Current mood:

annoyed

Some problems can't be solved with giant robots!
It's time for some robot talk!

I'm watching Mobile Suit Gundam 00, the new series airing in Japan right now. I just watched episode 8. The story in this one is that even in the face of technological advances providing mankind with an infinite energy source, people are still killing each other for some reason or other, so a group from space known as "Celestial Being" has made four super-powered Gundams that no earth force can match in order to intervene in any military conflict, and basically kill everyone until they surrender. The idea appears that eventually the earth forces will become so frustrated at this that they all team up to destroy Celestial Being themselves, and maybe then they'll be friends after that.

I was thinking they were working towards something clever. The over-poweredness of the Gundams is an acceptably plot device, though typically it seems that their enemies are just retarded. Every now and then they encounter an ace pilot who can actually harm them, but the vast majority of robot pilots apparently just stand there and wait to die (maybe this is a budget constraint). Even in episode 8, I saw a human with a rocket launcher (you never know what a well-aimed shot from that might do!) just STAND THERE waiting to get shot, and we never even got to see what the Gundam's counter to undetectable close-range infantry fire is. I guess they didn't think of something clever?

Anyway, what has happened is, terrorists have taken to blowing up random targets in random places in the world in order to make Celestial Being release its control over our precious armed conflicts. This seems like scary stuff, and I'm sure you're curious what they're gonna do to stop this and more importantly how does it involve giant robots. It turns out that terrorists are sloppy. The first bombing was done via time bombs and remote detonation and barring any time consuming CSI activities, untraceable. The second act was apparently more of a hands on job, and a terrorist is seen leaving the scene in a suspicious hurry, he gets IDed, and traced back to a massive terrorist group who has big, fat, easily-targeted bases all over the globe. Celestial Being gets the info leaked to them, the Gundams move in, destroy them, and our terrorist-hating freedom-fighters rest easy and we all feel good about ourselves.

But what the hell, right? First of all, because the various world governments want to go back to war mongering, they should be the ones funding this terrorism. These should not be traceable terrorist "cells" out in big groups, they should be independent agents building bombs out of whatever is available (and being well-funded, they should be able to get whatever they need) and leaving town preferably before the things even detonate. Isn't this how real terrorists are? Isn't it why they are so hard to pin down, because although training camps and such do exist, you can't just squash them all at once? Why even use agents who are even traceable, whose affiliation with terrorist groups is even known? Terrorism is scary because the terrorist could be your neighbor and there's really no way to know! On top of this, the government had a fabulous chance to really demoralize Celestial Being by feeding them BAD INFO. It would have been hilariously tragic if instead of terrorists they had accidentally hit the densely packed sweatshop full of women and children next door? Yeah?

Anyway it was probably a mistake to think this show was going to be intelligently written, but I really wanted it to be. :(