Welp, if last episode was a basically an 80's Tomino episode of Mobile Suit Gundam, this episode is straight out of 90's Gainax... right down to the egregious fanservice. Bleh...
Also, I was joking about the problematic polycule with the Space Ghost of Char Aznable I didn't think they'd actually go for it lmao
speculation
If Machu and Nyaan are the Amuro and Char of this love triangle (Shuji being Lalah makes waaaay more sense in retrospect) then we can add toxic Yuri to the genre tags here, it's been kinda amazing seeing the ED make both more and less sense as the show goes on
(that visual storytelling through blocking tho)
A lot of people are going to draw comparisons to FLCL here for the first half, and yeah I see it. Teenage angst isn't what interests me in the show though, it's the political commentary: here's hoping Tsurumaki can connect the dots successfully to make the personal political (as I suspect is his intention), but also I get nervous when a character like Nyaan gets depicted in this way since I'm reflexively expecting The Swerve: I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and wait to see how it plays out tho.
Next week: we assassinate a fascist!
Lalah from the original show was aloof in a really similar way.
I'm only going off the movies but she was at least presented as a capable individual in Zeon's ranks tho, wasn't she? I think the thing that annoys me about Shuji, and it does annoy me tbh, is that he's like a Kira-Kira version of a stoner and both Machu and Nyaan are fawning over him without enough of his character being developed for me to agree with it. Like, girls, no, you can do so much better. Unless, they're going for just a blissed out Kira-Kira-head polycule, which it kinda seems like, but then I feel they can still lean way more into it. Like it doesn't feel they've committed to that yet.
I think the comparison still sticks. She's an extremely competent pilot of the Hermes, but she's super weird and it seems like the Zeonic rank and file see her as Flanagan and Char's pet project. She's rarely wearing a military uniform, and I distinctly remember scenes where most of the other Zeonic peeps are walking while she literally floats around (they're all in space)
Ah, gotcha. I guess we'll see.
Shuji is presented as a very competent MAV when he's not running a fever of 102°
Sure, but that's part of being of a kira-kira'ed out Renfield, no? Lol don't mind me, I'm just being a cranky old man apparently.
Listen if I'm being honest I don't know what the fuck "kira-kira'ed out Renfield" means
Lol no worries.
Renfield was Dracula's servant. Kind of an empty brainwashed slave with no will of his own.
Kira-Kira is that mental dimension place they go into when they're vibing with the gundams' psycho tech. It seems to kind of bliss them out.
I'm saying the dude doesn't really have any personality beyond being some blissed out Gundam slave.
Thanks for the explanation.
Maybe he's repressing the space ghost of Char by staying blissed out 24/7. We don't really know where he came from or how he got the Gundam Char disappeared in yet, do we?
No, we don't. That's as good a guess as any; Either the Gundam is possessed or Shuji's got multiple personalities or something. And given this is Gundam....🤷
We just got a possessed Gundam last series
I mean, the white Gundam appeared to answer to Nyaan, so maybe they're not possessed, they're just alive. lol.
Oops! All Possessed Gundams!