it
It doesn't need to though, considering each series takes place decades if not century's apart from each other. Or in the case of TNG DS9 and Voyager simple involve themselves within different contexts of the Federation as a whole. So ideals changing are expected, yet they all at least take on a very socialist view throughout them all save the some outlayers.
I’ve unavoidably read my own opinions of western liberal democracies into the EF from the various parts of the Gundam universe I’ve seen. A top heavy bureaucratic and oligarchical state with authoritarian characteristics, some adopted from its adversaries. You could see the EF borrowing Zeon tech as its own operation paper clip, the Titans as the burgeoning peace time national security state, etc. The EF seems to be a democratic republic and as a result it is wholly unresponsive to and unrepresentative of its citizenry. We never really see any working class characters in Gundam celebrating the EF or feeling as though they’ve effectively participated in it, at most they’ve simply felt more threatened by an external force. It’s also pretty explicitly a colonial force. In some ways classically colonial though space colonies don’t hold the same connotations of conquest they do share the abstraction of power and extraction of labor. And also “neo-colonial” using economic and political force to erode and subvert the autonomy of regions both terrestrial and extraterrestrial. I think most of these traits tend to be found fairly consistently throughout the franchise.
Considering they did have their post 9/11 justification after Stardust, it does makes sense to see where the leadership of the Federation ended up at, and of course eventually where it will be in the next century.
Honestly speaking it's remarkable that the Zeon core colonies weren't literally just blown up following the events of the one year war. The sheer scale of the colony drop exceeds everything in human history.
Outside of Zeon there really isn't any ideology in Gundam, even the Zeon are vague. They're more like representations. Federation being the Status Quo. Zeon representation Revolutionary Action and seem to borrow from Fascism, Nazism and Marxism whenever the franchise's plot deems fit. For example Zeon Zun Deikun is basically Gundam's Karl Marx. And the Newtype Theory has a lot in common with the Soviet New Man theory by Trotsky. The Zeon's Oppressed vs Oppressor also comes from the Marxist Class Theory of History which has morphed within Feminism to be Men vs Women or CRT Black vs White. In the Context of Gundam, Earth vs Space. However the Zeon are also given a Fascist/Nazi veneer on top of it all. Interesting enough the Gundam franchise takes a huge dump on Zeon beliefs constantly. With most Famous Newtypes coming from Earthly origins, and Earthnoids also being quite poor while showing a lot of wealthy and well off Spacenoids. Showing Zeon Deikun's theories to be built on a bad perception of the world.
I would like to see a gundam alternate universe that explores how the tools of warfare affect what kind of values for society are able to survive. Maybe have 5+ major factions rather than the usually 2-3.
I kind of feel like total war scenarios with ~5 factions are unrealistic, because they'll just immediately coalesce into blocs, at which point you're right back to a war with two factions.
10:30 fukui also a famous blockbuster writer as his novel adaption into lived-action film such as boukoku no aegis which about japanese right winger conspire with north korean terrorist using american chemical weapon to threaten japanese government. so new york times was right to call him japanese tom clancy.
Funny you say this, I was working on a video essay on that specific movie (and also Lorelei). But then I found it was kinda bumming me out cause I honestly find Fukui's politics depressing on multiple levels. Maybe I'll still do it idk. One of the volumes of the Gundam UC LN is basically a complete retread of Aegis so there's some content there.
I read the Unicorn light novel 10-ish years ago and I never knew that the author leans toward the right. At that time, I really appreciated how the light novel fleshed out the beginnings of the Federation and how it was a version of our world if only men continued to go to space after the space race. There’s a part of me that wants to believe that the Federation is mostly to blame for the uprising of the spacenoid. Pretty much like how the US colonies rebelled against the British empire. But I can't ignore what the Zeon/Zabi did to billions of people. If anything, the recent Gundam animes have made the Universal Century more rough and gray.
Thats the thing for me, comparing The One Year War to the many independence wars in the Americas doesn't work because the US or Brazil for example didn't invade their colonizers, Zeon didn't want independence, they wanted an empire maskared under a false ideology of independence, and that's why in my vision Zeon is always wrong despite all the problems of the Federation. Also I feel that maybe Crossbone Vanguard and Zanscare were made so cartoonishly evil to bash in the heads of all the Zeon fanboys that they are not the side you should be rooting for.
@@CoracaoAcidental98Zeon are very similar to the Nzis in that regard, although the inclusion of freedom as a major tenet doesn't work as well imo. The "noble" ideology justifying horrific acts remains however
@@CoracaoAcidental98 アメリカ大陸には多くの先住民がいたはずです。 USAは侵略の結果です。 アメリカはフィリピン等の植民地をアジアに保有していました。 アメリカが建国戦争をイギリスと行ってどちらが勝っても先住民族は未だに被害者のままで永遠に祖国を取り戻すことはできません。 Google Translate There must have been many indigenous people in the Americas. The USA is the result of invasion. The US had colonies in Asia, such as the Philippines. No matter who won the War of Independence between the US and Britain, the indigenous peoples would still be victims and would never be able to get their homeland back.
In many ways, the original Gundam stories were about the dangers of autocracy: the idea that, even if there are blatant abuses in society, giving someone limitless power to fight those problems will always just make things worse, no matter how well intentioned. The Zabis are the obvious example, but you can see it even in something like Turn-A, where Diana trying to rush back to Earth starts most of the problems in the plot. As such, it's always felt like Gundam is worse off when it forgets that "wreck everyone until they all agree with me" is actually a bad thing. Maybe that's why something as weird as Gundam Thunderbolt feels more "right," since it's more sympathetic to the individualists than the people blindly drifting along with the war.
That "wreck everyone until they all agree with me" attitude is exactly what went wrong with Gundam Seed Destiny writing wise. (Okay it's one of a laundry list of issues.) Oddly enough, Gundam 00 had the best counter take on that situation, starting with literally doing that and ending on the fundamental lesson (literally spelled out for anyone who didn't get it yet) that peace can not be maintained through force, only through understanding. UC Federation ends up constantly trying to maintain peace through force and it just means Zeon style movements keep showing up, until the remnants of the Federation are so weak that they don't matter anymore by (IIRC) Crossbone Gundam or so.
well EF was quite anti spacenoid but at least 'democratic' federation until UC0079~UC0092 but after UC0093(CCA) when main threat(zeon) became weak, they no more care about spacenoids.
And Hathaway is very much just the latest version oF ALL HUMANS NEED TO MIGARATE TO SPACE TO SAVE THE PLANET!!!! REEEEEE Taxi Driver: Dude we just want to live our lives without being extorted, we have enough fish and other stuff you say is disappearing. Hatahway: BUT all humans must move to space to SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT! Taxi Driver: Did you now hear what i just said? In short: Hathaway is a Wok ECO Terroist who lives in a bubble where saving the earth means ignoring that people like the taxi driver clearly state that the only real problem they have is the EFF being pricks and extorting them. Hathaway really was a nieve person who has happy to use terrorism to stop terrorism without thinking about all the normal people he just assumed don't mind to have MS battles smashing their their neighbourhoods or being forced into space by his own "save the planet" wokism. That conversation with the Taxi driver makes it clear most people could care less about the the EFF or Zion or Newtype idealism and just want to be left to lead their normal lives. Sure they don't mind if the Evil Manhunter Cops that make their lives a misery get a black eye but they also don't want to live in a warzone forever stuck between two extremist factions.
Yes, I think Hathaway, like Char, is lying to himself about his real motivations, which is one of the reasons his goals are written to be so contradictory. Or at least, I assume that's what going on there.
I think UC0105 doesn't need a Mafty, it needs an AEUG. A proper military faction, not a terror group, that's looking to actually reform the state of things rather than burning it all down. Mafty's course of action will make everything worse for everyone.
I’m not the kind of person who tends to dislike ambiguity and stuff in my media, but I gotta say, I’m really fucking upset that Zeon had been so whitewashed to the point where now it’s generally seen as Zeon always being right, when this is just factually untrue. I don’t give a damn how corrupt or unequal the federation were, Zeon as a movement has caused so, so much worse, for their own people as much as those on Earth, and Hack authors like Fukui and the fanbase in general have gone out of their way to paint Zeon as completely correct.
Funny enough the dialogue in one of unicorns episodes highlights the contradiction of all of fukuis idealism. When Marida was speaking of zeon, how it was this shining beacon in the darkness of godless space, it’s the watering down of factual history and creating some rose tinted view of the past. Much like how it seems he believes in the whole imperial japan was just and did right back in the day, when the reality was no the Japanese empire did horrible atrocities. The same goes for zeon they did horrible things in the name of independence. Don’t get me wrong though I do love zeon, I’m a fanboy. Maybe that is the charm of them being the underdogs per se, they’re relatable with their drive to independence, cool suits too. But I see it as original gundam showcases how something good at the heart can be so corrupted and evil thanks to fascism. Let’s not get it twisted the zeon are the bad guys, memes be damned. For the feds it’s oddly enough similar just a slow burn. you can see a progression of decay. In 0079, origin, through to 0080 you see the federation as a democracy sure but bloated and ineffective and militaristic; means well but has its issues. But like all democracies if it’s not nurtured and taken care of it will decay and that’s exactly what you see by gundam Hathaway. The federation is more concerned with its own elite power and damn the rest of the world and civilians alike. they were the better choice than zeon, but for how long should they have stayed because life isn’t really much better after over 100 years under their rule. I always love this stuff because that’s dynamic world building. Reality is never EF good guys always, space people bad guys.
@@Jagecage Re: that Marida conversation, I think that’s actually pretty typical of Fukui’s writing. I’ve been watching the major adaptations of his work for a potential video, and also properly reading the Gundam Unicorn light novels, and I’m finding my motivation to actually do it flagging just because of how unpleasant I think his politics are. But, he’s actually very good at making it unclear exactly what he believes. Most of his stories will have nationalist right-wingers as the villains, but they’ll be presented as the only ones with a genuine ideology. So he’s presenting them as the villains, but also presenting them as the only alternative to an ineffective, neoliberal consensus. Which I think is kinda sneaky. Anyway, I’ll go more into that if I ever make that video. I definitely think Zeon are irrefutably terrible. Where I disagree with some fans, I guess, is that I don’t think the Federation being corrupt exists in opposition to that, in fact I think those two things feed each other. As you say, its also just good world building. The Federation being this shambling bureaucracy in which inequity is built into the system is part of what gives Zeon any ideological ammunition to start with.
@@pyramidinu9449 "Where I disagree with some fans, I guess, is that I don’t think the Federation being corrupt exists in opposition to that, in fact I think those two things feed each other. " Hence why I would always say, the EF is where the stinky flowers of Zeon bloom. One feeds the other. Zeon will exist as long as EF does, even when it takes its alternate forms like Cosmo Babylonia or Zanscare.
In my view, the Earth Federation in the original 0079 series represents the worst manifestation of liberal capitalism. That being said, their goals are implied near the end of the television series, as to retake side 3 because they want to monopolize mineral trade with the Jupiter Fleet. I interpret this from episode 38, or 39 (depending on the translation), The Newtype Chalia Bull, where the Jupiter Fleet is introduced selling weapons and minerals to Zeon and possibly the Federation. Hence, this makes the Federation out to be more of a petty despot. Plus, with the Federation being a liberal capitalist state, it's prone to falling into fascism when liberal politicians fail to govern and grant free reign to fascists to retain power. We can see this with how the Federation allows the Titans to rise to power in Stardust Memory and Z Gundam. Plus, I can't help but notice that it's almost like Tomino and the staff of Gundam are saying both capitalism and fascism are two sides of the same coin.
I am saying this as a libertarian and anti-communist so you may have a different view, but I see that post-industrial movement from capitalism into corporatism/fascism is pretty evident for the Federation. Basically what happens if you let the power centralize too much between the private so that you get megacorporations, and between the state that you get massive bloated bueracracy. These powers will ultimately work together to maintain that system, and if nobody tries to reform or resist, you get the Federation in Hathaway as a fascistic empire. It's quite evident that's what's going on in the irl west these days.
@@cabnbeeschurgr6440 I approach Gundam from a Post-Colonial Libertarian Socialist/Anarcho-Communist standpoint, or as an Anarchist Person of Color (APOC), in my view, capitalism will inevitably become fascism, once the state gives up the charade of democracy, or rather that capitalism is fascism. Allow me to elaborate what I originally said in more detail. It's evident in the 4 episode of the original series, that Admiral Watkins shows disregard for due process when he accuses the refugees and crew of the White Base of spying for the Zeon. Then you have the Federal soldiers not only getting drunk at Amuro's home, but also showing disregard for his personal property in episode 12. But then there's the pair of federal soldiers who harass a vendor Amuro knows after demanding payment. Hence, the Federation is classist, insofar as they have no regard for the rights of their own citizens. Also, it's not the case that too much centralized power is the problem, but it's power itself that's the problem. War for instance, is an institution of state power, and both the Federation/Titans and Zeon/Neo-Zeon, seek power through war. In other words, war is an opportunity for a grab at power. Another point I want to make is that, reform is only a band-aid solution to the problem of power. The AEUG in Zeta Gundam only want to remove the Titans' influence over the Federation general assembly, but have no real solution as to how to keep the Federation from slipping into a totalitarian state again. So it's best to overthrow the Federation and not replace it with a government, but with decentralized city-states in the colonies, that are without governments themselves and are self-managed by their citizens in the sides. Oh, and that also means abolishing capitalism, since it's the cause of all wars in the Universal century and today's conflicts. For example, the Moon-moon society in Double Zeta Gundam or ZZ Gundam are an indigenous, Mayan-esque, self-governed peoples who exist outside Federation influence, and have lived without the interference of the Federation, i.e., no capitalist dealing is present in the Moon-moon society.
Another nice video someone who's been watching Gundam since the late '90s it's nice to see videos that are more about the actual world and factions than just straight multiple suits which I don't have a problem with love that
I've always viewed them as outdated. They feared newtypes as if they were some sort of mutants. Meanwhile the Zeeks just saw them as living weapons. The feds reminded me how in a post crisis DC comic, the kryptonian council feared the potential of their species under the yellow sun. Which is why they banned space travel and lived as recluse. Like how the feds held amuro in a house arrest and refused to give him any privileges despite his contributions. The feds in unicorn were similar to the zeeks somehow. A relic of the past but desperately trying to cling on the status quo on the colonies.
It made sense in the Expanse with the poor living conditions and people suffering the effects of living their lives under a fraction of a g, but in MSG most spacenoids live in O'Neil Cylinder colonies that simulate a full G, always have perfect weather, and consist of hundreds of square kilometers of clean urban areas interspersed with parks and wilderness preserves. It's hard to believe the people who inhabit such a paradise are the ones being oppressed.
To me it kinda just seems to exist as some large polity creates Zeon and by extention the wars between them so the characters can duke it out with some decent motivations behind the. So this adds some light to it.
The Earth Federation symbolizes different things depending on where you're from. As someone from a colonized country, I hate the Federation because they represent the old colonial powers. How they have betrayed and exploited my people. Yes Zeon has been brutal and authoritarian, but how does it compare to a century of neglect, abuse and exploitation by the Federation. My people has and will suffer the worst from climate change while the people who profit off it are safe and secure from it's consequences. No wonder Zeon is very popular in my country despite suffering much in WW2 from the Japanese occupation. Because on a deep level, the Federation reminds them of the betrayal and the exploitation by the Americans and the Spaniards before them.
@@CosmoShidanI wouldn’t call it anti-capitalist in full, as it’s ultimately the corporate politics that allow Miorine to gain power. The Bennerit Group could really be any oligarchic power bloc, they just operate as corporations because it allows them to keep the League at arm’s length most efficiently.
@@federationprime I'm going to say this now, I look at gundam from an anarchist lens, which means that from my perspective, politicians, military brass, and business persons are the same class, the ruling-class. It's because they are in positions of power within the social hierarchy of capitalism, and that capitalism requires hierarchy to exist. Hence, the Federation is a hierarchial organization that seeks to maintain its power, while the Zabi Zeons, AEUG, Neo-Zeon, Cosmo Babylonia, and Zanscare are reactions to their power.
I think the Federation is a lot more similar to the modern Chinese government than anything else. Obviously Tomino would not have made that comparison when Gundam was originally conceived, but China's composite of capitalism and communism with an autocratic ruler and gross disparity between upper and lower classes with routine totalitarian crackdowns is to me, the most similar thing we can compare. I would suspect that the more modern Gundam works of Thunderbolt, Hathaway's Flash and Unicorn don't overtly look at China, but part of me wonders if their authors took note of the global shift from the war on terror lead by the USA, to the economic cold war we are in today as at least a small influence in their works.
For me, Federation is exactly like the government of my country (France): a Bunch of people, raised in capital (Paris, who is very different from the rest of France), who goes to special school and worked only in hyper-values work. Due to that, they can't connect with the normal people and their reality. Their aren't specialy bad, racist, authoritarian or other thing, they just know nothing about normal life. For them, life is good, and they don't understand why rest of France have problems with the current country situation. They can be easily manipulated by some group of pression, because this type of group only need to produce some fake report and oriented investigation to create a new reality and trick the elite to obey their wish. And for the people who come from the people and succes to enter the elite, they are easely corrupted by money of their new fonction and they quicly start to loss connection with their bases, like the deputees. For example, Kéké, a woman from immigration who worked during many year as a cleaning lady, started during is mandate to abuse social appartement and use is paid to employ and another people to clean is place. Soo, the governent is bad, but not due to is wish to be a bad government. It's just a government who is too deconnected to the people to act correctly. But in final, the results are the same: incompetence, corruption, brutality... Like the Federation of Earth. Earth is like Paris in this word, and the colony are like the French "Province". Just imagine how the situation is difficult in France, and they are only few hours of cars to go to the Province! In Gundam, you need to take a spaceship for that!
Wait...Gaia Gear is finally animated? I had known about Gaia Gears since the 1990s, but I didn't know it was part of the Gundam universe until a few years ago. ( I knew it was a novel, or maybe at best a manga, but there was so little info on it in the states (pre-internet) that there was little to go by.
Thank you for the kind comment! ^^ I'm really fascinated by basically every faction in Turn A (which I'm planning on doing something on eventually). I'm also very into the way G Gundam plays with a lot of this stuff.
Honestly I like to think the UC Federation cracked after the OYW and never recovered. UC Gundam never really delves into the sheer destruction the OYW caused, specifically the one week war and the colony drop, probably because it would make Zeon look horrible and we can't have that in modern Gundam. Instead we need games with cute female Zeon soldiers, but I digress. I can't imagine the economic strain that was put on the Federation post OYW and that it was never really allowed to recover after that due to the constant conflicts.
Eh, it was always shit. There is however a cedtain irony that if the colony drop had gone as planned amd hit Jaburo in one piece Zeon would have ended the war having killed more fellow spacenoids than Earthnoids. (And they still may have overall)
@@DIEGhostfish But when you think about it, it would have hit the AMAZON RAIN FOREST which would cause a shit ton more disasters, but then later the Titans in their infinite fucking wisdom decided to use a NUKE.
How are you reading this line? Do you think I'm disputing that Zeon is fascist? I'm 100% saying they *are* fascist, just that when you look at the two factions, it's easier to understand what Zeon is allegorising, versus the Federation, which is murkier.
@@FS_Scott Ah, fair. By noble ideals I didn't mean the valour and stuff, I meant the base idea of some autonomy for spacenoids. (Which was then warped into a state where the Principality of Zeon were even less democratic, and even more oppressive, than the Earth Federation).
People trying to white wash Zeon are like people trying to white wash the nazis because Churchill wasn't a precious little angel. Earth Federation doesn't care of my existence. Zeon wants me dead for being earthling.
@@pyramidinu9449 There's nothing wrong with explaining why Zeon is what it is. It gets into iffy territory the moment someone goes "jee I think Zeon had a point when they dropped a colony on Sydney"
The amount of depth there is to the UC Gundam is really staggering. Regardless of whose writing for it the amount of interesting stories that have come out of it are absolutely amazing.
The movie version of MSG will always be more canon than the TV show. There are officers who were definitely jealous of white base and given that Bright Noa gets sidelined to transport captain shows that they were successful in politically removing him from any responsibility when he should of made full captain after the OYW. The earth federation has no good people in the higher echelons of command after General Revil, only leaving those who were resentful of zeon after the war to continue holding power. I felt like after Zeta, the only think that changed was by that time, most of those people had died either during the 0083 nuclear attack or had joined the titans and died during the conflict. Just having people die doesnt mean a change in policy.
Honestly my only complaint is that everyone bands behind Zeon like they somehow aren't super genocidal, and infected with a philosophy that basically calls for the forced relocation if not outright extermination of everyone living on earth. Hell even the Titans in secret with their core leadership and the AEUG openly profess that second ideology. And that right there you can bitch and moan about the Federation all you want...but I'll stick with the guys who don't want to genocide me just because of where I was born and live all over not politics, but because they have a ideolized vision of a planet they refuse to even step foot on.
idk if I should have made it clearer, because I get a lot of comments like this, but yeah zeon is obviously worse. I just thought that went without saying. they are an evil group who want to kill most of humanity with big robots that look like demons. nothing in this video was meant to be read as 'and that's why zeon is better'.
Glad I found your channel! Bandit Flower is an underrated movie, I personally like that Ohtagaki worked fanatical religious extremism into this world of sci-fi, it gave me the similar vibes to the Terraist Church plotline in LotGH adding another player to a war between two powers.
Personally my biggest issue with the Earth Federation is that Zeon is so ludicrously evil, that I simply have to side with them. The fact that Zeon starts the OYW by gassing their fellow Spacenoids, then dropping a colony on Earth, goes so far beyond the pale, that no matter what the Federation does, I feel compelled to support them. Because after the fifth time some lunatic in a mono-eyed mech starts committing warcrimes like it's a competition, I'm simply just waiting for the Federation to put a permanent stop to it, no matter what. No matter how corrupt the Federation is, nothing Zeon does is even remotely justified. Which annoys me, because it's clearly supposed to be a conflict with a lot of grey areas. But with how evil their opposition is, you kind of have to support the Federation. Every crime the EF commits, Zeon does a hundred times worse and far more often. Better a corrupt, oligarchic, flawed democracy than the genocidal fascism of Zeon.
Yeah, I think making Zeon antagonistic was an interesting choice, but I can understand that making their actions so monstrous right out the gate raises some questions that aren't really answered in universe. Like, considering just how bad their actions were, you'd think you'd hear way more civilians express frustration and fear about them (whereas we hear a lot more of this about the Federation). I think what the creators are going for is this idea that the status quo of the Federation was fundamentally bad, but unfortunately the major oppositions to it were hijacked by fascism - which I do think is actually a really interesting story concept.
@@pyramidinu9449 Interesting, perhaps, but in the long run it's just annoying and strains suspension of disbelief. After their repeated atrocities, I'd expect the Spacenoids to just outright side with the EF, because they are more likely to keep them safe and not gas them. The problem is that we're never shown a more peaceful alternative. If we were to see such a movement, only to have some ambitious monster or mismanagement by the EF (or both) radicalize said movement, I'd be less annoyed with the situation. Historically, after a failed revolution, the establishment usually actually fulfills some of the demands of the rebels, in order to prevent another uprising. The peasant revolts during medieval Europe and the Napoleonic Wars show that after that much bloodshed, leaders will craft a new system to avoid a repeat. Of course, as the 1905 revolution in Russia showed, those reforms can be rolled back, but that was probably because that conflict wasn't violent enough and the Tsar was too removed from the carnage to be affected by it. If the EF did something like that, I'd be more sympathetic for Zeon, because it would show that the EF not only refuses to change, but will backstab them and break their promises at the first opportunity. Making it that it's not just Zeon performing unprovoked acts of aggression, but the EF being utterly unwilling of even minor change, making violence truly the only option.
@@tomasbillian4907 I suppose the Titans could be seen as making the support for radical groups more likely. Particularly in the early 1980s when it wasn't even clear what was canon when it came to the early OYW stuff. Having said that, it is still odd that when we hear civilians complain about the EF in Gundam side material, it's rarely the Gryps Conflict that's mentioned. Actually one of my major lore gripes with Gundam is we're never told what effect the end of the Gryps War had on whatever administration was in charge of the EF at the time. It seems like something that at least a light novel or manga would have mentioned.
@@pyramidinu9449 Probably because of what you mentioned in the video: the EF is supposed to be this vast, impersonal burocratic machine. Going into details about their actual government and the people who run it would defeat that purpose (and should it be shown that they aren't malicious, Zeon would look even worse by comparison).
But if you have to progress and prosper as a civilisation, sometimes wiping clean the decrepit and old is the only way? Call it fascism or whatever but there's being plenty of cases in the past when a large majority of a populace consents to genociding another group in their entirety (Rome, Spanish empire, mongol empire)
0:45 And that’s what I love about the federation. I is BOTH that. It’s both and the existence of one doesn’t mean the other isn’t true. Which is an accurate representation of modern liberal democratic states.
The problem with the Earth Federation is that it's conditioned as the protagonist's fraction, meaning that even if the main characters are fighting for their own purposes, they're still supporting EFF's flawed bureaucracy against post-humans that only get more and more corrupted as time pass by. Worse off, Characters like Bright Noa, who's capable of fixing the feds from within, retires by self-loathing because of Hathaway's strings of stupidity. Regardless, the feds are still considered better ideology than Neo Zeon's or Zanscare's forms of dictatorship, which only care of subjugating others through iron fists, manipulating and using Newtypes as if they're super weapons, and scapegoating anybody not cooperating with them as enemies. EFF ends up as the lesser of the two evils. People can take the third route and form their own fraction like in Gundam SEED, but even then they're aren't immune to developing senses of self-righteous moral grandeur as seen in SEED Destiny. No ideology is perfect.
Power hoarding Malthusians but ones unwilling to be first in line for any of their social engineering projects. (Basically all the factions in Gundam are Malthusian misanthropes though. Some are just willing to be part of their own proposed solutions rather than forcing them on others.
I think one of the key functions of the Federation, especially Tomino's version, is narratively answering the question "Why does the Principality exist?" or "Why are most of Zeon's OYW soldiers fanatical, cruel bastards?", something very few of the actual anime outside Origin and ZZ's Blue Team arc even come close to directly tackling and is mostly in the print material. We have an abundance of proof for why Zeon forces keep fighting, the mix of IJA never-surrendered soldiers and post-Vietnam despair combining with the singular nature of MS makes a heady cocktail. Soldiers with a need to take a swing at the Federation with the biggest weapon they could use, to have a violent catharsis, yet do so with no regard for what consequences their battlefield suicide would have to the people around them. But that never answered why Ghiren had so many loyalists in the military, why the Zabi Family was able to be accepted as the absolute dictators of Space Prussia, why people in the streets of the Principality were basically chanting minimally changed Nazi slogans. The answer is that over the fifty years since the Sides were made, almost none of the people who were sent from Earth *went willingly*. They were forcibly torn from their homes, deprived of land and property for the elite, and dumped into a thin metal tube with razor-thin margins being the only thing between them and a lethal void. While some of the Sides prospered economically over the generations by playing the Federation's game of economics, others like Zeon remained in squalor. We kept seeing MS pilots who were willing to inflict untold destruction and cruelties on both "fellow Spacenoids" and Earth-Elite because they'd lived in a hostile, bloody environment with no opportunities for a better life. The Black Tri-Stars or the Southern Cross were probably hard, violent people used to killing before they were taken into the military. Ghiren found plenty of people willing to go out and nuke Colonies because their people already hated the other colonists. When two groups of people whose ancestors had their land stolen by wealthy elites, one sold out to make their GDP go up, the other tried to make a genuinely new life in the vein of what the Federation propoganda promised. And it was the latter who were denied opportunities. And people living on Zeon were willing to cheer for a nobility and repeat old fascist slogans because they saw no benefit in the "progression" of the Federation and felt better believing they were a special, superior group. All they saw in the Federation was a group of rich elites who used an environmental crisis of their own making to pull the largest colonial land-grab in history. That's why part of Zeon's ideology has been 'everyone must go to space', it's a coded call to repute the class divide and imperialist origins of the Federation. It's just not about preserving the environment or treating Earth as a sacred place, none of the iterations of Zeon ever live up to that. It's Eat The Rich/Revolutionary economic redistribution, depriving the Earth Elites of their financial and real estate wealth to pull them down to the Spacenoid level. Or just outright below the level of Zeon, for whatever reasons motivate your Zabi family patron of choice. What Tomino accurately captured in Mobile Suit Gundam, however, is that the Federation Government, and the Federation citizens on Earth, *are not the same thing*. Very few people on Earth are living a wealthy or middle class life. We mostly encounter people living not that differently than our own, and just want to be left out of the two governments' militaries killing each other. It's why there's a reoccurring plot trope of adult civilians viewing Mobile Suits as some terrible thing and their pilots as reprehensible: They're a symbol for the horrors of modern/future war, and that's the person turning their fragile homes into collateral damage. I think if MSG had done an arc where the White Base crew got to run around on Zeon itself, they'd probably have a different outlook on the war. And most people from Zeon probably never experienced any other place than their homes, not even other colonies. That's why MSG's thesis is about the need to connect with people on a personal level to internalize the destructive nature of war. Zeon and the Federation never saw each other as individuals with their own identity, goals, and motivations, just "Spacenoids rebels" or "Elitist oppressors" steryotypes.
I think this why I'm more mad that the Feddies aren't getting any attention in many OVAs. They have so much baggage to unravel, but Bandai prefers to show us more Zakus
I think in the Hathaway movie, it would have been cool to have the scene were people are praising Hathaway Noa for his actions during CCA with a single piece of new dialogue. As they praise Hathaway for his talent as a pilot after the failed plane hijacking, he responds with "Thank you but I'm not Amuro Ray". This is said to give a signal to the Federation officer that 1, he didn't do a lot in his mind and 2, he isn't gonna be used and then tossed aside once the Federation is done with him. (I.E. how the Federation treated Amuro after the OYW and after his Axis Shock sacrifice with the censoring of NewType information). Though to be honest, part of me thinks I only thought of this because of my bias towards Amuro.
The federation are based on the Allie powers from World War 2. Every side story of the OYW be based on other powers such as the Soviets and UK such as using penal troops, spies, and in fighting. Post OYW we have most stories based around American imperialism and western neoliberal colonialism. The federation could also be a stand in for the League of Nations and UN since they are all western liberal democracy and oligarchy projects to settle conflict amongst western colonizers over land and resources, but failing to do so spawned the 2 world wars and a bunch of proxy conflict of the Cold War followed by regional conflict for power in the war on terror era. Yas when writing Gundam the origin invoke that WW 2 imagery and the Federation as that corrupt democracy run by a rich man’s club thru the pollution of the planet ,thus creating a refugee crisis that led to more people sent to space. The federation is heavily dependent on their space colonies for resources which was indicated during events leading up to Zeon’s Dawns Rebellion. Even unicorn’s writer invoke this idea of resource dependency by colonizers in the Side Co-prosperity Sphere presented by full frontal, which is based on Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere that failed miserably. As a person of Vietnamese descent and having family members who were war survivors, Thunderbolt setting with the South Sea Alliance was interesting with the Vietnam war era imagery. South Vietnam during the war was backed up by the Americans and ran by a pro-western Catholic minority. This religious minority was in charge of a country that was about 80 % Buddhist and were the privileged favorited group by French colonizers. After the French failed to take back their colony, their business partner that is the American gave it a shot and divided the country in 2 with a puppet government ruling the very resource rich areas of the South. The South Vietnamese government was extremely corrupt and mistreated the Buddhist majority to the point of mass protest of self immolation of monks and bad global public relations gotten the Americans to do regime change by executing one anti-Buddhist Catholic and putting in charge another. The South Sea Alliance Buddhist nation seems to be what happened if the Buddhist were in charge and the Federation being a stand in of the U.S. not liking that. Plus the New-type idea could be a metaphor for a genuine progressive communist and socialist in this context.
@@pyramidinu9449 As an American citizen I really wished Unicorn’s writer brought in the concept of race and religious conflict from the manga to the anime adaptation. America beneath all it facade struggle to come to term with such conflicts coming from identities and isms. To be far in the future and never confronting such century old issues and sweeping underneath the rug under a racial colorblind mentality and secularism with no real political awareness of religious dominance of Christianity to see why co-existence is difficult .
@@tomhuynh3867 Interesting note on this: according to Mark Simmons' summary of Gaia Gear, there's a scene early on in which a white Earth Federation politician goes on a racist tirade. I wanted to go into this in the video because I think it's the most explicit example of the Federation embodying a post war neoliberal hegemony, but I can't really analyse it in depth until full translations are available.
@@pyramidinu9449 interesting. As I think about this more, the “souls weigh down by gravity” line makes more sense now. With ZZ ,the unicorn manga, and Thunderbolt be showing that the old school race, ethnic, and religious conflict we experience in real life be existing on Earth, while in outer space the conflict is more based on where people were born and raised to a simple Earth vs the Space colonies. Gihren Zabi fascist perversion of Zeon’s ideals of Newtypes birth spacenoid supremacy to “save” mankind from the corrupt rich earth elites . Gundam 0083 and Zeta Gundam be showing Earthnoid Supremacy by the federation and titans showing disdain for those in space such as the Fed officer that did not like taking defiance from Nina Purpleton and called her a lunaria or Monsha of the immortal 4th calling the Zeon remnant moon men or space aliens. The titans that form New Desides in Gundam sentinel all place high values on the Earth and even Bask Om in 0083 used how sacred the Earth is to call for formation of the Titans. In Gundam origins, M’queve talked about how out of touch the spacenoids are from the culture and history on Earth, which is the motherland of the human race. The spacenoid are looked down upon, while forced to live in the harshness of space and build a civilization out of near nothing. Yas be invoking pre-Soviet Russia in his depiction of Pre-oyw side 3. The Russians were looked down upon due to their harsh environment and the poverty that comes living under the czar.
@@tomhuynh3867 Yas went hard on the "Degwin as Space Stalin(Father of Space Hitler)" by further making Daikun and Jimba far more extreme to fit the Lenin and Trotsky molds a bit better. I am shocked he had the subtlety to kill Jimba with something other than an Icepick.
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Interesting video, well researched and argued.
Two things I'd just like to bring up are how the federation is a stand in for the US in 0080 for a really interesting cold war commentary with zeon as a stand in for the USSR and side six for Japan being caught in the middle of it all.
The other thing, in 0079 we see both the US and USSR occupied by Zeon. The most notable part of this being how we see upper class men in the Americas sucking up to their occupiers in one scene.
The EF's adoption of fascism parallels the US's after the defeat of the nazis
What
@@Zudah_Pilot soon after WW2 the US quickly shifted to purging socialists and crushing organized labor internally and pursuing regime change abroad. By the 1960s US intelligence agencies are even overthrowing their own presidents.
@@yemmohater2796 Wrong, it parallels, fascism in Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. USA is nothing like that at least not yet, that would only happen if democrats get all the power forever.
Because right now there is no fascism in USA, anyone is free to speak their mind.
@@Mike-xh2vm 😏😏😏 right ?
I thought how After War Gundam X handled their equivalents was neat. It was interesting seeing how both factions lost much of their political power after the war and mass colony drops. Both lost most of their power and are barely holding on.
While Gundam X is an AU, it's feels like the closest one to commenting on the Universal Century.
Gundam X is the only AU I've still not seen, but I'm really curious about it. As you point out, it seems to be one that's most explicitly a meta-commentary on UC.
@@pyramidinu9449 it's one of my favorite Gundam anime, highly recommend it.
The setting of s is actually the bad ending of Universal century, where oyw ended badly and badly damaged the earth. It’s an AU, but it was based on uc in the first place (compare to other original AU)
My God, the Gundam timeline is so confusing. Where do wing and seed fit into this? My brain hurts.
@@dalenlewin G, Wing, SEED, 00, Age, IBO, and Witch From Mercury all take place in new universes and weren't made to fit on past timelines.
They were made to be standalone stories that are accessible to people who have never seen a Gundam anime before.
One of my favorite aspects of the Gundam franchise, especially the Universal Century Timeline, is how blurred the lines are to who the "good guys" and the "bad guys" really are. I mean look at Zeta Gundam, the AEUG are the main protagonists but from any other perspective they would be considered an anti government armed guerrilla organization. The United Earth Federation is definitely portrayed in many varying lights throughout the U.C. timeline, many of which are far from flattering portrayals. That's what I love about the nuance of the Gundam franchise.
AEUG is not that through. Its ties to Fed is too much to make them that.
That is why Gryps war is considered a civil war. An anti Gov forces wouldn't have the chance to resupply and repair within Military base at the same time of their opposing faction with both sides knew exactly what were happeing...😂
I would call the AEUG more of a splinter faction, they are similar to the Titans in that regard, but they don't have the power of the Fed's administration behind them.
If we want to look at a guerilla terror organization, Mafty is the best example. They are almost entirely concerned with assassinations and terror strikes, and have absolutely no legitimate recognition from the govt unlike the AEUG which had a good amount of former Feddies defect to.
The theming I get from Tomino's federation at the very least is a "democracy is flawed" discussion that while elements of it are corrupt it's still a better alternative than the dictatorship that is Zeon and our heroes are still a part of it working to defend it and root out the corrupt parts.
Maybe so, but Neo Zeon wouldn't rear it's ugly head so often if it wasn't for the policies of the Earth Federation. Even if they didn't cause the atrocities directly, they still bear some of the responsibility
@@battlesheep2552 And thus, the view that Tomino had. Democracy is flawed but so is any other government. There's always flaws which will lead to a bigger consequences from those who are in power that can't wield it with just.
Tomino original Earth Federation (meaning before Tomino make them basically a dead government by the time of F91) is probably the embodiment of Winston Churchill's quote that told as following "“democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried.” basically yes it's bad but whatever alternative they have especially as earthling and spacenoid still not consider themselves as one species will be worse until they can peacefully somehow come together and become one kind called humankind again
Interesting the Arabs who are genetically white even to the Nazi get called not white by many in the anti west groups. Plus of course them having been a colonial power that invaded a large part of the world in various forms of government.
Like the peoples in the south mostly the men trend to permanent tans while many of better off women very white skin.
Of course any Japanese who attempted to be part of the anti western colonial group while actually being part of a truly hideous Empire themselves seam to rest of Asia as bad as guys as the US. And China the dominant Empire in Asia for all but a few hundred years not a native victim either.
All forms of the propaganda that runs around.
It the human tribalism instinct that drives us to split into groups that hate each other and only DNA modification will permanently solve it.
Democracies have several flaws, and corruption isn't even the worst.
Yet, compared to everything else, I would never want to change it. We choose the least bad option and we try to improve it as we can. Global democracies ranking are lower since a decade ; but like in the 30' , we will survive this tide.
This is a great analysis, usually these types of talks were always been discussed in spacebattles forums or smaller or dedicated sci fi forums back in the day. Nowadays after the advent of social media being mainstream its nice to see some discussion of this still goes around.
Always loved those Forum talks, usually more civil than the average youtube or reddit comment section.
I found the federation to be most interesting in my opinion in 0083 since it shows a transition from how where the federation was nearing a fight for the elite but ultimately becoming to arrogant and careless as corrupted leaders like Bask Om took the helm by the end of the series with him sacrificing his own men to give out a message about how dangerous Zeon still is with the creation of the titans at the end of the series. It’s a perfect example of a military organization letting the wrong people slip through the cracks and then rising to power only to make something of what the original ideals weren’t into a nightmare.
This is such a great video! A really good overview on the topic that I think is overlooked quite a bit, especially in comparison to Zeon. I'm still more of a fan of how classic gundam portrays the federation, especially when you get to stuff like hathaway's flash. Hope you make more gundam content in the future!
Yeah, I think Tomino's and Yas' interpretation are the most interesting by quite a bit. And thanks for the kind words! :D
Thanks for the background detailing on the various author takes on the Federation. I recently watched Zeta and ZZ series recently and one thing that frustrate me is, why don't characters actually do something about the rot of the federation?! Besides just "Let's Genocide the Earth" Zeons?! Surely there has to be a middle ground between doing nothing vs wiping out all Earthlings. It's a frustrating habit in various media now-a-days to use social ills as motivation for villain's but never have the hero's actually deal with the issue themselves.
Hero's actually deal with the issue themselves. = AOT?
I agree to a small extent. But there's two things to consider.
Change in society happens over time(a lot different than a military conflict). And it requires different heroes than military heroes.
Gundam is still an action show.
So, this type of hero is trying to put out the fire so society has time to fix itself.
One single person is usually too small to be able to fix such massive problems.
In real life sometimes they can help organize a movement though. Push a cause. Become a politician ect.
I'd like to think that a lot of them are doing good stuff quietly in the back. As members of society.
That was AUEG and Karaba. But by the end of the Neo Zeon war most of the more ideistic memebers were dead and the ones left didnt have enough power to compleate their major goals.
Because heroes have lives of their own. When the OYW ended, Amuro went PTSD ex child soldier mode because that was literally what he was. Char, on the other hand, kept pushing until becoming a politician. Hathaway is doing what you said via terrorism.
@@mikexhotmailHeroes don't deal with the issues in AoT. It's a genocide fest.
Thunderbolt is one of my fav series
Same.
I always find it hilarious that while the federation always shown to be corrupt in the end of the day people rather siding with them rather than whatever opposition force was against from Zabi's Zeon to Zanscare Empire
I think Gundam Unicorn's post 9/11 themes actually makes a lot of sense when you take into account char's counterattack as the universal century's version of 9/11.
A pretty alright video, but two main things:
1. Text needs to be onscreen for more than the one to two seconds you did here, which made it really difficult to actually read
2. If you're going to put music in your video essays, you NEED to improve your audio leveling, pick low key music, and keep the music volume low.
I've got really good audio drivers that allow me to improve dialogue clarity, and during the Thunderbolt segment, there were moments I could barely make out what you were saying because the music was overpowering your voice.
Oh forgot to respond to this, but yeah my audio is absolutely dire here. Recently got a Blue Yeti, and have a better grasp on audio mixing now, so hopefully my next ones will be better in that regard ^^;
Good video man really well put together I loved watching it and had to share my appreciation. Thanks for the good content!!
gundam understands that right and wrong is not black or white, it isn't even a gradient but a mess of blobs all blurred and meshed together like a philosophical perlin noise map. there is good in the Federation and Zeon just as much as there is an immoral and twisted wrong subverting them. in many ways it shows that to follow a good and just path that you have to be willing to be proven wrong and even enjoy the feeling of finding the new horizons a new found understanding can present. you must twist and turn through life not caring about the destination because it is the result of your choices. I also DEEPLY enjoy when a protagonist gets that moment of realizing that the mistakes and wrongs are not just a stain on them but a defining moment to push for true embetterment.
Thank you for making this! I always felt some discomfort with the premises and framings of things in Gundam media, and this really helped contextualize some of that. Instantly subscribed!
@Pyramid Inu Any chance of covering the SEED equivalents and how they compare to the Universal Century?
Thanks for the comment! I'm not sure, I'm thinking of doing something where I give my hot takes on every Gundam series, so I might go into some of that stuff if that happens.
Awed was awful. I'm sorry. I showed it as the first gundam to my gf. And I apologized at the end. I ruined gundam forever for her because of seed
Seed's conflict is generally less about ideology and more about, well, transhumanism. Be it the biological aspect, social aspect, ethical aspect or what have u. Thats the whole schtick with Rau's story, Kira's whacko-genius biological dad, coordinators, Blue Cosmos, the Destiny Plan, George Glenn etc.
The most clearly defined faction "ideology" in the universe is Orb's, which in a way is what the creator wants Japan(in 2002) to be; stronger and more capable military but ONLY use it for self defense(no military adventurism), more independent of foreign powers snd neutral(which also ties into the military aspect), welcoming of ppl across the world and do not discriminate them etc.
PLANT's ideology is... well, just as u might expect from a young nation finding its footing in a hostile world. Self-preservation comes first before any ideological purity. And those like Patrick zala who do have some ideological fixation tends to be rather poor leaders. PLANT under much of its existence was lead by moderate ppl(be it genuinely so or just on the surface); they will make deals and play nice with naturals, even helping out South America in their own war, but they also are pragmatic enough to do things like pardon war criminals(like Yzak, even if he didnt mean it) or developing secret superweapons.
Alliance member states unfortunately suffers from either being coopted by turbo-racists that purged all the half-decent folks, being super-duper capitalist and run by the MIC, or have very little presence onscreen in side material. For what its worth, CE!China seems to be the least racist toward coordinators of the 3 Alliance founding states so there is that.
I think one of the big reasons Zeon appeals to many people relates more to a desire to a real-world desire to be free from a distant, uncaring, and often oppressive centralized government. As someone who grew up in the Heartland of the US it is not uncommon for people to have an outright hatred of The US Government and Washington. Hell, its also not uncommon for people to proclaim a full desire for the state to secede and form its own country.
It comes from the perspective of how uncaring Washington is of people out here (until they need something from us) and/or how disconnected the more liberal leaning coastal US is from is more conservative interior. Or the general snobbishness of the coastal people to the people of the interior.
True or not, this is a story old as time, and Zeon is just a fictional take of what happens when a oppressed people who rightfully deserve independence, have their movement hijacked by what amounts to just another group of Tyrants. But Tyrants who say all the right things to get the masses on board.
This was interesting and refreshing even as a person who knows nothing about anime
I feel like how Zeon is represented and thought about reflects how we talk and reflect on communism. Like communism, the Zeons had legitimate gripes and criticisms of the Federation. In action, well, they dropped colonies on Earth and both sides started firing giant lazer beams at each other. In communism, we can use bits and pieces of it and the lessons of the past to make our society better (Most developed countries have free health care and more government safety nets and such without becoming geocidal dictatorships) but other places use the history of communism to deny many genuinely good progressions in society. Similarly to how the historical existence of Zeon and the 1 year War and other neo-Zeon stuff led to the EF clamping down on its own corruption and blaming them instead of actually trying to change itself.
It's why I love how the Unicorn OVA adapted the novels in how it is a new generation trying to enact change beyond the past. Mineva is trying to find a way to create meaningful change without causing another war and should have succeeded (which is why I hate Narrative).
Zeon is a fun hybrid CommieNaziImperialJapan.
We were about to have a problem when I thought you were calling southland tales cringe and not amazing. It definitely is both.
Best movie ever made
The video analysis was alright but damn, you have a very pleasant voice.
Do you have any opinion on the factions of G-Reconguista? The final compilation movie was recently released though I'm unsure of the home release. Since all the different factions and their individual nuances play such a big role in the story. It's also interesting in that it shows Tomino's most recent world views and is completely bereft of a Federation or Zeon counterpart.
Thanks for the comment!
I think Reconguista has one of the most interesting settings in all of Gundam. I might do a video on it one day. What I love about it is, it shows a system that has just about worked for a while, but is inherently flawed, and can really only break. The idea that the horrors of the UC led to elite forming a religion that would teach earthnoids that even looking at the stars is a taboo - damn - that's a spicy world building.
I don't actually love the show itself - I think it's just too compressed, and there's so much comedy (I have troubles with Tomino's comedy). But I would love to do a video on it one day. I feel like I need to finish the compilation movies before I figure out my full thoughts on it though.
@@pyramidinu9449
IMO, Reconigusta in G is probably the best setting for proper aliens to appear in the franchise.
Yeah; that sounds about just right. ;-;
Personally I am wondering how the current global situation will affect the depiction of the federation going forward with an active war in Ukraine and China getting increasingly hostile in the Indo pacific region.
How do you mean “revisionist gundam”? I dont quite understand. Good video overall!
Did I use that to describe Thunderbolt? If so, similar to revisionist Westerns from the 70s (greater emphasis on violence, more pessimistic tone)
My takeaway from the video was Revisionist Gundam = "Anything I don't like".
@@lpsoldin3162 but I love Thunderbolt lol
@@pyramidinu9449 You tried to shoehorn the franchise into a juvenile political view of "Democracy vs Fascism" while smearing future writers of different UC series as being "controversial", "revisionists" and "Zeon apologists", with the reasoning being they portrayed The Federation as being, at minimum, morally gray and not the good guys or protagonists.
This is ignoring that Zeta exists and was written by Tomino himself, he is the one who opened the door to The Federation not being the De Facto good guys. Your argument about revisionism doesn't make sense if you have to argue that the entire franchise after the original series is now revisionist because of the direct sequel done by the original author of the franchise.
Thunderbolt had nothing to do with revisionism and your response just betrays how absurdly idiotic your political analysis of Gundam as a franchise is.
@@lpsoldin3162 I actually like Fukui somewhat, but I'd standby feeling like his emphasis on Federation war crimes reminds me of revisionist historians (Globe in particular)
Thunderbolt just reminded me of revisionist Westerns and warfilms from the 70s. I'd stand by it, but eh.
I don't mean revisionist to mean bad. I love The Searchers. I also love The Wild Bunch. I actually think The Searchers holds complexities Peckinpah's film does not have. Both are still great.
But ultimately: we all love Gundam. Robots exploding good. I really don't think Gundam is a story of Democracy versus Fascism. I think the Federation always represented a Western Hegemony (to be clear to the other side of the fandom: this is not a defense of Zeon). But yeah idk. Sorry you felt the video minimised your perspective or put down non Tomino works. I really love pretty much all Gundam tbh, in all its quirks.
Whatever Fukui's politics are, Gundam Unicorn is one of the reasons why I'm an AnCom. So if he is a right-winger, he does kind of suck at being one. If he's a right-winger, he should be criticized, but I still think Unicorn can be interpreted in a leftist way.
Edit: Gundam Thunderbolt will be adapted, but the Mangaka wants to finish the manga first.
Yeah, his version of the EF as a kind of paranoid Bush-era commentary on the Iraq war is pretty leftist I would say. Having watched some of his non-anime stuff, I'd argue he's a weird mish mash of hard leftism on some international issues, vaguely neoliberal when it comes to domestic policy, and a hard nationalist when it comes to Japanese history.
@@pyramidinu9449 I also heard the the Unicorn novels were queerphobic, which I wouldn't know. I haven't read them. I still consider the OVA to be my favorite story of all time.
@@comradefreedom8275 Angelo's backstory could be interpreted as problematic, though I wouldn't say I felt that way.
@@pyramidinu9449 I'm familiar with it. How do you think of it?
@@comradefreedom8275 It's really trashy and excessive, but it didn't strike me as evidence of queerphobia, just manipulative writing. I actually kind of like Angelo's demonic twink archetype character - reminds me of old Shojo.
Hooooo, you've stepped on the landmine, and the explosion is "TacCom comes to the comments to massively overexplain things" XD
Something to understand about Gundam, whether it be UC or CE or whatever... generally speaking? If it's a governing faction? They're a dick. Gundam and the later 08th MS Team didn't just portray the federation as uncaring, they portrayed them as a very "By any means necessary" group of obnoxious assholes, usually in a way where the main character ends up in opposition with them eventually. Original Gundam didn't take that much further than arguments and slapping Amuro around a bunch, but 08th MS Team showed us how they would deliberately send in GMs into cave structures just so they'd set off boobie traps and explode just to circumvent the Atlantic treaty by blowing up their reactors, a thing that... doesn't really make sense in-universe with how the technology works, but whatever. Point is, the Federation is very much the "Oh, we're gonna make sure we get our way, and we don't care how many kids we have to put in mobile suits and balls to get it." Meanwhile, Zeon, run entirely by the Zabi family, is obsessed with their independence so much that they violently attack earth, a move that... doesn't make THAT much sense, but it's the Zabis, they're kinda dicks like that, almost entirely self-serving in every possible way. Some series would go on to make the Zeon into this absolutist analog to the Nazi party(Looking at you, Igloo), but that sort of wasn't the point. I mean, it sort of was, because Zabi family, but also not really? Anyway, it's kinda complicated, I won't go too far into it, because all of that misses the entire point of the show in basically every case.
Gundam is about what a LOT of anime is about. The next generation fighting tooth and nail against the conservativism of the older generation holding them back without any real cause. And while Unicorn took a mild detour in this... sort of... probably because Unicorn's writer is a bit of an imperialist, and also because Tomino wasn't really given the freedom to go all out with a more complicated story(Which is for the better, you don't wanna know what Tomino had to say about how much of Sayla Mass he imagined in extreme detail). You see this theme a LOT in Anime, where the opposition to the protagonist is usually someone desperately trying to retain the status quo, or someone trying to continue a meaningless grudge match against some other older party at the expense of the wellbeing of younger generations who get dragged into that war and forced to fight in it. Zeta nails that home REAL hard.
A core component of the Federation is their near constant need to assert power and control. Every time something disastrous happens to them, they get even MORE fascist in their own dealings, and while we keep being told about how democratic they are, we never actually see that. What we DO see is a near constant need to control the media, control the message, and often justify some.... really poor behavior. Remember, Zeon's entire first push for independence was under Deikum, whose whole deal was "Look, if spacenoids evolve beyond the humanity of earth, they should run themselves, they know their own unique needs better than earth people do", which caused the federation to respond.... poorly. We'll say Poorly.
If you want a perfect boiling down of what the Federation is in UC..... watch Seed. Okay, bear with me, that doesn't make sense at first, but it's still true. Seed was very much a condensing of the core story elements of UC in a LOT of ways, newtypes are semi-replaced with genetically engineered individuals, making it a little less spontaneous, and the core elements are still roughly the same, new evolution declares themselves independent, old control decides they need to be put down for it, war starts, horrible things happen, and the entire point is watching what a party that starts on one side and ultimately comes to realize that there's no such thing as the invariable "Good guys" in war.... right as they almost get nuked by a giant microwave, in one of the bloodiest scenes in Gundam. Seed shows us a Zaft where the spacenoids want absolute dominion over everyone, and a Federation that is perfectly happy slaughtering millions in order to gain an inch of ground, to say nothing of allying themselves not once but twice with a group of genocidal "natural" supremacists, the second being in Seed Destiny where the genocidal lunatics make their way into the neutral Orb government as well, as well as in to weapons manufacturing, giving them a clear profit motive to keep on killing. This... very closely mirrors UC in a lot of ways, where the crew of the White Base is beset between the need to adhere to duty and the need to do the right thing(Bright), or the desire to avoid killing unnecessarily versus the requirement to kill or be killed, et cetera.
All of which is to say, this is a long way of saying the Federation is a bunch of dicks, Zeon are a bunch of dicks, and the majority of main characters(including antagonists, ESPECIALLY ones like Char) are those who are being pushed by the currents of those bunches of dicks and having to navigate living and/or coming out of the war alive in the end, because as every UC Gundam story has shown us thus far.... War? War never changes.
(Except Hathaway, because seriously, fuuuuuuck hathaway's flash, literally everything about it is stupid)
Also regarding Kai's statement about elites, it's an established canon that Federation citizens living on space colonies don't really have... rights. Like, at all. We keep hearing about how the federation is so democratic, but the whole reason zeon wanted to declare independence was because they were not given control over their own destiny, and were beholden only to those who lived on earth and who made decisions for them from earth. The universe in question goes on to show that the federation is perfectly happy to be a bit Tiananmen Square with its need to put down demonstrations, even and especially peaceful ones, and in later series, to starve and/or forcibly irradiate an entire population even on earth just to assert dominance.
The Federation, if it is democratic at all, does not give colonists the franchise, for sure. And as much as I hate HF, it also shows a federation that treats colonists as not being Allowed to come to earth without "proper documentation".
'cause. And while Unicorn took a mild detour in this... sort of... probably because Unicorn's writer is a bit of an imperialist, and also because Tomino wasn't really given the freedom to go all out with a more complicated story' Can you expand on what you mean by this?
The Tomino part I mean, you obviously know I'm aware of Fukui's politics having seen the video. :)
@@pyramidinu9449 Gundam got wrangled in to be marketable from the very start. There's a big reason they went with the newtype plot halfway in, it was pretty heavily pushed by the networks who thought this "Real robot" genre was a BIT too risky and they had to introduce a tiny bit of space-magic nonsense alongside. MSG was a HUGE risk for the network and for basically everyone involved, because up to that point, robot genre shows were seen as "Good guys good, bad guys bad, also the massive giant robot has to be unkillable and weirdly fantastical and violating all laws of physics". The "Super Robot" genre. Gundam's "Real Robot" genre was... heavier. Dryer. More depressing. It was harder to cheer for the main character when they did something crazy because it was almost always accompanied by something tragic but honestly kinda meaningless. Sure, Amuro took down the Big Zam with a big epic stab, but it got accompanied by Sleggar dying, as well as near-constant footage trying to get us to sympathize with Dozle, and coupled with the fact that the great last stand of the Big Zam was to cover a retreat anyway. We couldn't cheer much for Amuro defeating the fat Gouf because we'd just been given WAY too much time to get to know and love Ramba, just before he would be teleported to another world in order to buy gunpla for his kid to participate in tournaments. (Sorry, had to make that joke). It was a harder sell, and that made EVERYONE nervous. Coupling that with the fact that Tomino had... some odd habits when it came to his writing(Seriously, he at one point in an interview went into how he specifically imagined every detail of Sayla Mass's genitals when writing the character, which... yeeeeeeah), and it was definitely seen as risky. So the story got simplified a lot in production at first so that Gundam would be a lot more good-guys-good-bad-guys-bad, at least in terms of factions. Zeta would throw that out of the window pretty quickly for the most part, making even the top brass at AEUG be a bit awful, and 08th MS Team and 0083 would go on to fill in the details of how the federation was.... kind of the worst. Okay, maybe not THE worst, Gihren still has that title, but still. 0083 did a lot to let us know the Federation was paranoid, controlling, and heeeeeavily fascist in their own right.
MS Gundam didn't get to be as complex as it wanted to be, and the later series' let us see a MUCH more complex story, which did a lot more to flesh out how there really wasn't a Good side, per se. Tomino lived through post-war reconstruction era Japan, and suffered heavily through basically every day of production and beyond from post traumatic depression, dizzy spells, tinnitus, and a TON of other maladies. From what I understand, he still does. He has a lot of problem seeing the good in basically anything or anyone, and is consistently frustrated by how Bandai and Sunrise handle basically anything, which is to say, he wants to write complex stories, they want to sell toys of easily rooted for character-robots. And I get it, Bandai and Sunrise have a responsibility to fill seats and get people in, but when the risk is as great as what MS Gundam posed, I can definitely see why they'd be very, very nervous. Especially when you know Gundam wasn't really all that successful. Not at first, anyway, it took a bit before people woke up to it, which let Sunrise know that gundam COULD be complex, deep, interesting, and nuanced, and that you didn't have to root for a side if the core characters were worthwhile on their own.
Well... And then CCA happened and said "Character complexity? Naaaaah, we want big glowing green magic lights and characters reversing all of their character development in an instant because of the Stupid trope."
Would you kindly stop adding subliminal captions?
Sieg Zeon !!! ~ ♥
It is my opinion that the manner in which the Earth Federation is portrayed in the early Tomino works has had undeniable ramifications on how both the Gundam fandom and other Gundam creators perceive the narrative of the Universal Century. It becomes difficult to blame people for rallying behind Zeon when their alternative is basically a memetic vacuum that has no overt values or ideology and represents nothing but the worst stereotypes of a neoliberal market economy that one could make. Corrupt, incompetent, self interested, greedy etc. That and any and all of the "good" Federation characters are usually portrayed as good in spite of, not because of, the Federation, with no character be it Bright, Judau or Amuro being capable of reforming its deficiencies.
More Good Feddies who stood out were also Lieutenants Matilda Ajan, Woody, Sleggar Law, Ryu Jose and Admiral Revil. As if Tomino was showing us that the best men and women among them died during the One Year War. I'll bet they would have all become AEUG or would have prevented assholes like Jamitov and Bask Om from taking over.
All that I can say is that the people of Side 3 deserved better than Zeon.
True, but the other side, Zeon and Zanscare, are tyrannical, genocidal monarchies. So tye Federation is still the best alternative. The only decent akternative to the Federation was the AEUG, wich had the same underlying problems of the Federation, as ut was financed and controlled by big corporations.
@arx3516 The problem here is threefold.
1) The Federation has repeatedly shown that it lacks the means or even the interest to combat or deter these tyrannical genocidal regimes. Delaz Fleet steals our secret nuke equipped Gundam? Don't send anything other than a single Pegasus-class after them and continue our naval review despite the security risk. Axis trying to vie for control after the power vacuum left by the Titans' demise? Leave AEUG and Karaba to deal with and not only do nothing but even cave into their demands. Char literally opens his insurrection by dropping Fifth Luna on Lhasa? Sell him an even bigger asteroid to allow him to do more damage and leave Londo Bell to mop up. They straight up did nothing during the Cosmo Babylonia uprising because they just saw it as a "drunken bar brawl." Having the power to stop tyranny yet doing nothing makes you just as bad as the tyrant.
2) Zeon's (and their derivatives) repeated atrocities literally mean nothing within the public consciousness of the Universal Century. Them killing half of the human population didn't mean anything in Zeta and ZZ. The Titans were unanimously considered the worse threat, and Axis was able to return with little resistance or outcry. Char attempting to nuke earth didn't stop him from being considered a celebrity by UC 105, as well as Mafty rallying by his ideals to public approval. Anti-Zeon and Anti-spacenoid sentiment seems to be localised entirely within the military or the upper echelons of the government in the UC, and is completely absent from the general populace, essentially giving these regimes the blank cheque they need to commit further atrocities, since this populace is unwilling to push or lobby to prevent these atrocities.
3) The only reason to root for the Earth Federation instead is because of very tenuous self-preservation. They don't have superior values or ideology to Zeon. They're just better because they'll leave you alone. Provided you're not a space immigrant, in which they'll deport you into forced labour. Or you're an anti-Federation protestor, in which case they'll nerve gas you. And provided you're not unfortunate enough to be used as a human shield or bait or leverage during a battle. And if you happen to be on the receiving end of an imminent colony drop, well, GG. To them, you're one less mouth to feed, and they won't even give you a warning so you can evacuate by your own means that they won't provide for you.
@@arx3516Never forget the Crossbone Vanguard in F91, the ideology of the main leader was pure genocide of everyone on Earth.
I felt that in 0079 the WWII parallels were pretty strong. In a similar vein to how you put it, the earliest depictions of the Earth Federation are that of a stumbling and borderline incompetent governing force. Eventually, over the course of the original series, the Federation gets themselves together and reclaims the upper hand over Zeon. In my eye this is hugely indicative of the allies during the early war period of WWII, also known as the phony war.
The French government displayed vast incompetence despite the extremely high troop morale and willingness to fight, and Britain spent far too long dragging its feet on political notions that Germany could still be reasoned with even after the invasion of Poland. Arguably the allies first true attempt to halt Germany was the defense of France ended in that retreating battle to the port city of Dunkerque with abject failure. Some easy comparisons can be drawn here with the Battle of Loum. The Earth Federation vastly underestimated the capability and tenacity of the Zeon forces, leading to a total defeat.
It would take the allies a little over 2 years to make any willful attempt at an offensive. Similarly, things would get worse for the Earth Federation before they got better, with the destabilizing and dropping of Side 2 and the invasion of Earth.
0080: War in the Pocket carries some pretty obvious Cold War vibes with all the secrecy and neutrality. As does 0083: Stardust Memory, which while Zeon doesn't necessarily play a role resembling the USSR, the Earth Federation certainly plays a role similar to the mid Cold War United States.
It seems that the Federation will always be a stand-in for the bad (and some good) of our modern western world. I forget where I saw the quote, but the Federation was said to have been founded by "a Rich Man's club of countries". The original even had the Federation flag be a strange mix of NATO, the UN, and for some reason Brazil. The uniforms worn by Federation soldiers are also reminiscent of American uniforms from the Cold War mixed slightly with Imperial Japanese uniforms, and with the EF helmet looking very similar to the UN's own "blue helmets".
You mean a stand in for the good and some of the bad.
@@Mike-xh2vm I kind of have to agree with the OP here. We see much more of the bad than the good. We are following, for the most part the FEW good people involved, and virtually all of them are low rankers on the sharp end of the stick.
You say "for some reason Brazil" but that's because I think most people have forgotten that back in the day, Brazil was THIS close to becoming the US of South America, a genuine powerhouse of the region that dictated policy for many of its neighbors simply due to its influence and commanding the respect of European powers. Then their last emperor died, and a bunch of generals decided to destroy everything the man created by fighting amongst themselves over the government for the next 30 years and Brazil has still been trying to recover from that event. It's a wierd parallel to Alexander the Great's empire in that way.
@@SeruraRenge11 it's not well poised to compete with America because too much of it comprised of lush jungle, unlike the US which has the geography to set up industrialised cities more easily, it'd take them far longer and cost far more to become as industrialised as the US
That was less of a concern to them back then as conservationism was barely a thing in the 1800s so they were logging the everliving hell out of the Amazon. Nowadays most countries operate on the principle of "you have to grow a new tree for every one you cut down, for nature's future", but npt back then.@@joshjonson2368
Kai: I knew that rat must be one of the elites.
Mirai: Living on on earth doesn't make you one of the elites!
Note: Mirai is a Earthnoid heir to a corporate plutocrat.
I loved little gems like these from 0079
well at the end she kinda disinherited and she end up with an eternal captain whose career get held back from promotion for decades and son that end up in gallows,
Okay but I feel like you, and the franchise at this point have forgotten that there are still tons of poor people on earth because it's difficult and expensive to move to the colonies. Mirai would've known this to be true despite being born in a wealthy family.
In the same "Zeon is exhausted" speech by General Revill, he acknowledges that the Federation government has flaws such as corruption and poor leadership. Spacenoid have legitimate grievances and the right to be emancipated from a government they don't feel represents them. But replacing that with a dictatorial monarchical regime like the one proposed by Zeon is just making a 180° shift. I would not depose the Federation to be taken over by a monarchical version of the Federation that wants to impose itself even against the interests of other colonies like Side 6.
Yeah, since making this video I re-read the novels, and caught both that, and the paragraph about a right-wing, anti-spacenoid party taking power in the Federation in the lead up to the war.
Zeon is undoubtedly, unreservedly worse than the Federation. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just into the mobile suits I guess.
Tomino wasn't a fan of the real world but he disliked the Japanese empire era more. An era during which it's own militias that they set up in occupied territories turned on them.
If Zeon was anything like Imperial Japan, I see why all the colonies that stayed with the Earth Federation, stayed.
@@pyramidinu9449 on the surface it would seem that the AEUG is only good alternative, however, the AEUG itself has the same underlying flaws of the EF. The AEUG if financed and controlled by space based corporations,, who resent the fact that they don't have the same level of influence over the EF as their earth based competition has.
The Victory Gundam depiction of the Federation is honestly my favourite, a bunch of old men past their prime trying to maintain peace for the younger generation with whatever power they had left.
Me too.
When fed finally fell, things became... Really really bad....😢
By that time, Fed lost a lot of its influences and many Sides just did what they want but at least they kept them honest and restrained the worst of their actions. Once Fed gone, many of those rulers just released the beasts inside...
@@huntermad5668CONSENT and Settlement Freedom League
I still honestly don’t know if I’d go as far as to call Fukui a Japanese nationalist but people are right on the money about him being Japanese Tom Clancy from everything I’ve heard. In terms of his Federation I’m fine with him portraying it as a paranoid conspiratorial regime (even if Tomino already did that during Zeta) but him trying to retroactively moralize Zeon is extremely annoying considering they’ve historically been the absolutely worst between the two in every show
How is that worst and they never was depicted has such. Have you really watched the uc series? Ms igloo has shown the real issues of zeon from the grunt point of view. Zeon was run by Zabis who were the real Enemy. Im tired of seeing this comment. This theme has been going on since ms gundam 8th ma team! We see the federation sending squads into a mine based knowing those squads were going to DIE. Its bs on both sides of the war! The earth federation has never been altered! This is nonsense from
People taking there lore from unicorn! Go back the the war in the pocket, 8ths team, ms igloo. Ms igloo clearly states that no one new the colonies were going to be gassed but top braas zeon officials. The lore is there gundam was never a balck and white good vs bad theme.
I don’t know how anyone can moralize zeon considering that their action during the one year war was operation British :/
I dunno if I'd say Absolute worst... Deikum was very much on the side of "Let the people decide their own fate, that's all we want, is to be able to rule ourselves", Zeon themselves weren't the problem, it was the Zabis. Sasro was a manipulative fascist, Kycilia was a capricious idiot and a despotic secret-police lunatic, Garma was corrupt and self-serving, Dozle was a "Gentle Giant" who was also like "hey, let's drop a five kilometer diameter metal tube on earth to make a point", Degwin may or may not have been involved in assassinating Deikum in a power grab, only to get power-grab deaded himself, and Gihren was literally Hitler.
I think the only Zabi that wasn't awful was Mineva, and even that's a bit debatable, like, she was awful throughout the Neo Zeon war, but also somehow did a full 180 for Unicorn. Pretty sure that's my core issue with Fukui, the whole "Mineva goes from being a personality-less puppet to being a whatever-the-cost manipulator who has to learn the value of friendship from a guy who got absolutely obsessed with her after meeting her once and thinking that meant they would be together forever, or whatever. Seriously, I like Banana and his plotline, but that whole part of it was Super gross and weird.
@@TacComControl Deikum was a moron who built a society so badly that the Zabis could take it over.
I made a big post about how Fukui is like...the opposite of a Japanese nationalist but as for the Tom Clancy thing, ONE of the books he wrote, Aegis, fits that bill and even then its themes are the exact fucking opposite: Instead of America banzai it’s “Japan is fucked up” and instead of “fuck Russian terrorists” it’s “that North Korean terrorist might have had the right idea”. (They’re anti-establishment terrorists from North Korea who want to TAKE IT DOWN) It literally ends with the protagonist disenfranchised with Japan but somehow people claim this is nationalist? That would never happen in a Clancy novel, inevitably self-insert Jack Ryan would take down all of the corrupt elements in the American government and reinvigorated in his belief that America once again holds the values it's meant to.
Well in the original trilogy to Crossbone and Victory the EF has changes in personality because time passes. It's almost ironic that In Gundam the spacenoid factions that are antagonists are culturally stagnant and are threatened by earth. The common Zeon saying their souls are weighted down by gravity is emblematic of it. Unicorn is the odd one as the writer is a Zeon apologist. Look into Gundam Gaia Gear for the proper return of Char in that case. Gaia Gear is a novel Tomino wrote as part of the Char's Counter Attack novel timeline which is CCA Beltorchika's Children, Hathaway's Flash( original novel) and Gaia Gear. Neither is good nor bad but present different problems.
Do you know of any translations of Gaia Gear? I desperately want to read it.
@@pyramidinu9449 there is a Subtitle added version of the audio drama but the books I have not found a translation of yet.
@@barrybend7189 I really hope it happens one day, some of the stuff I've heard about it is wild.
@@pyramidinu9449 I found a translation of the first book, on the Zeonic Scanlations website. They're working on the second book as of almost a year ago.
Another cool video. I have one completely irrelevant nitpick, which is that the star trek federation is not consistent at all in what it represents from series to series (and sometimes within series!). Post war American idealism sometimes, but also occasionally Soviet idealism, then a much more cynical but still sympathetic view of the liberal state by the time of DS9, and then war on terror America in Enterprise, and then new trek seems to want to go hard on portraying them as repressive and on the verge of total crisis but can't quite ever commit on that
These are great points, and basically make me realise that I need to watch more Star Trek.
Also thinking about it, I guess the JJ Abrams movies could be seen as parallel to Fukui's Gundam work, like, with all the post-9/11 imagery and stuff. I haven't seen much at all of NuTrek so it's interesting to hear that it's also going towards presenting the Federation as dysfunctional.
@@pyramidinu9449 yeah, though nutrek is a weird animal. In Picard season 1 the federation is utterly callous at the mass death of romulans and essentially slavery and genocide of androids, but then at the end it turns out to be like, romulan false flags and infiltration? And then they just get over it? Strange stuff, but even in that case where I think it was an outright fumble, it's interesting to think about what approaches to media and fandom might be potentially at play there, and also the contrasts in the kind of imaginaries that influence the different series
@@Clara-anise I've not actually watched much Star Trek beyond the original series, but my sense from the Trek podcasts I've listened to is that some fans really fetishise the whole Sci-fi utopianism angle (even tho DS9 seems to be almost unanimously agreed to be the best, and the series that provides the most nuanced version of its factions). Anyways, I wonder if it's a case of writers wanting to do that sort of DS9 type exploration, while also being wary of fan backlash. I would honestly love to watch a video essay comparing Gundam and ST's respective factions (though I'm not the one to do it).
@Pyramid Inu Yeah some people definitely seem to pine for a particular vision of the federation in line with rodenberrys 'original vision', even though its most purely represented form is season 1 of TNG which is ROUGH. But at the same time, positing some kind of ability to create positive institutions is something that makes star trek stand out in a highly pessimistic era, so I think DS9 is praised so much because it does take the utopian ideals seriously while still trying to put them through scrutiny, making it feel more grounded and complicated but still rooted in at least some kind of idealism.
I personally get the sense that because you have such a mix of people who like that stuff, people who want the federation to just be the good guys who do the right thing, and people who only kinda know the series or have some nostalgia for the characters but no particular expectations besides "modern scifi TV show" when they watch a new series - whoever's in charge of the decision making on newer series seems to want to appeal to all of these groups at once and what you end up with is quite muddled.
And I strongly agree, a thorough comparison of trek and Gundam would be super fascinating. If it were extended beyond the political factions to their social critiques, views on technology, roles in culture as multimedia and merchandising phenomena, and legacies within their own sci-fi spheres, someone could probably easily work a whole dissertation out of it
It doesn't need to though, considering each series takes place decades if not century's apart from each other. Or in the case of TNG DS9 and Voyager simple involve themselves within different contexts of the Federation as a whole. So ideals changing are expected, yet they all at least take on a very socialist view throughout them all save the some outlayers.
I’ve unavoidably read my own opinions of western liberal democracies into the EF from the various parts of the Gundam universe I’ve seen. A top heavy bureaucratic and oligarchical state with authoritarian characteristics, some adopted from its adversaries. You could see the EF borrowing Zeon tech as its own operation paper clip, the Titans as the burgeoning peace time national security state, etc.
The EF seems to be a democratic republic and as a result it is wholly unresponsive to and unrepresentative of its citizenry. We never really see any working class characters in Gundam celebrating the EF or feeling as though they’ve effectively participated in it, at most they’ve simply felt more threatened by an external force.
It’s also pretty explicitly a colonial force. In some ways classically colonial though space colonies don’t hold the same connotations of conquest they do share the abstraction of power and extraction of labor. And also “neo-colonial” using economic and political force to erode and subvert the autonomy of regions both terrestrial and extraterrestrial.
I think most of these traits tend to be found fairly consistently throughout the franchise.
Considering they did have their post 9/11 justification after Stardust, it does makes sense to see where the leadership of the Federation ended up at, and of course eventually where it will be in the next century.
Honestly speaking it's remarkable that the Zeon core colonies weren't literally just blown up following the events of the one year war.
The sheer scale of the colony drop exceeds everything in human history.
@@GonnaDieNeverThey probably didn't want to (openly) antagonize spacenoids, as it is far harder to police space then individual states on Earth
@@Adam-nc6qg also side 3 after the war was one of the few places left that coul produce goods for example. it was a valuable asset
Outside of Zeon there really isn't any ideology in Gundam, even the Zeon are vague. They're more like representations.
Federation being the Status Quo.
Zeon representation Revolutionary Action and seem to borrow from Fascism, Nazism and Marxism whenever the franchise's plot deems fit.
For example Zeon Zun Deikun is basically Gundam's Karl Marx. And the Newtype Theory has a lot in common with the Soviet New Man theory by Trotsky.
The Zeon's Oppressed vs Oppressor also comes from the Marxist Class Theory of History which has morphed within Feminism to be Men vs Women or CRT Black vs White. In the Context of Gundam, Earth vs Space.
However the Zeon are also given a Fascist/Nazi veneer on top of it all.
Interesting enough the Gundam franchise takes a huge dump on Zeon beliefs constantly. With most Famous Newtypes coming from Earthly origins, and Earthnoids also being quite poor while showing a lot of wealthy and well off Spacenoids. Showing Zeon Deikun's theories to be built on a bad perception of the world.
I would like to see a gundam alternate universe that explores how the tools of warfare affect what kind of values for society are able to survive. Maybe have 5+ major factions rather than the usually 2-3.
Wouldn't that be mechwarrior/battletech
@@davidfinkel7379
Yeah but less gritty.
“Baby’s First Battletech” more or less.
I kind of feel like total war scenarios with ~5 factions are unrealistic, because they'll just immediately coalesce into blocs, at which point you're right back to a war with two factions.
10:30 fukui also a famous blockbuster writer as his novel adaption into lived-action film such as boukoku no aegis which about japanese right winger conspire with north korean terrorist using american chemical weapon to threaten japanese government. so new york times was right to call him japanese tom clancy.
Funny you say this, I was working on a video essay on that specific movie (and also Lorelei). But then I found it was kinda bumming me out cause I honestly find Fukui's politics depressing on multiple levels. Maybe I'll still do it idk. One of the volumes of the Gundam UC LN is basically a complete retread of Aegis so there's some content there.
I read the Unicorn light novel 10-ish years ago and I never knew that the author leans toward the right. At that time, I really appreciated how the light novel fleshed out the beginnings of the Federation and how it was a version of our world if only men continued to go to space after the space race.
There’s a part of me that wants to believe that the Federation is mostly to blame for the uprising of the spacenoid. Pretty much like how the US colonies rebelled against the British empire. But I can't ignore what the Zeon/Zabi did to billions of people. If anything, the recent Gundam animes have made the Universal Century more rough and gray.
Thats the thing for me, comparing The One Year War to the many independence wars in the Americas doesn't work because the US or Brazil for example didn't invade their colonizers, Zeon didn't want independence, they wanted an empire maskared under a false ideology of independence, and that's why in my vision Zeon is always wrong despite all the problems of the Federation.
Also I feel that maybe Crossbone Vanguard and Zanscare were made so cartoonishly evil to bash in the heads of all the Zeon fanboys that they are not the side you should be rooting for.
@@CoracaoAcidental98Zeon are very similar to the Nzis in that regard, although the inclusion of freedom as a major tenet doesn't work as well imo. The "noble" ideology justifying horrific acts remains however
@@CoracaoAcidental98
アメリカ大陸には多くの先住民がいたはずです。
USAは侵略の結果です。
アメリカはフィリピン等の植民地をアジアに保有していました。
アメリカが建国戦争をイギリスと行ってどちらが勝っても先住民族は未だに被害者のままで永遠に祖国を取り戻すことはできません。
Google Translate
There must have been many indigenous people in the Americas.
The USA is the result of invasion.
The US had colonies in Asia, such as the Philippines.
No matter who won the War of Independence between the US and Britain, the indigenous peoples would still be victims and would never be able to get their homeland back.
In many ways, the original Gundam stories were about the dangers of autocracy: the idea that, even if there are blatant abuses in society, giving someone limitless power to fight those problems will always just make things worse, no matter how well intentioned. The Zabis are the obvious example, but you can see it even in something like Turn-A, where Diana trying to rush back to Earth starts most of the problems in the plot.
As such, it's always felt like Gundam is worse off when it forgets that "wreck everyone until they all agree with me" is actually a bad thing. Maybe that's why something as weird as Gundam Thunderbolt feels more "right," since it's more sympathetic to the individualists than the people blindly drifting along with the war.
That "wreck everyone until they all agree with me" attitude is exactly what went wrong with Gundam Seed Destiny writing wise. (Okay it's one of a laundry list of issues.) Oddly enough, Gundam 00 had the best counter take on that situation, starting with literally doing that and ending on the fundamental lesson (literally spelled out for anyone who didn't get it yet) that peace can not be maintained through force, only through understanding.
UC Federation ends up constantly trying to maintain peace through force and it just means Zeon style movements keep showing up, until the remnants of the Federation are so weak that they don't matter anymore by (IIRC) Crossbone Gundam or so.
That convo with Hathaway and the cab driver is so real tho. Very relatable in the context of climate change and the working class.
well EF was quite anti spacenoid but at least 'democratic' federation until UC0079~UC0092 but after UC0093(CCA) when main threat(zeon) became weak, they no more care about spacenoids.
And Hathaway is very much just the latest version oF ALL HUMANS NEED TO MIGARATE TO SPACE TO SAVE THE PLANET!!!! REEEEEE
Taxi Driver: Dude we just want to live our lives without being extorted, we have enough fish and other stuff you say is disappearing.
Hatahway: BUT all humans must move to space to SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT!
Taxi Driver: Did you now hear what i just said?
In short: Hathaway is a Wok ECO Terroist who lives in a bubble where saving the earth means ignoring that people like the taxi driver clearly state that the only real problem they have is the EFF being pricks and extorting them.
Hathaway really was a nieve person who has happy to use terrorism to stop terrorism without thinking about all the normal people he just assumed don't mind to have MS battles smashing their their neighbourhoods or being forced into space by his own "save the planet" wokism.
That conversation with the Taxi driver makes it clear most people could care less about the the EFF or Zion or Newtype idealism and just want to be left to lead their normal lives.
Sure they don't mind if the Evil Manhunter Cops that make their lives a misery get a black eye but they also don't want to live in a warzone forever stuck between two extremist factions.
Yes, I think Hathaway, like Char, is lying to himself about his real motivations, which is one of the reasons his goals are written to be so contradictory. Or at least, I assume that's what going on there.
@@pyramidinu9449 he needs a bright noa slap to bring him back to reality.
What did you expect from a chud? Anime is literally full of chudjaks who will slaughter billions for some supposed unseen grand goal 😂
I think UC0105 doesn't need a Mafty, it needs an AEUG. A proper military faction, not a terror group, that's looking to actually reform the state of things rather than burning it all down. Mafty's course of action will make everything worse for everyone.
Corrupt bureaucrats Vs terrorists, the epic showdown continues
I’m not the kind of person who tends to dislike ambiguity and stuff in my media, but I gotta say, I’m really fucking upset that Zeon had been so whitewashed to the point where now it’s generally seen as Zeon always being right, when this is just factually untrue. I don’t give a damn how corrupt or unequal the federation were, Zeon as a movement has caused so, so much worse, for their own people as much as those on Earth, and Hack authors like Fukui and the fanbase in general have gone out of their way to paint Zeon as completely correct.
Currently working on a video on Fukui's live action movies that touches on this.
Funny enough the dialogue in one of unicorns episodes highlights the contradiction of all of fukuis idealism. When Marida was speaking of zeon, how it was this shining beacon in the darkness of godless space, it’s the watering down of factual history and creating some rose tinted view of the past. Much like how it seems he believes in the whole imperial japan was just and did right back in the day, when the reality was no the Japanese empire did horrible atrocities. The same goes for zeon they did horrible things in the name of independence.
Don’t get me wrong though I do love zeon, I’m a fanboy. Maybe that is the charm of them being the underdogs per se, they’re relatable with their drive to independence, cool suits too. But I see it as original gundam showcases how something good at the heart can be so corrupted and evil thanks to fascism. Let’s not get it twisted the zeon are the bad guys, memes be damned.
For the feds it’s oddly enough similar just a slow burn. you can see a progression of decay. In 0079, origin, through to 0080 you see the federation as a democracy sure but bloated and ineffective and militaristic; means well but has its issues. But like all democracies if it’s not nurtured and taken care of it will decay and that’s exactly what you see by gundam Hathaway. The federation is more concerned with its own elite power and damn the rest of the world and civilians alike. they were the better choice than zeon, but for how long should they have stayed because life isn’t really much better after over 100 years under their rule. I always love this stuff because that’s dynamic world building. Reality is never EF good guys always, space people bad guys.
@@Jagecage Re: that Marida conversation, I think that’s actually pretty typical of Fukui’s writing. I’ve been watching the major adaptations of his work for a potential video, and also properly reading the Gundam Unicorn light novels, and I’m finding my motivation to actually do it flagging just because of how unpleasant I think his politics are. But, he’s actually very good at making it unclear exactly what he believes. Most of his stories will have nationalist right-wingers as the villains, but they’ll be presented as the only ones with a genuine ideology. So he’s presenting them as the villains, but also presenting them as the only alternative to an ineffective, neoliberal consensus. Which I think is kinda sneaky. Anyway, I’ll go more into that if I ever make that video.
I definitely think Zeon are irrefutably terrible. Where I disagree with some fans, I guess, is that I don’t think the Federation being corrupt exists in opposition to that, in fact I think those two things feed each other. As you say, its also just good world building. The Federation being this shambling bureaucracy in which inequity is built into the system is part of what gives Zeon any ideological ammunition to start with.
@@pyramidinu9449 ima still sieg zeon though lol
@@pyramidinu9449 "Where I disagree with some fans, I guess, is that I don’t think the Federation being corrupt exists in opposition to that, in fact I think those two things feed each other. "
Hence why I would always say, the EF is where the stinky flowers of Zeon bloom. One feeds the other. Zeon will exist as long as EF does, even when it takes its alternate forms like Cosmo Babylonia or Zanscare.
what happens when a democratic gov't becomes complacent and loses an enemy to fight
In my view, the Earth Federation in the original 0079 series represents the worst manifestation of liberal capitalism. That being said, their goals are implied near the end of the television series, as to retake side 3 because they want to monopolize mineral trade with the Jupiter Fleet. I interpret this from episode 38, or 39 (depending on the translation), The Newtype Chalia Bull, where the Jupiter Fleet is introduced selling weapons and minerals to Zeon and possibly the Federation. Hence, this makes the Federation out to be more of a petty despot. Plus, with the Federation being a liberal capitalist state, it's prone to falling into fascism when liberal politicians fail to govern and grant free reign to fascists to retain power. We can see this with how the Federation allows the Titans to rise to power in Stardust Memory and Z Gundam. Plus, I can't help but notice that it's almost like Tomino and the staff of Gundam are saying both capitalism and fascism are two sides of the same coin.
I am saying this as a libertarian and anti-communist so you may have a different view, but I see that post-industrial movement from capitalism into corporatism/fascism is pretty evident for the Federation.
Basically what happens if you let the power centralize too much between the private so that you get megacorporations, and between the state that you get massive bloated bueracracy.
These powers will ultimately work together to maintain that system, and if nobody tries to reform or resist, you get the Federation in Hathaway as a fascistic empire. It's quite evident that's what's going on in the irl west these days.
@@cabnbeeschurgr6440 I approach Gundam from a Post-Colonial Libertarian Socialist/Anarcho-Communist standpoint, or as an Anarchist Person of Color (APOC), in my view, capitalism will inevitably become fascism, once the state gives up the charade of democracy, or rather that capitalism is fascism. Allow me to elaborate what I originally said in more detail.
It's evident in the 4 episode of the original series, that Admiral Watkins shows disregard for due process when he accuses the refugees and crew of the White Base of spying for the Zeon. Then you have the Federal soldiers not only getting drunk at Amuro's home, but also showing disregard for his personal property in episode 12. But then there's the pair of federal soldiers who harass a vendor Amuro knows after demanding payment. Hence, the Federation is classist, insofar as they have no regard for the rights of their own citizens.
Also, it's not the case that too much centralized power is the problem, but it's power itself that's the problem. War for instance, is an institution of state power, and both the Federation/Titans and Zeon/Neo-Zeon, seek power through war. In other words, war is an opportunity for a grab at power.
Another point I want to make is that, reform is only a band-aid solution to the problem of power. The AEUG in Zeta Gundam only want to remove the Titans' influence over the Federation general assembly, but have no real solution as to how to keep the Federation from slipping into a totalitarian state again. So it's best to overthrow the Federation and not replace it with a government, but with decentralized city-states in the colonies, that are without governments themselves and are self-managed by their citizens in the sides. Oh, and that also means abolishing capitalism, since it's the cause of all wars in the Universal century and today's conflicts.
For example, the Moon-moon society in Double Zeta Gundam or ZZ Gundam are an indigenous, Mayan-esque, self-governed peoples who exist outside Federation influence, and have lived without the interference of the Federation, i.e., no capitalist dealing is present in the Moon-moon society.
I always seen the universal Century as a conflict between American style democracy and European style hereditary royalty
Another nice video someone who's been watching Gundam since the late '90s it's nice to see videos that are more about the actual world and factions than just straight multiple suits which I don't have a problem with love that
I've always viewed them as outdated. They feared newtypes as if they were some sort of mutants. Meanwhile the Zeeks just saw them as living weapons.
The feds reminded me how in a post crisis DC comic, the kryptonian council feared the potential of their species under the yellow sun. Which is why they banned space travel and lived as recluse. Like how the feds held amuro in a house arrest and refused to give him any privileges despite his contributions.
The feds in unicorn were similar to the zeeks somehow. A relic of the past but desperately trying to cling on the status quo on the colonies.
Just by seeing other comments, i think gundam fans are either hardcore nerds or just smart in politics and economics
I like the inversion of the rich living in space for a change. If you consider being absurdly wealthy, who wouldn't purchase space real estate?
It made sense in the Expanse with the poor living conditions and people suffering the effects of living their lives under a fraction of a g, but in MSG most spacenoids live in O'Neil Cylinder colonies that simulate a full G, always have perfect weather, and consist of hundreds of square kilometers of clean urban areas interspersed with parks and wilderness preserves. It's hard to believe the people who inhabit such a paradise are the ones being oppressed.
In a certain way I think one of the main point of uc gundam is "every government is dangerous and can become a totalitarian state ran by warmongers"
To me it kinda just seems to exist as some large polity creates Zeon and by extention the wars between them so the characters can duke it out with some decent motivations behind the.
So this adds some light to it.
I need to watch more Gundam
The Earth Federation symbolizes different things depending on where you're from.
As someone from a colonized country, I hate the Federation because they represent the old colonial powers. How they have betrayed and exploited my people. Yes Zeon has been brutal and authoritarian, but how does it compare to a century of neglect, abuse and exploitation by the Federation. My people has and will suffer the worst from climate change while the people who profit off it are safe and secure from it's consequences.
No wonder Zeon is very popular in my country despite suffering much in WW2 from the Japanese occupation. Because on a deep level, the Federation reminds them of the betrayal and the exploitation by the Americans and the Spaniards before them.
Sounds personal to me, l like that to but...
I want a change for now. For greater good
You Filipino
Ah yes Zeon the gas the earthlings race war now faction that is led by a literal simp for adolf hitler.
Sad that Witch from Mercury did pretty much nothing with it's setting.
Actually, it did do something: it's the first gundam series to have a queer couple, and returns gundam back to its anti-capitalist roots.
@@CosmoShidanI wouldn’t call it anti-capitalist in full, as it’s ultimately the corporate politics that allow Miorine to gain power. The Bennerit Group could really be any oligarchic power bloc, they just operate as corporations because it allows them to keep the League at arm’s length most efficiently.
@@federationprime I'm going to say this now, I look at gundam from an anarchist lens, which means that from my perspective, politicians, military brass, and business persons are the same class, the ruling-class. It's because they are in positions of power within the social hierarchy of capitalism, and that capitalism requires hierarchy to exist. Hence, the Federation is a hierarchial organization that seeks to maintain its power, while the Zabi Zeons, AEUG, Neo-Zeon, Cosmo Babylonia, and Zanscare are reactions to their power.
Hathaway vs the can driver scene is definitely one of my favorites.
I think the Federation is a lot more similar to the modern Chinese government than anything else. Obviously Tomino would not have made that comparison when Gundam was originally conceived, but China's composite of capitalism and communism with an autocratic ruler and gross disparity between upper and lower classes with routine totalitarian crackdowns is to me, the most similar thing we can compare. I would suspect that the more modern Gundam works of Thunderbolt, Hathaway's Flash and Unicorn don't overtly look at China, but part of me wonders if their authors took note of the global shift from the war on terror lead by the USA, to the economic cold war we are in today as at least a small influence in their works.
For me, Federation is exactly like the government of my country (France): a Bunch of people, raised in capital (Paris, who is very different from the rest of France), who goes to special school and worked only in hyper-values work. Due to that, they can't connect with the normal people and their reality. Their aren't specialy bad, racist, authoritarian or other thing, they just know nothing about normal life. For them, life is good, and they don't understand why rest of France have problems with the current country situation. They can be easily manipulated by some group of pression, because this type of group only need to produce some fake report and oriented investigation to create a new reality and trick the elite to obey their wish. And for the people who come from the people and succes to enter the elite, they are easely corrupted by money of their new fonction and they quicly start to loss connection with their bases, like the deputees. For example, Kéké, a woman from immigration who worked during many year as a cleaning lady, started during is mandate to abuse social appartement and use is paid to employ and another people to clean is place.
Soo, the governent is bad, but not due to is wish to be a bad government. It's just a government who is too deconnected to the people to act correctly. But in final, the results are the same: incompetence, corruption, brutality... Like the Federation of Earth. Earth is like Paris in this word, and the colony are like the French "Province". Just imagine how the situation is difficult in France, and they are only few hours of cars to go to the Province! In Gundam, you need to take a spaceship for that!
Wait...Gaia Gear is finally animated? I had known about Gaia Gears since the 1990s, but I didn't know it was part of the Gundam universe until a few years ago. ( I knew it was a novel, or maybe at best a manga, but there was so little info on it in the states (pre-internet) that there was little to go by.
No it's not.
Do you have any other favorite Gundam factions? Also great vid!
Thank you for the kind comment! ^^ I'm really fascinated by basically every faction in Turn A (which I'm planning on doing something on eventually). I'm also very into the way G Gundam plays with a lot of this stuff.
Honestly I like to think the UC Federation cracked after the OYW and never recovered. UC Gundam never really delves into the sheer destruction the OYW caused, specifically the one week war and the colony drop, probably because it would make Zeon look horrible and we can't have that in modern Gundam. Instead we need games with cute female Zeon soldiers, but I digress. I can't imagine the economic strain that was put on the Federation post OYW and that it was never really allowed to recover after that due to the constant conflicts.
Eh, it was always shit. There is however a cedtain irony that if the colony drop had gone as planned amd hit Jaburo in one piece Zeon would have ended the war having killed more fellow spacenoids than Earthnoids. (And they still may have overall)
@@DIEGhostfish But when you think about it, it would have hit the AMAZON RAIN FOREST which would cause a shit ton more disasters, but then later the Titans in their infinite fucking wisdom decided to use a NUKE.
"a performance of noble ideals hijacked by fascism"
so .... Fascism.
How are you reading this line? Do you think I'm disputing that Zeon is fascist? I'm 100% saying they *are* fascist, just that when you look at the two factions, it's easier to understand what Zeon is allegorising, versus the Federation, which is murkier.
@@pyramidinu9449 That fascism always uses heroic language.
@@FS_Scott Ah, fair. By noble ideals I didn't mean the valour and stuff, I meant the base idea of some autonomy for spacenoids. (Which was then warped into a state where the Principality of Zeon were even less democratic, and even more oppressive, than the Earth Federation).
People trying to white wash Zeon are like people trying to white wash the nazis because Churchill wasn't a precious little angel. Earth Federation doesn't care of my existence. Zeon wants me dead for being earthling.
where do I white wash zeon
@@pyramidinu9449 You don't...
@@coryfice1881 fair. I just get a lot of comments on this video saying I do, so this comment on its own seemed like that was the implication.
@@pyramidinu9449 There's nothing wrong with explaining why Zeon is what it is. It gets into iffy territory the moment someone goes "jee I think Zeon had a point when they dropped a colony on Sydney"
Not like they didn't kill plenty of spacenoids with their gas attacks.
"For Spacenoids" is just propaganda.
You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain.
basically EFF after the One Year War or way before.
EFF become totally evil by the time of F91.
The amount of depth there is to the UC Gundam is really staggering. Regardless of whose writing for it the amount of interesting stories that have come out of it are absolutely amazing.
The movie version of MSG will always be more canon than the TV show. There are officers who were definitely jealous of white base and given that Bright Noa gets sidelined to transport captain shows that they were successful in politically removing him from any responsibility when he should of made full captain after the OYW. The earth federation has no good people in the higher echelons of command after General Revil, only leaving those who were resentful of zeon after the war to continue holding power. I felt like after Zeta, the only think that changed was by that time, most of those people had died either during the 0083 nuclear attack or had joined the titans and died during the conflict. Just having people die doesnt mean a change in policy.
Ah the original movie dub, IMO it had it's problems but I think its still the best.
I'm pretty fond of British Bright and Brooklyn Kai.
Honestly my only complaint is that everyone bands behind Zeon like they somehow aren't super genocidal, and infected with a philosophy that basically calls for the forced relocation if not outright extermination of everyone living on earth.
Hell even the Titans in secret with their core leadership and the AEUG openly profess that second ideology. And that right there you can bitch and moan about the Federation all you want...but I'll stick with the guys who don't want to genocide me just because of where I was born and live all over not politics, but because they have a ideolized vision of a planet they refuse to even step foot on.
idk if I should have made it clearer, because I get a lot of comments like this, but yeah zeon is obviously worse. I just thought that went without saying. they are an evil group who want to kill most of humanity with big robots that look like demons. nothing in this video was meant to be read as 'and that's why zeon is better'.
U gonna do a video on Zeon?
Humanity is corrupt.
No matter what platform you have, hierarchical power games will be played till a handful controls all of it.
Humanity isn't corrupt, it's the wealthy that are. Otherwise that is collective punishment toward the poor.
Glad I found your channel!
Bandit Flower is an underrated movie, I personally like that Ohtagaki worked fanatical religious extremism into this world of sci-fi, it gave me the similar vibes to the Terraist Church plotline in LotGH adding another player to a war between two powers.
what is the song used from 11:08
Personally my biggest issue with the Earth Federation is that Zeon is so ludicrously evil, that I simply have to side with them. The fact that Zeon starts the OYW by gassing their fellow Spacenoids, then dropping a colony on Earth, goes so far beyond the pale, that no matter what the Federation does, I feel compelled to support them.
Because after the fifth time some lunatic in a mono-eyed mech starts committing warcrimes like it's a competition, I'm simply just waiting for the Federation to put a permanent stop to it, no matter what.
No matter how corrupt the Federation is, nothing Zeon does is even remotely justified. Which annoys me, because it's clearly supposed to be a conflict with a lot of grey areas. But with how evil their opposition is, you kind of have to support the Federation. Every crime the EF commits, Zeon does a hundred times worse and far more often.
Better a corrupt, oligarchic, flawed democracy than the genocidal fascism of Zeon.
Yeah, I think making Zeon antagonistic was an interesting choice, but I can understand that making their actions so monstrous right out the gate raises some questions that aren't really answered in universe. Like, considering just how bad their actions were, you'd think you'd hear way more civilians express frustration and fear about them (whereas we hear a lot more of this about the Federation). I think what the creators are going for is this idea that the status quo of the Federation was fundamentally bad, but unfortunately the major oppositions to it were hijacked by fascism - which I do think is actually a really interesting story concept.
@@pyramidinu9449 Interesting, perhaps, but in the long run it's just annoying and strains suspension of disbelief.
After their repeated atrocities, I'd expect the Spacenoids to just outright side with the EF, because they are more likely to keep them safe and not gas them.
The problem is that we're never shown a more peaceful alternative. If we were to see such a movement, only to have some ambitious monster or mismanagement by the EF (or both) radicalize said movement, I'd be less annoyed with the situation.
Historically, after a failed revolution, the establishment usually actually fulfills some of the demands of the rebels, in order to prevent another uprising. The peasant revolts during medieval Europe and the Napoleonic Wars show that after that much bloodshed, leaders will craft a new system to avoid a repeat.
Of course, as the 1905 revolution in Russia showed, those reforms can be rolled back, but that was probably because that conflict wasn't violent enough and the Tsar was too removed from the carnage to be affected by it.
If the EF did something like that, I'd be more sympathetic for Zeon, because it would show that the EF not only refuses to change, but will backstab them and break their promises at the first opportunity. Making it that it's not just Zeon performing unprovoked acts of aggression, but the EF being utterly unwilling of even minor change, making violence truly the only option.
@@tomasbillian4907 I suppose the Titans could be seen as making the support for radical groups more likely. Particularly in the early 1980s when it wasn't even clear what was canon when it came to the early OYW stuff. Having said that, it is still odd that when we hear civilians complain about the EF in Gundam side material, it's rarely the Gryps Conflict that's mentioned. Actually one of my major lore gripes with Gundam is we're never told what effect the end of the Gryps War had on whatever administration was in charge of the EF at the time. It seems like something that at least a light novel or manga would have mentioned.
@@pyramidinu9449 Probably because of what you mentioned in the video: the EF is supposed to be this vast, impersonal burocratic machine. Going into details about their actual government and the people who run it would defeat that purpose (and should it be shown that they aren't malicious, Zeon would look even worse by comparison).
But if you have to progress and prosper as a civilisation, sometimes wiping clean the decrepit and old is the only way? Call it fascism or whatever but there's being plenty of cases in the past when a large majority of a populace consents to genociding another group in their entirety (Rome, Spanish empire, mongol empire)
0:45 And that’s what I love about the federation. I is BOTH that. It’s both and the existence of one doesn’t mean the other isn’t true. Which is an accurate representation of modern liberal democratic states.
There is literally nothing to like about the Federation. Well, outside of some mobile suit designs.
@@networknomad5600 And the girls 😏
The problem with the Earth Federation is that it's conditioned as the protagonist's fraction, meaning that even if the main characters are fighting for their own purposes, they're still supporting EFF's flawed bureaucracy against post-humans that only get more and more corrupted as time pass by. Worse off, Characters like Bright Noa, who's capable of fixing the feds from within, retires by self-loathing because of Hathaway's strings of stupidity. Regardless, the feds are still considered better ideology than Neo Zeon's or Zanscare's forms of dictatorship, which only care of subjugating others through iron fists, manipulating and using Newtypes as if they're super weapons, and scapegoating anybody not cooperating with them as enemies. EFF ends up as the lesser of the two evils.
People can take the third route and form their own fraction like in Gundam SEED, but even then they're aren't immune to developing senses of self-righteous moral grandeur as seen in SEED Destiny. No ideology is perfect.
Power hoarding Malthusians but ones unwilling to be first in line for any of their social engineering projects. (Basically all the factions in Gundam are Malthusian misanthropes though. Some are just willing to be part of their own proposed solutions rather than forcing them on others.
Glory to the Federation!
Only thing I hate more than Unicorn is how big of an impact it has
I think one of the key functions of the Federation, especially Tomino's version, is narratively answering the question "Why does the Principality exist?" or "Why are most of Zeon's OYW soldiers fanatical, cruel bastards?", something very few of the actual anime outside Origin and ZZ's Blue Team arc even come close to directly tackling and is mostly in the print material. We have an abundance of proof for why Zeon forces keep fighting, the mix of IJA never-surrendered soldiers and post-Vietnam despair combining with the singular nature of MS makes a heady cocktail. Soldiers with a need to take a swing at the Federation with the biggest weapon they could use, to have a violent catharsis, yet do so with no regard for what consequences their battlefield suicide would have to the people around them. But that never answered why Ghiren had so many loyalists in the military, why the Zabi Family was able to be accepted as the absolute dictators of Space Prussia, why people in the streets of the Principality were basically chanting minimally changed Nazi slogans.
The answer is that over the fifty years since the Sides were made, almost none of the people who were sent from Earth *went willingly*.
They were forcibly torn from their homes, deprived of land and property for the elite, and dumped into a thin metal tube with razor-thin margins being the only thing between them and a lethal void. While some of the Sides prospered economically over the generations by playing the Federation's game of economics, others like Zeon remained in squalor. We kept seeing MS pilots who were willing to inflict untold destruction and cruelties on both "fellow Spacenoids" and Earth-Elite because they'd lived in a hostile, bloody environment with no opportunities for a better life. The Black Tri-Stars or the Southern Cross were probably hard, violent people used to killing before they were taken into the military. Ghiren found plenty of people willing to go out and nuke Colonies because their people already hated the other colonists. When two groups of people whose ancestors had their land stolen by wealthy elites, one sold out to make their GDP go up, the other tried to make a genuinely new life in the vein of what the Federation propoganda promised. And it was the latter who were denied opportunities. And people living on Zeon were willing to cheer for a nobility and repeat old fascist slogans because they saw no benefit in the "progression" of the Federation and felt better believing they were a special, superior group. All they saw in the Federation was a group of rich elites who used an environmental crisis of their own making to pull the largest colonial land-grab in history. That's why part of Zeon's ideology has been 'everyone must go to space', it's a coded call to repute the class divide and imperialist origins of the Federation. It's just not about preserving the environment or treating Earth as a sacred place, none of the iterations of Zeon ever live up to that. It's Eat The Rich/Revolutionary economic redistribution, depriving the Earth Elites of their financial and real estate wealth to pull them down to the Spacenoid level. Or just outright below the level of Zeon, for whatever reasons motivate your Zabi family patron of choice.
What Tomino accurately captured in Mobile Suit Gundam, however, is that the Federation Government, and the Federation citizens on Earth, *are not the same thing*. Very few people on Earth are living a wealthy or middle class life. We mostly encounter people living not that differently than our own, and just want to be left out of the two governments' militaries killing each other. It's why there's a reoccurring plot trope of adult civilians viewing Mobile Suits as some terrible thing and their pilots as reprehensible: They're a symbol for the horrors of modern/future war, and that's the person turning their fragile homes into collateral damage. I think if MSG had done an arc where the White Base crew got to run around on Zeon itself, they'd probably have a different outlook on the war. And most people from Zeon probably never experienced any other place than their homes, not even other colonies. That's why MSG's thesis is about the need to connect with people on a personal level to internalize the destructive nature of war. Zeon and the Federation never saw each other as individuals with their own identity, goals, and motivations, just "Spacenoids rebels" or "Elitist oppressors" steryotypes.
I think this why I'm more mad that the Feddies aren't getting any attention in many OVAs. They have so much baggage to unravel, but Bandai prefers to show us more Zakus
I think in the Hathaway movie, it would have been cool to have the scene were people are praising Hathaway Noa for his actions during CCA with a single piece of new dialogue. As they praise Hathaway for his talent as a pilot after the failed plane hijacking, he responds with "Thank you but I'm not Amuro Ray". This is said to give a signal to the Federation officer that 1, he didn't do a lot in his mind and 2, he isn't gonna be used and then tossed aside once the Federation is done with him. (I.E. how the Federation treated Amuro after the OYW and after his Axis Shock sacrifice with the censoring of NewType information). Though to be honest, part of me thinks I only thought of this because of my bias towards Amuro.
Loving the use of KOTOR 2 music.
For all of the Earth Federation's faults, it's still a better alternative than all of the other antagonistic factions in UC, even Mafty.
Totally off topic but does anyone else get reminded of the bgm sound track of peragus station from kotor 2 around the 9 minute marks mood music?
Love the video, Nice kotor background music!
The federation are based on the Allie powers from World War 2.
Every side story of the OYW be based on other powers such as the Soviets and UK such as using penal troops, spies, and in fighting. Post OYW we have most stories based around American imperialism and western neoliberal colonialism.
The federation could also be a stand in for the League of Nations and UN since they are all western liberal democracy and oligarchy projects to settle conflict amongst western colonizers over land and resources, but failing to do so spawned the 2 world wars and a bunch of proxy conflict of the Cold War followed by regional conflict for power in the war on terror era.
Yas when writing Gundam the origin invoke that WW 2 imagery and the Federation as that corrupt democracy run by a rich man’s club thru the pollution of the planet ,thus creating a refugee crisis that led to more people sent to space. The federation is heavily dependent on their space colonies for resources which was indicated during events leading up to Zeon’s Dawns Rebellion. Even unicorn’s writer invoke this idea of resource dependency by colonizers in the Side Co-prosperity Sphere presented by full frontal, which is based on Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere that failed miserably.
As a person of Vietnamese descent and having family members who were war survivors, Thunderbolt setting with the South Sea Alliance was interesting with the Vietnam war era imagery. South Vietnam during the war was backed up by the Americans and ran by a pro-western Catholic minority. This religious minority was in charge of a country that was about 80 % Buddhist and were the privileged favorited group by French colonizers. After the French failed to take back their colony, their business partner that is the American gave it a shot and divided the country in 2 with a puppet government ruling the very resource rich areas of the South. The South Vietnamese government was extremely corrupt and mistreated the Buddhist majority to the point of mass protest of self immolation of monks and bad global public relations gotten the Americans to do regime change by executing one anti-Buddhist Catholic and putting in charge another. The South Sea Alliance Buddhist nation seems to be what happened if the Buddhist were in charge and the Federation being a stand in of the U.S. not liking that. Plus the New-type idea could be a metaphor for a genuine progressive communist and socialist in this context.
Completely agree.
@@pyramidinu9449 As an American citizen I really wished Unicorn’s writer brought in the concept of race and religious conflict from the manga to the anime adaptation. America beneath all it facade struggle to come to term with such conflicts coming from identities and isms. To be far in the future and never confronting such century old issues and sweeping underneath the rug under a racial colorblind mentality and secularism with no real political awareness of religious dominance of Christianity to see why co-existence is difficult .
@@tomhuynh3867 Interesting note on this: according to Mark Simmons' summary of Gaia Gear, there's a scene early on in which a white Earth Federation politician goes on a racist tirade. I wanted to go into this in the video because I think it's the most explicit example of the Federation embodying a post war neoliberal hegemony, but I can't really analyse it in depth until full translations are available.
@@pyramidinu9449 interesting. As I think about this more, the “souls weigh down by gravity” line makes more sense now. With ZZ ,the unicorn manga, and Thunderbolt be showing that the old school race, ethnic, and religious conflict we experience in real life be existing on Earth, while in outer space the conflict is more based on where people were born and raised to a simple Earth vs the Space colonies.
Gihren Zabi fascist perversion of Zeon’s ideals of Newtypes birth spacenoid supremacy to “save” mankind from the corrupt rich earth elites . Gundam 0083 and Zeta Gundam be showing Earthnoid Supremacy by the federation and titans showing disdain for those in space such as the Fed officer that did not like taking defiance from Nina Purpleton and called her a lunaria or Monsha of the immortal 4th calling the Zeon remnant moon men or space aliens. The titans that form New Desides in Gundam sentinel all place high values on the Earth and even Bask Om in 0083 used how sacred the Earth is to call for formation of the Titans.
In Gundam origins, M’queve talked about how out of touch the spacenoids are from the culture and history on Earth, which is the motherland of the human race. The spacenoid are looked down upon, while forced to live in the harshness of space and build a civilization out of near nothing. Yas be invoking pre-Soviet Russia in his depiction of Pre-oyw side 3. The Russians were looked down upon due to their harsh environment and the poverty that comes living under the czar.
@@tomhuynh3867 Yas went hard on the "Degwin as Space Stalin(Father of Space Hitler)" by further making Daikun and Jimba far more extreme to fit the Lenin and Trotsky molds a bit better.
I am shocked he had the subtlety to kill Jimba with something other than an Icepick.
Earth Federation 🇧🇷
Taxs to live in the earth?
Sounds socialism
I always prefered the federation over zeon in terms of aesthetic but also in ideas, its a sort of: the lesser evil of the two
Pls watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Good video dude and I must say your voice is similar to Aaron Dismuke who played Al in Fma 03 but your voice is like his voice has he got older.
Bahaha this is great
@@pyramidinu9449 good videos man keep it up and thanks for your reply
This is why UC is better than others alternate universe of Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.
Nice content. Looking forward to late UC timeline
You need to increase your volume, man. Can barely hear you. 50-75% at least.
Got a new mic used on recent videos which should be better :)
@@pyramidinu9449 Good luck with that. Awesome content, by the way. Hope your channel grows and prosper, man.
@@KrootX Aw thanks so much!