| quote: |
Originally posted by Mike
I really just couldn't get into Wing. The plot was weird, the characters were one-sided and annoying, and to me at least, nothing important seemed to happen. I just couldn't bring myself to care about anyone, especially Heero. |
You're not alone in this misunderstanding. There's many who feel this way, but please read this: I think the major problem is, combined, Gundam Wing's characters have more psychological baggage than any other set of Gundam characters. As a result, it takes a lot of reading between the lines to understand and relate to the characters--who are all wounded souls. Also, some of the episode scripts that would have more clearly explained this were canned because of tight animation schedules. The missing info from these canon scripts is chronicled in the manga: Episode Zero. Wing has characters that aren't really like the average joe (IE: Kira, Amuro, Kamille), which is why they come of as inhuman. But, because of their deep psychological pains and the ways--scary or admirable--they deal with them, I feel they have a lot more depth and soul than most Gundam series characters. They don't just whine about one or two problems they have, they carry the heavy burdens of their past and fight on, trying to find some meaning and balance, even if death faces them first.
Let me just explain a few of the characters to see if things make more sense (each has a complex backstory like this that is manifested in their actions in the series and movie):
Heero Yuy: A nameless war orphen raised as an assassin by OZ and later Barton Foundation-hired ace assassin Odin Lowe. Heero grew up as the accomplice to a killer, losing his innocence along the way. However, Odin Lowe was not a heartless man, and taught Heero many different principles, such as "Do as you're heart tells you, so you won't regret it later." Odin says this, because he is the one who killed the original colony peace leader Heero Yuy for OZ, thus causing so much further bloodshed, and he regrets carrying out those orders.
When Odin is killed by the Barton Foundation, Heero is left only with this principle and no home; no family--his father figure is dead. It is a principle that makes Heero act upon his feelings of what he feels is right, regardless if it is or not. After Odin's death, he comes into contact with Dr. J. Heero is taken in and retrained by the Barton Foundation as a more complete assassin who does nothing but follow orders. His feelings become twisted, until he accidentally kills a cheerful young girl and her dog. He feels intense pain, understanding how regretful Odin felt, and tries to commit suicide.
Dr. J stops him, telling him that the Barton Foundation's Operation Meteor is to commense. However, Dr. J does not like the idea of Operation Meteor, and offers Heero the option to change his mission. Heero takes the choice that feels right to him--the one seen in GW Episode 1: The Shooting Star She Saw--and feels he has nothing to lose. Since he wants to die anyways, if he fails his mission, he doesn't care, but he'll do his best to carry it out. As he says later on in the series, and he admits right before launching to Earth in the manga, "Life is cheap, especially my life". He doesn't believe he has the right to live after the things he's done and the people he's seen so easily and mercilessly killed. Life doesn't make sense to him anymore.
Heero does fail his primary mission, as Zechs takes down the Wing Gundam in the atmoesphere. However, he doesn't want the Gundam to become a tool to kill others, and so creates a new mission of destroying the Gundam. He meets Relena about this time, and feels that she'll have to die if she gets too close to him. People always make the mistake of thinking "I'll kill you" means he actually is going to go out of his way to sneak around and kill her. NOT TRUE. He means that if she stays around him and/or gets in his way, she'll be killed as a result: He sees her as the girl with the dog he killed accidentally in the manga and Endless Waltz's flashback to the manga event because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To make a long story short, leaving out the finer progressive details in the series: Relena is the first one who sees the lost shreads of innocence that're still there in Heero and tries to bring him back to life. He can't bring himself to kill her even after she learns too much from Dr. J, because his lost innocence is resurfacing through her. She cares about his life, and sees him as a normal teen, when no one else ever had. As the series goes along, the other Gundam pilots help humanize him further, and in return, Heero's principles of following emotions helps to humanize and give hope to other characters like Trowa--he tells Trowa the same thing that Odin told him. While Heero can never become fully whole again, by the end of Endless Waltz, he has resolved to never kill again--others or himself--and he has discovered that his life does have value: something he never thought possible. His tale is a beautiful one of redemption; from the brink of suicide to someone who has found a sense of balance. Also, poetically, the codenamed "Heero Yuy" redeems Odin Lowe, who killed the real Heero Yuy, and ends up being one of the catalysts for peace, which the original Heero Yuy was promoting.
Duo Maxwell: Also a nameless war orphan, Duo had joined a pack of fellow orphans to steal to get by in life. Duo based his first name off of the orphan pack's leader, Solo, who had died of a virus. Duo became the group's leader, but was eventually forced into being adopted into the Maxwell Church. Duo got his last name from the Church, and learned to be a more normal boy through the care of Sister Helen and Father Maxwell. Sister Helen, who Duo became close to, would give Duo his ponytail braid. However, Sister Helen and Father Maxwell sacrificed themselves to save Duo from a rebel attack. Everyone Duo had cared about--his surrogate family--had died. From that point on, he believed the only God in the world was Death.
To hide his pain, more than ever he acted cheerful and comedic, so that he would not have to face his sorrow. He wore a priest's collar and ponytail braid as a sign of remembrance for Maxwell and Helen. Later, he would sneak aboard a Sweeper Group's ship--Howard's group which was hiding Professor G--to steal some food. He was caught and imprisioned. Professor G was impressed with Duo's abilities to sneak around, however, and thus the events followed into the Endless Waltz scene where Duo tries to destroy Deathsythe, and then is told to steal it and do what he wishes with it. He decides he'll become "the God of Death," bringing payback upon those who wished to cause others pain like he had endured--in this case, OZ. Duo meets Heero, and sees how going too far will drive you to lose your humanity. Duo, through interacting with Hilde and others, regains much of his genuinely happy self, and becomes less cynical.
I don't have time to go through every character (that would take a huge book, probably lol), but they all make a lot of sense and have really deep back stories/motivations like this that you have to often read through their actions in the series. It takes a lot of viewer involvement, and since the characters seem so different than normal people, most write them off as insane without thinking about what might be the driving forces behind their wild actions. In almost every case, I'd say you don't need all these background details to understand the characters, as their actions speak for themselves, but this just helps clarify things.
As for the story of GW not going anywhere--it's a different type of Gundam story. It wants to show a condensed yet realistic cycle of war peace and revolution and all parties involved. It goes for such a huge scope, that it takes a lot of patience of the viewer's part to comprehend everything that's going on, just like in real life. One viewing is not enough. So the main point from start to finish is to show the cycle. The secondary point is to show how all sorts of characters with complex issues come to find their balance with the state of the world and find personal redemption for their pain. One of the major points the director said he wanted to get across was how through meeting/crashing into people from different backgrounds, we change ourselves and others greatly, even if we don't realize it, and that continues on like a domino effect for better or for worse. For all these reasons, Wing is my favorite Gundam series; but, for all these reasons, it's one of the least understood Gundam series.
While you don't have to like it--as the uncomfortable themes it tackles may not be everyone's taste--I don't feel its an illogical or pointless series. It's affected me a good deal.