Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Episode 40 Discussion

Sapewloth said:
Remember the time when Scirroco was an actually charismatic, well-written character and not a horny one-dimensional creep? Yeah, me neither.

Also no, Kamille, you cannot protect Reccoa. Because you cannot protect people from their own mental retardation.

It's pretty clear that Tomino had something important to say about women going to war and fighting on the front lines, as shown by most cyber newtypes being emotionally unstable women, Fa struggling to ally her caring/nurturing nature with the expectations of a soldier, Reccoa's search for a stronk myn to guide her etc.
At the very least,his point does seem to be more nuanced than the usual "women are not fit to go to war", because there definitely is a small number of women in the series who are perfectly functional and autonomous (like Haman Karn or Emma). But even after 40 episodes, that point he's trying to make still remains very unclear. As a result most of his female characters end up falling victim to a characterization and development which come off as half-assed and frankly sexist.
I also think that the reason why it's so annoying is because of the sheer number of women in the series (especially compared with 0079).

Sapewloth said:
I don't have a problem with biology or whatever, even though we've come to a time where those limitations have been made practically irrelevant (and I'd argue that a show where piloting skills and psychic space powers are what determines a pilot's capability renders those biologic rules even completely moot). I accuse Tomino of sexism for stuff I talk about in length in plenty of my other posts, and which is perfectly embodied by Reccoa's character.

Sapewloth said:
As I said, most of that stuff you wrote is not the problem I have with Tomino's way of characterising his female characters, though I would argue that women who join the military after meeting the same requirements as their male counterparts (see Israel or Russia) should be and are just as capable as them if only on a physical level, and that in a time where more and more women and men study for and venture into professions dominated by the opposite gender, the biologic rules are definitely becoming irrelevant as they cannot stop this phenomenon.
When it comes to emotional issues female soldiers have, Gundam clearly sets itself apart from real life as most of the emotional turmoil these characters face are tied to their status as Cyber Newtypes, which was forced onto them as oppposed to a innate trait like women's more emotional nature would normally be, which begs the question of what Cyber Newtypes are supposed to represent within the world of Gundam exactly and which still puzzles me years after completing the series.

Sapewloth said:
The change in itself might not be juge but it is still there and more importantly I believe, the possibility of change exists, and that isn't something any law of biology can take back or go against, that was what I was getting at when I was speaking of their growing irrelevance. I'll definitely call you old-fashioned even though I kindof sortof understand where you're coming from. Personally, as a profoundly anti-war person, I believe it shouldn't be anyone's burden, but in the case that war inevitable then I'd rather send able bodied women to war than their barely pubescent sons (which is funnily enough, a subject that will be more or less touched upon in Victory, as the protagonist is a 11 year old boy surrounded by women who will each embody different figures for him). You could say my concern is more of a generational than a gender-related one, I guess.

As for what I find sexist about Zeta Gundam (moreso this work than the franchise as a whole, even though a few other titles have their fair share of terrible female chars), I talked about it in other discussion threads but the fact that so many of them seemed to live and die to serve as props for the development of their male love-interests or colleagues (Mour, Four, Laila etc. even though the characters themselves were fine), Reccoa's entire existence which seemed to be meant to represent the life of a woman on the battlefield and was filled with tired clichés, gross exaggerations for the sake of drama and plenty of typical Gundam stupidity.
As for the Newtypes/Cyber Newtypes, I think it's important to make a distinction between the two. Most NTs presented in the story thus far have been seemingly functional human beings with the exception of Kamille, who's been established as a nutcase from the start. The Cyber NTs however, are all emotionally unstable due to the harsh mental treatment they receive and they're all women to boot (if Scirocco isn't a Cyber). Tomino was clearly going for something there, otherwise he wouldn't have gone out of his way to make them all like abused women, but I still wonder what exactly he was trying to say.