"
Disco Gun" is a term
devised by online communities for an unusual editing technique used
for the American broadcast of the
anime series
Mobile
Suit Gundam SEED in which distracting
neon lights are painted on firearms to make them
appear to be unrealistic weapons. The first one, held by
Andrew
Waltfeld, appeared in episode 19 to much surprise from fans.
While the series had quite heavily edited up until that point, guns
normally had their sound effects toned down to sound more
"futuristic". In this case, however, a troublesome situation
occurred in which a gun was being pointed directly at an underaged
character. Despite the fact that the character was a
soldier fighting in a war situation
and the gun was never actually intended to be fired at him,
Williams
Street was ordered to either alter the gun or cut the
scene.
Based on the fact that edited guns in the series
Outlaw
Star looked much more plausible, some believe that the
disco guns were done at the last minute and intentionally made to
look ridiculous so that the edits would be obvious to viewers.
Whatever the case, this became a trend as the series went on, with
virtually every gun in the show being altered merely for the sake
of continuity and, likely, stricter watchdog censorship from
Turner's
BS&P division. In one
particular case, laser beams were also painted in as two characters
fired at each other. However, in episode 49,
Muruta Azrael's gun
didn't have any edits to it for most of the episode. But near the
end, after he shot
Natarle Badgiruel, it was shown in its
edited form for several frames. It is unknown if that was due to
bad editing or if it was intentional. The same thing occurred in
the following episode where
Patrick Zala's gun and one of the ZAFT soldiers
guns were also not shown edited until that ZAFT soldier shot
Patrick Zala and that was when their guns were shown in their
edited forms. The term "[this character] got DISCO'D" became a
popular catchphrase.
Certain viewers attempted to defend the
edit as fitting in with the futuristic setting of the show.
However, this is at odds with the established Gundam SEED canon
where beam weapons were still fairly new and the technology was
certainly not at the stage where it could be miniaturised into a
human held gun.
It should be pointed out that previous
Gundam series had
run with no similar edits. The guns were also unedited when the
show aired on YTV in Canada.