Ford Prefect wrote:I'm not going to touch that pile of hysterical moral superiority neuroses with anything at all, but the reality is that the story is far more complex, and has a vastly more complex view of the Federation and Zeon and the One Year War and the subsequent conflicts, than you are willing to admit.
In short, no one is allowed to point out that Unicorn is following the trend of Japanese WW2 historical revisionism or has these elements because "the story is more complex than that!". Great. Glad we have that cleared.
Next time somebody comes out with a story that denies the Holocaust let's excuse it because "it's story is more complex than that!". Because complex story telling completely washes out the attempt at apologia!
Unicorn is about power and how it's used (it's also about our relationship with our parents and having the courage to follow our hearts). So much of its thematics are about how a stagnant, faceless power base creates suffering. About how clinging to the status quo pushes people to extremism. That aspect of the story is an indictment of the Federation. Comparatively, the Zekes had an ideal, a new world beyond the stifling Federation, and they lost sight of it in favour of hatred and largely meaningless violence. Zeons have faith and tenacity and consistently misuse it.
First of all: Those are seriously the theme of every UC show
ever which I'm not even contesting.
But hey, keep lording over your "superior" understanding of the series.
That is the message of Unicorn: that there was a path forward into a better future: a path which the Federation tried to bury because it threatened their power, and which the Zeons lost sight of and misused.
No, you idiot. That's nothing new with Unicorn.
Zeon were driven crazy by ideology and waged a massive war of annihilation (One Year War). The Federation also went crazy with ideology eventually and started gassing people too (Gryps War). The idea that "both sides are bad!" has existed
long before Unicorn. Portraying that "both sides are wrong!" and "driven by extremists" is
nothing new.
The problem with Unicorn, again, is that the Laplace Document ultimately ends up being
retroactive apologia. It talks about Newtypes
nine years before Zeon is even born. It also (as you admit) presents them as some kind of shining hope to the future.
But that's actually NOT what's shown in the series; or at least in the early ones.
Newtypes were never meant to save anyone. In every Gundam show, Newtypes ultimately end up as weapons - pilots flying giant mecha to kill their fellow men. This has
always been the case - from the original series all the way to Victory Gundam. Newtypes are just psychics who end up becoming soldiers who are used by both sides (and other extremist groups) as weapons.
This why there's a telling comment made by Amuro Ray in the original series - He tells the crew that "We will win this battle, my Newtype intuition predicts it!", and yet a few minutes later tells his close friends "I don't really believe I'm a Newtype, I'm just
faking to make the crew feel good".
The whole "Newtype" thing was meant to be propaganda. It was supposed to give people false hope, with the lesson being that people should
not believe in some kind of Deus Ex Machina that will save them (i.e. Newtypes will save us!), and that they should believe in their own power to change the world for the better. That is why the climax of the UC series involves soldiers from both sides working together to stop an asteroid drop (CCA).
Unicorn abandons that and goes to "Newtypes will save us!", without realizing that it's just another ideology that caused the whole mess in the first place. They won't. It has to be people working together and communicating honestly.
