Mobile Suit Gundam 00/Headscratchers

• In the second season we learn that Mary/Soma and only Mary/Soma was able to telepathically connect with Allelujah. So why didn't he recognize her right off the bat?
  • Repressed memories (considering what happened later on in the escape, not surprising...), or just forgetting that she existed due to being away for YEARS. OR Hallelujah was being a dick and repressed the memory.
• Where did the GN Drive for the Gundam 00 come from? It's not the Drive from the Gundam 0, since the epilogue for the first season said that the Drive didn't fit Gundam 00. Since Celestial Being only originally had five Drives, including the four on active duty and the 0's, where did the extra come from? Did they go to Jupiter during the four year timeskip?
  • It's stated when Gundam 00 first activates that it has 0's and Exia's GN Drives.
  • Actually, the 5th drive wasn't the 0's, it was Fereshete's (sp), the side group of Celestial Being in the 00F manga. However, that manga isn't fully translated so I can't say what happened to that drive. But yes, the 00 uses the 0 and Exia's drives.
    • The drive Fereshete was using was the 0's drive.
  • the line stating that the Drive didn't 'fit' 00 was a misinterpretation. It was that whilst the 0's drive was in place, Dynames', Virtues' and Kyrios' drives would not synchronize, hence it not 'fitting'.
• Does no one in show ever wonder at Tieria's gender?
  • Tieria, as seen in the S2 OP, is at least not fully human, so the question is right out. Even IF he was human, the idea of gender identity is different from his 'sex', as it were. He clearly identifies himself as 'male', but we, as the audience, know nothing of his genetic, gondal, and internal and external phenotypic sex. Visit 4chan for continuation this endless discussion...
    • But do the characters know this? The original question is about the characters' view, and I at last would assume that a person I see is actually human, not some kind of construction, if I wasn't told otherwise. If they do know, well, then their "wonder" is of the same type as the viewers'.
      • Neil knew, but he's dead. He was the one who made the comment on Tieria using "boku". Feldt listened in on the conversation, so its likely she has suspicions, at least. Moreover, we don't know the acceptability of androids/cyborgs in 00-verse; especially in an organization like CB with its advanced technology, perhaps it would not be too strange to see androids or cyborgs, like Hanayo (Meister 874) in 00F, who is clearly not human
  • It's now official -- he's of NO gender. In this December Newtype issue Sunrise outed Innovators as physically genderless. So it's all about perception, actually. Tieria might consider himself male and Anew might pose as female, but actually both are neither.
    • Wrong. In that interview (which was actually in a magazine called Pick Up Voice, NOT Newtype) Ribbons's VA simply said the Innovators were "androgynous"; the line was mistranslated/misinterpreted. It's quite likely that they're genderless, but for now it's technically still up in the air. We know from the end of ep 10 that Tieria definitely doesn't have boobs, though.
    • It's at least established in Season 2 that Innovators can have sexes, as Anew Returner is definitely female, confirmed by Revive Revival (and presumably Lyle Dylandy).
    • Healing/Hilling/Whatever Care has boobs as well, they're just small and easy to miss, and sometimes the animators forgot them. They fixed that in the DVD version. Also, seductively saying 'Do you want me to comfort you?' doesn't sound like something somebody with no genitals would say.
• How come Tieria hasn't had any suspicion that Anew is an Innovator? Not only is he one himself, but back in episode 10 he figured out that the pilot of Garazzo was a 'Vator without seeing hide or hair of Bring. I just thought of this since Lyle sees Anew's eyes flashing but doesn't out her to the rest of the Ptolemy crew in the latest episode.
  • I'm not certain that the Innovator golden-eye thing actually physically happens; I think that's just a sign to the audience that they're using quantum brainwaves. And while the audience is genre-savvy to Anew's Innovator traits - silly hair colour, silly name, near-identical appearance to another Innovator - then Tieria and Celestial Being aren't aware of such connections.
  • Well, in episode 21, Saji notices Setsuna's eyes are doing the golden-innovator thing, so I think that pretty much says that characters can notice it, and Revive and Healing also deduced that Setsuna was undergoing innovation just by watching his piloting. That also explains how Tieria deduced that the Garazzo's pilot was an innovator.
• Why is Ribbons trying to make Louise a human innovator? She is obviously not in the best condition since she needs to take medication to even stay alive/and or be able to use quantum brainwaves. Ribbons could have made use of Nena Trinity instead or easily just raised another testube baby. Making Louise into an innovator just doesn't make any sense storywise.
  • Supposedly, Ribbons just had no more needs of Nena since season 1, hence why Ali was sent to kill the Trinities. Alas, out of Ribbons' prediction, Setsuna interrupted and saved Nena, then she went missing. The next time he spots her, not only she's alive, she is now with Regene, his lackey that went rogue and has been personally pimp-slapped. Ribbons does not take traitors well, and he just feels like finishing the job he couldn't finish in the past.
    • Just guessing here but I believe that Ribbons was unaware that 'project Trinity' actually managed to produce anything of value. It seems obvious that the Trinities were originally created in order for Ribbons to have a REAL innovator that he could control. Since non of the Trinities were activated through the Green particle spam from the twin drives they wouldn't have displayed all the abilities that Setsuna did. Louise was just a new project and another attempt at creating a real Innovator. When Ribbon's found out about the twin-drives and subsequently later when Setsuna turned into an innovator it was already to late to make use of Nena or create a new testube baby. A normal clone would just have been as mindless and useless as all those Bring and Nova clones Ribbon's massproduced. Speaking of Nena, it seems he was aware of her existence at least in episode 10 of S2 when he sent Ali to go stop Nena from hacking Veda.
  • Louise is a major sponsor of the A-Laws - perhaps the biggest. By turning her into an innovator, he's able to control her on some level. And of course, regardless of whether turning her into an innovator was necessary, giving her the medication to stay alive pretty much is if he wants her to keep giving him money. As to why he'd really want a human innovator beyond controlling Louise, I don't know, but it does make some sense that he'd do that to her.

• When they captured Revive Revival, they captured his entire escape shuttle (Seraphim simply just grabbed the whole thing and started dragging it away), which included a GN-Tau Drive. When Revive escaped, he took the 0-Raizer, not his own escape shuttle thing. So Celestial Being has a GN-Tau drive sitting around. While it's inferior to the 'true' GN Drive, it's still something handy to have. They also have a mostly-intact Exia, which just needs arms and some patching up. Why not just plunk the Tau drive into Exia and have another Mobile Suit? Lord knows they need all the help they can get at this point.
  • Tau drives require recharging after battle, and output somewhat different particles from the originals. Celestial Being probably assumed that a condenser would work better with their equipment, so they didn't bother to recharge it.
  • What would be the point? The Exia's inferior to an Ahead, it's badly damaged, and there's no spare pilot for it. Plus, you're assuming CB still has it, and that it wasn't thrown in the dustbin as soon as the Ptolemy crew docked at a friendly base.
    • They can give it nice shiny new hax weapons, repaint it, and therefore sell another model kit. Also, if they can take the decades-old O Gundam out of storage...
      • They did.
  • First off, I think that the writers just missed that detail. Second off, even if they did have GN-Tau drive, I'm not sure that Celestial Being would use it given how nasty the false particles are. Certainly, they wouldn't use it unless they had to. Also, if they were really willing to use GN-Tau drives, they probably would have built one rather than use a particle storage tank for the Gundam 0. Building a GN-Tau drive wouldn't have been hard for them. Unlike the real ones, it doesn't require a trip to Jupiter. Of course, regardless of whether they had a GN-Tau drive from Revival and whether they would consider using one, about the only time that that might have made sense was when Lasse piloted the Gundam 0 briefly at the end of season 2, and given his medical condition caused by false GN particles, it may not have been at all safe for him to use a GN-Tau drive. So, all in all, it's seriously questionable that Celestial Being would even consider using a GN-Tau drive, and it's highly likely that the writers just missed the detail that capturing Revival would have netted them one.

• Which drive is the Ptolemiaos II using in the latest episodes? They aren't just using condensed particles, since they go TRANSO-AM at one point. Did they refit that Tau drive they captured when they caught Revive Revival?
  • It probably has a giant particle tank of some sorts, hence why typically conservatively use its Trans-Am mode to do quick dodges and the like. (and in the 'trench run' episode, they had Arios' GN Drive rigged up to the Ptolemiaos II, probably because their onboard storage wasn't enough to use Trans-Am that long)
• So as of the latest episode, we now know that the Gagas have guns: GN Vulcans mounted on their chests. They use them pretty well against Allelujah. So why weren't they using them from the start?
• Death might be cheap for the innovators, but if Ribbons is also backed up in Veda, won't they have to destroy the whole system to get him thereby taking Tieria down with it?
  • "File:Ribbons Almark", "Move to: Recycle Bin", "Do you want to empty Recycle Bin? Y/N?" "Y".
    • Oh, and supplementary material released after the finale indicates that his backup is locked under seven levels of encryption, to the point it can't "really be considered Ribbons" anymore.
• When they launch Exia in the latest episode, Ian complains about the "spare drive". But Exia's drive is attached to the 00, no? What was that all about, another translation flub?
  • They probably used a GN condenser like what they HAD on the 0 Gundam when Lasse was piloting it. Then, once they got over to what was left of the 00 they shoved the remaining GN drive into the Exia in place of the condenser.
  • In the translation I saw, Ian's complaint was that they hadn't got a spare drive for it. I assumed that it was launched either in a transport container or catapaulted on an unpowered flight-path to the battle location. (The former makes more real-world sense, but the latter is similar to other Gundam launches in past series.)

• What exactly is the definition of Gundam in this continuity? In season one, it seemed like shorthand for mobile suits which use GN drives, but then the GN-XIII showed up and everything went straight to hell. What makes an Ahead or Gadessa less Gundam? Is it just the helmet design? Is this why Reborn Cannon abruptly changed to a "Gundam type"? Because it had the Gundam helmet? Is it a design philosophy? What does it mean.
  • For that matter, how can people look at a Throne and shout "it's a Gundam!"? It's completely red, uses the same colour particles as the Federation, and doesn't have a Gundam head.
    • While it's true that only the Gundams had sparkly "reactionless" drives at the point the Thrones showed up, the Thrones clearly look different, both in structure and in the type/colour of the drive emissions. I would have thought it would have taken a bit more for people to equate them with the Gundams, especially since each of the actual Gundams has the word "Gundam" stamped onto the body somewhere (as shown in the first ep). You also would also have figured SOMEONE would have made the connection between the Thrones and the Tau Drives used by the GN-X suits used in the final episodes of Season 1, which are clearly different than the Gundam drives.
      • I suppose them releasing particles with the same (verifiable) properties as the Gundams, which only the Gundams have had access to for the entire series up to this point, and them assisting the Gundams when they were in a tight spot had nothing to do with them identifying the Thrones as Gundams? Of course people made a connection with the Thrones and the Tau Drives; the world governments knew they had gotten the Tau Drives from a traitor within Celestial Being.
  • As far as I can tell the only straight way to decide if something is a Gundam in 00 is if it's called Gundam * something* or * something* Gundam.
  • My understanding was that the true gundams were the ones with true GN Drives, and that all of the suits with GN-Tau drives were misnamed when they were called Gundams. No one knew about GN-Tau drives when the Thrones showed up, so it seemed reasonable to call them Gundams. When the nations of the Earth got GN-Taus, the GN-XIII's were Gundams for simplicity's sake. The Aheads were likely meant to be the models that would replace the "Gundams". My guess is that Ribbons calls his machine a Gundam because it's an imitation of the 00.
  • They have the traditional Gundam "v-fins" on their foreheads. And I feel that they were designed to look far less humanoid than the original Gundams so that the negative connotations would ring even louder.
  • The closest thing that the series has as a definition for what a "gundam" is is rather philosophical. At one point, Lockon describes it as "The embodiment of the eradication of war." In this case, it could be said that the Gundams are the overt devices designed to be used for Celestial Being's armed interventions with the purpose of ending conflict and war in the world, hence Setsuna's obsession with "becoming a gundam." That's why the Thrones are referred to as gundams as well, since when they initially appear, they are conducting armed interventions like the previous group.
• I'm just curious. Did anyone else notice the suspiciously familiar looking people popping up in the different crowds throughout the credit sequence of the final episode? The only reason I'm posting it here is because I can't for the life of me figure out what trope that falls under.
  • Those are Veda's repurposed Innovades. Veda has both pilot Innovades and general purpose Innovades who merge into the population to live and send back data for Veda to process. Their presence is probably meant to imply that Veda has a lot to do with the present status-quo. Though I like to think that Ribbons was reborn as an Azadistani citizen after getting stabbed in the face.
• How about the Redshirt Army of mass-produced Kamikaze Ahead suits used by Ribbons in the last battle? Surely, judging from their lack of direction-changing ability and low-level damage, missiles would be cheaper...
  • Ribbons is a monster. That is all.
• The Surveyors. Apart from the scene involving the debate revolving around Team Trinity, they haven't really been addressed or brought up at all. Based on Alejandro's involvement, I assume that they are organizers of Celestial Being, but there's a suspicious lack of focus on them, even after Celestial Being's reemergence in season 2. Are there any background materials or anything that sheds any light on them, or do we have to wait for The Movie for clarification?
  • Concerning why they didn't show up in the second season, it's All There in the Manual that Ali hunted down and killed them all in between seasons, presumably on Ribbons's orders.

• Where on earth were Saji and Louise in the scene where she chokes him before seeing his ring? I can't see any way they could have got from the 0-Raiser cockpit to anywhere else without un-combining and hugely damaging 00-Gundam's fighting strength.
  • They were inside the Celestial Being.
• Okay, what exactly is Veda's deal? How does it work exactly? How come Tieria and Regene managed to upload themselves into Veda when no other Innovator did after dying? Was it fucking with Ribbonz the entire time, waiting for a crucial moment to backstab him?
  • Regene had seen Ribbons do it, so he/she (not sure) knew it was possible. Quite possible that none of the other Innovades knew this. Probably helped Tieria do it when the time came. As for why Ribbons doesn't come back again after being killed by Setsuna, the last time he did that he was in control of Veda. This time, Tieria had control. He probably blocked any attempt Ribbons made to upload himself.
• How come the 00 had the software to initiate Trans-Am Burst if its OS was independent of Veda? The GN Drive engineers have no idea about Innovation, so they can't have input it as a failsafe.
  • It was likely another 'Black Box' within the Gundams or the GN Drives. And in this Troper's impression, the OS used by the Gundams probably only 'phoned home' to Veda, so Celestial Being just rigged up a way to trick it into thinking that it had Veda's permission to operate.
• Season 1, Episode 15. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Celestial Being's entire reason for being there to stop a terrorist attack? So, why not just nuke them from orbit? It's already been demonstrated that the Lockon and the Cherudim can accurately hit orbital targets from the surface, so why not the reverse?
  • Just because you can snipe a moving train doesn't mean that you can snipe somebody on a moving train. The cannon is not the most practical of weapons. The space station was a huge target in an obvious trajectory, which also isn't trying to dodge. It's not the same for some dudes in mechs in a desert. They don't have a spotter, they don't have any satellite support, and the orbital gun doesn't look like it is rated to work in space what with all the ground condensers it had. (And they're using the Dynames at this point of time. The Cherudim comes later.)

• How did they get Soma back onto the Ptolemaios after Sergei's death? Meaning, why would she have simply gone with Celestial Being, whom she considered her enemies?
  • Where else would she have gone? The A-LAWS? It was one of them that killed Sergei! And of course, she was reported dead. Besides, the impression I got was that the Soma and Marie personalities had more or less merged by that point: she reverted to being Soma because that's the name Sergei knew her by, and it was her only remaining connection to him. So she didn't consider Celestial Being her enemies: she still had Marie's memories and feelings.
• Ribbons has thousands of Trans-Am powered suits with innovator pilots, but makes them a suicide squad and has them charge in predictable straight lines. Two questions: why give them pilots at all except to Kick the Dog, and why not equip them with a few guns and make them an unstoppable army rather than glorified bullets?
  • They actually had guns, but didn't use them in the attack. Which makes this even worse.
• question regarding the GN-drive taus, why on earth didn't CB sue to the earth federation over them manufacturing knock offs? surely aeolia schenberg would have had the foresight to have the GN drive patented.(actually this is a criticism that could be applied to most black box technology and super prototypes in general)
  • Because if he had then everyone would know about them and everyone would have them.
    • Wat. I'm sorry, I don't think patent laws apply when you're notorious global terrorists who use high-end technology which isn't patented because nobody outside Celestial Being's head engineers know how it works. Do you think CB has a legal team hidden somewhere? Maybe some lobbyists trying to make their interventions legal?
    • Seriously, you can't patent a secret invention never shown to any state official, and even if you could, the patent would have long since become public in the 200 years from its invention.

• Why did Ribbons hack into Veda to recommend Setsuna as a Meister? I understand why he spared him all those years before, but Ribbons Almark has demonstrated time and again that he has a massive god complex and is an utter sociopath, so why did he do that? It seemed out of character.
  • Probably because he was aware that the Ptolemy crew was supposed to be killed at the end of S1. That's why he didn't go himself. As for why Setsuna specifically: You mentioned it yourself, it's Ribbons' God complex. Set looked at 0 gundam (so indirectly at Ribbons) as if it were a god, and Ribbons played god for him due to his massive ego. He's just toying around with him. Setsuna, with his love for gundam, is in theory easy to manipulate.
  • Branching off the God Complex thing, basically Ribbon's wanted Setsuna to be a Gundam Meister because he considered Setsuna his first "worshiper" in a sense. If you think about it Setsuna and Ribbons both pretty much created each others personalities for the main story line. Because of the Gundam Ribbon's was piloting Setsuna became obsessed with Gundams and thought of them as a god, starting his strange Gundam fetish. While Ribbons saw this random kid who stared up at him as if he were a god, and this started his "A God am I" complex.
• What ever happened to the poltical figures from Season 1 during Season 2? In S1, we get several scenes of them, providing their personal insight and reactions. It was nice to see their POV. Then by Season 2, they disappear?
  • Ribbons set up a puppet government in the Time Skip. Politicians who had risen to power themselves, and were not under his control, are a threat. Most likely he either had them assassinated or simply maneuvered them out of office through some legal means. No real point in seeing the puppet officials' POV because Ribbons is the government at that point. His POV is the only one of any real consequence.
  • Even so, you'd think they give them some ending. They were an important part of Season 1, and more interesting than the villains the show ended with.
• I'm surprised this is only being brought up now, but at the end of the last episode of S2, there's a conference. As the camera shows who is there, you can clearly see a woman that looks waaay to much to Anew Returner, only she's wearing a suit and glasses. What's up with that?
  • That one actually looks more like Revive Revival, albeit female (who is Anew's pair-mate among the Innovades anyway). Probably a production-model Innovade tasked with assisting the new female president of the Federation; she had more screentime in Gundam 00 A Wakening Of The Trailblazer if you must.