Tomino believes Zelenskyy is part of a glorious future master race set apart from mere humanity, with special abilities awakened and realized during moments of great violence. Does he need to repeat himself?
Literally the verbatim ideology of the bad guys in the first Gundam, who were all killed horribly one by one by Tomino.
The man hates fascists and warmongers, and they always die and fail miserably in his shows.
The man hates fascists and warmongers, and they always die and fail miserably in his shows.
But he now stans for Zelenskyy. Curious!
It's mind numbing to me that, as the title of the link says, Gundam creator Tomino think Zelenskyy is a "budding Newtype."
doesn’t keep up to date with politics
says the current popular thing
Aren't these contradictory?
I'd rather he didn't know about his favorite new "Newtype" at all.
I love how this worldview of Tomino, which he inserts into characters like Char Aznable, is torn apart by After War Gundam X - really underrated series.
Sure, a bit idealistic, but the whole
spoiler
The use of newtypes as tools to gain power and influence completely disregards the wishes and humanity of the newtypes themselves, who after all have a human consciousness and are not seeking power, violence, etc. by nature through some enlightened superhuman state. To make a newtype conform to those views, you have to basically force that worldview on them and that has the neat side effect of spreading the ideology to oldtypes and entrench them to be viewed as instruments of war.
is excellent.
I'd certainly think Tomino explicitly rejected that worldview, considering he gave Char one of the most pathetic deaths possible.
It's consistently those with an oldworld view of thinking that try to use newtypes as a weapon, drawing them into conflicts and destroying them as people with the brutality of war.
Yeah, like the defining tragedy of the original series is how people with the ability to understand each other through an empathic connection end up being used as weapons against each other.
And that the tragedy keeps repeating, that the characters with the responsibility to prevent it aren't able to is described over and over as their failure.
considering he gave Char one of the most pathetic deaths possible.
Wasn't Char in Gundam Unicorn? Did he die there, or was there some plot twist I missed about whether that was really Char because I stopped watching before the end?
Spoilers for Gundam Unicorn
Full Frontal is a literal clone of Char. The real Char died in Char's Counter Attack.
interesting take from "kill 'em all Tomino"
i will point out for the people to come my personal method of not being constantly pissed at random famous people
we don't watch his slop for his personal politics, we watch it because he makes interesting storiesThat can sometimes work for some people but sometimes I find it hard to look back at someone's body of work the same way after I know about their chuddery. Sometimes red flags pop up in hindsight.
I'm not saying it's the case for Tomino, but sometimes "interesting stories" can take on a horrifying new angle once someone really demonstrates who they are, like how Justin Roiland's "ironic" edgy humor, especially about sexual violence against children, was demonstrated to be actually what he craved and wanted to do and it made all the "irony" vanish pretty quick in hindsight.
yeah, i get that
i can't listen to gloryhammer anymore after their extremely racist text messages were unearthed
and i fucking loved that bandAs a less extreme example, Jeremy Soule being a sex pest and SV enjoyer and mentioning to the press that the Dovahkiin theme was inspired by his mental visualization of what it's like to "sexually conquer a feeemale."
Makes it hard to listen to that song for me these days.
Yeah, a while back. Not in those exact words, but he did say it was a sexual pursuit/coitus/climax/afterglow themed song.
Disclaimer: that'd be fine if he wasn't also revealed to be a sex pest and SV enjoyer.
wild, it's clearly derivative of the Morrowind theme (so much so it has to be intentional) and that one's definitely not got orgasm vibes
fun thing about sex pests is they tend to out themselves by what they associate sex with
Some of the background lore of Morrowind is very
especially anything involving Vivec and Daedric Princes in general, be they Azura or even Molag Bal. I don't think that was Soule's doing, though.Who knows in the early 2000s maybe he got to spend some time with
helping with 'creative direction'.Wasn't a lot of the weird Morrowind lore written by Michael Kirkbride? He seems very, uhhh, libertarian.
He was that weird 90s libertarian socialist hippie Magick type. His wife (a major member of the Elder Scrolls fandom and pretty left wing.) basically says he spent 20 years on various drugs, first recreationally and then medically, and when he came off them in 2010 or so he went into a spiral and said some pretty yikes things he's since publically disavowed.
So, not perfect, but he's trying to be better and I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
So much of his CHIM fiction involves
spoiler
"WHAT IF EVERYTHING IS A SIMULATION LIKE A BIDEO BAME? GEDDIT? GEDDIT?"
I mean, conflating the creation of an artistic world with that of a demiurgic sub-creation (rather than a direct channeling of the divine or becoming a god proper.) was fairly innovative at the time, though of course the Romantic artists came up with the idea. Especially so within games.
That one was horny but with significantly less SV, though some coercive elements.
Remember that it mentions her age at various points, which really, uh, contextualizes things. She's a teen when the Khajiit scene happens, which is seared into my brain because I didn't know cats were spiny in that fashion until I read that and looked it up.
Remember that it mentions her age at various points, which really, uh, contextualizes things. She's a teen when the Khajiit scene happens
I somehow didn't connect those details until now.
well that's someone i can strike off the "ttrpg ambient music list"
If it helps, Elder Scrolls Online has a lot of music that has nothing to do with him, and some of it is from Emily O'Brien, an amazing musician that did some Skyrim covers (and is the voice of some characters in the game, including a wonderful bard in Elsweyr).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeVC4RrWwUQ&list=PLn0jxTEc2W9ujBQNDeWEZ2kkYLt78xTk6&index=9
Here's one of the covers that has the Soule stench washed out of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOkkE93coIg
Oh god fucking dammit
The OSTs from Oblivion and Guild Wars 1 are some of my favourite ambient fantasy music, I loved his music
Why do people always have to end up being some kind of weird sex pest/transphobe/racist/etc
I just gave up on metal altogether after this happened one too many times. I don't know that band or the controversy you're referencing, but I am not surprised a band called "Gloryhammer" is full of racists.
they're like a comedic band, kinda like alestorm if you've heard of them
instead of alestorm's pirate theme, their songs were fantasy based, moving to sci-fi in their later albumsJesus I just googled it and read the texts. It reads like a 4chan thread.
Same, metal is a fuckin' minefield of reaction. I just want to listen to songs with 10 minute guitar solos about wizards fighting dragons
lmao don't i know it
"oh this band sounds fuckin' rad, oh no they're nazis" are words i have said way too often lol
The charitable interpretation is that he's just been fooled by American news and propaganda.
Only extremely leftist cranks are going to see past that veil of lies.
Oh boy, I wonder what my favourite
SocDemAnime Grandpa is gonna say... Oh. Oh God.If the population continues to balloon to 10 billion within our finite resources, it will be disastrous. Yet, we don’t hear these words from the people of the 20th-century mindset. For example, do you know the mission of Japan’s Minister for Measures against the Declining Birthrate?
――― Policies to increase the number of children and create a society conducive to child-rearing.
That answer is already wrong. What the Minister really needs to do is something completely different. Our current social system was built in an era when the population was continuously increasing, but from here on, there will be a surplus. This means there will be vacant houses, so the Minister should be working on creating a balanced society where a population of around 50 million can live. Yet, they are still saying, ‘have more, increase the population.’ This is the thinking of people stuck in the 20th-century mindset of mass production and mass consumption, the excessive capitalism.
Yay! Enviromental Activist Tomino is my favourite Tomino. (As an aside, and this is less a criticism of Tomino in particular, but I do hate how depopulation has crept into the discourse surrounding environmental activism, so even well-meaning liberals pave the way towards eco-fascism.)
One can see the potential impasse of relying solely on specialization. There needs to be a revolution in the way we think. However, words like ‘innovation’, ‘revolution’, ‘reform’ are as misleading as communism—they tend to push us towards a totalizing way of thinking, synonymous with socialism, which inevitably leads to totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism is akin to dictatorship; hence, by default, we should lean towards democracy. But democracy is perpetually plagued by the issue of populism—if we were to consider all public opinions, the end result would be indecisiveness. That brings us back to the paradox of needing some form of control over the whole.
The Newtype I envision is an entity that transcends those limitations, one that integrates opposing views and the status quo, while simultaneously seeking a novel system or direction. Humanity needs an Aufheben – to transcend and sublate. This diverges from the traditional notion of revolution, and is certainly not the same as reform. This isn’t a matter of right or wrong. Considering its social impact, there’s hardly anyone, including those in their 30s, who can articulate and contemplate this issue accurately. They are all Oldtypes, and hence, President Zelenskyy is just a budding Newtype.
The children of today, aged around seven to thirteen, who can precisely grasp the explicit issues surfacing in Putin’s War, and discern a future path forward from a neutral perspective, are the ones who may embody the Newtype once they assume decision-making positions. It’s your generation’s duty to ensure they safely reach adulthood. This is something beyond my capabilities now, so please, do persevere.
To be a bit more serious and discuss the concept- as I understood it, this was always Tomino's intended meaning: a person who was the end product of dialetics, a Hegelian counterpart to the Ubermensch at the End of History (in short, a New Type of Person), able to transcend the old ways of thinking and sublimate them into synthesizing a new way forward that would get history moving again- hence why in all his stories Newtypes don't resolve the conflict with violence, but empathy and understanding. (Also, for some reason, he coded them all autistic so maybe he was being more literal than I care to credit him for.) You can see the ghost of the Marxist that was here, although maybe the roots of this concept was too deep in Hegel's idealism, and the failures of the New Left followed by the fall of the Soviet Union too traumatic.
Having said all that, I have no fucking idea how he landed on Zelenskyy lmao wtf is he thinking
On the whole this is one of his less spicy and problematic interviews (Tomino Don't Be Weird About Women Challenge: IMPOSSIBLE), but this probably should be an abject lesson that no one is immune to propaganda.
Edit: You know what this means Hexbear, we need a Zelenskyy Newtype emoji now
Edit 2: Somebody good at photoshop put Zelenksyy's face on this
Show
The New Left -> Crank pipeline my beloved
Miyazaki has become a doomer nationalist radlib - Tomino has become a barely coherent lib - Oshii seems to be politically decent, but has been poisoned by the gamer mind virus (and Kazunori Ito, someone who he worked with closely in the late 80s to mid 90s, has been getting into twitter fights with chuds last time I checked... but probably isn't more than a socdem.)
The woes of modernity is that cool people have disappeared almost completely from public consciousness, or have become washed up in terms of politics - Japan is no exception.
I remember a Miyazaki interview where he said he could never make another Kiki's Delivery Service after seeing the bombing of Yugoslavia.
Yeah, the pacifism has stayed. He also doubled down on environmentalism and has an almost anti-industrial RETVRN to agrarianism worldview.
Nowadays he's pretty quiet on politics, but when he does speak on them, he's a staunch doomer.
The New Left -> Crank pipeline my beloved
I was going to bring this up if someone asked me to elaborate! It's really fascinating how the anime industry/subculture managed to perfectly capture that particular cultural shift in real-time.
I feel like growing old and financially successful rots one's brain in a weird way.
Kazunori Ito, someone who he worked with closely in the late 80s to mid 90s, has been getting into twitter fights with chuds last time I checked...
Lmao, I've been meaning to revisit .hack (the anime, definitely not the games at this point)
I feel like growing old and financially successful rots one's brain in a weird way.
Material conditions and class interests my beloved.
Also .hack is pretty good. The soundtrack is fantastic. Patlabor EZY, which supposedly is gonna come out next year, is certainly gonna be interesting. He's in charge of the project, but I'm not aware if Oshii is also along for the ride.
Patlabor EZY, which supposedly is gonna come out next year
Watch the Gundam SEED movie come out before it
population of around 50 million
Sure, being anti-capitalist-growth is good but Japan has 124 million people. Dude is really out here on that "half of people shouldn't exist" ecofash shit huh.
I don't think he's suggesting wiping out half the population, he's saying to let the falling birth rate lower the population and not interfere until then.
He's saying to send most of the population out into space and then have a war that kills half of the human population.
Tomino being a liberal is really surprising. Not as surprising as William Gibson being a liberal, or Yoshitoshi Abe (Serial Experiments lain) being a weird fascist, but it's still disappointing.
How do these people think so hard about things, create this kind of art, and come out the other side unable to understand their own messages?
How do these people think so hard about things, create this kind of art, and come out the other side unable to understand their own messages?
I mean, here's the thing: he does understand his own message. He was a Marxist. But now his views have changed, and he's no longer a Marxist, so what he says now and what stories he tells now will have a different message than the stories he told then.
To be fair, this interview was the first time I've seen him say something so explicitly anti-communist (I've read interviews from later in his career where he's critical of the Soviet Union, which should have been the first warning sign, but y'know a lot of Boomer Leftists were, like Chomsky). It is kinda heartbreaking, but at the same time I can kinda understand where he's coming from since he lived his entire life waiting for a cultural shift that never materialized.
What I'm getting from this is that you Zoomer's have to execute us Millenials before we disappoint you, for the sake of the Revolution.
or Yoshitoshi Abe (Serial Experiments lain) being a weird fascist
I'm happy to inform you I was mistaken. I got him mixed up with Chiaki J. Konaka, the other guy from Lain.
He's the one who made the Digimon fight a manifestation of cancel culture. He's also into Qanon
He also wrote The Big O. God, do I want him to make a hyper
Qanon super robot show.
the Prigozhin coup was the real gundam plot. Zelensky is just some Gjallarhorn stooge to waste the MC's time before they can take down the real big bad.
Someone pointed out to me recently that most Japanese anti-war pop media engages in a kind of convenient nihilism where the author makes a statement that all war is bad, so there's no point trying to figure out if one side is justified or better than the other.
SPOILERS FOR GUNDAM AND ZETA GUNDAM:
You can see it in Gundam and Zeta Gundam where in the first series Zeon was committing war crimes of unprecedented destructiveness and barbarity but in Zeta they both-sides it by showing that the Earth Federation is also pretty shitty. I don't recall they ever address the implication that being kinda totalitarian and shady justifies having cities wiped out by falling orbital colonies.
When you overlay this over Japan's own modern past, you can see how convenient this is for avoiding grappling with difficult questions. It's like a murderer talking about how "all crime is bad, whether it's shoplifting or whatever I did..."
Your larger point is true (especially in more modern shows, post 70's sci-fi anime boom) but I think that's being a bit unfair to Gundam and Zeta- as much as Zeon is definitely commentary on Imperial Japan and fascism in general, the Titans and the corruption within the Earth Federation was commentary on how much it sucks to live under Post-War American Imperialism. I don't think he was trying to both-sides it.
Someone pointed out to me recently that most Japanese anti-war pop media engages in a kind of convenient nihilism where the author makes a statement that all war is bad, so there's no point trying to figure out if one side is justified or better than the other.
I sometimes wondered if a lot of that was
because of the cultural sting of losing WW2, at least from the "all war bad" types that seemed to be suspiciously fond/nostalgic for Imperial Japan. 
Sorry I'm new to Gundam. Are Newtypes like Elans? Is Zelenskyy going to
spoiler
be incinerated on his birthday?
That would be a really interesting development.
In WfM, Witches are sorta taking the place of Newtypes within the narrative, but they sorta have their own feminist reading inherent to themselves. But basically Suletta is a Newtype.
Don't new types also have supernatural senses?
Also I Don't think gundam in UC work like Gundam in wfm.
Yeah Newtypes are basically espers, they have limited telepathy.
It's more that Suletta fills the narrative role of "Young person with exceptional abilities thrust into a wider conflict, and is called to use said abilities to resolve the conflict without violence" rather than like, a 1-to-1 lore replacement where you swap nouns, because yeah as you pointed out the mechanics of the worldbuilding is very different between series.
There are times when I am glad my knowledge of Gundam extends only to G Gundam and SD Gundam
Zelenskyy and Putin fight each other, then suddenly Zelenskyy reveals has previously unmentioned Mommy issues to Putin's bewilderment before they both die.
I'm sorry sir but it's time to put you down, thank you for Gundam
