From: bert@snowman.med.umn.edu (Albert Nakano  CBN)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime
Subject: Re: GUNDAM psionics, etc (Was Re: GUNDAM: CHAR'S ... )
Date: 27 Jan 93 21:18:00 GMT
Organization: University of Minnesota

In article <1993Jan27.015617.16813@srl.mew.mei.co.jp> marty@srl.mew.mei.co.jp (Marty Chumbes) writes:
>In article <1993Jan22.195535.9956@vicstoy.UUCP>, jstepp@vicstoy.UUCP (John Stepp) writes:
>|> In article <93020.172339U19807@uicvm.uic.edu> <U19807@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>|> >Agreed,but I suspect that the use of psi may be more of a sticking point than
>|> >some people might think. New Types are all over the place in GUNDAM,ZETA,ZZ
>|> >and CCA,but they're hardly mentioned (if at _all_) in WAR IN THE POCKET or
>|> >STARDUST MEMORY. Is this due to the fact that Sunrise doesn't want to overly
>|> 
>|> If I remember correctly, the New Type population explosion didn't occur
>|> until "Z Gundam" (and continued in ZZ), which was around U.C. 0086 or
>|> 0087.  At that time, the Neo-Jions and the Augusta Institute started
>|> "manufacturing" New Types.  Previously, New Types had been a natural,
>|> and fairly uncommon, occurance.
>|> 
>|> Whatever the actual reason behind the lack of New Types in "War in the
>|> Pocket" and "Stardust Memory", it makes sense that New Types would be
>|> rare in U.C. 0080 and 0083, respectively.
>|> 
>|> 
>|> -- 
>|> John Stepp - jstepp@vicstoy.oau.org : jstepp@vicstoy.uucp
>|>            - ...!{peora,ge-dab,tous,tarpit}!bilver!vicstoy!jstepp
>|>              vicstoy, Orlando, Florida
>|>              (407) 299-3661  1200/2400/9600 v.32  24 hours  8N1
>
>That's pretty interesting....
>
>The question of when newtypes started to emerge is quite impossible to answer because
>basically, they are supposed to be the next evolutionary step of mankind and evolution is a very very gradual process, so that's its possible that they could have existed even before U.C. 0079.
>
I quite agree that they were probably unnoticed and passed off as people with
really good luck or someone who makes good guesses.  Even in Gundam, Amuro 
makes a comment right before the assault on Solomon (I think) that probably
everyone on White Base is a newtype to some degree or another, or they would
not have been able to come so far without losing so many people.

>I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that most of the newtypes that
>appear in the Gundam History line do not know that they are newtypes until they are 
>provoked either conciously or unconciously to use their newtypes ability.  That's how
>we can distinguish newyptes from oldtypes in this universe.  This is pretty
>evident in Seabook Arno and Berah Ronah (F-91), Quess and Hathaway Noah (Char's CounterAttack) and Judau Ashita (ZZ Gundam).  In addition, it's possible that Camille Vidan, Amuro Rei, Char Aznable and all the other newtypes we see, before they got involved in the wars, didn't know that they themselves were newtypes.
>
>However, the military (EUG and Jions) are the first outside of newtypes to witness newtypes and their potential in the war.  That's why later on, after the One Year War (U.C. 0079-0080), the military on both sides started to invest heavily into upgrading the mobile-suit technology: psycho-mu systems and weapons and invest heavily into producing artifical newtypes.  Even at the end of the One Year War, the Jions started to produce
>systems that utilized newtypes' abilities for war-engaging purposes so that by around U.C. 0083 and onwards, the presence of newtype becomes much more signifcant in the later conflicts.  I can't say that their population increased because no one would really know how many newtypes there are during that time.  You only see them at war, when they are provoked to use their abilites.  

This was my original idea, that the military has a higher percentage of
newtypes  than the general population.  The first reasons is that they probably
recruit newtypes.  The second reasons is that the range of abilities that they
show are greater, and hence more noticeable to non newtypes.  Whether the
extent of abilities is provoked by war could be argued, but I would favor
that idea.  It may be a survival kind of thing, where the need to survive
subconcsiously brings more abilities to the surface.
>
>Keep in mind that the Gundam universe we witness is extremely narrow.  We only see the war aspect of the universe, we never really see the universe outside of the war and battles that occur between the EUG and Jions.  I could imagine that life on earth as well as on the colonies would be as normal as ours.  The general public in this universe knows very little about newtypes because their presence in the public life is extremely non-existent.  That's probably why you don't see any NewTypes in "War in
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>ocket".  In that OAV series, we see the perspective of war in the eyes of the people in the colony that's not involved in the war
>but are only an observant.  In "Stardust Memory", we don't witness any presence of newtypes with the exception of Haman Kahn who makes a cameo appearence, but their significance in the conflict is extremely evident near the end.  The GP03-S was, I believe, a prototype mobile suit specifically designed for a newtype.  It doesn't really give sound proof that EUG were
>making any considerable effort to invest heavily in upgrading mobile-suit technology to
>facilitate newtypes, but it gives an indication that even after the One Year War, the 
>influence of newtypes was important to the military on both sides.
>
>So in all, I think that throughout the Gundam Universe from U.C. 0079, newtypes gradually
>become significant on both sides of the conflict and can only be seen when provoked to
>use their abilites.
>
>Just my 2 yen worth.
>
>Any comments or criticisms are welcome, but no flames please.
>
>Marty

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Albert Nakano
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