The Lost Canvas Is My Gateway To Saint Seiya

A few years back, Saint Seiya ran for a good amount of time here. I used to catch it on the bus to school due to its weekday morning timeslot, but wasn’t very interested in it. Reading a bit on the show, however, tells me that it’s quite good, to the point that its filler arcs are on par with the manga arcs. For a shounen anime, this is amazing.

Just recently, I tried out the first two episodes of the spinoff OVA, The Lost Canvas. I know jack about Saint Seiya (even mistaking The Lost Canvas as a continuity reboot until good man Shiro corrected me), but I liked what I saw.

Now, you maybe asking, what did I exactly see?

Colors Make the Mech!

Chapter 4 of Gundam Sousei presents a hurdle for Tomino, which is commonly shared by creators of mecha anime–the producers hate the mech. The producer argues that a stark-white mech is too plain, and that no one would buy it. Zero potential toy sales = zero show. Yoshikazu comes up with a quick solution–one could say too quick–but a hasty job with crayons shows how much different a mech can look like to the eyes of someone who’s shelving money for a 40-odd episode toy commercial. And hey, it’s good! Keeping most of the white in prevents the RX-78-2 from looking like a gaudy super robot, while the blue-red-yellow torso looks easy on the eyes and breathes character into the mech.

In the first place, it’s plain that Tomino didn’t intend to put the white-blue-red colors on the RX-78-2.

The End of K-On

I’m surprised how I liked the final episode so much, considering that it was fairly uneventful. A lot of it has to do with how the girls live their personal lives through the winter, which shows some insights on their character.

I’m glad that the show reminds us that these are girls after all–Ritsu’s plot thread was by far the most interesting, even if I saw it coming from a mile away. I just wonder why she doesn’t ditch the headband for good… The others were just lol in the sense that the show tried too hard, and failed at it (like episode 11).

Overall, I think of K-On as a decent show. I had fun watching it weekly, and was pretty low-maintenance (meaning you wouldn’t be so pumped to get the latest sub floating around), compared to, say, Eden of the East.

Crossbone Gundam: Can You Walk 12 Kilometers On A Mountain Road In A Single Day?

Aside from the ingenious mobile suit battles in Crossbone Gundam, I noticed how Tomino tried to ground his Newtype concept by forcing Tobia Arronax, a Spacenoid, to take a simple 12-kilometer mountain hike on Earth. Can you see the catch?

It’s hard to compare the lives of an Earthnoid and a Spacenoid in a Gundam show, as it is made. Why, this is but tangential to robots blasting the shit out of each other. But Crossbone Gundam takes a breather in robot action to address this, and I am marveled by the elegance of its presentation.

A Reality Check

My anime-watching habits have changed ever since getting my second job. Of course, this is a given since I will be working during the day instead of blazing through a series, but I’ve noticed deeper changes to how I watch anime.

First, I’ve reverted to my pre-fansub watching habits. Back then, local TV stations aired anime daily, and most of them were really long shows like Lupin III, DBZ, Yu Yu Hakusho, etc. I’m not the greatest fan of these shows, but they were pretty fun to follow, and I ended up watching episodes whenever I can (read: when I wasn’t doing my homework, ohohoho). However, I couldn’t help missing a good number of episodes because of various reasons. In that case, I’d just shrug, and ask my classmates about how Lupin managed to pull off yesterday’s heist. This is where filler is awesome–they allow you to cut some slack and enjoy anime as an occasional endeavor, as opposed to tightly-written shows that absolutely cannot miss a single episode.

What I Want You To Watch: Souten Kouro

While I subscribe more to the hot-blooded type of manliness (i.e. Shin Mazinger, Sengoku Basara), I wholeheartedly approve of Souten Kouro’s angle, too.

Xiahou Dun was here, Date Masamune is a loser.

It’s a lot like LOGH. TBH, I think Souten Kouro is closer to LOGH than Tytania. We have the upstart noble, Cao Cao, who seeks to overthrow the decadent imperial dynasty by amassing both political and military power. On the other side of things, we have Liu Bei, the slacker bandit lord who seeks world conquest for… we’ll see. Cao Cao and Reinhard are extremely alike, having both lost precious women in their lives to the foibles of those more powerful than them. However, I can’t really compare Liu Bei and Yang since the only real trait they share right now is extreme laziness.

Gundam Sousei

My Gundam mentor showed me a peculiar Gundam manga, Gundam Sousei. It’s not another of those Gundam sidestories, but rather a humorous and exaggerated take on the production of First Gundam. Oh, and did I mention that Tomino is the main character? Not the Tomino that you and I know, but SUPER AWESOME COOL TOMINO.

Crossbone Gundam Scanlation Complete!

I’ve all but forgotten about Zeonic Corps’ scanlation work on Crossbone Gundam, having read their release of Volume 1 a year back. So imagine to my surprise when I saw a batch torrent floating around in the usual places.

It took them more than 4 years to finish this project, 4 years of being laughed at by /m/ for being Slowking. Really a thankless job, and my overwhelming gratitude for ZC won’t be enough compensation for the countless jeers thrown at Deacon and his staff.

To the uninitiated, Crossbone Gundam is a manga written by Tomino during the mid-90’s, illustrated by Yuichi Hasegawa. It has space pirates (manning a spaceship that has BEAM SAILS), and pirate-motif Gundams with cool tech, like anti-beam cloaks. It’s set in the Universal Century and takes place after F91, with Seabook, Cecily and Zabine as recurring characters.

Well, it’s time for me to read my copy now.

First Love, Eureka Seven

(Massive spoilers for Eureka Seven)

I virtually grew up on anime. Voltes V was a cultural phenomenon here in the Philippines, and it still appears on TV every now and then. My main course of anime in my elementary school years was composed of World Masterpiece Theater shows (Tom Sawyer, Cedie, Princess Sara, A Dog of Flanders, Romeo, etc). There also was the occasional Sailor Moon on Saturdays, which I’m still afraid to admit to have watched IRL. As I grew older, I saw four Gundam shows, a Witch Hunter Robin here, DBZ, and Cowboy Bebop, which I thought was a darn good cartoon but never really grabbed me by the balls. Perhaps a rewatch is in order.

I didn’t watch fansubbed anime until 2006, when I was finishing my 1st year at uni and having just acquired my laptop. Enthusiastic to fill it with something substantial other than boring schoolwork, I turned to my blockmates–then my senpai of anime–for anime to abuse our uni’s bandwidth for.

Then there was my soft-spoken friend, who gave a shrug and casually said, “Eureka Seven.”

That was how I got acquainted with the anime that changed my life, just the title. And it was more than enough to get myself a few episodes of it.

HK Subs Are Better Than Nothing

I’m fond of watching obscure mecha shows. Being obscure, there are a complete lack of subs for many of them, while some are being subbed by a loosely-knit group of /m/en (a labor of love for the most part, considering that their audience is almost completely composed of fuckwads). I want to watch this show, but a quick-and-dirty search yields nothing.

Do I give up? No, for there is one last resort: HK subs. Badly-encoded, minimal typesetting, erroneous karaoke, and very very lol translation, HK subs make even “mass naked child events” look nothing. They can’t even get the names right. But that’s what I have a brain for.

Because compared to no subs, lol subs are better.