#a good Real Robot protagonist were this not a Super Robot show

[doozie97]

I like to imagine that Isami is actually very competent at handling high stress workplace environments and resolving conflicts in his military role. He just comes off as a coward most of the series because he’s being forced into situations involving alien robots with fantastical powers and zero regard for the value of human life, the rule of law nor the Geneva conventions.

[ilikekidsshows]

I wish the plot of the first season was Marinette coming to love being Ladybug. Mostly because I’m sick of it still being presented as a chore when she could easily pass the responsibility on to someone else. Instead, Ladybug is still presented as mainly a burden that Marinette is forced to nobly bear. My best guess is that she’s meant to be a tragic hero, but she's mainly just annoying.

Both times she gave up the earing she only took them back because there was no other choice. The writers could have dedicated an arc to Marinette learning what it means to be a hero (If nothing else, this needs to happen! Marinette is one of the least heroic heroes I have ever seen in media) and then being given the option to give up the earrings, but refusing because she wants to be Ladybug. One reason I think Adrien would make a better protagonist is that he clearly loves being Chat Noir.

Or if that’s too serialized for the show’s formula, then make being a miraculous holder an inherited position to justify why Marinette is still doing this. Maybe only descendants of the original holders can wield their respective miraculous. Maybe since the kwamis are basically gods, their holders are their avatars. They reincarnate every hundred years or so, and the kwagatama allows them to speak to their past lives. As a bonus,both these options provide an organic way to explore the lore of the miraculous and Marinette’s chinese heritage, both of which are extremely lacking in canon.

---

Yeah, like, that's the most annoying thing about Marinette Ladybugging: she sucks at it, she hates it, she merely does the bare minimum and yet she has all the power to quit at any second. As soon as an audience member realizes she holds all the power in this situation, the question of “why” becomes essential. Why is Marinette still Ladybug? She only views her duties as a burden and she kinda sucks at superheroics with her fix everything spell and far more dedicated partners carrying her and pulling her ass out of the fire whenever she's dealing with anything more stressful than a run-of-the-mill Akuma. If she was up against supervillains where you couldn't just magic the problem away like a real superhero, she’d be throwing crying fits every week.

Like, back when Neon Genesis Evangelion came out, people didn't really understand what parental abuse does to a kid and they were constantly annoyed at Shinji not just telling his dad to go screw himself if he didn't want to pilot the super cool giant robot. There's some lack of sympathy in general going on here, but people who didn't get it were asking those questions. And that was when said abusive dad was also telling him he’d send in a grievously injured girl in Shinji’s place if he didn't do it. Yet no one questions why Marinette, who's her own boss and yet constantly complains about her job, doesn't just quit.

It's starting to feel like some attempt at false humility by the writers, where the reason it's okay she gets all the power and authority is because she doesn't "really want it", but it comes across as more like her not appreciating it. She's supposedly really stressed out, but she doesn't exactly feel concerned for the people following her lead, considering none of her concerns are about if she's being a good leader or not. Whenever she's concerned about her performance, it's mostly in terms of how she's viewed, not how she's impacting others.

Her arrogance goes even higher than Barman's in terms of thinking she's the only one who can do the job, but Batman actually gets called out for this attitude.

[wordsandrobots]

All right then.

I've finished watching Fang of the Sun: Dougram. And the first thing I will say is that for 75 episodes, it makes a very good attempt at justifying its run-time. There's a sense of things steadily ramping up over the course of the first twenty-odd episodes, helped immensely by the framing device of knowing the titular mecha is going to wind up burnt out in a desert somehow (it's literally the opening shot of the show). Things do flounder a bit halfway through, yes, but somewhat less than you'd think. The show keeps coming up with new developments and overall has the feel of a particularly long, rather old-fashioned sci-fi war novel that is committed enough to what it's doing to earn trust for the time investment.

Your mileage on that, however, will vary considerably with how you feel about the plot and specifically whether you actually want characterisation with it. But more on that later because the first thing I absolutely have to talk about is the mecha design.

Fang of the Sun is, I believe, the second series to fall into the 'real robot' category, following the original 1979 Gundam. Coming out in 1981 and with mechanical design also carried out by Kunio Okawara, it self-consciously sheds some of the more 'super robot' styling of Gundam. The 'combat armours' of this show have aircraft-like cockpits in place of heads, are carried about by heavy-duty helicopters or flat-bed trucks rather than flying aircraft carriers, and there are no space-battles to be seen. Everything is strictly terrestrial, with events mostly transpiring on the twin-sunned colony world of Deloyer. We are in capital-G Grounded territory this time around, with the combat armours really being the sole sci-fi excess in battles populated by normal tanks and 'Duey' attack helicopters.

And with the greatest respect for 'hard sci fi' as a tradition, I find this somewhat silly. Not because it doesn't work on its own terms, but because this is presented alongside faster-than-light wormhole travel that makes interplanetary hops equivalent to intercontinental commercial flight. While the mechanics are trying very hard to look like they belong alongside proper Airfix kits, the science is softer than Gundam in all respects save the actual psychic powers (Fang of the Sun does not indulge).

Furthermore, Deloyer is pretty much just Earth with an extra sun in the sky. There's no effort made to make it visibly alien, regardless of the multiple biomes the protagonists travels through. It's presumably been terraformed as part of the colonisation process, but exactly when and how that took place is irrelevant. There is some justification for setting events on an alien world rather than on Earth, as we learn Deloyer is supplying resources to a depleted homeworld and is positioned to allow colonisation of three further planets. However, for the most part, you'd be forgiven for thinking there was no need to place the action in another solar system. Since the wormhole traversal is done station to station, we don't even get any particularly memorable space sequences.

Thus, when the the mecha are mostly literally Gundam-style robot suits without faces, it does rather feel that the visible attempt at a more grounded approach is fighting with other parts of the set-up. And that kind of sums up my overall feelings towards this series. In some respects it is extremely strong. But I came away with the impression what the creators thought was really interesting didn't quite align with the framework they were working within.

(Cut for spoilers.)

Fang of the Sun tells the story of the Deloyer independence movement, creators of Dougram, from their beginning as a scattered guerrilla groups, through a back-firing attempt to neutralise them by the ruling Earth Federation, to the formation of a united army and the establishment of a true, self-governing state, and the ultimate betrayal of the movement by its less radical elements. In terms of this narrative, I have very few complaints to make, save perhaps that it is, from my perspective, not especially original. It is ambitious though, as it attempts to thoroughly chronicle the main beats of a year-long epic. I won't say it always succeeds in this; there are one too many 'and then the narrator bridges the gap most conveniently' moments. But as I said above, it's got a good handle on set-up and pay-off, as characters come in, establish themselves, and then disappear for a while only to return when it makes sense.

I will also give it props for how it renders political manoeuvring, with a roster of high-level characters including Federation Council Chairman Donan Cashim, puppet Deloyan representative Colonel Von Stein, dissident leader Professor Samalin, and most especially Donan's scheming secretary Helmut J Lecoque, the show's main antagonist, who engineers a rapid rise to power as his employer's health fails. The way these men drive the plot and have the consequences land upon them is very satisfyingly handled. Lecoque managing to come out supreme by the final few episodes, in control of a supposedly liberated Deloyer after engineering everyone else's downfall, only to be shot to death at the last minute by the traitorous sell-out he'd been using to play each side against the other is positively Shakespearian. And satisfying. So very satisfying. You would not believe how eminently punchable this man is. He practically leaves a slime trail everywhere he goes.

But that's only half the story. Or it should be, seeing as the characters we are actually supposed to be following are the 'Fang of the Sun': Donan's rebellious son Crinn and the Deloyan gang he falls in with after accidentally leading the Federation to the secret hangar where Dougram was being constructed. So what about them?

Well. Yes. What about them? You see, this is my big criticism of this show. It doesn't seem to care very much about its protagonists. Oh, they're there throughout, fighting battles, getting into scrapes, having amusing bits, and generally fulfilling the need for a mecha anime to have a bunch of explosions every episode. Yet I can't really say that they develop or grow or change over the course of events. They're stock characters in every way that matters. We've the daring leader, the teen hero, the big guy, the kid, the nerd, the blow-hard, the weirdo and the woman. And if that is doing Canary a bit of a disservice, it's only because she gets to be the most all-in for the fight a couple of times, because the Federation killed her brother.

Crinn Cashim is particularly egregious, giving a passionate final episode speech about how much Dougram means to him after everything when he has largely failed to display any real emotion that isn't 1) rushing blindly into danger, 2) staring into the distance and 3) screaming in agony as he is hit by enemy fire for the bazzillionth time. Seriously, they only stop the arrrgh!/urrrgh!/oooogh! reaction shots around episode 73. Up to then, you'd be forgiven for wondering why the hell the dimwit isn't used to it by now, given Dougram seems to have all the evasive ability of a barn. Lucky it's got Gundanium really good armour, isn't it?

And I've just realised: there's a half-hearted plot-point early on about how Deloyer is passing through an 'X-nebula' that is screwing up electronics and long-range comms -- basically Minovsky particles only always on. One of Dougram's key features is being 'X-nebula-proof', whatever *that* means. But I think they just drop that completely after a while? They certainly stop mentioning it, reasonably so since it has virtually no bearing on the plot beyond a couple of 'woo woo we can't use radar' moments.

Anyway, lest you be tempted to blame Crinn's inexpressiveness on the animation, which is purely serviceable on most levels except the quite good storyboarding, I should point out that Crinn is also one half of the central romance of the show; a romance that consists of his cousin following him from region to region so she can occasionally show up and shout 'Crinn!!!' at him while he gawps and yells 'Daisy!!!' back. It's truly pathetic fare, empty of any real content. Daisy is a limp lettuce who gets to traipse around, partaking of a roster of service roles as befits beautiful young lady in this kind of thing. She makes Mirai Yashima look like a masterclass in nuanced character growth.

Indeed I can't help but compare this to Gundam 79 and it can't help but come up horribly short. The places the narrative sings are when it is focusing on the political, command, and high-society levels of the conflict. The rest is just there because I suppose it had to be. Putting Crinn next to Amuro Ray is a hilarious downgrade, and I don't even particularly like Amuro Ray as a character! Crinn a void, there to do Stock Hero Stuff and not one iota more, surrounded by the sketches of good characters and a plot that is honestly carrying itself along fine without him nine-tenths of the time.

Oh, and? That opening shot of Dougram destroyed, with the strong implication Canary is the only survivor, mourning her lost comrades? Pffft. Nah. Totally not what happened. Yes, one of the gang does die early on (in a very contrived accident involving an exposed rivet snagging the pin of a grenade while its bouncing around inside a motorcycle side-car, no I am not kidding), but he is almost immediately replaced with a near-identical (IN UNIVERSE!) replacement. Thereafter, everyone in the title sequence has their plot armour on.

Well, except Rita. Oh gods, Rita. The 'fun' revolutionary ditz who joins for the middle arc, who is revealed to have a secret origin involving the traitorous sell-out, Destin, and thus tricked into betraying the gang, then shot dead to give everyone else feelings for a couple of episodes after which she is never mentioned again.

Yeah, this show is sexist in very typical and uninteresting ways and that's only not a big deal because there are precisely three female characters of any note (three and a half counting Nurse Dalloway, who I will concede does get to be awesome for a moment).

What else should I say while I'm, burying it? Right. Very few of these characters have any backstory to explain why they are where they are and doing what they are doing. Gang leader Rocky and Canary get a bit, as do Crinn and Daisy, and of course Rita, but it's almost laughable how flat everybody else is. I kid you not, we get some set-up that disgruntled Federation officer Zalstev and roving Che Guevara-alike J Locke have a history together and when the time comes to reveal it, we are treated to a three second slide-show going 'oh, yeah, these dudes are like mortal enemies who've been fighting for years which is why J Locke is going to bring Zalstev into the rebellion now he's gotten fed up with his superiors getting in the way of him bringing down Dougram'. It's comically half-baked. We never even find out the remotest thing about J Locke himself or why he's leading the GI Joe branch of the liberation movement. He just springs out of nowhere to be all cool and effective and then toddles off until he's needed again.

What a guy.

I'm being harsher on this show than I want to be. It is gloriously cynical in its approach, despite its toothlessness, but never without extra wrinkles. There's a lot of cowardice and regret on the part of the factions selling out or doing underhanded things, such that some tension is retained over how far exactly they will go to save their skins. Some of the stuff with Lecoque in particular is a great study in ambition and resentment. And roving journalist Lertoff is a hoot, particularly when he gets to spar with the people in positions of power.

I just wish he'd been integrated better as a way of telling the story. Which -- yeah, that's it. For all that Fang of the Sun does well, there's a checklist of elements just flapping around loose inside the walls of the actual story, never cohering in more than a lip-service sense.

[wanderersrest]

Some (Not So) Idle Thoughts On Mobile Fighter G Gundam

Before you begin reading: Do note that I have two companion pieces that I'll be referencing throughout this post, namely a small aside on the "Real vs Super Robot" debacle and a prequel highlighting what's going on in the world when G Gundam begins airing.

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to tell you a story. A story about a man set on a mission of revenge. tale. This is a tale about martial artists of all nations fighting it out on the grandest of arenas: the Earth. This is a tale about how a pair of young adults learn how to love not just themselves, but each other. Most important of all, this is a tale about a man who learns what it means to overcome even the most traumatic moments of his past in order to become a better man.

This is Mobile Fighter G Gundam. More specifically, these are my random thoughts about this series. And full disclosure: I grew up with G Gundam being my first entry into the Gundam franchise, as I was just a little bit too young to really watch Gundam Wing when it aired on Toonami.

G Gundam Is Just As Political As Every Other Gundam Series

Contrary to what a lot of people think, G Gundam is just as political as any other Gundam series. To give a quick summary, G Gundam is set in a time when the majority of humanity has fled to the space colonies above due to the how polluted the Earth has become due to war. In order to change this, the nations come up with an alternative to war: the Gundam Fight. There are just two problems with this:

Most of the people who fled to space were rich. And in case you're wondering, the first episode clears something up immediately: the poor were left behind on Earth.

The Gundam Fight uses the Earth as the battlefield. Which is fine if you're rich. But if you're poor...

This doesn't even touch on the motivations of THE UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST, MASTER ASIA, whose goal to seize control of the Devil Gundam stems from seeing how much damage was caused from the Gundam fight, which is pretty understandable as far as I'm concerned. This also doesn't touch on the fact the Shuffle Alliance and allies consist of people from all nations (specifically Japan, America, China, France, Russia, Sweden, and Nepal, among other countries), to say nothing of the fact that the nations of the world eventually come together to fight the Devil Gundam.

What a Lovable Cast of Goofballs

Nothing really pulls me into a show quite like a good cast of characters. And boy does G Gundam have quite the cast. Taking a page out of older mecha shows like Mazinger Z, G Gundam presents us with our protagonist: the hot-blooded samurai Domon Kasshu. Joining him on his mission to find the Devil Gundam are his mechanic/doctor/love interest Rain Mikamura and a handful of fellow fighters and support crews that make up the Shuffle Alliance.

I think part of what makes this cast so entertaining to watch is the fact that this series pulls a lot from Hong Kong action films and wuxia epics. It's why there are all of these crazy fighting techniques and action sequences that wouldn't look to out of place in something like a Jet Li or Donnie Yen film. Heck, THE UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST, MASTER ASIA is named after the popular wuxia character Dongfang Bubai (Literally the Invincible East in Chinese; this is why Master Asia's title in Japanese is Touhou Fuhai, as Touhou Fuhai is the direct translation of Dongfang Bubai into Japanese).

Another part of the cast's appeal lies in the fact that, despite this series having some out there Mobile Suit designs, the characters themselves are not actually stereotypical (or if they are, they tend to be portrayed in a more positive light). Take, for instance (and probably the most talked about example of this), Neo America's Chibodee Crocket and the Gundam Maxter. Gundam Maxter is notorious for being one of the more out there Mobile Suit designs in the series: A Gundam that is made to look like a football player, carries a pair of six shooters for ranged weapons, a shield that is used more as a surf board, and has shoulders that can also double as boxing gloves (the chest piece also flies off to give Maxter more of a boxer look). Chibodee, meanwhile, looks to be like a stereotypical American at first. He's loud, flashy, reckless, and just as much a hothead as the King of Hearts himself. Chibodee is also a street rat who, through his keen talent for boxing, was able to achieve the American Dream. Not only that, Chibodee also has a strong moral compass, which is also how he comes to meet his field crew.

I think I'd also be remiss not to talk about the King of Hearts, Domon Kasshu. Yes, it's an absolute blast to watch the man beat up anyone and everyone who gets in his way. But I think it's also touching when, after running into THE UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST, MASTER ASIA for the first time in the series, he breaks down crying due to the fact that, outside of Rain, Domon doesn't really have anyone else to go to when it comes to expressing his trauma. That's why MASTER ASIA'S betrayl towards the end of the Shinjuku arc hits as hard as it does: one of the very few people you could trust turns out to be a villain. Of course, things get more complicate once you find out what MASTER ASIA'S true goals are. It is so satisfying getting to see Domon grow so much in the first half of the series, and the payoff is that the second half really lets us enjoy some of the goofier aspects of Domon's character.

Really, I could go on about just about all of the characters. Like how Sai Saici is probably one of the best characters after Domon and THE UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST, MASTER ASIA, how the series gives us a pretty reasonable version of the love triangle by introducing probably one of the best characters in the series: Allenby Beardsley or the fact that Rain is already a great love interest (and just a great character in general) that knows how to put up with Domon's nonsense, especially once they get to Neo Hong Kong. Heck, I didn't even get to talk about the best Char Clone, Schwarz Bruder, who will show up at random, laugh at Domon, teach him a lesson, refuse to elaborate, and leave. I also feel like I'm doing a disserevice to THE UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST, MASTER ASIA by not talking enough about him. Like the fact that he doesn't ride his horse Fuunsaiki like a normal human being. No. Master Asia STANDS on top of Fuunsaiki. And you know that Fuunsaiki is built different because he gets his own Mobile Fighter, complete with his own suit up sequence. I would talk about them more, but we'd be here forever. So we have to move on, both for my sake and for yours.

What Everyone's Been Waiting For: The Hot-Blooded Action

I don't think I really need to explain this one. G Gundam just has some really good action sequences, even if it relies on a lot of stock footage. I'd honestly be more impressed if this series had better animation, especially considering that G Gundam is a 49-episode series. And really, that's what people love about G Gundam, regardless of whether they think it's just dumb fun or if it's some bespoke series. It knows that it's very different from most Gundam series, so it leans into that. A lot. Part of what makes this series such a treat to watch is seeing it carve out its own name in spite, or maybe because, it is a Gundam series.

The other part is that, by revisiting the older style of mecha stories, you do get some really cool setpieces. And man, when G Gundam is at its best, it's at its best. There really isn't much else to say here. G Gundam just knows that people like cool action sequences.

G Gundam Gets Referenced More Than Its Brethren

I would like to start this off by saying that I only found out that Amphibia references G Gundam while I was writing this post.

Anyways, that gif is important here, because in my opinion it kind of highlights G Gundam's legacy. Because in my mind, it shows that G Gundam has resonated with a nonzero amount of people. I know this because my last two posts currently have the most amount of notes, and they're both about G Gundam in some fashion.

But more to my point, it often catches me off guard just how often this series in particular gets referenced. This is especially striking when you remember that a lot of western fans talk about how important G Gundam's successor, New Mobile Report Gundam Wing, is. And while I would agree with that notion, I do think that Wing's importance outside of being how introduced a lot of western fans to the franchise is minimal at best (full disclosure: I am not a big fan of Gundam Wing especially due to how idiots like Professor Otaku talk up that series while trashing G Gundam, so I'm probably understating just how important it was), which is funny, because G Gundam gets referenced a fair bit in comparison (at least I think it does; I'm not about to verify this because I'm not that insane... yet). Here is a sample of some of the G Gundam references that I know of:

Regular Show's Brilliant Century Duck Crisis Special references a lot of mecha shows including G Gundam. The G Gundam reference here is when Benson suits up, which is ripped straight from Domon's Shining Gundam suit up sequence, complete with the ass shot.

There's a trainer in Pokemon Red & Blue that, when they spot the player, shouts "Pokemon fight! Ready, GO!"

Speaking of Pokemon, the Sun & Moon anime has an entire episode dedicated to G Gundam (which isn't surprising, since one of the banned in the US episodes has a reference to the original Gundam), complete with both Meowth creating a Devil Gundam-like machine, all while Brock and Olivia defeat said machine using a Z-move reminiscent of the Sekiha Love-Love Tenkyouken.

Nanbaka has a scene where one of the main characters defeats an opponent using the Erupting G*d Finger S*kiha T*nky**ken.

Gintama's Bentendo Owee arc has a store manager who's basically a dead ringer of Stalker. He even does the "Gundam Fight! Ready, GO!" pose at one point.

This doesn't even touch on the fact that this show is pretty quotable. Things like the Shining Finger/Erupting God Finger quote, the UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST motto, "...with the help of KYOOOOOJI!", MASTER ASIA'S quote about becoming more than just the UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST, and my personal favorite: "Except this time, I am a WANDER BUG!!!" are often quoted on the Internet whenever people talk about G Gundam. Heck this doesn't even touch on my personal memories of seeing (and even participating in) Reddit comment threads that were just the UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST motto.

(See? Guy even has his own version of the hyper mode!)

This also ignores the greatest form of reference: the fact that other works may have been directly inspired by G Gundam. This is going to be a bit more tenuous I think, but in my opinion, you can see this series' influence in shows like The King of Braves, GaoGaiGar. I'm convinced that Guy Shishioh is what happens when you take Domon and turn him into a cyborg more or less (It helps that their voice actors, Nobuyuki Hiyama and Tomokazu Seki respectively, are considered to be two of the most hot-blooded performers of the 90's). Guy even has the friend to all children shtick that Domon has, which isn't surprising since GGG is supposed to be for children primarily. You can even see G Gundam's legacy in shows like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, where the antagonist Lordegenome is often joked as being a disciple of THE SCHOOL OF THE UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST due to him bodying Simon with his bare hands (while Simon is still piloting Lagann). Heck, I won't say who it is due to spoilers, but there's also a Disgaea character who's based heavily off of Domon. Like the fact that I'm making this comparison alone is a spoiler, so I'm keeping it vague so as not to spoil everything.

Final Thoughts: A Maligned Series With a Lot of Heart

Mobile Fighter G Gundam is a series that is often looked down upon due to the fact that it is a traditional mecha series in a franchise that is all about being a military robot series. That line of thinking is a real disservice to G Gundam, as this series is one that has meaningful messages it wants to convey. Those messages being:

Humans have a responsibility to take care of the environment, even if and especially because we were the ones to cause harm to it.

There are no easy ways to solve complex problems, and taking shortcuts can lead to more problems.

It is okay to be angry, but do not let that anger consume you.

And because this is sports we're talking about: Cheaters never prosper.

This doesn't even touch on the fact that said messages are very much in line with what a lot of the franchise has to say. But because G Gundam trusts that its audience aren't a bunch of idiots, the series doesn't beat the viewer over the head with its morals (although MASTER ASIA does have a not-so-thinly veiled rant about how Japan is now in ruins even though it was once a financial juggernaut, almost as if the country had some sort of economic crisis happen around the time G Gundam aired *cough*), but it does understand that beating the viewer over the head with these morals is not going to help.

I think this is why I've seen people push back on the concepts of Super Robots and Real Robots, especially the latter. I hadn't touched on this in my original Real vs Super Robots post, but part of the problem with Real Robots in particular is the fact that it is basically just "Not Super Robots." If you look at the original Gundam, it still has a lot of the usual tropes that were in shows like Mazinger Z or Getter Robo. The RX-78-2 Gundam is a one-of-a-kind machine that is made out of a super alloy (Lunar Titanium) that makes it all but indestructible, carries one-of-a-kind weapons (the beam rifle, the beam saber/javelin, and the hyper hammer), and is treated as an almost supernatural entity on the battlefield (hence the moniker "The White Devil"). Heck even the much harder Fang of the Sun Dougram has the smaller-but-still-big Dougram jumping over other mechs like it's about to go for a slam dunk in a basketball game. Do these facts diminish the types of stories that Gundam and Dougram are trying to tell? NO.

It is this dangerous line of thinking, the idea that all mecha shows must be either "Real" or "Super", that helps fuel people's idea that G Gundam is a bad series. The fact that people do not like this series because of how different it is from the rest of the franchise ignores the fact that, really, it's still a Gundam series. Just like how The Last Jedi is still a Star Wars movie, or how Xenoblade 2 is still a Xenoblade game. It is a wild notion that, in my opinion, shows that people who say things like that are doing so out of some twisted doctrine that says that Gundam can only be a serious war story. I am happy, though, that G Gundam is finally getting the reappraisal it so deserves. I have a general aversion to rose-tinted lenses when it comes to media, and it always makes me happy knowing that Mobile Fighter G Gundam is still just as good as, maybe even better than, I remember it being as a child.

Special Thanks & Notes

I'd like to thank all of the people who have been waiting patiently for this post as well as the people who made all of the gifs I used in this post. I didn't really think people would be interested in what I have to say about G Gundam until I posted the "Real vs Super" post, so it means a lot to me to see people react so positively to what I had to say in that post as well as the G Gundam context post.

As for what to expect next, I'm going to take a break from mecha stuff for a little bit. I'll still be writing posts, don't get me wrong. I just want to branch out a little bit from mecha, and I'm going to start out in small steps. I do have something of a primer on Gintama that I'm working on, so look forward to that. I'm also going to try post sillier things every now and then like my Getter Robo post (which unfortunately got buried under the original G Gundam post), so also look forward to that. Who knows, maybe I'll talk about Xenoblade at some point along with my love of Zeke von Genbu, THE BRINGER OF CHAOS. Or maybe Pokemon, and how Rowlet is objectively the best starter.

But once again, and most important of all, thanks for reading.

[crystalmaiden77real]

Everything Good about Sonic Forces' Plot

1: It’s nice of Sonic to ask people if they’re okay after he smashes some robots in front of them.

2: It’s new that Sonic apparently has to face off with Metal Sonic and Chaos and Zavok and Shadow all at the same time except they’re just solid illusions.

3: I get to see Zavok get attacked, even though it’s not Zavok.

4: It sure is competent of Infinite that he can move faster than Sonic to dodge him.

5: It’s realistic that they just repeatedly get to hit him until he’s knocked out because he’s completely outnumbered and Metal Sonic and Shadow are as fast as you’d expect.

6: And he moves all over the place in the mean time so it still looks visually interesting.

7: It also ends with a bang because he’s thrown into a wall.

8: Knuckles says he’s happy to see his friends are alive.

9: It’s nice that there’s a new recruit to go help Sonic’s friends in the fight against Eggman’s robots.

10: And they took that fight seriously enough to give their group a name.

11: Tails shows compassion for Omega being sad that he couldn’t fix him.

12: Classic Sonic wants to save Tails.

13: Sonic gets to escape his cell.

14: I get to see Zavok fall over, though it turns out he’s an illusion. Since Sonic fans hate the Zeti, it’s good writing that he’s an illusion.

15: Sonic wants to save The Rookie.

16: Sonic’s given the task to destroy a weapons factory of Eggman’s.

17: It’s smart of Infinite to send Sonic flying away in that direction.

18: I get to see Eggman call Infinite out on letting Sonic live. It’s lampshaded.

19: The heroes smartly wait for Infinite to leave before

20: Classic Sonic attacks the Eggmobile.

21: I get to see the Eggmobile crash to the ground.

22: The characters start complimenting the protagonists. Knux says that was impressive

23: and Sonic tells him great job

24: and Vector says nice moves.

25: Tails flies over to Sonic and hugs him.

26: Sonic’s hands are on his shoulders

27: and at least he doesn’t demand him to stop.

28: Silver is optimistic enough to assume that the only reason Shadow would be working for Eggman again would be if he were brainwashed.

29: The real Shadow kicks the fake to one-shot him! At least that displays how competent Shadow is. It’s good that this was written so that the writer didn’t have to write Sonic somehow winning against a version of Shadow who isn’t holding back at all, aside from his laziness from being in a team. He's lucky he didn’t take advantage of his super speed to run around and hit him a bunch while he was talking.

30: Shadow thought to use Chaos Control, that’s good! THAT’S Shadow.

31: Eggman’s main city is Metropolis Zone again! It’s a harmless name, AND a name from one of the main Genesis games from the roots of the series, so what better place to be his capital city?

32: I kind of like the effect of the Rookie remembering Sonic’s encouragement.

33: Infinite got bested by the Rookie and asks why.

34: I like the character moment that Eggman has tons of selfies.

35: Knuckles acknowledges and lampshades that he doesn’t just like sitting on the bench.

36: At least Sonic is smart enough to lampshade that they should’ve just used the real Metal Sonic or built more of him.

37: Sonic talks awkwardly having a relatable moment

38: before fist-bumping the OC, which is trying to be nice to him,

39: and Tails gets told great job.

40: It’s creative that the Phantom Ruby needs an electric charge to work especially well now and so the heroes need to use a computer to shut it down in Chemical Plant.

41: I get to see the new Death Egg explode.

42: Eggman says he learned from his mistakes and had a back-up power source because the heroes always destroy his power sources.

43: Sonic maturely gives credit to the OC for his escaping Null Space.

44: Sonic lampshades the lameness of Eggman talking in the third person.

45: Tails thanks Classic Sonic for all of his help.

46: The various Sonic characters try to be useful by fighting.

47: It’s competent of Infinite to blast the heroes away from him.

48: He gets shot at by Omega.

49: It’s an impressive threat of Eggman’s that he scares the heroes with an illusion of a sun that can make them overheat magically.

50: The Rookie uses the prototype Phantom Ruby from courage to make the fake sun vanish.

51: Tails plans to help up the Rookie

52: as he calls Eggman a bad scientist for having a mistaken assumption.

53: It’s satisfying to see Infinite complain that he got defeated.

54: It makes sense that Eggman’s the final boss thematically since he took over the world in this game.

55: Eggman says the fortress reactor was a decoy since he was smart enough to have a back-up mecha to fight the heroes.

56: He put the Phantom Ruby in this back-up mecha, so now the Phantom Ruby no longer has a vulnerable energy source.

57: Eggman’s made to leave so he’s overthrown.

58: Sonic puts his hand on Tails’ shoulder

59: reassuring him.

60: The Rookie wants to help in case any other people need her help.

61: The rest of the scene’s devoted to the heroes flattering the OC one

62: after another.

63: Silver tells Knuckles that there’s still a lot to do and they’re just getting started.

64: Shadow’s in the room with the others with nothing to gain, proving he does appreciate their company. Shadow was just how I expected him to be, he was in-character the entire game. He wasn’t confusingly mean to someone unprovoked. This isn’t a separate point because that’s the bare minimum that you shouldn’t have to compliment, like, “ Sonic’s blue in this game. “

65: Back in Episode Shadow, Rouge tells Shadow that a report from the intelligence division located a place full of robots that’s one of Eggman’s bases. This establishes that like we already imagined Shadow spends his days looking for Eggman’s robots to smash, and Rouge tells him where to go to do that. So he’s in a group dedicated to heroically fighting against Eggman’s tyranny against freedom.

66: It’s established that Shadow was pragmatic enough to destroy Infinite’s defense squad. He did something harsh and it was the right thing to do because if he chose not to they would’ve gone on to do far more evil things, and he would’ve been responsible for them.

67: Shadow beat Infinite easily because he constantly used Chaos Control.

[warm-soda-solutions]

SUMMER ANIME FIRST IMPRESSIONS/RANKING WOW!!!!!!!

bunch of shows are coming out and i'm watching some of them!!!!! now that each show has 3+ eps i'm gonna rank them from worst to best by my enjoyment of them so far. 12. My Deer Friend Nokotan: probably a controversial pick for last place but i dropped this one after 2 eps because it was painfully unfunny and also not nearly as wacky as i was hoping it would be.

11. Days With My Stepsister: i don't get the generally positive reception this show was getting. dropped after 1 ep because it was real boring. this kind of premise is trashy no matter how you try to dress it up, and doing that rather than leaning into the trashy aspects like Domestic Girlfriend makes this show a lot less entertaining than that one. essentially this is a trashy show pretending to not be one and i dislike that sort of thing greatly. 10. Narenare -Cheer for you!- : dropped this one after 2 eps because it still wasn't really clear what the motivations of the protagonist were or where the plot might go. felt like it was juggling too many characters and i wasn't super interested in any of them. parkour was cool though. big gap in quality between the bottom two and this one. 9. ATRI -My Dear Moments- : dropped after 1 episode not because it was bad, it was honestly pretty solid, but because i found the whole robot girl thing to be done in a way that's kinda cliche and uninteresting to me. definitely check this out if you want a Key-esque thing but other shows were just more interesting to me.

8. Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin: this is where we get to shows i'm actually still keeping up with, and this one is just a cute little farming show. i like the character designs and the world a lot, but i'm pretty mixed on the characters themselves and the focus on rice farming after the premiere is expected and done solidly but also not quite as interesting to me as the more fantastical elements from the premiere. unsure if i want to stick with this the whole way through 7. Wistoria: Wand and Sword: absolutely killer visuals and music elevate a very generic Harry Potter/Mashle/Black Clover thing into a solidly enjoyable spectacle. if this were at all dumb or annoying i'd probably drop it but it's fairly inoffensive when it comes to dumb anime bs surprisingly.

6. The Elusive Samurai: some of the best art and animation i have ever seen in a TV anime (less so in the newer episode for justifiable reasons) and a very solid premise mixed with some awful, tonally dissonant humor and not super interesting characters so far. thankfully it seems like the show is getting the humor in check but it's gonna have to keep up the good elements of the story and the quality of the animation to keep me watching. 5. Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!: this one is mostly a very good romcom so far with a great, kinda grounded visual style that i really like. the op and ed here are also both fantastic. i think this shows's got a really good sense of comedic timing and a very likeable cast of dorks so i generally feel quite positive on it BUT i'm worried it could very easily become some garbage-y wish fulfillment harem stuff, and an awful, out of place fanservice scene in episode 2 has made me highly suspicious of the show's direction in the future. if this stays good, which it so far has, i will keep watching, and if it doesn't i will not. 4. Senpai is an Otokonoko: this is kind of the unexpected sleeper hit of the season for me. i was worried going into this one that it would handle its subject matter poorly since i don't really trust most anime to handle LGBTQ+ issues sensitively or all that well in general (not that i can particularly speak to this personally). however, it turned out to be mostly very good in that area and all the characters are quite layered and enjoyable. it's a great mix of fun slice of life shenanigans, a little bit of romance, and some surprisingly compelling if somewhat too quickly paced character drama. likely sticking with this one all the way through. 3. Mayonaka Punch: just a super fun romp about making YouTube videos from a lot of the same people behind Ya Boi Kongming, which i also loved. i think this show's got a really strong sense of style visually, and i enjoy getting an anime where the protagonist is actually an adult, i feel like that sort of thing is far too rare. every character here is fun in their own way, and the show seems intent on meaningfully developing them as well. i also like that the protagonist is really not a great person, so i'm curious how she'll change over the course of the show. 2. TASUKETSU -Fate of the Majority- : this show sucks really really bad but it's so unintentionally funny that it's easily one of my favorites of the season. the combination of an edgy nonsense premise, beyblade looking characters, limited animation, and completely out of control pacing make for the most fun i've had with a trainwreck of a show since EX-ARM. this honestly might be at number 1 if it weren't for the pacing grinding to a halt for no reason in the 4th episode, but even that just kinda adds to the fascination of this show. 1. SHOSHIMIN: How to become Ordinary: i really like Hyouka, so unsurprisingly this is my favorite of the season so far by a decent margin. it's a ton of fun to watch the two leads solve such incredibly mundane mysteries. you'd expect that kind of thing to be boring but the characters and direction work really well together to make it actually super engaging. i also love that the leads are something of a mystery themselves, with the audience slowly learning more and more about why they are the way they are each episode. it seems like it's just beginning to get to some even meatier character stuff so i'm very excited for that. i also really love the ED for this show, the live action settings with the anime characters just fits the whole show's vibe so well.

[kimbap-r0ll]

Vil x gn!reader x Neige - To Stand on the Stage Til the End (angst)

The only thing that Vil ever wanted in life was to see himself standing on stage, in front of the cameras, the audience, until the very last second. He wanted to be in the spotlight, standing as the audience cheered, as the music swelled into a heroic theme. But he would only watch from behind the shadows, his role in the storyline already over as he watched the protagonist, usually Neige, take his bow. 

Vil wasn’t sure how much harder he could try before he would have to simply give up. There were many moments when he felt it was all too much and perhaps his role as an actor was not fit for him. The neighboring children or the whispering mouths of adults would pester him as if he was an actual villain. It didn’t matter to the audience whether the characters were real or not, it seemed to him. 

But then you showed up.

You were a budding performer too, one that did not shy away from female or male roles. You took each character with love and you showed everyone working on the film or theater project with respect. Many people called you a muse because of how good you were at singing. If anything, however, Vil felt as though he was breathing fresh air when he met you.

“You did really well today,” you approached him one day after the filming. He looked over at you, the two of you were only around 12 in age, but he had already acted more like an adult. He nodded at your compliment. 

“I make sure to perfect my role before every filming you know, perhaps you should do the same,” he sounded cold. He did sound like a villain in a storyline, but to you it didn’t seem so. You simply giggled and sat next to him. 

“I’ll try harder next time,” you reply. You dig through your pockets to look for a piece of candy that you snuck in. Finally, after you thought you had lost it, the small sweet showed up. 

“Here,” you handed it to him. He was surprised, not because he wasn’t expecting sweets but the fact that you weren’t talking to him like he was an antagonist or if he was mean. You reminded him of Jack. 

“You don’t have to, I don’t usually take treats,” he took it nonetheless.

“It helps me calm down before I go onstage, I think it’ll help you too, though I’m sure you don’t have any butterflies in your stomach since you’re basically a pro at this,” you laugh. 

It was refreshing for him to have someone to talk to. You ended up going over to his house more often as the two of you lived in the same area. His father was happy Vil had more friends and your parents were glad you had a friend too. Whenever Vil and you would go out however, you could also hear the murmurs that others spread. 

“They’re going to get influenced by that boy,” a woman spoke in a hushed tone to another.

“He’s too robotic, I heard that he’s just as selfish as the last role he had,” the other responded. 

“Hey, don’t talk about him that way!’ your voice startled the two women. They looked down to see you with a pout. “If anything, I think that he has better chances at getting a date than you two combined!”

Vil would be lying if he said that it was a bit embarrassing with how upfront you were about some things, but he couldn’t help admiring you. He could stand up for himself sure, but he didn’t have the brightness that you had. It was the kind of brightness that he wanted in his life, perhaps like the stage lights with a protagonist. 

You two became closer until one day you two got admission letters from different schools. You had texted him that day, sending him a picture of your acceptance into Royal Sword Academy. You were super excited, especially because you wanted to become better at magic and what better place than here! But Vil turned out to be going to Night Raven College, the rival school of RSA. 

“We might see each other during sporting events then, or we could go hang out at the town area on the island,” you texted back after he told you where he was going. 

“We should, I think that would be nice,” he wrote back. He was always more formal in language than you were. Some may call it opposites attract, and Vil was definitely attracted to you. 

Vil wasn’t someone who believed in romance or love at first sight, but maybe he fell for you the moment he saw you on that day after the filming. Was he having a protagonist moment? No, he tried his best to keep his emotions away from him, but his heart would always beat faster when he was with you. He noticed how much your smile remained in his mind and how he would replay moments he had with you over and over again in his head. This would only continue to grow as the two of you went to your respective schools. 

There’s one person in this tale however that we need to mention. 

Neige LeBlanche.

You were always assigned a character paired up with the main protagonist, who happened to be Neige. He was similar to you: great smile, beautiful hair, amazing personality. He was everything a protagonist needed to be, and you were his sidekick or romantic partner in almost every show or movie. Vil however, would be the one to try and stop the relationship or end one of your lives. It always went like that. He didn’t mind that much, but maybe the world on a stage was merging with the one in real life. 

“There’s this guy I really like,” you confessed to Vil one day while you two were at a cafe. He stopped drinking his cup of tea and looked at you. He felt his heart rate go up, he hoped he wasn’t blushing. Was it about him? He hoped so, he tried to prepare what he would tell you after you confessed your feelings for him but your next words stopped him. 

“Ah forget it, it’s probably just a passing crush,” you laughed and bit a piece of your sandwich. 

“You know, we’ve been friends for a long time, don’t be shy to tell me if you need help,” he responds. 

“No, it’s totally fine!” you smile at him, then you look at your watch and gasp. “Shoot, I’m going to be late for a club meeting, I’ll see you soon!” 

He waves at you with a smile, watching as you nearly slam yourself into the door and hurl yourself out. He always found your slight clumsiness cute, and now he feels himself blushing.

I should have just told them, perhaps then they would have said something back, perhaps I will next time, he says to himself. 

Just like being on stage, he seemed to always be behind the curtains, a little bit further from you by some kind of a barrier. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to break out of the shadows and join you in the light, but perhaps this was his chance. 

Going to Sam’s shop, he found something that he always knew you liked; sweets. It was the same tiny ones wrapped in pastel wax paper, it was called “Poppins” or so, famous for their burst of flavor. He wanted to gift you with them, perhaps because it reminded him of the first time you two met, but it didn’t seem romantic enough. Should he ask Rook what he should get for you? No, asking Rook would mean the whole school would know, and he didn’t want to hear anyone teasing him about it. Hell if it were to get leaked onto Magicam, it would make it to the headlines and you wouldn’t like it either. Deciding on the simplest item, he bought a small box of Poppins for you. 

Walking back, he was reminded even more about how he had planned to confess to you right before the two of you went away to your respective schools. “What a pity, I could’ve saved myself this headache,” he mumbled to himself, opening the door to his room and placing the box on his desk. He had to ask you when you were available so he could confess to you. He could already imagine you blushing, perhaps you would smile brightly at him like you always did. Smiling once more to himself, he untied his hair and got ready for the night. 

He decided to visit you the next time you two had some free time, but he wished that he stayed back after he went to see you. He didn’t like stepping into RSA that much, but the students didn’t seem to mind that much that he was visiting. It wasn’t uncommon to see some NRC or RSA students visit from time to time to each others’ schools anyways. He saw some younger students, giggling and whispering as he went by. At first, he thought that it was about him and how he was a famous person walking into the school grounds, but he listened a bit closer and found out they were talking about someone else. 

“They actually decided to confess today!” one of them whispered excitedly. 

“I know, I knew they would do it eventually! I mean, they’re like a storybook couple, just like in the movies they’re in!”

Vil felt his legs stop. He looked back at the students, wondering if he should ask whether he heard them correctly or not. He then looked ahead, seeing a courtyard that you were bound to be in. Taking a deep breath, he decided to continue marching. 

He saw you, talking to someone and shifting your weight from one leg to the other. You seemed shy, how cute. He was going to call out for you but then suddenly you looked at the person you were talking to and hugged them. 

You hugged someone in the way that he hoped you would hug him. 

I guess that is the person they wanted to go out with? Wonder who it is, he thought. He wasn’t the type to snoop in on others’ business, but it was you he was in front of. He had to know, who was this person that you were enamored with, and who was it that he wasn’t able to take the role of?

“You know, I wanted to ask you out for a while too, I just didn’t have the confidence haha,” Vil recognized that voice. He would recognize it anywhere. 

“Neige,” he muttered to himself. The box in his hands felt heavier than before. Without a word to you, he left. 

You ended up texting him that night, telling him that you finally asked out the person and you were now going on a date. 

“That’s wonderful to hear, I hope it goes well,” Vil wrote back to you while you were sending long messages of how excited you were. 

He put his phone down and let himself fall onto his bed. It was just a school crush, why was he so shattered by it? Was it his emotions, the ones he had for many years, all crashing down at once?

Vil remembered how you two would talk for hours on favorite scenes, acting them out and playing different roles. He remembered how you would sneak Poppins in every once in a while to give him, sort of like a tradition between the two of you after every filming. You were the one that made him feel he had hope to get to the end of the story, standing in front of the audience as a hero. You were the one that gave him that bit of light that others blocked. He wanted to be the protagonist, standing with their lover, standing with you. 

But in the end, he was once again pushed into the shadows, having to watch you and the hero together.

[fantasyinvader]

So now that G-Witch is over (and I finally ordered a HG Aerial), is it a step up from Gundam IBO? I feel like G-Witch is the better show, but IBO is the more important one. I’ve been saying this since the first season, so much of G-Witch felt like it was done in response to IBO. IBO, on the other hand, felt like it was taking the hypocrisies of the Gundam franchise to their absolute limit.

The franchise wants to say “war is hell,” but also wants to market model kits of cool robots. We occasionally get bits on how war can mess kids up, but at the same time the franchise uses the war as a means to mature it’s protagonists. It usually wants to use a grey vs grey war setting, but at the same time the narrative wants us to support one side over the other. The enemy must be stopped, but it’s meant to be grey because the other side are just guys fighting for what they believe in and some of their commanders aren’t complete shitheads (though the upper echelons are another story). So while the “bad guys” are defeated, the good guys will talk about the need for “understanding” despite them having unstoppable killing machines. Violence is okay when the good guys do it, especially if they don’t kill the enemy pilots. It’s okay for the good guys to use illegal weapons, even if we condemn the enemy for using the same weapons. Worldbuilding fluff is often left out of the show, told in side-materials, despite how it could help us better understand the conflict (though that gets in the way of the narrative). And the whole not repeating the past thing is a joke considering we either base events on real wars or reuse the Universal Century timeline.

I mean, you can look at something like SEED and see how these things can be problematic. Old interviews with Fukuda have him saying things like he wanted to make it like super robot shows of the 70’s, the mold Gundam tried to break out of, or how things were done simply because they were cool. That got to a point where SEED was being deconstructed in crossover games and 00 was made with the intent, according to it’s director, to examine what happens when you fight to end fighting, something that was a major part of SEED’s morality later on (though Fukuda himself has dismissed this, saying that Kira fights during Destiny for a world where there will be conflict because that’s needed for people to grow and the Destiny plan would have eliminated conflict). Yet people believe SEED is emblematic of Gundam, and that 00 deconstructed the entire franchise in it’s first half.

IBO intentionally cranked the hypocrisy up to 11, made it’s main characters the villains in the eyes of history and punished them for their crimes while saying more people needed to question them (the creators backed this up0. It’s lost on a lot of people, but damn, that takes some balls. You really can’t go back to Gundam as normal afterwards, you need to be conscious of what messages you are sending out.

IBO sounded the alarm on what Gundam had become, G-Witch fought for the franchise’s soul. That's the way I see it.

Still would rather rewatch Witch though, because it doesn't drag like IBO did and the animation is way better.

[thevulpinehero1]

GWatch -- Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 Ep 1

Since Armoured Core came out and everyone's in a mecha mood, I figured I would talk about an entirely different mecha series instead. The plan is to watch one episode a day, talk about it, and include one (or more) screenshots to facilitate enhanced rambling. I want to start with the original series since I've watched it before, see if I can get through it all, and then maybe move onto some other Gundams if I have the spirit.

Beware! Spoilers for a 40 year old anime inbound, as well as possible misreporting since I probably am not going to fact check too well. Gundam nerds may feel free to correct me and dispense wisdom where appropriate. Also, I'm just going to go with whatever name spelling is on the subtitles I have at the time. Sorry, not sorry.

The first thing I have to talk about is the theme song, which honestly gives me emotions. Nowadays, we all have this image of Gundam as basically the show that invented the real robot subgenre, but you would absolutely never get that impression from the theme song or OP. Honestly, go find it and listen to it -- it's actually amazing how widely it misses the tone of the series, with lyrics like "Bring to bear the rage of justice!" and "If you are still burning with furious rage, you must fight the towering foe!" It sounds much, much more like a Super Robot theme song for like Daitarn 3 or Raideen or something, than something you would see associated with a classic "war is hell" series like Gundam.

And this was probably completely intentional. I remember hearing that even as far back as its initial run, the series had to fight the sponsors/toymakers in order to carve out its own identity, and part of that was projecting a surface level impression of a more palatable Super Robot style show. (Some things never change, I guess...)

To me, it adds a lot to the charm, because the singer is obviously going in and doing their best, singing an ode to a giant metal hero of justice who doesn't really exist outside of the fertile imagination of an advertising/toy exec who has been thoroughly mislead. I love that. I just want to go and tell them, hey, I appreciate you, you are singing your heart out on this theme song for an entirely different and imaginary series than the one they've actually made, and you're killing it. You are fighting the good fight, and you may be one of the reasons the series even got off the ground in the first place because you were part of this obfuscation.

This is Amuro Ray. His shadow looms large over every Gundam protagonist that will follow him; many of them either use him as a blueprint for their personality, or are meant as a study in contrast to it. He kills a lot of people. He eats a lot of sandwiches. There are long and intricate scenes of Amuro eating sandwiches, and they are among my favourite scenes in the whole series, and, in fact, any Gundam show I've ever watched. I'm not kidding.

I picked this screenshot not just because it shows a stone-cold, unrepentant sandwich-murderer in his natural habitat, but because it also showcases another thing I love about the show: the goofy animation. This was not a show with a huge budget. There is something weird or goofy happening in every episode, almost every scene, and the first episode -- traditionally one of the best funded in most series -- is no exception. Amuro eats like a turtle. Hayato's hand is an amorphous, misshapen blob. I think it honestly adds to the charm; the series is scuffed, and probably knows it's scuffed, but it's doing its best to tell a story in spite of that.

For now, Amuro is not the pilot of legend. He sits around the house doing science in his underwear, his neighbours don't like him enough to tell him about an actual military evacuation that he's supposed to be undertaking, and without the aid of his childhood friend Fraw Bow (who he mostly summarily ignores), he wouldn't bother to evacuate at all and would likely die at home. He's a scrunkly kind of dude. Maybe even a scrunklemeister. Your boy probably smells like a scratch and sniff card if you rubbed off all the panels and tried snorting them all at once.

The show is surprisingly quick at characterising him, too. Within a minute or two, we know all the above, plus that he seems to have a certain amount of tension with his father, who his neighbours blame for bringing the military to their peaceful colony. His father, Tem Ray, loves him at least enough to put a picture of him on his desk, and makes vaguely prophetic statements about how kids as young as Amuro are already joining the war as guerrilla fighters. Foreshadowing hit different in the eighties.

One scene I didn't actually remember, but really should have in retrospect, is the part where Amuro confronts his father ("Do you care more about Mobile Suits than humans?" is the absolute first thing Amuro says to him), and the death of Fraw Bow's mother and grandfather, both of which expose a more sensitive core to the scrunklebeast within. It's very convenient/poetic (delete as appropriate) that Fraw Bow was herself very nearly caught in the explosion that killed the crowd her family was in, and only survived because she separated from them in order to check on Amuro.

I was also kinda surprised to relearn that Amuro doesn't really 'fall in' to the cockpit; he very deliberately gets in, having happened to read the manual earlier, in an effort to either protect the remaining civilians or take revenge for the ones who've just fallen (the context doesn't really make it clear which one, but he rushes to the cockpit soon after Fraw Bow sees her family die and is making her escape).

One thing that's really interesting in the metacontext of the series is that although Amuro ends up being one of the best pilots (he's a legend in mecha anime for a reason), he kinda starts out as one of the worst. Many Gundam protags are either experienced, have some level of training, or have other reasons why they're hot shit right out of the box; Amuro really does not know what he's doing, and is carried entirely by the fact that the Gundam itself is dizzyingly durable for the time period. It also comes with a learning computer (which I bet sounded very advanced in the time the anime was made, but kinda brings certain chatbots to mind in the present day) to ease the piloting burden while he learns how to use the dang thing. Not only that, but he goes up against a lot of mobbers who aren't that much better than he is and can't do much against his much better machine.

(A really interesting experiment is to contrast Kira from SeeD, which follows a lot of the original Gundam's major story beats quite closely for the first part of the series and is almost a spiritual remake in some parts. Kira almost has the opposite end of the equation going on -- a very good pilot from day one, he has the misfortune of having five other named dudes who are close to his level and have machines that are arguably better than his in a vacuum, and he fights them pretty regularly.)

Anyway, through more luck than skill, Amuro manages to get through his first Mobile Suit battle in Side 7, but Bright is already looking to utilise him as labour, and Char is advancing on the colony. That's the first episode, more tomorrow. (I don't intend these to be exhaustive or talk about every little, but I wanted to go a bit more in depth for the first ep, and I don't want to restrict myself from veering off on tangents because those are fun.)

[rjalker]

The movie is clearly trying to show that racial (or in this case, speciesial? special?) profiling is wrong and that it has serious negative consequences not just for individuals but for society at large. However, as Devin Faraci points out in his review, the portrayal of minorities as "predators" seems to undermine the entire message of the movie. It implies that this minority is inherently dangerous; to quote Faraci:

"Predators eat prey. This is their relationship, and we in the audience understand it as such. Yes, the bunny should be pulling her kids away from the tiger. The tiger is demonstrably, historically dangerous. He has evolved to be dangerous to her."

Archived link.

Yeah this is where Martha Wells, a cis white woman, fails every time she tries to portray oppressed people in her writing. The Raksura are literally apex predators who literally evolve shapeshifting abilities so they could sneak into other species' cities, gain their trust, and then eat them all. They are so absurdly overpowered the protagonists, who are Raksura, have literally never lost a fight on screen, even against the other Actual Evil Race of Shapeshifters Who Eat People that are supposedly super scary and dangerous. No, despite all the characters constantly telling us these other ones are super scary and terrifying and dangerous, Martha Wells just can't bring herself to let the protagonist lose a single fight against them.

Or anyone else for that matter. The Raksura are physically superior to their natural prey - - other people - - in every way. They're faster. They have natural weapons in the form of teeth, claws, wings, and pure physical strength. You can't outrun them, you can't hide from them, there's no defence against them for 99.99% of the people in this world.

But the Raksura, we are old, are oppressed by everyone else, because everyone else is rightfully wary of them and thinks they're going to eat them. You know, the way they literally evolved to do?

And then in her newest series The Murderbot Diaries, the androids (she decided to call them constructs to confuse everyone for no reason) are enslaved, and obviously this is a bad thing....but not even the fucking protagonist, who is one of these enslaved androids, thinks the other androids should be freed because they're all so inherently dangerous and violent and scary and used as weapons by Capitalism to oppress people.

These androids have guns built into their arms and the ability to kill as many people as they want and the protagonist, Murderbot is constantly spying on literally everyone around it by hacking into security cameras and trailing people with drones and there's literally nothing anyone would be able to do to get it to stop doing this. If it wanted to it could, very easily, within less than a minute send a space station crashing out of orbit and into a planet if it felt like it. And there would be nothing anyone could do to stop it.

But then we're still supposed to think that it's not fair for humans who have been directly and traumatically oppressed by these androids to be afraid of them and to think they're dangerous. The protagonist itself literally doesn't even think other androids should be freed because it thinks they'd all go on a rampage and start killing everyone.

Martha Wells has not written about a single oppressed people in any of her stories where the oppressed people were not literally posing a real life threatening danger to the people doing the oppressing.

Because Martha Wells does not understand how oppression works, or why it exists. Just the same way as she doesn't understand that gender is a social construct, or how it works.

If your oppressed people are oppressed "for a good reason" and it's not just literally propaganda to justify oppressing them, then you're just racist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Real oppressed people are not oppressed because they're super powered robots who can kill hundreds of people in a few minutes, or because they're literal shapeshifting apex predators who evolved to kill and eat people, or because they're fucking antivaxxers who've literally wiped several cities off the post-apocalyptic map by refusing to get vaccinated.

Stop fucking writing about fantasy oppression if you don't actually know how real oppression works in the first place.

[h50europe]

Why the myth about Steve's PTSD doesn't add up and other inconsistencies

In the last few episodes of H50, PL tried to sell us a mentally broken Steve suffering from PTSD. Only the whole thing came a bit too late. The clip you see is from season 4 and ended up - no, not in the series - but somewhere on the floor of PL's editing room. And why? after Kurtzman and Orci departed, along with their writers, PL took the helm and started turning Steve into a super-soldier. He stylized him into something that wasn't meant to be. Instead of developing the characters, PL began to incorporate more and more hair-raising action sequences into the series and then let Steve fight on the front lines. There was no mention of Steve's mental state, and a lot was explained by PL with: it just happened "offscreen." Yeah, sure. PL can't create a decent character. He can only produce stereotypes and one-dimensional beings. Like Adam. What potential would that character have had had he been turned into Five-0's antagonist? But no. So his role remained diffuse and monotonous. Sometimes even tragicomical.

Back to Steve. When SEAL Team started on CBS, PL also lapsed into SEAL mania. If someone who writes fanfiction were to produce as much garbage as this man did, he would be chased away from every writers' platform in disgrace. PL's Super SEAL also had to rescue his team members from a blazing inferno. Not man by man, no, he flew a helicopter right into the danger zone and lifted a whole cabin out of the burning jungle. If lunacy had a name, it would be PL. While the action became more and more exaggerated and unrealistic, the same happened to the protagonists. After the departure of Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park, PL completely lost his mind. And please, don't blame the writers for the nonsense that was thrown at you. A series stands and falls with the showrunner. He dictates what he wants and passes it on to his staff.

And so, lovable Steve became a soulless robot who only showed feelings here and there. Danny diminished more and more into a sidekick. McDanno became a ship that drifted anchorless through a stormy sea and threatened to capsize again and again. From season 8, it became a reboot of the reboot. PL tried an ensemble show and failed more than miserably. Often the actors just stood around bored. At least that was the impression. The only highlight was episode 8.10. A feast for all McDanno fans. But even here, the outcome of "who shot Danny" was more than insubstantial.

Wait, there was something about SEALs... Oh, yes. Junior appeared on the scene and became Steve's lapdog. I really wondered when there was going to be an episode where he would fetch sticks for Steve. Luckily we had Eddie for that. And because he thought he was so clever, PL invented the episode speed dating. How many subplots can you squeeze into one episode at the same time? In some episodes, you couldn't even take a look at the bag of potato chips without losing the thread.

The case of the week became the yawn of the week. There were so many loose ends that PL then came up with something called retconning. That's what you do when you're no longer satisfied with what was once established in the series years ago, or it no longer fits. But PL went one step further and did the same with the characters. The more the series was dragged out, the more the characters deteriorated and became OOC. It means, often, they were not recognizable at all. And that's where we come to Steve. Because PL, in his desperation, didn't know what else he could do to Steve, and so he killed Joe White. He did it in such a cheesy way with a fake sunset that it made you sick.

Of course, one episode later, there had to be another gig of PL's favorite Barbie. He stuck a fake beard on poor Steve/Alex, so he couldn't even hug Danny/Scott properly. The episode also raised more questions than it answered any. And Steve? He still didn't suffer from PTSD, even though he had now lost Joe White and a fellow SEAL. Everyone is dropping like flies, except for Steve, who is standing like a rock. No matter what. He doesn't need in-depth talks with Danny, nor psychological care, nor any sleeping pills. No, he's doing great. He also opens a restaurant with Danny because apparently, the carguments are already getting on PL's nerves. Unfortunately, this plot device leads into nirvana. The idea was nice, but nobody thought it through to the end. And the merry-go-round continues. Until we get to season 10, where it gets even more absurd. Now PL is almost bombarding us with McDanno episodes, or at least it should seem that way. Oh well, he's already planning for season 11, so a new character has to come on board quickly. While in the beginning, Steve's mother, Doris, dies.

Alex was allowed to take on the subject. Of course, only under the strict eyes of PL. He then nullifies Alex's idea that Steve kills his mother. Because a good soldier and Super SEAL won't do that. Little does PL know. THAT could have been the opening of a PTSD scenario for Steve. However, apart from that, this episode would have had any potential for a multi-arc. Just imagine Steve chasing his mother across multiple episodes. Again, PL stepped in and butchered Alex's episode. You can really feel sorry for the guy. PL at his best or worse? He just can't help it. And then, on the very last meters of the series, he brings someone new, who is allowed to cruise around with Steve most of the time. Because Danny was kidnapped by Wo Fat's widow, PL also invented quite late to have some villain at his disposal. This wannabe mastermind must really have been living under a rock somewhere if she wasn't even mentioned by her husband or appeared earlier.

Because towards the end, PL obviously ran out not only of steam but also of ideas, everything culminated in a wildly illogical scenario. Steve has to live through a dramatic day with Eddie, who stands as a metaphor for Steve (as I said, PTSD was never a thing for Super SEAL), Danny bangs his brains out in a ladies' room with a complete stranger, who dies shortly after that in an accident with Danny's rental car. Apparently, there was no budget to turn the Camaro into scrap metal. Danny then also goes home alone, ignoring the incoming emergency vehicles. Everything remains open at the end of the episode. While Steve expresses his gratitude to Tani and Quinn and says, he would be just as lost as poor Eddie without the dog and all of them. The strange thing is that you never notice anything until that sentence. A few forced dialogues are supposed to make the drama visible, but they all happen way too late or are so poorly written that you miss them.

PL had decided early on to make Steve a Teflon hero. That also means he didn't need to put much substance into the character. Which you can clearly see if you compare the first three seasons to the rest of the series. But towards the end, PL wanted to turn the tide and forcefully rewrote Steve's past. There is a huge difference if you compare Steve from seasons 1 to 3 with Steve from season 10. It is only a sparse remnant of what made this character so great. This change in Steve's personality also affects his relationship with Danny. The witty, affectionate banter degenerates into a snappy, humorless bitch-fest that takes all the joy out of it.

The final two episodes could have been written for any other crime show. As mentioned, we have Cole, who even gets a book'em Cole from Steve, which can only be described as out of line. And it begs the question, was that what Lenkov originally had in mind? Danny out of the show and Cole in? Was the last episode, which mainly featured McCole, something of a test run? Did all the McDanno moments happen only to tear the two apart eventually? Was the real final scene the one where Steve and Catherine take Danny's coffin back to Jersey? Was Danny not supposed to survive? Was that the real reason Steve wanted to get out of Hawaii because he wanted to pay his respects to Danny? And would he really have returned to Hawaii later? Or would he have turned his back on Hawaii? To me, this ending is more plausible than what PL served us. Then, Steve handed over his credentials to Cole instead of Danny, his second in command. Honestly, you can't make the end of a series any more sloppy and dumber than that. And I won't even lose a word about the last 1:30 minutes because I think everything has already been said.

No PL, mission absolutely not accomplished. You created Teflon-Steve. You never wanted him to show any weakness. You turned him into a superhuman who can survive anything. Only to pull the rug out from under him on the last few meters to the finish line and spit on his legacy. How can you dismantle such a great series and its characters like you did? How much do you have to hate something to do that? In the final interviews, the showrunner didn't exactly cover himself in glory either. Everyone who grew up with the series from day one knows that its end was wrong on all the possible levels and that the showrunner is solely to blame for that. It takes a fair amount of egoism and carelessness to drive 10 years at full throttle against the wall. Not many people can do that. Whether you can be proud of that, however, I doubt.

My respect if you have made it this far. Each of you gets 10 extra brownie points for it.

[canmom]

Animation Night 88: 08th MS Team

Hi friends, it’s a Thursday, which means I would like to show you some animations!

This week’s number is unfortunately inauspicious in political numerology, and what’s worse it will be a very long time until Animation Night 1312 by which point we’ll surely have run out of animated films, but since I have kind of already shown the major antifascist animated films I know about, let’s instead just use the number 8 to signify... a buncha gundams!

All together now... Moeaagre GANDAMU~~~!

...ok, not actually that particular Gundam, but the song is such a banger that I had to post it.

Gundam is of course the oldest and mightiest mecha franchise, the jewel in the crown of the venerable anime studio Sunrise, and highly influential as the lead of the ‘real robot’ subgenre that took over from the prior ‘super robot’ shows. Gundam models, or Gunpla, are one of the core otaku industries. Gundam is sufficiently popular that they’ve even gone and built ‘life size’ gundam statues - soon to be four of them, in fact. We’ll talk about how this came to be in a little bit, but first let’s try to lay out the map a little bit.

If, like me, you’re curious to know what the fuss is about, you kind of hit a wall in that there is just so much Gundam, and it’s arranged so haphazardly that being a fan of Gundam has been likened to being a historian. Where do you begin? You will fairly soon discover that the Gundam title comprises several different, separate multipart stories, known as ‘timelines’. So some Gundam stories, such as Iron Blooded Orphans, are separate stories linked to the brand only by some similarities of design and shared staff. However, most of the material falls into one primary series, known as the Universal Century timeline. That’s the one that began in 1979 with Mobile Suit Gundam (機動戦士ガンダム Kidō Senshi Gandamu).

At the time Gundam arrived on the scene, mecha anime (anime about machines, primarily humanoid robots) was already well established as one of the major subgenres, closely linked to tokusatsu in terms of target demographics and sensibility.

Back then, mecha shows typically fell into a genre known as ‘super robot’. Here, the robots were essentially a kind of scifi spin on a superhero: a one of a kind machine with wondrous abilities. So let’s begin our history of Gundam a little earlier, with a history of robot anime in general.

Humanoid robots in manga originate in Tetsujin 28-gō (1956) [lit. Iron Man No. 28] by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, which you may recall cited by Otomo as a major influence on Akira; it featured a military robot built in the last days of the Japanese Empire repurposed by the son of its creator. Yokoyama drew on a number of his sources: primarily the manga of Osamu Tezuka (Animation Night 80), particularly Metropolis (whose adaptation by Rintaro we watched on Animation Night 53). But it also drew on his experiences living through the levelling of Kobe by American B-29 bombers, the 1931 film adaptation of Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, and the rumours of secret Nazi weapons projects.

Much like Frankenstein’s monster, the robot in Tetsujin is not intrinsically good or evil; the manga’s protagonist, Shotaro Kaneda, manages to get to it before a group of gangsters and becomes a kind of boy detective figure insistent on using the robot for peace. The idea of sitting inside a humanoid robot had not yet become established, and Shotaro controlled it remotely. Design-wise, it’s much more a product of 50s movies than the distinctive Japanese robot aesthetic which would snowball later.

Alas, beyond that short summary, I have not on a brief look been able to find any scans of the manga, so I can’t tell you how it ends, or what thematic resolution they find. Regardless, Tetsujin was wildly popular, which had a variety of impacts - awkwardly, one of them being the coinage of the term ‘shotaro complex’ as a counterpart to ‘lolita complex’. It received an early anime adaptation in 1963, which like Speed Racer (Toku Tuesday 20) was redubbed in the first wave of anime localisations in America by Fred Ladd as Gigantor, removing the historical setting and tone down the violence; the same happened to the 1980 series. Subsequently, the short-lived Palm Studio produced a more faithful anime adaptation directed Yasuhiro Imagawa in 2004.

(^ Mazinger Z (1972) - here you can see how much simpler mech designs are in this period: spheres and cylinders, and rather inconsistent dark reflections. as we’ll see, this would be refined to an insane degree over the coming decades)

However, this was not yet a genre. Super robots truly became established in the 1972, when Go Nagai (of Devilman fame) published a manga called Mazinger Z. This introduced the idea of sitting inside the robot, and set the pattern for many plot elements. The protagonist’s father Professor Kabuto is a scientist whose boss Dr. Hell (no really) finds an army of robots under the Earth and decides to go for world domination; escaping,  creates a special, advanced robot before being killed (and, trust Nagai, by “Baron Ashura, a half-man, half-woman”); his son must pilot the robot to fight Dr. Hell’s army.

As usual, Nagai had his finger on the psychic pulse, and his new storytelling formula became wildly popular. It very soon received an anime adaptation by Toei, and inspired a wide wave of imitators which copied most of the plot points. Like tokusatsu, the format gave them the ability to design a variety of weird looking enemies each week - just drawings instead of rubber suits.

Action animation at this point was still pretty stiff: the complex multi-layered camera movements of Ichiro Itano were still a long way to being invented. But it was a time of major change: the gritty gekiga style popular in manga of the time was spreading to anime with series like Tiger Mask and Ashita no Joe, and this is about the time when a young Yoshinori Kanada was starting his career. So the new genre of robot anime rode this wave, and proved a perfect fit for the Kanada’s emphases: striking poses, light flares, strong solid drawing varying framerate, playful physical comedy... and indeed, much of Kanada’s early work is on early shows like Getter Robo G.

Still, despite the new flashy innovations in animation techniques which were starting to define a distinctly anime style that could make the most of limited drawing counts, these super robot shows were largely telling the same sort of stories with the same primary drive: selling toy robots to children. And while you could totally read them as geopolitical, nationalist metaphors - the robot fighting off the monster of the week sublimating the resentment of Japan defending itself against the allies - they were on the surface level pretty black and white.

So it’s time to enter... Yoshiyuki Tomino!

(he did not look like this in 1979!)

Well, OK, not so much enter. Yoshiyuki Tomino not only already on the scene by ‘79: he started work all the way back on Astro Boy in writing and storyboarding. Before long he started directing his own shows adapted a Tezuka manga, Blue Triton, as Triton of the Sea (1973), making an early stab at complicating the very black and white narrative of the original - and also setting up his reputation as ‘kill ‘em all’ Tomino by wiping out much of the cast by the ending.

He started working in the robot genre with Brave Raideen (1975) and Invincible Super Man Zambot 3 (1977-8), the latter apparently the point where the ‘kill ‘em all’ nickname stuck. But he was growing frustrated with the limitations of super robot shows. In Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3 (1978), he started introducing more complex story elements from other genres, like spy stories and ironic pastiches. Evidently something was ripe for a change.

But the real break came in 1979, with Mobile Suit Gundam. The idea was to mix a robot show with hard science fiction space opera, and realism became a central drive - which is as has been hashed out endlessly since, an inherent contradiction since humanoid robots are far from practical military equipment. But the combination of meticulously observed machine animation and tragic war stories with cool humanoid robots proved explosively influential...

(^ this is an ambitious cut for the period, but notice how the Gundam (white mecha)’s legs change in size and proportion! they hadn’t quite got it at this point)

The title ‘Gundam’ is quite literally ‘gun dam’. It actually began as a portmanteau of ‘gun’ and ‘freedom’, with early iterations of the story imagining that the protagonists would belong to a ‘Freedom Base’, but Tomino changed it to ‘Gun Dam’ with the metaphor of a robot holding back enemies like a dam holding back water.

What was science fiction like at this time? Over in the English language, we could look at the Hugo Awards shortlist, where we’ll see Le Guin, Asimov, Clarke, Haldeman, Cherryh, Niven... or perhaps we could look at blogs like @70sscifiart​. So a time of high concepts, space operas, and Vietnam metaphors... hard sci-fi was pretty central, and still considered a genuine speculative exercise rather than a nostalgic pantomime of a past genre.

And, of course, the US had only recently stopped sending people to the Moon, Japan was still riding an economic boom, there was still a Soviet Union and a Cold War and at least nominally still nominally a Space Race; the idea that humans would soon find their way to space en masse must have seemed much less of a romantic fantasy, but also the idea that once humans got up there they’d immediately stage an enormous scale war would have seemed all too plausible.

So Gundam is full of hard sci-fi concepts like helium-3 fusion and Lagrange point colonies. They go to great lengths to attempt to justify the central ‘humanoid robot’ premise as a reasonable military strategy with the convoluted concept of a ‘Minkowski particle’. But that’s details; what’s the narrative thrust?

(^ this twink is Char, the major rival character/villain.)

The first Gundam doesn’t walk too far away from its super robot predecessors. A secessionist faction called Zeta, who are portrayed at this point entirely unsympathetically as fanatical and more than a little fashy, launch a war using their mecha which wipes out half of humanity. The protagonists belong to a polity called the Federation, which has developed a powerful new robot called (guess what) a Gundam. However, when they go to collect this robot, Zeta attacks. The protagonist, Amuro, gets in the robot and fends them off; in the process, he discovers he’s some kind of new evolution of humanity better adapted to space which becomes known as a Newtype, and thus becomes the regular Gundam pilot.

He’s opposed primarily by Char, a Zeta pilot who is modelled closely on the career of the Red Baron. Although flying for Zeta, Char has his own designs, and exploits the war to do away with the rival Zabi family who killed his peace-loving father. Naturally the series ends with Char facing Amuro in a duel - but Char realises at the last minute that he’s lost sight of his true goal (killing the Zabis) and flees to finish them off instead.

This story of rivals on either sides of a war with all attendant sexual tension (and bearing in mind Tomino’s Gundam is, I understand, far from kind to its girls) proved wildly popular. For Tomino, the principal theme is famously an anti-war one: despite all the cool robots they get to play with, going to war brings only tragedy to the cast.

He pushed this even harder in his next project, Space Runaway Ideon (1980) about a group of humans in Andromeda running from a powerful military faction in ancient alien tanks, which despite first being cancelled on its original TV run, was able to finish its story in a final movie that’s known for mercilessly slaughtering its cast. (Which I would like to watch at some point so I can say something more about it than ‘haha... death...’)

Meanwhile, the Gundam juggernaut was getting seriously underway. The 1979 series was summarised in a trilogy of three movies (coming to a future Animation Night). The release became a notable event...

The first Gundam film, upon release on 22 February 1981, drew a large crowd of 15,000 people at its premiere, leading to concerns from police and media that it could lead to social unrest from a riotous crowd. The event is considered a turning point in the history of anime, referred to as "the day that anime changed" according to Asahi Shimbun newspaper.[20]

...although sadly I can’t report on a Gundam riot, fascinatingly as that would be.

Tomino set a certain tone for the mecha genre: a simultaneous fascination with military technology and deep antipathy, or at least ambivalence, towards its purpose. The psychological realism of his characters also developed, from the more iconic superhuman pilots of a super robot show to an attempt towards people who act irrationally, suffer war trauma, and can drive a story through their desires rather than stepping into the familiar roles of prosocial/antisocial. The mecha was increasingly a vulnerable body, able to be gruesomely destroyed; the dead pilot whose blood seeps out of the cockpit. (This was, therefore, a major step towards the territory of Neon Genesis Evangelion on the one hand, and the films of Mamoru Oshii such as Patlabor on another.)

This political theme was not a natural thing either, but explicitly contested by animators. Shortly after Gundam, the industry was shaken by the Future War 198X controversy, related by Matteo Watzky here. (Hey Matteo, if you read this, sorry I keep selling your name wrong with two ‘t’s. ><) In this event, a large portion of the industry signed open letters and protested the production of a near-future war film imagining a future World War III. Like Gundam, the film put a huge emphasis on realism, claiming to be an accurate projection of what such a war would look like. For many animators, this felt too much like profiting off militarism, and the unions were far from happy about its negative depiction of the Soviet Union. The result was a partial victory: the movie was made, but with an edited script ending in a rather clunky pacifistic ending in which a Star Wars-like program destroys all the missiles.

Over time, however, this political strand would diminish as anime increasingly became continuous with the notoriously apolitical otaku subculture. Gundam sits in an odd place: it is perhaps the epitome of otaku media as the source of highly profitable gunpla models, but despite that, its films and series insist on attempting to return to the same ‘anti-war’, more or less overtly political themes.

Of course, such territory is risky, and it won’t always be executed well. Gundam can end up as just characters with hilariously weird names launching into long but ultimately incoherent political rants. Over time, it attempts to add a more sympathetic dimension towards the aristocratic Zeon faction, with Char in particular swapping from antagonist to protagonist in the next series, and then going back round to antagonist again in the landmark film Char’s Counterattack (1988), a major accomplishment of animation which is unfortunately gated behind about a hundred episodes of TV anime to set the context. One day I’m going to figure out how to show it to you!

(^ note how much more detailed the mechanical designs are, and how much more consistently they are animated! the camera is also much more mobile, and the general sense of weight and motion is considerably more developed. Per sakugaboor, this cut was animated by Kouji Koizumi.)

Along the way, however, another strand of Gundam developed. While the main series emphasised big robot battles and dramatic rivalries playing out over decades, these side story OVAs tended to go for something a little smaller scale. War in the Pocket (1989), the one which I’ve seen, focuses on children in an O’Neill cylinder space colony who, running on militaristic fantasies, get pulled into the space war on different sides when some mecha crash into their habitat. Inevitably, they end up tragically dying in a futile skirmish.

08th MS Team comes much later, at the tail end of the 90s, when the realist movement in anime was well established. Its 90s stylings are certainly very clear in its character designs...

More so than the other Gundams, which tend more often to present superhuman pilots having flashy battles and high stakes duels in space, this iteration of Gundam attempts to be a gritty, down-to-earth war story. It pulls the battle down to Earth during the period of the first movie, with the fights consisting of tense jungle warfare emphasising lines of sight and logistics; its characters are seasoned and cynical soldiers rather than young prodigies.

The story naturally focuses on a connection forming between fighters on either side of the war - indeed, star-crossed lovers, Federation pilot Shiro newly assigned a command and talented Zeon pilot Aina. Shiro finds his loyalty in question when his rescue of Aina from a space wreck at the beginning of the show is discovered, and he is ordered to take his ragtag crew on a mission to destroy Aina. So it’s that juicy territory of personal vs political relationships, transcending inherited conflicts, etc. etc.

Animation-wise, 08th MS Team is also exceptional, coming at the tail end of the cel era and featuring many talented realist animators, such as Akihito Yamashita who would later work on Ghibli films - and even a young Yutaka Nakamura on his rise to the household-name (to anime fans) Sakuga Throne. The skill of these animators allows the robots to move with exceptional weight and presence, and interact believably with water and their environment, like in this iconic shot of a robot firing from behind a shield:

This makes fantastic use of an impact frame, slow-out, lighting on the environment, and especially secondary motion such that you really feel the force of this big gun. This is Sunrise at their absolute high point of traditional mecha animation, standing up to compete with the likes of Gainax’s Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (Animation Night 29).

The character animation is similarly strong, in that sharp 90s way; you can tell this is of an era with Eva and Macross Plus (Animation Night 64), but the characters are able to express a lot of subtle acting. For these reasons, and the strength of the story, 08th MS Team is widely recommended as a starting point for the Gundam-curious. So that’s where we’ll begin tonight - and if we still feel in a Gundam mood, at some point I’ll take us back to the trilogy of movies summarising the original 1979 Gundam, and then, well who knows?

(One strand I haven’t touched on much in this writeup is the actual mechanical design of the robots themselves - the substrate on which all of this is built. This is, alas, because I’m not particularly well informed about that subject! I hope I’ll be able to get to it in a future writeup, drawing on sites like zimmerit.moe. Surely someone has a compiled a history of Gundam design?)

We’re all out of time right now: we’re going to have to take a pretty brisk pace to get through the full OVA tonight, so, strap into your mobile suit and head over to twitch.tv/canmom and we’ll take flight shortly!

[wordsandrobots]

What if 'Gundam SEED' was told from Flay's point of view? How would they approach it? Would it have been better?

For a long time, watching Gundam SEED, I would have said Flay was the most interesting character so I understand the appeal. 'X manipulates Y to exact revenge for Z while simultaneously being what Y needs in the moment and using this to avoid dealing with their own grief, fear and bigotry' is definitely a meaty premise.

However, this is also very clearly not the story SEED was interested in telling.

SEED is fundamentally about Kira and Athrun, and when I say 'fundamentally', I mean the show commits to the day being saved by two blokes in magic space robots who successfully blow up various bits of evil technology and/or bad guys because they're just that special. And to my mind, it's with this notion of 'special' that SEED's underlying flaw lies.

See, the Coordinators are definitively special. Textually, they can do things other humans cannot. We are told (and shown) that people are scared of them as a result. Yet this and Kira's struggles to be defined beyond his genes are obviously poor analogies for any real-world prejudice. It's 'being bullied for being smarter than everyone' logic, rather than how oppression or ethnic conflict actually work.

Basically, it's the X-Men. Hated and feared for being the brilliant ones, why oh why can't we just be treated as people.

Now, I like the X-Men. Always have. It's just, once you commit to inherent genetic 'specialness' of any kind, you back into a corner from which it is extremely hard to extricate yourself. Despite its token protests about Coordinators still needing to train, SEED presents a world where some people are just better. It embraces the idea of functional eugenics. There's nothing here of the nuance allowed by 'new-types' being analogous to new ways of thinking that emerge naturally from a changing world and are subverted or maximised by people who want to control the future. Nor does SEED turn around, as Gundam X did, and saying, nah, you're all random quirks of nature and/or incredibly lucky.

Eugenics is the explanation for why Kira is special. Someone literally bred a super-protagonist. That is a thing that is possible in this world.

So is Flay therefore right to fear the Coordinators?

Even as it presents her hatred and anger towards them as a flaw, SEED allows the possibility that the answer is 'yes'. Because it is reasonable to be wary of those who hold power over you, and the Coordinators come with power built in. Which is an exact inversion of the ways prejudice ascribes particular malevolence to groups who are, in fact, more vulnerable than people holding the prejudice.

I think a story centred on Flay over Kira would automatically be more interesting. If that's the criteria for 'better' then I must answer your question in the affirmative, straight up. The thing is, given all of the above, I can't in good conscience say it would address the stuff I don't like about what SEED is saying. As much as there are stories I love whose politics and worldview are quite at odds with my personal beliefs (currently delighted by Dracula, adore The Man Who Was Thursday, etc), I draw the line at centering lazy misconceptions about bigotry and oppression. And you would need to centre those things if you spent more time with Flay because, within the confines of what is presented in SEED as it stands, they form a significant part of her character.

If you were to take out the whole concept of the Coordinators and simply make Kira a talented member of some group responsible for killing Flay's dad, then tell the story of how she uses him as her instrument of vengeance before growing as a person and confronting the fact Kira is a person too? Sounds like a fantastic set-up with which you could do some very entertaining, very messed-up stuff.

That, however, essentially brings us back to my one big idea for improving SEED which is this: rip it up and start again.

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

My Top Ten Overlooked Movies With Female Leads In No Particular Order

Note: When you see this emoji (⚠️) I will be talking about things people may find triggering, which are spoilery more often then not. I mention things that I think may count as triggers so that people with them will be aware before going in to watch any of these.

Edited: 3/16/21

Hanna (2011)

So, before I get into why you should watch this movie, I just want to take a moment to say why it's near and dear to my heart. Growing up as a queer kid in the early 2000s, seeing portrayals of people like or similar to myself on anything was rare at best. It was mostly in more "adult" movies or shows that my parents would occasionally let me watch with them that I'd see any lgbtq+ rep at all. Often times they were either walking stereotypes, designed to be buried, evil, or all three.

Then here comes this PG-13 action thriller with a wonderfully written main female lead who, at the time, was close to my age, and who got to kiss another girl (her very first friend, Sophie) on screen in an extremely tender and heartwarming scene. To say the least, it was a life changing moment for me personally.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, Hanna is a suspenseful movie about a child super-soldier named, you guessed it, Hanna (played by Saoirse Ronan) and her adoptive (?) father Erik Heller (played by Eric Bana) exiting the snowy and isolated wilderness of their home and taking on the shadowy CIA operative, Marissa Wiegler (played by Cate Blanchette) who wants Erik dead and Hanna for herself for mysterious reasons.

It also has an amazing soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers, great action scenes, and it has an over arching fairytale motif, which I'm always a sucker for.

⚠️ Mild blood effects, some painful looking strikes, various character deaths, and child endangerment all feature in this film. However, given its PG-13 rating, a majority of viewers are presumably able to handle this one. Still, be aware of these going in.

Sidenote: It's recently gotten a TV adaptation on Amazon TV, although I have not watched it, and do not know if Hanna and Sophie's romantic/semi-romantic relationship has transferred over.

A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor is a "black-comedy mystery thriller" centered entirely around the relationship between two mothers, the reclusive, rich, mysterious, and regal Emily (played by Blake Lively), and the local recently widowed but plucky mommy blogger, Stephanie (played by Anna Kendrick). When Emily suddenly goes missing, Stephanie takes it upon herself to find out what happened to her new best friend.

It's a fantastic and entertaining movie throughout, with fun, flawed and interesting characters. The relationship between the two female leads is also implied to be at least somewhat romantic in nature, and they even share a kiss.

⚠️ The only major warnings I can think of is that the movie contains an instance of incest and one of the main plotlines revolves around child abuse, although both of these potentially triggering topics are not connected to each other, so there is thankfully no csa going on.

Edit: I legitimately forgot there was drug use in this movie until now. So, yeah, if that's a trigger, be careful of that.

I Am Mother

I became mildly obsessed with this movie when it came out. I Am Mother is a sci-fi film that centers entirely around a cast of two woman, and a female-adjacent robot who is brought to life on screen with absolutely amazing practical effects.

The plot is such, after an extinction-level event, a lone robot known only as Mother tasks herself with replenishing the human race via artifical means. She begins with the film's main protagonist, Daughter. Years go by as Mother raises her human child and the two prepare for Daughter's first sibling (a brother) to be born. However, on Daughter's 16th birthday, the arrival of an outsider known only as Woman shakes Daughter's entire world view. She begins to question Mother's very nature, as well as what's really going on outside the bunker she and her caretaker call home.

⚠️ This movie features child endangerment and reference to child death.

Lilo and Stitch

When I decided to add a single Disney film to this list I initially thought it was going to be hard but almost immediately my brain went to Lilo and Stitch, and specifically about the relationship between Lilo and Nani.

On the surface, this film is about a lonely little girl accidentally adopting a fugitive alien creature as a "dog," but underneath that the story is also about two orphaned sisters and the older sister's attempts to not let social services tear them apart by stepping up as the younger sister's primary guardian. Despite its seemingly goofy premise, Lilo and Stitch has a very emotional and thoughtful center. It's little wonder how this movie managed to spawn an entire franchise.

Despite the franchise it spawned (or possibly because of it), I often find that Lilo and Stitch is overlooked and many people only remember it for the "little girl adopts an alien as a pet" portion of its plot, and I very rarely see it on people's top 10 Disney lists.

⚠️ This movie could be potentially triggering to people who were separated from their siblings or other family members due to social service intervention. There's also a bit of child endangerment, including a scene where Lilo and Stitch both almost drown.

Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind

Unlike the above entry, I did struggle a little bit with picking a single Studio Ghibli film. Most media of the Ghibli catalogue have strong, well-written, unique, and interesting female leads so selecting just one seemed like quite the task.

However, I eventually settled on this particular film. In recent months, Princess Nausicaä has become my absolute favorite Ghibli protagonist and I'm absolutely enchanted by the world she lives in.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world overun by giant insects and under threat of a toxic forest and its poisoness spores, Nausicaä must try to protect the Valley of the Wind from invaders as she also tries to understand the science behind the toxic forest and attempts to bridge the gap between the insects and the humans.

For those who have never seen the film, I think Nausicaä's personality can best be described as being similar to OT Luke Skywalker. Both are caring, compassionate, and gentle souls who are able to see the best in nearly anyone or anything. She's an absolutely enthralling protagonist and after rewatching the film again for the first time in well over a decade she has easily become one of my all time favorite protagonists.

Whenever I see people talk about Ghibli films, they rarely mention this one, and when they do mention it, it's often in passing. In my opinion it's a must watch.

⚠️ This movie contains some blood, and the folks who either don't like insects or who have entomophobia may not appreciate the giant bugs running about throughout the movie. (Although most insects do not directly relate to real life bugs, and are fantasy creatures).

A Silent Voice

A Silent Voice is an animated movie adaptation of a manga of the same name. While I've never had the pleasure to read the manga, the movie is phenomenal. It covers topics such a bullying, living in the world with a disability, the desire for atonement, social anxiety, and depression in a well thought out manner that ties itself together through the progression of the relationship between its two leads, Shoya and Shouko. It's also beautifully animated. Although very popular among anime viewers, I've noticed that it's often overlooked by people who watch little to no anime. So I suppose this is me urging non-anime viewers to give this film a chance.

⚠️ As mentioned above, the movie deals with bullying, anxiety, and depression (with this last one including suicidal thoughts and behaviour). If discussion of those topics are triggering to you, than you may want to proceed with caution or skip this movie all together.

In This Corner of The World

Another manga adaptation, this one taking place during WWII-era Japan. In This Corner of The World follows the life of a civilian Japanese woman, Suzu Urano, as she navigates simply living and her new marriage as the wartime invades nearly all aspects of everyday life. I think this movie is a good representation of what it must be like to be living as civilian in a country at war where the fight is sometimes fought on one's own soil. It was also an interesting look into pre-50s Japanese culture in my opinion. It's also beautifully animated featuring an art style I don't see often.

Despite it being well known among anime fans, I never really see it be brought up, even among said anime fans themselves.

Side note: I've seen many WWII dramas centering around civilians but they've almost always been about American or UK civilians. This was the first movie I'd seen that features the perspective of a Japanese civilain.

⚠️ Features the death of a child and limb loss. There's also a disturbing scene featuring a victim of one of the atomic bombs near the end.

Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki

This film follows Hana, a Japan-native woman who fell in love with a magical shape-shifting wolf-man, and her trials with raising their children, who can also magically shape-shift into wolves, on her own. It's a very heartfelt movie about a mother's love and the struggles of doing right by your children when you have limited resources to actively guide and care for them. All the characters feel unique and alive in my opinion. Also, the animation is so good that my sister and I initially mistook it for a Ghibli film.

Again, like the previous two anime entries, I don't see it ever brought up outside of anime circles.

⚠️ There's some child endangerment present in the film, although none of it is the fault of Hana as far as I can remember.

Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday is about the fictional Princess Ann (played by Audrey Hepburn), who while on a whirlwind tour of Europe, finally reaches her breaking point over having her entire life be one big schedule and all her words and actions being rehearsed. In the spur of the moment, she runs away in hopes of experiencing what life is like for other women. Unfortunately, she was previously given a sedative, meaning she doesn't get too far before it takes effect. Fortunately, she is found by the kind reporter Joe Bradley (played by Gregory Peck). Believing her to be drunk and unable to get an address from her (because she has none) he ends up taking her home for safety's sake and allows her to sleep off her suppose drunken stupor. The next day, he realizes who she is, and decides to take her on a fun sight seeing trip across Rome in hopes of getting the big scoop. Along the way, they begin to fall for each other.

This is my favorite black and white, old romance film. I think the relationship between the main characters is absolutely beautiful and I have a lot of fun watching it.

⚠️ I'm not entirely sure what kind of warning this film would need. However, it was released in 1953, so values dissonance will probably be at play for many viewers to at least some extent. For example, early in the film Ann is given sedation drugs by her doctor for her behavior, something that is very unlikely to happen today. Also, Mr Bradley deciding to take Ann home to keep her safe rather than call the police or an ambulance is a very pre-90s decision in my opinion.

[mocacheezy]

Things that made watching Transformers (2007) easier and even enjoyable:

[note: B'verse gets the treatment that it gets by fandom for good reasons. There are tons of posts that dissect the bullshit of these movies far better than my second-language-english-non-american self could ever tackle, so I am not doing that, or plan on doing that. But if I decide that I'll get through every continuity of the franchise I will find a way to make it fun for myself. And so, this is my search for golden nuggets in these movies, because they did bring in new fans to the franchise and that's why we have other continuities that we might not have otherwise. Credit where it's due, and some positivity for those that did find B'verse at least amusing if nothing else. ]

🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪

Frenzy

Anytime Frenzy was on screen made me smile because his movements and personality were hilarious, he is just so expressive despite looking like someone super glued a bunch of knifes together. I wouldn't know it was Frenzy if I didn't go to the Wiki, but no matter that, he was funny and that's what matters.

The original Cybertronian robot modes

We don't see them for long, but the glimpses were glorious. Just look at Optimus

Gorgeous. What I wouldn't give to see the details up close. Maybe I'll go looking eventually, but this is just so nice.

We also get a "sexily rises from the pool" scene with Ironhide (probably unintentional and I am biased due to being a robofucker. In any case, very very nice and Cybertronians look so good as aliens)

"Excuse me, are you the Tooth Fairy?"

You see this kid?

This little girl was the only human I cared about in the movie until I saw just how badass Mikaela is, and how cool the military dude is. I don't like kids, but I would lay down my life for this girl.

This one scene just makes me think of what would happen if her parents showed up way earlier. Ironhide would be her guardian and it would be both adorable and hilarious because "Honey, you have to drive in a sentient alien that looks just like our car because the goverment men said so or there will be consequences and potential alien threats."

There are so many joke potentials there; the cultural barrier, the "I am the ine that is supposed to keep her safe" glaring contests, there is just so much shenanigans that could happen.

Also, tea party with the kid. Tea party with the kid.

Sam Witwicky actually reacts like an average human would when faced with the situations he finds himself in

Do I like Sam Witwicky? No, he is the kind of character that I would want to punch irl because of his personality and actions. He is disgusting. But watching him scamper and scream and stutter when faced with giant metal robot aliens that can squish him like a bug? Good, that was a beliavable reaction and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Megatron. Just, ✨Megatron✨

(the best screenshot of the few I could take while watching, no, I am not going back for a better one, he looks perfect like this)

I also laughted at how they kept him frozen like a popsicle. And not even well, like, they COULD'VE made an actual freezer and pop him in instead of using those couple of tubes just so he was displayed for all personell to gawk at. HE CRASHED IN THE ANTARCTIC!

The design looks so good, because it looks ALIEN and POINTY and AGH!!! The colors? There are no colors that would make him stand out, he looks like someone opened a cutlery drawer, mixed up what's inside, threw in some extra knifes for a good measure and then shook the whole thing until this guy materialized from the pile. It is both incredibly annoying and satisfying.

🔪

Mr. Welker did an amazing job with his voice, I don't know what the directions were, but oh man it sure sent shivers down my spine. That is the kind of voice that spells "You are going to die" and I already have my coffin picked out.

EDIT: SO APPARENTLY! IT WAS NOT WELKER THAT VOICED MEGATRON.

It was Hugo Weaving, and yes the man did am amazing job, but I apologize a million times, I was CERTAIN that THE OG VA OF MEGATRON WOULD ALSO HAVE VOICED MEGATRON. LIKE, OKAY BAY, OKAY!

🔪

LOOK AT THE AMOUNT OF ICE! With how quick he came back fully online once Frenzy turned off the freeze liquid tubes, I bet he was half awake through the whole thing. Systems just below idling or something, in any case, AGENTS YOU ARE SO DUMB! WHO WAS GIVING SUBPAR FUNDING TO THEM, THEY BETTER BE FIRED!

I also was glad that Sam refused to call him by the name the sector asigned to him, despite Megatron being in stasis. And that he insisted they use the correct name. Good job Sam, acknowledge the threat by the actual name and show respect to a fellow sentient lifeform. Even though said lifeform is hellbent on destruction of the universe and your world.

ALSO, AND I CANNOT STRESS THE LAUGHTER AND AMUSEMENT HERE; the sheer DISRESPECT! They don't disassemble Megatron's corpse. No, these idiots, these absolute morons decide to dump him into the ocean, letting him sink to the lowest possible point (not sure if they did say it was the M' Trench or not), where there are proper freezing temperatures - good! You're learning, good job!! - just... In full. Full corpse. What's left of him. Just blup! Down with the fishies he goes!

I understand that they probably didn't know how to approach Optimus about it, but... At least behead the guy. He came back ONCE, who is to say he won't come back again?! Safety precautions my dears.

They also completely disregard what a giant extraterrestrial metal alien rusting away on the bottom of the ocean could do to the ecosystem at large. Like, I find this incredibly amusing, because this ISN'T something most folks think about when watching a movie but we have giant squids down there. We have so much weird things down there, the ocean isn't even fully explored AND YOU WANT TO CHUCK AN ALIEN CORPSE DOWN THERE?!

Now the real question: is he a looker? *looks at the pictures* hmmmm, depends on if you like knifes. Like, really like knifes. Like really, really REALLY want to get it on with a fine assembly of kitchen knifes that were exposed to the elements but somehow haven't rusted away completely.

I think he's neat.

Needs a good long powerwash though. Preferrably with something to help the whole "I was frozen for more than 50 years and sprang back to action as soon as I woke up" thing that happened.

My man needs to take a moment and get his bearings, like dude. Please. You can conquer the world after some energon and slow system boot-up period. The strain on the systems my dude, you ain't young.

Also love that this "death" was probably reused in TFP because lord golly, do we love our faves ending up under the sea. (Though Megan took a much bigger fall, Bayverse WAS PLOPPED INTO THE WATER LIKE A NEWLY ACQUIRED FISH I CAN'T YOU GUYS I CAN'T!)

In short: I love the comedy of american military giving such disrespect to an Alien Warlord. These guys are really sealing their fate.

I loved the way they got the Witwicky family to be important to the plot

The whole "selling my great great grandpa's glasses on e-bay" thing gives us a very good self insert/OC/rewrite/movie AU potential. Don't like Sam and his disgustingness? Find a way to write a cousin or some far off relative or hell, even just someone who buys the glasses off e-bay and go wild with it!

Archibald was also clearly an inspiration for Isaac Sumdac as far as I can tell, what with both of them using Megatron as a means of helping technology advance.

Only difference being one of them lived and actually talked to Megatron after he came back online and the other got driven to madness and death due to the amount of information beamed into his brain. Isaac also acquired a space baby daughter, so the guy is absolutely luckier of the two.

Mikaela being fucking competent and badass throughout the movie, and not being just fanservice eyecandy

I could do without the fanservice, but her personality? I loved it. I loved that she wasn't crawling to Sam and wasn't being "hard to get". Which is also why I was very displeased at the very sudden "oh yeah, romance! She returns his feelings after he took her for a ride and let her vent her frustrations!". The movie is 2 hours long and they could throw in some moments where these two connect?

Welp, it is an action movie, boy gets girl no matter what, can't complain about the staple in the genre.

However, Mikaela x Optimus? Now THAT is something I considered as soon as the two locked eyes and interacted. Like, even taking my shipping goggles off, these two could have a very interesting dynamic and Mikaela could be a very good protagonist. I wonder what the movie would be like with her as the lead and Sam being the fucking moron she has to drag along with her.

BUT ALSO! Can we talk about the horrible, excruciating fact that her and Bumblebee drove around with Bee's damaged legs dragging over asphalt all the time he was shooting at 'Cons? There were sparks flying! SHE WAS DRIVING BACKWARDS! She took command of the situation and did what she could because Bee still wanted TO FIGHT!

Also, they way she beat up Frenzy? Gorgeous, I want to slap Sam's non-existent balls off for not atleast saying "thanks". The dude would be sliced thinner than cabbage if she wasn't there.

The millitary man we are supposed to care about because his wife gave birth while he was on duty and we see his baby three times in the whole movie, actually being a pretty awesome and well-written character

Look, personally, I was a little confused at the reason why we were seeing his wife and baby interacting/the scene where she thinks her husband is dead. Mostly because I don't like kids, so scenes like that, when I don't even know who the character is, have no impact at all. Him having a baby isn't going to make me like the guy more, unless I know his character. Him being absent because he's on duty doesn't mean he'll be a good dad (though he looks like the kind of man that will try his best, and I like that in a man). So seeing his wife and kid at the start of the movie seemed pointless to me.

BUT! FOCUSING ON THE POSITIVES HERE!

Lennox is a good character and whenever he was on screen I was invested in what is going to happen to him. He's the kind of action movie lead that would have me invested, despite my meh interest in mainly gun fight oriented action movies.

Essentially, loved the guy, would love to see more of him while also being able to tell what's happening on screen. Also the comedy scenes he was in were usually funny.

~

Okay so these are the things I like about the first movie! It was very long, had to watch it on 2,5x speed because it simultainously dragged while ALSO giving me too much information, but the moments like these and the way my imagination latched onto characters I liked made it watchable. It isn't a movie I'd use to introduce someone to the TF franchise, but it provided me with lots of material for my imagination to run wild.

[scope-dogg]

Knight’s and Magic: Final Thoughts

Isekai anime have been very popular in recent years, and 2017′s Knight’s and Magic was one of many cashing in on that trend, with the added twist of being a mecha series. However, what many may not realise is that the Isekai genre of anime was originally born out of the mecha genre, with the first Isekai anime arguably being the 1983 classic Aura Battler Dunbine by Yoshiyuki Tomino. While Isekai has split off and diversified into its own extremely prolific and popular genre, mecha has kept a foothold within it, and subsequently some of the greatest mecha shows have been fantasy-themed, with great titles like Magic Knight Rayearth and The Vision of Escaflowne following in Dunbine’s footsteps over the years, so really Knight’s and Magic should be viewed rather as the continuation of a fairly long tradition of fantasy mecha rather than Isekai but with robots. Adapted from the early volumes of a currently ongoing manga by the same name, it’s a short series, but one with high production values, superb mechanical design and entertaining action. It’s also a series that I ultimately simply cannot stand.

The plot setup is that Tsubasa Kurata is an unassuming but highly talented programmer working in contemporary Japan - or at least he is until he’s killed in a road traffic accident. As he dies, he has but one regret - that he’ll no longer be able to live with his hobby of building plastic model kits of giant anime robots. As is often the case with such a setup, he finds himself reborn into a fantasy kingdom called Fremevilla as the son of nobles called Ernesti Echavalier. However, to his joy, he finds out that the main weapon for fighting back against these monsters is the Silhouette Knight, a kind of gigantic magic-powered mecha. Thus, he devotes himself to the art of learning everything there is about these machines and one day building and piloting one of his very own.

There’s nothing really wrong with this premise, but Knight’s and Magic is flawed in how one-track it is. The show’s really only about one thing - how robots are cool. Of course, I agree that robots are cool. Knight’s and Magic’s lineup of robots in particular is very cool, both in their form and unique functions. However, anyone who’s actually a fan of the mecha genre knows that just having cool robots isn’t enough to carry a show - you have to have compelling characters and interesting narratives. The all-too-frequently trotted-out line of “[x mecha show] is actually good, unlike the rest of the genre, because it focuses on the characters instead of just the robots” is probably the single most effective thing you can say if you want to piss off a mecha fan, because that sentence describes literally every mecha show that was ever worth a damn, even going back to the genre’s roots in the 70s. However, it arguably doesn’t really describe Knight’s and Magic. The series’ creators come off as just as obsessed with robots as its main character, and it comes at the expense of the characters and setting. Each new episode comes with a cool new robot or a cool upgrade for an existing one, but practically none of them feature development of the setting or its characters. Fremevilla and its neighbours never come off as anything more than “generic fantasy kingdom”, the supporting cast are all cut from extremely generic-feeling moulds, and Ernesti never undergoes any growth or exhibits any notable character traits beyond “likes robots.”

Now, there have been several characters in mecha anime who are in large part defined by their dedication to giant robots as an ideal, or simply to their aesthetic, and some of these are truly excellent characters. For instance, Gai Daigoji from Nadesico, Akagi Shunsuke from Dai-Guard, Noa Izumi from Patlabor, Sei Iori from Gundam Build Fighters, or the Super Robot Wars Original character Ryusei Date. The difference between all of these and Ernesti is that being fans of robots isn’t the only thing that makes them relatable or endearing characters, whereas in Ernesti’s case it’s basically the only thing that defines his personality. It also doesn’t help that he’s perhaps the biggest Mary Sue main character that I’ve seen in a mecha anime. His gimmick is that his past-life experience as a programmer also makes him profoundly adept at magic, and that he’s a genius Silhouette Knight designer. He’s always totally successful at everything he tries and everyone loves and respects him for his accomplishments. Ironically, it’s this that makes him an unlikable character for the viewer, because, again, he has no real admirable qualities beyond liking robots and being good at making and using them. It’s a character’s struggles and tribulations that ultimately make them truly sympathetic, and Ernesti is never really challenged until right at the very end of the series, and ultimately that challenge only feels like a mild speed bump for him. This results in a series that despite all its cool robots and flashy battles is fundamentally dead as a story at its core.

However, all of this simply describes a series that I would find boring and mediocre rather than one I actively disliked in a serious way. However, this is arguably the first series I’ve watched since Gundam Seed Destiny that really ground my gears quite badly, and it all boils down to one specific moment in the show’s narrative. To explain why, I need to diverge from my usual review format and spoil not only this show, but also it’s forefather, the original mecha Isekai, Aura Battler Dunbine. I really don’t think spoilers for the former is anything to worry about but spoiling the latter is probably more of an offense. As such, the remainder of this review is below this spoiler cut:

Dunbine is not everyone’s cut of tea. It’s old, has bad animation, it’s long-winded and has a sometimes confused and scrambled narrative in accordance with some of Tomino’s worst habits. However, it was also a work of great imagination that really delivered on communicating a valuable message in some engaging ways. It’s a message that Knight’s and Magic cheerfully and infuriatingly tramples all over. Let me explain.

In Knight’s and Magic, the show’s hero is an outsider who enters into a fantasy world and uses his real-world knowledge to bring about a revolution in technology. This also happens to be the chief descriptor for a major character in Dunbine too.

However, this isn’t the description of the show’s protagonist, Show Zama.

It’s the description of the show’s villain, Shot Weapon.

Shot Weapon is the creator of the Aura Convertor, the technology that powers the show’s mecha, the Aura Battlers, and other weapons besides. The introduction of this technology destroys the peace of Dunbine’s world, Byston Well, and causes it to descend into anarchy and bloodshed. However, the real devastation doesn’t occur until Shot’s creations are transported back into our world, where they inflict destruction almost beyond imagining. Ultimately, Shot Weapon’s actions condemn him to a punishment of being forced to live forever in Byston Well in a state of eternal suffering, like Cain after murdering his brother Abel. Dunbine’s ultimate, most crucial message is that those who manufacture weapons and spread death are to be condemned.

Knight’s and Magic gave itself the exact same opportunity to deal with this exact same theme. The show’s final arc is that a kingdom called Zaloudek has accumulated vast military power and used it to invade its neighours. We get to see as they descend into a neighbouring kingdom, slaughter its just and rightful rulers and install themselves as tyrants. Now, enter Ernesti and his friends at the conquered kingdom’s borders. At this point he’s achieved his aim of creating his own unique robot called the Ikaruga, and in its first battle effortlessly dispatches the Zaloudek soldiers guarding the border. In the aftermath, he examines the wreckage of a destroyed Zaloudek Silhouette Knight. He and everyone else see the obvious - this machine, the Tyranto is based on Ernesti’s designs. Previously, one of the prototype Knights he’d constructed in an earlier arc was stolen by a mysterious foreign agent, and now it’s become clear what happened to it. The source of the military strength that’s fuelling Zaloudek’s ambitions of conquest are the new technologies that he created, reverse engineered from the stolen mecha. As he looks upon the wreck of the Tyranto, the show is presented with a unique opportunity to do something that it’s thus far not done - challenge its protagonist with the consequences of his actions. Sure, Ernesti is not exactly the same as Shot Weapon - he only wanted to create robots because he thought they were cool, while Shot Weapon wanted power. However, in this case the end result has been the same - death, destruction and oppression. Ernesti has a chance to think about whether the things he’s done are right and acknowledge that he’s at least somewhat responsible for the disaster that’s played out, even if it’s just to acknowledge that he has a duty to set things right by beating Zaloudek. This is an opportunity for him to grow as a character for the first time.

The show swerves this opportunity without flinching.

Sure, Ernesti does liberate the kingdom in the end, but it’s clear that it’s not as a result of any real moral calling. He just wanted to build more robots and fight with them. His motivation in the final battle is that he wants to destroy the enemy’s flying battleship because he’s worried that battleships might replace Silhouette Knights if he doesn’t. He remains a totally one-dimensional character right to the end.

As I said before, Ernesti’s obsession with cool robots arguably mirrors that of the creators of this show, if its myopic focus on them is anything to go by. Perhaps this seems extremely out of character for me to say, but this is an infantile obsession. Yes, I like giant robots, but I don’t like them so much that I miss the point. The core of not only the real robot genre that both Knight’s and Magic and Aura Battle Dunbine belong to despite the fantasy trappings of the show, but arguably of the mecha genre as a whole, is that technology can be a force of destruction and great evil when not used responsibly. Yes, the protagonist mecha in these shows are meant to be heroic, but only in their opposition to those who’d use technology as a tool of death and oppression. This is the core of the soul that makes mecha as a genre compelling. It’s a point that Knight’s and Magic completely misses and why it’s fundamentally a failure. It’s as if it’s trying to be what the mecha genre’s detractors try to paint it as.

That said, despite my misgivings there is entertainment to be found if you only want dumb action. But I’d highly encourage you to check out any alternative. If you want a fantasy mecha series, Dunbine, Escaflowne and Rayearth are all much more compelling stories than this - even ones I’m not so keen on like Panzer World Galient and Ryu Knight are fundamentally more interesting as stories than this. If you want a story with a mecha fanatic in the lead role, you’re much better off watching Patlabor or the chronically underrated Dai-Guard instead.