So we can’t cover every Gundam series that’s ever aired this week. (And for some of them, why would we bother? Looking at you, G Gundam.) But I wanted us to pay some special attention to Gundam Wing—the first Gundam series to air on Toonami in the year 2000.
War Is for Losers is a meditation on Mobile Suit Gundam.
Wing was lightning in a bottle for Western audiences. Its story was a pretty easy concept to grasp: five elite soldiers piloting giant robots rebel against authority. A dude in a mask with a name that rhymed with “sex” was the bad guy. Kids watching after school were regularly treated to a trailer narrated by none other than Peter Cullen, the voice of Transformers’ Optimus Prime. There was lots of cockamamie philosophical mumbo jumbo punctuated by shots of a woman THROWING A MAN OUT OF A PLANE AND SHOOTING HIM IN THE HEAD IN MID-AIR. It was genius. Just watch this promo.
There was just one problem with all this gloriously hyper-violent anime nonsense, of course. This YouTuber rightly called it out through this 28-second excerpt of a conversation between lead characters Heero Yuy, Zechs Marquise, and Lucrezia Noin: “Everyone in ‘Wing’ Is Fucking Insane.”
Everyone, down to the last named character. Gundam Wing’s cast is filled with sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, and more. The main characters that we’re ostensibly meant to empathize with the most on this show are so brutally traumatized and closed off from normal human contact that their reactions to taking out their enemies is often merciless laughter. They’re so damaged and steeped in violence that the only trails they can blaze ahead for themselves—even when they claim to be fighting for peace—tend to leave thousands of bodies in their wake. So obviously it was a healthy thing for young boys to watch in the Bush years and in the wake of 9/11. Perfectly healthy and not at all problematic.
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