**SPOILERS** I'm not sure how much of this is intended by Gundam writers or just head canon on my part but I think the reason behind the stagnation of Mobile Suit technology and common knowledge of Newtypes, is that after the events of Unicorn and the Laplace Box, the Earth Federation was in decline and that the psycho-frame and Gundam Unicorn was the peak of MS tech (I'm not trying to get into a power scaling debate, just head canon to make sense of the UC post-CCA). The decline of the EF stagnated technology, or just made advancements a lot slower and gradual (represented by the revived use of the guillotine). The events of Hathaway's Flash and the rise of terrorists and pirates (Crossbones) as well as the rise of Cosmo Babylonia just further cements the EF's lost control over the space colonies. Despite this, the Newtype themes of making peace with people through empathy still carries through the later UC and that's how Victory makes for a good cap off to the UC with the Angel Halo imo (also carrying the themes of humans becoming technology and being used like with Cyber-Newtypes and Gundam Narrative). So while the later-UC isn't as narratively connected as early UC (especially without returning characters/rivalries like Amuro and Char), it does have an overarching story in the world-building. I think this is all showcased in Turn-A too when Newtypes aren't known at all, Victory's brutality adding cause to Turn-A's setting, and the Turn-A having the Moonlight Butterfly similar to the Victory's Wings of Light. Like the review! Looking forward to G-Savior! Loved that you loved Victory Gundam but think its the worst of the 4 main shows (telling me you don't hate ZZ like most) and I agree, the V2 is awesome, one of my favorite Gundams.
Yeah a "problem" with UC Gundam, especially the stuff made by Tomino is that a lot of information has to be inferred, the show won't spell it out for you.
Glad someone finally made a review that explains the good parts of the show. Part of the reason the suits feel weak defensively was explained somewhere, possible F91? To put it simply, beam technology outpaced armor, so it because pointless to make big and heavily armored suits, so the suits were made smaller, lighter, and faster, eventually light enough to fly in atmosphere.
If only both Early and Late UC Gundam characters met up with each other, it would've been the Peak UC Moment 🤯 Like, Judau was still kickin' even in his grandpa state. Who knows if Banagher was still alive? Who knows if Tobia met Uso at some point?
While not perfect, Victory Gundam is pretty good and i feel it gets hated too much, though its understandable if people aren't used to the brutally, to me Victory Gundam is up there alongside Space Runaway Ideon for being dark and brutal, but I'll never forget those weird moments, bikini squad and that zanscare dude obsessed with bikes and battleships with wheels, dude going to biker heaven made me laugh😂😂😂. Good review. Also have fun with G-savior.
I think the narrative around Newtypes is misunderstood in modern times, even by the Japanese. I think Tomino's message about basically newtype futurism is that it will fail ultimately which I think is demonstrated time and time again with newtypes being used as weapons of war and not peace. Furthermore, despite newtype understanding, newtypes often fight against each other regardless. Char and Amuro are an excellent example of this. While both are newtypes, they both still continue to struggle against each other till the end. The fact that newtypes arent very common even in Victory is evidence of the fact that newtypes are this new epic thing thats gonna happen real soon, but really just a rare occurrence of genetic freaks existing. perhaps they are the next step in human evolution that will continue to happen very slowly, or maybe they are just freaks. Regardless, they arent what Gundam proports to hype them up to be, especially in works like Unicorn which I think miss the point entirely. Gundam X probably has the best commentary on this that gets frequently ignored because mecha fans tend to have an oddly negative view on it by default, but I think most mecha fans have incredibly autistic tastes that are not indicative of how normal people would view most things. Gundam X basically gets to the bottom of the whole newtype thing as just saying they arent special, they are just mutants but ultimately are people like you and I. They arent going to be this great messiah and ultimately we still have to muddle through everything the hard way anyways which is still a noble intention. This I think is the ultimate takeaway from the whole newtype concept and I think people deliberately fool themselves into believing the in universe hype of newtypes
victory is really awesome, i wish that we'd get a return to this era of gundam, either a victory side series or a crossbone anime, like victory Refined, a show with modern animation and more refs to f91 and early late uc mobile suits to tie things back together
I know they talked about it in production but I'm honestly glad they did not go that direction. Zeon is not too relevant in Victory, Char already has several offshoots (Unicorn, Gaia Gear, NT), and I prefer Uso being more of an everyman. It's an interesting thing to speculate about though.
It’s a shame this and Gundam X didn’t do too well when they aired probably the most underrated shows in the series. It’s interesting seeing people praise this and ZZ nowadays when they were criticized so heavily for years. On the bright side Victories “failure” in the eyes of tomino and Sunrise helped spawn the AUs with G Gundam which got a *ton* of people into the franchise, hell in America the AUs are probably more popular then the UC stuff so Victory deserves credit for that even if it was all unintentional so in the end i consider that a victory
And it's the show from which Evangelion took it characters and characters scheme of they relationship. Next spoilers: A boy who should get in robot, which was made by his mother, his father is a had of a military organisation, with complex relationship with his son. A older woman who became a mentor and she has a romance with a colleague. Also prototypes for Aska (Kategine) and Rey (Shacty).
Flay Allster and Louise Halevy are the finalized characters derived from Katejina Loos of Victory Gundam. Haman Karn is a close 2nd due the Char's Deleted Affair manga flesh out her anime character by making her character background that was left out in the two series, Zeta and ZZ 🤓
A lot of people hated Shakti. While you do have some points as to why she's an okay character, the biggest gripe people have with her is that she makes a lot of dumb decisions. One example is that she decides to jeopardize a mission by releasing a captured soldier in order to be taken back to Zanscare in order to try and convince the army to stop, while also to somehow help people who are sick.... Yeah she willingly gets herself kidnapped, thinking that a little girl like her with little to no political power can somehow end a conflict. Side note: Shakti is actually 11 years old. As for the feminist aspect of the show, it demonstrates the negative and positives. The Shrike Team is a positive representation, where they work along side men and are supportive. The Zanscare is the negative aspect, where they blame men for the Earth's problems, are selfish, and unhinged. Not to mention being used by others for their own personal gains. Maria wants women to take on the roles of men but failed to realize that doing so, the women would also take on the evils of men. Griffin is a psychopath, Lupe is a PDF File, Katejina is an attention seeker, etc. Someone once said that the major theme of the show is depression, where things seem bleak and hopeless, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel if you're optimistic and keep on moving. Tomino was going through a depression at the time so it kinda makes sense.
I first encountered Victory Gundam in SD Gundam G Generation Seed for PS2 and loved the V2 Assault Buster but thought Uso had a weird name. So I dove deeper and watched the opening and instantly got hooked. Then I saw V2 Assault Buster in Super Robot Wars and it was hella powerful! ...then I watched the show. Holy shit the trauma. Then again, thanks to Tomino I can appreciate Dunbine, Ideon and G no Reco even more!
Victory Gundam made me laugh out loud and be shocked for one specific thing: It's obvious Tomino heard that Czechia and Slovakia were divorcing on January 1st 1993 and thus he ended up using the area around Prague as Uso's home, as well as using a bunch of Czech names, even if the people responsible for subtitling the series never heard the names or saw the written and thus wrote them in wild ways. Kateřina being turned to Katejina is acceptable, it just makes it sound like you've got a lisp, Karel getting and extra R had no impact, Tomáš to Tomache keeps the pronounciation but looks odd. But then it hit me with fucking Batstraff for Václav and I lost it. Almost as hard as when I learned Tomino blew up Prague pre-UC and put WOOWIG in its place. WOOWIG. And as such I feel obligated to defend Victory Gundam. Because Tomino looked at my country, went "Neat!" and put it in Gundam, although in a very specific form.
Victory Gundam is the least successful Gundam show in japan that it got very few model kits. only Victory, V2 and V2 Assault Buster Gundam gets modern HG kit, Gun-EZ gets Re 1/100 kit and Zanscare Mobile Suits didn't get one.
i personally wouldn't say it's the worst of the main four but its the second worst for sure I like victory Gundam it has many flaws but most of said flaws are pretty admissible when its bad its dull or a bit stupid maybe a little cringeworthy but when its good its pretty solid gundam goodness
"A woman's ideal will bring sadness in the end" Trust me, Tomino in no way made this as a feminist show. The biggest villain in this show are women like Katejina, Lupe and Fuala.
I suppose it depends on which definition of feminism you choose. I mainly just meant to highlight their larger role relative to the other shows I watched prior. But Tomino is based per usual
I find with a lot of mecha anime, I find myself liking 1/2 of a lot of series. I recently watched Zeta Gundam, Victory Gundam and Votoms. I liked the 2nd half of Zeta, the first half of victory and the first half of Votoms. Most of the issues I have with Victory seems to stem from plot points, decisions, and elements that seem to stem from Tomino and are often attributed towards his anger towards this show and apparently the depressive episode he had while making it. The most off-putting thing being the constant introduction of new (often female) characters for what seems like the sole purpose of having them be newtypes to justify scenes of them naked and then immediately killing them off.
The only way to enjoy Victory Gundam is, much like this review demonstrated, to ignore all of the annoying characters acting suicidally stupid. If you can do that, you'll enjoy the show. If you can't, this will be your most hated UC Gundam show. As just an example, Shakti (who should've been left behind on Earth with the _newborn baby_ she's taking care of, mind you) repeatedly surrenders herself to enemy forces in hopes of stopping the war, getting scores of people on both sides killed every time she does it. No, it doesn't stop the war. Yes, you _would_ think she'd learn what the consequences are after the first time, but no. The characters in this show are _painfully_ stupid... even the adults... and no, "They're just kids!" or "They really need Uso!" are not excuses. So yeah... if you can ignore that kind of thing... enjoy!
If you want to be overly strict and lack suspension of disbelief you can make the same argument about every show ever. Zeta Gundam repeatedly has stolen mobile suits (almost every episode) and villains escaping from combat. ZZ has prisoners constantly escaping, among everything else. 0079 has Amuro being let off for desertion. We can appreciate the shows for what realism they show but at the same time, expecting that of them at every opportunity and scrutinizing them as if they're meant to be ultra realistic is just silly. Shakti surrendering to the enemy is far more excusable than a lot of the aforementioned contrivances, as well as them letting her go free. For her naivety and political power. Acting like it's uniquely an abomination is pretentious. None of these shows are meant to be Game of Thrones.
**SPOILERS** I'm not sure how much of this is intended by Gundam writers or just head canon on my part but I think the reason behind the stagnation of Mobile Suit technology and common knowledge of Newtypes, is that after the events of Unicorn and the Laplace Box, the Earth Federation was in decline and that the psycho-frame and Gundam Unicorn was the peak of MS tech (I'm not trying to get into a power scaling debate, just head canon to make sense of the UC post-CCA). The decline of the EF stagnated technology, or just made advancements a lot slower and gradual (represented by the revived use of the guillotine). The events of Hathaway's Flash and the rise of terrorists and pirates (Crossbones) as well as the rise of Cosmo Babylonia just further cements the EF's lost control over the space colonies. Despite this, the Newtype themes of making peace with people through empathy still carries through the later UC and that's how Victory makes for a good cap off to the UC with the Angel Halo imo (also carrying the themes of humans becoming technology and being used like with Cyber-Newtypes and Gundam Narrative).
So while the later-UC isn't as narratively connected as early UC (especially without returning characters/rivalries like Amuro and Char), it does have an overarching story in the world-building. I think this is all showcased in Turn-A too when Newtypes aren't known at all, Victory's brutality adding cause to Turn-A's setting, and the Turn-A having the Moonlight Butterfly similar to the Victory's Wings of Light.
Like the review! Looking forward to G-Savior! Loved that you loved Victory Gundam but think its the worst of the 4 main shows (telling me you don't hate ZZ like most) and I agree, the V2 is awesome, one of my favorite Gundams.
Oh yeah this is a good head canon you can even see the sorry state of the federation in f91
Yeah a "problem" with UC Gundam, especially the stuff made by Tomino is that a lot of information has to be inferred, the show won't spell it out for you.
V Gundam review without complaining about the same thing over and over again, thank you very much.
I'm more thinking Turn A Gundam is the true ending to the Universal Century saga, but that's just me.
True Reco and Turn A are kinda connected
Me too
@@NopeMechsthere’s still G-Saviour
Nice to see a fellow Victory Gundam fan.
Glad someone finally made a review that explains the good parts of the show.
Part of the reason the suits feel weak defensively was explained somewhere, possible F91?
To put it simply, beam technology outpaced armor, so it because pointless to make big and heavily armored suits, so the suits were made smaller, lighter, and faster, eventually light enough to fly in atmosphere.
Tech tip: The victory gundams have a minovsky flight system; like the one in Xi gundam from hathaways flash that lets it fly in astmosphere easily.
Victory Gundam is always a W in my book
If only both Early and Late UC Gundam characters met up with each other, it would've been the Peak UC Moment 🤯
Like, Judau was still kickin' even in his grandpa state. Who knows if Banagher was still alive? Who knows if Tobia met Uso at some point?
While not perfect, Victory Gundam is pretty good and i feel it gets hated too much, though its understandable if people aren't used to the brutally, to me Victory Gundam is up there alongside Space Runaway Ideon for being dark and brutal, but I'll never forget those weird moments, bikini squad and that zanscare dude obsessed with bikes and battleships with wheels, dude going to biker heaven made me laugh😂😂😂. Good review.
Also have fun with G-savior.
I think the narrative around Newtypes is misunderstood in modern times, even by the Japanese. I think Tomino's message about basically newtype futurism is that it will fail ultimately which I think is demonstrated time and time again with newtypes being used as weapons of war and not peace. Furthermore, despite newtype understanding, newtypes often fight against each other regardless. Char and Amuro are an excellent example of this. While both are newtypes, they both still continue to struggle against each other till the end. The fact that newtypes arent very common even in Victory is evidence of the fact that newtypes are this new epic thing thats gonna happen real soon, but really just a rare occurrence of genetic freaks existing. perhaps they are the next step in human evolution that will continue to happen very slowly, or maybe they are just freaks. Regardless, they arent what Gundam proports to hype them up to be, especially in works like Unicorn which I think miss the point entirely. Gundam X probably has the best commentary on this that gets frequently ignored because mecha fans tend to have an oddly negative view on it by default, but I think most mecha fans have incredibly autistic tastes that are not indicative of how normal people would view most things. Gundam X basically gets to the bottom of the whole newtype thing as just saying they arent special, they are just mutants but ultimately are people like you and I. They arent going to be this great messiah and ultimately we still have to muddle through everything the hard way anyways which is still a noble intention. This I think is the ultimate takeaway from the whole newtype concept and I think people deliberately fool themselves into believing the in universe hype of newtypes
victory is really awesome, i wish that we'd get a return to this era of gundam, either a victory side series or a crossbone anime, like victory Refined, a show with modern animation and more refs to f91 and early late uc mobile suits to tie things back together
They need to make it official to have Uso be Chars grandson
I know they talked about it in production but I'm honestly glad they did not go that direction. Zeon is not too relevant in Victory, Char already has several offshoots (Unicorn, Gaia Gear, NT), and I prefer Uso being more of an everyman.
It's an interesting thing to speculate about though.
If phantomstrider ever picks a gundam show, I bet he’ll like Victory Gundam.
It’s a shame this and Gundam X didn’t do too well when they aired probably the most underrated shows in the series. It’s interesting seeing people praise this and ZZ nowadays when they were criticized so heavily for years. On the bright side Victories “failure” in the eyes of tomino and Sunrise helped spawn the AUs with G Gundam which got a *ton* of people into the franchise, hell in America the AUs are probably more popular then the UC stuff so Victory deserves credit for that even if it was all unintentional so in the end i consider that a victory
And it's the show from which Evangelion took it characters and characters scheme of they relationship.
Next spoilers:
A boy who should get in robot, which was made by his mother, his father is a had of a military organisation, with complex relationship with his son.
A older woman who became a mentor and she has a romance with a colleague.
Also prototypes for Aska (Kategine) and Rey (Shacty).
Flay Allster and Louise Halevy are the finalized characters derived from Katejina Loos of Victory Gundam. Haman Karn is a close 2nd due the Char's Deleted Affair manga flesh out her anime character by making her character background that was left out in the two series, Zeta and ZZ 🤓
A lot of people hated Shakti. While you do have some points as to why she's an okay character, the biggest gripe people have with her is that she makes a lot of dumb decisions. One example is that she decides to jeopardize a mission by releasing a captured soldier in order to be taken back to Zanscare in order to try and convince the army to stop, while also to somehow help people who are sick.... Yeah she willingly gets herself kidnapped, thinking that a little girl like her with little to no political power can somehow end a conflict.
Side note: Shakti is actually 11 years old.
As for the feminist aspect of the show, it demonstrates the negative and positives. The Shrike Team is a positive representation, where they work along side men and are supportive. The Zanscare is the negative aspect, where they blame men for the Earth's problems, are selfish, and unhinged. Not to mention being used by others for their own personal gains. Maria wants women to take on the roles of men but failed to realize that doing so, the women would also take on the evils of men. Griffin is a psychopath, Lupe is a PDF File, Katejina is an attention seeker, etc.
Someone once said that the major theme of the show is depression, where things seem bleak and hopeless, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel if you're optimistic and keep on moving. Tomino was going through a depression at the time so it kinda makes sense.
What on earth was that episode 29. One of my biggest wtf moments ever, EVER.
I first encountered Victory Gundam in SD Gundam G Generation Seed for PS2 and loved the V2 Assault Buster but thought Uso had a weird name.
So I dove deeper and watched the opening and instantly got hooked.
Then I saw V2 Assault Buster in Super Robot Wars and it was hella powerful!
...then I watched the show. Holy shit the trauma.
Then again, thanks to Tomino I can appreciate Dunbine, Ideon and G no Reco even more!
Victory Gundam made me laugh out loud and be shocked for one specific thing: It's obvious Tomino heard that Czechia and Slovakia were divorcing on January 1st 1993 and thus he ended up using the area around Prague as Uso's home, as well as using a bunch of Czech names, even if the people responsible for subtitling the series never heard the names or saw the written and thus wrote them in wild ways. Kateřina being turned to Katejina is acceptable, it just makes it sound like you've got a lisp, Karel getting and extra R had no impact, Tomáš to Tomache keeps the pronounciation but looks odd.
But then it hit me with fucking Batstraff for Václav and I lost it.
Almost as hard as when I learned Tomino blew up Prague pre-UC and put WOOWIG in its place.
WOOWIG.
And as such I feel obligated to defend Victory Gundam. Because Tomino looked at my country, went "Neat!" and put it in Gundam, although in a very specific form.
I love this channel.
knights of sidonia is real good i read the manga instead of the anime and i loved it
W video
Victory Gundam is the least successful Gundam show in japan that it got very few model kits. only Victory, V2 and V2 Assault Buster Gundam gets modern HG kit, Gun-EZ gets Re 1/100 kit and Zanscare Mobile Suits didn't get one.
Someone said that Victory is more enjoyable is you see it as a borderline parody/deconstruction of Gundam and honestly I have to agree
I fw this video
i personally wouldn't say it's the worst of the main four but its the second worst for sure I like victory Gundam it has many flaws but most of said flaws are pretty admissible when its bad its dull or a bit stupid maybe a little cringeworthy but when its good its pretty solid gundam goodness
"A woman's ideal will bring sadness in the end"
Trust me, Tomino in no way made this as a feminist show. The biggest villain in this show are women like Katejina, Lupe and Fuala.
I suppose it depends on which definition of feminism you choose. I mainly just meant to highlight their larger role relative to the other shows I watched prior. But Tomino is based per usual
I find with a lot of mecha anime, I find myself liking 1/2 of a lot of series. I recently watched Zeta Gundam, Victory Gundam and Votoms. I liked the 2nd half of Zeta, the first half of victory and the first half of Votoms. Most of the issues I have with Victory seems to stem from plot points, decisions, and elements that seem to stem from Tomino and are often attributed towards his anger towards this show and apparently the depressive episode he had while making it. The most off-putting thing being the constant introduction of new (often female) characters for what seems like the sole purpose of having them be newtypes to justify scenes of them naked and then immediately killing them off.
I just hate shakti
because she's one of the main problem
always got kidnapped and uso always need to save her
The only way to enjoy Victory Gundam is, much like this review demonstrated, to ignore all of the annoying characters acting suicidally stupid. If you can do that, you'll enjoy the show. If you can't, this will be your most hated UC Gundam show.
As just an example, Shakti (who should've been left behind on Earth with the _newborn baby_ she's taking care of, mind you) repeatedly surrenders herself to enemy forces in hopes of stopping the war, getting scores of people on both sides killed every time she does it. No, it doesn't stop the war. Yes, you _would_ think she'd learn what the consequences are after the first time, but no. The characters in this show are _painfully_ stupid... even the adults... and no, "They're just kids!" or "They really need Uso!" are not excuses.
So yeah... if you can ignore that kind of thing... enjoy!
If you want to be overly strict and lack suspension of disbelief you can make the same argument about every show ever. Zeta Gundam repeatedly has stolen mobile suits (almost every episode) and villains escaping from combat. ZZ has prisoners constantly escaping, among everything else. 0079 has Amuro being let off for desertion.
We can appreciate the shows for what realism they show but at the same time, expecting that of them at every opportunity and scrutinizing them as if they're meant to be ultra realistic is just silly.
Shakti surrendering to the enemy is far more excusable than a lot of the aforementioned contrivances, as well as them letting her go free. For her naivety and political power. Acting like it's uniquely an abomination is pretentious. None of these shows are meant to be Game of Thrones.