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

As some of you may remember, I was in Japan almost exactly one year ago! And you know what? I bought a ton of books over there! I’ve been meaning to review them for a good long while, but I never actually found the time or drive to sit down and write some real reviews. However, that all changes today with a Mistakes of Youth Exclusive review of the realer than real Gundam artbook, MS Era 0099– Mobile Suit Gundam 0001-0080.

Ever since the original Gundam aired back in 1979, its realistic approach to the horrors and nature of war caught the eyes of viewers who were far more mature than the show’s intended target audience. While the original Gundam TV series, and to some extent the subsequent compilation films, are candy-coloured cartoons meant to sell toys to little kids, fans were fascinated by their realism despite these outward appearances. Before Gundam came out, there was nothing in the way of “real” robot shows, so the idea of a robot being used as a military weapon was a completely new one, even if the robot was hilariously toyetic.

Over the years, a bunch of UC-centric Gundam media has pushed the real world angle hard where the original TV show did not. One such bit of media, which drives this idea home 110%, is MS Era 0099.

Considering this book came out in the 1990s, I can only assume that it was an idea thought up by guys who were taken in by Gundam during their high school years. This isn’t an easy-to-compile collection of artwork by hands who worked the original show. This is a book filled with images drawn especially for it. It is a love letter to UC Gundam if ever there was one.

0099 is a mock photo album, covering the supposed events of the One Year War. It’s a hardbound number, and it’s meant to evoke complete and total seriousness. As if it was a real book you could pick up if you lived in the Universal Century. Contained within are roughly 100 “photos” taken during the One Year War, matched with English captions and a running timeline–also in English–of the events between the first year of the Universal Century and the end of the One Year War, 0080. There is also an introduction to the book, which contextualizes it within the Gundam universe, along with brief biographies of the “photographers” at the back.

These illustrations aren’t meant to be flashy DVD cover material. Their compositions are very subdued, and at times mundane, with the intention of feeling like a real photo album. Drawings oftentimes err on the side of complete realism, while colours are deep, dark, and at times quite de-saturated. The illustrations are done on cels, giving them some honest texture in addition to a noise filter that seems to grace most–if not all–of the images in this book. In fact, a lot of filtering is used to add a degree of realism to these drawings, and strangely enough it doesn’t look contrived at all. Motion blurs, lens flares, monitor scan lines, along with sepia and monochrome toning give these illustrations lots of character, lending themselves more to this idea of realism.

The subject matter ranges between very powerful depictions of war-time acts, and quieter subjects that flesh out the UC world. Images of foot-soldiers attacking Zakus, GMs sniping in the forest, and mobile suits launching are amongst the more exciting images in the book. Depictions of astronauts working on the first space colonies, tests of prototype mobile suits, Zakus as they come off the assembly line, and a portrait of Dr. Minovsky make up a portion of the book that attempts to bring some degree of believability to the science and technology in Gundam.

The book is also filled with portraits of random people, adding the human element needed in any realistic depiction of war. Friends and relatives mourning over the death of a soldier, people left homeless after an attack on their city, and kids playing on the wreckage of mobile suits paint a rich image of civilian life, which is barely touched upon in any anime adaptation of Gundam. On the military side, we’re treated to soldiers playing cards, taking sips of coffee in the snow, and lighting up smokes.

Certain other illustrations in this book look like they could have been taken from newspapers, like a black and while photo of Gihren Zabi in a Hitler-esque pose during his famous speech after Garma’s death, or another black and white shot of General Revil returning to the Federation after being held captive.

Yes, there are some cameos of actual Gundam characters throughout this book, but since its focus is more around what the series never showed you, their presence is tastefully restrained. There are about two pictures of Char in this book, and in each one his face is only partly visible. Another illustration depicts a harbor in Ireland, where one can only just make out the top of the White Base poking out from behind a wall.

Every single illustration in this book is well done. There is no instance of anything looking strange or off model. One can thank the talented group of illustrators behind these drawings, of which one is Cowboy Bebop character designer and professed Gundam otaku Kawamoto Toshihiro.

I can’t say the same for the written portion of the book, however. Honestly, reading this book is a chore. Yes, it is bilingual, with the English at the forefront (English is the language of the future, after all.) and the Japanese relegated to odd corners throughout the book. Considering this book is made for a Japanese audience, the English is purely cosmetic. However, as an English speaker, this translation is hard to get through. It’s done by a westerner, but clearly someone who obviously had no interest in Gundam, and was paid the absolute minimum to translate this. It doesn’t read like a machine translation, but it is very stilted and has a few newbie translation errors. If the translation was better, it’d be easier to get immersed into the book, but as it is, it just takes you out of the experience. I can’t say much about the Japanese, but a quick glance brings to light random mojibake on one page. In short, it’s a lot more fun to look at this book than to read it, and maybe glance at the captions every now and again. That said, it should probably be read through at least once.

MS Era 0099 is one of the quirkier things I’ve seen come out of the Gundam merchandise machine. Despite some stupid technical issues, it truly is a lavish love letter to the UC universe, and I recommend it to any serious Gundam fan. As far as buying it goes, Google brings up a couple of sites that sell it. Don’t go for Amazon–it’s way too overpriced. Getting it second-hand at BeNippon is probably you best bet. This book originally retailed for 3500 yen, and I probably got it for around 1800 at Mandarake. It was a little beat up, but if anything that just adds more character to a book that’s already brimming with it.

Further Images

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 he 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.