[Mobile Suit Gundam AGE 15]

[Mobile Suit Gundam AGE 1-15]

Asemu Asuno is 17, making him one of the older lead characters to ever pilot a Gundam for the first time. What’s interesting to me as well is that it would seem that despite his father Flit’s schedule, he’s pretty well-adjusted and grew up surrounded by a loving family. Very interesting indeed, given how Gundam leads usually have less-than-ideal family/upbringing situation. Asemu is no orphan, has a non-overbearing dad, a doting mom, a non-annoying kid sister, and the freedom to pursue his interests. This kid has got it made.

Of course, the foil to such a perfect life, is pretty much WAR. True enough, the Veigans (can’t really call them the UE anymore) attack the Tordias colony and threaten civilian areas. But let us put that aside for later, because the war will play out not only on the fields and in space, but also in High School.

Galette Zehart is the new transfer student and is every bit as pretty as Asemu. This guy has rival written all over him, and the way the narrative is presented, and especially through the OP, there will be a love triangle. Since this is Gundam AGE, and based on what happened in the previous age, this triangle will be resolved with death. Something to look forward to.

He’s into mobile suits, the high school has a mobile suit club. This going to be a kiddie/high school version of Stardust Memory/Macross Plus. Galette already has Gato’s white hair locked down, and Asemu rhymes with Isamu. No matter how you look at it, the triangle will be resolved with death. Yes. (Of course, since he’s wearing a mask in the OP, and will be piloting a red suit, he is also Char).

Two things before I talk about the expected set-piece battle:

Flit Asuno is both an awesome family man and a genocidal Gihren Zabi. This is great. I can’t love this enough. He’s our hero, the developer of the Gundam who showed a whole lot of valor in the battle of Ambat. Captain Grodek may have spared him from having to summarily execute Yark Dole, but Flit turned out to be this racist/xenophobic soldier and technologist anyway. His values are pretty much intact, he just won’t forgive nor tolerate the Veigans. They all got to die.

This is to me, a far more effective characterization of a sympathetic complexity than the one done for Dozle Zabi in Mobile Suit Gundam. The Zeon commander doted on his siblings, respected his father, and treasured his wife and daughter on his way to die defending their safety. But yes, he’s a key player in the Zeonic war offensive that was responsible for the gas attacks and the Colony Drop.

In Dozle we have a villain who looks like a villain who did human, heroic things. In Flit we have a proven hero who we feel will do morally questionable things and act righteous about it. It’s exciting. We don’t know if Asemu shares the same values as his father, but I foresee this is where they would have conflict, if at all.

Asemu and Zehart are MEN’S NAMES!

I find it interesting in how both would-be antagonists faced down bullies. Both, however didn’t really threw strikes at their opponents opting instead to use some kind of Aikido; mostly sidestepping their attackers. These introductions are very Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, wherein Kamille Bidan found  himself in a number of violent situations. Kamille however, is a FAR more angry kid than either of the two, and never hesitates to lay his fists on whomever pisses him off.

Both characters will be a little (or a whole lot) smoother than Kamille, and a whole lot more than his trainwreck clone Shinn Asuka. Don’t get me wrong though, Kamille is still the best angry teen character in robot anime. Part of me kind of hoped Asemu would be batshit angry like him, but given his family and upbringing, if he behaved like this he’d be aggravatingly stupid.

The set-piece battle that re-introduced the Gundam AGE-01 Normal, and put Asemu in his first battle (to seize the reins of history, as the trope goes) was delightful. Just like Flit, he showed some talent and individuality, in this case a preference for two-swords style close combat. The way the battle played out was clumsy, scrappy, and very violent in the end. Asemu stumbled around in a way that didn’t make his opponents stupid in how he managed to survive and prevail.

The immediate and most relevant comparison (aside from Flit Asuno’s himself) is that of Kira Yamato’s first foray into battle. Asemu did pretty well against a traditional pair of mobile suit opponents, but he isn’t portrayed as having to do some god-mode reprogramming the whole thing’s Operating System in the middle of the fire fight.

The battle was exciting despite how predictable the outcome obviously is, and will better set-up Asemu’s eventual X-Rounder fury when the big battle arrives. This is crucial, I think. Despite how carefully the show paced Flit’s fighting capability progression, his valor and fighting prowess in Ambat still seemed sudden for some.

This show, just can’t get a fair deal from the critics LOL.

[Nisemonogatari 03]

Hanekawa is powerful. She is a joy to watch. It is revealed how she dominated Senjougahara over the phone in the previous episode. She told her basically “Do as I say or I will ask Araragi to be my boyfriend.” This is delicious in that the most powerful moment in the previous episode is the reinforcement of the Hitagi x Koyomi love story/pairing, and that this casual revelation undermines everything. It makes Senjougahara weak and vulnerable and not just some crazy tsudere service machine.

Also, Hanekawa is amazing with her new look. Yeah the meganefags are screwed over, but her short hair and no-glasses look is far superior to her usual frumpy moé look, and even her crazy cat version. She exerts her power and influence over the Araragi household, and Koyomi has the good sense to listen to her. I don’t think she’s all well, and the show is subtle enough to hint this without being overbearing, and this (and her eventual showdown with Senjougahara over Koyomi) will be something I look forward to watching.

This means I will have to endure what things that follow (after the jump) that I am not going to say anything about anymore. My silence should say pretty much everything.

Yes. No.

I’ll eat a little crow on this one.  I did tweet that I was gonna enjoy “oldfag” hating on Gundam AGE before the series got started.  I figured that with the kiddie designs and some of the mecha designs I peeked at that I wouldn’t get too deep and my enjoyment wouldn’t extend past laughing at its attempts at greatness.  Sure there may be some surprise moments of awesome, but I had placed my bets on Gundam Unicorn impressing me.  But once I started watching I started to wonder if would just be “remembering love” or if this would truly make me “see the tears of time”.

Gundam AGE has made an interesting “gumbo” with the Gundam mythology, its key elements and history so far.  Even the early  episodes I couldn’t realy pin down to one or even two Gundam series.  Flit’s age reminded me of Uso (Victory Gundam), Yurin gave me thoughts of Tiffa (Gundam X), and of course the Gundam and the colony strike hearken all the way back to the original 0079.  It hints at aliens (something only Gundam 00 even attempted to play with, results left up to opinion), and incorporates possibly its one controversial element (in my opinion anyway).  The AGE system.

I suppose the AGE System, which appears to be a super computer attached to some super tech creating  massive manufacturing/fabricating unit, is the series equivalent and replacement for the Gundam metaverse’s traditional “plot armor”.  Most Gundam shows use Gundanium, a mythical alloy that gave the machine its super endurance.  The SEED universe replaced it with Phase – shift armor (a very interesting, flawed idea).  G Gundam seemed to replace Gundanium with a combination of GAR and Guts.  Gundam Wing literally used not only Gundanium, but actual plot armor itself in the way important characters in grunt mobile units would take significantly more damage before going down, as opposed to their actual grunt counterparts.  Gundam AGE has managed to attach itself to the Gundam metaverse in its own way.   Allowing the Gundam to become stronger or faster as the super computer saw fit.

The other way it attaches itself to Gundam tradition is through the use of the term …ugh, “X-Rounder”.  It seems like an extremely simplified and unromantic take on the famous Newtype theme.  The even attribute an X-Rounder’s heightened abilities to a scientifically (by anime standards) identified X-Region.  UGH!  I’ll make myself perfectly clear when I say I HATE the term.  And it’s clearly an example of me “oldfag” hating on the series.  But the term feels way too dry and straigh forward for me.  I guess calling people psychic or Newtypes is no longer in style, but I just can’t let it go.

Somethings just as important as the plot armor and special pilots to Gundam are  the kid pilots and the captains.  Flit is as young as any Gundam pilot I’ve seen, and I severely underestimated him.  Someone who I thought was just a mentally talented and driven, but naive kid turned out to be one hell of a pilot once he got a little experience and got pushed a bit.  I expected Flit to just rely on his plot armor and mobile suit.  But Flit has shown to be good leader, an excellent pilot who could even hang with real aces like Woolf, and an absolute natural “Newtype” (yeah, I’m stubborn).  He accesses his “abilities” with a command even SEED’s aces had trouble managing.  While Kira and Athrun from SEED seemed to need an emotional trigger, Flit seemed to be able to focus and dig it out.  Maybe it’s an apples to oranges thing comparing X-Rounder abilities with SEED factors and even Newtype flashes.  But it does show that the writers are allowing him to have a high level of discipline and skill I didn’t think he’d be allowed so early in the series.  That overachieving kid has turned into an exceptional, though potentially traumatized human being.

Another exceptional human being in this series Captain Grodek.  I didn’t know what to think of Grodek at first, I was quick to compare him to the legendary Bright Noa for convenience reasons, but he’s no Bright.  He doesn’t really compare to any of the commanders and captains I can think of in Gundam.  He really is a renegade.  This man had one mission.  To make the UE pay for killing his family.  By the end of this story arc, I was expecting him to torture his enemies Punisher style.  But despite my fears he turned out to be an excellent and driven leader, as opposed to the blood thirsty maniac he easily could have been.  I still say that ground assault on the Ambat fortress was pretty dumb and insane, but I would probably blame that more on grandiose writers.  The point is that that man was a beast, and may very well be what Flit turns into in the future given how alike they seemed to be and the events that ended the fifteenth episode.

The one thing that really threw me off was the UE.  It was bad enough that in the beginning they were advertised as aliens, that immediately threw me off.  I don’t take kindly to new things like aliens being in my Gundam.  I didn’t believe it for awhile, then I did believe when I saw them.  Then I saw that the series had a thing for really weird hairstyles and colors, so I thought that maybe they were a race of “Cyber Newtype” type beings created and forgotten by the Earth government.  It turns out I had been led in a circle and that the UE were just abandoned humans with advanced technology.  In a roundabout way, they used the UE as a new angle on the old Zeon standard.

Ghost corrected me in the comment section of his episode 15 post, I had completely forgotten about the Jovians of the UC timeline.  The Veigans would be more of a apt comparison, but with some Zeon elements in there, too.  Seeing as how a Jovian, Paptimus Scirrocco is one of my favorite Gundam characters, this adds an additional bit of joy to me watching the series’ second “age”.  I can think of it a little as Scirrocco’s buddies waging a war on the Earth Sphere.  Joy!

During the One Year War of the original 0079, you could always have compared the “space men/spacenoids” of the Universal Century to aliens.  At the time their mobile suits were highly advanced technology, they invaded the Earth, and you could say they were on a campaign of revenge against the abusive, yet neglectful Federation government.  In that way, these faux-spacemen of Gundam AGE are exactly the same.  It’s a wonderful idea, and I’m very glad I was exposed to it.

All these elements have been combined to help make this a very solid, very accessible and fun Gundam franchise so far.  The series isn’t without its weak points.  Despite the show getting rather dark and a bit more graphic near the end of the arc, the writing and plotting for some of the episodes felt a little too familiar and simple at times.  Situations  I thought could have been more tense and complicated were often resolved through convenient plot points and techniques.  The timely arrival of an enemy or friend in the middle of a tense situation.  Predictable solutions to problems happened a little too often for me.  And I didn’t feel like the pacing allowed some of the characters and relationships to blossom fully. Yes, I’m saying some of the dreaded character development episodes were needed in this series.  Admit it, sometimes there needs to be some real quiet moments for this to really stick and feel significant.  Flit and Yurin’s relationship being the biggest victim of this failure.

For those reasons, I’m inclined to compare this to another favored show of mine, Fairy Tail.   Both shows have excellent elements and use the lessons of the successes and failures of their respective lineages and genres to build a unique and distinctive niche for themselves.  But unfortunately, some of the elements are so familiar, and so well worn to veteran like me that I fail to be emotionally moved by their key elements.  Though to both their credits, Yurin’s death and some scenes in Fairy Tail I have found genuinely powerful.

I’m hoping with the next “age” of Gundam AGE we’ll get to be more invested in the characters.  We already have the added bonus of seeing how the characters from this age grow and progress.  I have a feeling Flit may be a bit bitter and obsessed.  Though it looks like his son is gonna be quite the firecracker.  I wonder if Woolf may be a bit more sympathetic to the Veigans’ cause?  I don’t think we’ve really seen  our Char equivalent in this show quite, yet.  Desil looks like he’s going to grow up to be a very good villain.  Though I do worry that they’ll just saddle him with the loser villain role after losing so handily to Flit.

Ract is a character that also shouldn’t be forgotten.  Though how could anyone miss that hair?  He could be an influential ace pilot, but I think I would like to see him captain a ship.  With Grodek out of the way (for now), I think he’d be an excellent replacement the next campaign.  And most of all, I’m looking forward to seeing if  the second “age” takes more cues from the Universal Century and we see a show more similar to Zeta Gundam.  The seeds of hate have already been sewn.  And Gundam AGE has shown us in the past three episodes that it doesn’t fear its bloody roots.

Gundam AGE clearly has quite a way to go, both literally and figuratively , but I feel good about this show now.  It’s a complete 180 from how I felt about the series a few months ago.  And to me that equals success.  I greatly look forward to seeing what the series has in store for the future.  And maybe if it does things just right, it will squeeze those precious “tears” from me.

ghostlightning:

Some of these numbskulls twisted my arm and said they wanted in on this post. DonKangolJones unfortunately has to take it like a man.

[Cowboy Bebop Session 15 “My Funny Valentine”]

Several things strike me about this session.

1. This is a story of old men.

Even during the flashback, the characters were already old, or rather at the prime of their respective detective and criminal careers. The episode itself felt old, film noir old, so old that Faye asking Jet about growing his arm back at the beginning of the episode got her a very (grouchy) old man response.

2. It is musically stark.

A typical session has around 3-5 pieces between the credits. Sometimes the pieces are repeats from previous episodes, sometimes for just a few bars. Check out the track list for this episode:

• Tank! (TV edit) – opener
• Space Time [unreleased] – intro of Udai.
• Space Time [unreleased] – Udai kills Dig.
• Cosmos – Trumpet solo played during Jet’s flashback.
• The Real Man – techno piece that plays as Jet flies Hammerhead over to the prison ship.
• Cosmos – Udai’s revelation of the truth.
• Farewell Blues – Jet’s final scene with Fad/end of the episode.
• The Real Folk Blues – end credits, sung by Mai Yamane
• Mushroom Hunting – funk piece played during the preview for Mushroom Samba; sung by Tulivu-Donna Cumberbatch

It’s really just Cosmos and Farewell Blues ain’t it? Why? Why is Jet’s story so quiet? Why deny it even the sad notes? Compare it with the song list from “Sympathy With the Devil.” You’ll find it pretty bare. “Ganymede Elegy” was pretty soulful for Jet, this one had nothing… a past that catches up with him not to free him, but just to put into order the people he’s killed off in his heart… with their respective deaths.

There are lots of clips, and from original recordings too, but I liked this rendition and find affinity with its amateur nature.

This is different from Led Zeppelin’s and probably far closer to the mark for Jet Black.

3. Con Air (1997)

I actually enjoyed this cheesy film and loved how this session referenced it. Cowboy Bebop sometimes takes one aspect of the source and distills it, framing the allusion into a limited set of meanings. In this case, it’s just Udai Taxim being a badass beyond anyone’s level among the convicts. And quite unlike Cyrus “The Virus,” his story is of a bitter kind of tragic (as opposed to a Jerry Bruckheimer produced villainous comeuppance).

The world had moved on without Udai. His gang have sold him out, and his information he intended to use against them has grown stale. He’s still dangerous, but no longer someone who makes a difference in this world.

Such a man is the kind that meets his end among deadbeat detectives and down-on-their-luck bounty hunters.

So now we know how Jet lost his arm, and how the truth of the story is met with the death of the big reveal. Fad let Jet kill him while pretending to attack. Does Fad’s death win him redemption? I don’t know, but it was sure as hell a manly way to die, after living a life of a weasel all these years. And Jet lets the guy who would quit smoking for all of 10 days smoke one for the road. And that’s a manly thing to do.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now, I see.

Begining with Episode 40, Eureka sevenN starts its final opening sequence for the series. The opening verse from the song is from a iconic 18 century song “Amazing Grace”. Amazing grace is a song with a “message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of the sins people commit.” In the homestretch of the show, redemption and love is found for three of our protagonists; Captain Jurgens, Lieutenant Dominic, and Anemone.

T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear The hour I first believed.

Jurgens captains the ship Izumo. In Episode 44, while visiting Warsaw, we find that Jurgens lost is wife and daughter in the war. These loses hardened Jurgens, and he typically follows orders without question. But while visiting Warsaw, his home town, he begins reading the last issue of Ray=Out. In this, he finds truth in the situation. His eyes are finally opened, and his belief in truth renewed, when he learns of Dewey’s, and his path to redemption begins. In the following episode, He makes the choice to join Gekkostate, and begins his fight against Dewey. His final act in Episode 49 is to take in the Ageha Squad, as reparations for his actions leading to the current state of the world.

 Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home

Warsaw is also a turning point for Lieutenant Dominic. Dominic finally makes his move with Anemone in Episode 43, only to be rejected. In his downtrodden state, Dewey terminates Dominic’s assignment to Anemone, and is ordered to find her replacement. In Warsaw, he visits the Novac Foundation, which experiments on girls with Desperation Disease. When he witnesses the sick experiment, and the death of all three subjects, he reaches his limit. He decides then to fight against Dewey, and confess his love to Anemoe. In Episode 48, He purposefully risks his life to chase after her, to confess his love. He rushes through an opening made by Dewey to reach her below the surface, wrecking his ship along the way.

  Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil, A life of joy and peace.

In this episode we see Anemone at her emotional bottom pit , a point of utter despair, her confidence wiped out. GhostLightning expresses how heartbreaking this is. Her dialogue revels it all:

Someone on my mind?
I had someone. Yeah, past tense.
I think about how I should have told him how I felt.
I want to live, to give so many feelings to people.
He isn’t with me any more!
It’s too much. It’s too much!

But Dominic’s selfless act, risking his life on a hope that his love will be returned, is enough to convince Anemone to stop her attack, and finally return his feelings of love for her. Both can now find rebirth in the new world order that is about to begin.

When we’ve been here ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’ve first begun.

The groans!  The pain!  I suppose the end of this episode wasn’t bad, but for the most part I felt like the first 3 episodes of this series could have been rolled into two.  There was a lot of faffing about this episode, a lot of silliness.  And plenty of things that I know Ghostlightning would have cringed at in viewing.  The whole nonsense about Madoka hopping about the city trying to save it just irked me.  All she had to do was just leave the area.  Hell, she shouldn’t have charged in the first damn place!

Hearing her sing the that Jersey Club song just made me nauseous.  Seeing the horrible mecha on mecha combat made me wonder if the genre was being mocked, or just underestimated.  And having Lan in the background mentally pacing back and forth on piloting her machine or not wasn’t exactly the most compelling way to sidestep the action.  ”Action”?  Ugh.

I could say that there is some positive to this series in that the bad guys aren’t faceless, or pure evil entities.  They’re bishounen, but I won’t punish them for that.  They’re about the only things so far that have been given better than average development this early into a series.  Everything on the Earth side is what irritates me with its bland characters.  The snippy commander who clearly hates his job.  The snake-like butler/alien who.. actually I don’t think he’s a bad character so far.  He could be a good guy or bad guy in my eyes.  There’s Madoka who is just knucklehead in my mind.  And not the kind of knucklehead I like either.  Lan, the doll/Rei Ayanami sterotype who has succeeded for getting a lot of screen time for either looking vacant or frustrated.  I suppose I could comment on Madoka’s cousin, but there’s not much to say.  She’s just succeeded at being vague, nosy, bossy and annoying to her cousin.  She does have a nice game face though.

It’s rare that I put a series on life support this early into its run, unless I just hate the first episode.  I’m pretty steadfast in my “5 episode or bust” policy.  But Rinne no Lagrange has not shown me anything compelling.  It has no “wow factor” for me at all.  And I’m starting to feel that what I want to see as a mecha fan, and what the studios believe mecha fans want to see are no longer compatible.  Or maybe that’s the problem.

Maybe I’m not watching a mecha show at all, but instead another one of those cleverly disguised mahou shoujos.  The two genres aren’t really that far apart in their general story structure.  They often involve some sort of coming-of-age story/a journey to find one’s self.  There is plenty of fluffing and posing involved in both genres if we’re gonna be honest.  The enemy of the week theme seems to run pretty strong in both genres.  And you can bet there are going to be some convenient upgrades.

So maybe if I look at this in a different light, I may come to tolerate it better.  You think? No.  No.  This show clearly dresses itself up as a mecha.  So I will judge it as such.

[Mobile Suit Gundam AGE 14]

It was bright and colorful, and was dark as it felt like it needed to be. Mobile Suit Gundam AGE finished its first age of three on a very dark note. The enemies are defeated. Vengeance was served. The hero’s innocence was preserved, even if his love was killed. The girl who loved him was victorious, but we do not see her triumphant – her rival was killed unjustly and the hero will not love her the same way, not for some time. The captain was tried and convicted for treason. The big government reveals itself to be unjust and evil.

The enemies are revealed to be human, and are victims of human negligence and corruption. Everybody loses, as war must go on. As a viewer I claim victory. This is Gundam, and better than I expected.

Grodek carried the whole story. His was the motive and drive that caused action in the narrative. As Flit discovers love, X-Rounder powers, and the different ways of Gundam, it is Grodek that brings urgency to everyone he meets and brings the fight to the UE.  My favorite moment in relation to this was when we were spared from watching – Flit was spared from having to pull the trigger on Yark Dole.

Grodek shot him from behind, and once more when he didn’t quite die. No hesitation, just the clear and decisive action of a man who knows who he is and why he does things. It doesn’t make him right, but it makes him a powerful element of the narrative. It was quite touching as well, how he thanked everyone who participated in his vendetta. It was only fair that he took the fall for them.

For a moment I thought he was going to kill himself. But as Legend of the Galactic Heroes tells me, the leaders of any failed uprising must survive so that only they receive the reprisals of the movement’s failure (or success). The soldiers who followed them must be spared from these, and this is more honorable an act that a commanding officer must do. Take the disgrace in the place of his men.

Grodek saved Flit, who retained his moral high ground because he did not have to execute an unarmed prisoner in cold blood. This way he can still vow to be a savior. This is exactly what the narrative needs to proceed to the next AGE. For this all thanks must be laid upon Grodek’s prison cell.

As for the Veigans, they’re this story’s version of the oppressed colonists. Their grudge is legitimized in part by the extreme trials they’ve survived. We know that the Earth Federation is accountable because this is Gundam. What we can expect is that the Veigan everyman just wants to return to Earth, while the powers that lead them want to return to Earth as conquerors. They’ll have to get past the Gundam.

If there’s anything that bugs me about the past two episodes is that we saw the Ambat asteroid get NAILED by the big laser. There is nothing in it that tells us it was damaged in any way.

See you next AGE.

[Nisemonogatari 02]

Smut aside, the events in between the in medias res–like device the narrative uses to launch itself serve the following things:

• Remind us of, or re-present us with the characters of the narrative with some updates.
• Characterize the relationship between the two leads.

I find it striking how Senjougahara is portrayed with significantly less smut, to negligible levels (especially relative to everyone else). Ever since they got together, the fanservice coming from Senjougahara is circumstantial and verbal. She’s completely stopped being shown naked and such.

Senjougahara: serious business; everyone else: temptations for Araragi.

This is all played out during an interrogation scene between Senjougahara and Araragi. I’m no expert in BDSM but I’ve heard/read quite a few times that the locus of power is in the one being punished, especially because the “session” is something the punished asks for, or at the very least tolerates and has the power to terminate.

This is clear when something very important (Araragi’s sister needs him), he breaks free from his shackles using his Vampire powers. Suddenly, it’s Senjougahara who has to assert how she isn’t going to back down from a fight with a Vampire.

I find this all very interesting, because in this harem dynamic – reinforced by the previous episodes and the temptation thingy, re-establishes the locus of power: Araragi IS the main character and he is not quite just your weakling milquetoast generic harem lead – maybe he never was, but clearly not anymore if he ever was.

Senjougahara is now desired, clearly so, because of her tsundere service. That’s her charm point. And it’s something that doesn’t easily get brushed off as database crap because I do acknowledge the feeling underneath all this verbal calisthenics. She wants to protect him from himself because she loves him… but that thing she’s protecting him from, is precisely why she knows he’s worth it.

I love these guys.

Oh yeah, as my post title suggests – an antagonist appears: one of the confidence men who Senjougahara dealt with when she failed to get rid of her weight problem prior to meeting Araragi and Oshino. It would seem that this guy would target the haremettes, and eventually endanger Araragi’s sisters. So it begins.

It’s a nice thought, but it’s an inauthenticity. I can’t stay forever young, not even in “mind” nor in “spirit.” I’ve seen things. I remember so many things. Even more telling, I’ve forgotten things. But there are things I want to remind myself as I grow older, as I do so today – things that are appropriate to share here on this anime blog.

The first thing: someday this blog will end. It will be well-before I actually die. But since I will die someday, so must this blog as I know it, as you’ve known it. The very idea of this finiteness allows for sentimentality. The sentiment here is that, at the very end of my youth and at the onset of middle age, I rediscovered and remembered love for cartoons.

The internet is awesome. It is full of things that will aggravate me, disgust me, and piss me off. But it also allowed me to reach you, to get your attention for a few moments. I got some of you to read, and some of you to keep coming back, and still even some of you to talk to me, about cartoons and comics… all on my terms. I never got to be the great and influential writer of consequence that was the stuff of my adolescent imagination, but some of you acknowledged me the way my university professors told me I will be acknowledged someday. I will never forget this.

I dislike many good things, and it’s okay. I don’t think I will ever like FLCL. I don’t think I will ever enjoy anything Getter Robo. I can be wrong, but I’ve made peace with the fact that there are good things out there that I’ll never enjoy, and I congratulate myself in how I won’t tell people how because I don’t like these things, these things must therefore be  not good. I don’t care enough about these shows to have to be right about them.

I like many bad things, and it’s okay. I feel no guilt. I like Robotech without having to be a Macross purist. I don’t have to apologize for Robotech. Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory remains one of my favorite shows, and I like it more than War in the Pocket.

I like terrible things in some shows (regardless of their overall quality) and I do feel guilt for them… and that’s okay too. I rooted for Lelouch, I feel sympathy for Zeon, I like characters precisely because they are or do fail (hello Minmay, Char, Ranka). I love Cowboy Bebop precisely because it is a pointless piece of sadness.

Lastly,

I’ve grown a lawn. While I still am subscribed to so many anime blogs. I’ve increasingly found them difficult to read – because I think the writing is shit. Things I would’ve read and commented on in 2009, I can’t bother with anymore. I’ve become less invested in seeing these improve over time, because well, they quit before they ever get better at blogging anime… or they just linger on being half-assed, or are like myself – fully convinced of their own ability.

STILL, I am very glad that people care enough about cartoons and comics to blog about them in any capacity and with whatever intention… whether as jaded haters, hipster haters, elitist tryhards, and the whole fucking spectrum of n00bity (precisely, because it rhymes with nudity). It’s because if any of these people ever eventually get an atom of what awesome, vitalizing, pleasure I got out of this hobby, then I feel even better for having done all this.

Like GL, I’m a father with three young kids, in particular, two young girls. In the last couple of years, as a causal form I’ve entertainment, I’ve taken a stronger interest in watching anime. My only real exposure in the past were shows on Cartoon Network, during the Toonami time slot or Adult Swim. During this exploration of new and old shows, my kids started joining me in watching, wondering what strange cartoons I was watching.  Being ages 7, 4, and 2, they have differing amount of interest in types of shows. But the one that surprises me the most is my 4 year old daughter.

Now keep in mind, no one in my family speaks or reads Japanese. My wife, genetically Korean but raised by a WASP family here, does speak Spanish, but that’s as close as we get. My oldest daughter is just beginning to learn to read. So you would think watching a subtitled show in a foreign language would be a little hard for a four year old. But every week she wants to sit down with Dad and “watch a show”. But, what really got her hooked, was watching Bunny Drop (Usagi Drop) this last summer. It became our Sunday ritual to watch together.

And what a fun show to watch together. A soft, and loving premise written around a working man, and the young girl he adopts into his home. I’m not saying my family situation is the same. But I see the interactions between a father and daughter in our own life. Together, we match up to there ages pretty well. Me, a working Dad, and Rin, a pre-school aged girl.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take a lot of dialog to understand the generality of what’s going on. So, she watches intently, making cute comments as Rin does silly stuff, and giggling at the more comical situations. These moments make the experience of watching the show all that more enjoyable. I’ve found something in common with my daughter that is just for us, an activity that she solely comes to me for and not Mom.

And as the season closed, it has hard to tell her that their would be no more to watch. And of course, she doesn’t understand why. But as I make my way through shows new and old, she’s there enjoying them as well, my little anime watching sidekick.

And a question for you as you read his post. What would you recommend I watch next with her? What can we watch together that can continue this great experience so far?

[Gundam AGE 13]

Everything that has run its course has been predictable so far, except finer details with regards to Death Flags – She was less Four Murasame in the end and more Lalah Sune. But truly what I didn’t count on was the boarding maneuver that the Diva is executing.

Let us put aside how it fails to make sense (like the previous episode’s necessity to fire from visual range despite 1) the presence of an advanced targeting system and 2) the effective range is much greater than the distance fired from) – in that the size of the explosion should’ve gutted the whole Ambat asteroid. Well, unless Grodek is some kind of bloodthirsty, xenoocidal, vengeance-freak (yes!) and is fighting a battle of extermination.

He wants his UE massacre. He’s willing to risk sending his crew — who are not infantry soldiers into the Ambat fortress in a boarding maneuver and get them all killed. By all means GO FOR IT! (Don’t forget that kids are watching bro!)

The battle for AMBAT shouts out to both the battles of Solomon and A Baoa Qu near the end of the One Year War in the Universal Century. In both cases it was a siege of an Asteroid fortress, especially for A Baoa Qu. During Solomon it was the fight between the team of Char and Lalah in the Gelgoog and Elmeth respectively (and the debut of funnels/bits) and Amuro in his Gundam. It was the showcase of Newtype powers, and Gundam will never be the same again afterwards.

The awesome things in this episode have to do with the Gundam itself, and I WON’T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY.  First, when Yurin does the Lalah Sune thing, sure Flit got really, really pissed. But instead of drawing him with thick lines Nagai Go style (or Simon from Gurren Lagann style for you newfags)  they put the emotion in the Gundam itself. Wait what? Emotion, from the Gundam’s masked face?

Why yes, it’s from the Imagawa school of immovable, but emotive super robot faces:

It’s just a matter of dramatic angles that play with the light.

Second, is how the Gundam went through its different modes getting trashed. As I would imagine, going up against two X-Rounders and one of them with flowery funnel attacks will rip off the Gundam’s limbs. Then Flit goes Titus on the UE and holds the figurative drawbridge open for the Diva to breach. Then yes, it too breaks apart. Good thing the Gundam AGE Normal is still good to go.

Daddy buy me all them toys! ALL YOUR MONEY FOR BANDAI! Oh shit, I’m the dad. Oh well. Let’s spend our money on food.

Bring her home, Char. Bring her home.

[Nisemonogatari 01]

Since the first episode aired, I’ve rewatched all of Bakemonogatari. One of the things I noted about the structure is how Hitagi Crab is just two episodes… and Hanekawa Cat is 5. Hitagi Crab presented the whole premise, introduced the leads, and resolved a conflict/plot point. It was very efficient. Hanekawa Cat on the other hand, had almost completely tangential first two episodes. Episode 12, while important to the resolution (Araragi’s stand against the meddlesome cat) was really more about Araragi and Senjougahara’s story than it is about Hanekawa. Still, it was a story to tell.

In the first two episodes of Karen Bee, not only nothing was resolved, the conflict is still only being hinted at. Instead, we get a whole lot of smut. Sure, there’s a lot of clever dialogue, but the medium and the content is really smutty fanservice.

Sure in episode 01, Hachikuji discoursed about authenticity and courage and this is part of the domestic conflict that will eventually be the Karen Bee concern. Sure in episode 02 Koyomi got some information however flimsy on his sister’s in school from Nadeko. But this is thin as gauze stuff in terms of mystery or conflict building.

The content is the smut. The value proposition is the smut. It’s incredibly slick and expertly made smut. But it’s smutty smuttacular smut.

The best part, oh my god, is when Kanbaru for some reason molests Koyomi in her room to end their conversation and the episode, he makes a moral resolution to never start a conversation with Hachikuji with sexual harassment.

SEE THE COMEUPPANCE OF A PERVERT.

SEE THE REDEMPTION OF A HERO.

WITNESS ALL OF THIS PRESENTED IN EROTIC, COMICAL “WHY SO SERIOUS?” HALF-NUDE TO FULL NUDE IRONY IN 1080P.

Of course, next episode will reveal more of the moral core of Araragi; the one that counts when we’re pressed to discuss the quality of this show – the one that saved all the girls of Bakemonogatari; The story of monstrous perversion… WITH A HEART OF GOLD!

By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed the kata animation of Araragi Karen. I love Karate.

Why does this franchise exist? Why? I am asking a serious question. Let’s put away the obvious reasons: make money, sell merchandise, etc. But surely, there are more efficient and less expensive ways to make a buck and sell toys and music. Why assemble the kind of talent that went behind these shows just for those reasons?

In the process of making this post, I figured it out. It’s so simple: It’s fun as fuck.

Kawamori and his tribe grabbed each other’s genitalia and just had one orgiastic creative party. Does the product have any “artistic” merit? It does. I really think there are cherries here for the picking. Does the product have fucktons of “artistic” demerit? You bet. There is probably a lot more bad, than there is ever any good in the whole thing. But I also truly believe everybody had fun making this show. It’s the bad idea everyone was wary to do, but had the time of their lives making, and then well, now Aquarion exists.

Then years later they made some more… then even later, they did it again!

Thus, this post is a metaphor for the anime:

• A concept of dubious merit.
• Content of doubtful value.
• A talented (read: faggoty) creative team behind it going “what the hell.”
• Incredible effort going into the production.

You think you’ve gone far into this post? We haven’t even started.

I could write a whole post on how EVOL basically animated Aria’s Neo Venezia so awesomely beautiful beyond anything even Aria the Origination can hope to do, then have a whole super robot battle fuck the whole place up. For me, this alone was worth it. But this post isn’t about that. Maybe some other time.

Instead I will note the significant thing in Aquarion EVOL is the metamasturbation (read: Kawamori “remembering love” for his own shows); this work immediately does, in Kawamori’s special way: He inserts an in-universe film version of the 2007 film Gekijoban Aquarion, and have the first leads fall over the film and perhaps each other. This is halfway between Macross: Do You Remember Love? getting discussed in an episode of Macross 7, and Bird Human being made as an in-universe film adaptation of Macross Zero in an episode of Macross Frontier.

The best part is how the “useless couple” as they will refer to themselves, note how the film was not successful, but it had a great song. Yes. Exactly. That’s how I feel about the franchise as a whole. It was unsuccessful (as an anime), but it had Kanno Yoko goodness, particularly in this variation of the first OP:

I think this is one of Kanno’s best work, and I love a whole lot of what she does for anime. But enough of this. Time to really talk about the show. Here to do just that is Digibro’s BRO, our token girl mecha pilot Victor:

What to make of that rapid-fire recapping? We complete our GATTAI trio with JoeAnimated’s wary but optimistic take:

If you left reading this post with exactly how I left watching Aquarion, then I’ll take it.

I’ve recently started watching Tetsujin 28 Go (2004), an incredible TV anime done with the same spirit and gravitas as was the OVA Giant Robo: The Day The Earth Stood Still (1991), both by Yasuhiro Imagawa based on Yokohama Mitsuteru’s works. Based on the intro, and the first five episodes I’ve seen which featured its showdowns with the rival robot Black Ox, I find it fascinating how Tetsujin 28 fights.

It is simplistic to the extreme. It almost feels like a saloon brawl in some John Wayne western. Big punches that knock opponents down, stomping on the ground, and the occasional palm-t0-palm grappling. I’m fascinated by it, despite my deep love for advanced martial arts performed by giant robots, because how it really fits. Shotaro is a 10-year old. He controls Tetsujin with this big electronic box, and frankly, he doesn’t strike me as an advanced martial artist.

Punching, kicking, and stomping seems just about right for Tetsujin 28, and he looks damn good fighting that way.

What I’m trying to say is, there’s a way to make fights good without being complex, and Tetsujin 28 Go so far has a good grasp of this. I’d rank this stuff higher than say, Mobile Suit Gundam AGE with its set pieces, firefights, and duels.

You won’t see a whole lot in the clip, but the elements are there. Tetsujin blasts into the field with his jetpack, punches the crap out of the enemy robot. BOOM. The drama isn’t focused on the fight itself, though you may be pleased to find out that Tetsujin himself takes a pretty good beating in the first 5 episodes. Good stuff.

Then robots start focusing on weapons and special attacks. Each special attack then was decisive. Take Mazinger Z:

Wow. That was awesome. The special attacks sure showed those mechanical beasts! This was how this show escalated the excitement, as the highlight of each episode became the fight.

As super robot shows progressed, the fights became more like “pro wrestling” matches wherein the fights were prolonged. This meant that many special attacks were no longer decisive, but instead were used to soften up the opponent.

WARNING: TOO MUCH AWESOME IN THIS VIDEO

Well, that showed way too much but I’m too lazy to make my own videos. The pro-wrestling aesthetic was refined when Tossho Daimos brought in my favorite kind of robot fighting: motherfuckin’ karate!

HOOOOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME!

Goddamnit, that was just breathtaking. The badass levels just doesn’t show up in modern robot anime in the same heavy-handedly dramatic, and yet incredibly fulfilling action-packed way. However, by 1978, it had become increasingly harder to deliver the same quality of fights while remaining fresh.

This was the kind of environment that led to the innovation of militarized giant robot fighting: Mobile Suit Gundam. However, Gundam never really left its roots as a duelist kind of robot, taking the light saber battles from Star Wars and making it a standard weapon for many mobile suits in the shows to come.

Bet you didn’t expect me to use the fucking Gyan and M’Quve as an example! But since we’re now in the militarized mecha sphere, the fights now involve 1 vs. many scenarios using standard robot units. The best example of this is the super-soldier piloted Scopedogs from Armored Trooper VOTOMS:

Unfortunately, you get fights like this (albeit in different environments) ad nauseam. Chirico just picking off enemy ATs all day every day. It would take Macross’ approach – which is to involve a large number of combatants and create massive chaos in the battlefield to keep the action exciting and dynamic.

But it isn’t only in 1 vs. many scenarios that Macross excelled at. It took the dogfight style duel and turned into a grand animated spectacle:

FABULOUS MAX!

I picked this example precisely because it wasn’t a pure plane vs. plane battle. The Qaedluun-rau is not a transforming robot, and yet Macross was able to give the duel a very dogfight feel, but of course taking it into insane levels of close quarters battle, without resorting to Gundam-style melee engagement.

Interestingly, it would be Gundam who would make the next “innovation” when it comes to 1 vs. many battles. It would take giant beam weapons mounted on Gundams and just hose the battlefield and take out multiple enemies. This came to a head when Mobile Suit Gundam Wing’s  Wing Zero Custom did this:

Uhhh… yeah.

Well, the 90s weren’t entirely made of fail when it comes to robot battle innovation. If Gundam Wing really started doing cheap shit like this, Neon Genesis Evangelion brought things back to basics, in ways never really seen before in robot anime.

I just love the lack of sync and the tracking lines from the VHS rip LOL.

This pretty much owns, and shows how Evangelion brought something awesome as a contribution to the tradition of robot anime. The bones of it is still very Tetsujin 28 Go, but the lengths it reaches was far beyond anyone’s imagination.

This pretty much presents the general fighting traditions in robot anime. Different shows will give us variations of these methods: Gundam gives us funnels, Eureka SeveN gives us air jousting by virtue of the vehicular nature of ref flight. The King of Braves Gao Gai Gar gives us HUGE WEAPONS… But all these are in the context of duels, 1 vs. many, or many vs. many kinds of battles.

What I showed here are, more or less, my favorite examples (controlling for age of the shows) for these categories or traditions. How differently would you set up the taxonomy? If the structure is works for you, what examples would be your favorites then? Feel free to post videos!

[Gundam AGE 12]

It is to my great delight that while Flit had his big X-Rounder moment in this assault, the show belonged to the capital ship. It’s been discussed quite early on that the Diva ship would transform in some way, and it finally did. I’m not sure how much sense there is in distinguishing the two different modes, but hey, the Diva Albion looks a lot better, and packs a big punch.

There’s much negativity on my end regarding beam weapons in mecha anime, but I have no complaints when any particular derivative of Yamato’s Wave Motion Gun is fielded or fired by a fixed installation, or a capital ship. This is the kind of weapon that makes the ship more than just a mobile suit carrier. This is important because the Diva can’t just be the ship that fields all three mobile suits in every battle, even if one of them is the Gundam.

Now it fired, taking out its opposing battleship, and punching a hole through the very asteroid holding the UE fortress. Now this doesn’t quite decide the battle, I have every suspicion that the battle will eventually be decided on the level of a mobile suit duel. What’s interesting however, is the tactical action that led to the firing of the AGE-builder delivered gun.

The tactical objective in this case is to get the Diva into effective firing range. Nothing complicated about the battle itself: there is a straight line of fire that’ll get both the UE flagship and the fortress. What gets in the way is the swarm of mobile suits providing cover and anti-ship support.

This is sound defense, in that mobile suits clearly are the best weapons against bigger, slower capital ships. Thus it is the job of the supporting carriers with their mobile suit complements to clear a firing position for the Diva. What I find funny, however – and I fully fault the planners for this one:

The Diva never needed to get that close.

Yes, you read that right. Why? It’s because if the beam was powerful enough to punch through the damn asteroid, then its effective range must be far greater than from where they fired from. The Diva could’ve just destroyed the capital ship from a position of superior safety, and reduced the mobile suit resistance greatly. It could then recharge and destroy the asteroid fortress at will.

But of course, we need drama in our arc-ending, two-part battle. And much drama there was, giving Flit the opportunity to go all Setsuna F. Seiei on a swarm of UE suits and deploy his X-Rounder CQB skills. Decil and Yurin will combine next episode to fight you.

Still, pretty intense battle; I enjoyed how Ract was saved from his own suicide, thus preserving the most awesome hair in AU Gundam to date.

That Athrun is so pimp.