I'm Calling You Out, Rika Takahashi

For those who think that I was just calling out some random Japanese man, (woman? It's Japan, do they let women work on anime? In a role as impotant as writing? Maybe, he now officially an "it") I'm not. Takahashi is the credited writer of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, and no, otakus, I'm never actually going to use it's original title on this blog. Any commenter who does without first being actually Japanese, as in born in Japan, will be punished after the revolution. Regardless, for post's sake, we'll assume it wrote Gundam Wing on it's own. Having seen Wing, and considering myself either a current or former (I have yet to decide) fan of, I now call this individual out.

 Out on what? That's going to take some time to explain. I'm nolt calling it out on making it's point through ludicrous wars. Most of the wars fought in Gundam Wing make sense if you think about them, which is more than I can say about Gundam Seed. Whatever wrote that drek decided to make their point by creating two factions and having them enter into what is basically a horribleness contest. It's actually kind of cartoonish, or it would be if the series didn't go about it with such a straight face.

The saddest things is that I am in no way using hyperbole. I'm not, and the approach to warfare in Gundam Wing is comparatively mature (Seed is mature in the same way that Gears of War is mature, so not very), wheras many animes make armies and soldiers out to be monster clubs, you made them human, with everything that entails, good and bad. In a large way, it makes up for what I'm about to complain about.

Nor am I calling it out for it's dialogue choices. The entire world takes issues with some of Relena's more classic lines, but that's for another time.

No, I am calling it out on all those diatribes about what it is to be a soldier.

First of all, Rika Takahashi, there is no way you'd know a damn thing about what it is to be a soldier. Just like a soldier probably isn't in any position to write about what it is to be a cop, or how a cop isn't in a position to write about what it is to be a grocer. You're a writer, from Japan, and even if you'd been a JSDF soldier for any period of time, you never saw combat. It's not an experience you've had, so you don't have anything except your own agenda to draw on. It shows, and not in a good way. I know you were trying to make a point about war and peace, but the Paul Baumer routine didn't work because you never actually fought in a war. You aren't Erich M. Remarque. I'm not saying you have to have been a soldier to write a good story about war. Stephen Crane wasn't a soldier, and his The Red Badge of Courage did just fine. He also never paused in the middle of the action to remind that audience that he's a soldier and to elaborate on what that means. Of course, you may have been limited in what you could have done with the character, Gundam is insanely formulaic, were probably just working with what you had. The problem there is...

 Providing aggravation is your choice to use resident Char clone (I intend to write about his kind later on). I'm not going to cite his assigned villainy as the why for this position. I do take issue with the entire world fawning over the Gundam pilots as they force the opening of new orphanages (the first few "missions" were basically indiscriminate slaughter, and "the real target" being Oz doesn't change that they killed thousands of Alliance personnel for absolutely shitty reasons) but it's a Gundam series, and having the Gundams in an antagonistic role isn't in the formula. Regardless, you picked the antagonistic mask guy to be the mouthpiece for these little speeches. I don't think that he had any real combat experience before Operation Meteor, here's why:

Try to consider what it is that made a mobile suit pilot stand out as elite before there was combat between mobile suits. It's stated that only Romefeller (the Alliance and Oz) has the technology to make the damned things, and people will generally agree that internal warfare is bad for business, so we can assume that no real combat took place between mobile suits pre-series. Wargames, maybe, but you don't earn a reputation as an ace pilot in playfights. Exceptional performance might explain how he made Lieutentant, if he'd displayed strong leadership abilities in said games, but they wouldn't have scored him a reputation as a great soldier. Only real combat can do that. Now, remembering the fun fact from before, and gathering that only his side had the giant robots that rapid fired tank shells, we can conclude that every real fight he's ever been in has been horribly in his favour, like George Foreman fighting a paraplegic. In other words, not real fight. It's like being a UAV operator. You've done some destroying and killing, but you've never actually had to fight your enemies, you aren't a soldier. That's not fully accurate. Zechs is, and he shows over and over again that his moniker "lightning Baron" is deserved, but that doesn't change the one sided nature of his previous engagements, and doesn't make it any less unbelievable.

So, basically, Gundam Wing is filled with higher than thou ideas on what it is to be a soldier delivered by an antagonist who'd never really fought before and written by a wannabe Remarque. It's the type of thing that usually constitutes cringe worthy poetry written by a community college student, but here has become an incredibly successful anime series. It's true that the writer was hemmed in by meta-series convention, every new universe has basically been a re-make of the original Gundam series, and they all follow the same constraints. The problem is that it's never been more obvious, or more painfully awkward than it was in Gundam Wing, the "true soldier" angle really wasn't one that should have been carried so far, those of us who aren't at all into shipping the pilots together couldn't have helped but notice. It worked a bit better when Goto did it in 0083, but that was because he was already an experienced and hardened soldier who had fought the enemy on equal terms. Although Milliardo Peacecraft was an otherwise well written character, that one annoyance is a black stain that can't be removed.