The New General Mecha thread

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Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

ninjewtsu posted:

Yes it did. Cornelius literally has a monologue with claudia about how io isn't naturally some horrible death demon, but his balls to the wall personality being mixed with war creates a horrible death demon. He more or less literally turned to the camera and said "io is a good person who has been twisted by war." It's as subtle as a sledge hammer, and while it could have been shown in ways better than a side character having a monologue it's certainly there. Io's interactions with claudia and the children serve a similar purpose: he's humanized in that he's well aware of how hosed up the situation he's in is ("we're both here because everyone above us died" and "we live in times where the more people you kill, the more you're called a hero" being choice example quotes). Daryl's a little less obvious, but seeing the contrast between him as an innocent, happy child and the reality of his current life seems like enough to me.

Claudia's drug addiction makes plenty of sense. She's a normal loving person with the tragic "weakness" of caring about people dying, and the guilt leads her to dark coping mechanisms. Her valuing human life would be a good quality in any situation besides "war commander," where it undermines her ability to lead effectively (her constantly having to retreat to her room to deal with her guilt is a bit less than inspiring) and her final action is choosing to have the ship evacuated so the crew doesn't die. This action gets her shot by someone she was trying to save . "War is awful to good people" is the entire point of her plot, and while it's certainly the weakest part of the show its not at all pointless. Narratively, I'm not sure what's at all unreasonable or unbelievable about "person in a bad situation turns to drugs to deal with it."

The kids' purpose is to contrast the reality that the soldiers face with the idealized version that people who haven't experienced war hold. It's not as good as a whole series devoted to the concept like 0080, but as a quick and condensed deal the kids being introduced spontaniously saluting a war machine while all the actual soldiers look on and say "what the gently caress are they doing?" Is pretty good, followed up by them immediately panicking as soon as a single zeon soldier starts shooting at their group of 40. Narratively, they're a distraction meant to draw zeon's attention while io goes on a solo mission to blow up all the zeon ships. Daryl actually does the exact same thing with one of his buddies, and both plans work out extremely well. I'll grant that I'm not entirely sure why they got gms instead of all being put into balls for this purpose.

Because it's the end of the One Year War, when the Federation had finally started focusing the combined energies of an entire planet on building mobile suits, and was starting to hand them out like candy. That's a major subtext to the entire Thunderbolt Sector arc, especially when compared with everything about the Living Dead.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2017 11:28

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 07:31

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

What I watched of ID-0 was pretty fun, if you can get past the full CG.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2017 09:42

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Aldnoah S2 definitely gets dumber, and has a very weak ending, but at least there are a fair few parts of it that are the entertainingly ridiculous kind of dumb, like the thing with the bullets.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2017 22:46

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Light Gun Man posted:

It's annoying that the characters don't seem to see it coming but I'm fine with it as a thing, I suppose. It's been done before in the franchise.

Honestly it's almost weird that Voltron is like the only robot in a galaxy of spaceships I suppose.

That actually makes sense to me. Giant humanoids are pretty much the least practical vehicle designs, and giant humanoids that spend most of their time in space are even more so. By embracing and exaggerating that impracticality (it's not just a warship shaped like a great big metal knight, it's a great big metal knight made out of great big metal lions), Voltron stands out amidst a universe full of more conventional sci-fi designs as something otherworldly - not a simple weapon, but an ancient god of war.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2017 13:30

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Light Gun Man posted:

Oh yeah it makes sense from that perspective, it's just weird in a genre sense. Usually there's a bunch of robots or the enemies also have some robots or whatever.

Ideon did it, and the Evangelions and RahXephon were short on humanoid enemies, even if they did show up on occasion.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2017 20:56

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

fivegears4reverse posted:

Whoa, holy poo poo. A third season of the main storyline could be pretty awesome!

FMP was one of those shows that nailed just about every strikezone for me at the time. Being a Front Mission nerd immediately got me into the smaller scale of the mecha here. I dug the slice of life episodes, and I liked the longer arcs. I got a HUGE kick out of Souske essentially being Kid Solid Snake, with all the awkwardness and hilarity that could entail in the setting.

The Second Raid kinda weirded me out when it first released. It wasn't bad, it was actually pretty cool in a lot of ways. It felt super rushed though, and something about the animation throughout the series just felt... off. Everything about the show felt... off. Maybe it was deliberate, there's a lot of unsettling things that happen throughout it. Maybe it was a budget thing. I dunno.

Fumoffu, though, is a loving treasure and should be preserved in a capsule for future generations.

I'm glad to see it coming back. Between this and Left Alive acting as a pseudo revival of Front Mission, I'm feeling really nostalgic at the moment

Second Raid was by KyoAni. It was having proper animation by people who knew what they were doing that weirded you out.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 12:47

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

So an actual, real-life duel between American and Japanese mecha just happened. It was very anime.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2017 04:05

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Kingtheninja posted:

Oh yeah, who won?

Japan beat the initial American design with a single punch, and then the upgraded, big-budget American machine grappled and chainsawed them to death after they tried using attack-drones and a paintball machine-gun to distract and weaken them.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2017 04:15

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

ninjewtsu posted:

where can i find footage of this

It was streamed on Twitch. It�ll presumably be available through other means soon enough.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2017 04:45

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Sordas Volantyr posted:

http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2017/11/08-1/hidive-adds-mecha-anime-space-runaway-ideon

Ideon got picked up for legal streaming. Guess that's another series in the backlog.

The main series is dull, plodding, and has a terrible ending, and while the movie�s are much better, they�re divergent enough and cover so little material that they can only serve as companion pieces rather than replacements to it.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 11:30

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

a kitten posted:

I'm glad that Wako was aiming for the harem ending.

e: wait there's a movie?

Not just aiming for - I�m pretty sure she got it.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2017 19:38

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Marx Headroom posted:

Just started VOTOMS and loving it, just arrived on Vietnam world. Can anyone point me to the show's influences or related stuff? It seems to have a heist + Heart of Darkness + Judge Dredd thing going on but it's hard for me to pin down, I'd really love to watch more stuff like it.

A good post on another forum that covers some of that, plus a bunch of other interesting stuff about the making of VOTOMS.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2017 19:41

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

tsob posted:

Yea, there was an interview with Takahashi a few years ago at some Western Con where he said he didn't actually particularly care about mecha and just used it to appeal to the producers. You can probably find it on Google easily enough. I want to say he was in Scotland for a con, though that seems like a very small one for him to appear at, but it'll almost certainly be findable with a bit of searching.

That was actually the one I just linked.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2017 02:50

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

The Muffinlord posted:

What's the best way to get familiar with Mazinger? I feel like it's something I should see but I feel like there's an imposingly large number of adaptations of it.

Go for Shin Mazinger. Just be aware that much like the manga it�s based off, it doesn�t really have much of an ending.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2018 00:02

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

I said it before, but M3 was just too dark for me. Like, literally. Orange hadn�t figured out how to make their CG visually-comprehensible in low-light scenes yet, and all the mech fights were at night.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 13:34

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

So, y�all got any particular favourite giant robot fight scenes?

# ¿ Mar 12, 2018 00:43

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Caphi posted:

Akira, you couldn't have gotten out the sword a few trillion in property damage earlier.

You know, does anyone even remember the new REIDEEN?

e: not even the internet remembers REIDEEN, all the pages for it are dead.

RahXephon was pretty neat, yeah. :v:

# ¿ Mar 12, 2018 02:39

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

That is kind of a recurring problem for Tomino, isn�t it?

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 06:23

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Pandora has Nobunaga the Fool�s director and Macross Delta�s writer. That�s a powerfully underwhelming combo.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2018 21:38

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Light Gun Man posted:

Netflix Voltron.

I remember the first season of that being solidly OK. Nothing terrible, nothing super-special. Does it step up its game from there?

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 15:08

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Endorph posted:

FlipFlappers has two entire episodes about the main characters relationships as explicitly lesbian and even has one of those episodes be entirely about it criticizing how common it is to leave lesbian relationships at just subtext, the main girls literally kiss in Izetta. So, like, yeah, I'm gonna say it's kinda hateful to just wrap all of that up and dismiss it as 'lol girls not kissing' while two dudes cackle over the footage and how inherently worthless it is because The Girls Don't Kiss, lol. I don't actually have tons of other examples of stuff like that from that dude but that one snippet was legit hurtful to me.

And the most hosed up part of this is that I had to go to bat for freaking Izetta because of it.

Kuromukuro was pretty decent.

Agreed on KMK, but I should note that the giant robot action was the worst part of it. It just wasn�t very interesting. The show�s real charm is in its characters.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 19:03

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

I think part of KMK�s problem was that the main mech was functionally just a big dude with a sword. They didn�t lean into the giant robotness nearly as much as they could have.

Typing that out, though, I remembered Iron-Blooded Orphans, which mostly had its mecha fighting with traditional melee weapons, and yet felt exciting and otherworldly. Might be interesting to consider what that did right and KMK didn�t.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 19:13

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Mister Olympus posted:

Has anyone brought up Majestic Prince yet

Cool mecha battles by the same folks who did Akito, hideously ugly character designs from Hisashi Hirai, YMMV on the sense of humour. Probably worth a shot if you like your giant robot shows chill and light-hearted.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 19:36

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Guyver posted:

Devilman Lady is fully translated and easily twice and crazy as the Devilman manga is.

Hope you�ve got plenty of tolerance for rape, though.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 20:14

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

I did feel pretty comfortable with following the action in Pacific Rim 1. The fights were in low-light conditions, but contained enough illumination to let you see what was going on. It wasn�t, like, M3 or something.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2018 23:45

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

ninjewtsu posted:

wasn't build fighters pretty successful

Unicorn is probably a better example - IIRC, that was basically a purpose-built love-letter to older male kit-collecting nerds.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2018 18:24

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Zoids Wild�s first episode was a pretty charmingly-executed standard kids� show with some good expressions. Probably worth a poke if that�s your thing.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2018 18:35

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Are both SRW titles on the PS4 worth getting?

# ¿ Jul 27, 2018 01:29

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Raxivace posted:

I watched the first five episodes of VOTOMS. They...were good!

I was confused by episode 2 though. Who shot the Mad Max biker guy at the end?

I don�t think we ever get a concrete answer, but it is one of several hints at a much later plot twist (or something else they considered and then abandoned - I got the strong impression that VOTOMS was written as it went rather than being extensively pre-planned).

# ¿ Aug 27, 2018 21:54

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Guy Goodbody posted:

The robots and robot fights in Break Blade are pretty cool. It's a shame that everything else in the show is bad

Borcuse was somewhat interesting as an antagonist. A true believer in the humanitarian value of war crimes was unusual and oddly resonant.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2018 02:55

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Luminaflare posted:

Any rad new mecha series this season?

Gridman's first episode owned pretty hard.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 15:53

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

I heard the action scenes were a bit old-fashioned, technologically speaking, but how do they compare to the ones in Macross Frontier? Because those were beautifully-directed, even if the CG has aged a bit, and the short clips in the trailer reminded me of them.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 17:44

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

FYI, Karakuri Circus is basically a mecha show, and it's cool and fun in an old-school way so far.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2018 20:55

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

My biggest beef with the final arc is that they overcommitted on the fakeout. In particular, Chirico blowing up that ship felt less like he was putting on a show for Wiseman and more like he was legit trying to murder his friends. If they'd had an easier escape with a few hints that he was helping them along, it would have made the whole thing feel a lot less weird.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2018 17:12

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

StrixNebulosa posted:

Woah, I didn't expect the Gridman show to actually have Gridman as a character. I'll check it out!

I haven't seen FMP, and Gargantia is kind of an edge case because of the 5-6 eps I watched, the robot was just... there. Very minor character.

e: It's kind of like Exkaiser (which I love) - yes, technically Exkaiser has a personality, but it's so generic and doesn't go anywhere that it's like, why did they bother.

Chamber does go somewhere in Gargantia. Not only that, but the main villain is the rogue mecha that once belonged to the hero's commanding officer.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2018 16:17

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Schwarzwald posted:

If you want a show in the Brave series style where not only is the main robot is it's own character, but the side robots that help out are also their own characters, then Gridman has that in spades.

In fact, the robots are probably the most real people in the show, alongside the antagonist.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2018 21:59

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Kanos posted:

It's hard to compare the two directly because the two shows are focusing on entirely different storytelling angles. IBO is man versus society while Thunderbolt is man versus self, which means that IBO focuses on society being terrible while Thunderbolt focuses on people being terrible.

Being petty, mean, ugly, and nihilistic is pretty foundational when you're trying to tell a story specifically about how war warps people into monsters, which is entirely what December Sky is about. Io is a trainwreck garbage person because trauma and conflict pushed him in that direction and he gave up and stopped fighting it, and basically the entire character story of December Sky is Darryl following that same path.

That said, IBO does move a little more into man versus self in S2.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2019 12:53

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

His three buddies from Woodo are surprisingly endearing. It helps that they're much more useful than your typical comic relief.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2019 02:00

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

chiasaur11 posted:

So, finished Gurren, which was good, and I've got a toxx ensuring I'm going to finish Eva, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to get a little more all round experience.

I've been watching an episode or two of some other mech shows this year, just enough to feel like I have a vague idea what they're about and so I can know which ones I'll actually want to follow up on. So, basically, I'm asking if anyone has any suggestions. I'm already planning to at least take a look at more VOTOMs, and Patlabor and Macross Plus both are on my eventual list, but quality isn't the most important thing for a sampler, especially it's at least bad in an interesting way.

Sadly, that wasn't the case for Mazinger Infinity. The comedy wasn't particularly funny, the action was rare and not terribly interesting, and the drama didn't land. It felt like the film had drama not because it had something to say, but because a film's supposed to say something about the human condition, and they had to vaguely gesture at a bunch of themes in hopes they could bluff their way through.

I've seen worse, but at least a lot of those felt like someone had passion for the ideas on display. Here, nothing doing. No matter what the actual thoughts and visions were going in, what came out was a big fat nothing. Maybe seeing another show where extremely giant robots decide the fate of the universe so soon after seeing Simon's drill pierce the heavens stacked the deck a little more, but yeah. Not impressed.

How up are you on your Gundam?

# ¿ Feb 2, 2019 11:57

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 07:31

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Anshu posted:

Is anyone around here following RoosterTeeth's new mech show gen:LOCK?

I like how they've had the stones to go properly weird with the transhumanism. Especially with the reveal about who the protagonist and antagonist really are.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2019 21:17

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