Just what the heck were they thinking (Gundam)?

[Thanas]

Can anybody explain to me why the Zeon Eagle is a copy of the Nazi Parteiadler and the Zeon flag is copied of the Nazi War Ensign?

Are they trying to piss off people?

[Samuel]

They were trying to subtly imply that Zeon was full of Nazi's.

I'm guessing they didn't realize how offensive what they did was.

[MKSheppard]

To answer your question....Gundam was created by Japanese.

The Japanese and the Asians....have a...problem...with the Nazis. They have nazi themed bars for christs sake throughout Asia...

[Ghost Rider]

Fetish, Shep, fetish.

As for The question at hand, let's not sugar coat it. They want to give Zeon Nazi overtones. Not implying but give that they were not very much different in ideals and thoughts of said group, or at least the heads of it were. Char, on the other hand, was more of a cross between the obvious(Red Baron) and missing nobleman then the rest.

[Thanas]

And people actually like the principality?

Jesus Christ.

[Ford Prefect]

Are they trying to piss off people?

Gihren Zabi actually gets compared to Hitler in the series by his father, and takes it as a compliment. It was probably his idea. Later incarnations don't use the OYW Principality's iconography, except those who were big fans of Gihren, like Admiral Delaz and his fleet.

And I think it's most accurate to say that people like the Zekes, if not necessarily the Principality itself. Setting aside for a moment that the Republic of Zeon did actually stand on a platform of freedom from Earthnoid oppression, which Gihren almost certainly used to fuel his propaganda machine, there are a bunch of sympathetic Zeke characters who people can identify with. It's pretty hard to not like Dozle Zabi, for instance, who's only motivation in leading the Space Forces was to ensure the safety of his family, folowed by ensuring the safety of his own men. Then there's characters like Ramba Ral, Char Aznable etc.

[Ghost Rider]

And people actually like the principality?

Jesus Christ.

Yes. Interestingly enough the former head of it, Char's father had no such insanity. Just the Zabi family. Plus there's a few characters people admire, but on the whole? Zeon, as they were first shown, in the first series was pretty much as you saw, Space Nazis.

Now, as the series progressed, you get monster governments on both side trying to one up anything and everything Zeon even did. It gets rather silly how bad and evil they become.

[Ford Prefect]

That's unfair GR. The Titans are basically the only group which is seriously more callous than any other UC antagonist, except maybe the F91 Crossbone Vanguard or Zanscare. Of course, later installments do have a habit of painting the Federation in a bad light.

[SapphireFox]

That's unfair GR. The Titans are basically the only group which is seriously more callous than any other UC antagonist, except maybe the F91 Crossbone Vanguard or Zanscare. Of course, later installments do have a habit of painting the Federation in a bad light.

Wow Ford I think you damn well named almost all the major UC Gundam villains save Neo Zeon. Tho to be fair most of the later villains in Gundam are depicted as irredeemably evil most of the time.

[Ford Prefect]

There are basically three incarnations of Neo Zeon (Haman, Char and the Sleeves), the Federation itself is the antagonist in Hathaway's Flash and there's the Jupiter Empire in the Crossbone manga. Of all of the villains, only the Titans can be called the 'worst', with easily the most widely corrupt and vicious leadership and with the highest number of total bastards in uniform.

[SapphireFox]

There are basically three incarnations of Neo Zeon (Haman, Char and the Sleeves), the Federation itself is the antagonist in Hathaway's Flash and there's the Jupiter Empire in the Crossbone manga. Of all of the villains, only the Titans can be called the 'worst', with easily the most widely corrupt and vicious leadership and with the highest number of total bastards in uniform.

Yes they were. Zeta has even been criticized by its own fans saying that the Titans were almost if not were pointlessly evil for the sake of being evil. At times it was almost illogically evil, almost evil for the sake of being evil rather than a point or purpose for the evil.

[Ford Prefect]

When you're run by megalomaniac with control issues with the unfortunate happenstance of being named Jamitov Hymen, you don't get a balanced organisation. I remember watching Stardust Memory, and at the end when a lot of the Albion's crew were inducted into the Titans, I couldn't help but think 'no, you fools, don't look so optimistic! This is a bad thing! A bad thing!'

[Stark]

The series becomes massively stupid the further you get from OYW, and in the OYW the Zeon are CLEARLY the Nazis. Since they kill like half the human race, its difficult to imagine they could have been portrayed worse.

[Zinegata]

Ergh, guys, before anything, some context...

The Principality of Zeon had always been meant to represent a dictatorial state rooted in racist ideology. Even in the time of Zeon Deikun, the guiding ideology behind Zeon is known as Contolism, which basically states that "Spacenoids are far superior to Earthnoids and must rule over them". Little different from saying "The Aryans are better than XYZ" really.

Now, the conventional Point of View is that Zeon Deikun sought only Spacenoid independence through peaceful means, and that the Zabi family subverted this and used it as an excuse to wage full-scale war. However, it's worth noting that in all of the canon works, the only person who actually defends his record is his own son, Char Aznable. So when the Zabis say they are just carrying out the will of Zeon, they might actually be saying the truth.

That being said, the Zabis really do turn up the rhetoric of Spacenoid vs Earthnoid hatred. Giren Zabis delivers a pre-war speech often called the "Master Race" speech, where he proclaims Spacenoids are so much better compared to Earthnoids.

During the war itself, Giren's father accuses him of being little better than Hitler, to which Giren claims he doesn't even know the man. Whether Giren is telling the truth (and fulfilling the parable of how those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it), or lying outright is left to speculation.

Note though, that the "Nazification" of Zeon was relatively mild in early series. Yes, they used Nazi symbols and even adopted a Nazi-like salute (Sieg Zeon!), but it wasn't until 0080 that Zeon turned into an expy of Nazi Germany, with Mobile Suits using German names (i.e. Kaempher).

Finally, why is Zeon popular? Several reasons:

1. The Federation is often depicted as a corrupt, incompetent government with a lot of red tape, with uncaring officers willing to sacrifice their own men. If Zeon is meant to represent Nazi Germany, the Federation represents in many respects the Soviet Union.

2. Gundam often attempts to apply a "balanced" look at both sides, hence there is no shortage of honorable Zeon officers who are just "doing their jobs".

3. Virtually all of Zeon's worst atrocities are committed off-screen. They never depict the mass gas attacks which killed billions of fellow Spacenoids. MS Igloo in particular turned the worst slaughterhouse in Gundam history into a Zeon MS pilotting exhibition with 0 civilian casualties.

4. Fans keep ignoring that Zeon, in fact, is based on a racist ideology. And only Char ever actually defends Zeon Deikun's ideology, and fans who have analyzed the series quite deeply tend to agree that Char is at best wishy-washy as a leader, and at worst outright delusional and liable to focus on petty conflicts rather than serving his people.

But I'm sure the Zeon fanboys will vehemently disagree .

[Zinegata]

Also, regading the Federation Post-OYW...

I don't think it ever really turns evil. If anything, it shows the symptoms of a declining Empire.

The surviving colonies of the OYW were almost all pro-Independence colonies. Side 3 was Zeon's home. Side 6 became independent prior to the OYW. And there's little to indicate the Federation sought to crack down on this at all. In fact, every colony now seems to have control of its own cruiser and MS garrison. To gather up a fleet, it seems as though the Federation needed the consent of all these different colonies - which is probably why they found it so hard to gather an effective response to all of the Neo Zeon threats.

The Federation often gets a bad rap for forming the Titans, but it's unclear if they actually knew about the Titan's war crimes. After all, the Titan mandate was to hunt down Zeon extremists. Instead, the Titans tried at various times to ally with Zeon remnants, and their efforts seem to revolve around securing power as opposed to policing.

It's also note worthing that after the Titans are destroyed, the Federatin forms another organization with the exact same mandate as the Titans - Lond Bell. And these guys are such Big Dam Heroes in the UC world that every Super Robot Wars player faction is invariably named after these guys!

[Ritterin Sophia]

Can anybody explain to me why the Zeon Eagle is a copy of the Nazi Parteiadler and the Zeon flag is copied of the Nazi War Ensign?

Because they were intentionally supposed to draw a parallel to Nazis. Most of the inhabitants of Side 3 come from France and Germany, their infantry equipment are reminiscent of Whermacht uniforms, a large number of mobile weapons named have Germanic names or are phrases in German, a 'Master Race' ideology used to justify attacking neutral nations. Gihren when told he reminds his father of Hitler pretty much says, 'Thanks Dad'. Then there's Sieg Zeon.

[Bottlestein]

In another older thread here - "Zeon as a power in the Battletech Universe", we discussed pictures of Zeon invading Pozan, Poland. So yes, the creators went to idiotic lengths to make them Space Nazis. Amusingly enough, as was discussed in the other thread, Zeon lost for much the same reason that Nazi Germany and IJA - run Japan lost: not realizing the extent of industrial powerhouses they were going up against

Also a question I always wanted to ask the inventor of the Zeon flag: it has the black cross with the "Sigil of Zeon", and red background. Does this mean that Zeon was preceded by a Spacenoid Empire that used black, white and red as its colors? I also take it that it identifies with Christian Scandinavia, since it has the cross on its flag ?

[Shroom Man 777]

It would be great to see a parade of goose-stepping gundamechanimus. That alone would make them actually awesome. Hell, have them do the Hitler salute and I'd totally never ever think they're stupid ever again.

[LionElJonson]

Yeah, Zeon might have been founded on racist ideology, but weren't the Spacenoids actually superior thanks to all their assorted New Type psychic powers?

[The Yosemite Bear]

should we tell Thanas about Space Battleship Yamoto, and the bad guys from there....

[Ritterin Sophia]

Also a question I always wanted to ask the inventor of the Zeon flag: it has the black cross with the "Sigil of Zeon", and red background. Does this mean that Zeon was preceded by a Spacenoid Empire that used black, white and red as its colors? I also take it that it identifies with Christian Scandinavia, since it has the cross on its flag ?

As I said most of the inhabitants of Side 3 are from Germany with a good number of French descent as well. This is the original Republic of Zeon Flag:

Yeah, Zeon might have been founded on racist ideology, but weren't the Spacenoids actually superior thanks to all their assorted New Type psychic powers?

Spacenoid=/=Newtype. They only seem to show up in spacenoids and remain extremely rare even seventy years after the OYW.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Yes, the Republic of Zeon Flag is an 'image hosted by tripod' picture.

[DPDarkPrimus]

If they'd kept it as "Seig Zeon!" in the English dub then maybe folks would have put two and two together more easily.

[Zinegata]

Yeah, Zeon might have been founded on racist ideology, but weren't the Spacenoids actually superior thanks to all their assorted New Type psychic powers?

This is actually one of the biggest misconceptions about Gundam ever.

Repeat after me:

Newtype ability has nothing to do with being a Spacenoid.

The most prominent Newtype of the original series (Amuro), was in fact an Earthnoid (He was born on Earth), and he developed most of his abilities while on Earth.

In fact, if you look carefully very many "Newtypes" were born on Earth. Very many of them also manifested their powers on Earth. Hence, at best you can claim that being in space helps people manifest these powers, but "You must be a Spacenoid to be a Newtype" is in fact total bullshit.

By 0087, the "Newtype ability" had been isolated to the point that it can be recreated in a lab, producing Cyber/Artificial Newtypes. Sure, these guys are generally crazy, but I wouldn't exactly call Amuro or Char well-adjusted either . Still, it proves that Newtypeness had nothing to do with being a Spacenoid.

That people keep missing this seems to be one of the reasons why Tomino is so bitter about the fanbase .

(SEED is a totally different matter however, as Coordinators are indeed genetically engineered to be more superior, albeit that makes often them even bigger jackasses).

[Zinegata]

As I said most of the inhabitants of Side 3 are from Germany with a good number of French descent as well. This is the original Republic of Zeon Flag:
[img]http://yesenixan.tripod.com/sitebuilder ... fzeon2.gif

I don't think there's actually any evidence to support this. The historical ethnicities of each particular Side has never been mentioned in great detail in any timeline or document, albeit it would make sense for colonists to have originally come from the same country.