Mobile Fighter G Gundam is, depending on your viewpoint, beloved or reviled for its absurd mecha design. Its Mobile Fighters differ greatly from Gundam's traditional Mobile Suit design. Few Mobile Fighters are as impractical or as bizarre as the GF13-066NO Nether Gundam. Piloted by Rutger Verhoeven (possibly named after actor Rutger Hauer and director Paul Verhoeven), Nether Gundam is Neo-Holland's candidate for the 13th Gundam Fight. The ridiculous Gundam features a huge clunky windmill structure on its front end.
While this design is not as problematic in its national stereotyping as, say, Tequilla Gundam or Zebra Gundam, it is one of the most impractical and silly-looking Gundams in G Gundam. However, Nether Gundam's design, while ridiculous, does manage to serve a practical purpose. Do these practical decisions actually benefit Nether Gundam in the end? Not really, but there is a method to the madness behind Nether Gundam.
Why is Nether Gundam a Windmill?
Holland's Nether Gundam appears very odd at first, but its bizarre appearance actually serves a practical role in the narrative. In fact, arguably, Nether Gundam being a windmill is one of the keys to its success -- in a sense.
Holland chose to exploit the structure of the Gundam Fight tournament in order to qualify. Nether Gundam hid as an ordinary windmill on the battleground, never fighting for 11 months. Because the preliminary round required the Gundams to fight for almost a year until only a small number of Gundams remain for the finals, Holland qualified. This strategy for qualification was impressive, but was it actually capable of winning any fights once it qualified?
Nether Gundam is Not a Practical Mobile Suit
If Nether Gundam's design looks impractical, that is because it is. The Gundam is ultimately defeated fairly early on in the Gundam Fight without much difficulty. In the Finals, Nether Gundam is beaten by Neo-France's George de Sand and the Gundam Rose, one of the main protagonists of the series.
Nether Gundam's structure restricts its close-range attacks. While many of the other Gundams in G Gundam are designed for melee fighting and weapons, Nether Gundam's bulky and restrictive design -- such as the windmill structure -- keeps it from really being good at punching. Rather, its body has several mounted lasers that can fire off from a distance.
The windmill itself can also be used as a weapon. By churning the blades of the windmill, Nether Gundam generates hurricane winds that can blow anything in its path away. This is the Nether Typhoon, an attack that sounds incredibly dangerous. However, many Gundams are able to just walk straight through the attack without being truly hampered. Compared to the myriad of weapons sported by rival Gundams, the Nether Typhoon is just not too powerful of an attack.
However, this ultimately doesn't matter. Holland's goal was never really to win, but just to qualify. This qualification alone centered Holland as a political power in the stage, when before it had been all but ignored by the greater world powers. In this sense, Nether Gundam was 100% successful at what it was designed to accomplish.
