So I find a set of HD-remastered episodes of Gundam Wing for free on Youtube. Sweet, time to indulge in 90s nostalgia.
And in the first episode I hit the scene people make fun of, where Relena, the richest girl in school, gives Heero, the new transfer student, an invitation to her birthday party tomorrow, in front of her fawning entourage -- and the guy not only rips up the invitation in front of her, he whispers that he'll kill her as he passes by.
Taken out of context one is tempted to say "dude what the fuck is your problem" but in context Heero's problem is clear: He's one of five Gundam pilots engaged in a secret military rebellion and he's been told in no uncertain terms that he has to kill everyone who sees him in action, which now includes Relena because she saw him wash up on shore. He's a child soldier infiltrating a civilian setting and he's like so many child soldiers who only know how to address problems through violence.
So, for example, he's entirely willing to make an escape from the beach by beating up a bunch of EMTs and stealing their ambulance. At the school, when he is put in an awkward unexpected position of a semi-public invitation, unfamiliar with basic skills of diplomacy and politeness, he panics and thereby falls back on his default, though thankfully not to the point of open violence.
I suppose Heero's real problem, then, is that he was either given terrible training for his civilian identity, or he received good training and he's so thoroughly optimized for war that he lets his usual M.O. show through his disguise anyway.
Or it could be that he is just as much a Drama Queen as the scene out of context suggests, because if you're going to kill someone, you probably shouldn't tell them. If he was 100% professional he would either snipe Relena before she gets to school or keep his damn mouth shut until he decides to make a move. But, he's a teenager, and thus followed the characteristic teenage attitude of letting drama overtake practicality. Clearly effective as a soldier, but he is still, also as clearly, a child, who should not be in this situation. What the hell is going on here? Whose stupid idea was this? How could anyone think this was a good idea? What sort of crazy situation would let this happen?
Whatever dumb war earth and the space colonies are fighting this time. It ain't ever pretty.
Having not seen the remaining episodes yet, I will allow the possibility that Heero is actually being savvy here, by deliberately alienating everyone in the school so they don't ask him any questions, and trying to scare Relena into keeping her mouth shut, so that he doesn't make a visible mess by killing a girl connected to important people. But if he's not telling her specifically 'keep your mouth shut or I kill you' then he's still being childish with that brief death threat because he is, I will point out again, a child who should not be in this situation at all.
Viewing the whole thing as an adult, the show doesn't look as pretty as it might have when I was a young rapscallion. It looks pretty dark from episode 1 onwards.
In general, Gundam is a curious franchise because its series are nearly always about the grim physical and psychological realities of war, where even the less horrifying stories usually have a teenager roped into wielding the current war's most powerful weapon, thereby being shoved to the front of the front lines -- and yet for all the unsettling implications, they're combined with the necessities of a merchandise-driven Shonen show that wants to advertise the associated toys. So on the outside of the Gundam you have bright primary colors and awesome weapons and heroic battles and explosions and mid-air acrobatics and a soundtrack of High Adventure, and on the inside you have a classic teenage Shonen protagonist operating pilot controls, but instead of saying "for great justice" he's saying "everyone who sees this thing has to die", and outside the battles themselves you have people engaged in the bleak banality of politics while shuffling people around like pieces on a game board, child soldiers or not.
Plus the occasional gory death, which is occasionally shown in as graphic detail the artists can get away with. Blood and all. Want to see someone get their head knocked off by accident? I'm not telling you where you find that one.
I suppose you could call it a merchandise-driven show for adults. Same Toyetic habits as Transformers or G.I. Joe or any Shonen series, except that the characters use real bullets, people die permanently all over the place, sometimes they die in pointless random accidents, vehicles take realistic damage, and nobody comes out looking shiny or even clean. It's got teenage protagonists like Shonen, sure, but the franchise is more like 'Seinen with a toyline.'
Unless it's Mobile Fighter G Gundam. But that one ditches the Real Robot/Real War aspect so it barely fits into the franchise. I don't go into a Gundam series expecting idealism. Nor do I expect the overblown Grimdark of a sci-fi horror story -- I expect realism, wherein the characters, however heroic they may be, still have to acknowledge the costs of their actions. In the grim darkness of the near future, there is not only war, but there's a hell of a lot of it and children are all too often invoved.
Don't ask to be a Gundam pilot unless you know exactly what you're in for. And pity the kids who fall into the cockpit. They don't leave with their hearts intact.