Landscape With Anti-AT Rifle

Armour Hunter Mellowlink arranges lots of fighting around a simple, sturdy story, leavened with drama and mystery in just the right (minimal) amounts. I owe it a certain debt for being my introduction to the VOTOMS franchise. It has, therefore, always pained me that the only available subtitled version is a set of rips from some kind of well-worn VHS fansub. Recently, however, I discovered that some inspired /m/en had got together to release Armour Hunter Mellowlink in higher quality. It’s still the old, amusingly unreliable translation but — well, I did say this was mostly fighting, didn’t I?

Anyway, to celebrate, I thought I’d write another post about it.

Pailsen Files: Assaulting Monad

The first three minutes of the eleventh episode of the Pailsen Files portray an assault, but they also are an assault – on the viewer. Vast troopships (VOTOMS’s spaceships are essentially brick-shaped) loom over the machine planet Monad. (Incidentally(?), ‘monad’ may or may not have been a Pythagorean name for God.) The transports which aren’t blown up (in suitably massive explosions) by the defenders disgorge swarms of Armoured Troopers.

VOTOMS: Clarke’s God Is Dead

Armoured Trooper VOTOMS is a simple show. I should swiftly add that by ’simple’ I don’t mean to imply ‘bad’ (it was good) or ’stupid’ (it wasn’t stupid), simply ’simple’, in its denotation but not any of its connotations. Armoured Troopers are simple mecha, tin cans with machine guns, the characters are simple people, the dialogue is frequently sparse (and better for it) and some of the show’s best images, such as Chirico carrying a sick Fyana across Sunsa’s airless desert with Zophie following behind him, are its simplest ones.

Kummen: Needs More Dith Pran

(Contains spoilers; if you wish to avoid them, the same stretch of anime is reviewed here. I think I may finally have learned how to spell ‘Ogiue’ now.)

We see a small boat putt-putt-puttering its way in midstream, while the men onboard lie about, sweating in the sun. They heft guns, looking bored; one man casually applies the burning end of his cigarette to a leech. Complaints about the boat’s progress bounce back and forth, though the external heat seems to have taken any fire out of the complaints themselves. Someone stands up, leans back, stretches – and is promptly hit by a swarm of bullets from the bank.

Welcome to Uoodo City (Please Kill Carefully)

Even the pushiest estate agent would have trouble selling me a house in Uoodo City. It’s an entirely metallic environment. We never seem to see the sky. The buildings are unreasonably tall, and instead of solid ground under your feet, you’re more likely to find cavernous metal spaces full of more unreasonably tall buildings. The police chief is corrupt and power-hungry, and his men are only really distinguished from thugs by their heavier armament. If you don’t fall foul of the police, perhaps you’ll be captured and put to work as a miner by the local gang of biking vikings. You could turn to religious consolation, but sadly the only priest we see is a conspirator in cahoots with the police chief. Oh yeah, and the rain can kill you – so listen out for those weather sirens.

Why do we need to know about Uoodo? Well . . .