Honestly I kind of just chalk it up to the fact I was really, really, really fucking disappointed with how the final battle was such a letdown given how virtually every single other battle in the show was so brutal and awesome. They had to rain nukes on Barbatos purely so it couldn't curbstomp that stupid hypocrite into the ground like she deserved. For purposes of story telling I can understand why Mika ultimately lost, but at the same time it meant Barbatos went out with a whimper instead of a bang.
Scroll back the YEARS worth of pages on this thread and you'll see I called it from the beginning. When the premise of the series was literally "Peter Pan and the Lost Boys meets Lord of the Flies," you knew it could only end one way for the main characters. IBO's themes of child soldiers, abject corruption ruling the world, and idealists trying to make their moment, only one force would survive and it would be about how the survivors carry on afterwards. In one perspective it was the mirror opposite of "Gundam W." Similar themes, plotbeats, and the protagonists put through more visceral, wrenching experiences whose deaths were inevitable. Rustal was pretty one dimensional when he fits the definition of the villian trope when he *looks like a badguy* just for having the goatee, but as the most politically powerful antagonist in the series at the end, it was a guaranteed victory for him, despite not having the same charisma as Treize. He used McCharcolate's own plan against him right from the beginning, when he literally said Bael is just a Mobile Suit, not a symbol of authority/divinity/leadership, and then proceeded to use Anti-Gundam Frame Weaponry on everyone. *Yes, I think the weapon was Chekhov's Gun Cannon Spam that puts Kira Yamato to shame. Once the Danslief was introduced, you knew where it was aiming. However from a certain point of view, Rustal wanted to get rid of the corruption he knew existed just as much as McCharcolate did, but since he wasn't McCharcolate with the whole 'burn it down!' attitude, it made him the defacto "hero of Gjallarhorn. Even Julieta came to mirror the painting that Kudelia was inspired by through the first half of the woman on the battlefield holding the sword as the symbol of victory. While the "heroes" of the series did indeed lose the final battle, they won on an ideological front and became martyrs to the reformation and Mars' independence even though history recorded them as pawns of McCharcolate's scheme to overthrow the entire system. Tekkadan may die, but everyone they saved will live on. My central criticism of IBO though remains the pacing. The THREE EPISODES per arc format runs out the episode count, so by the time the finale came around, it felt rushed just to meet the LoL-Tomino quota.
Thoughts. Is this from the origins manga? Because Char was out of action after Garma's death so he didn't get a chance to have a 'final' fight with his Zaku against the Gundam. Now this is just my opinion but I like that Amuro never really did manage to defeat Char in the Zaku II despite using a superior MS. I like to think that Amuro improves overtime with the same MS while Char gets progressively better suits from the Zaku to Z'gok to Gelgoog and Zeong but his skills remain relatively the same. So it goes like this: Amuro/Gundam VS Char/Zaku = Char has the upper hand despite fighting a more advance MS while Amuro is just a newbie that is saved mostly by the Gundam's performance. Amuro/Gundam VS Char/Z'gok = Amuro's skills has improved during his journey to Jaburo and manages to finally damage Char's MS. Amuro/Gundam VS Char/Gelgoog = Amuro can fight equally/better against Char even though Char finally had an MS that should be able to take out the Gundam with a veteran pilot while Amuro still uses the same MS that needs to keep up with him. Amuro/Gundam VS Char/Zeong = Char gets a better MS than the Gundam and manages to damage it but Amuro still took down the Zeong with it. Back to the video, in the middle of battle Char was distracted and got his Zaku's head cut off, that's just bad.
Spoiler I think the problem is IBO was the exact wrong show to pull that level of realism in given the preceding events. If it was a grittier, more down-to-Earth narrative I could see that kind of tonal bait-and-switch working, but aside from the lack of beam weapons the actual story of IBO is incredibly romantic and contrived in a narrative sense (as in events follow an obvious storyline progression) and had more than a few moments of more typical, nigh-super-robot antics and traditional storytelling emotional beats only to fumble the end for a confused and unsatisfying conclusion. See, my problem with IBO is not that Tekkedan lost, it's how they lost. Specifically how so much of the story points and mechanics the world had built up just... stopped being relevant as soon as the plot needed the heroes to start losing. Orga and McGillis infamously became useless, idiotic characters who lacked the cunning and reservation they had in season 1. It was too easy to just make Orga stop thinking, and it was too easy to turn McGillis into a raving lunatic. He wasn't consumed by his own ambition, he just turned into an idiot, lacking the foresight and guile the character had been built on. he was always several moves ahead but once he acquired Bael his plans just... stopped. He was even goaded into obvious, transparent provocation and fucked himself for no reason. It's like his brain just stopped working. It also had some of the actually shittiest antagonists I think Gundam has ever had. Julietta was a really poor attempt at a "protagonist in villain role" archetype (which is a shame because I like that archetype) with no real personality to speak of. Her quirks were cartoonish and nonsensical. Mika wasn't just an oddball for oddballs sake, he was a legitimate personality disorder, and so the same awkward detachment he displayed in social interactions was the same mechanic that governed his brutal, merciless combat style. Julietta was inoffensive, and that's the problem. She wasn't written as a character, she was written as a mascot, with her behaviour in and out of battle having no consistency. She felt like a bad fanfic character with no internal mechanics. Then there's Rustal, so cartoonishly villainistic it hurts, and yet he still had no personality. He had no charisma, no ethic, nothing that defined him as a character or believably convinced me that he could garner the insane levels of loyalty he did. McGillis had a charm and an affability that is easily something I could believe gained him the loyalty from his underlings that he had. We are told Rustal makes people incredibly loyal, but never shown how. He's just a big obviously evil guy who stands around and gives orders. His victory in the end honestly feels like it came out of nowhere, because it's not based on anything. Both these problems could've been solved if more time was spent showing Rustal's political prowess instead of him just standing around. He should have been shown winning people over and being that charming person people would devote themselves to, rather than us simply being told it. The in the end when his victory in the political sphere is shown we instantly understand that all that "off time" was really him securing the win, and that all the battles ultimately were pointless. Then there's Gaelio, who was possibly the most human and rootable character in the first season, reduced to a simple-minded vengeful persona in season 2. The bets part was when he took the opportunity to apologize for looking down on Mika, because it reminded me why Gaelio was such a strong villain: he was completely sincere and earnest in everything he did. He was the perfect foil to McGillis, who was entirely internal, because he was entirely external. It made his being betrayed genuinely emotional because he was such an honest person, even if he wasn't a good person. To put that personality into such a generic role is just misguided. It didn't add anything to him and subtracted so much. And of course, the absolute worst part of the show: the Dainsliefs. AKA Ex Machina sticks. Probably the worst narrative tool in a Gundam series specifically because it was a narrative tool and nothing else. It didn't feel like an organic part of the story, it felt like the writers needed something that could kill Tekkedan because they had overpowered them to the point that just losing in mobile suit combat wasn't, I dunno, good enough? Every instance of their use just defied logic. I think my favourite was when Rustal snuck a fake McGillis ally into their lines equipped with one of those things, to be used as a pretense to authorized use of their own Dainsliefs, but the very instant you run that through your brain it crumbles: 1. Why or how did no one among McGillis' faction notice a stray mobile suit with a Dainslief launcher? This is a universe where every machine has a unique, registered code and is pretty much the one thing you can track on a battlefield. (take a drink every time an engagement begins with "Ahab wave detected!") 2. If this was just pretense for Rustal to use Dainsliefs in return, and outlawed weapon (for some reason, but fucking maces and pile bunkers aren't) what then was his excuse for having this illegal weapon on standby? 3. "Well, Rustal controls the media!" People say. But then why the pretense? Just fucking lie. He sent one infiltrated suit, not a whole unit. It already looks like an obvious staged response. 4. Why did Shino not fire his fucking Dainslief from a distance when his suit's entire purpose is long-range? They even brought it out against the Mobile Armour specifically because it didn't need to get close. 5. Who honestly staged that final battle and thought "yeah, this is cool. Just demolish the main characters, we're running out of time and budget." Ultimately the problem with IBO season 2 is almost entirely in execution. It relies on far too many informed attributes and characters just not thinking. That's no fun, it's not "realistic," and it's certainly not an enjoyable story. IBO S1 felt like it bucked so many trends that even if it ended in a typical way it didn't make the show feel any less unique. S2 spent most of its narrative being about as predictable as possible only to try and shock the audience over and over rather than tell a compelling narrative with the detail and believably viewers came to expect from the show I think the biggest problem is season 2 started so strong. The fight between Akihiro and Gallan Mossa or the fight against the Mobile Armour is everything the latter half failed to be, which is engaging, character-driven action with narrative structure to the fights, especially the former. The dialogue of the Akihiro fight is fantastic, with Gallan Mossa running his mouth all while Akihiro just brute-forces his way through, tanking hits he doesn't need to just because of his singular focus while Mossa calculates every move to try and outplay him as he talks his way around him... only to reveal Akihiro was actively conscious of the dialogue all along and had his own final move hidden in the end, beating Moss main the dialogue as well as the fight. There's also one other problem I have to bring up: Spoiler So much of IBO's lore is just wasted, or not capitalized on. Mobile Armours? Just a boss fight with no real bearing on the plot. Gundams' hidden limitless potential? Only used twice, and in the last fight it's not even much of a display. For as much as Barbatos going red-eyed looks cool, it only did it during the ultimately pointless MA fight and the utterly disappointing final battle. In fact, the whole idea that the final battle was winnable at all to me sits ill. I think all parties should've died, and this is why: As I said above, Rustal's ultimate victory was a political one, and the actual fighting had very little to do with it. In fact, had his political prowess been more extant, I think the best way the final battle could've ended was with Mika and Akihiro killing all of GH only to expire from their injuries, the whole bloody conflict not even a thought on Rustal's mind. His fanatical loyalists used and discarded in a frivolous melee, including the one character (Julietta) who seemed truly convinced of him, a character who lacked purpose only to find she had none, that she was in fact like like Mika, and like him only had one end to her story. If they really wanted her to be a foil to him, she absolutely should've died in battle there, realizing all too late that her loyalty and drive to succeed in the battlefield and "get stronger" led her to be the same purposeless husk Mika turned out to be. Her pained pleas to understand him "why do you fight?" would mean so much more if she was realizing they were on the same path On a more personal note, I also think Akihiro got done dirty. He was honestly one of my favourite characters. He was a brute, but not in the sense that he was the butt of a joke or didn't have any internal mechanics. But aside from his fight with Mossa he had no opportunity to express those mechanics, until the literal last second where he happens to glean that the guy responsible for the Turbines' death was on the battlefield with him. I feel like Mika was too special, being the only one allowed to go all out. both of them should have been consumed by their Gundams, the implication that the show had hinted at but never capitalized on. Both give their bodied to their devil machines, losing themselves and ultimately their lives for that last will to fight and win... only for it to not matter. Like I said, everyone in that battle should've died, because it shouldn't have been winnable, because ultimately it meant nothing. IBO's second season just feel too much like it lacked any idea in what it wanted to do. It had certain goal posts it wanted to reach, but no idea how to get there or what they amounted to. It feels like a different writer took over, one who misunderstood the tone of the show, and I feel like people overlook that because it was a shocking, against the grain narrative. Yet when you look past that incredibly reductive notion of "well not every war story has a happy ending" you're left with a really messy, really uninteresting story that leaves many completely unsatisfied. IBO didn't have to end happily, it just needed to end properly. Aside form a few cool fights and some of the best mecha designs in years, it's hard to look back on that show and not feel like we fell just short of something great.
I still have not watched IBO. Something about it just didn't grab me. It looked like a show that was Gundam in name only, as opposed to something like 00 or even AGE.
I believe it is from Origin, I read it earlier this year. at the Jaburo battle where Char uses the Z'gok, I think instead of using the Gundam Amuro is forced to use one of the the fresh-off-the-line GMs as RX-78-2 was getting a Core Fighter added I liked IBO for melee weapons and demonic looking mobile suits, which are the two most jarring things compared to the other series. the actual story, though.... ehhh
In a franchise that prides itself on deeply flawed characters, IBO succeeded. Mika took the Gundam Protagonist trope and dialed the antisocial tendencies to full blown apathetic, inhuman sociopath. It's honestly very tragic that he had no real qualities as a person outside of Orga's gun weilding attack dog in a Mobile Suit. Sure, his devotion to everyone in his circle was vicious, but beyond that there was nothing else to him. Orga is so deluded by his own ambition he gets careless, and ultimately that brought about his own demise. It was like Henry in "Goodfellas," although Orga didn't aspire to being a crime lord, he still wanted to be "the boss," and made deals with anyone who would give him a chance to achieve his goal. He would do whatever it takes, siding with whomever pushed him one step further to his goals. Even if it meant getting Mika's hands dirty. In spite of being one of the eldest members of a group of child soldiers, he was the most childishly naive. Always desperate for recognition, validation, or familial bonds like how he called Naze "big brother" (to Naze's dumbfounded indifference at first) without even knowing the full extent of the Turbines' role in the Teiwaz organization. I hate to say it but he reminded me of my own older brother for those same personality ticks.
It's one thing I give IBO credit for with the uniqueness of each generation of Mobile Suits until the final ones. The Gundam frames are more angular, enlongated, with raw mechanical components with exposed cables and pistons, even the hands are more like claws, compared to the more utilitarian, modern models like the Graze. One thing about this that stood out was just how unnatural it was to combine parts from different Suits, say when Barbatos took the shoulder pauldrons from a Graze, attached them differently than they're supposed to be and just repainted them in Barbatos's colors. Compared to when they took the claw anchor from Gaelio's Schwalbe Graze and didn't even repaint it. Fun fact, the original concept for the Barbatos Lupus Rex made it more assymetric and monstrous, literally cannibalizing parts from two other suits (the Reginlaze and Barbatos form 1) to repair what was lost during the fight with the Hashmal. Then there's the Gusion Rebake where they basically stripped down the entire machine and rebuilt its armor around the Gundam Frame, but still used the parts from the original form's legs and turtleshell backpack, and turned them into subarm binders and a shield for the Rebake.
I think that's a fair appraisal of his character, but the problem is he never grew or developed. If your protagonist is stagnant, no matter what, that's not an engaging story, especially in an otherwise "typical" narrative. You can't have two seasons of non-developing MCs, there has to be something, even if it's not the protagonists. The thing with IBO's first season is the circumstances were always dramatically changing, and that forced the characters to be reactive and dynamic even if they didn't change much by the end. In season two the world is not not changing or growing in a way that forces the characters to expand or alter their thinking, and it sort of reveals how flat they really are against the setting. They have little to react to, and because they're written as totally reactionary, it leaves the show with a near total lack of direction. Things happen, but they're not directly informed much by the characters' actions, either being the result of mechanics behind the scenes or simply happen outside of their control. Season 1 may have been simple, but Tekkedan's constant forward momentum towards their goal allowed for logical progression. There's no goal in season 2 beyond the assistance in getting McGillis his position of power... kinda, because Tekkedan doesn't factor much into that, and when he does get it they just change the rules so it doesn't matter. Cause and effect gradually becomes less extant as the season progresses. Either the characters must be dynamic, or the setting must be dynamic. S2, especially after Hasmal, was neither. I think that's why it sits ill with many fans. The mecha design of IBO is unparalleled, and I honestly feel as though the mobile suits tell a more compelling story than the show. The legendary status of the Gundam Frames and the clear engineering lineage paints a vivid picture of a past history we unfortunately never truly experience. Plus they're all so fucking cool.
What hurt Season 2 is that stagnation. Despite not wanting to, Tekkadan became exactly what they were trying to get away from in the Chryse Guard Security company. Child Soldier Mercenaries by any other name. Then compound it with everything they went through in Season One, they inspired the worst elements of an already corrupt, broken system. You saw more pirate groups taking children as hostages to become AV system pilots, unearthing more Mobile Suits of questionable status, and Tekkadan was even shipping their members off to fight in wars on Earth they had no part of.
While true, the actual solution didn't really feel like any of those problems were addressed. Gjallarhorn simply uses the "nuke from orbit" option without any inclination they wouldn't do so again instead of suffering any losses worth a damn (Iok Kujan dying was if anything a benefit to both sides), with Rustam finally outlawing child slavery looking more like closing a loop hole in oversight to ensure another Tekkadan couldn't rise as opposed to any actual ethical reason why child slavery is fucked up. And the show acts like any meaningful change happened. How is Gjalarhorn actually going to enforce the anti-debris stance? The oppressive economics really didn't change, all that happened was Rustal became the emperor of mankind who could decide "fuck mars" and there's nothing Kudelia could do about it.
No, I like the designs fine. Both the mobile suits and the characters. That isn't it. More about the feeling I got from what little I knew about the story.
It tries to tell the "true peace is achieved by dialogue and understanding and not violence" story common to Gundam but fundamentally trips by having the oppressive regime stay in power with even less democracy. As AB pointed out, the ending of IBO addresses none of the status quo problems and yet still acts like some kind of better future was achieved. Human debris is outlawed, but it's not like there were many legitimate organizations taking part in the child slavery, so the guilty parties can still happily traffic human beings like they always were. Nothing is set in place that will prevent Mars from being exploited like it already has. The only change is that GH is comprised of even less voices and Rustal more or less has total control of the Earth sphere which is all he ever wanted and fixes nothing. The problem with IBO is that... violence does solve everything. The heroes win by killing, the villains win by killing. Every issue is resolved because people killed their way to power, nobody is punished for their evils, and peace is only achieved through deception and political strong-arming. Kudelia has no tangible power and it's entirely plausible she will simply become the same victim of the "who cares about rules if we all just agree to not follow them?" that McGillis was. (who legally gained full control of GH and was still ousted, meaning even the existing system itself is so fundamentally broken that you can't even rely on it) Mikazuki's child is implied to be his legacy, the real victory, but growing up on Mars there's really nothing saying he won't be the same victim of the system his father was because the system hasn't changed. The same people are in power, people proven to be malicious, evil individuals who willingly ignore the law and cover up their crimes. How is that at all a happy ending the way the tone implies? What has been achieved? You could say that was the whole point, that IBO is really some bleak message that you can't fight the system and that corruption always wins, but that's not the tone the ending strikes, nor is it at all an entertaining series to watch. Whatever message it was trying to tell is muddled and contradictory, and feels entirely too convoluted even for Gundam. Usually Gundam is a convoluted story preaching a simple message, but IBO was a fairly straightforward narrative with a confused and unsatisfying conclusion.
Wonder if some Gundam fans can help me out. Which UC series has an episode where Zeon is trying launch something into space, and there is a fight on the launchpad. There is a heavy Zeon ‘gunner’ suit in one of the lifts in one of the key scenes (I think). I know it’s in an OAV, but I can’t remember which one. It may be Stardust Memory, but I can’t put my finger on it (I sometimes get that confused with War in the Pocket, but I think that one takes place mainly on a colony, except for maybe the 1st episode?). I’d like to watch whichever series it was in again.
