1) I'm in Uni studying medicine
2) I've moved out of London away from home and making friends here
3) Had a few exams and a coursework!
4) Now struggling to be motivated to get my arse into gear - curse you xbox and pc!
Right, that's my list of most interesting things summarized in about four points.
Oh yeah, I'm cooking for myself - not doing too bad, been cookin veggie sausages, yummeh!
Okay, moving on from that (I've noticed I've got quite a scientific vibe going with my listing and such....the joys of scientific courseworks :P) I think I'ma talk about something that interested me more than I thought it would.
About a month ago I had this really strange craving to watch Gundam Wing. I'd been lying in bed thinking about my childhood days of watching it on Toonami and thinking "wow that's is pretty damn cool" but I felt it was a bit too complicated for my DBZ hayday :P. I think being here away from home makes you think alot about who you are and where you come from, both culturally and individually. So on that train of thought, I just remembered this show and decided to download it and watch it. I was a bit hesitant because the copy I had was in dub (eek) so essentially I already was limiting my viewing experience. Put on top a niggling feeling that Gundam stereotypically was about big machines fighting each other (DBZ robot style) and you had the set up of an epic failure. Nonetheless, there was something egging me on to watch it, so that's what I did.
You know what? I was pleasantly surprised. Whilst it was a bit melodramatic (it seemed the characters were exaggerated a fair bit for some stuff that seemed kind of absurd to do so) I liked the ideas they put across. However, these characters, for all their accentuated drama, had understandable notions (apart from wufei - i was confused by his "YOU SHOULDN'T FIGHT, SO IM GOING TO KILL YOU" style), from Treize desire to find a chivalrous battle in which humans can find that despair in what war truly means and why by fighting we can really see how harmful it is to us as a species, to Relena's idealistic (maybe far too much I have to say) notion of creating true peace by having all parties discarding their weapons. For a series that's that single handedly made Gundam famous in the USA, I was intrigued by the notion of peace throughout it. Here you have a series that's choc-a-bloc full of fighting yet there's underlying feeling that all the fights seem...pointless (not to watch, but what their aims were). Looking at it one way, you could say that the fights all highlighted the futility of war. However there's a thin line being tread here - for all the talk of peace, these gundams, which are labelled as symbols of rebellion, are trying to create peace by destroying other ships. It seems kind of contradictory, but when you bottle it down - when can you really and truly have peace without defending it? it is human nature to fight and yet it is also human nature to try and find a peace of mind - even those who are afflicted psychologically try and find resolution by doing what they feel will satisfy their mind-state. In some twisted way, satisfying yourself is one form of temporary peace but it is not the true higher level of peace that many people aspire for, because that kind of peace relies on reducing those carnal desires and finding calm contentment, which cannot be found in those disparaging ways. For me though, whilst the notion of peace was a good mention, I feel that the biggest draw is how history repeats itself in this story. Out of all the aspects covered, this is the one I feel is done the most expertly because you always feel that one dictatorship is being replaced by essentially another under a guise of peace through sheer military force being used to dominate. You see three of these throughout the 49 episode run, giving you a real sense of it.
Overall though, whilst the story had some intriguing ideas, I think the tedious melodrama cuts it down a bit and so you're left with a story that has lots you can extrapolate out from its core, but the surrounding enclosure is full of poor execution.
I'd give it a 6.5/10.
