Gundam - TV Tropes
- ️Wed Oct 12 2011
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/RonTheDeathEater/Gundam
Ron The Death Eater
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- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED + Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny:
- Lacus Clyne suffers this fate from a large part of the non-Japanese fan community. While certain parts of her actions, and more so in the case of her accomplice Kira Yamato, could certainly be a question of perspective, large portions of the community have decided that the anti-war, egalitarian Idol Singer who declined to take control of her country at one point, is, in truth, a psychopathic Manipulative Bitch who hires assassins to attempt to kill her to motivate her retired boyfriend return to piloting so that she can usurp control of her home country from the current ruler of said country. Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 nods to Lacus' Hatedom by having a non-canon storyline where she really does turn out to be an evil, manipulative queen-bitch who hops into a Gundam and kicks her own boyfriend's ass after he realizes the truth.
- Adding to this is how many feel that she's as cutesy and annoying as is probably humanly possible. This gets worse in the dub, where her English voice actress takes the high-pitched, cutesy princess shtick and goes way over the top with it. Fans of the dub know her as a teenage girl who talks like a three-year-old on crack even when alone. This should be a minor part of her character, it can overwhelm the rest of her personality.
- Flay Allster suffers from this a lot. While she isn't exactly innocent in canon (she does go Yandere for a while), there are reasons for her Sanity Slippage, mostly how she witnessed her father getting blown up. A stunning number of Alternate Universe and High School AU fics, which don't feature Flay's traumatic experience or the existence of Coordinators (thereby removing the Fantastic Racism), nonetheless decide to make her a monster. She's invariably the bitchy, spoiled, jealous and unfaithful girlfriend that Kira is dating at the fic's beginning solely so that he can break up with her to be with Lacus (or Athrun). She always goes out of her way to pick on Lacus, and does her best to make all the characters miserable, for absolutely no reason. Even the kindest and most forgiving characters will feel nothing but scorn for her, and of course she feels nothing but hatred for them (as a being of pure evil, she can't feel love). Needless to say, Flay's canonical redemption will be completely ignored.
- Rey Za Burrel gets hit with this and Draco in Leather Pants depending on which side of the Broken Base you're on. While the Durandal was right! crowd turn him into some sort of hero, haters on the other side are prone to writing him as a monster and a sociopath who cares nothing for Shinn and Luna and shares his predecessor's Omnicidal Maniac philosophy. In reality Rey's a sympathetic Anti-Villain who thinks that Utopia Justifies the Means, cares for Shinn and Luna even as he manipulates them, and rejects Rau Le Creuset's desire to Kill All Humans, seeking instead to build a better future. He's a bad guy, absolutely, but not to the degree that fans make him out to be.
- Lacus Clyne suffers this fate from a large part of the non-Japanese fan community. While certain parts of her actions, and more so in the case of her accomplice Kira Yamato, could certainly be a question of perspective, large portions of the community have decided that the anti-war, egalitarian Idol Singer who declined to take control of her country at one point, is, in truth, a psychopathic Manipulative Bitch who hires assassins to attempt to kill her to motivate her retired boyfriend return to piloting so that she can usurp control of her home country from the current ruler of said country. Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 nods to Lacus' Hatedom by having a non-canon storyline where she really does turn out to be an evil, manipulative queen-bitch who hops into a Gundam and kicks her own boyfriend's ass after he realizes the truth.
- Mobile Suit Gundam:
- Protagonists such as Amuro Ray and Kamille Bidan have been victims of this too, due to their apparently unlikeable initial personalities, as compared to the Draco in Leather Pants villains Char Aznable and Haman Karn, who are charismatic for all the wrong reasons.
- Although not as frequent due to dying off early in the series, Garma Zabi receives this by fans who are a little too obsessed with Char. Despite Garma's concern for civilians leaving an enemy warship and refusing to destroy mountains for a military tactic, fans label him as a spoiled brat because Char calls him such frequently in his thoughts. They also label him as greedy for trying to impress his sister Kycilia, despite Garma telling his own fiancée Icelina that if push comes to shove he will choose her over leading this war. Char fans also claim Garma was Too Dumb to Live due to trusting Char and that he deserved to die so Char could avenge Zeon Deikun, despite Char having acted as his loyal friend for years before backstabbing him over someone else's crime.
- Kycilia Zabi and Quess Paraya also get this to make Char look better by comparison, though they have better reasons to not be liked.
- Interestingly, the Zeon Commander Ginias Sahalin receives this AND Draco in Leather Pants. While some portrayed him as a misguided Jerkass Woobie, most fans view him as a sadistic, genocidal bastard who kills Federation soldier and civilians for fun while also treating his surrogate father Norris Packard as a slave and physically and sexually abusing his kind-hearted sister Aina. Some fans even go so far as claiming that he is worse than Giren Zabi and Char Aznable combined. While Ginias is by no means a hero and has his share of Kick the Dog moments, he does show some love and affection for his sister before his his mind degrades and isn't actually responsible for several atrocities committed by Zeon forces.
- While they are definitely no angels, being a corrupt, bloated, elitist and negligent oligarchic bureaucracy whose mistreatment of the colonies and negligence and outright suppression of the Newtype ideology have led to the One Year War, the Earth Federation as a whole is painted in some fan circles as even worse than they are in canon such as gassing colonies on their own before the ascent of the Titans or being the ones to fire the nukes first during the One Year War, instead of being provoked by Zeon. Some even believe the Federation to act like the Titans from the get-go, only hiding their true nature until the events of Zeta Gundam. That is despite the fact that the Titans actually kept their atrocities such as their colony gassings hidden from the Federation to maintain support, which was cut back once Char exposed them in his Dakar speech. It dosen't help that this is done sometimes in negligance of Gundam's Black-and-Grey Morality and Grey-and-Grey Morality themes, with some of the worst portrayals due to genuine support of Zeon's actions despite, or sometimes because of its implications.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing:
- Relena Darlian Peacecraft perhaps gets hit with this the hardest out of any character, at least in America, primarily due to Die for Our Ship reasons. The usual fanon portrayal is a shrill, possessive, catty Yandere homophobic killer bitch, with some stories going so far as to turn her into a female Sauron who needs to be taken out by the heroic (and, of course, gay) Gundam Team. In canon, the character is usually softspoken, understanding, an Actual Pacifist, states in her Image Song that she'd let go if Heero found someone else, and on top of that Duo (the person Yaoi Fangirls want Heero to get with instead of her) actually does his best to set the two of them up together. The closest she ever gets to her fanfic portrayal is in perhaps the first two or three episodes where she's kind of snarky and backhandedly polite to some condescending Alliance soldiers, but that's about it.
- Even if you ignore the Die for Our Ship, plenty of fans hate Relena because they think she's a useless idiot who detracts from the plot by opposing the war, and is unrealistically naive by believing in peace and pacifism. Never mind that Gundam is and always has been anti-war, Relena arguably does more to resolve the main plot than the Gundam Pilots and demonstrates a good deal of intelligence and savvy despite only being 15 during the TV show and 16 in The Movie.
- This also happens to Quatre Raberba Winner. There are fanfictions that portray him as kicking puppies for fun and being abusive towards his boyfriend. In canon, yes, there was the incident with the ZERO System
, but let's not forget: 1) All the other pilots had bad experiences with the system (all except Duo overcame it) 2) Quatre went particularly berserk because he was already stressed from the death of his father, his sister being seriously injured (to the point of being killed in the manga), and from the argument he had been having with said father over being a Gundam Pilot, and he was not thinking clearly (especially under ZERO) 3) Quatre felt really bad about what he did. Except for that one time, Quatre is a sweetie-pie. Why, he even apologizes to enemy soldiers for killing them!- Quatre does have issues—probably more than Trowa, really, because as the end of the above post indicates he believes killing is bad even when necessary and yet also believes that it is required and acceptable for him to do it under the circumstances. He's set himself up to be Hitokiri Battousai, except he's smart enough at least not to put himself and his machine into the hands of any one faction. He has not made the transition to being a killer as smoothly as he probably needs to; the other idealists among the pilots have solid warrior mentalities to fall back on. But he does not have the kind of issues he's given in such stories.
- However he's the only one who had that level of issues with the mind-warping ZERO system, probably because of his inner conflict as well as all the crap he got put through while flying it. Heero and Duo coped better, Trowa is Trowa, and Wu-Fei just used it to go on a Vision Quest. ZERO told him to work with the other pilots. So he did.
- Relena Darlian Peacecraft perhaps gets hit with this the hardest out of any character, at least in America, primarily due to Die for Our Ship reasons. The usual fanon portrayal is a shrill, possessive, catty Yandere homophobic killer bitch, with some stories going so far as to turn her into a female Sauron who needs to be taken out by the heroic (and, of course, gay) Gundam Team. In canon, the character is usually softspoken, understanding, an Actual Pacifist, states in her Image Song that she'd let go if Heero found someone else, and on top of that Duo (the person Yaoi Fangirls want Heero to get with instead of her) actually does his best to set the two of them up together. The closest she ever gets to her fanfic portrayal is in perhaps the first two or three episodes where she's kind of snarky and backhandedly polite to some condescending Alliance soldiers, but that's about it.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00:
- Marina Ismail, another Expy of Relena Peacecraft, is given similar treatment. Although a devoted total pacifist and a symbol of the fainting good in humans, so many fans tend to hate her for excuses such as being a totally useless and indecisive. Even her heart-touching song, Tomorrow, does not help.
- Gundam Build Divers
- If you asked various detractors of the series, they would tell you that the entirety of Team Build Divers are a bunch of cheaters who bum off of Sarah's mysterious game-based powers. Never mind that the entire team never knew about it until the final few episodes and never mind that Sarah only used them twice and was the cause of the problems befalling GBN during the second half of the series. In fact, many fans consider the fight with Tigerwolf defeating Riku to be a Catharsis Factor moment because he lost.