#gaelio bauduin

MG 1/100 Gjallarhorn Arianrhod Fleet Unit No. 21 Gundam Frame ASW-G-XX "Gundam Vidar"

It's done!! After completing the frame last week, adding all of the surface armour and acessories went quite smoothly. I'd already weathered and prepped everything, but even then I had to move quite quickly to get it done during the build meet I was at.

The Vidar is a disguised and revamped Gundam Kimaris Trooper, incorporating new technology and armour onto the ancient Kimaris frame, including a 3rd Ahab Reactor (done in a really nice trans-pink), knee thrusters, and these really nice rapier sheaths on the skirt armour.

Being a modern Master Grade kit, it comes colour separated from the get go, with a complete inner frame that peaks through the multi-layered armour plates. The Iron Blooded Orphans MGs in particular seem to show off a lot of the inner frame, so I'm happy I took the extra time to weather and detail it, although a lot of the frame marking stickers did get covered completely.

The colours chosen for the kit are really nice, especially the almost lavender blue that makes up the majority of the armour panels and contrasts really well with the bright pink marking stickers. I had a lot of fun with these - there are far fewer than on a RG kit, and they're nice and big so they're easy to apply. I even added a few extras, including the Bauduin family crest on the shoulder and cockpit. There's also some really nice shiny gold and chrome pieces for the frame.

There wasn't much for me to do in terms of further detail, apart from panel lining. I used both a liquid enamel liner as well as felt tip to touch up any mistakes. For some of the black armour panel pieces, I also experimented using a light grey liner, to give them some extra contrast, as black can tend to get lost and look like it isn't there at all. I've seen people do this on aircraft and it usually looks quite good, and I think it gave a few of the armour pieces a really nice worn metallic effect.

I also painted the little pilot figure and added some weathering. For the armour panels, I tried adding some drybrushing to the edges before assembly, helping to accentuate the seams between panels. I tried out a new weathering technique too using a chrome paint marker on a few of the sharp edges, and spreading out the self-leveling paint using a q-tip. This added some super shiny worn edges that catch the light and add a bit of textural variation over the matte finish.

A neat feature of this kit are the eyes and rear camera. They're moulded as a single hidden trans-pink piece that's also UV reactive, so you can make them light up both by shining UV or blue light on them, as well as placing a light source behind the head. Unfortunately there's no room in the head for an LED, although you could probably hollow it out to fit one in, and hide the battery in the backpack.

This kit is super poseable, with nicely designed joints that aren't difficult to move but are decently stiff and can hold themselves in place. Apparently the hips have been redesigned from the original MG Barbatos, although I still found them a little looser than I would've liked.

There's a decent number of gimmicks for this kit, as well as weapons and option parts. The feet include the fold-out "Hunter's Edge", which is partially missing on the HG version.

There's a few gimmicks included on the side-skirt/sheaths. There's two small verniers that swing outwards, and a little extra joint piece to let you move the skirt around for more flexible poses. The sheaths include 6 replaceable blades for the rapier, as well as the handle, and you can recreate the "reloading" action by sliding the entire sheath down, which actually pulls out a single blade attached to the handle.

There are also 2 extra "detached" blades, representing used blades that have been deposited as explosives in another mobile suit (although there's not really anything to attach them to for display, until Bandai releases more MG IBO kits).

One of the coolest parts of this kit are the twin pistols hidden in the front skirt. The holster gimmick can be a little finnicky when replacing the pistols, but they're held there securely when in place. The pistols themselves are nicely recreated, and you can even rack the slide of each one!

Finally, there's the large 110mm rifle. This has little tabs that slot in to a few holes on either side of the skirt, and an aiming camera in trans-pink that even has a foil sticker behind it to make it stand out. The rifle was always the funniest aspect of this suit to me, as it's clearly IBO's homage to the RX-78-2 beam rifle, and yet it's used by a suit that shows up as a transitional form in like 3 episodes and it gets fired once.

It's still undeniably one of the coolest parts of the kit, and it even has a removable magazine, although the part lacks a catch and so can be removed a little too easily. I wish it had had an actuating bolt as well, although it didn't really have one in the show.

Alongside all the weapons are a few hand options for holding the weapons. The hands are rather nicely done, with only a single hand that needs to be built, alongside a single moveable thumb. Instead, you switch out the fingers, between a pre-posed left and right pistol grip, open fist, closed fist, or open hand. This was much more preferable to working with the poseable hands I've seen on other MG kits. I still have sour memories of the fiddly poseable hands from the RG kits. The removable fingers also make it easier to swap out weapons for posing, and there's a little slot in each hand that clips into the weapons to hold them securely.

A short story from the official "Third District Orphanchu" artbook, translated by https://bsky.app/profile/trafalgarlog.bsky.social /@trafalgarlog with images photographed and edited by me (sorry about the quality!)

I am now going to talk about it. (There will be spoilers for Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans)

Gaelio did everything he possibly could to save Ein, going beyond human biology. Eventually, Ein is left as part of Gundam Vidar. He is there, but not human anymore, as represented by being in shadow.

After this is done, Gaelio swears to take revenge on those who left Ein this way, even adopting the name Vidar (Norse god of vengeance, according to minimal internet searching). (Also interesting to note that Vidar is named after a god while all other Gundam frames are named after demons)

It is also stated in the show that he spends ALL of his free time maintaining and tuning his mobile suit. Clearly he truly cares about this thing that everyone else only knows to be a soulless machine.

When Gaelio fights, he states that he and Ein are perfectly in sync. Sharing the same name, they ARE one being.

Ah, excellent. A question that lets me talk about one of my favourite things: Gaelio Bauduin's suffering.

I'd actually be interested in surveying how Gundam as a whole has handled revenge narratives over the years. A few characters spring to mind who ultimately (or temporarily) dodged a bullet by evolving past vengeance as a motivation - Zechs, Prospera, even Char himself, to a degree. I'm not sure how widely-spread that pattern is, although I suspect it depends on how one defines 'revenge-hungry' as a trait.

In any case, I think the allusions to Gundam's history are far less important here than that thing I am always banging on about, which is IBO being a tragedy. From that perspective, it's fairly obvious why Gaelio lives to see the closing credits: the most tragic end to his plot-line is for him to win.

I'm going to preface this by saying I do not have a psychic link to the creators of this show. That's important because it is quite possible - perhaps even likely - that Gaelio's survival originates as a decision to flip the script compared to previous Gundam shows, or revenge plots in general. His Vidar phase is, after all, at its core, a what-if where Garma survives Char's attempt to murder him.

Equally, the execution matters and I'm more interested in the final result than I am which tropes are being subverted. That I'm willing to make some definite statements about, in terms of interpreting how things play out.

Let's consider Gaelio as a character. Two of his defining traits are his moral compass and his romanticism. What I mean by the latter is that Gaelio spends most of his screen-time operating within a slightly heightened view of reality. This is distinct from McGillis' idealism, which represents a distorted view of what the world ought to be like; instead, Gaelio makes a lot of mistakes about how the world is, usually viewing it through rosy-tinted glasses.

This is what the Season 1 betrayal demonstrates, as Gaelio discovers that far from being McGillis' confident in usurping power from the older generation, the whole hidden agenda hinged on Gaelio's death. The show later revisits and dissects this during the reveal of Vidar's true identity, as Gaelio reflects on their shared childhood and seeing McGillis put on a mask to navigate the Gjallarhorn social sphere, while assuming that he was the One True Friend, around whom McGillis could relax. This mistaken assumption blinded Gaelio to some pretty blatant manipulation on McGillis' part.

Then there's Ein. I joke a lot about Gaelio falling head over heels for a raving nutter, but the kernel of text beneath the bisexual reading is that the way Gaelio sees Ein is firmly at odds with how we, the audience, get to see him. Ein's a desperately hurt and unstable young man who rationalises some pretty abhorrent intentions by leaning on his sense of self-righteousness. In this regard he is, in fact, an excellent reflection of Gjallarhorn as it actually exists. But to Gaelio, he is an exemplar of what Gjallarhorn should be, a true-hearted soldier in a sea of conniving politicians, dedicated, loyal, forthright and honest. This is what Gaelio believes himself to be fighting for, at McGillis' side, in a crusade against a failing system.

It's flat bullshit if you take even a small step backwards and view Ein's actions as what they literally are, namely trying to murder a bunch of kids over the explicit wishes of the man he is supposedly trying to avenge. And McGillis is trying to build his own power-base at the expense of his peers, who are rivals for the status he's attempting to seize. Yet by dint of his personal connections to these two, Gaelio romanticises their actions into something more meaningful. Likewise when he pursue revenge on McGillis, he does so while evoking mythology. He's a god fighting a terrible wolf! Even his embrace of that 'ugly emotion' (per Julieta) is couched in grand terms.

The reason I highlight this aspect of Gaelio is that it's key to how his morality actually plays out. He is one of the characters who learns and grows the most over the course of the series. But he also has one of the firmest sets of morals to begin with. He respects loyalty and is loyal in turn. He cares deeply about the people he considers friends, going so far as easing their final moments however he can. He is offended by the police actions in the Dort colonies, displaying indignation and disgust when the Regulatory Bureau engages in wholesale slaughter. And as much as he develops a vendetta against Tekkadan out of wounded pride, a lot of what he does in the back half of Season 1 is framed around supporting Ein's quest for 'justice', specifically.

His desire for revenge extends naturally from this, in that he is carrying it out as much for Carta and Ein as he is for himself. Significantly, he is willing to 'give up his humanity' for that goal: doing right by the people he's lost is more important to him than being grossed out by the prejudices he grew up with. Indeed, it's through knowing Ein and taking these steps that he gets past those prejudices, finally acknowledging Tekkadan's humanity. His personal moral framework allows him to changes his mind when exposed directly to real people. He does in fact really care about those around him, be they the kid next door, his new subordinate, or the weird girl who starts hanging around him.

However.

Gaelio's temperament is such that by and large, he is always reacting to what is in his head, not actual, literal reality. Consider the case of the mobile armour. He works out this whole nefarious plot that McGillis must be pursuing, in line with a reformed view of the man as a constantly self-serving arch-villain. True, that's a negative conception of McGillis, but it's still a romanticised one, sanding off the complicated edges. Because as we know, McGillis goes to Mars with no intentions other than containing Hashmal. He isn't interested in winning an Order of the Seven Stars at first, knowing full well that the last thing anyone needs is for that engine of destruction to wake up. It's only later, with outside prompting, that he entertains the idea of using the situation to his advantage like that. His original motives appear to basically just be public safety.

Gaelio is constantly doing this, operating under the firm belief that he knows exactly what the people around him or opposing him are like, in ways that make the situation a lot simpler than it is. In this respect he is a neat inversion of Kudelia, who spends a lot of her time grappling with the nuts and bolts of the world, compromising her own sense of right and wrong to get the necessary result. Gaelio does not do that. He doesn't do it even when he thinks he's doing it, by allying with Rustal's hyper-pragmatic faction and using the Type E system.

Every step of the way, he convinces himself McGillis was always and forever a false friend, a liar who manipulated him from the word go, the Pied Piper, deluding hundreds of people with poisoned promises. Yes, he's making tough decisions and sacrificing some of his principles, but it's in a just cause. His revenge is against a monster!

There is a significant parallel to Ein here, as you noted. Like Gaelio, Ein ignores reality in favour of a version where he is a purely righteous force, all but declaring that he's doing God's work by trying to kill a bunch of teenagers. Gaelio doesn't put it in quite so dramatically: he's essentially demanding that McGillis acknowledge him as a victim, rather than a mere road-bump on the path to success. Underneath, though, there's a similar note being struck. They're both dressing themselves up as avenging angels, unquestionably in the right.

In this setting, that's rhetoric born of privilege. Gaelio gets to clamber up on to a pedestal because it's his natural habitat. The illusions he suffers are part and parcel of being a member of Gjallarhorn's elite, in contrast to Tekkadan, who very much don't start from the assumption that they're the good guys. Mechanically, that forms a major part of why Gaelio gets to live: he's got too much material support to simply lose and die.

But that doesn't excuse him from being undone by the tragedy he is a part of. So it is that his final story beat is of finally having the scales ripped from his eyes.

Gaelio gets everything he wanted for the whole of Season 2. With the help of Ein's ghost, he defeats McGillis and has the big climactic confrontation, forcing the other man to look him in the face and see what he has done. He gets to wrap his hand around McGillis' neck and watch the life fade from his eyes.

And in that moment, he is confronted with the actual truth of who McGillis is and why he did what he did. There's no monster. No raving lunatic driven by an unreasoning lust for power. Just a lonely man who couldn't face the fact he was loved. Someone who believed in an ideal so much, he would deny his own feelings for the sake of forging forward. A broken boy who couldn't tell the difference between real and fake happiness.

Death would, I suspect, have been merciful compared to those realisations. Can you imagine being Gaelio after this, dealing with the knowledge that you got everything so catastrophically wrong? Gaelio believed in a lot of the same things McGillis did when it came to Gjallarhorn. They should have been natural allies, to say nothing of how he'd likely have reacted had he learned about the abuse McGillis suffered. I don't tend to entertain what-ifs with this series very often; I am nevertheless convinced that if Gaelio knew what Iznario did earlier on, he'd have swung for that bastard (and Carta would have helped). The easiest thing McGillis could have done to improve his odds of success would have been to bring his best friend on board. It was in pushing that friend as far away as possible that he set himself on the road to ruin.

Yes, the ideal was poisonous. Gaelio just didn't realise McGillis was a victim of it too.

The last we see of him, he's flirting with Julieta and reaping the consequences. But prior to that, we get a glimpse of how shattered he is by what happened, as he stares at his hand - a call-back to Mikazuki and most especially to Kudelia - and thinks, maybe, if I'd understood a little sooner...

He has the Type E removed, re-succumbs to the injuries McGillis inflicted. It's not a horrible ending by any stretch of the imagination. The fates of the less well-off characters are underscored by the survival and relative luxury of someone in his position. That alone makes it worth including, a final flourish on the themes of inequality and social injustice. At the same time, what we are presented with in the epilogue suggests repentance and perhaps guilt. Gaelio Bauduin won and lost in the same instant. Now he has to live with that for the rest of his life.

I personally think that's a damn-near perfect conclusion for him. Far less cheap than 'revenge will get you killed'. Sometimes, if you're rich enough (unlike Ein), you get to walk away from things other people don't. Sometimes, if you're a semi-decent person (unlike Ein), that's not going to make you feel any better about it.

That's my perspective anyway. I've considered this a lot, since one of the major parts of writing Wishing on Space Hardware was taking Gaelio and Julieta and pushing at their status in the epilogue, trying to unpick the emotional threads there. I know I reference my fanfic a fair bit and it's not-not in the hopes of getting more readers, but I really did do a lot of my thinking-out-loud on this topic there. This chapter from The Ares Affair and of course his part of Ragnarök in G Minor (spoilers!) are very much about working through what Gaelio's ending says about him as a character and how he's used in the show.

I think the way I put it best, though, was this bit from We Three Kings:

images + text of ito's bonus manga that came as a theater bonus after the read more

usual disclaimer: i might have misread or misinterpreted smth not fluent and pretty bad at reading handwriting