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unless it gets great after the first 15 episodes, in which case don't
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Feb 28, 2016 02:09
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I like Macross 7, and it has some great moments, but it would be better if it was shorter
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Feb 28, 2016 02:14
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I've liked parts of it so far, but it has a similar problem to the original in that the pacifist character seems ridiculous in the situation they're in
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Feb 28, 2016 02:15
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Parallax posted:I've liked parts of it so far, but it has a similar problem to the original in that the pacifist character seems ridiculous in the situation they're in Yeah! I mean, spoiler alert, it turns out he's right, but the part before people realize that is great. The army guys are mad because he gets in their way, and the rest of Fire Bomber is mad cause he misses gigs. But Basara doesn't care, he just wants to move that mountain.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:43
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boom boom boom posted:Yeah! I mean, spoiler alert, it turns out he's right, but the part before people realize that is great. The army guys are mad because he gets in their way, and the rest of Fire Bomber is mad cause he misses gigs. But Basara doesn't care, he just wants to move that mountain. I think he just comes off as an unlikable butt for the most part, though I will say things have picked up the last few episodes, but man, are those first 12 a slooooooooooooog
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Feb 28, 2016 02:47
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also Mylene is cute
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Feb 28, 2016 02:47
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7 is my second favorite Macross, but yeah, it would be better if it was shorter, the beginning is rough, and I don't remember when it went from a trudge to "I must binge this until the end." It's a toss up to me whether the worst part early on is Basara or the fairly low number of songs constantly being repeated.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:50
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Parallax posted:I think he just comes off as an unlikable butt for the most part, though Oh yeah, Basara's a kind of terrible guy. SpikeMcclane posted:7 is my second favorite Macross, but yeah, it would be better if it was shorter, the beginning is rough, and I don't remember when it went from a trudge to "I must binge this until the end." I love Totsugeki Love Heart, but if I never hear Planet Dance again in my life, I'd be cool with that.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:52
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There's variety in the music played early on but it's incredibly easy to forget that because Planet Dance is used waaaay more than everything else in those early eps.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:52
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A neat detail about macross 7 i really like: there's no background music. All the music in the show has an in-show source
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Feb 28, 2016 02:54
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Srice posted:There's variety in the music played early on but it's incredibly easy to forget that because Planet Dance is used waaaay more than everything else in those early eps. there's maybe two other songs that get played over and over, but god gently caress planet dance
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Feb 28, 2016 02:55
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On the plus side, I can actually list to Planet Dance. Minmay singing "kyun kyun" makes me want to murder. Oddly, though, I like covers of it.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:55
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SpikeMcclane posted:On the plus side, I can actually list to Planet Dance. Minmay singing "kyun kyun" makes me want to murder. Oddly, though, I like covers of it. I like the songs in the original but it has the same problem of playing them way too often
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Feb 28, 2016 02:56
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Ray is also a cool character since he believes in Basara's pacifism but still believes in the idea of people defending themselves and others with force
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Feb 28, 2016 02:59
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My favorite tune from M7 is actually the opening
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Feb 28, 2016 03:04
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Macross 7 owns because it is more interested in following through on the actual themes of the original Macross than any other series made after it. I'm spoiling this since someone is watching it in the thread and I can't discuss stuff without mentioning plot arcs It's unarguably a bit too long (the first arc really could have been trimmed down and the first 15 episodes or so kind of spin their wheels) but even then it puts a lot of time and emphasis into the elements of Macross that they're clearly interested in: The military vs civilians, music as a bridge between cultures, and what it means to love someone. MIlitary vs Civilian is a theme present in Macross from the very beginning and a lot of people tend to overlook it. Hikaru's plot arc is someone who begins as an anti-war civilian and eventually becomes a soldier but rather than it simply emphasizing that 'soldiers are right' the show goes out of its way to focus on the idea that soldiers are necessary but not necessarily right. The Zentradi are a culture of all-soldiers and the eventual key to peace isn't in Reaction Warheads blowing everything up but in the introduction of culture and unification. Minmei's idol songs are very Japanese but they represent the idea that war is fought to protect civlians, not as a means and an end of its own. Kaifun is a shithead but a thing a lot of people overlook is that he has legitimately reasonable points even if he is wrong a lot of the time. Him being a shithead doesn't make him wrong and the show does try to emphasize that. Macross 7 goes further on that and the primary conflict early on is between die-hard soldier Gamlin and freewheeling Basara. Basara is intentionally a take on Kaifun from the original show. He takes Kaifun, rolls him into a ball with Minmei, and thrusts him into the protagonist role and the characters is as aggravating and over-the-top as he is supposed to be. Early on people are expected to sympathize with Gamlin who is a lot more like the previous Macross characters and clashes with Basara in that way. The thing that makes this work is that Basara is not proven unarguably right. It goes back to the idea that Basara's desire for communication and pacifism is a noble goal but one that can't exist on its own. Basara doesn't singlehandedly win and eventually has to work alongside the military, just as Gamlin eventually learns to understand what Basara is going for. The end result is that it actually follows through on Macross' idea that the military exists and is necessary but is also not always right. The show's slow start does work against it but once it gets going it legitimately gets going. Characters develop and change and the themes and concepts are extremely well executed. People tend to miss that Basara does have character development because almost all of Basara's character development is done via song. A lot of anime viewers are kinda trained to ignore the lyrics or not think about them very hard and some subs of MX7 actually didn't bother to subtitle them. This is a real problem for Basara because the dude literally is trying to communicate via song and is trying to move an unreceptive audience. There's plot arcs involving him struggling with writing new songs because what he's singing isn't doing the job and that isn't just because his power level isn't high enough or whatever. It is that he is legitimately a guy with serious brain problems trying to communicate. Like there are jokes about 'he is autistic' but there's elements of that to his character. He's also underlined by the fact that he chooses not to fight but the show is careful to emphasize that is a choice he struggles with. There are multiple scenes where he flips out and beats the poo poo out of a dude and he specifically requests no weapons on his Valkyrie because he's tempted to use them. When Ray installs weapons on his Valkyrie he's super pissed off because he knows he's likely to start blowing poo poo up if he has the temptation. (And he almost does at least once.) It spends its time developing characters and everyone has a development by the end of the series. People get upset that Max and Milia broke up but it makes perfect sense both within the context of the show and within the context of Macross. (Seriously they went from knife fight to married in a single episode.) The show actually spends time on this and it makes sense why those characters ended up where they did and the final ending where they unite to blow the poo poo out of some Protodevlin makes it clear that what they felt wasn't false, they just have other issues. Mylene is a little weakly developed largely because she really does have more charisma with Gamlin than Basara but the end of her plot arc is her going "You know what, I don't really have to pick a lifelong love right away" which is a perfectly reasonable resolution to a love triangle. The pacing is slow and there is a lot of stock footage but it's used fairly carefully. Someone mentioned before but music and sound is very important to MX7. There's no background music in the show that doesn't have a diegetic source in-show and when music is playing it tends to be important for a reason. The use of vocal songs can be a bit exhausting but they are almost universally there to set the mood. The character animation also tends to see a lot of effort. The musicians playing is given as much care as the robots fight and often sometimes more. A musician friend of mine was legitimately impressed at the small animation touches that made it clear Basara was animated as playing a guitar rather than just repeating a music cycle. It doesn't work universally (it runs into budget problems the same as any show) but they tend to focus their budget in sensible places. It's honestly, at least to me, the best-crafted Macross series. It keeps the themes of the original and develops them in understandable ways. It goes goofy and super-robot but that isn't inappropriate for Macross which was a very goofy series. It's far closer to what I expect of Macross than, say, Macross Frontier which hits the superficial beats ("love triangle! Aliens! Idols!") without any of the context or depth. tl;dr: Macross 7 owns and is a better Macross sequel than any of the other choices because it actually cares about being a Macross sequel and not just having transforming jets and idol singers. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 03:19
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It needs a Do You Remember Love remix or some compilation, because the super dull pace is what really kills it for me.
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Feb 28, 2016 03:36
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I was going to say that I really like M7 even though it has some flaws, like the weakest love triangle in the franchise. Then I remembered M0 exists and it has an even worse love triangle. There are many things to criticize about M7, but it is still better than what came after. The same is true for Macross 7's polar opposite, Macross Plus.
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Feb 28, 2016 05:08
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That's a really good post about Macross 7 but at the same time I still can't stand Basara and think the show is the hardest to really watch all the way through in comparison to other Macross series. That and I really didn't like any of Fire Bomber's songs. Gamlin is a really good character though I felt.
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Feb 28, 2016 08:40
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I remember thinking that the plot didn't really start until like 30 episodes into it, so much of the beginning is skippable or unnecessary. And yeah Basara is intensely uncharismatic and unlikable, the "rival" character in Gamlin was far more compelling. Even had some semblance of a character arc, what a novel idea.
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Feb 28, 2016 15:10
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Tribladeofchaos posted:That's a really good post about Macross 7 but at the same time I still can't stand Basara and think the show is the hardest to really watch all the way through in comparison to other Macross series. That and I really didn't like any of Fire Bomber's songs. Gamlin is a really good character though I felt. This is understandable but it is also completely intentional and integral to the character. Basara is supposed to be a super weird dude who doesn't relate to people in normal ways and comes off like a huge uncaring rear end in a top hat. All of the people in the show except for Ray react to him negatively as well. He's a really intense dude who would likely be diagnosed with some form of autism or developmental disorder who really only knows how to communicate to people through music, not a charismatic and likeable guy. Gamlin is definitely intended to be liked way more by the audience because he's the reasonable, down to earth, honorable, and noble guy who's just trying to do his duty for his friends and his city and who doesn't really understand why Basara is doing what he is. His only negative traits are "is a little hidebound and stiff" and "gets angry at Basara for flying around an active battlefield", so it's not really surprising that he comes off as more likeable.
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Feb 28, 2016 21:48
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Kanos posted:This is understandable but it is also completely intentional and integral to the character. Basara is supposed to be a super weird dude who doesn't relate to people in normal ways and comes off like a huge uncaring rear end in a top hat. All of the people in the show except for Ray react to him negatively as well. He's a really intense dude who would likely be diagnosed with some form of autism or developmental disorder who really only knows how to communicate to people through music, not a charismatic and likeable guy. That's more or less what I meant, I kind of feel it was a mistake to have him as the main character. I mean having the main character act like a huge rear end in a top hat to everyone and throw fits when his friends try not to get him killed doesn't make him very sympathetic. If he had been a bit more open to compromising he wouldn't be as unlikable.
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Feb 28, 2016 23:46
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I find Basara interesting as a character which is all I really care about. Likability be damned.
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Feb 28, 2016 23:56
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I think I had an issue with Basara's personality earlier on when it was unclear whether the show wanted us to like him or not, but now it's kinda clear that they want you to be somewhat irritated by him. Also, can we not label every fictional character who has trouble communicating as autistic, Basara clearly isn't interested in communicating with people in the normal sense, rather than completely unable to. I also think the "love triangle" might be more interesting than people are giving it credit for, and a kind of inverse of the original's.
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Feb 28, 2016 23:58
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Srice posted:I find Basara interesting as a character which is all I really care about. Likability be damned. Yeah, "likability" is something I only have an issue with if something is trying to say, "hey, look at how cool and great this character is" and instead the character is total butts
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Feb 29, 2016 00:01
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Parallax posted:I think I had an issue with Basara's personality earlier on when it was unclear whether the show wanted us to like him or not, but now it's kinda clear that they want you to be somewhat irritated by him. Also, can we not label every fictional character who has trouble communicating as autistic, Basara clearly isn't interested in communicating with people in the normal sense, rather than completely unable to. The "Basara may be autistic or have some other sort of mental irregularity" descriptor is not intended as an insult or a slight against autism or autistic people and it's not a negative trait, it's a foundational aspect of the character and is one of the things I like most about him. Basara is wired completely differently from other people in profound ways and the show and OVAs make that abundantly clear. He is explicitly 100% not a Minmay who is a normal person in pretty much every respect besides having magic singing powers and it was super ballsy of them to make a character like that the lead protagonist in a franchise that has become about idol girls. It's not a matter of him just being uninterested in communicating with people in the normal sense, he legitimately can't seem to; the few times he gets into arguments with Gamlin he can't make himself understood without breaking down into a yelling mess despite Gamlin being one of the most understanding characters in the show. His band members would support his peaceful goals 100% if he would simply explain his intent to them, but he doesn't because he can't so instead he misses shows, drives Mylene crazy, and gets insanely pissed at Ray and starts ranting at him because Ray installed self-defense weaponry on his Valkyrie. Even later on in the show when people finally start to "get" what Basara is trying to do, it's not because of interactions with Basara that they start to understand. The only times Basara ever looks comfortable or happy are when he's singing to people.
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Feb 29, 2016 00:12
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Kanos posted:He is explicitly 100% not a Minmay who is a normal person in pretty much every respect besides having magic singing powers and it was super ballsy of them to make a character like that the lead protagonist in a franchise that has become about idol girls. Minmay is definitely not a normal person, she needs validation from other people to be happy, not to mention how she acts after Hikaru and she are freed after being stuck together for days and days. Every character in the original is pretty hosed in some way or another Honestly I just wish we could go without calling any character with communications issues autistic
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Feb 29, 2016 00:37
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Tribladeofchaos posted:That's more or less what I meant, I kind of feel it was a mistake to have him as the main character. I mean having the main character act like a huge rear end in a top hat to everyone and throw fits when his friends try not to get him killed doesn't make him very sympathetic. If he had been a bit more open to compromising he wouldn't be as unlikable. Basara is the main character but he is not the viewpoint character. The show is about him but the audience is expected to like and empathize with Gamlin early on. You're not supposed to sympathize with Basara and you're supposed to find him unlikable. It's a risky thing to do because yeah, people will dislike the guy, but the show makes it clear that is intentional. People in-show respond to Basara that way too and the show is careful to slowly filter in information and most importantly to present Basara as *wrong.* He isn't always right. He has the right idea but not the right solution. I absolutely understand people finding Basara annoying, I just think the show is right there alongside you. (This is part of why the early pacing hurts because he's there for a long time.) But without Basara as the main character I think the show would lose a lot because it really is critical to the ideas of the show for the protagonist to be difficult to communicate with because Macross is all about communication. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Feb 29, 2016 |
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Feb 29, 2016 00:41
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ImpAtom posted:Basara is the main character but he is not the viewpoint character. The show is about him but the audience is expected to like and empathize with Gamlin early on. You're not supposed to sympathize with Basara and you're supposed to find him unlikable. It's a risky thing to do because yeah, people will dislike the guy, but the show makes it clear that is intentional. People in-show respond to Basara that way too and the show is careful to slowly filter in information and most importantly to present Basara as *wrong.* He isn't always right. He has the right idea but not the right solution. I think Mylene serves as more of the viewpoint character, but yeah.
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Feb 29, 2016 00:45
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ImpAtom posted:Basara is the main character but he is not the viewpoint character. The show is about him but the audience is expected to like and empathize with Gamlin early on. You're not supposed to sympathize with Basara and you're supposed to find him unlikable. It's a risky thing to do because yeah, people will dislike the guy, but the show makes it clear that is intentional. People in-show respond to Basara that way too and the show is careful to slowly filter in information and most importantly to present Basara as *wrong.* He isn't always right. He has the right idea but not the right solution. You know what that's fair, when I watched it years ago I think I just missed the point with his character. I took it as "he's the main character and he's always right because his singing works", that and what I felt him having a big lack of character development really soured the show when I first watched it. But I never did think about Basara own issues with communication being intentional, it makes a lot of sense now that you mention it, maybe I should give the show another watch. I just wish there wasn't so much filler, that and the long length make it really hard to watch.
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Feb 29, 2016 01:02
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Yeah, I can completely sympathize with that. I like MX7 a lot but I tend to skip to at least the Sivil Arc almost every time I've rewatched it. You lose a little of Gigil but the dude gets enough time to shine. (On that note Gigil's plot arc owns so hard.)
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Feb 29, 2016 01:06
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Gigil was not a good singer but his version of My Soul For You still gets me. 
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Feb 29, 2016 01:57
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ImpAtom posted:Basara is the main character but he is not the viewpoint character. The show is about him but the audience is expected to like and empathize with Gamlin early on. You're not supposed to sympathize with Basara and you're supposed to find him unlikable. It's a risky thing to do because yeah, people will dislike the guy, but the show makes it clear that is intentional. People in-show respond to Basara that way too and the show is careful to slowly filter in information and most importantly to present Basara as *wrong.* He isn't always right. He has the right idea but not the right solution.
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Feb 29, 2016 02:27
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Parallax posted:Minmay is definitely not a normal person, she needs validation from other people to be happy, not to mention how she acts after Hikaru and she are freed after being stuck together for days and days. Every character in the original is pretty hosed in some way or another Minmay is whiny, selfish, and codependent, but everything she does is perfectly sensible and understandable from the perspective of a teenage celebrity with an abusive rear end in a top hat brother and a huge crush on a guy who is part of a love triangle. Basara is is an entirely different universe than her when it comes to dealing with interpersonal relationships. We're shown glimpses of Basara's childhood and he is super strange even back then. Again, it's not an insult. Tribladeofchaos posted:You know what that's fair, when I watched it years ago I think I just missed the point with his character. I took it as "he's the main character and he's always right because his singing works", that and what I felt him having a big lack of character development really soured the show when I first watched it. It's easy to get the sense that "Basara was right all along!" at a glance, that's completely understandable, especially since so many shows cop out on that sort of thing. The thing is is that while his general idea(communication with the aliens) was correct, the way he was going about it was totally worthless and ineffective and only with the aid of the military and other pilots like Gamlin is he able to put his solution into effect in a meaningful way. All of his singing to the protodevlin didn't actually start having an impact until speaker pods and sound energy technology was put into practice. Even with Basara's influence, without the efforts of the people actually fighting like Gamlin, the fleet would have been eradicated long before Basara managed to achieve what he did.
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Feb 29, 2016 03:18
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Feb 29, 2016 17:28
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BBK/BRNK is quickly becoming the show I look forward to the most every week. That being said, if I never saw another girl who worships her elder brother in a "no it's totally not sexual" way again I think it'd be too soon.
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Mar 1, 2016 01:43
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I imagine he's not literally their brother and they're using "onii-san" as a respectful form of address towards an older male, since he looks nothing like them.
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Mar 1, 2016 01:48
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Like that's ever stopped anyone before. At least they're not the brother and sister kid prodigies from GunxSword.
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Mar 1, 2016 01:54
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The Muffinlord posted:It's pretty legit. Very super robot, though. It's basically "what if Giant Robo was five teens" but it turns out Giant Robo is the Turn X. I need more information about this show now I think 
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Mar 1, 2016 04:37
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Lanz posted:I need more information about this show now I think People wielding giant robot limbs as weapons that give them superpowers.
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