Chris responds:
1. Well, now we know that DESTINY is a disappointment, but I still think my criticisms are legitimate. I'm not going to waste another breath on DESTINY, except to cover the Special Editions.

2. They don't synch up at all. Indeed, in the original Gundam novelization, Amuro dies before the end. When Tomino wrote those novels, it was before the movie trilogy and long before "Zeta" meant anything in connection to Gundam. All his other novelizations are separate entities, including of course his two novelizations for Char's Counterattack - Beltorchika's Children and Hi Streamer.

3. Ah, the ever-tricky bit about continuity. As I've said before, it really depends on the individual's definition of continuity. I don't know how Sunrise would consider a unit like the Dolmel, which appeared in an arcade game, or the Zanspine that came out of G Generation. Of course, the Gundam Belphagor started out as a G Generation unit, but it ended up in the Gundam X: After the Moonlight manga, so who knows?

Chris responds:
From what I can verifiably discern, Tomino is a colorful character, to say the least. But I think a lot of the stories you hear are probably just that - stories. There's the story about a fan asking him about the next Gundam series, and Tomino's response was to allegedly smash the fan's model kit and say: "There's your next Gundam series!" There's stories about him hating Victory Gundam and wanting it removed from continuity. If anything, I think some of them might have a nugget of truth that has been exaggerated and twisted into something entirely different.

Chris responds:
1.There's plenty that hasn't been done in Gundam that I'd like to see. For one, a female main character. I'd like to see a Gundam TV series in the vein of the OVAs that focuses on adult, military personnel rather than civilian teenagers. I'd like to see a setting that moves beyond Earth vs space, maybe to Mars or even farther out in the solar system.

2. Well, the super robot genre is something that will always be around, since the real robot genre was born out of it. Initially, I exclusively watched real robot shows and didn't bother with super robot shows. However, in the last few years, I've watched quite a bit of super robot shows and am watching them more frequently (especially since there's a lull in real robot shows now). A lot of fans like to argue that one is better than the other, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive and can be enjoyed together.

Chris responds:
1. It's never exactly made clear what Amy is piloting. It's not a pre-existing fighter like a TIN Cod, it's just a fighter. Sadly, I've never run across full lineart for it that could shed light on the question.

2. Surely Fukuda wouldn't sink that low just to have it for eye candy, you say? After all, this is the same director who took every opportunity possible to show stock footage in SEED of Murrue's breasts bouncing up and down. Heck, he even updated that stock footage in DESTINY to have her breasts bounce in her new Orb uniform. Anime military uniforms don't make much since. And in Cosmic Era, women apparently don't wear bras and can wear mini-skirts if they wish.

3. Good question. I think Tomino likes to depict a lot of less-than-stable women in his series. Just look at someone like Quincy Issa/Iiko Isami from Brain Power'd. I think it may perhaps be due to most depictions of war in popular entertainment have no women as soldiers. I think a sentiment that's expressed in Zeta Gundam is that war knows no genders. By having insane female pilots, I think Tomino is attempting to shock viewers by showing that war can affect anyone.

4. DESTINY is already available in America. The first DVD came out in March 2006, and new volumes are out every other month. However, the series won't be airing on Cartoon Network.

5. I think the massive losses by the Earth Alliance in DESTINY are the result of poor, one-sided writing. At the start of the series, ZAFT were the good guys, and I think the EA was unnecessarily made over-villainous. This is a trend that continues all the way through to their defeat in episode 45. This seemed to have no point, since in the end ZAFT became the bad guy again. In most Gundam series, the opposing sides both have sympathetic characters. Even in SEED, this was present to a more limited degree. But in DESTINY, there are absolutely zero sympathetic characters on the EA side. It's just bad writing.

6. Birdlime is actually an adhesive used to trap birds. In Gundam, it's an adhesive with a different purpose. At the beginning of Zeta Gundam episode 1, Char fires birdlime at two workers when he infiltrates the Green Noa 2 colony. The birdlime traps both workers against the wall while Char does his recon mission. Later on in the show, we see birdlime being used as a stopgap to quickly seal breaches in space colonies.