Celestial Being and The Peace Authority – Comparative Post Regarding the Fabulously Colored Mecha Show

Author: nova

Recently I realized that there actually _was_ a third mecha show running in the summer. Being short on things to watch, I decided to give it a go. Yep, I’m talking about Gundam Fabulous 00. Now be advised, this post has no real point and contains some spoilers. It’s just something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while now.

As much as I dislike the mechas that could be used as paint color sample boards at hardware stores if Celestial Being ever reaches its goal of worldwide peace, and unintentionally funny character names (Allelujah Haptism? Saji Crossroad? Lol wut gaise), I did find something interesting in the show. All thanks to finishing a certain book just a few days ago, that introduced a bit similar setting. Without this book, I would have dropped Gundam 00 after a few episodes; The Peace War by Vernor Vinge.

The text will be TL;DR, so have some pics of Gundam girls to keep you at it.

Make no mistake, Gundam 00 and The Peace War have quite little in common. Except for both having one similar concept: A rogue organization engaging in a war to end all wars; or as the book describes it, a war that no one started but everyone lost. In Gundam 00 we have the Celestial Being, a mysterious organization that utilizes high-tech mecha units and specially selected personnel to intervene in every conflict worldwide until the humanity realizes the futility of waging wars and unify under one banner. In The Peace War similar organization exists; The Peace Authority, a league of rogue scientists utilizing a weapon that can surround even large areas into inpenetrable “bobbles”, isolating them from the space-time itself.

A notable, if not the biggest, difference in the setting of the Peace War and Gundam 00 is the timing of the storyline itself. In the book the main storyline takes place after the uprising of the Peace Authority and the subsequent collapse of all world military powers; in Gundam 00 the story takes place during the process of Celestial Being reaching for their ultimate goal. Also, a great different exists in the methods utilized by the peace-striving rogue factions. The Peace Authority, initially a small group of physicists and some other specialists, discovered the bobble-theory and after constructing sufficient facilities for putting it to effective use, severed their ties from governmental control, effectively starting a war against every power in the world at once. Instead of operating an army, the Authority used a handful of static generator buildings to seal all hostile forces into bobbles, leaving the nations defenseless and forcing them to surrender all power into their hands. Whereas Celestial Being, possessing much smaller-scale power in the form of a handful of Gundams and their support systems, utilize a strategy of making them ultimately the opponent of the entire world – this would drive old nations to unify in order to match their common enemy. In the book we see the classic scenario of seizing world power using unmatched force and bending old regime to one’s will; in the anime, a scenario of raising fear and hatred to make peoples forget about their old disputes, unify to one cause in order to eliminate the common enemy – the peace organization itself. One for destroying every other cause, and one for sacrificing self to make old enemies into allies.

She can set my launch catapult to standby mode any day if you know what I’m saying.

From this description already it’s easy to see which strategy is more justified. Although the Peace Authority’s bobbles do not harm the ones they isolate – merely stop their influence in the current space and time, until the bobble dissipates – the downfall of nations (replaced by often savage local feudalist regime), strict restrictions on allowed technology set by the Authority and bioweapons released by the old nations in their desperation causing pandemics have made the humanity only a shadow of its former self. The conflicts Celestial Being engages in are mainly almost entirely military-based with minimal civilian casualties and being quite local occurrences; not a worldwide war.

However, in the end we learn that neither of these peace authorities are as much allies of justice as they claim to be. The Throne Gundams with pilots that do not hesitate to randomly attack and kill civilians just for the heck of it are just the tip of the rotten iceberg that lies in the core of Celestial Being. The Peace Authority is prepared to even destroy the entire mankind save themselves when faced with unbeatable resistance. Having peace for the sake of itself neglecting everything else turns out to be an ugly goal that has nothing to do with justice or doing right things. In the end the seemingly well-meaning allies of justice turn out to be nothing more than moralists forcing their views on others and abusing their power just the same. For this reason I could not side with the Gundam Meisters until Throne Gundams appeared and they were forced to realize the maliciousness within their own organization.

In the end the nearly infinite power used by the Peace Authority becomes their downfall, giving us a classic example of how striving for absolute control is not a proper way in forging a peace. They did not succeed in bringing a lasting peace to mankind; even though they were unintentionally successful in unifying it, which coincidentally was the main goal of Celestial Being. Peace Authority did not believe in mankind’s capability to unify and work without their control – Celestial Being believed in sacrificing self to let the civilization to join together to face the common enemy.

Ultimately in both stories unification and peace were attained – however, in The Peace War the Peace Authority was utterly wiped out, whereas in Gundam 00 Celestial Being succeeded in its objectives and maintained their existence. How long the peace will last is another question and I’m sure the next season of Gundam 00 will provide a lot to think about. Marooned in Realtime, a continuation to The Peace War, it is revealed that after all The Peace Authority was correct – the mankind annihilates itself by the 23rd century – and failed to meet their ultimate objective.

A chibi is fine too.

A lot of TL;DR here for tonight. I understand that this post wasn’t all that informative to the most of us, but doing some kind of literacy-related analysis has always interested me (don’t worry mike, I’m not going to take your field) and this topic saved me from a long-term writer’s block – at least for now. Next up is a little something about ef. I think.