VIII: Shambling Monstrosity

The Shamblo owned much of the latest episode of Gundam Unicorn.

I like good mobile armours, I think because they’re usually bestial, and it does the soul good to see a small humanoid figure (the Gundam) squaring off against something like that. And it’s a salutary reminder that Gundam is at least as much unstable psychics riding monsters as it is hard-bitten soldiers piloting war machines—you will note that the painting stuck in Banagher’s memory is not titled The Lady and the Ordnance QF 17-Pounder.

IV: Gundam Ageing

Welcome back to broadcast TV, Gundam. Now get out there and shift plastic off shelves!

Sometimes, I’m not sure I really watch much Gundam qua Gundam. Instead, I spend a lot of time watching for the pattern of reused, reconfigured ideas, and watching how that pattern interacts with any elements new to the franchise.

Thankfully I can still be prodded into dumping the reserve and getting into the spirit of things. Both capacities are operating when I say Grodek’s little private war is pretty Neate. I’m definitely up for protagonists independent of the larger factions not because they’re executing a peacekeeping mission, but because they’re vengeful. Besides that, well, AGE looks competent, the designs have been amusing, and I’m slightly excited to see when and how the multigenerational scope kicks in.

A moment? It’s in the picture up there.

Robotic Vomit

When Banagher threw up in the second episode of Unicorn, I thought it was natural. Marida just punched him in the belly, after all.

But that’s ridiculous. The Kshatriya, not Marida, punched the Unicorn, not Banagher, in the belly. He succumbs, I suppose, to the amount of force applied to the cockpit as a whole (and the NT-D’s demands?), rather than to any particular part of his body. And yet part of my mind still thinks these are human-scale bodies or suits of armour.

(Compare that scene in Votoms where Chirico’s wounded in the leg, and his blood, escaping from a bullet-hole, runs down his Scopedog’s leg. Though, re-reading what I just wrote, we could probably do other things with that.)

Where We’re Going…

Maybe Kycilia told you that the Zeong is only eighty percent complete, says the mechanic, but it’s at one hundred percent of its operational capability. Legs? Legs are merely a matter of appearance, whatever the officers think.

IX: Victory

I watched the last episode of Victory Gundam this August, about two-and-a-half years after I watched the first episode. I thought it was a fairly bad mess with salvageable, enjoyable facets. I stalled about half of the way through, which is fairly common with lugubrious fifty-episode-plus Tomino anime, but I also stalled for a long time before watching just the final episode itself. Because now that I’ve watched it, I’ve more or less caught up with the production of Gundam.

Well, that’s a lie. There’s still the 00 movie, which I probably won’t enjoy, and three-fifths of Wing, plus Endless Waltz, the one part of the franchise which I find entirely unwatchable. Beyond that there’re a few oddities like Mission to the Rise which I can’t be bothered to watch, and of course a substantial amount of manga, games, prose &c. But still, finishing Victory created a sudden absence: I no longer have the ‘see more of whichever Gundam I’m working through’ option when I’m bored.

VI: Losers With Nukes

By chance it was December the first time I watched 0080, and in the years since I’ve made rewatching it part of Advent’s furniture. Moderate lateral spoilers follow.

III: Three Times Faster

‘Technology takes precedence over characterization, and thematically, the material is retrograde.’

The One Safety of the Conquered

. . . is not to hope for safety.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, for several reasons. One of these reasons is my preparation for a working holiday. In its (questionable) wisdom, my university has sent me to Cambridge for a month, to badger academics, raid libraries and generally gather enough material to write an impressive ‘Wot I Did In My Holidays’ piece when I return from the land of privilege. So far I can report that the land of privilege is efficient, friendly and just a little mad: there is, for example, a big white piano in my room. The room’s big enough that the piano isn’t inconvenient, or menacing, but it is there. Maybe I’ll attempt ‘Chopsticks’ once I finish writing this.

Escape Mechanism

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.

‘War Sucks!’

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.