The women and Katz allow Kamille to become the ultimate psychic gun to defeat the Titans. All of these deaths plus the previous passing of Four and Sarah become significant, as the souls of these characters join Kamille to defeat Scirocco. But the most shocking of death all isn’t a woman Katz is unceremoniously destroyed when he accidentally crashes directly into an asteroid. To see them offered up as fodder for the special boy removes some of that core individuality. It’s a disappointing end for both women, who started out the show as strong individuals. After being pulled out of her suit, she speaks to Kamille about the power of the Zeta Gundam and passes on her life force. Emma is then hit while piloting the Super Gundam which leads to her sustaining mortal wounds. Reccoa finally meets her doom on the other side of Emma’s gun punishment for defecting because she was entranced by Scirocco. Zeta has a number of “doomed women” and the show’s rough gender dynamics culminate in back to back vignettes. The large-scale fight results in the aforementioned body count including the majority of the main cast. The last two episodes of Zeta culminate in all three factions battling it out our heroes in the AEUG, the ailing Titans and the ascending Axis (formed from the remnants of Zeon). It’s the way Ideon explores death that really sets it apart. Both Ideon and Zeta’s endings cover similar ground, but I find Ideon much more resonant and thematically consistent than its Gundam counterpart. The 1982 movie follow up, “Be Invoked,” greatly expands upon the ending fleshing out the final battle between the Buff Clan and Solo Ship. Ideon’s main series ends semi abruptly (it was canceled) with humanity being wiped out except for two babies. Ideon, the series Tomino followed up the original Gundam with, is a show that can be similarly dark telling a story of a group of people stuck in an endless battle trying to keep large institutional powers from acquiring a devastating weapon (one of my all time favorite shows now and I wrote about it last year). I’m not opposed to a challenging ending but I found it less engaging than one of Tomino’s other works “Space Runaway Ideon”. It stands in dark contrast to Mobile Suit Gundam’s “the characters are all Newtypes now” ending, eschewing shared humanity for a darker exploration of sacrifice. The series factions come to a head over two dark episodes, where just about all of the characters meet an untimely end. Unsurprisingly, Zeta ends on a big down note. That’s not to say this isn’t a truly great series that earns a lot of its tragedy but Zeta does come with a lot of warning flags and a bit of whiplash immediately following Mobile Suit Gundam. Zeta also has no compunction of killing its characters and its treatment of women is frequently awful. It’s a lot to take in and that’s even before the series starts to reckon with the political ramifications of the original series and the various failings of its two main leads. In the span of 5 episodes, Kamille steals the Gundam Mark II mobile suit from the Titan’s (the even more fascistic wing of the Earth Federation that essentially abuses power without repercussions) and runs away to the resistance group AEUG, only to have his mother killed in front of him (“accidentally” by Jerid) and later his dad (fleeing the AEUG to try to get back to his mistress, truly an all time bad dad). Kamille has a cantankerous relationship with his parents, specifically his engineer dad who we come to find is not only a leading Earth Federation worker but also a misogynistic adulterer. Zeta opens with him running away from school and immediately getting into a fight with army officers (including all time great shithead and Kamille’s series rival, Jerid Mesa). The protagonist Kamille Bidan is a good encapsulation of Zeta’s change he’s headstrong and way more aggressive than Amuro Ray. The series strikes a much darker tone than the original, removing a lot of the ancillary comedic elements in favor of a more serious war series. “Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam,” the 1985 sequel series to “Mobile Suit Gundam,” is notoriously bleak. Spoiler Warning for the complete series and movies for Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta, & Space Runaway Ideon
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