Category: Favored Topics

Ballads of the Earth and the Moon: Turn A Gundam, UNIVERSE!

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I will go on the record, so far I consider Turn A Gundam my favorite Gundam series which is no small accomplishment. Much like Gundam X, I had really only ever heard people bad-mouthing Turn A Gundam the few times they would talk about it. Then I saw someone jump to its defense claiming it was only a bad Gundam series if you hated character development. My original plan was to watch all of UC Gundam and then watch Turn A, but Turn A kept tugging at me. Since I knew one or two oddities of the plot I thought I would be better severed by watching all of UC first but I quickly found that was unimportant. It lets you catch one or two little things but Turn A is completely stand alone from any other Gundam.

Loran Cehack is a man from the moon sent on early reconnaissance to see if the Earth is fit for recolonization. The problem is they have to displace the people who stayed on the Earth since the Moonraces’ exodus long ago. The Moonrace is equipped high technology that includes space travel and mobile suits while Earth still has the far inferior science of the early 1900’s. Once on Earth, Loran quickly falls in love with the Earth and is conflicted when the Moonrace starts a forceful colonization of the planet. When the fighting breaks out, Loran uncovers the Turn A Gundam which he uses to turn the tide for the otherwise outclassed Earth forces. Soon the people of Earth discover other deposits of mobile suits and begin to fight back turning what should have been a quick battle into a prolonged war.

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Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, A pocket full of tears.

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There is an interesting spectrum in the three Gundam OAVs we have watched recently. On one end is Gundam 0083 which is the biggest in scope and totally focused on the mobile suits. It deals with the events that make Zeta Gundam possible but I highly doubt that anyone claims their favorite characters come from 0083.  In the middle you have 08th MS team where the story is  more personal while still having a good mixture of mecha to character importance. Then you have Gundam 0080, everything about this series is personal. The objectives, the feelings, and the missions are all clearly motivated by the characters not the politics. There are mobile suits but they are almost MacGuffins to move along the individual stories within 0080. I won’t claim that 0080 is the Gundam series for people who hate robots, that Gundam series does not exist. However, this is the Gundam series for those who care most about the people behind the machines and how they are effected by war.

Since we decided to watch the Universal Century OVAs in timeline order, this was our second stop and truly I felt 0080: War in the Pocket had much to live up to since I enjoyed 08th MS Team so very much. I knew this OVA was going to be different from other installments in the Gundam franchise merely because I had been told so, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant till actual viewing.

Maybe just to prove that this OAV is very different from any other Gundam series, we start with an elite commando team trying to steal an experimental mobile suit from a secret facility. While this seems extremely formulaic it deviates when after two attempts the Zeon unit cannot waltz off with it like it was a free sample of cheese and crackers at the local supermarket. During the second attempt Bernard Wiseman is shot down and crash lands in a deserted part of the colony. Bernard is discovered by a young boy named, Alfred Izuruha, who is a mobile suit fanatic. As Alfred beings following Bernard they become friends. Bernard soon discovers that the Zeon fleet has decided they will just destroy the whole colony. Will Bernard try and save his new friend or will he leave everyone on the colony to die.

From what I have seen, the 0080 OVA may be the Gundam series that deals the least with robots and pushes the development of its characters and the moral ambiguities encountered in war. Also of note, Gundam tends to do away with young children protagonists except as background or minor characters, but not so in 0080. But hold on there, no Alfred isn’t a super annoying (okay sometimes he is annoying just not all the time) and irrelevant child character. He shares the screen with Bernard and is equally vital to the telling of this story.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #059

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In honor of Yoshiyuki Tomino coming to NYAF there is only one thing to be done. Gundam Sousei has to be reviewed because it was a documentary, and the events were drawn in real time. Alright, that may be an exaggeration. Gundam Sousei is actually an over the top dramatization of the creation of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series. This manga does not reflect events as they  happened. It reflects events as they should have happened. All the actors look remarkably like the characters they portray. All the production staff looks like you would imagine them to look. Tomino does not just yell at Toru Furuya to get him into his role. He Bright Slaps the performance right out of him. Shuichi Ikeda does Char so masterfully that when he is recording people see Char Aznable in the booth. Tomino masterfully schemes in ever step of the creation of Mobile Suit Gundam as if he were the Red Comet himself. Things just don’t happen in the manga. They are moved into place by the unalterable hand of destiny as the prophets that are the production staff will it to be. If you are a fan of Gundam and/or epic drama then you should check this manga out.

I picked up this One Piece pin set which is all the emblems that the crew came up with for the flag design. I had seen this set of pins before but when they presented themselves to me on the cheap and in person, I couldn’t resist. Colorful, fun, and unique.

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