Gundam Wing : animated Universal Century fanfiction part 1 : Plotanium Armor

Now chances are that if you weren't an embryo around 1999-ish and had Cartoon Network you have probably seen this anime. Because of how cable works around these parts we didn't have Toonami so all I did see was a couple of commericals for it but never got to see the series itself until a few months ago when I watched the entire series.
In the west this anime was groundbreaking for several reasons. It had great production values. This was also one of the first anime to come in to a more mainstream view as opposed to bootleg fansubs or just heavily altered and edited dubs. Gundam Wing's dub was unbelievably faithful to it's original script and featured top noch voice acting for an anime of that era. It's diametricaly opposed to another anime from that point, DBZ, which had an intentionaly changed script, hammy dialogue, corny, over the top voice acting compared to the more straight-faced Japanese version.
You can also say that this anime was a bit more mature for the time period compared to most of the stuff on the channel at the time.
However. Without any nostalgia for Gundam Wing, I can clearly see the flaws of Gundam Wing. It has the same characterization and the way action happens is the same thing you would typicaly find in a fanfiction. Altough Gundam Wing is still more compitently written than 100% of the dross on fanfiction.net, it still suffers from elements of what a fanfiction contain.

Problem #1 : The Action

So the first problem I have with Wing, altough it might be second to most people who aren't stupid, would be the action. Now Gundam Wing goes through most of the motions of Gundam 0079, the Gundam that I think all other Gundams should be compared to, and mostly fail compared to it. Now in 0079 the 3 Federation mobile suits were semi-unique at the timepoint and more or less the secret weapon of the Feddies compared to the neverending legions of Zakus that Zeon had. But you have to remember, while the Federation was less equiped than Zeon, they were still an official organization and that didn't mean they didn't mean that they didn't have manpower or weapons at all save for the 3 mobile suits. But in Wing, the 5 Gundams are absolutely everything that a poorly organized rebellion has.
The Feddie mobile suits were superior to most of Zeon's mobile suits and it was more or less because of the Gundam that the Federation got so far, but that didn't mean that the Gundam was invincible. To the RX-78-2 Gundam, even a piece of shit like a Zaku II could pose a serious threat and could make twisted metal salad to it if Amuro didn't watch his stupid ass.

Now I do agree that if the 5 mobile suits were to be able to pose a threat to a global superpower, they probably should be much stronger than an RX-78-2. But you see, that's unrealistic. You see, God Gundam could probably do it all alone, but with G Gundam they realized that if they want to do something like that, then they should probably drop all pretences of trying to be realistic, and the result was awesome. But with Wing, they're trying to make homage to 0079. Now if you haven't watched 0079 you probably didn't even realize that this is supposed to be real robots.

Okay no, if Evangelion has anything done right, it would be the fact that they did mecha-esque action that seemed realistic to a certain degree while still having the damn things feel powerful and significant enough that they really do feel like humanity's last hope. In Evangelion you actually felt the EVA's actions when they did something.

The Gundams in Wing are just these invincible death machines that are never posed any threat at all, and only take damage when it's convenient to the plot. I saw all of the grunts like the Leos and the Tauruses impotently pew pew at the invincible plot armors of the Gundams in a manner that's like having 5 year olds armed with straws and chewed up paper balls trying to kill Nosferatu Zodd. So after like 20 episodes of watching the Gundams take millions of ammunitions dumps to the faceplates with no significant damage while killing grunts like snapping bread sticks, suddenly, SUDDENLY, Duo goes in to space and gets his ass wrecked by a bunch of grunts. One shot even took off Deathsychte's arm in one clean swoop. I was like ''wait... WAIT. WHAT. This has never happened before''. So supposedly the 20 episodes actually took some sort of toll on the Deathsychte, except there was no sign of that ever happening before. In Evangelion, pretty much every battle took some sort of toll on the EVAs, like arms being torn off and armor being destroyed. You saw the RX-78 take damage all the time, and in the finale it was wrecked completely because of how fucking brutal the shit it went through was. Instead, the Gundams in Wing take damage only when the plot needs a reason for the Gundam to not be involved for a while.
In Gundam Wing, any mobile suit that isn't a Gundam or a Tallgeese meets the same exact destiny in a way that makes the countless pointless battles seem boring in samey since it's just like watching lambs being sent to a slaughterhouse.
The greatest offenders from the Gundams would be the Wing and the Wing Zero Gundams with their Buster Rifles.

''This isn't Gundam at all''

I was taken out of the experience when I saw the Wing Gundam kill 5 Grunts with like a single shot with these huge DBZ-style beams. And they do it all the fucking time. You see, if you're going to make a tribute to 0079, I expect you to have some realism. And having DBZ beams is certainly not realistic. But then they act like nothing happened at all. Sure, in UC you had mobile suits like the Zeong and suits with funnels that could take out large groups of enemies, but there it wasn't failsafe and it was equaly the pilot's skill and newtype power as it was the uberness of his suit. But the Gundams in Wing murder hordes of grunts with the same significance as wiping their ass.
The only times when the action actually gets interesting are when it's Gundam on Gundam or Gundam on Tallgeese action, and these fights are very, very, very rare compared to the hundreds of meaningless grunt fights that use the same recycled (but not bad) animations since there are only 10 specific mobile suits over the course of the entire 50 episode series that actually matter.
In the very ending of the TV series there is a situation where it looks like things are not good as half of like the space colony thing is still falling on the earth with no way to stop it. This scene was a callback to the finale of Char's Counterattack. Then Wufei throws the Twin Buster Rifle to Heero and everyone is instantly like ''YEAH WE'RE GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT'' before the fucker even fires the damn thing. It's like the characters were sure since they understood the way the series was written. No, seriously, it wasn't like cautious optimism, it was like ''FUCK YEAH, HURRY UP HEERO AND GET THIS SHIT FINISHED, WE'RE GOING TO UNCORK THE CHAMPAGNE'' when Heero hadn't even caught the rifle yet. Imediately they destroyed any tension. Now the way this scene ended in CCA was kind of ''wait what'' but it atleast had some tension and there was an actual loss at the end. Instead, this is just some Mary Sue shit.

Okay so tune back in tomorrow as I dive in with a machete and a raincoat in to the pool of fanfiction elements.