Hmmmmmmmmmm this makes me want to check out IBO now. I can’t exactly say why but it never really interested me before.
Coinciding with this is I’m watching Gundam X for the first time right now and 15 eps in it’s not doing much for me. I like the premise and there have been a few good episodes recently but the first 10 were kinda boring and even the good ones are mostly just okay.
Actually I just looked up the series and remember exactly why I wasn’t interested: haven’t been a fan of anything the director or writer have done.
We finished Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans this weekend and holy shit was it simultaneously a huge fucking downer but also pretty dang satisfying! It actually has some queer characters (although don’t get attached to them, if you take my meaning), which was a surprise! It’s a good show, and it was kind of nice to watch a Gundam show that didn’t fall into all the same boring tropes that so many of the other Gundam shows do, like whole episodes of 14 year olds talking about the philosophy of fighting each other in mobile suits. It’s also refreshing to have a protagonist lad who is an unapologetic killing machine? In these times? Especially when fighting against systemic oppression.
I was really excited to see a new season of Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary has dropped! I loved the first season, and I was initially worried that knowing the whole hook of the series (which I’m not even going to refer to obliquely because finding out was so enjoyable for me I wouldn’t dream of ruining it for anybody) would lesson the impact of season two, but I think if anything it makes it more enjoyable, for me anyway.
We also started watching Wind Breakers, which is surprisingly fantastic. Like isekai shows, tough guy brawler shows are so done for me that it’s hard for me to bite and want to watch more than one or two shows before giving up at their general stupidity, but Wind Breakers kinda beats that assumption. It’s got compelling characters, lots of varieties of lovable dumbass, and (because I’m superficial) very nice looking animation. It’s a high school where all the tough guys congregate; do they have classes or teachers? Because it sure seems like not! It sounds dumb, and it pretty much is dumb, at least so far, but it’s the right kind of dumb (again: at least so far)!
I started but didn’t continue Sakamoto Days because I’m not sure it’s interesting or well animated enough to outweigh the sheer number of fat jokes per second of the first several episodes.
first ep of Gundam GQuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuux is out! I saw the movie so I’ve already seen it, apparently the movie is the first 2 eps and an exclusive ep 0 thing, and I really recommend everyone check it out! It has the old school Gainax energy that you’d expect from the people who are making it.
It’s streaming exclusively on Amazon so I of course recommend finding another way to watch it that isn’t giving them money ;)
was just thinking about jumping into a showing of GQuX, can I do so without having seen any other gundam stuff? will it be a good time?
You may be a little like, “wait what? why do I care about this? why are we lingering on this?” but I doubt to an absolutely insane degree
The whole series is basically an alternate timeline future to do with events from the original show going very, VERY differently–but based on the movie at least you’ll be fine if you’re able to just roll with it
It’s gotta be Rhythm Emotion
Rhythm Emotion 100%. Love them beeps.
Is Gundam Wing a good series to start with?
The intros and choruses in both are great but the verse for Rhythm Emotion falls off pretty hard, Just Communication wins for sure for me
For Gundam as a whole? I’d say no…not that I don’t love Gundam Wing but the original, OG Mobile Suit Gundam show not only holds up but is one of the goats
I promise I’m not yanking your chain or being a lame old completionist or anything when I say that the original is the best first Gundam not just because it is THE first Gundam but also because it’s genuinely incredibly good
Works for me, makes the idea much simpler anyway. Thanks!
The best time to watch Gundam Wing as your first Gundam show is very specifically: in the 90s when you’re a kid and will probably think that the Deathscythe is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen.
As that’s not really possible anymore I wholeheartedly endorse @GameBeginnerGirl’s suggestion of just watching the original series first. First off, it’s excellent. Secondly after you watch that you can jump into almost any other Gundam show you want and understand the touchstones that most of them have with the original show and the types of characters/themes it introduces. You can jump into any of the alternate universe shows like Wing and it’ll be real cool. Or you can keep watching UC shows!
It’s so true like, the OG Gundam is not only one of the Rosetta Stones for all other Gundam shows, but also for anime and Japanese Pop Culture in general. I would argue that the cultural impact, even to like normie grandmas in Japan, of Gundam was on the level of Star Wars here in the States.
Like a fun thing to always noodle on is that Anno is probably–no joke–humanity’s biggest Gundam fanboy, so every UC Gundam show (and Tomino’s whole ouvre) is a very rich text through which to examine the career of another one of Japanese pop culture’s biggest movers
Mobile Suit Gundam, the original, is the alpha and the omega
Anno wrote an essay in the first volume of the Gundam The Origin manga that basically confirmed he might be the biggest Gundam nerd on the planet lol, it’s great.
It’s also very fun (to me) to play ‘spot Char’ in any Gundam after the original. There will always be one! Or at least there’s been at least one in every Gundam I’ve consumed! Iron Blooded Orphans has three, by my count!
Also RE: Gundam Wing, it was my first Gundam, even though I knew of the series in general long before that. It was just the first one I had access to. I always think of rewatching it because I found the dub in the original to be pretty goofy and I have no idea if being almost comically melodramatic was the original intention or if it was partly due to the dub.
The Anno/Tomino/Oshii/other big anime creators interview for Char’s Counterattack is a very interesting read. Two different translations below. They also shit talk Miyazaki for a good chunk lmao.
The best part is this exchange between Anno and Tomino. Might be the downplay of the century.
You read my mind @goatmyboat – what Anno says in that interview about Miyazaki is one of the things I really click with in Tomino’s stuff (and Anno’s, by extension)–they feel deeply personal but they’re not coy or subtle. They unabashedly exist without pretense and that absolutely rocks
Tomino goes a little off the rails wrt women in L-Gaim and Victory but apart from that the man is exactly what you see on the tin in all the best ways
I still haven’t seen Victory because of all the weird shit I’ve heard about it.
