I mentioned earlier that I found Gundam’s relative sophistication missing in Space Runaway Ideon during the first half. The genesis of this post actually came a couple episodes ago, but the 18th episode did a mix of reinforcing me and throwing me off a little.
One of Gundam’s overarching themes is that war is hell and all are guilty who participate in it. There seems to be lipservice paid to this in Ideon, but as a whole the Buff Clan strike me as a more typical warlike outer space invader who wants to destroy for no purpose. That lipservice comes in the form of the Buff Clan calling the Logo Dau explorers “aliens,” and occasionally commenting on their supposed warlike nature. Every time I hear that, I hear the gears of manipulation attempting to turn, but not quite working for me.
They’re styled more like a standard robot show supervillain: their culture seems monarchistic, they constantly and doggedly pursue the Solo Ship, their mecha (excepting the Ideon of course) are superior to the protagonists’ technology, and they even possess the Death-Star-like means to destroy 90% of life on a planet apparently at the push of a button. Compared to the OVA-length plot to drop a colony that Zeon has to go through for a fraction of those results, these are serious adversaries.
But that awesome power, along with a dearth of insight into their real motivations, makes the Buff Clan a much less sympathetic villain. If anything, Ideon‘s means to a sympathetic villain is “make the good guys seem more like turds.”
But here’s the recent twist: Though it’s a little heavy-handed to just deliver it in a speech, Sheryl’s observation that “once we’re on different planets, we’re all aliens to each other” served to codify the Betrayal at Ajian incident and (hopefully) lean toward a more nuanced approach to Hero and Villain roles in the second half.
Totally unrelated, I only just now recognized that this show is called “Space Runaway Ideon” and not “Space Runway Ideon.” I guess I’ve never really typed the full name.
Oh, come on… It’s English after all, and not one of those long names like Index. That’s not even long compared to some other ones I don’t remember the names of…
Length is not the issue here, for one thing I’ve never really talked about the show, and for another, you would know what I was talking about if I just said “Ideon.”
This is the level of quality I get in my comments for writing about Ideon? brb going to go join Colony Drop.
Better than no comments, right? I always like knowing someone’s actually reading the post and finding it interesting enough to say *something*, even if it’s not relevant.