Chang Wu Fei

Mobile Suit(s) of Choice: "Nataku" Shenlong Gundam, "Nataku" Altron Gundam
Mobile Suits Piloted: "Nataku" Shenlong Gundam, "Nataku" Altron Gundam, Wing Zero Gundam

Sex: Male
Age: 15
Allegiance(s): Colonies

"I am Chang Wu Fei. I won't run or hide until there's no one left to fight."
~Chang Wu Fei

Chang Wu Fei, the Actual Person
Driven by a strong sense of personal integrity and valuing honor and power high above all else, Chang Wu Fei is quite possibly one of the most mature fifteen year old this Gundam fan has ever seen. Of course, all his rivals for that crown do fall into the Gundam Wing series....but, still...

A long time ago, the Dragon Clan was one of the strongest, biggest dynasties in all of Eurasia. However, the powers that be soon concluded that they were getting too strong, and they were banished to an old, rickety little colony in outer space. Now, in the Dragon Clan, it is custom to have arranged marriages at the age of fourteen. Wu Fei's bride to be was a woman his age, named Meiran, who was a strong fighter, fighting for a "justice" that Wu Fei, a quiet reader, couldn't understand and then deemed worthless and stupid. That's right - Wu Fei once thought fighting for "justice" was stupid.

Anyway, they weren't too....compatible, per se, and one day, Wu Fei was reading in a field, after storming angirly away from their wedding,when Meiran, searching for an explanation, came up and challenged him. Wu Fei, who didn't take fighting seriously and thought it was stupid to fight when you could get around, easily defeated her. Meiran, who thought herself to be the strongest of their clan and had even named herself "Nataku," after a Chinese legend (Wu Fei wasn't too happy about her arrogance in naming herself after such a legend...), was flabbergasted and ashamed.

Master O watched them fight and approached Wu Fei. He offered Wu Fei the chance to fight in the Shenlong, but Wu Fei refused it. He thought the war was stupid and pointless. "Don't you want to try and change history? You're strong, you can bring them to their senses perhaps," O tried to convince him. "History cannot be rewritten," Wu Fei replied.

Elsewhere, OZ and the Federation were planning on destroying the colony the Dragon Clan was situated on and getting rid of them once and for all. Major Sally was working in on this operation and of course she didn't approve of it. But General Septem's orders overrode hers and the attack was going to take place. However, since OZ and the Federation never worked well together, OZ was planning on doing it with mobile suits and the Federation with germ warfare. The mobile suits got there first. When they started to attack, Meiran, in order to prove the point in fighting for justice, jumped into the cockpit of a Tallgeese look a like (which, for convenience's sake will just be referred to from now on as Tallgeese..keep in mind it's just another Leo prototype, though, while we're talking about Wu Fei's past), which was evidently under Master O's jurisdiction at the time.

Wu Fei, standing in a field of flowers, watched Meiran fight right next to him, trying to convince her to get out of the suit. When she decided to fight outside in order to save the flowers, Wu Fei leapt into the Shenlong and chased after her. Meiran was losing when Wu Fei came in and started taking blasts for her. The strength of the Gundam surprised everyone, but Wu Fei wasn't able to protect Meiran and her suit collided with another one. After the explosion, Meiran floated away, and Wu Fei was able to rescue her, although she was, in fact, dying. She begged him to take her to the field of flowers, and he did.

Elsewhere, with only a few soldiers left, Major Sally sent in a report stating the Dragon Clan's colony had been destroyed, even though it hadn't. OZ and the Federation accepted this, and the Dragon Clan's colony was able to live in peace, until it was attacked and ultimately destroyed again in the Gundam Wing series ("Wu Fei's Return To The Battlefield").

He carried her to the middle of the field and set her down. She smiled, and when he called her Meiran, she asked him to call her Nataku. He did. She shut her eyes. He screamed at her, begging her not to die and telling her he had not earned the right to be her husband yet. She died in his arms.

One day, when Wu Fei was at Meiran's grave, Master O and the Elder standing behind him, he offered to pilot the Shenlong. O was surprised, but Wu Fei explained that his wife had protected that machine and her spirit lives on inside of it. He then vows to change the insane times and put an end to the idiocy that is war. "Watch, Nataku!" he says. "I swear I'll bring justice!"

Wu Fei is a loner, to the bone, perhaps the single most independent of the Gundam pilots. While Trowa and Hiiro are definitely introverted, they're usually surrounded by allies, even if they don't consider them friends. Through a majority of the series, Wu Fei is alone, sporatically popping in to demolish an Oz base here or there. As a matter of fact, a lot of the characters spend a majority of the series hunting down Wu Fei, who refuses their offers at alliances and rushes off alone again.

Wu Fei is also usually quite composed and can figure out what the enemy's thinking. In the case of the New Edwards base incident, where the Gundam pilots were all fighting amongst themselves and Hiiro was slaughtering the peace representatives, it was Wu Fei who figured out Oz's plan, Wu Fei who opened the pilots' eyes to what was happening, Wu Fei who vowed then and there to get Treize Khushrenada.

It was probably then and there that the vicious rivalry between Chang Wu Fei and Treize Khushrenada, two men who value and understand integrity and honor probably more than any other men on the earth, sparked to life. When Wu Fei then attempted to assassinate Treize, Treize challenged Wu Fei to a duel, simply by standing at his window and clapping his sword into his hands. Wu Fei understood, stepped out of his Gundam, and lost in a swordfight versus Treize.

Treize, appreciating Wu Fei's honor at getting out of the mobile suit and fighting hand to hand, allowed him to live. But the fight had a massive impact on Wu Fei. He spiraled down a road of self-pity and hatred, claiming he could only defeat people who were weaker than himself and hating himself for it. He continued on this way until he met Major Sally and observed her and her resistance group, who were so weak, yet at the same time so strong. Motivated to fight, and to regain his sense of integrity and honor, Wu Fei again stepped into the cockpit of the Shenlong Gundam.

As you can see from the way Wu Fei reacted to his loss to Treize, Wu Fei's honor and integrity can very easily be interpreted as a weak point of his. When pushed too far on the subject, he very easily cracks and he has a tendency to shell up even more than he does naturally.

Wu Fei often has a knack for appearing just at the right time to save another pilot's butt. He may not even be in an episode at all until someone's in trouble, or a fight sparks, and then, bang, there's Wu Fei in all his splendor. He's often been the determining factor between life and death, and between fighting and surrendering, such as in the case of when Quatre and Duo fixing to give up after hearing the Colonies had betrayed the Gundams. They were preparing to die when Wu Fei showed up, assured them of the righteousness in their actions, and went into space with them.

Again, Wu Fei flies solo, attacking bases in space almost at random. Then, after a savage battle at Barge, where his Gundam is severely damaged, Wu Fei allows himself to be captured at the Lunar Base. There he is thrown in a prison cell with Hiiro, who had also been captured. Duo soon joins them and Trowa is posing as an Oz officer. There, the scientists, who have also been captured by Oz and are being forced to manufacture mobile suits for them, rebuild and upgrade his Shelong "Nataku" Gundam into the Altron "Nataku" Gundam.

Once again, Wu Fei manages to escape from the Lunar Base and vanishes, alone, this time with a purpose: To find out what he's fighting for.

Wu Fei leaves the series for a while, and when he returns, we find him training on a colony at a Chinese shrine of somesort. Suddenly, Oz attacks the colony, which was apparently under the jurisdiction of the Chinese shrine. As Wu Fei is fighting outside the colony, the people in the shrine access a button, and, with Wu Fei watching and screaming for them to stop, self-destruct, taking the colony with them.

Again, Wu Fei loses sight of what, exactly, he's fighting for. He attacks Oz bases sporatically again, and is eventually confronted by Zechs, who has gone on a mission to find the Gundam pilots and just happens to stumble on Wu Fei first. Wu Fei, however, acts rashly and doesn't listen to Zechs, attacking him and then running away.

Eventually, in another fight, Wu Fei's Gundam is severely damaged again. He drifts silently through space, amongst the rubble of his battlefield, with a seemingly bleak future. Moving the Gundam would be too risky - it sparks and cackles just sitting still. Wu Fei simply closes his eyes and waits as Fate runs its course.

Fate, it seems, was on Wu Fei's side, for he is soon spotted by a ship being piloted by Hiiro and Major Sally. They pick him up, but he assures him he's only staying as long as his Gundam is damaged. Major Sally protests to this, but Hiiro shuts her up. "He just likes to do things his own way," Hiiro says, and the conversations ends.

Suddenly, a search team arrives with the ship the three of them are on as the target. Wu Fei goes to fight, but Hiiro stops him, suggesting he takes Wing Zero instead of his busted up Altron. Both Sally and Wu Fei are confused by this, but Hiiro explains Zero is in better condition and the suit has the ability to show Wu Fei the path he should be following, which could hopefully clear up the confusion that was tearing the poor boy up.

Wu Fei takes Zero, and, as expected, begins to see visions. When he asks who his enemies are, he hallucinates Zechs and Treize infront of him....and when he ventures to ask who his allies are, he sees visions of Quatre, Trowa, Duo, and Hiiro. Wu Fei finishes fighting and returns to the ship with a clear, defined future ahead of him.

Soon, Hiiro and Wu Fei meet up with the other Gundam pilots as they all prepare for the upcoming, decisive battle between the White Fang, the Earth, and themselves. When the battle finally comes, Wu Fei breaks away from the group, and they let him go. He says he just wants to keep an eye on the battle outside, but everyone knows Wu Fei's true intention of venturing into the battlefield alone.

Eventually Wu Fei finds what he was looking for and ends up standing face to face with Treize Khushrenada, who's piloting the Tallgeese II. They talk, arguing, and Wu Fei feels an almost....respected disgust in Treize's mixture of cold integirty and honor with almost careless compassion. Suddenly, Treize charges him, and, Wu Fei, not knowing what how to respond, closes his eyes and holds his trident out to meet Treize's charge...

When Wu Fei opens his eyes, he finds the Tallgeese II hanging over him, impaled on his staff. Tallgeese falls off and starts to float away, and Wu Fei screams for Treize to escape as Treize says his final goodbyes. When the Tallgeese explodes and Treize shuffles off this mortal coil, Wu Fei screams, tears running down his face, and says, to an empty cockpit, that he didn't expect to win.

Wu Fei, however, vows to go on and keep fighting, for his own sense of justice and integrity. When the Libra battleship is plummetting towards Earth and all the Gundam pilots are trying to destroy it from the inside, Wu Fei is absent. When Hiiro is emerging from his battle with Zechs, he is greeted promptly with an explosion...and when the smoke clears, the Altron Gundam is standing amidst the rubble, holding Wing Zero's buster rifle that Hiiro long ago drops. He tosses it to Hiiro, ensuring victory in what could very easily be compared to an assist in, say, a game of basketball.

Alone and independent, fighting for a sense of justice and integrity that, as everyone whose drawn breath into their lungs knows, is almost frustratingly undefined, Chang Wu Fei makes an awesome addition to the Gundam team. Almost stumbling blindly, Wu Fei reaches deep inside himself and searches for something that rests within all of us, although in most it lies dormant and unused, which may be the very reason it's so hard to uncover. And although he may not know it, he could quite possibly be the single person in the series who understands honor the best.

"I'll be true to my own sense of integrity."
~Chang Wu Fei

Chang Wu Fei's Mobile Suit Piloting Skills
As I've said with every other Gundam pilot...he just wouldn't be a Gundam pilot if he didn't know his way around the mobile suit cockpit.

However, I would like to draw attention towards his relationship with his machine, the Shenlong and Altron Gundams. As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, when I talk about Wu Fei being alone and independent, and how he's a loner, I, in a sense, am mistaken. Wu Fei is never alone, at least in his eyes. He's got his best friend by his side at all times, the only one who understands him aside from Treize, and probably the only one Wu Fei would willingly submit to - his Gundam, whom he knows as Nataku.

As stated above, Wu Fei named his Gundam after his wife, who named herself after a famous Chinese Legend. Wu Fei believes that his wife's spirit lives on in the machine, and whose to say it doesn't? That mobile suit has had a profound impact on Wu Fei's life, so it's not farfetched or insane for him to believe that she sits beside him during every battle, celebrates every victory with him, and mourns every defeat. Without the companionship of Nataku, Wu Fei simply would not have been the same. If he was fighting at all, he'd have been weaker, more dependant on others, most likely without such a severe sense of justice and honor.

So, while the other pilots all learned things from their suits (hell, they all learned something from Zero...) or whatnot, Wu Fei's Gundam seems to have taken the biggest part in the molding of the pilot's character. The Wu Fei we all know and love may not have been the same without the Gundam Nataku.

"Nataku, you and I have to become a whole lot stronger."
~Chang Wu Fei

PJ's Opinion of Chang Wu Fei
See, the thing about Wu Fei is this...he's an ultra cool character. He kicks ass in so many departments. He's deep, he's strong, and you basically just love when he comes onscreen to whomp some booty.

HOWEVER, he is the Gundam pilot that the series chooses to focus the least on. Sure, he appears from time to time to save our heroes' asses....but that's pretty much it. He's used more as a bulldozer than a character, and in my opinion, they could have EASILY have drawn MUCH MORE from Wu Fei's character than they actually did. While he's deep in the sense that his character is strong and values important areas and such, he's weak in just about every aspect. It's really quite sad.

Other than that, Wu Fei makes a very nice addition to the series. What would an anime series (or any series, for that matter) be without the proverbial honor-valuing Chinese martial arts expert?

"Fighting a weak enemy leaves me feeling so empty inside..."
~Chang Wu Fei

Written by PJ