Chris responds:
1. The AEUG's goal in getting the Gundam Mark II was to reverse engineer its secrets. From that perspective, if you send two units off for study, you can have two teams work on it and study specific aspects of the design, thus producing faster results. That'd certainly be needed when Anaheim started incorporating Mk II design elements in AEUG mobile suits.

2. It's been awhile since I read up on the G-3, but if I remember correctly, the magnetic coating is not the only difference between it and the RX-78-2.

3. You have to keep in mind that the original series was created at a time when the super robot was king, and the specs on all the mobile suits weren't created until after the fact. It was a different time from the era in which 08th MS Team, which went for a more "realistic" depiction of MS combat. Basically, the key point here (and for many of these issues) is that specs are completely arbitrary and usually don't make any sense.

4. We can see how the armor penetrators didn't work so well, but I would chalk up their inclusion as way to differentiate Blu Duel's design from the original Duel Gundam.

5. There's nothing weapon-like about those forearm protrusions in any specs, so other than that, I don't know why they'd be there.

6. There's no reason I've ever heard, but we're talking about a very insignificant design element here, so again, I'd say it's just design flare.

7. To sell more model kits, plain and simple. It was a genius way for Bandai to make people buy the same five Gundams all over again, but they were "new" versions since they got Katoki-ized. It's kind of the same like with the Valkyries from the original Macross series - you have lots of kits for both the TV versions and the nicer DYRL versions.

8. It's been a few years since I saw Victory Gundam, but I think there was one instance of a beam shield generator getting cut off. If the surface of the generator that becomes part of the shield was itself vulnerable to attack, I think we would've seen it. Instead, you can cut off that part of the arm or the arm itself below the elbow.

9. The Gundam Epyon might have emergency auxiliary power if the cable is severed, but it'd of course be weaker. Without being connected to Epyon's reactor, it can't do powerful attacks like the one Zechs used to destroy space station Barge.

10. No, they're probably never coming here. With ACE, you run into the same problem as SRW, where multiple mecha series are owned by multiple companies. With the SEED games, there's not much point because the original series aired in America four years ago, and DESTINY never did. Aside from the slow release of the DESTINY Special Editions, there's nothing SEED related for Bandai to want to tie-in to, especially since they've moved on to 00.

11. We got rid of it a few years ago because it had become pretty static, and it would've just been too much trouble to keep adding new galleries. Rather than have a dead section, we got rid of it, in part because the same gallery was available at Gundam Plus at the time.

Chris responds:
1. I think it's a good idea. I don't know what Gurren-Lagann's ratings are right now, but the show is probably reaching a new audience that may not watch Cartoon Network. I've also been of the opinion for years that Cartoon Network mistreated every Gundam series after Gundam Wing. They canceled the original series, shafted SEED to a bad time slot and passed on both Zeta and DESTINY. Given all of that, why would Bandai want to waste their time pitching 00 to them?

2. In the case of the Nu Gundam, that's explained as it being incomplete. If you'll recall, it was wasn't even fully assembled at the start of the movie, but Amuro had it rushed to the battlefield.

3. I'm not a fan of such bulky designs, so I don't like it.

4. The difference is that in the first episode of Gundam, Amuro specifically destroyed the reactor, while with many other suits, the reactor isn't hit. Of course, some of the early shows are inconsistent about how this is depicted. By the time of Victory, people are more cautious about setting off reactors, specifically on Earth, although they're sometimes used that way as weapons.

5. This supposedly came from the re-classification of G-Saviour on the old official Japanese Gundam site. Curiously, at about the same time, every mention of G-Saviour was removed from America's Gundam Official website. If it's true, it's a loss I don't mind since the movie was such a piece of crap. Also, since it's become rather obscure now, it's possible Sunrise didn't want to restrict themselves to the movie's timeline if they ever decide to explore the UC 200's in the future.

Chris responds:
1. I'm not sure they're Newtypes, since they're mediocre pilots and don't really display much in the way of special abilities. As to why it wasn't mentioned earlier, keep in mind that in the original series, Amuro didn't start really showing full Newtype identifiers until around episode 37.

2. He and Chara both became Cyber Newtypes, which as we know aren't the most mentally stable people.

3. The scene where Judau and his friends return to space always struck me as odd. They don't wear suits, and they basically seatbelt themselves to shipping containers. It doesn't make much sense.

4. There certainly are other naming conventions in Gundam shows. In the Cosmic Era series, the Earth Alliance names its ships after American politicians and famous generals, and ZAFT names ships and weapons after scientists and Latin scientific names. In Gundam 00 and its side stories, Celestial Being's units are connected to Biblical lore and Greek mythology.

Mark asks:
1. Some of your comments on your Gundam Wing episode reviews echo some of the entries I saw on Siege Zeon's section called Why Gundam Wing Sucks, such as the plot building up to "Let's throw a big nasty thing at Earth!", the pointless battle between Heero and Zechs in the Antarctic, the patriotic babble that is just there to make the series look more intelligent than it really is, and the misleading "Tallgeese Destroyed" episode, among others. Did you send those comments to that site but if not, that is quite an eerie coincidence.

2. Will there be model and action figure reviews in the Models section of this site outside of Gundam? Is it a staff decision to only have Gundam reviews or is it simply from reviewer submissions?

3. Have you heard of or played MechQuest? If you have not, it's an online mecha-RPG by Artix Entertainment, the creators of AdventureQuest and Dragonfable. The mecha are customizable and can either be real robot or super robot. It has also made people in my area who forgot about the mecha genre have their interest in it re-stimulated (I never lost my enjoyment for mecha).

4. This one is simply out of curiosity. From how you described Evangelion as GAINAX's "prized cash cow series" (undeniable, though), does that mean you dislike the series? Again, this is just out of curiosity. I like that series but I can understand why others dislike it.

5. From what I've read in the previous Mailbag entries, new mecha sections are being added. What can we expect to come?

6. As far as real robots go, it seems none surpass the Psyco Gundam and the Evangelions in size from what I know. Do you know any bigger ones?

Chris responds:
1. I've never posted comments like that anywhere, so it wasn't me. Also, I should note that my opinion of Gundam Wing has changed over the years, and that'll be reflected when I eventually re-review the series.

2. Over the years, I've put out several requests for Macross reviews, but I've only ever gotten one or two reviews, which is hardly enough for a section. Unfortunately, the section is molded entirely by what people are interested in sending in, and from the looks of it they're only interested in Gundam.

3. I have played both AdventureQuest and MechQuest. I played AdventureQuest years ago and even paid to be a Guardian, but I've pretty much given it up since then.

4. A lot of people seem to mistakenly believe that I hate Evangelion, mainly because I refuse to review the show. I don't hate it, and in fact I own the Platinum box set from ADV. I think Evangelion is a good series, but it's vastly overrated by the fans, ADV and GAINAX. It's not the best thing since sliced bread, and I certainly think there are plenty of shows that are better.

5. I've been so busy with a thousand things that I'm not even sure myself right now. Seriously.

6. There's quite a lot of really big real robots out there. The WaDom from Turn A Gundam is the same size as the original Psyco Gundam, as is the Quin Mantha from Gundam ZZ. The giant backpack and cannons of the Destroy Gundam makes it much taller than the Psyco Gundam. Although smaller than the Psyco Gundam, the Gilgazamune from Dragonar towers over the standard metal armors from that universe. Whether you call the Evangelion units robots at all or real robots specifically is debatable. It's also debatable as to whether the Gunbuster and Ideon are real robots, but they're certainly quite large.