Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

It’s been tough for a Gundam fan lately. Unless you are particularly fond of the alternate universe offerings that have more or less defined Gundam for the past ten years, there’s been nothing much us devotees to the original series can really sink our teeth into and appreciate beyond some manga in GundamAce that I can’t read, and some neat model kits I don’t have time to build. Oh, maybe we can sink our teeth into Ring of Gundam. Or at least try.

But you know, we have nothing to worry about now. Gundam Unicorn is here. And it’s tasty.

I don’t even understand what’s going on beyond the basics so far! Big Japanese words go straight over my head. But that doesn’t matter. The punch that this first episode packs obliterates any language barrier one may have. This shit is a spectacle. I am not afraid to say that it is in fact what Gundam fans have for ages been longing for.

Let’s be honest UC fans–ever since First we’ve had to live with compromise. First Gundam is dated, but we can appreciate its raw spirit despite its sometimes poor production. Zeta Gundam is great, but it takes some time to get on its feet. Even when it comes to big-budget affairs like Char’s Counterattack or 0083, we kind of let the story side of those works slide a bit since they look so damn pretty. No one can agree on 08th MS Team. I guess 0080 is good, but I haven’t seen it in so long that I don’t even get the hamburger joke people always make. What I’m getting at is that this first episode of Unicorn can be enjoyed completely without compromise. The animation is slick, the plot is engaging, and the characters so far seem great.

Gundam Unicorn is clearly a reply to years of fan prayer. The First Gundam movies are amazing–there’s no question about that–but in the end it is a cartoon made to (initially) sell simplistic toys to children, and this simplicity is reflected in the look of the animation. However, because of First’s very realistic approach to war, it established this mindset in UC fans everywhere that the UC universe concerned itself with real, gritty war, even if it doesn’t really look like it. It’s serious stuff. It has gravity to it. Even if Char does pilot a bright pink Zaku. Excuse me, red.

As I mentioned before, previous big-budget Gundam series which have tried desperately to answer the cries of fans gave it the good ol’ college try–came out pretty great–but no one can agree on which one is good. I’m really jumping the gun here, but I have a feeling Unicorn will be universally embraced.

This first episode is a perfect mix of classic and modern. There are some traditional Gundam tropes sprinkled throughout, as well as some typically ridiculous scenes that can only really happen in a Gundam series. But they’re pulled off with high levels of class. Alongside these scenes  is a developing plot that I already find engaging, despite not fully understanding it. This too is of course handled with the same amount of class. The whole episode in general has a very serious streak, and evokes an epic tone skilfully.

As I alluded to before, the animation is more or less phenomenal. There is some dodgy 3D work at times, but for the most part this is film-caliber stuff. Characters make pronounced and full movements, the camera isn’t afraid to move around, and the world is convincingly alive and breathing. Mobile suit battles aren’t simple exchanges of beam spam. This is a show in which 30 seconds are spent on a Zaku making a suicide run at an enemy suit while the various pieces of its frame slowly come apart due to being nearly destroyed moments earlier. This is a show in which fights have actual choreography. Suits move around, dodge, and fire with intention. Nothing looks stiff. Background music that fits like a glove doesn’t really hurt things, either.

The character designs are a breath of fresh air. Yasuhiko Yoshikazu is one of my most favourite artists of all time, and seeing his designs come to life by way of anime designer Takahashi Kumiko fills me wholly with joy. Specifically the girls. Maybe I just like poofy hair or something, but these girls are hot. Well, Gundam girls always have been, but in a time when anime has more or less perfected the art of making girls look really cute, the girls in Unicorn shine bright. There’s this scene where one of the main girls, Audrey, eats a hotdog. She blushes at the end. It’s pretty moe.

Well, that ended on a perverted note! Anyway, all I’m saying is that Gundam Unicorn is what a lot of us have been waiting for. If further episodes can somehow find a way to top this one, we’ll be looking at the greatest Gundam show ever made.

Yesterday I got this Kannagi DVD that for some reason came with some random Mobile Suit Gundam stickers. Lord knows for how long these have been sitting around the Bandai offices!

Here’s a sexy picture of Hachikuji by tooo.

Happy New Year!

Now to make a post that’ll get no comments at all. Thank God for that, huh!

There’s a new Nadesico pachinker game that opened up in Akiba, and as such there’s been something of a Nadesico advertising blitz going around. Last time I was there with Nocturnesb there was a giant trunk driving around with Yurika’s and Ruri’s faces plastered on it, and today there was a cute woman outside of the station dressed as a Nerval employee handing out… what I assume is a fan.

Then, while looking for the Saki taco truck (it wasn’t there, guess it only appears on weekends) I ran into a guy handing out Nadesico tissues. A Nadesico DOUBLE DOSE. Man, I am sure getting to burning.

In my attempt to not spend any money at all with Comic Market approaching, I ended up buying things. Cheap things that I wouldn’t find this cheap ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD, but still. I need  my doujinshi. I haven’t even paid for a Summer Wars ticket, yet!

These deals were too good to pass up, though.

(more…)

Since nothing really exciting happened here except for the performance, I’ll spare you guys the wannabe Gonzo journalism this time.

Going off of a tip from kransom, as well as a series of amusing youtube videos, I decided to pop down to Yokohama’s Chinatown yesterday to see a Gundam Kodan performance. That is, scenes from Gundam told in the Kodan style. I’m not sure how many Japanese people I’d offend by saying this was my first time watching a Kodan performance, but it was.

The venue was pretty small. The stage was a modest size, and the seating area (composed entirely of normal chairs, so they weren’t fastened down) was enough for about 20 to 30 people. Thusly, in retrospect the whole thing felt not dissimilar to a school play, but I’m under the impression that most nerd events in Japan are like this, especially ones like this that only weird people would care about. I must be especially weird, since I was the only foreigner in that small–but fairly packed–room to go see some crazy guy perform scenes from Gundam dressed in a kimono.

I got there a little late, but the performance hadn’t properly started yet. Minamihankyu, the man of the hour, was on stage with two girls dressed in Zeon outfits (in fact, all the staff were dressed like either Federation or Zeon soliders) and they were going on about something or other. A variety of Gundam theme songs, as well as First Gundam BGM were coming through the sound system to set the mood.

Once the clock struck 15:15, a woman came on as a warm up act told what I assumed was a chapter from the Tale of Genji. I’m just assuming because I couldn’t understand anything she was saying at all beyond “Genji.” Once that was over the man himself, Minamihankyu, took the stage clad in a green kimono with Zeon emblems all over it.

He opened with a short introduction about kodan, how he got into it, and more importantly how he got into Gundam. He made note that was 33, and Gundam this year is 30, so when the original aired he was just a 3-year-old boy. He went on to say that at one point in his life (I couldn’t tell when) he watched all of the original Gundam movies in one sitting, without sleeping or eating. Because he’s awesome. After about 15 minutes of that, he went into his performance.

This first thing he decided to do was most of episode 1 from the original series. Everyone laughed when all the famous lines came out, and people really went nuts when he started humming the appropriate BGM for the scenes he was doing. The most amusing parts were probably when he’d take on the role of one of the robots, and do something like the stealthy infiltration of Side 7, or one of the battle scenes. The battle scenes were especially hilarious because it’d just turn into him running around the stage making lots of noises.

Once our man had finished his attack on Side 7, there was a short intermission, followed by a guest interview segment. Three people were on–a game developer who seemed to have worked on Gundam MS SenSen 0079, a female Gundam doujin artist whose specialty was making cutout artwork of the robots, and the woman who had performed previously. I couldn’t get too much out of this since my Japanese comprehension is rather bad, but it was pretty cool to see that one artist cutout a Zaku at lightening speed. People made requests, and once she was done she’d give the final product the person who requested it, as well as one to a random person in the audience. I didn’t get one, unfortunately.

Another short intermission followed the guest segment, and the event ended with an encore by Minamihankyu. He concluded by reenacting the events after the Side 7 infiltration, meaning he got to say the famous “mistakes of one’s youth” line, as well as run around the stage as Char Aznable’s Zaku, this time dressed in an appropriately red Kimono, once again emblazoned with the Zeon emblem.

All said, it was great. I feel I got my money’s worth (2800 yen), but I still kind of wish there was more of him and less of other things. It was mostly worth the three hour round trip to Yokohama, but only because I got to sleep on the train.

Original Post

Even though I’ve always made a point of doing a Christmas-themed comic every year, I don’t believe I’ve ever done one to bring in the new year. Well, there’s a first time for everything. I was going to do another new years comic along with this one featuring the main characters, but it’s far too late now, and that script kind of sucked anyways. I really like the art here, and I also think the jokes are pretty good. There should be a gag for everyone, even for those poor souls who sat through all of Dragonaut -The Resonance-… like me.

In other site news, I’ve been doing a 2008 anime retrospective on the blog. It’s about three posts in, and I reckon I have another five to go. If the planets align properly, then I’ll have another post out tonight. Look out for it!

It is at this point that I would talk about C75, but I feel like a dick talking about doujinshi I’m stealing. If I manage to swing C76 then I’ll do a proper rundown. Lots of Tora Dora! this time around, though. Where’s the Strike Witches and Kojika love? At least we’re finally getting some decent Nagi books. Sanzenin Nagi, that is. Not the slut from Kannagi.

Since we’re between seasons (actually, the winter season is just starting up, but whatever) I’ll talk about video games instead of anime. The only game I’ve really been playing is Gundam Musou (or Dynasty Warriors: Gundam.) The gameplay is still very lazy, but it manages to be lots of fun regardless. What really makes the game shine is its writing. I’ve said this before, but I love the idea of all the characters from the different Gundam universes coming together into one epic adventure. It’s not as well written as, say, Giant Robo–but the exchanges between the characters are great. The game has also piqued my interest in some Gundam shows I haven’t yet gotten around to seeing. I know people get on its case, but after playing Judau’s Official route, and working through Puru’s Original route really makes me want to see ZZ Gundam. How can you go wrong with Purupurupuru?

Anyway, that’s all for this week. My backlog has gotten less epic in the last week, but it’s still somewhat intimidating. I’m going to try to make a pretty big dent in it later on today. Until next time!

Those with a keen eye on the ever flowing stream of pirated anime may notice that a curious torrent has appeared. It is a most sadistic little collection of files, containing the first thirty-nine episodes of the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam series. Where are the last four episodes, you ask? They’re sitting on my harddrive, as R2 DVD rips. I am perfectly content with watching these last four episodes raw, and then sharing them as AVIs, but it sure would be neat to see them translated!

So, I am putting out a call for translators– if you like Gundam and know Japanese, please help me in putting out these last few episodes. It’d make you a super-cool person.

edit: Seiya has just brought some anonymous fansubs to my attention. I think I’ll just torrent them and be done with it!

HERE IS ALL OF FIRST GUNDAM

maybe I’ll finish it this week, finally.

This is an issue of Megami Creators, also acquired from when I raided Seiya’s house. This issue features the work of Shaa–you know, the Nogizaka Haruka artist—and on the cover it reads “Shaa ga kuru.” Those in know will recognize that this is also the name of Char Aznable’s theme song. しゃあ and シャアsound exactly the same, just in hiragana it’s the Nogizaka Haruka artist, and in katakana it refers to The Red Comet.

Man, my Japanese professor sure would be proud!

Original Post

No rant today because I’m on break, but here are some quick notes.

• Kurogane no Linebarrels is actually enjoyable now
• So is To Aru Majutsu no Index
• Been making a fool of myself on mixi
• Gundam Musou is still mindless fun

That’s all. Going to catch up on anime today, and try my hand at Perfect Cherry Blossom.

I don’t possess anywhere near the amount of animation expertise as some people. I can’t pick out individual animators, nor am I well versed in animation directors. However, I do know art, and I do know what I like, so let’s see if I can say something semi-intelligent about animation.

A couple of nights ago I was looking through my Gundam folder for a picture. This picture was a series of six weird looking frames from the notorious 15th of episode of First Gundam– Cucuruz Doan’s Island. While looking for this picture, I came across a bunch of other great stills from the TV series, and it reminded me of how much I just loved the animation in the original Gundam series.

Let’s be honest– the original Gundam TV series had some pretty clunky looking animation. That said, while the animation was really clunky, and at times downright ugly– the movement of characters and mecha was always filled with personality. Thankfully the movie cuts knock out of most of the ugly, and keep the personality.

What do I mean by personality, though? I mean the animation is filled with life. It isn’t sterilized and cleaned up. It’s raw. When the mecha move, even in the nicer looking episodes of the series, they don’t always conform to their models, nor do they act as real machines would. They bend in weird ways and move in a cartoonish manner. Let me dig out a picture to illustrate my point.

Take a look at this picture. The first thing I want you to notice is the Gundam Hammer– it’s not a perfect circle. In fact, it’s actually very much an oval. This frame is just one in a series of frames drawn to depict the movement of the Hammer hitting the Zaku. But why isn’t the Hammer perfectly round? When the Hammer is stretched out like that, it works as sort of a motion blur– it helps the motion seem faster and stronger. Also, notice how bent up the Zaku is. I doubt metal really bends like that, but when drawn in such a way, that Zaku looks pretty fucked up. I suspect it explodes in the next couple of frames. This is what I love about the animation in Gundam– it’s really kinetic. It sacrifices detail for movement, and as a result things tend to flow in a very visually pleasing way.

One thing I noticed about the original Gundam series is how there’s a lot of western influence. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s designs are very much Japanese, but his contoured, free-flowing lines remind me more of western character designs. The animation itself is also really free flowing and cartoony, free of a lot of obsessive attention to making things move totally realistically. One of my favourite scenes (animation wise) in Gundam isn’t even mecha or character related at all. It’s when the Zeon are landing in Jabro. When they land, you see a snake sleeping on a tree. Once a Zaku or whatever lands right near the snake, the snake’s eyes pop out and I believe its stripes do, too. After that it comes back together and probably falls down. I love this scene.

Sadly, this approach to animation has died in Gundam, and in most Sunrise mecha shows in general. When you watch something like Gundam SEED, Code Geass, or even Gundam 00, the animation is very sterile. There’s no personality in any of the movement, and it’s all very calculated. I understand the mainstream prefers this, but I find it kind of boring.

However, the cartoony, kinetic movement of old Gundam and the like is still alive today. Just look at Gurren Lagann and its various violations of laws of reality. Hell, even look at Clannad. KyoAni, known for their very clean animation that adheres strictly to character sheets gets pretty crazy at times, and by “at times” I mean “whenever Kyou beats the shit out of Sunohara.”

Oh man, last night at MIT they were giving away free shit. Considering I’m dangerously poor, I jump at any opportunity for free stuff, and boy did I jump!

Well, I guess I only jumped a little. I had to carry this all home by hand, you know! Anyways, we got some VHS tapes here, and the quality of the programming ranges from good, to bad, to ugly.

• The Good- Tenchi Muyo In Love, Urusei Yatsura Beautiful Dreamer: I actually own all of the Tenchi films on DVD, I just picked up this old release because my buddies and I watched this movie on VHS a long while back. This is the Japanese subbed version, though. We watched the dub. Since that’s all Potomac Video had. I haven’t seen anything Urusei Yatsura at all, but I hear this movie is pretty good. It’s directed by Oshii, so I guess it has no choice but to be good.
• The Bad- Dangaioh: A friend of mine loves Dangaioh as corny 80s fluff, which is reason enough for me to pick this up. It’s only Part I, so I have to find the rest some place. Also, I feel it should be noted that Dangaioh’s opening is so amazing that it produced a video even more epic than the one of the black guy singing Ai wo Torimodose.
• The Ugly- Dog Soldier: This is AWO approved horrible anime. While I was talking about this, other great titles like MD Geist and Crystal Triangle where brought up. Apparently one guy there owned Crystal Triangle on LD. Crazy.

I also got a page out of a Gundam calendar. It’s all bent up and stuff but I can still probably find a place for it on my wall. There’s always room for Master Asia.

It’s that time of year again! Time to purchase giant books of poster-sized illustrations that are passed off as calendars simply because they have some numbers running down the side! Seriously, who actually uses these as calendars? I know I don’t! But yeah, preorders are going up, so it’s time to buy. In past years I’ve usually ended up with three to four of these hanging on my wall during the year, but this year I’m keeping it simple. I’m getting just one calendar. Reason for this is because I want to save money for, uh, something, so I’m trying to be as thrifty as possible. However, despite my best efforts, I only managed to narrow the selection down to four!

• First up is the annual Evangelion calendar. I got the 2007 Evangelion calendar which was pretty good. The art was trying so hard to look like Sadamoto, but wasn’t quite there. The guy gave it the good ol’ college try, though. The main thing that put me off about this one was its total lack of Misato anywhere! Shinji and Kaworu get a gay gay gayed up page and Misato gets nothing? What gives, mang?! Anyways, when I was about to get the 2008 one last year, it was sold out. I didn’t get too pissed since I figured it lacked Misato as well. Then the scans came in! I’ve already had an Evangelion calender once before, but the idea of potential Misato material and art from the new movies is enticing…
• Second up to bat is the usual Gundam option. Truth be told, the only Gundam calendars I’ve bought have been of Seed Destiny (yes, I admitted it, laugh) and just general Gundam. Since I’ve already had two Gundam calendars in the past, I’ll probably steer clear of this one. I do want the resulting scans, though!
• Gurren Lagann is up third, fighting the power as always. I have the 2008 GL calendar sitting next to me right now, and it’s pretty cool. But you know, while I appreciate them collecting all the great eyecatches together in one package, I really wanted more original art out of a GL calendar. From the looks of it, this one seems kind of different– more like a “traditional” anime calendar (but still pretty small from the description.) I’m not sure if I actually want this– I may just hold out for the scans.
• And last but not least are everyone’s favourite trio of Absolutely Lovely Children! This is the one I’ll probably end up buying, since there won’t be a Zettai Karen Children calendar next year, and the show itself is pretty alright. I’m not as mad over it as I am for Hayate (which is the current big boy calendar I have hanging up) but this calendar has potential to be filled with lots of yummy art of our cute little preteen espers.

I’ll think about this over the next couple of days, but I’m really leaning towards the psychic kids. You guys should probably buy one of these things, too. Like, buy them through clicking these links. Doing so might give me money! ( ‘3′)

It’s been a while since I’ve played a video game, and it’s been an even longer while since I’ve actually played one that I own. My younger brother promised me Gundam Musou (or Dynasty Warriors Gundam) for my birthday, and all of two months later, a copy of the game randomly appeared in my room. Not having much time to play it during work, I only just popped it in recently to give it a spin before heading back to Boston.

When it comes to video games, I’m very much “I don’t know art, but I know what I like” and I certainly like Gundam Musou, but more experienced reviewers would probably tear it limb from limb. It’s a fun, easy to play game that pits all of the famous Gundam heroes together in one epic adventure. Kind of like how they took all of Yokoyama Mitsuteru’s characters and threw them together in one story for Giant Robo. Yeah, it’s like that, and it’s awesome.

I’ve never played a Dynasty Warriors game in my life, but given the English title, I can only assume that this game is Dynasty Warriors, just with giant robots. The gameplay is serviceable, but it kind of sucks that projectile weapons are more or less useless. The beam canon is one of the most used weapons in the Gundam TV shows, but in this game it’s difficult to aim, and when it does hit, the damage done is minimal. As such, you mainly have to rely on melee attacks, combos and special attacks. It’s not really true to Gundam style, but it’s still a lot fun. I did my first playthrough with Domon anyways, so it wasn’t that out of character.

The story is, like I mentioned earlier, one that involves all of the main Gundam heroes from I guess… 1979 to 2000? I haven’t seen any Seed guys yet, but maybe they’ll show up later. I’ve only played through original mode on Domon, so I probably don’t have the whole story, but right now it seems pretty thinly defined, and only an excuse to go around chopping things up. And that’s totally fine. There’s only so much story you can cram in through mission briefings and in-mission dialogue, so that fact that they even have some background to go with all this fighting is impressive enough for me.

Besides, the story isn’t the important part– the characters are! The character interaction in this game is a Gundam fan’s wet dream– seeing all the characters from various Gundam shows coming together and exchanging snarky comments during battle is just too funny. I love it! And hey, the inclusion of Puru actually makes me wanna watch ZZ now! She’s too cute~

Anyways, I’m having a blast. Gundam Musou may just be the game to get me back into gaming… provided other people supply me with the games. I’m spending enough money as it is!

Despair

Hope

Slightly more affordable Hope