#Getter Robot Ark | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

over-the-time-flow · 11 months

Text

Super Robot Rollcall: Members of the Londo Bell

Bright Noah

"I'm sorry, but i'll be putting your lives on the line."

Source Material: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack

Age: 32

Height: 180 cm

Hobby: Model Kits

Voice Actor: Hirotaka Suzuoki

War vet among war vets, Bright is just plain old tired. Thrust into a commanding role right out of military academy due to the death of the entire chain of command above him, then mistreated by an authoritarian government, only to then have to fight a reborn version of his very first opposing faction while babysitting an entire ship of teenagers, Bright’s career has been seemingly nothing but a recipe for a nervous breakdown. Despite it all, he’s always managed to keep things together just enough to command authority and inspire confidence in all of those who serve under him, even if he’s had his fair share of low points.

When it comes to raw stats, Bright is the best captain in the game. On top of that, he has a top-grade lineup of support-oriented Spirit Commands.

However, he has two big weaknesses. He doesn’t learn Focus (集中) nor Strike (必中, guarantees this unit’s next attack will not miss), which for a battleship captain means it’s gonna be very difficult for him to hit anything, and he spends long swathes of the game unavailable. Depending on your choices during route splits, you can have as little time with him as 12 total chapters of use (out of 37 chapters in the game!!).

Despite this, he DOES stay with us all the way to the end, and as a battleship captain, is going to be deployed whenever he’s around, whether we like it or not. And with that performance, we very much do like it.

Fun Fact: According to the December 1979 issue of Animage, Bright’s name is derived from “the Brightness of Noah’s ark”.

Ra Cailum

Source Material: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack

Length: 487 meters

The culmination of Earth Federation battleship design, this is the Londo Bell’s own flagship. Nearly as much of a SRW veteran as Bright and Amuro themselves.

An absolute beast of a battleship. Tied for best allied battleship armor (though the battleship it’s tied with does have an edge over the Ra Cailum thanks to its barrier) in the game, Incredible firepower, 4 part slots, and a very powerful MAP attack thanks to its signature nuclear warheads. Sadly, Bright's Spirit Command learnset just isn’t quite equipped for this ship’s offensive output, so you could say it isn’t used to its fullest potential. If you really want Bright getting some kills, consider dedicating some of its parts slots to accuracy-boosting items.

Fun Fact: This style of ship (as a group, referred to as Ra Cailum-class battleships) would go on to see frontline usage as far as six decades after its first initial deployments. The culmination of Federation battleship design indeed!

youtube

Amuro Ray

"I'm not impatient like you! I can wait for humanity to learn and grow!"

Source Material: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack

Birthday: November 4th

Age: 29

Height: 172 cm

Education Level: Middle school graduate

Favorite Food: Hamburgers

Voice Actor: Tooru Furuya

The Federation’s infamous White Devil. If Bright is tired and stressed, Amuro is tired and depressed.

Alongside Bright and the entire makeshift crew of the White Base, he was thrust into active warfare in the middle of one of humanity’s bloodiest wars, but unlike Bright, he was one of the crew members who was originally nothing but a civilian. Feared due to the abilities he displayed during the war, after it he was essentially kept under house arrest and strict vigilance by the authoritarian regime of the Titans. Once they were finally toppled, Amuro's next foe would be one of his oldest and most personal enemies, Char Aznable.

Alongside Bright, Amuro is something of a SRW hall of famer. There’s very few SRW games he’s not present in. Alongside Ryoma from Getter Robo and Koji from Mazinger Z, he forms the core trio of SRW protagonists, who in recent games tend to be characterized as old war buddies.

He’s just as much of a beast as his reputation would have you believe. He is top notch in every stat besides Melee and Defense, neither of which he particularly needs anyway. His already exorbitant Accuracy and Evasion are further compounded by his high Newtype level; by default he arrives with the skill at level 6, meaning that he has a permanent 25% hit/dodge modifier. This is nearly equivalent to him always having Focus (集中) active. If that somehow wasn’t enough, he comes with a stacked spirit command list right out of the gate, and will very soon learn an incredibly powerful skill in Zeal (覚醒, grants this unit an extra move).

If i had to find fault any with him, it’d be that Mercy (てかげん, if this unit’s next attack would shoot down an enemy, it will survive with 10 HP instead. Only procs if the user’s Skill stat is higher than the enemy’s) is basically a wasted Spirit slot, as this game doesn’t really have any particularly difficult missions requiring you to keep an enemy target alive, but if you ever need to feed someone kills for one reason or another, you can rest assured that Amuro’s enormous Skill stat will always make Mercy proc.

Fun Fact: During early phases of planning for 0079, Amuro was called Higashi Hongo.

Re-GZ

Source Material: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack

Model Number: RGZ-91

Height: 20.5 meters

Power Source: Nuclear Fusion Reactor

Real World Designers: Mamoru Nagano, Yoshinori Sayama

The Re-GZ (pronounced “Re-Gazee”), short for “Refined Gundam Zeta”, is a proof-of-concept Mobile Suit intended to simplify the famous Zeta Gundam from the Gryps Conflict for mass-production. Its complex transforming frame has been replaced with the much simpler solution of the Back Weapon System, a fancy marketing term for “what if instead of a transforming MS, we made a partsforming MS”. Though this succeeded in creating a Mobile Suit cheaper to produce than the Zeta, it’s just as unintuitive to pilot, was prone to running into issues due to the slapdash nature of the BWS, and was still fairly expensive in its own right. As a result, it never saw proper mass-production and instead became a machine for aces who could handle its eccentricities.

True to its lore, the Re-GZ is underwhelming. Average at best in most regards, and dips further into below average after armor purging.

The BWS-less Re-GZ IS equipped with the full UC loadout of gun, sword, and shield, so it has better survivability than you’d think, and getting shot down in BWS form will simply armor purge into this form, so you could argue that above all else, this machine prioritizes survivability. Still, even within that niche, there’s other robots later down the line that will completely invalidate it.

Fun Fact: Though only in a cutscene, in Super Robot Wars MX, this unit joins the rank of the distinguished few machines to be piloted by a character from an entirely different show, in this case a supporting character from Nadesico.

youtube

Kayra Su

"Don't worry about me!"

Source Material: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack

Voice Actress: Shinobu Adachi

Second in skill only to Amuro himself, Kayra is one of the Londo Bell’s top aces. She’s also in a relationship with Astonaige, the resident mechanic. Despite how it might look, it’s implied she’s the older one in the relationship!

I have a soft spot for her, even though she doesn’t do much. I just think she’s neat!

Kayra is the single Oldtype pilot we get from the Universal Century in this game, and boy she does not do much of anything to make up for that unfortunate distinction.

Her stats are all fairly low save for a higher than usual Defense stat for a MS pilot (emphasis on the "for a MS pilot"), and her Spirit learnset is more fit for a Super pilot. Her only two upsides on that front are learning Valor (熱血) and Enable (再動) early, both of which are pretty good to have.

She does have one distinction, however; she is capable of acquiring the single highest level of the Blocking skill to be acquired by any allied unit in this entire game, at a whopping level 6. The Blocking skill is something I'll have to cover in a more indepth way once it comes up, but rest assured that this is actually rather impressive. There’s only three other characters in the game that even come close to this feat, and of those three, only two will be with you to the end of the game, and one of those two is a secret pilot! Sadly, there's little practical use for this other than making her slightly better at survival than you'd think at first glance. No Potential (底力) dashes her hopes of being some strange UC equivalent of a Super Robot pilot, and even "designated Support Defense punching bag" is too lofty of an ambition for her, thanks to her Support Defense skill capping out at level 2.

It's no great loss, but she won't be with us to the end of the game.

Fun Fact: In a possible reference to SDF Macross, Astonaige once promised to cook her his signature salad before a battle in Char’s Counterattack.

Jegan

Source Material: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack

Model Number: RGM-89

Height: 20.4 meters

Power Source: Nuclear Fusion Reactor

Real World Designer: Yutaka Izubuchi

The standard mass-produced Federation mobile suit circa the mid-UC 90s and beyond, and the successor to the iconic GM series of mass-produced mobile suits. Of the Federation's mass-produced MSs, this is probably the one with the most appearances in SRW.

SRW R’s Jegan is unfortunate. There are so many issues with it i struggle to even see where to begin. There's Supers with better Mobility and Reals with better Armor.

Its only good points to speak of are having the UC standard loadout of sword, shield and gun, having 4 parts slots, and having a 5-range post-movement attack… but its base damage is so low, and its upgrades cost so high for so little return, that you couldn’t possibly see that last one as a selling point unless you’ve already made up your mind that you want to use this robot. To rub salt in the wound, it’s got a glacial default movement range of 5 tiles, meaning that in practice, its post-movement 5-range missiles are hardly an advantage.

Depending on the way you look at it, keeping this thing until the end of the game kind of constitutes a secret? I know the Jegan has some diehard fans out there, so if you are one, you'd better make your presence known soon so i can know not to lock myself out of it. And be aware that keeping the Jegan until the end also means picking it over the Thaqnz Zx-VVV (rot13).

Fun Fact: A rarity for mobile suits, the Jegan does not have a “front skirt”, e.g. the little mechanical flaps that usually cover the mobile suit’s “thighs”. This was apparently done to reduce the workload of drawing a bunch of Jegans onscreen during the movie.

youtube

#srw r #super robot wars r #rollcall #lets-play

5 notes · View notes