it's not like, new, how gundam is all about themes of freedom and violence but damn gqx really is about freedom and violence and how adolescence is about thrashing and biting at the things that tether you to childhood as you struggle with what comes next.
you've got your machu who on the outside doesn't have a problem in the world. good school, good mom, popularity, but she strains at every single one of these things, no idea what she wants other than being free.
your nyaan who has none of those things and scurries in the dark running contraband and getting harassed by cops, living a proscribed life because that's all side six has to offer someone like her.
and shuji who is just kind of this fey creature who seems to have no childhood to speak of, seemingly made from whole cloth to be a vessel for his red gundam's desires like i don't think there's enough 'him' in him to express any needs of his own beyond hunger. in that sense he's already free but it's like, ego-death free.
which i guess is why he's the first of the three to go and kill someone because all he is-for now-is the will of the red gundam and the red gundam says killing is okay, it's chill. then nyaan follows up, with all her frustration and anger and a universe that never showed her an ounce of mercy suddenly opened up and gave her all the control she never had.
these kids get their taste of freedom in gundams made for the purpose of incredible violence and with the newtype state being common to all of them, violence and freedom and connection become rolled up into this hot messy ball of teenage hormones that's set to explode.
and it goes beyond them. there's side six itself, just a big tin can in space packed tight with people who barely understand each other between the refugees and the military police and the citizens who know they aren't really free as zeon stomps all over them and threaten to drag them into a civil war that's got nothing to do with them. like it's protests now, but it's gonna break violent from one side or another and when it does, it's gonna be whatever connections they have with each other that's going to determine what their lives look like after the fact.
that machu hasn't yet made the leap from freedom to violence to killing makes me curious if she will and, in that moment, gets the freedom she thought she wanted and in the process completely breaks the things she percieves as restraints (in which case, rip her mom in gundam tradition). guess we'll see where shit goes but man, what a show
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