Meaning of 'Like Mother! It was love that caused her to leave us!' ?
I don't get it.
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MovieChat Forums > Kidô senshi Gundam: Dai 08 MS shôtai (2001) Discussion > Meaning of 'Like Mother! It was love tha...
I'm so glad you asked this question as, despite his position as the antagonist of the series, Guinesuss (spelling?)is one of my favourite characters because he is so intriguing.
Basicaly, I believe Guineuss had abandonment issues. With the way he makes it sound, his mother probably ran off with another man, leaving him and Aina alone. I myself have always been fascinated with this possibility as it explains a lot of his behaviour: He finds comfort and reassurance from his Absoluse (again, spelling?). If you recall, he even calls it his "son", emphasizing the idea that he views it as a replacement for human companionship. With the exception of Aina, Guineuss never had anyone he could be close with. When she begins to "convert" to Shiro's idea of a peaceful coexsistance between the Federation and Zeon, rather than the violent vision Guineuss had in mind, this seems to anger him even further as his skewed view of reality causes him to see even Aina's actions as "betrayal", causing him to shoot her. Perhaps her changing perceptions and love of Shiro were like his mother abandoning him all over again.
If you think about it, Aina probably had to deal with the same pain. I always thought that, because she had found a sort of "father-figure" role in Norris, she perhaps had an easier time dealing with the pain. It should be noted that, in most societies, males are taught to handle personal pain and crisises alone, while females are encouraged to seek out other people for consolement;I think Guineuss' predicament sort of reflects the sad results this kind of thinking can bring about.
As an interesting note, there is another character from another anime that makes me think of Guineuss: Altena, from the series "Noir".
Without going into detail about the anime, Altena was a war orphan who was raped by a soldier when she was a little girl. Because of the ravages of war and horrors of humanity she has experienced, her view of the world becomes warped and she developes the belief that "if love can destroy others, hatred can perhaps save." Much like Guineuss, she becomes obsessed with carrying out this belief through various methods which ultimately destroy her.
"Escalators can never break, they can just become stairs."- Mitch Hedberg
Psybur, are you my twin!? I swear to god if I weren't needing bed soon I'd write a big nice pseudo-essay to compliment yours on what makes Ghinius tick. He's been my favorite character for so long and I never tire of trying to figure him out. He's such a fascinating, sad, and horribly under-appreciated character. I'm so happy to see someone else who does more than just write him off as 1-dimensional or a horrible monster!
That said, I strongly believe on top of some of the things you said that he's practically a textbook case of Borderline Personality Disorder. I won't go into detail right now since as I said, I need sleep, but I think that'd also explain a good chunk of his behavior. Especially his panic over abandonment and mood swings.
Really interesting choice of characters to compare him to as well. I think Souji Mikage/Professor Nemuro from Revolutionary Girl Utena is eerily close to Ghinius psychologically as well. It intrigues me that the character you chose was sexually abused, since I've long wondered if Ghinius was abused as a kid (thus shaping him in to what he became).
Hope that was somewhat coherent, I'm about to die on the keyboard now ._.
I want to thank you so very much for the compliment. I am big into analyzing sociological and psychological aspects of anime, and the various Gundam series are a hot bed for this kind of activity. To cite an example, I wrote a report on the sociological aspects of Gundam Wing for my Sociology class in my first year of college. . . the teacher loved it! To date, you are the only person who also shares this view with me. I honestly agree; I don't know what it is about Ghinius that really piques my interest. . . he's a character I keep coming back to with all kinds of questions. Have you ever seen the show "Most Evil"? It's on the I.D. channel (an off-spring of the "Discovery Channel") and features Forensic Psychologist Dr. Ian Stone and his famous "scale of evil" that he invented to rank criminals based on their psychological and sociological backgrounds. I often think that characters like Ghinius would fit really well on this show.
I'll have to watch "Utena" as I've never seen it before. I'd be really interested in seeing how well Ghinius matches up with Souji Mikage/Professor Nemuro.
"If you have legs and are flammable, you are never blocking a fire exit."- Mitch Hedberg
No, haven't seen that show, and honestly I don't think Ghinius is a truly evil person (!). His acts are evil, yes, but they're a result of the specific circumstances at the time. In his mind, all that mattered was the Apsaras because it was his last remaining thread of worth and meaning (so he felt). I don't think he really thought about whether his actions where right or wrong because I doubt he even thought that far into it. His train of thought ended at "must protect my baby!", and by the end especially he was running almost entirely on (very negative) emotion. So while the most common angle/opinion is a selfish, evil douche who values objects more than people, you can also see a desperate, panicked, sad, and broken person almost instinctively clinging to only thing that validates his identity. To me that makes him more tragic than truly loathsome.
I think it's also worth noting that he seems to have little concern for his own well being. He looks downright emaciated in the opening to episode 11, and even before then his body language gets progressively weaker throughout the series. And this is a character who was established off the bat to be physically frail as is, who probably was putting his life at risk by neglecting his meds/food/sleep/etc. Somehow, I don't think crazy!Ghinius would bat an eye if you told him he could die if he didn't stop.
That's not the same way other Gundam villains (i.e. Char, Giren, etc) operate. They methodically plot and shove ethics aside out of greed and ambition, but I doubt they'd do terribly much that'd risk their own lives. Ghinius, however, is willing to sacrifice lives because he doesn't have the most basic worth for his own I think. That's another thing makes him such a sad character to me, especially since I personally have struggled with self worth issues for a long time.
And that's not even getting into what all he might've gone through in his life. The mom comment leads me to believe the family was dysfunctional all around, which probably is where most of his issues really stem from. The abandonment of the mom is one thing that really traumatized him, but there could've been other stuff IMHO.
Also, is it just me, or is anger not necessarily the main emotion going on with him in episode 11? Sure it's there, especially superficially, but I think he's more in panic and despair beyond that. Hell, I kind of think the main reason he shoots Aina is because she's (unintentionally) putting him in even more psychological pain than he's already in by bringing up the past (especially if her questioning was a trigger for some traumatic memory/event that he had). He pulled the gun on her without really thinking at all, because he couldn't take it and needed the cause of the pain to leave.
I found this quote from an essay explaining Borderline PD that I think helps illustrate the above:
"Imagine you had a pet dog and it runs into the street and by accident it's hit by a car. The dog's leg is broken and it limps off into an alley to lick it's wounds. A friend of yours sees the dog and comes over to help. The dog is now feeling trapped and cornered - a "wounded animal" - and misinterprets the friend's attempts to help. The dog snaps at the friend's hand who is trying to help. The BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) is a malfunction in the brain's trapped or "cornered" animal area. Under stress, a seizure develops in that area. That's why under stress, while raging, a borderline will say to him or herself: "Why am I doing this" - yet be unable to stop it. It's a seizure - nerve cells firing inappropriately and out of control."
I think he was probably regretting it the instant the bullet left the gun. Hell, I think that if he'd succeeded in killing Shiro and Aina, he would've committed suicide soon after. There's no way he could live with doing that to Aina, on top of everything else he going through his head.
I'm actually planning to write an essay comparing Ghinius and Mikage, and numerous others on other ponderings about him. That's not even getting into the fanfic ideas I have, either.
Yep, totally not an obsessive fangirl with no life at allllllll :|
I agree: I don't think Ghinius is evil, just his acts. The show ranks the person based on their acts and background when considering their rank on the scale, not neccessarily the person as an individual. Anyway, I do feel that Ghinius becomes more and more detached from reality as the show progresses: you kind of see hints of it when Aina goes missing on that mountain as he shows very little concern of whether she is dead or alive. You also get the impression that he cares more about the Apsalas than Aina's well-being when he places more emphasis on getting that protoype to work than on making sure Aina's safe. And then there's that ever-famous and ever-obvious seen where he shoots at the screen and then half-jokingly aims at Aina. I actually found what he says during this scene far more interesting than the action he takes: ". . . It's the men of science that change the world. . . " or something to that effect. There always seems to be this semi-clichéd tempelate of the eternal conflict with science vs. the military (I often think of the second "Fantasic 4"
movie or "Avatar" when I picture this) or science vs. the government. It often involves the scientist feeling used or under-appreciated by either of these aforementioned entities to the extent that they feel their values and/or reseach is threatened leading to a conflict of ideals. A good example of this within the Gundam universe are the 5 disgrunteled Gundam scientists from "Gundam Wing" who left the E.S.A. when it's perspective of world domination conflicted with the scientist's ideals. Ironically enough, it happend to them AGAIN when they worked with the Barton Foundation. And finally, they are used by O.Z. to manufacture mobile suites even though (ironically enough) they originally made the gundams to destroy O.Z.! (This is actually really funny when you think about it; the Gundam scientists can never seem to catch a break! I also find it funny when they are called "mad scientist" by a newsreporter in the episode where Duo is captured).
Anyways, getting back to Ghinius, in the last episode (the REAL last episode, not that B.S. semi-mystical episode that makes on freakin' sense) where he is about to shoot Shiro after he had already shot Aina, he makes a "saving grace" comment about how he is sorry for shooting Aina and that she hopes she understands that he never really hated her, or something like that. This gives the character a reedeming quality so that the audience doesn't totally hate him. It also intsills in the viewer that Ghinius hasn't totally "lost it" and that he still is aware of the consequences of his actions.
"If you have legs and are flammable, you are never blocking a fire exit."- Mitch Hedberg
Gravedigging because I wrote some related essays:
http://android-raptor.livejournal.com/48630.html
http://hated-character.livejournal.com/422464.html