The Xi, like a lot of designs in the original novel, has been redesigned in the past. I don't think we'll see any really significant changes in the design. Still, these are just teasers that focus mainly on the early parts of the story (the shuttle hijacking in the trailer is in the second chapter of the novel).
As I said to you just recently, and as I said to you five years ago, the story of Gundam Unicorn is not solely an allegory for World War II. It's probably fair to say that it's not an allegory for World War II at all, even though Full Frontal's plan alludes to an element of that history. Gundam Unicorn is first of all a sequel to Char's Counterattack, which is itself a sequel to ZZ Gundam, which is a sequel to Zeta Gundam, which is a sequel to the original. It's an entry in a long running franchise and it's open to that franchise to be about itself.
With regards your specific point that by making it so Full Frontal could succeed this, by necessity this 'legitimises' the actions of Imperial Japan is a pretty long bow to draw. You say that Minerva should have told Full Frontal that it wouldn't even be possible, but he's the main antagonist. He's supposed to be dangerous. But that doesn't mean he's legitimate. When he reveals his motivations Minerva actually does tell him that it won't work. This is somewhat different, but after he explains himself, she tells him, straight to his face, in essentially the same scene, that all it will do is create a different cycle of resentment with the roles reversed. That it is essentially just a flimsy justification.
That's literally the text of the story. The main revelation that we get about Full Frontal is that for all his professed ideals he is ultimately empty, that there's nothing to him except for Char Aznable's lingering guilt and resentment. To me that seems to more or less fit your requirements for it to not be 'bad civilisation.'
The point isn't that it won't work. Again, Fash love villains with plans that wont work, as long as they look cool doing it.
The point is that the plan relies on the biggest victims of Zeon taking Zeon's side in away that suggests that, by analogy, the GEACPS was a genuine attempt at pan-asian sentiment and not a thin facade for colonial exploitation.
Which is, again, infuriating to the victims of that exploitation. I'm angry about "Co-prosperity" and the "everyone apparently forgot about the mass murder less than a generation ago, because otherwise no one with a functioning brain would trust this proposal coming from someone wearing Zeon iconography" not "Full Frontal wasn't confronted about being wrong." He was, you're right on that point, okay?
Minerva's objection isn't "Zeon was never truly for spacenoid solidarity, even I know that's a lie," which would at least reflect the reality both in verse and out. It is, instead, by your own description: "A pan-spacenoid economic alliance would just become as bad as the Federation in time." Which is, granted, a legitimate and meaningful objection to FF's plan on distant and dispassionate pacifistic moral principles. It's NOT AT ALL a rejection of "co-prosperity spheres" on honesty and human rights moral principles. It also completely skips the HIGHLY topical "my dude, no one trusts the genocide man to lead a currency union," which strikes me a big (and problematic) thing to skip over.
My objection isn't that FF's plan is bad - if he could get cooperation (he can't because that's insane), economic warfare isn't a bad path for his goals - it's that his plan requires ridiculous premises and and therefore
insulting to the viewers as thinking humans as well as because of the RL thing it parallels.
To much of Asia "co-prosperity sphere" is
Japan putting them under the boot under the blatantly false promise of coming together as comrades to face the European powers. Minerva's objection translates as "But if all Asia gets together to beat on Europe, won't we become the colonizers?" which I think is a noble sentiment, but clearly missing the point. Asia won't get together, because Asia remembers that the last time someone suggested this what actually happened was
mass murder.
Zeon was far worse about the mass murder than Japan. Zeon proposing a CPS would quite literally be greeted with gunfire by any side full of actual human beings (many of whom have
seen the WMD'd colonies Zeon left in their wake even as they claimed to be for spacenoids) rather than cardboard cut-out non-people.
Unicorn apparently has loads of non-people (or the MCs actually thinking that everyone else on the other colonies have no agency and will fall in line with crazyplan, which is
even worse), because the objections I pointed out are never even hinted at. Mr. perhaps-not-as-bad-as-fivemarks-says is apparently oblivious to what kinds of associations the words "co-prosperity sphere" evokes in non-Japanese-nationalist people.
It honestly feels like Fukui
refuses to believe that the GEACPS was not proposed in good faith to begin with because surely my beloved Japan wouldn't be so evil? I mean, that may be unfair to the guy but I can't blame
@Fivemarks for assuming the worst in this context.
For emphasis, the Underlined part above is auto-aggro for a lot of Asian people. (I'm honestly mellow about it compared to my uncle)
