[Spoilers for Mobile Suit Gundam, Turn A Gundam, and other works directed by Tomino]
When I first tried watching the Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy, something really disturbed me. I’ve said this before, but I think it merits repeating for the sake of my subject in this post:
In Soldiers of Sorrow (movie 2), Amuro Ray felt betrayed by Bright Noa and the rest of the crew (Bright said something to the effect that they shouldn’t let Amuro get big-headed by reminding him that he’s the only one who can pilot the Gundam), and ran away.
Ikari Shinji ran away. Renton Thurston ran away. Teen emo pilots run away. But I’m telling you that neither examples ran away the same way Amuro ran away. It’s because Amuro ran away stealing the Gundam. Not only did he steal the Gundam, he somehow dug a hole in the middle of the desert, and put the Gundam in it… completely vertically. Now the cockpit of the Gundam is in its abdomen, so either
a) Amuro dug the hole using the Gundam, then threw the big lug with his bare hands and filled the hole with his bare hands; or
b) Amuro dug the hole using the Gundam, and transformed into a sandworm like Leto II and crawled his way out of the hole and transformed back into a human again.
Either way, there was no way the RX 78-2 would be operable again because he would have either no access to the cockpit which would have been 9 meters buried in dirt, or if he did crawl out like a sandworm the cockpit would be filled and clogged with dirt. Afterwards Amuro realized that he brought neither food nor water, so he had to wander the desert to find a town that will serve him. It is significant to note I think, that Amuro does not have local currency, if any money at all. If he did find a town with a saloon (he did, and they did serve him… though he wouldn’t have to pay for it due to subsequent plot events) he had no means to purchase anything.
And what was the purpose of this histrionic display? It was a set up for a chance meeting with Ramba Ral and Hamon Crowley, a significant plot event. This arc is actually very good, and had lots of drama that grimly depicts the turns of human fates in time that feels captive to the whims of war. The set-up however, is just terrible. To recapitulate:
Rape (of logic) is a good plot device. Amuro had a hissyfit, stole the Gundam, and buried it in a hole in the middle of nowhere while having no other provisions nor plans beyond this.
When I first saw this, I just got so mad! I think my writing still reads so mad. In any case, a year after I watched these movies again and I found myself a lot more forgiving of the show’s out-of-place weirdness and gaps in logic. I had come accross the idea called LOLTOMINO. When I see scenes or things like the above (large or small, of great and miniscule significane), I just laugh it off. Bcause there will be more:
- In the second episode of Mobile Suit Victory Gundam Uso Evin performs a ‘Gundamjack’ (stealing a mobile suit) in mid-air, engaging the enemy pilot (Chronicle Asher… the name itself is LOL, but if I start talking about names in Gundam I don’t think I’ll ever finish this post) in fisticuffs. The fight in the cockpit is prolonged, and desperate; eventually resulting in Uso (all of probably 120 pounds of 13-year old squirt) beating a grown man and throwing him out of his own mobile suit Grand Theft Auto style (yeah the videogame, only with more fighting).
- In episode 39 of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam a strange woman (Rosamy Badam) who appears to be in her 20s declares herself to be the younger sister of the lead character Kamille Bidan (around 15 years old) who is a conscripted soldier in active duty and the pilot of the A.E.U.G.’s most advanced mobile suit (the Zeta Gundam) in wartime. The command and crew of the Argama let her onboard without question in episode 40, nevermind that there is nothing believable in Rosamy’s behavior, in the eyes of the cast (not just me). This is not going to end well.
- Also in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, episode 21:
A brawl like this just happens in the bridge of the Argama, with the captain himself ‘peacemaking’ by kicking the shit out of everyone (yeah Bright Noa is badass LOL). There’s lots more, but by know I hope to have made my point. You want more? How about “waves of peace?” Just don’t make me explain it. [->]
One thing I personally don’t qualify as LOLTOMINO are general physics-related inconsistencies or problems (e.g. small helicopters lifting mobile suits, variability of damage caused by weapons depending on plot needs, etc) because one can find this in anime in general. Tomino has no monopoly on these and his habit of including these things doesn not significantly distinguish him.
Theorizing on our Laughter
Considering my relative inexperience with Tomino’s works (only having seen the Space Runaway Ideon movies some years back, and not even completing the Tomino-directed Gundam shows), I solicited the assistance of The Animanachronism in taking on this often-mentioned but rather underexplained phenomenon:
LOLTOMINO (or ‘LOLTomino’) is obviously a word used to describe something(s) in anime directed by the man. It’s therefore an open question whether the quality we call LOLTOMINO is actually inherent in what we’re watching, or just something we see because our minds have become predisposed to organise our impressions that way. But maybe inherent stuff isn’t very important, while the way our minds organise our impressions is.
I’ve frequently seen the word used almost as a justification in itself. Why did such-and-such a ludicrous thing happen? LOLTOMINO. I think for some people it encapsulates the idea that there are some things in the Tomino corpus which we can’t (or perhaps shouldn’t?) think too hard about. We just have to let such scenes pass us by on the understanding that no explanation will be forthcoming: ‘When the LOLTOMINO is gone there will be nothing. / Only I will remain.’ But it’s also seemingly just another adjective, as it’s used like that here.
(I wonder who’s meant to be laughing. Is it the audience (‘Oh Tomino, you card!’) or is it a reference to the idea that when Tomino laughs, things are going to get very bad for the characters and/or the viewers?)
Another issue that the word brings up is the actual extent of Tomino’s creative control. I’m not entirely clear on how much influence he’s had on each of the things he’s directed. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some LOLTOMINO incidents weren’t his ideas (there are such things as scriptwriters, after all). So it may partly be a symptom of fans’ desire to tie lots of things together with one author-function, and of Tomino’s relatively famous status among English-speaking anime fans, especially fans of the mecha genre.
And, finally, it feels to me like this concept has some kind of connection to the so-called ‘Happy Tomino’ (sub)genre. I can’t quite pick that apart, though. […]
I won’t argue against this assertion on the subjective nature of the ‘laughter.’ In the cases I’ve enumerated in the preceding section, I was laughing in derision, in a “LOL you stupid old fart” kind of way. I was upset at seeing these problems and had a beef with the adulation Tomino is given since I had expected little fallibility and much excellence from his works.
I think the laughter is a reflexive behavior. In the face of ludicrousness, or at least when an event in the show makes us unwilling to suspend our disbelief, we end up taking issue with the perceived (sole) author. Even if the work is delivered by a composite group, we’d be reasonable to think that the command responsibility lies with the director.
The interesting behavior among fans of his works is their willingness to forgive, overlook, or mainly laugh off these supposed problems and go on to appreciate the merits of the shows. I find this behavior in myself, and I feel that I’m onto another related dynamic.
After we finished our Turn A Gundam marathon, mechafetish said something very intriguing to me:
When you watch by yourself, LOLTOMINO makes you facepalm, gets you irritated, or even upset with the show you’re watching. When viewing with others (perhaps at least people who are sympathetic with Gundam), the LOLTOMINO becomes a fun collective experience.
HMMMMM, interesting! Going by my own experience, watching Gundam by myself resulted in dropped shows (Tomino works that I’ve seen and dropped before my ‘Gundam conversion’ include: Victory, Turn A, 1st Gundam, and ZZ). I was quite upset when I first watched Turn A Gundam. I mean, my good friend praised it to the high heavens and online I saw hype, hype, hype. When I started watching, not only did I find the mecha ugly and silly, I also would see all this weirdness going on:
- A mecha battle involving the Turn A Gundam kicking little lizard mechs aside and sometimes picking them up and throwing them like sacks of potatoes… the whole affair looked more awkward than a brawl between first graders of mixed sexes.
- Keith Lajie forcing a whole loaf of bread into someone’s mouth to prove that it’s tasty (it was, apparently).
- Everything about Corin Nander (I dropped the show after the episode of his first appearance).
See that arrow on his crotch shaped like a cock and a nutsack? There’s one just like it on the back of his costume, only pointing to his bunghole. LOLTOMINO.
When I tried watching Turn A again, mechafetished watched every single episode with me. Whether it was politeness or just the power of friendship, I was significantly less upset when I saw Corin reappear just as ridiculously and this time as a wandering monk, berserk and was pacified by being given a giant papier mache parade float of the Gundam to fight against. I found myself smiling a little, if grudgingly. By the finale, Corin Nander was a hot-blooded hero of balls-out manliness. He had won me over with his inexorable unreasonableness. I was laughing with mechafetish, and remarkably, with Tomino now. Turn A Gundam’s victory over me was near-complete.
So yes, I think given the ‘pressure’ to enjoy the show given the scarcity of common time together among friends (especially as adults with different schedules), LOLTOMINO becomes funny and yet another way to enjoy the show. In this dynamic, it actually becomes a credit to the show. More laughs, fun times with friends and anime; take that with the other merits of the show, it becomes a very enjoyable experience overall.
But what of the Man?
In the discussions about LOLTOMINO I don’t get the impression that Tomino himself gets a lot of credit for having a sense of humor. He gets laughed at, not with; as if the joke is own him for being so serious, killing shiploads of characters, and making a treasure trove of unintentional comedy. I haven’t seen Overman King Gainer, but it seems to be a work of lighthearted fun. Turn A Gundam itself is charmingly comedic in its wealth of idiosyncrasies.
Consider that it’s possible that the man is in on the joke, and in Turn A he uncharacteristically breaks the fourth wall with possibly his most over the top nutcase of a major character:
With Turn A Gundam, Tomino remembers love and laughter. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. Watched a few Tomino shows? What scenes made you LOL?
We Remember Love 
LOLTOMINO: The entire first half of ZZ
A fun time with friends or will I get killed if I make people watch this with me? (no way in hell I’m going to watch this by myself)
Watching it by yourself will make you want to strangle him for shitting on Z.
Watching it with friends means you get to make fun of freaking Aztec ninjas!
I had to EPIC-SKIM because I haven’t seen any of this yet, but RE: digging the hole in the desert: I cite Timon of Athens. Who dug his grave? Who put him in his grave? Who inscribed the fucking gravestone with the bitter epitaph? No one would help him, that’s the point!
I had to do an EPIC-SKIM of Timon of Athens and got nowhere, so I went over to Wikipedia. I still fail to see the relevance of this with LOLTOMINO. Can there be a case of LOLSHAKESPEARE?
If so, do say more.
Ugh, the LOLTomino. I really can’t decide how I want to think of it. I seem to be one of the least forgiving people of bullshit these days, considering my treatment of Eden of the East as well as Gainer, and LOLTomino has a lot to do with why I’ve been watching Turn A for 2 fucking years and still haven’t finished it.
I mean, it comes down to what KIND of lolTomino it is, I guess, for me. I love the LOLTomino of, say, the Turn A Gundam being used as a giant fucking washer. That kind of thing is fun, hilarious, and doesn’t really negatively effect the plot at all, it’s just funny. However, it’s harder to forgive LOLTomino when it effects the plot heavily, or IS the plot. I can tell you now, I’ve seen 37 episodes of Turn A and I still can’t tell you what the fuck is going on in that show at any given time. The fucking character interactions are so goddamn convoluted, and the plot twists and curves before it even catches up with itself – I ended up largely tuning out the plot and just concentrating on how manly Harry Ord was and how hot Loran was as a trap.
No man, Turn A is actually pretty simple. It just has a hueg cast. You got to meet Gym Ghinghnam, srsly (and Harry’s pyjamas).
I’ve always felt that part of LOLTOMINO is that Tomino laughs at us: the fans who’ll buy into even the really ridiculous shit he puts out.
As for me, I’ll always love the LOLTOMINO of episode 15 of Mobile Suit Gundam where Doan tells Amuro that he’ll show him mobile suit martial arts. I have no clue why I found it that ridiculously lolworthy aside from the fact that it was actually followed by horribly animated Zaku martial arts.
Speaking of that episode. I just rewatched it and I have no clue why I didn’t make the connection between Doan and Eureka’s story of killing the parents of three children and then running away from the army to raise them. Weird.
Great catch on the Eureka SeveN connection! I wasn’t able to mention this in my previous post.
I also realized how every Tomino Gundam show I’ve seen involves nudity in a shower scene. Given that you make pretty intense blog posts on gender (women), what do you make of this?
Although limited in my own experience with Tomino credited works, these LOLTOMINO examples remind me in tone of Revolutionary Girl Utena, a series I just recently finished and still fresh in my mind. The part about how these wacked-out moments are unwatchable alone but hilarious and endearing in the presence of friends nearly perfectly describes my Utena movie experience also.
I think what makes LOLTOMINO stand out is that amidst the robots fighting and bodies piling, expansive plotlines and complex character relations, a lot of them simply come off as plot gaffes or unintentional comedy. Compare again to something like Utena, where every bit of crazy is obvious in presentation and intention, if equally baffling. LOLTOMINOs might even stand out more because the rest of its proceedings are so straight-laced and serious.
Utena is still further down my viewing list, so I can’t validate your claims. But, I think you got the idea. With friends, terrible scenes become winners.
You then described something that may apply to the earlier Gundam shows, or maybe even Space Runaway Ideon, but may not apply as much with something like Turn A Gundam, which breaks the fourth wall which tells me of an awareness of its own ridiculousness.
It’s much more forgivable because Utena is a more stylized, abstract work, while Gundam is supposed to be gritty and “real”.
Gotcha, will look forward to viewing it. ZZ, I probably will see this when I can convince my friends to sit through it with me (again wwwwwww).
By the time Amuro and Ral meet the earth had been using the same currency for 160 some years. I think it’s safe to say that if he had any money on him it would be the same they used in they tavern.
Does this mean we can stop laughing out loud now?
I guess so…?
In many ways the things that can be said of Tomino can probably also be applied to Shoji Kawamori of Macross – both are in essence the creators of their respective rival mecha franchises; both seem to enjoy playing around with the “accepted limits” of the canon, have their fair share of controversy and sometimes end up muzzled, or at the very least held back, by the rest of the production team, and both certainly seem to get a big kick out of baiting the fanbase of their franchises.
Well, Tomino is probably an idol of Kawamori’s. Good old Shoji was a pretty hard core oldfag of the original vintage, being the president of ‘Gunsight,’ his uni’s ‘Gundamshiken.’ Note how the club isn’t about anime in general, or mecha, or anything else. It’s all about Gundam.
His pals from this club eventually went on and joined him to make Macross.
Mikimoto Haruhiko (character designer) eventually got to work on Gundam in 0080: War in the Pocket, and our boy Shoji went on to provide mechanical designs for 0083: Stardust Memory. Dreams come true.
Actually it’s entirely the other way around. Mobile Suit Gundam inspired Kawamori to do Macross. You have to have known this.
Scratch that, I interpreted that sentence completely the other way around myself. *yawns* Yeah, definitely time for bed.
Personally I would describe LOLTomino as highly noticable ‘off-the-wall-ness’ that somehow goes unchecked in the anime itself.
I honestly don’t know if every joke was on Tomino, since most of those moments really do feel like genuine oversights. Yet I too believe that he probably became more and more aware of it during the latter part of his career.
It’s as if he through repeated experience recognized these type of faults, gradually taking them in his stride. So by the time he directs Turn A, it’s as if he conciously yet willfully plays along, just like you mentioned.
Perhaps his coming of (middle) age has something to do with it, with Tomino becoming gradually more selfaware and -accepting.
That is of course if we are to consider him to be the exclusive source of these LOLTominos cropping up, though it seems rather particular to his style of direction.
Other than that, I’d say the tense production schedules also played an important part, when there’s little time to (re)consider every fault to meet a strict cascade of deadlines.
Also, some faults were accepted perhaps by virtue of it being ‘just a [s]commercial[/s] cartoon aimed at kids’. That especially rings true for his earlier works, when his name nor the teenager market were yet established.
Their aim wasn’t to make something that could withstand the scrutiny of repeat viewings or kids older than 10. (MSG stumbled upon its niche of teens only after the fact, I’m presuming.)
To put LOLTomino into perspective, why do [s]Power Rangers[/s] Super Sentai and their enemies teleport to gravelpits after changing into their colourcoded suits?..
Just to mention, I initally also couldn’t [s]stomach[/s] see the merits of the MSG Trilogy and Turn A in large part for this reason when I first watched them. Likewise, I dropped BrainPowered after a few eps, not having bothered with it since.
And on a somewhat relevant tangent, the (IMO very irksome) “TRANSFORMERS: Revenge of the Fallen” could be considered rife with LOLBay…
P.S.
I’ve been reading your blog for several weeks now with great pleasure.
I really like the deliberations you do on various things mecha anime considered.
May you continue to spread the love. 😉
Some interesting points you’ve made here, especially re tense production schedules and what not.
Anomalous plot logic and randomness in anime isn’t Tomino’s monopoly. I’d say though that there’s a distinctness in how it happens in his shows that makes it particular to him. Good or bad, his works possess very high memetic capital, which to me is just/yet another way to enjoy his works.
Thanks for the generous words. I most certainly enjoy making these posts ^_^
Ah, yes. Forced memes.
Just what anime blogging needs more of.
Just like COLONY DROP. LOLOLOLOL
But ghostlightning, animeblogging needs more Colony Drop like a virgin needs an STD!
People talk about LOLTOMINO and yet how many of you have seen Xabungle? Come on now, I wanna see a show of hands.
Nope, I haven’t seen it. I’m almost afraid to ask… should I?
Not really seen it, but I have the first episode sitting around here. I’ve played a good part of SRW Alpha Gaiden to know what it’s about, yes… and it is definitely insane.
LOLTOMINO, nice term to describe the “style”. Now i know why Overman King Gainer gives me the similar feel with V Gundam. there are quite a few scenes as “scary” as Corin Nander. if u can stand V Gundam, i strongly recommend Overman King Gainer, which is so much better (at least it makes more sense, just some random unrelated dialogue will confuse u).
Truthfully I don’t find V Gundam that difficult to stand, perhaps due to my increased tolerance and outright appreciation of LOLTOMINO. I found Turn A Gundam to be harder to get past the random wildness of the idiosyncrasies.
Just so you know, I didn’t invent this term — it’s been around a long time and I just felt like I wanted to have a clearer distinction for what it is and how it works, because those who use it, speak of it as if it’s a self-justifying statement oftentimes.
Wow! I almost take this as a challenge from you, ghostlightning. An example of LOLTOMINO? There’s at least a little bit in every series he’s headed. I find the whole “keys in the ignition” tradition to be LOLTOMINO, but since everyone does it nowadays I don’t consider that exclusive to him.
-Gundam 0079: Amuro burying his g0d@mn Gundam in the sand. Kids on a damn battleship. They could’ve dropped them off SOMEWHERE!
-Zeta: once again, kids on the damn Argama! Fist fights on the bridge! Scirrocco’s hair bun. Yazan grabbing a fellow pilot’s nuts to get him to focus! He grabbed them hard too.
-ZZ: the first half was not LOLTOMINTO for me. The first half was RAGE! I almost RAGE QUIT the series (as in kick the cpu monitor) during the first 5 eps. Also, *SPOILER ALERT* when Puru AND Puru Two died & NO ONE had a reaction! WTF!? TOMINO!
-V: Uso beating the sh*t out of a grown man with a HORRIBLE name in a cockpit IN the air, IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIREFIGHT! The Shrike Team & their many deaths. There are some SO stupid that they will forever live on in infamy as some of the dumbest deaths in anime history.
-0083: Gato stealing a fully fueled, fully NUKED Gundam with just a change in uniform. No keys, no keycard, just good looks & a smile.
-CyberNewtypes & their overall weirdness….
-Debates during firefights. In UC I thought that you could only talk while the mechs touched. What’s up w/ going on the open channel & talking sh*t! When you point a beam rifle at me the convo is over.
Ok, Ok, I’m done. I won’t get into Turn A, that’s too easy.
-Keys in the ignition… He still started it (It’s all there in the manual yo!)
-Kids on a damn battleship… comic relief and a farm for characters for future LOLTOMINO (I’M LOOKING AT YOU KATZ KOBAYASHI, even if it turns out it wasn’t you who didn’t have the RAZOR SAW TEETH that stopped Char from blowing up the GMs)
-Yazan and balls… LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. He knows how to violate people. Scirocco’s hair bun is a good find, I don’t read a lot of discussion about this. But yeah lol, WHAT THE FREAKING FUCK?
-Airborne Gundamjack… Oh lol this is a favorite as well. I feel bad for Chronicle Asher, and not just for bearing that stupid stupid name.
-Gato’s Gundamjack… THE trope namer; BUT ALAS THIS WAS NOT DIRECTED BY TOMINO.
-Newtypes PERIOD. Too easy. Zeta is chock full of them, but I can watch Four Murasame float into the screen in the 2nd OP ALL DAY.
-Debates during fights… oh LOL. Yes, this pissed me off at the beginning. It is really a very very important part of the series.
My current favorite thing to HAET:
ROSAMY BADAM GUNDAMJACKS A NEMO SNEAKS UP TO KAMILLE WHO’S FLYING THE ZETA GUNDAM IN SPACE…
AND FREAKING GLOMPS THE ZETA GUNDAM.
G L O M P
So LOLTOMINO I fucking died.
Actually, Rosamia was 17, the same age as Kamille, not twenty-something.
Whew. I’m so relieved. That makes it all okay. lolTOMINO.
But seriously, thanks for the clarification ^_^
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Years later they would make a whole series of the main character turning emo and running away by the name of Gundam Seed.
That would be ‘remembering love’ for LOLTOMINO.
Late to the party but…
It’s interesting because ‘LOLTomino’ has kept me from ever getting past episode 2 of ZZ, and I’ve tried a number of times. But I watched all of Turn A by myself and was hooked by Episode 2. I love ‘LOLTomino’. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it just works for his series. It introduces further chaos to an already troubled universe, and for me, that’s never a bad thing.
ZZ Gundam is a blight on the entire Universal Century narrative, but otherwise LOLTomino is a fun thing that can be enjoyed at a distinct level of fan/viewer participation.
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Finally got around to watching TurnAGundam. Up to episode 12 and so far weird yet strangely good. The setting and story are very original and relatively angstfree so far which is unusual in the Gundam I’ve seen. However that’s beside the point. All I wanted to say, is that you tried in some other post to warn me about Corin Nander, but in all honesty I don’t think words can prepare anyone for Corin Nander. A true LOLTOMINO indeed!
ZZ experience is priceless!!!! XD
That’s one way to describe it.
buenas ,he verificado ganga en monopoly en esta web, algun ha adquirido algo en ella?