Now for the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this that you’ve already seen the entire saga of the anime discussed here or you don’t care to get some major spoilers but I will warn you ahead of time I’m going to dive deep into spoiler territory for this show. I recently rewatched one of my absolute favorite animes, Mobile Suit Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans, and one of the things I really wanted to see and fully understand was how Tekkadan soared so far in the series only to lose in the end. It’s easy to say that they lost due to their inferior numbers, but the fact was they always fought under those circumstances. Ultimately looking at the motivations behind the children of Tekkadan and how they planned to reach their goals I concluded hate and ignorance ultimately led to their downfall, but not in the way that you would expect.

The children of Tekkadan had every reason to want to better their lives as the ones forced upon them were far from fair from the abuse they got on a daily basis to the sub par living conditions. However, the biggest issue that rose here was the hate that they had for those conditions and what those conditions took from them. They hated how they were treated, they bonded with each other over a mutual hate for the world that forced them into those circumstances and as a result of the continued abuse they grew to quickly hate anyone that stood in the way of their happiness. Because they were raised with a kill or be killed mentality they never had the chance to understand the value of diplomacy, trust, love or even family. So event hough Tekkadan had a bond that equaled to that of a family they had no way of fully understanding that and it took an outside party just to point that out to them.

Due to Tekkadan’s hate for the world they had an unrivaled determination to fight because they never had anything worth going back to that would make them value their own lives enough to preserve them under dire circumstances. Biscuit was one of the few exceptions who had siblings and a grandmother that he loved dearly and he was able to see that the end of the path they were on was not a peaceful one; however, Orga, the leader of Tekkadan failed to heed his warnings. It becomes a little ironic when you look at this but their hate actually drove them to incredible success in season one as they managed to become a well known name and known for their combat abilities; however, they made a lot of enemies along the way and this is where their hate came back to haunt them.

With every single person or entity that dared to challenge what they were fighting for Tekkadan’s only method of dealing with that was to completely obliterate their foes. This mindset is the ultimate driving force behind their defeat and was crated due to a combination of their hate and ignorance. Due to their hate they had unrivaled fury that they were at the ready to unleash at a moment’s notice so the minute an enemy appeared it’s like a switch went off and that fury usually led to their victory. Then they came across an enemy that hate alone could not defeat, Rustal Elion of Gallherhorn, but they were still determined to try because violence was all they knew. This is where the ignorance came in. Tekkadan was a force strong enough that a little diplomacy would have ultimately landed them some more allies or at the very least detured enemies. Even Elion lost quite a few of his forces when dealing with them; however, they were so set on defeating anyone that stood in their way of a goal they barely understood that they rushed head first into the jaws of a much more powerful enemy and got crushed.

So Tekkadan had an incredible hate in the world that all they ever knew was to respond to all of its challenges with fury and aggression. This worked until it didn’t and they had nowhere to go after that. The enemies they made and the friendships they severed caught up to them and they had nowhere to run. Because they hated with such passion they were unaware of any other outlit for that hate and it even to some degree made them unaware of what they were even fighting for in the first place. Because they had their hate and didn’t know how to overcome it they really had no place to end up at except death because they would always make enemies, they would always strive to destroy those enemies and in turn create more enemies and they had no idea of the endless circle they put themselves into. Their hate made them aggressive, their ignorance made them unaware of their circumstances and they got trapped in an endless battle partially of their own making until they couldn’t fight anymore.