This post is part of the 12 Days series.

The Universal Century is not too long as opposed to other fictional timelines, but its 150 years have been fraught with the major war or two, and a dozen different petty conflicts.

UC 0096, where Gundam Unicorn takes place in, is nowhere near the end of charted wars. So it becomes very poignant when two conversations in episode 4 expound on the woes that plague the Earth Sphere. Audrey in the diner shows the rift between Spacenoid and Earthnoid, while taking a stab at CCA Char (as if he needed it). Banagher in the desert is about the futility of making both sides see eye-to-eye with each other, enabling the main character to shed his tears in a gnawing feeling of powerlessness and anguish.

Yes, the content of these scenes are very good. But what kills me is, in the grand scheme of things, none of the problems they address will be solved in the knowable future. Their insignificant lives will burn out like a candle in the wind, and the Earth Sphere will remain wracked in pockets of fighting. Because in the grim darkness of the Universal Century, there is only the exploitation of robot toys.

But it’s conversations like these that remind me how Gundam is a sci-fi series. The ideals are lofty, but humanity can’t keep up. And that Audrey, the diner owner, Banagher, and Zinnerman are just dust. Dust, yes, who can’t help but hope. I wonder how rich Gundam would be if it could spend explaining its themes in this manner, instead of during climactic battles!

There’s a very short scene in Gundam AGE, one which lasted only a couple of seconds, which prompted me to ask an important question:

Why don’t more mecha anime show fight scenes in cockpit view?

The answer was immediate. Mecha anime employs the cockpit view more as a gimmick. It’s just as a device to show how terrifying an enemy mech is as it wastes the hapless pilot looking helplessly at his screen, as well as a budget-saving one (much of the console would take up the viewing area, and it could afford to remain still). This is because it’s generally more exciting to watch mecha combat from a third-person viewpoint. You get to see their maneuvers in full, unrestricted glory.

However, for those few seconds I was absolutely charmed. When Asemu realigned his mech’s bearing to face his reinforcements, I realized how curious I was in wanting to know how a fight scene would enfold entirely in cockpit view. The field of vision is severely limited, but you get to watch the pilot actually work the cockpit for REAL piloting. Charging an enemy mech into melee would be much more exhilarating, every dodge more meaningful.

With cockpit view, one could see how a mech handles in the eyes of its pilot. The difference in performance between a grunt mech and an ace unit would be clearer. Space mecha combat is still shackled by two dimensions–notice how mechs are always upright and facing each other when locking melee weapons? Cockpit view would force the viewer to accept 3D space more readily.

Would I watch an entire anime with it? Probably not. But I sure want to see more of those awesome cockpit shots.

A couple of weeks ago, I got wind of a Gundam Wing rap album by Richie Branson, which turned out to be a hilarious bag. My prior experience in nerdcore rap was that Firefly rap album, which was fantastic, but this one is more relevant to my interests.

Honestly, I don’t know much about rap. But the lyrics are great and the album is well-produced. I wouldn’t have guessed that this was largely a singular effort!

Richie raps about becoming a Gundam otaku thanks to Gundam Wing, which proved to be THE gateway Gundam show for so many, myself included. There’s a lot of cool references to the show, a couple harkening from other Gundam shows, even. He even watches Gundam Unicorn! My favorite track out of the bunch is “Merquise Dreams”, which is all about sleeping in class, dreaming about cool robot battles. That’s totally my childhood right there!

A minor complaint I have, though, is that a bunch of lyrics are about how awesome Richie is, from being a geek to being a rapper. I suppose this is part and parcel of rapping, but I would’ve liked the EP much more if Richie focused on more in-universe Wing stuff (mobile dolls! Wufei’s raging boner for dragon arms! Relena “I-Can-Hold-Two-Grown-Lions-In-My-Arms” Peacecraft!), or other issues that come with being a Gundam fan. At any rate, it isn’t very jarring and the dissing is all in good fun.

It’s available for free here.

The 3rd arc of Gundam AGE started this week. It was surreal seeing Flit turn from iron-hearted commander to a good-natured grandfather. The goggles are a great touch, furthering the enigmatic image that he possesses in this arc–without seeing his eyes, we can’t really delve his motives. Already my mind is racing with theories: how did Flit end up from a position of power into this comparatively low-key role?

A lesser show would have me raging, but this is Gundam AGE. Gundam AGE has built upon itself from each arc: the 1st one sets up Flit’s motivation to plot the annihilation of the Vagan race. The 2nd arc focuses on the tenuous relationship between Flit and his son Asem, which gives credence to Flit being a caring benefactor for his grandson Kio. It’s as if he’s trying to atone for his absence in Asem’s formative years!

It’s easier to swallow these developments. Flit has always remained a main character throughout Gundam AGE, be it Flit the young pilot, Flit the career soldier, or in the present arc, Flit the badass grandpa. He’s been through a lot: he’s fought wars as a frontline fighter and as a fleet commander, he’s lost people dear to him, people whom he grew up admiring. Yet you can’t let a good man down. Gundam AGE is his story.

We’ve been through two arcs. The third one is the payoff. How will the Vagan invasion of Earth commence? Is there a hidden twist in it? A silver lining? What about the generations we’ve followed since episode one? Will Flit finally complete his life’s work?

I don’t know. For now, I’ll be content with waiting, week after week.

PS: I really like how grunt Federation mech design is influenced by the Gundam’s improvements. 2nd arc had the Titus and Spallow parts, 3rd arc now has transformations!

The Hyaku Shiki had always been a odd fixture in UC Gundam: it was a high-performance mobile suit given to Char Aznable, a legend in his own right, and it resembled the Gundam in many ways. However, the distinct lack of a V-fin and the different shape of its face made it clear that it wasn’t the real deal; not THE main character’s personal machine, and more importantly, not a Gundam.

Funny, that. The Hyaku Shiki was supposed to be a Gundam.

Before the events of Zeta Gundam, Anaheim Electronics experimented on transformable mobile suits, and designed what was called the Delta Gundam. The Delta Gundam turned out to be a failure, so Anaheim sidelined the transforming capability, to be incorporated into the Delta Plus years later. But you can’t let a good design down, so the Delta Gundam’s base was used to test the Gundam Mk II’s movable frame technology, as well as anti-beam coating.

And that’s just the in-universe explanation. The fluff. In the production side, the Delta Gundam was a proposed Gundam design by Mamoru Nagano, but Director Tomino rejected it for the main Gundam role. He liked it enough though, so it eventually became the Hyaku Shiki, Char’s personal machine.

These stories of coming up short might present the Hyaku Shiki in an unfavorable light, but I disagree. It’s failures like this that provide the Universal Century a flawed, yet interesting history, and we are all the richer for it.

PS: Just as Char was a rival to Amuro, he could also be considered as a rival to the Gundam. But the Hyaku Shiki is a Gundam in all but name! Can Char fans reconcile this fact–that at one point, Char piloted a Gundam, as well? Can you?

PPS: If you look beyond the Universal Century, the Cosmic Era has the Akatsuki, which is also golden and piloted by a blonde ace. The model kits of it drop all pretensions of denying the label, even.

Welcome to Men OP Destiny! This is a post series about the Gundam OP. Why? Gundam shows tend to be long, and OPs tend to be the face of a show. And because of the nature of its thirty year-old franchise, the Gundam OP has turned into its own kind of beast–you’ll pick up recurring themes and visuals across them all. Most importantly, I love Gundam and I love OPs!

And what better OP to start the series with Gundam AGE’s OP1? I find it interesting because I believe it has a lot to contribute in the show’s dismal sales and ratings.

Why, what’s exactly wrong with the OP? Let’s watch it and take down some notes.

Flit looks really young in a pilot suit. Even younger than Usso Evin, but that’s a by-product of the Level-5 character designs.

This scene of the Gundam and its friends allies moving into the battlefield feels relaxed, like they’re on leisurely patrol. There’s no sense of urgency, and the pink explosion even looks like a happy afterthought.

The meadow scene is shot at length. To me, this evokes Flit’s idyllic days with his friends. I like the panning shot of the colony interior; it evokes a brief sense of wonder. Simple, but effective.

When this peace is threatened by unknown invaders, however…

…Flit rises up to the challenge. Some nice visual consistency here. In the previous scene, the UE come from the left, and Flit here is literally facing them. This is enforced throughout the entire OP–the Diva and the AGE-1 emerge from the right as well–but I think it’s best demonstrated by this scene.

In the actual battle, Flit is alone. This is to set him up as a savior. He is the sole hope standing against annihilation. To further promote this image, he locks swords with an enemy, shoots it, and then the scene cuts. The shot hitting is not actually shown–Flit is a hero, not a killer. He’s protecting people, not destroying enemies. This is fully explored in the show proper.

So what’s the problem again? If you’re a Gundam fan who didn’t get turned away by the promo art of three young boys, the OP is one of the first things you will see. And the OP is as kiddie as it gets. It’s been thirty years, but some people still think that Gundam as a franchise is made of serious war stories for serious people. AGE deviates from this ideal, therefore it’s something that’s undesirable and should be written off as a pointless aberration. How sad, because when AGE gets good, it gets really good.

Going back to the OP. What is it essentially trying to convey? That the show is about this pure-hearted, kind boy who rides a robot to fight off evil robot monsters disturbing his peaceful land. However, this first arc of Gundam AGE is much more than what its OP shows. Flit is a good kid, but it’s Captain Grodek, a rather dark character, who is the major plot mover in the story. Grodek doesn’t figure in more than a panning shot in the OP. Flit also loses his home as early as episode 3–some defender he is! He becomes more of an uniting figure, like a prince in exile who’s traveled far and wide to warn others of an impending threat.

If you’re a long-time (and adult) Gundam fan, chances are the OP will turn you off, as it’s made for kids. If you’re a kid, the OP is made for you, but the actual meat of the show is darker than the OP lets on. It gives the wrong impression to one set of viewers, and sets false expectations to another.

In this respect, I think the OP fails in its aim of getting the viewers invested and hooked in the show. It’s still pretty good–the chorus part has a nice rhythm to it (quick shots of the side characters), and I like the song despite it not really being Gundam OP material (if that makes sense). It just doesn’t work very well.

What do you think?

I’ll talk about OP2 (sharp# by negoto) in the next post for this series.

PS: There’s a minor change in the OP starting episode 12. The Diva is replaced by the silhouette of the Gundam AGE-2 (I first thought it was the Diva’s transformed form, but it’s too thin to be the ship). The AGE-2 doesn’t actually appear in the show until episode 19! As to why, I have no idea.

[Spoilers for Gundam AGE]

Obright died, but not before treating us to an Oldtype-style beatdown where ingenuity trumps over genetic piloting talent. This I will remember. But Obright’s life is far more memorable than that.

He was a better character than Kio. Kio combines the skills of Usso Evin, the civilian sensibilities of Banagher Links, and all the worst bits of Kira Yamato. It is particularly damning that the final product of the Asuno Project is not the AGE system or the Gundam, but Kio himself. Kio exists to promote the pacifist Gundam message, the telling that war is bad, the hypocrisy of post-human pilots who fight while sparing lives, and their absolution.

Consider this: Obright has backstory. From an unremarkable pilot in the 2nd arc, to a grizzled veteran in the 3rd, Obright was two distinct characters. The 2nd arc invests in his maturation through loss. Obright the veteran was a man of few words, maintaining his distance even from his own team. It’s subtle, but the team greatly respects him, even Seric, his own superior. For a minor character, the show invested on him a lot.

Obright lost a loved one to the Vagan. But it did not make him bitter and develop a consuming hatred against the enemy, unlike Flit Asuno. This is noteworthy in the Gundam metaseries, where feuds are fueled by revenge, where pilots try to avenge their fallen comrades. If anything, Remi’s death taught Obright to value his friends more, to treat them as family. Obright’s life shows that war can do terrible things to a person, but that person need not let himself be defined by such tragedies.

Obright was loyal to his comrades, and merciless to his enemies. He didn’t put his allies in danger by taking chances. He didn’t fight with suicidal rage. He even tried to guide Kio in his own little way, showing the child some tenderness. The scene itself was sad. Kio was young enough to be his own son. The son he and Remi never had.

Obright had to die, in the tradition of Gundam grunt pilots. He had to die because he was an Oldtype.  He was firmly set in his ways, as adults are. Those who are incapable of reaching enlightenment are incompatible with the anti-war message that post-Turn A Gundam puts out. This is a shame, since the very lecture that Gundam tries so much to preach to its audience is often its own narrative’s downfall.

But it was fitting when Obright died in front of the Diva. He, like the ship, were relics. It was time for them to go, to keep the tears flowing for the characters. I will not ask for more, like wish that he had survived in the end. I knew he was going to die the very first time I saw him.

(Isn’t this a bad thing? Gundam’s tropes are so established that we automatically decide the final fates of characters long before they themselves even meet it. The grunt pilots always have a high mortality rate.)

People say that the 3rd arc of Gundam AGE is a mistake. I believe it is very flawed, and nowhere near as good as the first two arcs, but we get isolated cases of good minor characters who would linger in one’s mind, even after their calculated demise.

After the unconventional, failed gambit of Gundam AGE’s OP1, OP2 is a return to form, exhibiting a more adolescent tone while including some nifty mobile suit action.

I’d rather not try to divine authorial intent, but I find it interesting that Susumu Yamaguchi (Gundam AGE’s director) storyboarded both OP1 and OP2, as well as OP4. OP1 and OP2 are like night and day when it comes to overall feel–it looks to me that OP2 is a response to the dwindling ratings of AGE, where the staff employs tried-and-tested formulas to hook in viewers, focusing especially on longtime Gundam fans. All pretense of pandering to a children’s demographic is thrown out of the window. The new main characters look fully in their teens, and they have teenage motivations in the story proper.

So, what does OP2 have that OP1 doesn’t?

The enemy gets shot down.

Prior to this arc, it’s been revealed that the UE are human beings as well. Zoinks! Asemu and his comrades shoot them down with no hesitation. They’re soldiers, it can’t be helped. Despite under the tutelage of an ace pilot, Asemu and co. remain vulnerable, with every battle a desperate struggle for survival.

In the OP, we are treated to Asemu’s teammates’ terrified looks inside the cockpit–they have no time to philosophize about the horrors of war, they are living it. This is a far more effective way of showing such horrors than the disastrous fourth arc of AGE. It doesn’t blueball or preach to the viewer. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?

You know what, the action is really, really good.

I love how the Gundam “ascends” from its killing spree, giving off an angelic appearance, minus the gay feathers.

The choreography of the Woolf squad fight is excellent, down to the G-Bouncer parting the pink smoke as it rushes the camera.

This is a Gundam OP staple: mobile suit(s) flying outward to space, strafed by a curtain of laser fire. In this case, there looks to be only one mobile suit shooting at the Gundam, which leads later into Asemu and Zeheart clashing. Continuity!

The AGE-1 variations to AGE-2 is a little misleading, though. It implies that the AGE-2 is an upgrade to the AGE-1, which I did believe, but it turns out to be an entirely new mech. I actually wonder what the staff were planning from the beginning. Personally, I would’ve liked it more if there was only one Gundam, passed down to the Asuno family’s descendants. It would be more in line with the generational theme, with Asemu and Kio using the Gundam in ways their predecessors would never have envisioned. But that would also mean cutting the awesomeness of adult Flit in the cockpit. Oh well.

The placement of Double Bullet is rather untimely. It clouds the consistency of the OP by being placed right before Asemu and Zeheart’s mobile suit clash, in which Asemu is still using the AGE-2 Normal. It looks serviceable on its own, but it’s also a glaring toy advertisement.

On Zeheart: The OP sets this scene up early. Asemu and Zeheart, crossing paths on the street, and walking past each other. I think there is really subtle foreshadowing here that’s only clear after I’ve finished the show. Before I explain, let’s examine how differently could this scene have played out:

1. A&Z could’ve had a fistfight right there and then (like Amuro and Char!). That would mean resolution, and someone dies.
2. A&Z could’ve ignored each other. That would mean they threw away their friendship completely, and there would be no more reconciliation.
3. A&Z could’ve stopped, and walked together. That would mean permanently setting aside their differences and shacking up allying together.

But A&Z give each other a look. No matter how Zeheart denies it, Asemu being on the other side of the battlefield troubles him greatly. Asemu holds a part of his humanity, that part of him who peacefully lived among friends for years. Walking away from each other means that their conflict isn’t resolved in this arc. At the same time, they part as equals at the end, which fits in with the second arc’s ending. Whew! I must secretly be a fujoshi.

Now, about the song. People have expressed their puzzlement at OP2′s song choice (sharp# by negoto). It’s a solid rock piece with sharp guitars, but its unconventional sound gives off the initial impression of “is this really a Gundam OP?” It’s unabashedly a teenage song slotted into a kids’ show. sharp# quickly grew on me after a few loops, but I can’t speak for anyone else.

So how does this OP fare? It’s a lot more enjoyable and sets expectations that its respective story arc succeeds to meet. Often either the OP or the story doesn’t hold up to the other, but OP2 is a rare case of both succeeding. It doesn’t really break any new ground, but it manages to excite the viewer with the meat of each episode.

Also notable is how Flit only appears at the end of the OP. I wouldn’t say the OP is misleading us, because Flit plays a big role and even has his own subplot, but this isn’t his story. It’s Asemu’s, with a smattering of Zeheart (*u*) thrown in.

The next post in this series will be about OP3 (Real by ViViD). Until next time!

[This is a special guest post by ghostlightning]

For the third year straight, I’ve rewatched Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket just before Christmas. I believe it’s become the ideal anime tradition; well, at least Gundam fans if not robot anime fans as a whole.

Christmas time is when the year is also winding down, a time to meet friends and family, reconnect and renew. It’s a time perfectly suited for nostalgia, and tradition shares a sphere with nostalgia in the great venn diagram of everything.

War in the Pocket was a celebration of Gundam’s core audience coming of age… a good decade since the original series aired. The kids who watched Mobile Suit Gundam are becoming or have become physical adults. It was then perfect to tell a story that speaks directly into the psyche of a Gundam fan.

The allegory here is that Alfred and his 11 year-old peers are robot cartoon fans who have this naive picture of war and violence; oblivious to the real risks and costs, while they fawn over the weapons and technology… of course the piloted robots in particular.

Among his friends, and especially after his immersive and trying experience with both Chris of the Federation and Bernie of the Principality’s respective armed forces, Al finds himself transformed. He could no longer be the kind of war/weapons/military junkie his friends were.

It’s as if Gundam, the franchise itself was saying:

“It’s okay that you’ve changed, and can’t get into these cartoons the same way you used to 10 years ago. We’ll try to change with you, and give you shows like War in the Pocket, but we both know it’s different between Gundam and you as an adult. We’ll be okay that you won’t be as into the more naive, sillier, and youthful shows we’re going to make as alternatives to the Universal Century. But we won’t forget you. Every now and then we’ll come up with these videos just for you.”

True enough, the franchise went back to TV with alternatives to the original story while remaining modeled after it, with W, G, (even V), X, (even Turn A), until last decade’s SEED, 00, and this decade’s AGE. For the older and aging fans, OVAs like Stardust Memory, 08th MS Team, and Unicorn were made.

War in the Pocket came not long after Char’s Counterattack, which at the time closed out the main conflict in the Universal Century. 0080 let us back into that conflict, what we know and love about Gundam, while trying its best to give us stories that grow up with us.

This is also why “oldfags” are utterly faggoty for the UC while excessively faggoty against AU Gundam shows. They lack the perspective of the crossroads that faced the franchise a decade into its existence. It was always going to be about Alfred’s friends, they’re a renewable resource. But Alfred is the fan of the original series, and he grew up, as some fans over the decades will grow up and discover the UC and its more adult stories and perhaps, like Al, will never be the same.

Gundam AGE is a failure, in multiple ways. First, it achieved abysmal ratings, beating Gundam X’s all-time low. I think this is well within the experimental nature of the show, where Gundam tried to become a children’s TV anime. I find it a shame because the first arc was pretty good, the second arc even better, but kids probably didn’t have the patience to stick around for that.

The second failure would go to the third and fourth arcs, or to Kio Asuno in general. Kio didn’t start off bad. He had a genuinely compelling dilemma whether to follow his grandfather down the road of Vagan genocide, or to find a way of fighting for himself. We now know that he followed the latter, in the worst imaginable way–Kio becomes Jesus Yamato, on a personal crusade to reconcile both Earth and Vagan in the battlefield.

No one ever truly stops Kio from this. In the fourth arc, when Kio was forced to truly kill someone, another person steps in and does it for him. Kio conveniently avoids a painful choice. Seric tells Kio to stop not killing the Vagans, because it also endangers their own allies. It goes way over Kio’s head, because he is the strongest X-Rounder and he could protect everyone from danger anyway. He is given special treatment, not belonging to the military at all. If he did, well Seric could’ve had license to shoot him instead.

All this is to further promote the stupid Gundam Message that War is Bad, Violence is Bad, and Stopping Violence Will Stop Wars. There wouldn’t be any trouble if we had a nuanced, smart execution of these themes, but Gundam all too often tries to dumb them down, doing its absolute worst for Gundam AGE. The fourth arc is particularly bad because all the other interesting subplots were shelved in favor of preaching to its audience, instead of trying to do cardinal thing asked of it: tell a good story.

Getting AGE’s bad parts out of the way, I want to affirm that there is still a lot to love about this show, especially in the great second arc. Asemu’s story is compelling in a way that Young Flit and Kio’s aren’t, because Asemu is a soldier. Asemu piloted the Gundam AGE-2, a powerful unit in itself, but he was still commanded by a superior, and was surrounded by teammates. This team setup places an immense weight on Asemu’s shoulders. He is responsible for his teammates and even his superior officier, so he cannot just run off and do things on his own. He is a great pilot in a great machine, but he is only a pilot, and the AGE-2 is only a machine, and neither are treated as a savior of humanity that recent Gundam TV has a tendency for doing.

Asemu’s relationship with his father is also very interesting–Asemu wants approval from the great Admiral Flit Asuno, who is a first-rate commander, engineer, and pilot rolled into one. But he wasn’t a very good father, and hoped to make a good man out of Asemu by being cold towards him, in the fear that showering him with attention would spoil and stunt his development. Asemu had to forge his own identity, to not live forever under the shadow of his father.

Zeheart is also at his most coherent in this arc, which isn’t saying very much, but he acted as a good foil to Asemu, and their team-up at the conclusion of the arc was one of the highlights of the entire show.

I think that Gundam AGE would have done better if the AGE-FX did not exist (to rob Kio of the agency to play God in the battlefield), the third and fourth arcs were meshed together without Kio’s X-Rounder values, and the second arc had been longer. There were some interesting subplots that didn’t have enough time to be resolved in a satisfying manner, and I would have wished for more squad dynamics with Asemu and his teammates.

There are a lot of things I wish for in mecha anime, and for Gundam AGE to have been a lot better is sadly one of them.

No screencaps because I streamed the first episode legally! Hurrah, GundamInfo channel!

So, Gundam Build Fighters. After the failure of Gundam AGE, Bandai is sticking to its strengths, which is in the form of honest-to-goodness merchandise. You see, Gunpla is a big thing, and even in the Philippines we have a good number of hobby stores catering to modelers. As long as they keep the story solid enough to serve the conceit of crossover Gundam action, we’ll have a good hit on our hands. I hope!

I needn’t repeat any info that could be looked up in better places in this post. Rather, I want to talk about how Gundam in the show is made into this modeling/battling thing. In Sei’s world, people build Gundam model kits not just to ogle at something pretty, but they use them to fight other people’s model kits. The actual anime franchise is downplayed, or nonexistent at best aside from the little nods the episode did.

I have an issue with this. More exactly, I have an issue with Sazaki all but bullying Sei to be his partner and fight using his Gunpla. To me, he’s what’s wrong with the Gundam fanbase as a whole.

But Schneider, he’s just a noisy kid! What did he ever do wrong?

Consider this: Gundam is A Thing with many facets: there’s the anime, where it all started. There are also toys and model kits, where it arguably ends. There are games. Novels. Manga. A freaking amusement park ride. Hell, there’s a legit Gundam car (it’s Char’s, though)! And even if we just look at the anime, there’s UC and AU. I don’t have numbers, but I can safely say that a lot of Gundam fans nowadays have never even seen a single episode of UC Gundam, and aren’t willing to, for various reasons!

Now, what exactly makes you a Gundam fan? Know what, I can’t really say! I’ve watched practically all Gundam anime, built a nontrivial amount of model kits, discussed Gundam with friends for many, many hours, and I can’t tell you what a Gundam fan should be. As I’ve already established, Gundam has many facets, and a person could like one while ignoring the others, or two, or all, and it’s not our business to decide what they should go for. Maybe someone can’t really stand UC Gundam, or isn’t willing to drop money for the expensive Gunpla habit. Maybe they just find the Kira and Lacus pairing really cute, or exclusively build SD Gundam kits. That’s okay. It’s their own prerogative if they want to branch out.

What’s not okay is the attitude that Sazaki espouses, which is “you like the same thing as I do but you like it for different reasons, so you suck!” There is a huge cesspool of hatred in the Gundam fanbase that’s based on this very sentiment. UC fans hate AU fans, modellers hate non-modellers, anime fans hate toy collectors, people with no sense of fun hate G Gundam, there’s no end to it. I’ve done my share of gatekeeping and I’ve turned around. It’s not cool, guys! Gundam is so big, we could just ignore the parts we don’t like, and really focus on what tickles our bones. It’s not like the days when Tomino directed Gundam are gone forever (and honestly, they’re not even that good to warrant such bitching), one could always rewatch the shows. Even if Sunrise or Bandai stopped doing That Thing You Like, you could always go back to what existed. Or leave. I mean, what are you going to do about it, complain on the internet? Please.

(The best/worst thing is Gundam fans complaining about the very existence of this show, yet watch it every week. While decrying it. Every week.)

Sei could have completely renounced the battling aspect to focus on the building side. He could memorize every bit of Gundam fluff so he could talk a great sales pitch for their Gunpla store. But it’s a show about competitive plastic robot battling, and everything must work in the context of selling the building/battling nature of the sport. The hero must be spurred on to fight, even if he sucks, so just throw in a dude who’s gifted at battling to be his partner. We get a slick fight, now everyone can pack up and go home.

At the end of the day, it was a solid first episode, and I was entertained. You don’t get to see a Dijeh painted in Gundam colors slash a Freedom in half anywhere else. But one annoying kid made me remember why I’ve started to distance myself from the rest of Gundam fandom in the first place–people who insist and impose their own standards of fun on others. I may have read too much into a simple cartoon, but I can only see Sazaki, and the real-life haters being the worst Gundam fans they could be.

Another Men OP Destiny post! To tell you the truth, I got into a funk from writing these, because I was unsatisfied with how Gundam AGE ended. ‘Course there’s nothing preventing me from writing about other Gundam OPs, but my inner completist kept me in a state of inertia for a long time.

But really, the OPs are far from what made Gundam AGE bad. As long as I keep that in mind, I can reconcile with myself on writing about its last two OPs!

OP3 is markedly different from its predecessors. Masami Obari storyboarded and directed it, and the end result is something very solid, in my opinion.

“Obari who?” Kraker from The Vanishing Trooper Incident has written a lot of words on The Man, and I’ll let him do some talking:

It is often forgotten that Masami Obari’s major break into the anime industry and ultimately what made him popular was mecha anime. His talents lay in bringing giant robots and other gigantic creatures to life through his animation. Specifically his work on the Metal Armor Dragonar opening cemented his brilliance among his contemporaries, an opening animated entirely by himself at the astonishing age of 22. From there he went onto forge a career into many different genres but one thing he remained strong at was creating anime intros.

By directing the 3rd Gundam AGE opening Obari brings together many popular mecha opening clichés and remixes them into something very fitting for Gundam. So sit back and enjoy the breakdown and analysis below.

The timing of the visuals to the song is great. 胸 (mune) means chest, and here Kio does something appropriate.

Oh man. Wendy. It feels like the show shelved her before she got the chance to do anything interesting. She just turns and stares up the sky in this scene but the camera makes it dynamic and breathtaking.

Here, Kio opens his eye in time for 声 (koe), which means voice. It seems like he’s actually responding to a voice he’s heard.

In this scene, Kio changes from his civilian clothes to his pilot suit, revealing that he’s in the Gundam’s cockpit all along. The line in the song really means “it’s not a dream; in reality–”. The message is clear.

I didn’t catch this while I was watching the show, but the title card is animated. The words “Gundam” and “AGE” smash together like two halves combining. There’s even some neat effects thrown in. Fantastic.

The previous two Gundams appear a few seconds later, providing a nice blue-and-red background. (See the first screencap) Blue and red are the quintessential super robot colors, and this OP really screams SUPER in a wonderful way.

The sequence with the Seric team is beautiful. This shot is from a Veigan soldier’s POV. He’s got a target lock on the Clanche, which then transforms and pounces on his face. Look at how his own mobile suit is reflected in the visor of his enemy. It’s an amazing blink-it-or-miss-it detail.

If you’ve been watching the show, you should be able to recognize the silhouette without any problems. The Pirate AGE-2 (Dark Hound) is fully revealed in the OP after Asemu appears again, who also appears in the shot. I just love it when OPs evolve to reflect plot points in a series.

Oh man. Classic Gundam imagery. A panning shot of the enemy army, with elite units making as if to pounce the viewer, and then a surprise guest appears. Before it’s revealed in the show, it’s rendered in a classic Obari silhouette.

Here’s a standard OP trick. We’ve known Zeheart for a while, but do we know him as a Char? I like how the transition is made when Fram turns around. To tie in with the previous scene, the two “pouncing” mechs belong to these two characters (Zeheart’s on the left, Fram’s on the right), adding visual consistency.

Old Flit gets his own scene. More lyric-to-visual goodness: the light appears as 光 (hikari) is sung. The meaning should be obvious.

These shots during the fill-in to the chorus tell a quick and effective story. Shit’s about to get real, the Gundam’s gonna go and save the day! It leads on to a lovingly-made combination sequence that’s so good I can’t find a single screenshot to give it justice.

Instead, have the end result. I love the pose. We’ve seen this many times before, but I still love it. The Gundam AGE-3 Normal is a homage to the ZZ Gundam, and it looks slick here.

The following scenes show off the AGE-3′s variant forms, the Fortress and the Orbital. Their strengths are made clear–the Fortress can hover on the ground and fire a lot of beams, while the Orbital is very, very fast. (I had to go through its part a few times to get a proper cap!) They feel like a real evolution from the AGE-1 series of variations.

It’s the mecha standoff! I don’t have much to say here, except that the shading and exaggerated movement make Obari’s hand very clear.

I really like this OP. For me, it wins over OP2 by a small margin, because of its overall polish. Obari has had decades of industry experience after all, and you can tell he had a lot of fun making this. I sure can’t accuse OP3 of being uninspired, because it uses standard mecha OP tropes very well in a Gundam manner. It’s just a shame that the actual story arc that OP3 covers isn’t up to its quality.

I’ll talk about OP4 (AURORA by Aoi Eir) in the next post for this series.

One of the most challenging things I must handle as an anime fan is when people ask me to recommend them anime. I take recommendations seriously, because I want others to enjoy what they watch–if they get a dud and hate it, I would hold myself liable. My knowledge as an anime fan isn’t just for myself; it’s also for the service of other anime fans. It’s challenging because anime is so vast and wide that one can’t just hope to throw out a couple of shows and expect them to be well-received.

So what I do is ask the person to narrow down their preferences. They give out a genre or two, or mention a specific show they like and would like to watch more of.

“Would you like to watch a classic?” I ask, giving a baseline, like “older than 2000″.

“Umm… I guess not. Something newer, maybe?” they answer.

This is where my heart breaks a little. But I give them what they want, and hope for the best.

What’s with this exclusion? When pressed gently for reasons, my friends say, “because it’s old”, or “they’re ugly”, or shrug. I, too, have once harbored a strong case of aversion towards old anime, but when I actually sat down and watched a few of the good ones, I realized that I’ve been closing myself off to excellent works. Though I think that I take anime more passionately than your average anime fan, which makes me more accepting of anime regardless of their age.

Giving a bit of thought for this, here are some reasons I could think of:

1. Most people live in the present
2. “Old” is conflated with “ugly”
3. Old is no longer relevant

Most people live in the present

I once overheard a conversation about music. One person remarked that he liked listening to old pop music, like Michael Jackson’s Thriller era. The other said, “that can’t be pop! It’s old!” While this statement is false, because pop music is pop music regardless of how old it is, the second person’s attitude illustrates what most people think about old stuff.

The average person don’t actively seek out entertainment by himself. We are bombarded every day by music and TV and movies that we could just grab whatever we fancy, give them a spin, and go on with our lives, doing the same for the next hits that come in. Naturally, if everyone is watching and listening to the same things from the same places, it all starts to become homogenous. There’s a whole lot of stuff at hand that we tend to forget anything that’s already a month old. It’s not that they aren’t good and are therefore forgettable, it’s just that we stop thinking about them.

Also, the sheer volume of presently-available entertainment tends to make us fickle. At the first sign of an unpleasant voice, a boring stretch of time, or an uninteresting episode, we discard the work and go ahead to the next. We channel-surf. Because there’s so much at our fingertips, we grow afraid of wasting time. We rush into the next thing right away.

How many anime blogs do season previews? They answer a special need–to note up-and-coming shows, so that people would know what to follow. And yet this just shows that people live in the present–they are concerned with the soon, that will become the now in a few weeks.

I don’t blame them. After all, most people don’t want to take charge of the entertainment they consume. It’s simply something to distract them from the harshness of their daily lives. They’re content with others curating for them.

Old is conflated with ugly

Have you watched a show before 2000, before digital animation? Back then, anime was made with cels, which were painted and layered to make a single frame, many of which form animation. It used to be a problem that studios ran out of paint to color these cels, like in Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko (directed by a pre-SHAFT Shinbo!). It was far more expensive and time-consuming to animate with cels than with computers. Nowadays, digital animation allows a wider variety of colors, and CG allows backgrounds or mechanical objects to stay on-model with less work. Anime can be made faster, easier, and cheaper.

(I had put in Gunbuster as an example in the above paragraph, but it turns out that the black-and-white thing they did for the final episode wasn’t to save up, but it actually cost more!)

I make it sound like cel animation is a bad thing. That’s not true at all. Despite its limitations, some of the most gorgeous-looking anime were produced with cels. It has its own charm–some people prefer the less-saturated look (digital is often criticized to be too bright and colorful for its own good). The problem with cel, however, is that if it looks ugly, then it looks really ugly.

On the average, if you sample an old anime, it’s probably going to look unflattering. A lot of the classics haven’t aged well in terms of looks, but we still love them because they’re still good. It’s just something you have to keep in mind if you want to watch older shows. All things being equal, it’s harder to watch an older anime than a newer one, because it was made in a different eera.

But when you stumble upon an anime that looks beautiful despite its old age? It’s worth it.

Old is no longer relevant

Anime is continually evolving throughout its storied history. It is a lot more diverse now than before–anime used to be the domain of giant robots and espers and adaptations of old classics. And since anime today is a result of years’ worth of iteratively trying out things, watching something old might seem a regression.

It would make sense that someone who got into anime today had been hooked by watching recent shows. Their taste is calibrated towards such shows, and so older anime may look strange or uninviting. Entertainment is a product of its own time, and older anime was made with different mores or values than today. And when the anime belongs to the science fiction genre, it may look extremely dated with its limited knowledge of science–The Galaxy Express 999 movie amused me to no end because of all the liberties it took with space travel!

But is it really a step back? I am interested in how stories have evolved, so I want to see how the classics first approached things. Appreciating the original Mobile Suit Gundam made me more receptive to the entire franchise; I could draw a clear line of innovation and consolidation from past to present. (Some may look upon this more negatively, that Gundam has regressed since the good old days.) Even if such works are flawed, it pays well to understand what they had tried and why they didn’t work, and how succeeding works had refined these elements.

Isn’t it refreshing to see how something was done first? Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was influenced by Getter Robo. Gurren Lagann is larger in scope; it deals with a rapidly increasing scale that by the end, the fate of the entire universe is at stake, and the titular mech reflects this with its impossible size. To watch Getter Robo, the OVAs at least, you could get a feel on how the super robot genre has grown.

Conversely, a lot of old anime fans lament the passing of their favorite genres. They dislike shows today and lament the disappearance of those that which they used to like. They are still anime fans, though they aren’t fans of anime today. It works both ways!

* * *

I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface; there’s probably an entire area of study for this, which I’m interested to know. If you have your own answers, why not post them here! How do you convince people to watch an older show that they wouldn’t see on their own? It’s agonizing for me, because most of my favorites are pretty old!

When I was starting to get into anime seriously, I encountered people who would discuss creators and studios. This was a big quantum leap for me, having framed anime in terms of “good” or “not good” only. Why are they talking about who made what? Why bother? I thought.

Maybe some of you are asking the same question. Why does it matter? What do we gain from doing so?

Shortly after that encounter, I began to read about studios and people responsible for making anime–directors, character designers, scriptwriters, animation directors, and composers. If I was going to talk to these people, I would have to understand what they were talking about. Slowly but surely my understanding grew, and with it I started doing  something utterly surprising:

I would seek out shows based on who made them!

The anime watering hole I used to frequent, the Megatokyo Forums, was fond of Akiyuki Shinbo. Hidamari Sketch, one of my all-time favorites, had been dubbed as “that damn new Shinbo show” in its thread title. Now, I wasn’t ready to enjoy Hidamari Sketch then, but I had been watching Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, from the same studio and director. When the cool cats in the forum started talking about Shinbo this, Shinbo that, I looked up his body of work, since I liked what I was watching and wanted to see something similar. It pointed me out to fantastic stuff like Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko and The SoulTaker. And while I was watching these shows, I was able to gain a much greater insight on Shinbo’s style. What do you know, I grew as an anime fan!

Now, I don’t think this creator fascination is different from, say, film or TV. However, anime is insulated from us non-Japanese fans by its linguistic and cultural layers. If we are to understand it without learning the language and the culture, we would have to turn to its creators to give us a stronger familiarity with the medium.

It may seem a lot of work for disposable entertainment, but it’s actually a whole lot of fun. I could think of a few reasons why learning about the people who make anime could heighten a fan’s sense of enjoyment:

1. It allows you see other shows that are (generally) similar to your favorites
2. It makes you understand creators’ styles and their quirks
3. It gives you a better appreciation for anime

It allows you see other shows that are (generally) similar to your favorites

Anime is vast. There are so many shows that one can’t help but be overwhelmed sometimes with what to watch next. What I learned by studying anime creators is that they tend to have a niche of their own: the aforementioned Shinbo has a striking visual style that goes for economy of presentation over highly-detailed animation. Yoshiyuki Tomino, the father of Gundam, makes a lot of mecha shows, with a reputation for heartlessly killing off characters. Shoji Kawamori, founder of studio Satelight and mastermind of the Macross franchise, is a peace-loving hippie.

Now, if you’re at a loss with what to watch, you could simply bring up your favorites, read through the production staff, and check out what the other shows they’ve done. Chances are, you’ll find something to your taste. And even if you don’t like what you saw, I daresay it’s interesting to talk about this with like-minded people. Try it out! Even if you’re never going to engage with anime beyond simple entertainment, this method will help you find shows you like faster.

It makes you understand creators’ styles and their quirks

Anime is made by people. People have their own preferences or biases. Sometimes it’s so strong that they’re stereotyped–Shinbo makes glorified PowerPoint presentations instead of animation, Tomino is a misogynist, and Kawamori always has an insidious environmental theme he loves to insert in all of his shows. Stepping back a bit, a person will tend to have something he or she wants to do.

By going through an anime creator’s portfolio, we can pinpoint trends or preferences. We can see his or her sense of style as it develops and changes throughout the years. I’d say that Tomino has gone a long way from his Zeta Gundam days after directing Turn A Gundam and Overman King Gainer. And when you see that change for yourself, it’s a whole lot of satisfying.

Sometimes we become fans not only of anime, but of the people who make them, too. I, for one, am a fan of the following people: Yoshiyuki Tomino, Noboru Ishiguro, Yasuhiro Imagawa, Kunihiko Ikuhara, Goro Taniguchi, Masami Obari, Haruhiko Mikimoto, Ichiro Itano, Yoko Kanno, and a whole lot more. I make it a point to watch these people’s works. And most of the time, I’m pleased with what I see.

It gives you a better appreciation for anime

Anime is made by a lot of people. I learn something new every now and then–I recently learned that it pays well to notice the sound director than just the composer or the voice actors. Until last year I only truly understood the difference between a director and an animation director.

It’s easy to frame anime in terms of “good” or “not good”. But have you thought about what went through a show’s production? Of the disagreements and eureka moments? Of the amazing larger-than-life anecdotes about people doing something insane? Doesn’t it make you treasure anime more? These shows wouldn’t be around if not for the valiant toiling of people like you and me. Oftentimes it’s a thankless job; the least you and I could do is to know what they’ve gone through in order to deliver us what we love. Maybe you could become a lot more forgiving after reading about a show’s production.

It also lends well to discussion. Now that you know how a particular anime was made and who made it, you can engage in deeper conversation than other people, explaining directorial styles and whatnot. A few anecdotes about the production could spice up the conversation!

* * *

Now, you might ask, how do I get started? Simple. Just identify your favorites and look up who made them. You could start from the director, or look at the character designer if you’re an art person, or the composer if you’re into music (like me!). From then on you could track down a single person’s body of work, see who he or she worked with (chances are they’re going to be the same kind of people), and track those people down next. Before you know it, you already have an influence web of creators you could jump off from. There’s so much to love, and I doubt that you’ll run out of people to admire.

Some anime are harder to tackle than others. It’s not because they’re niche or complex or even plain old, but because of length and the lack of an obvious starting point.

I can divide them into the following categories:

1. Anime that are very long (Legend of the Galactic Heroes, One Piece)
2. Anime with multiple shows/movies (City Hunter, Sailor Moon, Slayers)
3. Anime with different timelines/continuity (Gundam, Getter Robo, Patlabor)

For #1, we start at episode 1, and work our way onwards. For something like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which is one sprawling epic, it could be very intimidating. One Piece, however, is composed of arcs, which follow an overarching narrative but nevertheless are self-contained. Still, you’re going to be watching that anime for quite a while. A good number of people wouldn’t want to start something they think they wouldn’t be able to finish anyway.

For #2, we need to piece together a unified timeline that ties all shows together. Once we get that order, we’re all set. It can get a little hairy, like in City Hunter’s case, which has a bunch of movies interspersed between TV seasons. (Good thing I have a guide here.) While this is pretty close to #1, at least we could use the end of a season (or movie) as a break in the narrative. Feel like that last season wasn’t so hot? Then don’t watch the next one!

For #3, we almost always need someone (or something) to guide us. And that’s when people run. (Perversely enough, this seems to attract others, but I digress.)

Despite AU Gundam’s varying degrees of success, I sort of appreciate that it’s friendly to newcomers. A lot of people like Gundam SEED, and just its own timeline, because it’s the only one that clicked for them.

Myself? I don’t actually have a problem with #3. I find that I’m pretty good in getting on track with a story even if I started it from the middle. I think it’s because I’m a huge Wikipedia nut and I’ll just open up a page (or look it up if there isn’t enough information in the site to begin with) later if I have any questions. Being a writer too, I also want to see how a continuing show plays catch-up with its viewers when backstory is referenced.

I think my cavalier approach to continuity is based on my view that continuity should be a secondary (tertiary even) concern. Is the story good? Then good. Far too many nerds argue about continuity, often ignoring the actual quality of the stories themselves. I think it’s important not to think too much about the stuff that you don’t like (i.e. ignore them), and focus your attention on what you like instead. Because it’s all made up.

But sometimes, we just want a good, standalone story not bogged down by continuity. And, fortunately, there’s enough of them in anime.

PS: I get sad when I try to recommend the UC OVAs that are self-contained (War in the Pocket, Stardust Memory, and The 08th MS Team) to people who aren’t UC Gundam fans. The biggest hurdle is that these people ask about the One Year War, which all three are tied to, albeit loosely. Maybe my being a big Gundam fan makes me myopic to the difficulty of getting into these shows as a newbie, but they’re perfectly fine on their own. You don’t need to know what happened between Amuro and Char to appreciate the drama between Bernie and Al, etc.

PPS: I’m pretty sure this post expounds on canon and continuity a lot more than I could!

OPs for OVAs tend to be different from OPs for TV shows. Unlike TV OPs, which are primarily concerned with catching a channel surfer’s attention, OVA OPs can afford to be more experimental or less grounded in formula, because the viewer has already bought or rented the show.

That, and you can’t air a scene of underage drinking on TV.

The Gundam OVA OPs (War in the Pocket, Stardust Memory, 08th MS Team) don’t subscribe to the standard pattern of OPs, and they have their own gimmicks. They’re all quite interesting and I’ll expound on that when I go through each of them.

So what’s 08th MS Team’s gimmick?

The entire OP is set in the Federation’s point of view. There are no Zeon characters! Some parts of it look like a Federation recruitment video. Makes sense, when the show’s name is The 08th MS Team, but if you’ve actually seen the show, you’ll know that the good guys are frequently outclassed in their battles. They aren’t heroes, they’re grunts who only happen to have a few spare Gundams in their possession.

The 08th MS Team portrays Gundam in a way that isn’t like its predecessors–the RX-78[G] Gundam Ground-Type is a scaled-down version made from surplus parts. It doesn’t even have the original’s iconic beam rifle (which was a game-changer during the One Year War). The OP portrays exactly this: the Gundam is a soldier, not a savior. It isn’t pew pew space battles, but grimy ground war.

And there’s the song. Tell you what–when I hear the words “90′s anime music”, I don’t think of the iconic Evangelion or Utena or even DBZ songs, I think of The 08th MS Team. Arashi no naka de kagayaite (or Shine in the Storm) is as cheesy as any pop song should be, and that’s why.

Let’s talk about some of the scenes.

This is straight out of a war film! It took me a while to perfectly capture the silhouette of an attacking Zaku here before it’s riddled with machine gun fire.

First glimpse of the Gundam, and the tropical jungle setting.

A reminder that tanks remain cool, even in a world where they’re all but obsolete.

It’s the 180mm cannon, a really cool-looking gun with a wallop, which isn’t as effectual in the actual show. Shame. On another note, I really like the Ground Gundam’s shield, it looks functional. It can also be used to prop up the cannon, which is parodied at times.

A cool shot of Michel here that is funny in context. Karen fares better in the show.

Ouch. This, and screencap above show that these Gundams aren’t indestructible or special. In fact, The 08th MS Team pulls this off with glee–in one memorable scene, a Gundam is decapitated by a badass Acguy.

Army life in stills. I like how laid-back and goofy they look in them. The old guy drinking, Eledore complaining about the rations and the rain.

Note how the buggy driver clamps his headphones tight here. That shit is loud. Hey, at least the shell casings don’t cave his head in, like in Gundam F91…

I have a Master Grade kit of the Ground Gundam (the only MG kit I have, in fact), and this is my  favorite pose of it. Though the gun sags a bit in time. But hey, if there’s no shield to stabilize it, you gotta make do with your knee.

So what’s cool with this OP? There’s a surprising amount of detail crafted into it. The budget isn’t very big and there are a lot of pans and stills, but they work very well in painting a picture of Federation army life in Southeast Asia, as well as the fighting they do there. It’s not pretty, but people will make do with what they have.

It also has flow; while it doesn’t tell a complete story from start to finish, its sections transition naturally. Characters and technologies are naturally introduced. It borrows a lot of imagery from war films, adding a popcorn cheesiness to the mix.

My favorite part in the OP (and arguably my favorite Gundam OP moment of all time) is the Gundam paradrop scene during the chorus. It’s got great detail–the booster backpack is jettisoned right as they land. Screencaps don’t do it justice; it has to be watched with the music.

While my opinion on 08th MS Team has changed over the years, my love for its OP remains constant. A lot of it is from the song, but the visual side is also great and ages very well.

Amen.