Maaaaaaaaan....

So far, I've been content to let Tsurumaki's pace carry me, but unlike FLCL which kinda had no expectations placed upon the viewer and the intended viewing experience was to just go with the flow, GQX is building upon decades of narrative and lore that at this point are kinda essential for context, so as of right now even I'm starting to feel how crazy fast we're hitting plot beats out here.

I mean, the entire episode is about Lalah Sune, who she is as a character and what she represents thematically to the entire series, but if you haven't seen OG Gundam thru Char's Counterattack (because her relationship with Amuro and Char is an important aspect of her character) her appearance here is just going to be a weird catalyst for Machu's character growth and probably very confusing.

She looks great in GQX's animation style tho

But having said that, doing The Man in the High Castle with UC0079 Gundam is so insanely ballsy and ambitious, I'm down for the ride.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5125423

On the one hand it's kind of like hey commercials for younger people that aren't made with boomers in mind! But then on the other hand, it's a fucking anime commercial for a debilitating mental health condition.

Inspired by @[email protected] comment here: https://hexbear.net/comment/6203083

10/10 - the throughline of cicada sounds throughout was probably one of my favorite details, especially that it ended up being somewhat significant plot wise.

Only a few episodes into the anime, so I’m interested to see how it compares.

I used site if anyone’s interested: https://ww2.mangafreak.me/Read1_Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_1

Manga

I've been reading Full Metal Panic: Sigma, while watching The Second Raid alongside it. It's interesting, considering it has some differences from the anime. Some for good, others for worse. I prefer the Anime, but the Manga is good too.

The other two manga I've been following, The Lies of Sheriff Evans: Dead or Love and Shibuya Near Family are both still fun.

Anime:

I've recently watched Gundam 00 - I wrote more about that here.

Tokimeki Tonight is still a fun show when it comes to the wacky comedy and artsy backgrounds.

Ranma 1/2 (1989) - Rumiko Takahashi's writing is consistently entertaining, and over a dozen episodes in, it keeps delivering. Will the show be able to keep up? I hope so!

Another entertaining show is You're Under Arrest!. Is it copaganda? Yes. Has a certain aspect of the show aged poorly? Also yes. What the show excels in, are the villains of the week. Strike Man will be living in my head rent free for a bit, I suppose.

Dragon Ball Z is peak, over 60 episodes in.

**Western Animation & Live Action **

I'm still watching Gravity Falls, and it's good, if formulaic. Apparently people dislike Mabel and like Dipper? Because so far it's the exact opposite for me lol.

Also, I started Andor. I like it so far, but it's clearly still cooking at this stage.

IMPORTANT NOTE: please use a VPN whenever visiting Blorptube, or anywhere else on the internet, for that matter. Protect your privacy.

For this edition of Saturday Anime Night, we are beginning the classic Gainax series Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990), covering episodes 13 through 18. Join a rag-tag group of unlikely heroes on a steampunk adventure to find and save the lost city of Atlantis from an diabolical organization determined to rule the world. Stargate (1994) and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) pretty much ripped this series off. Oh yeah, and did I mention that Hayao Miyazaki wrote it, and Hideaki Anno was involved, too?

After that is Heart and Yummie (2010), an anime feature film about a vegetarian tyrannosauru rex raised by herbivores. Upon running away from home, he discovers an orphaned baby ankylosaurus, and decides to be his adoptive parent. Uh-oh, he starts feeling his carnist urges to eat the baby. Will he be able to resist his animal nature? I guess we’ll find out. Think The Land Before Time (1988), but anime, and with a cuter aesthetic. Director Masaya Fujimori has not made any other original films, but he did apparently work on the Fairy Tail franchise. Great reviews for this, so let’s check it out.

We’ll start at 8PM EST on Blorptube, right here:

https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

Be there, comrades!

Letterboxd:

• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water: https://letterboxd.com/film/nadia-the-secret-of-blue-water/
• Heart and Yummie: https://letterboxd.com/film/heart-and-yummie/

Doesthedogdie.com links:

• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096591/parentalguide/
• Heart and Yummie: Sorry, nothing on DTDD or IMDB.

CWs for Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water:

• Voyeurism.
• Objectification of female characters.
• Nudity.
• Sexualization of minor.
• Bath scenes.
• Gun violence.
• Child abuse.
• Child endangerment.
• Explosions.
• Cruelty to animals.
• Electrocution.
• Rude gestures.
• Plane crash.
• Animal corpses.
• Suffocation.
• Nuclear explosion.
• Blood and gore.
• Alcohol.
• Smoking.

CWs for Heart and Yummie:

• Carnism.
• Child endangerment.
• Child abandonment.
• Slapstick violence.
• Eye injury.
• Deaths of parents.

Links to movies:

• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water ep. 13: https://tankie.tube/w/oo1MCx2jeNR4RVu2M98H19
• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water ep. 14: https://tankie.tube/w/nFL9NbX6mFScconC4ASTdt
• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water ep. 15: https://tankie.tube/w/bpt9LMnsW8E6btfM2JJSAw
• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water ep. 16: https://tankie.tube/w/xkQy8Cxm7Bc4QUvUhyh2ED
• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water ep. 17: https://tankie.tube/w/prBdwf53UMu71XKFh8UDQj
• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water ep. 18: https://tankie.tube/w/sAub59YETxZ55kkUVJhyaU
• Heart and Yummie: https://tankie.tube/w/bYKtYMogu1JHV8aJ97q5kv

The show offers you a disapproving commentary on the War on Terror, liberal technocratic fantasies, and even accidentally recognizes that the bourgeois state itself is one of the biggest obstacles in the liberal one world fantasies that were popular at the time this show aired.

And predictably retreats into hope and despair that this is all caused by a lack of good morals on the part of the rulers. Because if you did that, you'd get something oddly similar to the backstory of Star Trek... and now, but nicer. Literally nothing changes, but it feels good!

Light of the world, shine on me! Love is the Answer! - as always.

And good lord there is a lot of love. This show goes really overboard on the romance melodrama in season 2. Without giving one to the MC, despite the obvious candidate of Princess Marina Ismail. Guess he can't be the man, the legend, Colasour the Indestructible.

Season 1 was the strongest, when it was about geopolitical blocs trying to crush an insurgency that happened to be the main characters of the show. Season 2 retreated hard into totally not newtype mysticism - as can be expected from Gundam really... I need to rewatch After War Gundam X.

What this show was really strong in were the visuals, especially in Season 1, and the music. The soundtrack is composed by Kenji Kawai, and featuring excellent OP and ED themes. Such as the OP2, sung by Tomoko Kawase - one of the Japanese artists I consistently get impressed by - plus Pulse by the Back Horn (containing ED1) is a really good album.

As close as this show was to jumping the shark, it never really did (in the movie? I haven't watched it yet, but thanks to Super Robot Wars I know what it's about lol). The show is just very, very competently made. At the very end of Mecha's presence as a TV anime staple.

Is this show good? Yeah.

Does it have good politics? They're very lib lol, though much more interesting than I expected.

What is this show really? Full Metal Panic, but without the comedy + Gundam Wing

Bonus: A random comment I found on r/gundam

OH SHIT OH FUCK

What did you think of this week's chapter?

No break next week!

Hooboy another build-up episode- first half is the remaining 0079 era bits from the movie with Char trying to kill Kycilia with a big asteroid provided by the Federation (the more things change, the more things stay the same it seems). There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it freeze frame of Lalah stopping Char from shooting Sayla in Newtype space just before the Axis Shock/Zeknova happens that I didn't catch in the movie, but it's here in the show.

Overall I'd say this entire sequence felt better with the movies chronology, since it set up the big mystery of this timeline (what happened to Char?) and highlighted the danger of the Zeknova. I guess this was as good a place as any to put this tho, because we really couldn't continue the back half here without this context.

I'm not going to get too deep into the back half- a lot happens here. (And a distracting amount of Eva references.) But I do want to highlight a smaller character scene/detail that's only possible because we're playing in a franchise with 46 years of material-

Nyaan is a refugee from Side 2. Side 2 was the colony that Zeon gassed and then dropped on the Earth, the event that kicks off the One Year War.

That dinner scene between her and Kycillia would be like if George Bush gave a home cooked meal to an Iraqi kid, promising asylum and college entry if they just signed up for the US Military to test their latest weapon systems.

The entire back half, Nyaan has a deep-seated sadness within her, almost like her soul is being weighed down by gravity.

Oh shit is that my favourite Gulp Shitto, Quattro Bajeena!?

(Have some Kycillia Obaa-chan cute fanart.)