From: visser@convex.com (Lance Visser)
Subject: Re: Why do people love Jions (was Gundam 0083)
Organization: CONVEX Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx., USA
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 03:52:03 GMT
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              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
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In <39026@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> egamboa@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Emmanuel Gamboa) writes:

+>jwp@panix.com (JongWoo Park) writes:
+> 
+>| The more I hear about what Jions preach, the more they sound 
+>| like Nazis. Also, it seems to me that Gundam series sort of 

+>The relationship between the Feds and the colonies are very much
+>like that between England and the American colonies, or any of
+>the expansionist empires in Europe and their colonies during the
+>age of colonialism.  The crown (or the Feds) want to suck the
+>life and wealth out of the colonies and continue to maintain
+>control over them.  Jion is an independence movement, although
+>it got off to a bad start when the Zabi family interfered.

	The relationship and the form the rebellion was very remincent
of that between the spanish imperial colonies and spain.  Spain was
decaying and only engaging in exploitation toward many of the colonies.
And the rebellions that shook of spanish rule in many cases were
lead by people of great power whose motives ended up being in
some cases directed toward local exploitation rather than explotation
by a colonial power.
	I also find some similarities between the jion/fed conflict
and the Boer war between the UK and the africanner republics.  The
Boer republics were fighting for what they perceived as their freedom,
but at the same time their internal government was not something
to be proud of.
	Like Jion, the Boars had lots of initial success but 
were eventually steamrollered into submission by the weight of
the british empire just as Jion were defeated by the feds.

	There are also vague similarities to the american civil 
war in which many of the sourthern generals and military
personell were not unsympathic or evil people, even though
the cause they were fighting for was.
	Some southerners do not see, in their own minds that
the war was about slavery, they see it as being about defending
their states which many felt they owned their primary loyalty to.
There could be similar thinking in the lower ranks of Jion.





+>More and more Nazi elements crept in, and in Gundam
+>0080 you have mobile suits named Kampher, Gelgoog Jaeger, etc.
+>Kazuhiso Kondo, 0080's concept supervisor, may have had something
+>to do with it, since he's a military otaku.

	I thought that the Jions in 0080 were more just very tough
special forces type people.  I didn't see any of them as being
"nazi".  They were tough and bitter as you would kind of expect
the "surviving" soldiers on a soon-to-be-losing side would be.
By contrast, the upper leadership of Zion is never to my knowledge
shown to be anything but evil, amoral people.

	The whole message that I got out of 0080 was that war was 
a "bad" thing and that lots of innocent people get hurt or killed
or just turned bitter by what happens.  

	I one thing that I think would have made 0080 more amoral
than it was, would be to have shown federation big-shots pushing
around the nominal rulers of the colony. (i.e. proving the Jion's
point about what was wrong with the federation).

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