
I was idle, and I thought idly about war and anime. ‘Anime says that war sucks,’ is what I thought first. This seems to be the standard opinion. If it’s deployed, it’s frequently followed by mention of pacifism and the atomic bomb.

I was idle, and I thought idly about war and anime. ‘Anime says that war sucks,’ is what I thought first. This seems to be the standard opinion. If it’s deployed, it’s frequently followed by mention of pacifism and the atomic bomb.
Categories: commentary · fanboy
Tagged: gundam, gundam 0080, gundam seed, introspection, pacifism, politics, pomposity, war, zeta gundam
These days it feels like writing an episode summary is a political act, and writing about old anime is always a slightly charged business, so when the Mighty Benefactor who is subtitling Dougram took the time to do a first-draft set of subtitles for the first episode of Panzer World Galient, I thought I might as well combine the two activities. (more…)
Categories: commentary · fanboy
Tagged: mecha, panzer world galient, summary

The first episode of Macross Frontier – the Deculture Edition of the first episode – was my first contact with Macross, excepting a dimly-remembered trailer for (I think) Plus, which I saw on a rented DVD ages ago. I’m not counting that trailer because I didn’t pay much attention to it, on the grounds that ‘you promised me giant robots, and these are definitely planes, not giant robots’.
How little I knew! (more…)
Categories: commentary · fanboy
Tagged: killer salad, macross, macross frontier, twelve days of christmas 08

Part of the fun in watching Tytania is in picking apart the choices taken by Tytania’s Dukes, and my favourite example of this is the chain of decisions surrounding Lydia, ‘the Moe Princess‘. Tytania doesn’t fit Lydia, though I imagine she would say it’s the other way round. Her sense of honour-driven politics is naïve, but increasingly attractive when juxtaposed with, say, Idris’s serpentine plotting, or even Zalisch’s more honest belligerence. (more…)
Categories: fanboy
Tagged: twelve days of christmas 08, tytania

We can come away from a good action sequence saying more than ‘wow’ or alternatively ‘it left me cold’. So, for example, in one of Legend of the Galactic Heroes’s side-stories it’s extremely fitting that a certain character dies with the loss of his right arm just before the revelation that he was less of a dangerous Machiavel than he had seemed. That revelation would have felt different if he had lost his left arm instead, or for that matter if he had died with all his limbs attached. (more…)
Categories: fanboy
Tagged: action, gundam, gundam 00, legend of the galactic heroes goes in every field after all, star wars, twelve days of christmas 08

For those who have had better things to watch this year, Zettai Karen Children is – how to put this? – a cocktail of comedy and action in a magical girl-shaped glass, with an olive in it that tastes like X-Men’s theme of prejudice against the superpowered. Judging from its timeslot, children are its main audience, though there are moments when one must suppress qualms about precisely who is enjoying what. (more…)
Categories: fanboy
Tagged: twelve days of christmas 08, zettai karen children
Categories: fanboy
Tagged: kaiji, manly tears, twelve days of christmas 08, zawa zawa
Escape Mechanism
Tuesday 31st March, 2009 · 28 Comments
There’s no real reason behind my selection of this picture, beyond the fact that I’m talking about Turn-A Gundam in this post. It’s nice to see a Gundam lead piloting something low-tech now and then, though, isn’t it? (Given what I could have chosen, be thankful.) Anyway, this is a follow-up to ‘War Sucks!‘, and while it contains no spoilers for Turn-A, it does contain one moderate spoiler for the final episode of Gundam 00. (more…)
Categories: commentary · fanboy
Tagged: gundam, slice-of-life, storytelling, turn a gundam