30th Gundam Perfect Mission: If You Are A Gundam Fan Then You Absolutely Have To Watch This

My life is now complete. I can die happy now.

Oh wait, there’s Unicorn and 00 next year. Dammit!

Update: The old video got taken down so I used a new one instead. Video quality is less but the Andrew W. K. song makes up for it.

Hodgepodge

This is actually a series of mini-posts that I decided to just group together. With 100% more link-love.

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.

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.

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.

Why the Gundam Unicorn Anime Needs To Be Movie/OVA

The official Unicorn anime announcement has been kind enough not to include the format for the show, and now we have legions of Gundam fans speculating on it. My guess is a theatrical release, but the OVA format could also work.

But not a TV show.

The main problem is the mechanical design of Unicorn itself. Just looking at the box art of the MG Unicorn tells you that the mech looks ungodly busy. The detail is magnificent, and the transformation from Normal to Destroy Mode is seamless. I doubt if Bandai could even model it for HGUC. This will bode badly in anime regardless of format, where a mech will have to be redesigned for actual animation. It’s hard to imagine getting enough time, money and skill to animate Unicorn consistently, as its design stands, for a 50-episode TV series. They’ll have to trim down on the detail to make it work, and Unicorn ain’t Unicorn without the assloads of panels. Of course, even a movie/OVA Unicorn will suffer some design simplifications, but it will look better due to more budget and less time pressure.

Aside from that, no Gundam TV anime since Wing has soundly burst into popularity without vast helpings of bishounen. Unicorn character designs, assuming the animation staff makes a more-or-less faithful adaptation of them, won’t exactly make fujoshi swoon over. Also, there’s only one Gundam, and it doesn’t even start looking like one until Destroy Mode activates. I could hear the kids going “Where’s the Gundam with the big gun? Where’s the cool weapons? Baddies standing still waiting to be shot down? Boooring.” Let’s face it: the UC school of Gundam will not sell in TV format anymore, unless it gets a makeover.

I could be too hard on the show when it’s not even out for a year, but that’s because I have high expectations for it. Maybe this will be the Gundam show that would bring in old and new fans together without going down the same path that Wing, SEED and 00 did. Being tightly connected to chronologically previous Gundam shows, Unicorn would hopefully answer a lot of questions left hanging after CCA (or retcon more stuff, for better and for worse), as well as bridge the distance from post-CCA UC (F91 and Victory). So good luck, Sunrise.

Back

I wanted to spend my money on plamo, and having bought a local model kit magazine (pictured above), I resolved to track hobby shops down for it.

And then I stopped by a bookstore with a stock of Gundam manga I won’t find in godforsaken Philippines.

Oh, fuck plamo.

I ended up spending the rest of my money for the first four volumes of Ecole du Ciel, and had to abandon plans for purchasing Lost War Chronicles. I hope Noel Anderson doesn’t fault me for making Asuna mai waifu.

Anyways, I also bought two Cantonese manga on a whim, at a third of the price of the Tokyopop ones, which cost about 100 HKD. I got the one with the girl on the cover out of curiosity, and the other because it was Giant Robo. The former turned out to be Kieli, and related research has increased my like for it. The Giant Robo manga had lots of Zangetsu.

The Taiko no Tatsujin cellphone strap I got from Ocean Park. So cute <3

Expect an AGP ‘09 aftermath post soon. I don’t think I’ll be able to do round-by-round writeups anymore because of the work involved.

In Conclusion: Gundam 00

The final fight of Gundam 00 is symbolic for a number of reasons. It may be interpreted as a clash between the new school of Gundam (modern AUs like SEED and 00), and the old school (UC). But the nice tidbit that I noticed here is that Setsuna is actually fighting his god, the 0 Gundam that which had set his life down the path of a Gundam Meister.

Indeed, the story comes full circle from the battle-scarred boy looking up at the angelic Gundam, to the now grown-up man stabbing his former god through the cockpit. Could Ribbons have foreseen this? Kill all witnesses, his orders were, but he spared the dumbfounded boy who seemed to have witnessed a religious epiphany, because Ribbons liked the feeling of being revered. Ironically, a very human act.

In Aeolia’s original plan (i.e. the plan that would’ve been executed without Corner’s interference), Setsuna was intended to be used as a pawn, destined to be swallowed up by the beast of the world which he was to stir up. He survived, yes, but how does an abandoned pawn find the will to live? In coming up with a new goal in life, that is. Setsuna could have swallowed it up and find a more peaceful way of living, but he refused to stay down. (This is the part of him which I like the most, his sheer stubbornness, his willingness to clean up the mess he had started.) And down the long, battle-heavy road, Setsuna strikes the 0 Gundam down, and is reborn anew–in killing his old god, he affirms his power to carve his own way to the future.

Gundam 00 may have its bad points, but I choose to find a positive meaning out of it.

Gundam X: Hidden Wonder

Gundam X is a very maligned show. It was cut short by 10 episodes and was a commercial failure. But it achieves something that its direct predecessor Gundam Wing failed at, which is telling a damn good story. Gundam X may not have done well as a Gundam show, but it was a great anime.