Narutaki and I usually were I silly little home made badges. That is the best way of recognizing us.

We will be doing the Bloggers Roundtable on Friday and the Anime Recruitment Panel on Sunday. I forget the times. They will be posted before the con. But I always appreciate mecha so I will definitely show up at the Essential Mecha panel unless pure awesome happens to come up (aka I get a Tomino interview or the such).

BTW – Do you have a accompanying little red headed girl to be your Mineva? :)

- Hisui

Gundam 0080: Score: 7.661 (scored by 2049 users)
Gundam 0083: Score: 7.651 (scored by 2183 users)

So people thought that it was about the same level of awesome as War in the Pocket and I give a pretty good review to War in the Pocket. So I think that Stardust memories has its fans. It is just not Daryl, Narutaki, or I. But that is hardly the majority of Gundam fans in the US.

I find it amusing that I have been to three of your Gundam panels yet we have never said a word to each other. I will have to correct that the next time you have a panel. Or you can visit on of our panels. Either way is good.

- Hisui

Btw I just realized you’ve been to 3 of my Gundam panels and we still haven’t really met.

1. I was unaware so much money was sunk into Gundam 0083. It looks really nice so I suppose in retrospect that is unsurprising. Still as you implied all the money in the world can’t turn garbage into treasure.

2. I sort of liked the mechanic girl for the Federation but I think random Zeon soldiers were in it more than her. South Burning was an OK character but he totally get a punk arse send off. But yeah Kou Uraki is just so … uninteresting. Combined with the fact that Nina is so aggravating, the other pilots are horrible human beings, and all almost all the Federation commanders are just plain SUPER EVIL it makes it really hard to like the Federation. I think they wanted to show you the conditions that led up to the creation of the Titans but they could have done it in away that was like nails on a chalk board.

3. I mostly found Gato boring as a person. But considering who he was up against boring is 1000% better that utterly horrible or extremely annoying. Still his fights and suits were cool. But he is no Char. Not by a long shot. He is not even a Paptimus Scirocco or Ramba Ral.

4. Narutaki and I are still the freak jobs of mecha fandom because we hardly care about mecha design so no matter how cool or lame the mech design is it rarely makes a significant impact on us. OK some of the super silly designs on the later mobile armors in original Gundam cannot be ignored. But we mostly consider them a separate factor from our overall enjoyment. Heck I only have model kits of suits based on characters I liked. That is why I have 2 Turn A kits despite the fact that the Turn A is kind of goofy.

5. I remember Mike Dent mentioned that only the Turn A Gundam compilation movies come close to being as bad as the Last Blitz of Zeon. I would have made Narutaki sit though the compilation movie but we have to get through UC before Tomino gets here. So there is not time for unnecessary watching. Maybe I will trick him into watching it later. :)

6. I always buy DVDs on the off chance that I ever make enough friends that people would want to borrow stuff off me. Most probably this day will never come. :(

- Hisui

It looks fantastic. The character and mecha designs are highly distinctive–the GP02a Physalis Master Grade was the first Gundam model kit I ever bought, and then years later I bought it AGAIN–the animation is really fluid (unlike Lodoss), and the fight scenes are quite dynamic. The music is good stuff too, with two memorable songs by MIO (the Yoko Kanno of her day) as opening themes, though it should be said that one of the most effective scenes in the whole piece was the part without any sound or music at all.

And yet it’s a goddamn nightmare to watch.

Plot lunacy aside, the characters, particularly on the Federation side, are the worst characters ever. I tell myself that it was 100% intentional that Kou Uraki is literally the UC Gundam equivalent of the Comic Shop Guy from The Simpsons. He embodies what the Gundam fanbase is. He and his cohorts are all useless, particularly his best friend Chuck Keith. With the exception of South Burning–a Tomino-caliber name if there ever was one–and maybe the one captain guy with his SWEEPING THEATRICAL GESTICULATIONS~!, nobody on the Federation side is interesting. Especially Nina Purpleton.

People always dug Char Aznable, but the absolute suck of the so-called heroes of 0083 was what made the Zeon officially cool as a whole. They didn’t even have to be THAT awesome. Anavel Gato’s basically The Terminator as far as personality goes, but he’s got a boss character design, his robot is one of the neatest Gundams there is despite its armament consisting of “beam saber, shield, NUCLEAR BAZOOKA,” and he frequently beats the entire good guy team on his own. What’s to root against here?

I get the feeling the idiotic ending of 0083 was the result of Shoji Kawamori et al having went absolutely berserk on the mecha designs without considering it was supposed to be a prequel. How could Zeta Gundam, Double Zeta, and Char’s Counterattack make sense considering the outlandishly high level of tech on display here? They basically painted themselves into a corner, with the only way out being the Michael Bay Transformers ending: “uh…and the government covered it all up so nobody in the world ever knew about any of this, SEE YA.”

I triple dog dare you to watch the compilation movie 0083: Last Blitz of Zeon. It manages to be handled worse than the compilation for 08th MS Team, Miller’s Report. In fact, other than the original movie trilogy, every Gundam compilation has been bad. This makes the fact that the compilations tend to be what get considered “canon” that much worse.

I used to feel slightly bad that I don’t actually own 08th MS Team, 0080, or 0083 on DVD. But now I know that unless I find someone to show them to, there’s really no chance I’ll actually go back and rewatch these. This is true for most of my belongings.