Die for Our Ship/Anime and Manga/Gundam



The Gundam meta-series is a BIG long runner with many different continuities. The bashing started with G Gundam and Gundam Wing, and ever since then it just won't stop.


 * Pictured above: Relena Darlian/Peacecraft, from the fangirl-popular Gundam series Gundam Wing, is perhaps the most famous victim of Die for Our Ship ever in Anime, and may be one of the most hated fictional women, along with Akane Tendo, Orihime Inoue, Ginny Weasley and Miaka Yuuki. She is often Flanderized as a Rich Bitch, a Yandere, or (sometimes) even a Card-Carrying Villain by fans who prefer the Heero/Duo pairing, even though Heero/Duo is virtually non-existent throughout the series (with the Ho Yay technically going more towards Trowa and Quatre than them), even though Duo himself is shown several times to ship Heero/Relena, and even though the lyrics to Relena's Image Song "Always a Secret" depict her as a sweet and kind girl who would be pretty willing to let go of Heero if he fell in love with someone else.
 * Technically, this happens to most of the show's female cast, since there's a 1-to-1 ratio of men to women among the primary cast -- even ones who don't express any overt signs of romantic love for their counterparts and seem to go more for friendship or partnership with the guys. Relena gets it the worst (by far) because of a bad first impression. Other common victims are Duo's partner and potential girlfriend Hilde; Treize's right-hand Lady Une; and Quatre's rival/counterpart Dorothy, who also receives hate for opposing and hurting The Woobie during a fight late in the show. Trowa's Cool Big Sis Catherine Bloom gets surprisingly little of this, perhaps because she and Trowa act more like siblings than potential lovers..
 * Gundam Wing's director Masashi Ikeda once admitted that he can't write romances, and that he was more concerned with politics. This is sometimes taken as evidence Relena and Heero aren't a "real" couple. But surely, if the director can't write romances, then he can't write the Fan-Preferred Couple either?
 * Ikeda was only one of five script writers for Wing; three of the others penned side-stories which blatantly ship Heero/Relena, including Blind Target (where it's implied they actually kiss), Battlefield of Pacifists (where both Duo and Dorothy attempt to set the two of them up together) and Frozen Teardrop (where Heero and Relena are cryogenically frozen for 30 years, rendering any potential relationships with the rest of the cast Squicky).
 * In Gundam Seed and its sequel: The ire of Athrun/Cagalli fans, after canon went against them in Gundam Seed Destiny, brought lots of bashing of Meyrin Hawke, Lunamaria "Luna" Hawke and Meer Campbell... to the point that some people have either: a) sworn off SEED as a whole SOLELY for the Ship Sinking; b) sworn off the Athrun/Cagalli pairing, or c) bashed AsuCaga back for the evil it inflicted on their girls or ships - especially poor Cagalli.
 * And it's not only about the infamous AsuCaga shipwar. If you like Kira/Lacus, apparently you can't like Fllay and must call her "whore" and "rapist". If you prefer Kira/Fllay, you're often expected to call Lacus a plain and unrealistic Purity Sue. Not all the fans are like that, but it's still often the first thing that other fans see when the Ship-to-Ship Combat is mentioned.
 * A case that's more or less forgotten but was horrible in its time, is the war between Domon/Allenby and Domon/Rain shippers in the G Gundam fandom. Allenby/Domon stans bashed Rain for being "girlier, therefore weaker and a slut" and "too whiny"; Domon/Rain fans retorted by calling Allenby a "third-wheel bitch" who "wanted to tear apart the Official Couple".
 * Domon himself isn't free of this. Those who preferred Rain with Chibodee or George often took his already pronunciated bad traits, ran away with them and derailed him into a rapist or a wife beater so she could ditch him for any other of her possible beaus. Sometimes, Rain's canon ex love interest Saette also was badmouthed by Domon/Rain fans, despite having more or less valid reasons to wonder about Rain and Domon.
 * What makes the Rain vs Allenby debate even more interesting is that Koichi Tokita, the author and artist of the official manga adaptation, went on record as saying he preferred Allenby. However, rather than making Rain look bad, he tended to make Allenby look better, both in the manga itself and in the silly Yonkoma included with it.
 * Exception: despite the sheer popularity of the Neil "Lockon Stratos" Dylandy/Tieria Erde yaoi pairing in the Mobile Suit Gundam 00 fandom, its fangirls never seem to bash Feldt Grace for having a sweet crush on Lockon. In fact, many of them actually like her.
 * Sadly, it has started... in Feldt's "defense". More than a few Feldt/ fans bash Anew Returner HARD and call her a Canon Sue for threatening their OTP. Which is ironic and utterly stupid, since before Anew ever was in the picture,   The fact that Anew in canon  doesn't help fangirls' negative perception of her at all, even if that's not all there is to her character.
 * As for 00's main star Setsuna, there are those who ship him with Marina or with Nena. The odds are most likely in Marina's favor now since . However, the two aforementioned ladies are... not well-liked. As a result, some fans paired Setsuna with other characters such as his Gundams, his fellow Meisters, Saji, Graham, Louise, Liu-Mei or Feldt.  Recently, however,
 * Setsuna turned out to be the standard Gundam Asexual Celibate Hero...
 * As far as Saji/Louise shippers go, they have a good reason to bash Louise's partner Andrei Smirnov for trying to win Louise's heart, as he has certainly became The Scrappy for crossing the Moral Event Horizon by . And again by  And again in episode 24 when   However, they "conveniently forget" that in The Movie, Andrei not only has learned his lesson and gotten some bits of Character Development, but
 * Miraculously, Mileina Vashti has managed to dodge shipping-based hate as well, despite having a crush on Tieria
 * And believe it or not, not even the Universal Century Gundam series are free. The hate that Zeta Gundam fans levelled to Fa Yuiri came less from her being a Naive Everygirl stuck in a bad situation and not being able to become a 100% Action Girl, and much more from her "being in between" Kamille and Four's True Love.
 * Gundam AGE has this too, due to the hostility between Flit/Emily and Flit/Yurin shippers.
 * And now that the second generation has started, Romary is starting to get massive hate from the Asem / Zeheart shippers. And more than one potshot from Asem/Arisa fans, too.