Yeah I know all of that you talk about, I know my fair share of Gundam history. The problem with most of the non-Tomino UC works based on the OYW is that it is preciously about Zabi family’s Zeon and their influence on the troops, and the soldiers of Zeon during that period. Tomino obviously modeled the OYW Zeon (post Zeon Deikun/Char is already planning his revenge, troops are rallying behind the Zabi philosophy etc) as a jab at both the Nazi regime as well as Japanese imperial militarism mentality but that image are basically forgotten by a lot of the fans and actively being rewritten by the creators (that are not Tomino) themselves. For almost all of the non-Tomino works you see see loads and loads of honorable soldiers with “pure” ideals (that the Zeon has the right to cleanse not just the Federation but all the Earthnoids) and are avid supporters of Giren (Gundam’s Hilter, Tomino wrote a scene in MSG that specifically references that) in recent OYW works. Case in point, the infamous Gato of 0083, lots of “fans” found him to be cool and hail him as their idol/hero, but completely forgot the fact that he was an avid supporter, a blind follower even, of Gihren as well as his ethnic superior talks, NOT Zeon Deikun’s more pacific ideal, and the creators went to great lengths of making these soliders looking really cool, charming, righteous and powerful as well. This is the kind of pro-Zeon works I’m talking about. And as fans gets absorbed into how powerful these soldiers are, they tend to forget what these soldiers are fighting for, such as in the case of Gato, sure he is a great pilot, but he was fighting for Gihren and Gihren’s ideals! The question worth asking here is – is this the kind of character that people should be idolising? Just because that Gato makes a good soldier (in relative terms – as he follow orders, fights honorably etc), he was *most definitely* fighting for the wrong ideals and shouldn’t be cheered/hailed for for doing so, which most fans of Gato tends to do, and this is the sort of comparison I’m drawing parallels to here.

No it’s clearly based on the Nazi uniform, since you can see the belt-over-the-jacket design, which is unique to the Nazi uniform design but missing in the Chinese uniform. Also the armband of course will not have the swastika – even the Japanese is not that DUMB to openly advocate this. But even then, the general design is obviously inspired/based on the Nazi uniform.

>ヘイちゃん

Well of course the Japanese fans are not offend – this is why the costume designers think is ok to use it for her concert.

It’s not a news at all in Japan.

It seems to me that Japanese – at least the 20 or so Nana fans I personally know – are completely not offended by Nazi related issues.

And for those of you who want to see a clearer picture:
http://www.anican.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=163

Asian and Middle Eastern countries could care less about Hitler and such. Where problems start is when you bring this type of stuff to the West (ie America, Britain, France, and ESPECIALLY Germany), then it becomes such a major issue that it has reputation damaging effects.

Years ago, a previous owner of the Cincinnati Reds supported Adolf Hitler, and was practically banned from Baseball from that time forth.

In the picture though, it’s not clear if its a Nazi uniform. For all we know, it could be a Chinese army uniform (which it actually more closely resembles), so I wouldn’t go calling it a Nazi uniform yet until I see the Hail Hitler pose and the swastika.