3·
3 months ago“Fun” is not a word that comes to my mind when thinking about IBO lol. Intense, gut-wrenching, gripping, cathartic… yeah that sounds more accurate. Either way, seconding the recommend.
- 0 Posts
- 52 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: March 8th, 2024
You are not logged in. If you use a Fediverse account that is able to follow users, you can follow this user.
If Hollywood buys out much of the anime industry
Sony has quite a head start on this already, Hollywood be slackin.
Going right from Zeta Gundam to the sequel (ZZ/Double Zeta) breaks my brain, even though I know it’s coming. Zeta is played very straight and gets grim towards the end. The tone of ZZ eventually evens out a bit but those first dozen or so episodes of Ragtag Band Of War Orphans Clowning On Every Adult is like a mallet to the nads.
Yazan should not be comic relief. 😤
Echoing others’ thoughts that it very much depends on what the person enjoys in general. But it’s very hard to go wrong with Cowboy Bebop. If they lean towards fantasy, Record of Lodoss War. If they want a movie instead of a series, something from Miyazaki/Ghibli.
Yep, 20th anniversary, re-cut with bits of new animation and a completely different ending. The back and forth between original and new animation is jarring. I haven’t watched them since they came out but I don’t feel like they added anything noteworthy.
The OG movie trilogy is a good compromise to start with. Definitely better theming/pacing than the show, which suffered from a lot of filler and being cut short. And glad to hear you went onto the full run of Zeta, whose movies I do not endorse in any way shape or form lol.
Definitely a fan now.
Welcome! 😁
Have you ever wanted Too Much Information about watch order recommendations for Gundam?
https://ani.social/comment/8014698
tl;dr I recommend production order for Universal Century stuff. For alternate universe stuff it mostly doesn’t matter, though they do build on tropes etc from earlier shows.
It’s a big franchise. Don’t let that be intimidating. You don’t have to watch it all lol.
So, OP wants weird anime. “Anime” anime.
- Odd Taxi
- Ping Pong Club
- Excel Saga
- FLCL
- Gantz
- Otaku No Video
- Way of the Househusband
- Golden Boy
- Colorful (of note, the English dub is heavily adapted to the point where it can’t really be considered accurate. But it is faithful. The format helps. This approach doesn’t often work, but it does here.)
- Cromartie High School
- Paranoia Agent
- Nerima Daikon Brothers
- Puni Puni Poemy
- Great Teacher Onizuka
- Gundam-San
- Oruchuban Ebichu
Depending on which flavor of weird one is going for, not all of these are going to scratch that itch.
I think we got through two episodes. Not planning on picking it back up lol.
Duck walked across the keyboard.
Prospera
The picnic ending really felt tacked on. I mean, yeah, it’s great that she saw the error of her ways and was forgiven etc. Good vibes, feel-good ending, yadda yadda. That and Sunrise really REALLY hedging bets on SuleMio. They spent the whole series developing a complex same-sex relationship and then chickened out on “did they actually get married.” I’m half-remembering conflicting tweets from official sources, along with considerations taken for the time slot it was airing (they had already taken flak for the violent end of cour 1). Sigh.
The second half Gendo swerve was pretty well done, I thought. Her motivations were hidden from the beginning. We only got bits and pieces. As it was airing, there was a LOT of speculation about whether Suletta and Eri were the same person. The show specifically left dates out of most of the show, and when… sigh I’m horrible with names, begins with a B, the older researcher from the prologue lab/company (again, I’m awful with names). When she dropped the “revenge from 21 years ago” line, shit blew up. “Maybe Eri was in stasis.” “Is Suletta made of Gund prosthetics?” But Eri being either dead or in the Aerial (Eri-Lfrith) was something a lot of people didn’t want to believe. It all seems obvious in hindsight but this was a huge point of contention.
They left ALL of the breadcrumbs out in plain sight, but they left the viewer to connect the dots (or not). And every time a dot was explicitly connected, another was revealed.
I think the back half suffered from pacing and productional indecision. We needed more time to flesh out the story. Instead we got periods of drag followed by boom boom boom reveals. Prospera went from:
- obvious revenge arc
- revenge using her daughter as a pawn
- revenge using her brainwashed daughter as a disposable pawn
- uhhhh why is she working with Delling
- SHE KILLED HOW MANY CLONES FOR REVENGE?!?!?
- pawn disposed of
- she didn’t actually kill any of them, but the only way to keep them alive was to embed them in Gund
- ready for instrumentality to let her daughters live freely (and honestly, fuck all them corpo motherfuckers but that’s a lot of innocent people)
- newly self-actualized pawn saves the day with the power of love and giant robots
The outline is solid, and the first cour was nearly flawless. Then the pacing fell apart and this was one of the many victims.
Iron Blooded Orphans spoilers seriously do not click if you haven't seen it
As much as the ending of WfM felt unresolved with the status quo basically unchanged, it doesn’t hold a candle to IBO’s stomach-churning denouement. Technically, I guess it’s a “happy” ending. Things improved for some of the marginalized groups, the power structure got reformed, and the war ended. But holy fuck the price paid. And the chosen elite got to re-solidify power anyway. It all feels WRONG. But it’s a fairly accurate portrayal of how things work out IRL. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.
opinionated statements
Julia was an uninteresting character not worthy of the epilogue spotlight.
I ride with Ride.
:::
Apologies if I’m not particularly coherent. I am passionate but it is late and I’m sick.
That kit is the pinnacle of Bandai engineering… for now. They’re eventually going to top it because that’s what they do. It’s really amazing how much they’ve innovated over the years.
On one hand, it’s a very affordable hobby. $20-30 for a well made kit is an absolute steal in the modeling realm, and puts most actions figures in that price range to shame.
On the other, it’s a very expensive hobby… there’s just… so… much. If you’re someone who leans towards completionnaire’s disease, consider this your warning lol.
But it really does bring another level of appreciation and immersion to the shows. The newer kits especially let you inspect all the little details that just flash by on the screen. Gunpla is a big part of why Gundam both took off and persisted this long. It’s not required, but it adds so much.
I’m going to try and talk around spoilers, but if anyone hasn’t seen it and is interested, just watch. It’s relatively short and well worth it.
I’m going to echo just about everyone else and say the pacing bombed out in the second half. Some sub arcs seemed to drag along. As the end got closer and so many threads were still dangling, I thought for sure it was going to get another season. And deserved one, because the setting and characters were exquisitely crafted. But then everything happened all at once and we got a pretty little bow to try and hide those loose ends.
I really enjoyed Prospera as a character. And reviled her as a person while still retaining some forms of empathy. That’s a pretty big win IMO.
Agreed that they dropped the ball on the meta theming. On one hand, it’s a Gundam staple to “save the world” while not much materially changes. On the other, it’s very much relevant to the present day, and unsatisfying to leave things mostly as they were.
The mech designs were hit and miss for me. Which should not come as a surprise, since they hired different mechanical designers for each of the corpos. I really appreciate this kind of attention to detail.
Speaking of details, they are everywhere, and they build on one another. Things like using cinematography to mirror an earlier scene, then later doing the same but with a different perspective to highlight the changes in the characters. The symbolism is rampant, some obvious, some subtle. This wasn’t a Tomino story, but it builds on one of his tenets: show, don’t tell. Environmental storytelling. I have a friend that really only engages with Gundam as “second screen” material while she’s doing something else. Unsurprisingly, she’s ambivalent about most of it and actively hostile towards WfM.
Overall I loved the idea, got very immersed in the setting and characters, and was a little disappointed when the pacing fell off. Still an easy recommend.
Btw, @wjs018@ani.social was kind enough to open up !gundam@ani.social for us. And @Endmaker@ani.social volunteered to mod. So feel free to hop on over there and join us! 👊
Thank you for braving CBR so that others don’t have to. 🫡
@Endmaker@ani.social made some great points. This is one of the reasons I recommend watching in production order: to get that base of knowledge, tropes, tone, etc. before going back and getting the little bits of flavoring shows like 0080 provide.
to address your notes
Al is a kid, yes. He’s also a brat that is kind of used to doing what he wants. He’s selfish and lacks the larger perspective granted by experience. Lots of kids think they’re invincible until they learn otherwise. I don’t particularly like Al, but I do think he’s one of the more realistically portrayed children in the entire franchise. His classmates, though one-note and tropey, are up there too.
As much as Al is a naive kid, Bernie is also just a kid. Older, yes. But he still felt the need to boast to an 11-year old. He’s an immature rookie put into an impossible position, made worse by his own insecurity. He’s played like a fiddle by his own side, and torn between playing the good soldier and not wanting to endanger Al. By the time he needs to be The Savior, Al’s childish optimism had won him over. At least externally. Part of him knew it was hopeless, but he acted anyway. And managed to put up a pretty good fight all things considered.
Chris was more of a secondary character, akin to Bernie’s Cyclops teammates rather than a lead. This is a subversion of the trope of Gundam pilot = main character. She had just enough screentime to twist the knife of the tragic story arc. Would I have liked to see more? Definitely. But ultimately it’s not her story.
It’s Al’s story. Bratty, spoiled little Al. The One Year War spawned countless tragedies, great and small. This was just one of them. Compounding that, Al would be recruitment age once Zeta happens. If he had managed to recover from PTSD by then, it very well might have sent him spiraling. It’s tragedy on every level.
There are also a few meta things going on. One, this is the first (animated?) story told primarily from the Zeon side. Today, not very remarkable. But in context of the day, it was a big shift.
I’m going to try and keep this light on actual spoilers for after 0080 but it’s hard to discuss otherwise:
This is a throwaway line in the show but the Alex
Was supposed to go to Amuro. Being a retcon, obviously he didn’t get it. But had the Cyclops team not been so dogged in their pursuit, the possibility exists that it might have been delivered before the end of the war. At that point, Amuro’s skills were off the charts, and he was casually picking off Doms and Gelgoogs like they were nothing despite having outgrown the RX-78’s abilities. He even had Char dead to rights, foiled only by the Zeong’s cockpit being in the head. Take a step back and imagine what Amuro could have achieved with the Alex. Or let Kakarot197 (very spoiler, so fanfic) do it for you, if that’s your thing. Talk about changing the course of history.
And then there's the small matter of the Federation
Testing deployment of newtype machines. This is A Big Deal given later events.
Again, it all hits harder with context.
I’m not going to disagree about the soundtrack, just note that it’s relatively easy to place Gundam shows in a timeline based on the music. Usually it’s mostly the OP/ED, but 0080 embraced the aesthetic and ran with it. For a smaller story amongst grand narratives, it succeeded in changing the tone. It didn’t hold up particularly well, but as a product of its time it is what it is.
I’m glad you enjoyed it though. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on future shows!
I couldn’t finish that one. Still have the box set. But it was just too much.
Like many in the west, my first exposure was to Gundam Wing on Toonami, and while I remember thinking the character and mech designs were cool, it never really clicked for me. I never watched it from the beginning, however, so I don’t think I can fairly judge it.
Wing was also my gateway. A friend of mine got me watching on VHS during downtime at work (man I’m old), but the official releases were taking forever to come out. So I tried tracking down Toonami reruns, and the damn thing never had a consistent time slot by then lol. So things felt very disjointed. It was only on rewatch when I got the DVDs that I realized that disjointed feel was due to the plot. 😂 I still enjoy it but it’s definitely a brain-off show.
Glad you enjoyed! If the end felt like things could have been fleshed out better, it’s because they were supposed to be. The show was slated to be outright cancelled, but they negotiated to at least allow the it to end properly. The end result is about 10 eps of planned content had to be cut.
The movie versions do some massaging to work in the newtype concept earlier, as well as improve the overall pacing. A lot of series ended up getting the compilation movie treatment, but 0079 is the only one to do it right IMO. They are worth watching on their own, and Ai Senshi is a fucking banger.
The Zeta movies in particular I do not recommend as a shortcut for the series. Main reason being the ending was completely changed, which makes the start of ZZ problematic if not impossible. The cuts between 80s and 2000s animation are also jarring. If you want the overall notes, they’re there. But the series does a far better job of telling the story.
0080 and 08th Team are fine next steps. They touch on thematics brought up in Zeta a bit, but that’s all. They’re self-contained and worth watching.
The only feature film I can recommend at the moment is Cucuruz Doan’s Island. Just roll with the Origin continuity differences (Sleggar had already joined the crew on Earth, for example) and it’s basically an extended episode of 0079 with modern production. I think there’s a good chance it’s exactly what you’re looking for.
WfM is its own thing and can be enjoyed at your convenience. Hell, you can probably binge it between episodes of GQuuuuuuX if you wanted lol.
and even the soundtrack (there are a few Gundam OST cues that I wouldn’t be surprised were used as placeholders or references during Eva’s production) .
I’m almost positive I read/watched that MSG and Eva shared some sound staff, and could have sworn that Anno himself was involved somehow. But I cannot find a source, and searches are naturally putting GQX front and center thanks to the Khara connection. So grain of salt all of that, and if I come across the source (because it’s now bugging me lol) I’ll share it.
Enjoy!
…I’m honestly not sure how to answer. I mean, there were lighthearted aspects. Who names their kids Cookie, Cracker, and Biscuit? 😂😅😢 But start to finish, it was a tragedy in the classic sense.
Tap for spoiler
I ride with Ride.