Mobile Suit Gundam Wing/Fridge


 * When Gundam Wing shifts to outer space, there is a scene where Oz fires on its own soldiers in what first appears to be a typical We Have Reserves moment. "But we'd be firing on our own Leos!" "Who cares, do it before the Colonel leaves." But in the next episodes, it is revealed they are getting their space Leo pilots from "volunteers" they tricked into fighting. They give their own soldiers the superior Taurus suits, so the characters' attitudes fall into place. Nowhere in the script do the Oz soldiers specifically say they think the colonists are second class, but it is implied twice later in the show. I'm surprised I didn't catch this sooner because I've read about the Japanese conscripting Chinese troops from the populations they took over in WWII. Plus, it isn't an old concept, so well done again Gundam. -lunnarian
 * It still works, though less well when you realize the OZ's Space Leo Troops are either combat engineers (who use older machines throughout the series) or colonial volunteers, quite literally, since OZ doesn't conscript (unless you're a Gundam pilot in captivity). It's not a "trick", since OZ makes a point of arming the colonies to fight the Alliance in space... all of which is alluded rather than being shown. It's not quite a perfect fit into the idea of Korean conscripts in the IJA or black rifle companies of the U.S. Civil War (Glory style), but it's still relevant. Especially when the next colonial revolution uses OZ's weapons to try and obliterate life on Earth....
 * As is otherwise noted with respect to Humongous Mecha, mobile suits are not particularly practical in terms of the vulnerability of their limbs. In Gundam Wing, however, their use is entirely thematically justified. Mobile Suits are generally the preserve of the Earth military forces, their initial mass production and deployment being specifically on behalf of the Romefeller Foundation. This is a foundation rooted in Aristocracy, and many of its members stressed the need to retain the human element in battle according to traditional ideals. When you consider that this is an organisation that controls global munitions production, and that can effectively dictate the terms of any and all military force, it makes perfect sense that they would develop weapons to fit romantic ideals of the soldier even in the face of combat suitability: they're Nazi Noblemen.
 * Also note the shunning of massive space fleets like in previous UC Gundam where you have carriers for Mobile suits. Instead, they project their power from military bases just to prevent any notions of mobility based warfare and a focus on "whomever have the biggest fortress wins."
 * Which also explains why the five engineers never built Wing Zero. In AC 195, it's a Lightning Bruiser, but in AC 180, it would've been the most dangerous thing in space.
 * The Dengeki Data Collection (released in the US as the Gundam Wing Technical Manual) says that eventually, two paths of "evolution" were determined for mobile suits: enhancing the pilot (the ZERO System) and removing the pilot from the equation entirely (the Mobile Doll System). I was posting on some other tropes about the ZERO System's finer points: the System forms a Technopathy connection between pilot and machine, while feeding massive amounts of combat data directly into the pilot's brain, which combines with the speed-of-thought reaction times to border on Combat Clairvoyance. And then it hit me: the ZERO System effectively turns its pilot into a combat computer, just one based off of wetware rather than hardware. It also serves to help explain Dorothy's loss to Quatre later in the series: she was feeding orders to White Fang's Virgo IIs, but didn't have the direct mental connection to all of them, meaning that she couldn't react to things like the Gundam Pilots' improvised tactics as quickly as if she had been using the System in, say, Wing Zero or Epyon.
 * The OZ mobile suits are often mocked for their abysmal performance, but it makes perfect sense when you remember they were originally created as terror weapons (or as maintenance machines even earlier than that) to keep the civilians in line & were never intended to fight other Mobile Suits, let alone Super Robots like Wing and friends. Indeed, Mobile Suits introduced after the Gundams' debut do manage to score a few key victories before the obligatory round of Midseason Upgrades sets them back to being mowed down by the thousands, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam-style.
 * Part of this is the show provides us with precious few reference points—OZ's mobile suits are used by practically all organized armies, and almost all non-Gundam fighting involves either the fall of the Alliance or Treize Faction's Civil War. It's hard to reference because of the similarity of technology, but they do overwhelmingly clobber every form of non-mobile suit military weapon they encounter (remember, Gundams are mobile suits).
 * OZ's mobile suits' trouble is that they were designed with combined warfare in mind (the Leo would be akin to a main battle tank, the Aries to an attack helicopter, and the Tragos' hovercraft configuration is biased to artillery support), and the pilots are smart enough they never let them do it unless there's the whole team or are Quatre with his small private army, that also have combined arms (either through the Gundams' respective specializations or the Maguanac Corps' having counterparts to both the Leo and the Tragos) but with much higher performance suits (at least for the Gundams), better pilots (the Maguanac seem to be on average superior to OZ's pilots) and a much better field commander (Quatre).