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The story
A thread on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board (aka “NanJ”) asked: “Even if we got reincarnated into the Gundam universe, wouldn’t we just end up as bottom-tier pilots, like Guncannon pilots?” In the show’s setting, Mobile Suit (MS) pilots are usually elite military officers — second lieutenants fresh out of officer academy — so pessimistic replies piled up fast: “Could guys like us even become soldiers in the first place?” and “We’d be lucky just to get a seat in a mass-produced Ball.” Others pushed back, arguing mass-produced units are smaller targets with better survival odds, and that serving as crew on a battleship might actually be more dangerous. The debate spread further into where ship crews stand, and whether it’d be better to be reborn into the Earth Federation or Zeon.
What people said
That's sad… a real elegy for me (a pun on ワイ = "me" and エレジー = "elegy")
You actually think you'd get to ride in a Ball?
Honestly I've got better odds working the assembly line building them
Apparently there are 7 units according to the official settings
If you count the Gundam Ground Type too, that's actually quite a few
Even the regular infantry aren't just average, you know
These are soldiers from that era we're talking about
No officer academy, no MS
Liar, I checked the ranks in Gihren's Greed (a Gundam strategy game)
and there are tons of scrub MS pilots ranked below second lieutenant
If I get hit, I'm hitting back
Just ride this into a suicide charge and that's it, game over
Lol, it's built so that no matter where it gets hit, you're dead for sure
Lol, there's literally a stat saying the non-return rate is 90%
In Gihren's Greed I surrounded a Qubeley with a swarm of Public units (mass-produced mobile suits), used jamming to keep it from firing its beam and to drain its energy — burned through a ton of Publics to pull it off
The unit's small, so it's a small target, and it's got decent mobility too — seems like it'd dodge more and have a higher survival rate
Plus you're basically always paired up with a GM by default, so wouldn't that make it even more likely you'd come home alive?
Real talk, it's possible — the German army used to stick criminals in assault guns too
Honestly the real coffins are battleships like the Magellan or the Salamis — one slow call from the captain and everyone's dead
It's about the same size as the Argama, so the crew was probably around 200 people — the fact that the bridge crew's vibe alone can decide to protect one MS and get everyone killed is no joke
What happens if you land in Zeon instead…?
Looking at how they treat civilians there, your only move is an immediate evacuation to wealthy Axis
though once Haman Karn (the Axis/Neo Zeon leader) heads for Earth, there's nowhere left to run
Battle of A Baoa Qu → picked up by the Delaz Fleet
→ picked up by Axis's advance fleet, head to Axis → join the AEUG alongside Captain Quattro (Char Aznable's alias in Zeta Gundam)
→ eventually get into the Federation forces, then discharge and become a writer
If you're lucky, there's a shot at ending up in the Federation after all
It's genuinely terrifying that a snap decision made by a few middle-aged guys on the bridge can drag the entire crew down with them 😭
Zeon had three separate MS development companies competing to get their designs picked
while they wasted time on bribery, espionage, and sabotaging each other, the Federation mass-produced GMs like crazy and it was game over
you'd probably fail the entrance exam
It's the opposite, isn't it — the Gundam universe is basically a dystopia where civilians are dropping like flies as a matter of course
if anything, NOT being a soldier seems more dangerous given how bad security is
wild that society even functions
MS cost a ton of money too…
Even if we're super-elite forum posters, they'd probably just stick us in a fighter jet and send us in to crash
otherwise they'd just sell us off to Zeon for cash, human-trafficking style
surviving the One Year War at all makes you a full-fledged pilot
shoot down 3 units and you're an ace
What were Kai's and Hayato's actual kill counts again?
Background and key points of the debate
The thread’s starting premise is that Gundam-universe MS (Mobile Suit) pilots are generally established as officers of second-lieutenant rank or higher, meaning only academy-trained elites get to fly them. But since spin-off games like Gihren’s Greed feature plenty of pilots ranked below second lieutenant, opinions split over whether to go by the original anime’s canon or the games’. Another sticking point was the mass-produced “Ball”: some argued it has strong survival odds as a small, mobile target, while others countered that serving as battleship crew is actually riskier, since one slow call from the captain can take the whole crew down with it. Note that while only one unit of the original Gundam (RX-78) actually saw combat on-screen, the setting also includes several prototype units — the “7 units” mentioned by one commenter is thought to refer to this group of prototypes. All of this is banter about a fictional setting within the anime; it doesn’t involve any real people or events.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Even if we got reincarnated into the Gundam world, we’d probably end up as bottom-tier pilots like Guncannon pilots.”
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