All the Gundams revealed so far are initially only armed with physical melee weapons. And we know that one-on-one duels were commonplace in the time of the Calamity War. With this we can assume that Gundams were made specifically for combat against a single Mobile Suit at close range and that they would need to be upgraded to fight in the modern battle situations where they're more likely to face two or more enemies at a time.
With the revelation that MS were created to fight Mobile Armors and that physical weapons were really the ONLY thing capable of killing Mobile Armors (Melee weapons to crush their thick armor at close range and Dansleif rounds for long range), the standard equipment being close range weaponry and almost every single gundam carrying heavy weaponry by default suddenly makes a lot of sense.
Technology could have also degraded from the Calamity War onward, with modern day mobile suits being decidedly less advanced and armed than those of the past. The fact Gjallarhorn has a tight grip on everything, namely Ahab Reactor production and/or distribution, seems to hint at this. And as for suits that have survived to the modern day (namely the Gundams), they would end up being downgraded as well due to their original specs being long lost and modern tech would being brought in to improvise. This seems to be the case for the Barbatos and the Gusion; the former is hinted to have had more equipment to it than what's been shown (the Gauntlet it was originally armed with being an indication, as it was theorized to be part of the Barbatos' original weapons) and the latter was heavily customized by the Brewers upon recovery (making one believe that the Gusion looked and performed far differently than its modern incarnation).
The Gusion Rebake, which is the Gusion once it has been stripped of its Shoal Zone armor, takes it even further away (It looks very similar to Barbatos due to using its spare armor in its construction). It's implied that it was initially more akin to the Brewer's take on the machine, albeit with a different color scheme, armaments, and the ability to operate in the atmosphere.
Given that Flauros ended up being a suit designed for ranged combat, it's likely that some of them (i.e., the Barbatos, the Kimaris) were made for close combat, while others (the aforementioned Flauros) were designed for long-range combat.
Gundam Barbatos Lupus Rex - Barbatos, King of the Wolves. It's fitting considering that Tekkadan's structure is quite like a real-world wolf pack, which is an extended family unit built around a central pair.
It seems odd at first that Gjallarhorn, an organisation meant to protect the peace, is named after an object in Norse Mythology that would announce the coming of Ragnarok. But, it's eventually revealed that Gjallarhorn was founded during the end days of the Calamity War, and their objective was to finally kill the "angels of destruction". In other words, the name was initially used to announce Ragnarokuponthe apocalyptic machines known as Mobile Armours. With supplemental information stating that Agnika Kaieru was a Hot-BloodedMaster Swordsman, he probably came up with the name to help spur the other Gundam pilots into action.
Watch how CGS/Tekkadan operates and keep in mind that these kids aren't mere space rats. They are private military company who might at least received some higher-than-normal training.
Turns out "Turbines" isn't meant as a self-named band, but the clan surname.
Usually, even if All There in the Manual is in play, we know some of the main characters' ages nine or ten episodes into a Gundam series. But so far there don't seem to have been any reveals of any ages - not even for the main characters in Tekkadan. There's a rough height and build range that implies which guys are older and younger, but this makes a bit more sense when you consider that the vast majority of Tekkadan are orphans, many are illiterate, and most were brought up on the streets. They may not know how to read a calendar to find their own birthday. Some of them may have been orphans long enough that nobody actually knows or cared to tell them when their birth dates were.
Small thing, but in Episode 13 Mikazuki picks up a seed he dropped on the floor and then eats it. Why should he care anyway? Nobody taught CGS kids proper manners before.
Ep. 14 outright states that nobody taught them about personal hygiene either.
When a cheeky Tekkadan kid insult Atra in her face that she doesn't have any breast, Atra acted... rather mature? No freakouts. No moment of self-conscious. Just an urge to insult him right back. This gets hi-lighted in episode 13 when the series puts Almiria and Atra side by side. No thanks to her former workplace.
Take note that Atra often comforts Kudelia, who is older than her.
Kudelia being (at least implicitly) not much older than Atra and Mika and yet towering over them makes a lot more sense if you compare their backgrounds. Kudelia was brought up in a high-class rich family, whilst Mika and Atra spent a large part of their childhood on the streets underfed and malnourished. Often, children brought up poor look physically underdeveloped compared to those in the same general age group who are raised in more privileged circumstances. (May also explain why the 15-year-old Atra looks like she hasn't hit puberty yet.)
Much has been made of Tekkadan's complete disregard for decorum in battle. (A couple of times, its Played for Laughs. Episode 23, not so much.) However, it should be noted that first of all, CGS's very function as Private Military Contractors probably involved activities and tactics that wouldn't be state-sanctioned. PMCs aren't usually called on for legal operations. They're usually called when someone needs a lot of firepower (and people skilled enough to deploy that firepower) with few to none of the limitations state militaries impose on themselves and each other. Given CGS's leadership were a bunch of crooked, duplicitous bastards from the start, it's a pretty sure bet they didn't impose a one. Second, these are a group of young men who've struggled every day under those bastards just to survive, and are continuing to do so against their current enemies. Third, they all consider eachother brothers and view their freedom and survival as practically sacred. With all that in mind, it stands to reason they're not going to give their foes a chance to take their lives, brothers or freedom from them just for the sake of playing fair.
Carta Issue's relationship with her soldiers is... interesting. She puts them through a lot and seems to treat them like crap, but also reacts badly when one of them is killed. This seems out of character because you'd think someone with her status and haughtiness would say, "We Have Reserves", and just keep moving. But keep in mind that Carta's unit consists mostly of tall, blond, handsome young men, picked mainly because of their resemblance to her childhood crush, McGillis Fareed. Every time she sees one of her handsome, blond soldiers picked off, she imagines McGillis dying in front of her.
This also helps to explain why McGillis was so cold and distant towards her. By surrounding herself with pretty blonde boys, she inadvertently reminds him of his past with a man who also liked pretty blonde boys - just much... younger.
It's probably amusing for some viewers, Canadian or otherwise, to see Edmonton look much like it does today on Post-Calamity Earth, where Australia has already been cratered. Then again, Canada's a famously pacifist country so there might not have been any need for the conflict to spread there. This is further reinforced by characters like Carta Issue and Crank, noted to be exemplary of pre-Calamity values, meaning they would have recognised Canada as a place of refuge.
Perhaps you may feel curious why Ein deliberately aimed his Pile Bunker to the head of Ryusei-Go instead of the cockpit, until you realised Ryusei-Go used to be Crank's Graze and is Ein's Tragic Keepsake. No matter how vengeful and violent he is, Ein would never shoot Crank.
And when Ein called Mika out for killing Crank, Mika asked who Crank was. It's not just Mika having no empathy to his enemies, Crank never introduced his name to Mika at all. Considering how many nameless soldiers Mika killed, he is speaking truth and literallydoesn't know who Crank was.
With the economic blocks of Earth forming their own armies after Gjallarhorn utterly failing to do their jobs, one gets the feeling that this is the exact opposite of what happened in Mobile Suit Gundam 00: where everyone formed a single military after their individual attempts to defeat Celestial Being completely failed.
This reversal further becomes understandable once you take into account how events panned out. In 00, the world chose to unite and gang up against a single N.G.O. Superpower with big sticks (Celestial Being): uniting would indeed make sense to combat a status quo-ending threat. In IBO, Tekkadan emerges as an N.G.O. Superpower with some big sticks (the Barbatos and Gusion), but is still functionally within the authority of the Arbrau Parliament. Basically, a Lensman Arms Race has been launched, akin to Ameria gaining an edge over Capital Tower and Towasanga last time (only this time, the political conflicts are actually clearer in origin and emergence).
The Combat Pragmatist attitude of Tekkadan when dealing with their Gjallarhorn foes, vicious though it is, is totally justified. They don't trust Gjallarhorn, and for good reason given what happened in episode 16. The corrupt nature of the organization is obvious to all but the most naive members of Gjallarhorn itself. "Honorable" characters such as Crank, Carta, and Gaelio, are badly outnumbered.
Why have so many Gundams been found around Mars? Why did Barabatos need to have the Cockpit replaced by a Mobile Workers in the first episode? Because there was a Mobile Armor there. They were fighting against it and Barbatos' original cockpit likely got crushed by it.
The fact that nanolaminate armor can no sell beam weapons makes sense when you realize that Mobile suits and therefore nanolaminate armor came after the Mobile Armors. It makes sense that they would make the armor invincible to beam weapons to stand a chance.
There's another reference with the Ahab Reactors - we know now that the technology was developed for Mobile Armors, and was later used for for the Ars Goetia Gundams, which were developed to destroy the much larger machines. By the end of the first season, the reference is sealed with the self-destructive nature of the AV System inside said Gundams (instead of a leg, Mika 'loses' an arm and an eye).
The reveal of McGillis' backstory ends up explaining why he holds such an affinity towards Tekkadan. McGillis, an orphan, was the victim of abuse and forced into prostitution as a child. His circumstances really weren't different than "the space rats" and his Ruthless Ambition to climb his way to the top shows that he's not that different than the Tekkadan members.
It also adds another layer towards explaining why he keeps his relationship with Almiria chaste. Having been a child prostitute, he is quite aware of how damaging such sexual relations can be for a child and wouldn't dare do such a thing with her.
Backstory or not, you'd think that he'd at least show a bit of disdain towards users of the AV system, given that he's a member of Gjallarhorn, right? Well, it makes sense that he doesn't - he himself likely had it in him when he first met Tekkadan, or at least he was still planning out his surgery.
Fridge Horror
And I Must Scream is in full effect when we finally get to see Ein in his new body known as Graze Ein. Ein himself seems happy to his current status, but judging from Gaelio's reaction and the computer interface, one may ask how mangled and twisted Ein has become beneath that mobile suit.
And, based on his earlier characterization, just how happy Ein seems about having something done to him that made a person, in his own view, less than human - and another shared commonality with his mortal enemies in Tekkadan. Something doesn't match up. Is Ein (or whatever's left of him) genuinely happy? Or has he perhaps lost some of his recent memories as a result of spending so much time near death. Or, possibly, did the doctors under McGillis's orders screw around with whatever was left of Ein's brain?
And by the time when Ein piloted it, he's literally driven by vengeance to maneuver the machine and has no qualms about exacting revenge onto everyone, including Kudelia, one may ask how far Ein's mind was twisted during, or even before the surgery.
The relative ease with which this was done was disturbing, almost like Gjallarhorn had spent some time perfecting such an idea and was just waiting for an opportunity to use it. Remember those human debris kids and how some of them didn't get all of the way through the surgery? Wonder who the guinea pigs were for the experiments that led to Graze Ein even beingpossible?
Considering that McGillis implies that the reason for the ban of cybernetics was so that the direct neural hookup technology wouldn't be used against Gjarlhoron, they probably have some lab somewhere making cloned brains for a fake "Autonomous Combat Artificial Intelligence" to make their own version of mobile dolls somewhere...
Speaking of autonomous mobile weapon, the Mobile Armor has a similar characteristics: they have their minds on their own, they are agile and efficient, and they are seemingly built as prototype weapons. In fact, the barrel of Hashmal's beam cannon has the same emblem as the one found on Gundam Barbatos, in which the Gundam Frames were created by Gjallarhorn. This raises a question, what if the Mobile Armors were the predecessors of a such twisted Wetware CPU experiment created by none other than Gjallarhorn themselves? If that's indeed the case, no wonder the Gjallarhorn is more familiar with the Alaya system than everyone else to the point they can create monstrosities like the Graze Ein!
Considering Ein's brain has been digitized into the Gundam Kimaris Vidar's Alaya-Vijnana Type E, this raises some very disturbing questions about the Mobile Armor's origins.
As it turns out, the Hashmal, alongside Gundams Bael and Barbatos, were created by Agnika Kaieru's father.
By the time when Biscuit died, Mikazuki and Orga have declared whoever blocks the way is Tekkadan's enemy, be it Gjallarhorn or not, they will crush every last of them. This raises a question: What would happen if Teiwaz was met after Biscuit's death and they confronted them in the same attitude as how they confront Carta?
Hell, what if it had been the Brewers? Tekkadan's crew would be a hell of a lot smaller. That's for sure. note Keep in mind, a lot of the youngest boys survived and were adopted into Tekkadan due to Orga's kindness and Mika not offing everyone indiscriminately.
Answered for you in Season 2 Episode 17. They just stopped caring and killed other human debris - and that's when they are just totally calm!
When the entire Tekkadan is driven to vengeance, is it what Biscuit and Orga truly wanted? Or is it Mikazuki himself pushing Orga and the rest of the children into following his belief? It's no surprise that Orga has to tell Mika to let go and continue the escort instead of having Mika to land the final blow onto Carta.
McGillis's Awesomeness by Analysis gives a rather disturbing explanation for how he was able to defeat Gaelio and his Gundam Kimaris so easily. He was able to put up a decent fight against Mikazuki after observing him only briefly. Of course he'd have an easy time defeating someone whom he'd likely observed and fought alongside for years. It also helps that he had a mobile suit that was almost perfectly designed to counter his opponent's and for all we know, that may have been the entire reason he picked that suit.
During an episode, Orga mentioned to Biscuit that the reason he pushes forward with his leadership is for one reason, he is paranoid about Mika watching his every action, claiming that no matter where he goes, Mika is watching him. It seems like a harmless and even affectionate reason of a person not wanting to let his friend down. After Biscuit died, it is Mika who outright bullies a terrified looking Orga into diving off the slippy-slop by going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, something Biscuit would be against. So the question becomes: Is Orga really the leader of Takkadan because he wants to be, or is he so terrified of what Mika would do, that in his mind, he doesn't have a choice?
Season 2 shows that due to what happened in season 1's finale, Mika cannot use his right arm outside Barbatos, keeping it in a cast. While his eyes seem to be fine and the bloodshot one was just stress, his nervous system is physically tied to his Gundam now, not unlike Ein's more literal fusion with his Graze. Why is this horror? The ED has a Freeze-Frame Bonus of Mikazuki's left arm turning into Barbatos' as well, the implication lingering that he may give more of his body to the Gundam if not all of it eventually.
Confirmed in Episode 38, where Mika loses the use of his right leg, and it's implied that if he fights like that one more time, it'll be his last.
By the time of Episode 50, Mika overclocks the Barbatos in the final battle and dies due to heavy blood loss, and this is his last.
When it was first shown in Season 1 this image made people thought that McGillis has a younger brother. When one watched Season 2 Episode 18, one has to wonder Fareed is still at it...
While some consider Iok's death at Akihiro's hands as karma. Tekkadan was lucky that Iok took to the field to finish off a dying Akihiro. Had he chose to stay back and them die, Rustal would have no reasons to reform the system and Season 1 repeats itself with Iok being like Mc Gillis, taking over what Mc Gillis lost and becoming the man famous for ending Tekkadan.
On another similar note it's entirely possible Rustal "allowed" Iok to join the assault fully expecting his by then obvious incompetence to finally get him killed. Iok had very publically committed obvious war crimes against Teiwaz and was exposed in this as well as been a general example to the world of how terrible Gjallarhorn could be. If he'd lived Rustal would have had to deal with him somehow otherwise it would look like Gjallarhorn was still as corrupt as Mc Gillis claimed and they could care less which would just incite more rebellion and no reasons to trust them. With Iok dead, Rustal can claim he sent him to fight as penance and he paid for his crimes with his death. Iok has notably been demoted in the final battle from his sniping Reginlaze (which would allow him to pick them off at range or at least make him feel like he's helping) to a standard Graze with a melee weapon as if Rustal was provoking him into attacking the Gundam's head on which would absolutely get him killed.
It seems like a harmless and even affectionate reason of a person not wanting to let his friend down. After Biscuit died, it is Mika who outright bullies a terrified looking Orga into diving off the slippy-slop by going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, something Biscuit would be against. So the question becomes: Is Orga really the leader of Takkadan because he wants to be, or is he so terrified of what Mika would do, that in his mind, he doesn't have a choice?