On Vulnerability: An Essay about Char's Counterattack
I wrung myself dry of emotions analyzing Char's Counterattack on Bluesky. I felt like I was reaching through time and space to grasp a meaning that could save me somehow. I was as vulnerable as I could possibly be without talking about myself.
A fair number of people read it, even as I was in the process of posting it. Just like when I posted my "random Gundam thought generator," my words reached a fair number of people.
The feelings I expressed were deeply related to my own life. If those feelings connect with other people, I can feel much less alone. Thinking about the connections between myself and strangers online, I feel a little bit of comfort.
In the thread, I wrote that Char, who never connected with Lalah as a person — not on the level that Amuro was able to connect with her, or even the level that Char, himself, was able to connect with Amuro — how that Char had come to idolize Lalah in death.
"If we could be like you, humanity could be saved. If you were still here, I could be saved."
His line about Lalah being an existence that could have been like a mother to him; his discussion of "machines;" his simultaneous desire to be a father and unease at the idea of another person, who should be more intuitive than him, relying on him… Char has built up the idea of Newtypes in his head, until it has become the solution to every problem. "There is a type of person — a type of human — who can fix all of this. Maybe if I can rely on such a person, I could also become someone like that. If I can manufacture a person like that — if we can all become like that, everything that is wrong in this world will end, finally."
If, like a child, I can find an ideal parent, I can become a better person, and everything that is wrong with me will be healed.
There is no such person. That's not how human beings work. Amuro cannot convince him of this truth, but Amuro knows: we are all alone together and none of us can overcome that reality. All we can do is reach out to one another.
Amuro doesn't even want to do that anymore, though. Not to Char. Not to anyone.
Lalah is too close to him and he feels the damage of the battlefield too keenly. If he doesn't maintain some distance, it'll drive him to break down. That's why he tells Hathaway that he has to give up on Quess. It's for Hathaway's own good.
If you zoom out, both "politics" and "the battlefield" are two aspects of "society," and "society" is both the collective will of all people living in an era and the singular ties between individual people who are subject to "society."
I know that's overly philosophical, but what I'm saying is that Amuro's feelings of "being too close" to someone and "feeling the damage of the battlefield" can be metaphors for being vulnerable with others in this deeply painful, ideologically impure world.
Char wants everyone to feel what Amuro feels. Amuro doesn't want anyone to feel what he feels. Both desire an end to all the problems that plague society, but they have very different ideas about how to get there.
Char wants all people to have to reckon with the consequences of hurting one another by forcing them to confront that pain directly, as an extension of their own emotions. Amuro knows that would just drive everyone to some terrible breaking point. He believes communication with words, collaborative action, education, and all of those traditional, slow-moving methods are the best way forward for humanity.
But Amuro doesn't want to be vulnerable. And all the high-minded talk of compromise in the world will fall apart if you're not willing to reach out to others with vulnerability.
When Amuro tells Hathaway to give up on Quess, he's being pragmatic. He's also being a rotten adult. The only thing worth living for is love, and without that, humanity will even go so far as to destroy the Earth.
Neither Char nor Amuro are correct. Having become adults, they have become the enemy.
My own feelings are so violent. They're a reflection of the political landscape and the battlefield called "society." People who understand the words "bound down by Earth's gravity" are unfortunate.
None of us live alone. We are all part of the world and are affected by the world in turn. We are not such independent existences that we can overcome the parts of other people that we have absorbed.
We learn to be people from our parents, thinking of them as ideal existences until we get old enough to notice their flaws. We don't forgive them for being human beings instead of machines. And they, who were always hoping for us to overcome society on the backs of our inspiration towards the future, are disappointed in us for being shaped by society. We repeat the cycle, hoping our own children will overcome Earth's gravity. But all of us are connected to the water-colored star that birthed us.
This is about national identity.
This is about being the child of my parents.
This is about living as a human being.
I will never be able to have another conversation with my mother, but even if I could, it would not save me.
I will have to be vulnerable with the people who are still able to hear me.