top 5 characters

OF ALL TIME? FROM ALL MEDIA? JESUS CHRIST TIA

uhmm..

I can't put them in order,. but

hisoka. eridan homed stuck. taako taaco. yuki sohma. and of course. keith voltron.

ps I want you to know it took me over an hour of intense thinking to come up with this list and I'm still not entirely happy with it

thank you for the pain!

edit 6/18/23 taking eridan off the list replacing him with vash the stampede

@rozenangel​

The situation was clear to Daryl Lorenz. This wasn’t his time. The stealth mission into Luna II, acquiring the ‘Perfect’ Gundam and getting caught in some kind of blast that lead him to encounter the most bizarre Federation GMs: Jegans and Zeon ZAKUs: Geara Dogas he’d ever seen. Fighting through the Federation and getting into Zeon territory he ran his IFF code to try and flag down some allies.

“What is going on...?” Daryl muttered, trying to maneuver into some floating debris of destroyed floating Musai wreckages that look decades old avoiding the shots from the Geara Dogas. He keyed the radio on trying to talk down his fellow countrymen. His skills were still relatively sharp as a marksman nailing the Zeon Suits in the non-critical systems. ”I’m Ensign Daryl Lorenz! I’m returning from a Mission to recover the Reuse-P System! I am a friendly dammit!”

Watching the whole Gundam series in 2023 #8: Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt Review

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt was directed by Kou Matsuo and released as two 4-episode ONA series from 25 December 2015 to 8 April 2016 and from 24 March 2017 to 14 July 2017. The two series were also rereleased as the compilation films Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky and Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: Bandit Flower respectively. The plot follows Earth Federation pilot Io Fleming and Principality of Zeon pilot Daryl Lorenz throughout their experiences in the One Year War and beyond.

This review will be a little shorter since Thunderbolt itself is such a short series.

From the start of the series I was taken by the unique free jazz soundtrack. The combination of rapid, almost chaotic sax lines and drumming, coupled with breakneck MS combat is one that tickles my brain in the best ways. Io is kind of an asshole, with Daryl and his team depicted as the underdogs of the story, so I was sort of rooting for them. In the end both Zeon's Living Dead Division and the Earth Federation's Moore Brotherhood take severe losses, especially with young kids deployed as reinforcements on the Federation side. The battle between the Full Armour Gundam and the Psycho Zaku was brutal and dirty, like every other battle in this series. With such a short runtime per episode, every death feels simultaneously cruel and insignificant, with no time to linger. Suffice to say, the first half of Thunderbolt was my favourite.

The second half of Thunderbolt sees Io posted to a new unit, the Spartan carrier, in the new Atlas Gundam. Daryl is still fighting in a Zeon remnant unit, though the two do not come to blows in this part of the series. I felt that the plot was a little bit all over the place in these 4 episodes, as there are two completely unrelated perspectives to follow. Unlike the first half of the series, Io and Daryl's perspectives are not connected, and they are often fighting on opposite sides of the world. It doesn't help that the series ends on a cliffhanger, with no continuation to the Seven Seas Alliance plotline that it started. For these reasons I must say that this half of Thunderbolt was quite weak, and I will be reading the manga while hoping/waiting for a third season.

Overall this series is a 6.5/10. It would've been higher if it weren't for the flaws of the second half.

Animation Night 144 - Gundam Thunderbolt

144 is 12 squared. Squares are kinda robot like. Ergo we’re watching Gundam. Impeccable logic I’m sure you’ll agree.

Check it out, it’s an Itano circus.

Gundam! Over the course of Animation Night I’ve gone from being someone who doesn’t know the first thing about Gundam (back when I wrote Animation Night 88 on the history of robot anime and Animation Night 94 on Tomino’s “New Anime Century” and ‘anti-war’ fiction) to someone who is developing a fondness for its particular brand of scifi melodrama.

Gundam Thunderbolt is set in the core Universal Century timeline, but it approaches it with a mind towards changing and dismantling; the author of the manga, Yasuo Ohtagaki, even spoke of ‘always trying to identify which parts of Gundam must be destroyed’ - destruction and subversion being what he considers the original spirit of Gundam.

Gundam Thunderbolt thus begins in a time period concurrent with the original Gundam TV series, with the Federation and Zeon battling on Earth in a ‘Thunderbolt Sector’ littered with space debris. On the Federation’s side are survivors of one of the destroyed space colonies wishing revenge; on Zeon’s is a special unit of amputee pilots. Before long, however, the conflict develops a third faction with the Buddhist radicals in the ‘South Seas Alliance’, which declares its secession from the Federation.

But it’s Gundam, so the focus of the story is on a handful of characters caught in the middle of it. On the Federation side we have Io Fleming, an ensign with a passion for music, and his lover Claudia Peer, a spaceship captain deeply depressed at the long war. On Zeon’s side comes Daryl Lorenz, double leg amputee, and Karla Mitchum, a caring scientist specialising in prosthetics. Early on in the conflict, Io causes Daryl to lose yet another limb - but rather than pack up and leave the war, he volunteers to undergo a further amputation for full integration into a brain controlled Gundam.

The manga is still ongoing, but the first arc was written with the intent of being adapted into a movie, and indeed Sunrise did just that. The first form of Thunderbolt was an eight-episode ONA series released on the web from 2015-2017. Concurrently, this was recut as a pair of compilation movies, titled December Sky and Bandit Flower.

(look it has girls and robots!)

Gundam has gone through many hands since Tomino’s day, and the principle factions of the Universal Century setting have been interpreted in a number of ways - something that anituber Pyramid Inu discusses nicely here. At the time Ohtagaki was writing in the mid 2010s, the mainstream Gundam airing was the Unicorn series (OVAs and then a TV show), written by Harutoshi Fukui, a writer who began his career writing Tom Clancy-like stories with a nationalist bent. He toned this down when he took over Gundam, describing himself as a ‘JJ Abrams’ type figure; nevertheless his Gundam presented a heavy-handedly war-on-terror inspired story in which the Federation is cast as America fighting Muslim militants.

Ohtagaki’s vision also emphasises religion, but instead puts the focus on a more familiar Buddhism, taking aim at what he sees as unreasonable suspicion towards religion in modern Japan (source)...

If you depict people who believe in Buddhism in a manga, people call that a cult. He points out that that way of thinking is already biased and feels that it points out people’s ignorance towards religion. He laments that if you look at it from a global perspective or even consider the history of humanity, the lack of religious beliefs among Japanese people today is quite unusual. He says that it’s a significant problem for Japan today to accept and tolerate other people’s beliefs, so much so that just because someone appears chanting sutras, they’re branded a cult.

He says that assumptions like that are far more dangerous. He’s not out to portray the South Seas Alliance as an ally of justice, nor their religious beliefs as righteous, it’s just that Japanese people close their eyes and try not to see them. He’s illustrating all this because he wants people to realize that it’s strange to think there is no such thing, that it’s more than a little unnatural that there were no religions in the world of Gundam in the first place.

Ohtagaki aimed to sidestep Gundam conventions in other ways: an adult protagonist, a stronger emphasis on chain of command. On the matter of ‘anti-war’, he takes a more fatalistic, small-scale stance:

In anime, the side the protagonist is on always ends up looking like the side that’s in the right. But both the Federation and Zeon are just countries, so it shouldn’t be about wrong and right. I don’t think there’s any point in inserting your ideologies in a manga. For people with normal lives, nations and wars are the ultimate kind of violence, and I want to draw the best ways to handle being in a war in order to survive.

So I’m not anti-war either. Wars will continue to happen, and I don’t think we’ll ever be rid of them, so the most important thing is to know how to handle them. But there aren’t that many people in Japan who think about things in that way. It’s correct to say that you’re anti-war or that there shouldn’t be war, so if you look at things as though war is inevitable, people think that you’re pro-war and you’re a bad person. But I think that’s a very narrow way of thinking, and it actually shows a lack of historical knowledge.

What do I think of that, eh? Right now, mostly ‘hmm’. Ohtagaki is correct to recognise that ‘will wars happen’ and ‘should wars happen’ are different questions; there’s also the question of ‘if war shouldn’t happen, how can it be prevented’. To say ‘war is inevitable’, even if is true, is not to commit to any particular war being inevitable. But it’s also true that there’s no need for all fiction about wars to try and take them on!

I can’t entirely comment on this until I’ve seen the movies, so put a pin there; but given the morass of ‘what does it mean to make true anti-war fiction’, deciding to sidestep the issue entirely is perhaps an understandable move. I’ll be curious to see what focus this approach gives the films; if previous Gundams have approached ‘anti-war narrative’ through focusing on the futility of going to war and the hope for some kind of new-age transcendance (original Gundam), the tragedy of civilians caught up in the middle (War in the Pocket), or the story of a soldier who tries to avoid killing (08th MS Team), what will a story that’s more about just trying to survive look like?

Anyway, so far we’ve focused on the writer and the manga. Let’s actually talk about animation.

Thunderbolt was animated at Sunrise Studio 1, known as one of the bastions of the gradually dying art of 2D mecha animation, as well as character animation with an impressive sense of space. More recently, they impressed everyone with Gundam Hathaway (Animation Night 124).

So Gundam Thunderbolt abounds with complex shouts and detailed designs moving through space, leaning on the talents of e.g. Nobuhiko Genma and Kazuki Ito who animated this incredible POV shot, or Shingo Tamagawa of Puparia fame who provides this splendid character animation. In the late 2010s, we are firmly in the digital compositing era, and glows, flares, gradients and high contrast backgrounds abound, but even though this isn’t entirely to my taste I can’t deny just how splendid the underlying drawings are. The character designs are on the realist end of the scale, and they float around with the classic Sunrise sensitivity to 3D space.

Mecha destruction is given a particularly impressive level of flair, with beam swords and lasers slicing up robots and splattering hot metal all over to the point that it starts to feel like a gory samurai movie. All in all it looks intense and compelling: the product of decades of development by some of the best in their craft. It manages to retain clarity of very complex designs even as they move around wildly. It’s even got some cool oldschool lighting effects...

A question that may be asked is, if mecha animation is mostly about animating complex, rigid 3D shapes, why not do it on the computer, which excels at exactly that? One answer is that there’s a certain quality of movement that comes from planning everything out in 2D. Low framerates can be used to create a sense of weight and avoid the ‘toyetic’ feeling that comes from overly-smooth CG without considerable effort put in to avoiding it.

Another is that 2D gives you a different approach to composition, which allows you to subtly exaggerate and stylise or just frame things in a way that puts the layout in the camera first without constraint - the reason that Houseki no Kuni planned out its action scenes in great detail in 2D before animating them in 3D. Then there’s just the ‘feeling’ of 2D, the slight errors and roughness giving it a more lively, organic feeling. Finally we might add the effect of limitations and constraints as structure.

That said, the ‘2D feel’ of a digitally composited series like Thunderbolt is not the same ‘2D feel’ as a 90s OVA like 08th MS Team. Working digitally makes some aspects of the workflow easier - you can easily preview a motion and scroll through the timeline - which makes some of these extremely complex shots possible. But conversely it is associated with faraway objects becoming indistinct blobs - this is I believe what is referred to as ‘douga melt’. Thunderbolt in all these clips looks very ‘2010s’. Which makes me wonder what the characteristic look of 2020s anime will turn out to be...

I think that will suffice for an introduction/study log/whatever these posts are! Animation Night 144 will begin at 8pm UK time, about two hours from this post! Movies will start at about 8:20pm. It will be at twitch.tv/canmom! Hope to see you there~

So ya know, a lot of people I know (friends, acquaintances etc.) have felt, especially this year, the call of the abyss, the sheer absence of any purpose or will to live, some felt it a little more than others.

I've always considered myself lucky, ever since I overcame that issue myself, that I'm maybe uniquely gifted in the ability to find a lot of joy in the little things, it's easy to see that as taking what scraps life throws off its plate to you, but I especially am guilty of always thinking life should be more, a better job, a relationship, more money, bigger house, fancy clothes etc. And to that I'd say, as I've learned: Survive first, live second. These are trying times even for those with a decent starting hand, let alone those without.

So, with all that said, I wanted to get out a few little things I've enjoyed this year, I hope you reblog it and add some of your own, I have no end of want to pick up some new hobbies or fascinations, and I'd love to make some mutuals on here. So with all that said:

Gunpla- Right, so this has been the big one. I first got into it when I came across a Zaku II Gunpla on Halloween and, being a big fan of mecha and the Zaku's design I picked it up. Prior to this I had been struggling with my free time and what to do with it, it was a time when I eagerly anticipated sleep and would zone out and go into a full dopamine fueled trance of YouTube shorts and whatever was on TV. Gunpla changed that. Now, every night for an half an hour, an hour, maybe 2, I'd sit down, put a podcast from my mountain of media I need to get through on in the background, and get to work. It's been genuinely nice having an actual hobby, something I can take some time on, actually think my own thoughts for a little bit, and be rewarded with something to put up. For Christmas I invested in some tools (sharper snippers, some different grit sandpaper, line removers etc.) and hope next year to slowly improve, make my builds a little cleaner. Gunpla really speaks to the average Japanese hobbyist I imagine, the whole idea of measure twice, cut once, spending an inordinate amount of time on a single part so it's polished to perfection, and taking pride in what you do, I get it now.

If you want to get into Gunpla yourself I, much as I love the Zaku, can't really recommend the High Grade Zaku II as mine falls apart if I look at it funny, though I've recently bought a high grade RX-78 which I've heard is sturdier. If you like either of those and find yourself getting into the hobby then I absolutely recommend the Real Grade Z'Gok, it was a treat to put together from start to finish, it's a beautiful piece of plastic even if you (like me) don't plan on painting it, it's sturdy and it's articulation is second to none. I've recently picked up a Real Grade Zeong for Christmae and, on and off-note, I feel like every time I see a new suit I think "that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen", and it immediately enters my faves. Z'Gok, Zeong, Gogg and Hygogg.

Gundam - So, this may be cheating because arguably Gundam is as far removed from a little thing as possible, but really the way I see Gundam is you choose what looks the coolest to you and jump in.

So a friend asked if I had actually watched any Gundam when I bought my Gunpla, and while I maintain so long as you think the Gunpla in question would look sick on a shelf you need no other reason to justify getting it, I'm again a big fan of mecha so decided I'd have a go. So here come the recommendations:

Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky - First of the Thunderbolt movies and (from what I understaaaaand?) is an OVA of a full series, December Sky is for my money the most War is Hell of any Gundam series while still remaining actually believable and salient to war and it's impacts as we know it today. It stars Daryl Lorenz, an amputee sniper and mobile suit pilot of the evil Zeon regime and focuses a lot on his and his brothers in arms' role under Zeon and how each side has good, honest men and women fighting for causes they don't understand or have lost all meaning of, with special focus on the cold brutality of war, how it affects people inside the mechs and out and how much can be lost for so little. It has a pretty famous soundtrack comprised of frenetic and freestyle jazz as well as some wholly original, voiced pop songs, with the framing device of both Daryl and rival pilot Io Flemming listening to music they have a deep connection with during fights, the juxtaposition of which is awe inspiring, tragic and sometimes even beautiful, in a haunting way. Not for the faint of heart but a must watch for people like me who prefer more grounded and brutal mech combat as well as a story both introspective of its themes and characters. I won't say much about Io Flemming because this is a positive post and, I'mma keep it real with you, I hate Io Flemming.

Gundam Thunderbolt: Bandit Flower - Now this is a very hard recommendation. December Sky is sold a lot on its narrative and thematic elements, whereas Bandit Flower throws basically all of that out for balls to the wall anime bullshit. Focus is given less on the characters or any overarching point but instead on showcasing all the cool new Gundams. I'd still recommend it however if only because it's focus entirely on spectacle and action means it's at the very least a fun, dumb watch, with admittedly a few standout story moments like the Zeon Remnants as characters and their fight in the Arctic.

War in the Pocket - Points immediately for maybe my favourite mobile suit in the entire franchise, the Hygogg, War in the Pocket is also in the War is Hell subcategory following the great war between the goodies and the baddies (I'm condensing here) through the eyes of a kid caught in the middle of it, with a LOT of time dedicated to more of the slice of life of your ordinary kid in the Universal Gundam universe, though what fights do occur onscreen are stellar. A mixed bag when it comes to recommending it since your patience has to be pretty high and, admittedly, I feel like Gundam is perfectly capable of delivering its message while not boring me. Still, it's 80's animation so even the boring bits are a joy to watch.

Deli Sandwiches - Okay, yes I know this sounds like I'm prescribing hearty sandwiches for depression and yes I kinda am but here me out: Corned beef. This is probably going to really emphasise just how much joy I can find in the little things but sat down, watching TV with corned beef, sauerkraut and melted swiss cheese all in one beautiful hoagie, it made me feel like life isn't all bad. I don't even LIKE cheese that's how good it was.

Street Fighter - So to preface this, Street Fighter is a series I've WANTED to get into for sometime. I remember vividly playing SF2 Turbo on my Gameboy Advance back when I was a kid and, when I was in my teens and wanting to actively get into fighting games, picking up SFV. This, right, was a mistake. Street Fighter unlike any other franchise I've played is not only not beginner friendly it's most diehard fans seem to want to keep it that way, so thank God for SF6. Even beyond all the praise I could give it for Modern Controls and it's ability to not only let me play the game, in a hype manner, online against real people and WIN but it's a visually gorgeous game, it's redesigns of classic characters are basically all straight up improvements and new characters (shoutouts especially to my mains, Manon, Marisa and A.K.I) all have a sense of identity and belonging within the SF universe, and that's not even mentioning the soundtrack. Go, immediately, listen to R.E.D, Zangief's theme, The Plunderer, JP's theme.

I titled this recommendation Street Fighter and not Street Fighter 6, because playing SF6, actually getting invested in the characters and feeling like I'm a part of this niche now, urged me to seek out more, which is why I'm also going to recommend the Udon comics which I've read enough issues of to give a give thumbs up as well as the 1994 anime movie, not heavy on plot but easily some of the most enjoyable martial arts fight choreography in anime.

The Yogpod - So this isn't really anything new to me, per se, but I hope it will be for you. I used to listen to the Yogpod, that is the Yogscast's podcast, a long while back, not when it first premiered but in time to listen as some of the middle to later episodes first came out. Lewis and Simon at their peak were, and I use this word specifically, effortlessly funny and had a genuine sense of camaraderie, with hour long conversations that devolve into tangent after tangent from a single talking point the way conversations with old friends do, and it's great to sit in on that not only for the laughs but, and this may sound sad, feeling like your there.

Now, I will add a few things:

This is specially the Yogpod, not Triforce. Ive5nit listened to Triforce as I'm nit familiar with its newer cast and while I have no doubt it probably is a good listen perhaps it's just my nostalgia but I have no urge to listen to it.

I have not kept up with the Yogscast as they are today at all, I'm not aware of their political leanings or any drama outside of the Sjin incident which, as far as I'm aware, they handled in the most sensible manner possible.

All that said, onto recommendations. Honestly the first episode where they call Sips in my mind is mandatory listening, it was a complete dumpster fire of a pilot and that's what makes it so genuinely hilarious. Others of note are I believe the 2nd or 3rd episode, 'Drugs and Zombies', all the Spooktacular/Spacktacular Halloween specials as well as their Simple Simon interview with Bill Bailey, if you like any of those really do give them a listen.

Horror movies - Now, I already have an alt account dedicated specially to horror media, horror as an interest is not at all new to me, I've been drawing monsters back when I was using crayons, it's always been my favourite genre and I'll try to keeo this brief or I'll be rambling for days. This year I decided to start buying physical and collectors editions/Blu Rays of horror movies which eventually spurred me into branching out and actually watching some new movies, and by new I mean at least 3 decades old, but new to me. Specifically I wanted to seek out absolute garbage, and while garbage I often found there was the occasional gem, and those are:

Motel Hell - Horror comedy starring Rory Calhoun as Farmer Vincent, known all around the USA for his smoked meats, you get where this is going. It is bizarre, it is somehow stranger than Texas Chainsaw, and like Texas Chainsaw 2 ALSO ends with a chainsaw dual between a sheriff and a pig-coded, skin-mask wearing cannibal.

Ghostwatch - NOT a trash movie but easily one of the most effective pieces of, at the time, interactive horror and ghost media, the less spoiled the better. It was produced by the BBC and starred a lot of 90's BBC alum with the framing of a Halloween ghost hunt that, at the time, aired live to the entire UK, this as I'm told was sorta like our War of the Worlds broadcast.

So, yeah, I hope this terrifying dive into the psyche of a man easily pleased by deli meat and giant robots/trashy horror movies/buff women has given you some ideas and maybe the perspective to look at the little things you enjoy in life and to keep on enjoying them, I'd genuinely like to hear any recommendations of your own, as I said I'm always looking for more to get into, hoping everyone has an easier time of next year and happy holidays to you all.

Psychozaku-coaster: please keep no arms or legs inside the vehicle at all times

cheap promotional t shirt, Daryl Lorenz's Dried Fish

Two gundam characters I feel have a tendency to be misunderstood would be daryl lorenz and io flemming from thunderbolt. and thats understandable, its manga in the west isn't particularly wide spread [especially when we're talkin the less legal side of things] and its animated adaptations stalled out waiting for the manga to finish up [among health complications for the author as well].

in essence though id say they're two characters with very deceptive first appearances. io comes off as a very yazan like character, a skilled pilot out of raw natural talent and a bloodthirsty/battle hungry edge to him. someone who says to have been possessed by the demon of the battlefield. daryl lorenz on the other hand comes across as soft spoken and gentle, much more in the mold of your pacifistic type leading man ya see relatively often in gundam with the added bonus of newtype rumors [that are absolutely true of course] spiraling around him to boot.

once ya start getting into the individual characters especially as the story gets on ya start to see how those first impressions were, i would fairly confidently say, misdirects on the characters actual nature. io for all of his brutality on the battlefield is in essence incredibly fucking childish, and not even just in the sense of being immature but arguably in every sense of the word. hes easily excitable, he gets upset to the point of throwing tantrums, hes got that childish inflated ego that takes criticism poorly, and in the manga, he just makes the goofiest faces out of almost anyone else. and in that manner his initial demeanor reveals itself for the facade it actually is; an act to help handle the stress and tragedy going on in his life better [the loss of his home, his friends and their dreams falling apart, his fathers suicide] by effectively ignoring it and pretending everything's fine. its also why as a character he goes through a lot more development in terms of his identity as one then his comparative foil daryl, criticism from his teammates and commanders who try and help bring him past that childishness so his abilities as a pilot and asset can flourish, suffers a lot more setbacks and obstacles to overcome and develop around compared to the numerous successes daryl enjoys in the stories later half, until he finally gets that snap realization of 'i get it now' that lets him grow as a character after hitting his lowest point [the 'all is lost moment' as it were if ya wanna get cheeky].

daryl by comparison for all his outward nobility especially in the early parts of the story, is once ya move past that misdirection a character far more consumed by the battlefield then his comparative rival is I would say. we can see this in the literal sense, he loses his legs and one of his hands to the battlefield before deciding to willingly remove his last hand for the opportunity to be a better pilot on the battlefield, in the later parts of the story he suffers a number of lapses to his fight with io in the thunderbolt sector in later fights to the point of entering a warrior berserker like trance, and the reuse psycho-p device itself being his effective signature a device that connects you on a biological level to your mobile suit so you can pilot better [*cough* ibo *cough*] but i'd say you can also see that on a more thematic sense as well. daryl being the star pilot of the living dead division is arguably rather apt in the manner that as a character daryl could be said to be of the 'living dead' variety himself. he doesnt really have much of an interest in the zeonic cause all things considered, he only joins up to help earn citizenship for his family and he only joins up with the zeon remnants to care for karla [and cause they're using her as a barganing chip but shshshshhhh]. yet in man instances he still displays a strong sense of patriotisms towards the nation of zeon despite his own experiences, and i'd say the reason for that is that daryls something of an empty vessel for ideology at the end of the day who takes up these causes because of a lack of any strong personal beliefs. he shares a childish excitement for the battlefield with io at the end of the day certainly, the only time hes arguably ever actually alive even is on the battlefield, but he has a tendency to bounce between beliefs and ideologies rather easily taking them up passionately as his own and inspiring others to do the same without thinking for himself on any particulars. theres an argument to be made with the levan fu stuff that hes just doing and going what and where karla wants to go, but noticeably he becomes a much more genuine fan and believer of levan fus professed ideology then karla ever does [who correctly pegs that fu's just out for revenge more then an actual grand visionary], with others around him placing him in the position of an ideologue and successor to fu then strictly taking that up for himself. as well theres the whole matter of becoming more the mobile then your own person, being consumed by its power, cutting away so much of yourself that your only able to truly move [in daryls case feel like he has limbs again anyways] in a powerful machine of death etc, but thats all ground that also gets covered in ibo so i'll assume when i point to mikazuki and barbatos and say 'its kinda like that thematically', ya'll can get me.

with that all in mind its why i'd say the script ultimately gets flipped in a manner once it comes to the final battle [in setup anyways] in terms of the general strokes of the players at action. thunderbolt begins with the zealous unpalatably presented moore brotherhood using unsavory tactics in pursuit of a noble cause [reclaiming their destroyed stolen homeland] going up against the palatably presented living dead zeon division who are under orders to hold side 4s smoking ruins to protect their own homeland [and also be guinepigs but hey ho]. come to the final battle and you have the sketch as hell presented south seas alliance using unsavory tactics in pursuit of a noble cause [blowing up anaheim] going up against a more nobly presented spartan division of the federation who are under orders to stop the terrorists from challenging the federations authority [and blowing shit up, like anaheim].

cause as characters io and daryl themselves have gone in rather opposite directions all things told.

[ID: A closeup of Daryl Lorenz’s eye from Gundam Thunderbolt. His expression is horrified and his pupil is dilated. End ID.]

Gundam Thunderbolt, ep2: Daryl’s radio.

Today’s disabled character of the day is Daryl Lorenz from the Gundam series, who is an amputee

Requested by Anon

god he’s so uncomfortable at that

Daryl Lorenz

Gundam Thunderbolt