pikestaff

Over the Moebius Skies

Fond of yuri and giant robots. Char Aznable's Pet Eevee, for better or for worse. Probably for worse.

last.fm listening


I was browsing the Gundam feed on bluesky and came across someone who just started watching Zeta and wanted to know why this keeps happening.

I have a overly simplified answer for you, and that answer is Starship Troopers (1959) by Heinlein. Note that I will be talking about the novel here, and not the 90s movie, which has a different flavor.

Starship Troopers is a novel about military men who don powered suits (similar to say Master Chief's suit in Halo) to fight aliens. Notably, the aliens themselves don't do much and there isn't a lot of action until the very, very late end of the story. Most of the story is about guys in the military talking about how much they love military training and also corporal punishment. They really like corporal punishment in this book. It's actually a huge pain in the ass to read because Heinlein does not ever shut up about how much he loves it to the point that he frequently has the characters go off on tangents about how we need to discipline the future soldier by hitting the youth. This is in addition to all the multiple lovingly written scenes about people getting flogged for disobedience.

Anyway, questionable politics aside, this is essentially the first time we see the "space marine" trope that would go on to be popular in military sci-fi, and while its powered suits were not mechs by a modern definition, it was noted by Tomino himself as an influence on Mobile Suit Gundam. Tomino has also been pretty forthright in interviews about his own thoughts on corporal punishment (he likes it), which leads me to believe that he probably liked what Starship Troopers had to say about it and was not afraid to incorporate that into Gundam as well.

Because for better or for worse, those kids really are always getting smacked in Gundam.


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