I am realizing that a few times this year I’ve mentioned aspects of the Mobile Suit Gundam anime franchise. There is good reason for this, as the entire point of the franchise as according to the original creator Yoshiyuki Tomino is ‘reality.’ This means through the use of fiction it shows the reasons why certain lofty and overblown concepts can’t work in reality. In addition to that, it shows the ‘reality’ of humanity’s potential. He has done this with so much of the series by showing not only the true nature of men as empathetic and caring individuals, such as Ranba Ral who is supposed to be a ‘bad guy’ from the perspective of the Earth Federation, to showing the disposability of even men who are considered important. Also he is not afraid to show even women dying in his shows even going so far as to (SPOILER ALERT) show the final antagonist of the original show, Kycillia Zabi, get beheaded by a rocket launcher.
So why do I mention all of this? Because today’s subject is someone I’ve mentioned elsewhere, and I am of the mind that he encapsulates what we’ve been dealing with in the vein of male feminists for the past few years. Now keep in mind this character was developed in the mid 1980’s, so the fact that I recognize the traits of this particular man in male feminists today just goes back to the attempt of Tomino-sensei to depict the reality of things. Who is this we are talking about today? A leader in the off-shoot of the Earth Federal Forces TITANS: Lieutenant Paptimus Scirocco – Commanding Officer of the fuel transport Jupitris, genius mobile suit designer and Newtype. Let’s Hammer This In!
To start off, I think I need to set the stage of where we are working from to explain this character. The year is Universal Century 0087, after a conflict with a remnant fleet of the Principality of Zeon called the Delaz Fleet, named after its commanding vice-admiral. A particular mobile suit development project was buried and a special ‘anti-terrorist’ organization was ratified called the TITANS. The purpose of it is to wipe out any remnant of the old Zeon forces to ensure that nothing like the One Year War of 0079, which killed millions, ever happens again. Catch is, the group became very heavily bigoted and socially restrictive to the point where in their eyes, even regular military are seen as trash. They’ve come to think themselves the true rulers of the Earth Federation. Without spoiling the anime of Zeta Gundam where the GRYPS Conflict in which they are deposed takes place, they even risk the lives of the reigning government that is supposed to oversee them in order to try to kill off the AEUG or Anti Earth Union Government group that sought legitimate autonomy for the Earth’s space colonies to do what Britain is trying to do right now with Brexit.
So as you can see here, if you take the armed conflict out of the picture there are a lot of funny coincidences. We have a group of non-government “warriors” that think they run the show, a group of plucky outcasts trying to make sure people can live free without restrictive bullshit, and the antagonists thinking they are morally justified in their actions when said actions are anything BUT moral, all fueled by a fear of a group of just a few hundred people who no longer have anywhere near enough resources to be able to pose a threat. And that’s where I think you can see why I want to talk about this. In fact, after going over a couple of other characters coming up, I’ll probably do a full review of the anime of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam so I can cleanly discuss all the parallels in-depth. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Why am I discussing Scirocco first here? He is the epitome of a male feminist, and talks as such in the original Japanese. That means in 1986, Tomino has likely already dealt with someone just like this, since as he said he is motivated by ‘reality’ to create. As such, the dubbed “Man from Jupiter” gives us a very unique look into most likely a real person when it comes to his personality. To start, we know he is a newtype, the in-universe moniker for those who have evolved to the next stage of humanity, which is shown by an evolved sense of spatial awareness and ability to sense emotion and intent, allowing them to react faster and control more advanced wireless weaponry through a sort of psychic communications unit referred to as PSYCOMMU. In addition, it’s noted that TITANS personnel ranks outclass rank and file Federation Forces. So even though he technically has a commander over him, he, by being a TITANS officer, outranks the person who would normally be his CO. This also nets him a plethora of other privileges.
When it comes to his realistic aspects, save for his purple hair and eyes, he is exceedingly charismatic. This is, of course, due to the way he presents himself around others, particularly women, who he surrounds himself with constantly. As such, he manipulates and uses these women constantly. This is done with him making claims of female superiority and his claimed ‘desire’ to have women running the world. That’s right, he uses blatant and open gynocentrism combined with his seemingly waifish looks, combined with their innate hypergamic instincts, to gain influence and power. He does this so well that he is able to overtake the entire TITANS group by the end of Zeta Gundam. He intends to use the same approach with the Axis Zeon remnants after the TITANS are disbanded officially by the Earth Federation. He plans on using their resources to perform a full blown coup d’etat on the rightfully elected government of the Earth Federation, who had forgiven and accepted the AEUG’s remaining forces as having had the best intentions for the Federation, and being merely misunderstood because of TITANS propaganda that was hiding their true authoritarian intent.
The reason he thought that he had a chance at seducing the Axis Zeon leadership was due to it being run by the at the time 8 year old Mineva Lao Zabi, the sole remaining heir to the family that ran the Principality of Zeon, and her regent Haman Karn. What he didn’t account for, however, is the both of them having their own newtype training, and Karn sealing away her feelings after being abandoned by the man she fell for as a kid… feelings that wouldn’t be rekindled until she met a different newtype. That is a story for another time though. What’s important here is examining his tactics.
While he was more than capable of piloting mobile suits, particularly as he designed several of them, he preferred to manipulate weak-willed women by making them think he thought them strong, using the ability to parse a person’s emotions to have women bend to his will. He talked just like a male feminist and used their mindset to make them think he was a good man even though he was a villain through-and-through. This primarily worked on oldtypes more than anything else, because they would be unable to recognize what newtype awareness actually is. This was made even easier by the fact that many didn’t even believe in the phenomenon. This also worked fairly well upon the young, at least those young enough to be going through the more adolescent spat of life. In some of these fashions, you could say he used some pick-up artistry on them.
Of course, he only saw these women as tools to fulfill his own ambitions, for his own lust for power. As with many of these male feminist types, his beliefs end up forming the idea that as a man who is supposed to be living in a patriarchy, that power is his birthright. This can be fully seen in his ‘masterpiece,’ the O. While many could interpret the name as meaning a reference to the Japanese word for King, (王）the full meaning is “The Will of God,” meaning Scirocco viewed himself a god. It’s build resembling that of a court noble from the Heian era of Japan. This wouldn’t be obvious to many outside of the culture and maybe not even to those in the culture, though this makes more sense as you examine the character who was to have designed it. In fact all the units that were attributed to him in universe had a sense of false grandeur about them, so much that they come off as garish.
This could, of course, be attributed to the style of the day out-of-universe. However, when compared to the rest of the designs of the other Titans units, they are very distinct. It becomes even more obvious when compared to the designs fielded by the AEUG and Axis Zeon, not to mention the standard Federation suits. Some aspects of the in-universe explanations for these outlandish designs were that they were designed to handle Jupiter’s extreme atmosphere, though when you look at the much later designs of Jupiter-based suits during the era of Crossbone Gundam, it becomes more apparent that ego was more behind the units than function.
How does this analysis of Scirocco help us in reality? By seeing how much of these actions are fueled by perceived privilege and an over-inflated ego, we see that this is why we find that male feminists end up being such monsters. It’s most likely that their egos that are pumped up to the extreme by their upbringing or social conditioning. For one, they are told all their lives that men are horrible monsters that can get away with anything, that are entitled to sex and various other perks from life. They are also told they should uplift women but at the same time the ‘instincts’ they were led to believe they had manifest and they take what they think is their birthright, full control over women. Running on this speculation, it’s no wonder many of these male feminists are found to be abusers and rapists. The subjugation imposed upon women In trying to obtain supremacy, all in name of their ‘protection’ and ‘victim’ status, is ironic to say the least.
On another front, it could give us another method to counter male feminists, take advantage of their ego and turn it against them… use it to reveal their true nature and show the darkness in their hearts, and show how they are truly broken by their own feminist programming. Depending on the development of that mindset, it may be possible to bring some to their senses by cognitive dissonance. Others it won’t help, due to them being too far gone, after a point. This is why humility is important for a man to embrace, because it keeps him grounded and able to walk with little issue. Yes, take pride in the good works you do, but always balance it out with the humility of knowing you aren’t infallible. Otherwise you could lose everything.
I hope this advice helps along with this character analysis, because the better we can understand our opposition the easier it is to counter what’s wrong with them. Now, considering that Yuletide comes for me on the 21st, many families still celebrate Christmas and New Years follows I’m going to be going on a two week hiatus to spend more time with my own family. I wish you all well with yours and look forward to re-joining you in 2019. Until then Please Remember to Game Freely!
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Personally I have only a very foggy idea of Gundam … but the description of Scirocco IMMEDIATELY reminded me of Eric Esquivel … who is a comic writer for DC Vertigo (Border Town), who has been accused of “being a manipulative man” by one woman just a few days ago. Her blog reads – lots of “inbetween lines reading” – like he is very convincing and able to “make women do stuff they dont want to do” … because he had an unconventional sexual relationship with more than one woman at the time.
He is also an SJW/feminist AND rabid racist … at least the comic he writes/wrote is.
After these “accusations” made in a blog post (which didnt even mention his name!) they were picked up by ComicsGate Youtubers and spread (because the SJWs and their media didnt do it) … and now the other two artists on the book have said that they would stop working with him … and DC even made previous issues that were already sold returneable, because the series gets canned pretty much immediately.
Even though he is a racist this is yet another case where “a woman’s teary eyed story” got a man pretty much convicted and fired … with nothing to actually prove her claims AND nothing really illegal going on.