The New General Mecha thread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > The New General Mecha thread

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Siegkrow posted:

But yeah if you're gonna recommend Cross Ange, remember to add a big asterisk because the main villain is rapey as fuuuuuuuuck

Not to mention the warning that every Hirai show since SEED has needed regarding gross out of place gorn that does not fit the artist's style at all

# ¿ Nov 30, 2020 20:04

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 00:45

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Droyer posted:

https://twitter.com/discotekmedia/status/1336779731564285953?s=21

Acrobunch has a top tier OP from an era that was full of them*, though from what I hear it's story is both mostly nonexistent and weird in such a way that it's kinda obvious why SRW only touched it like once and didn't use any of it's plot

*though honestly the only bad in every respect OP I can think of for a Mecha show up through the 90's is Gordian(which has both a mediocre song and terrible and boring animation), as much as God Mazinger gets memed for it's OP at least it's a good song(albeit one that fits way better as an ED than as an OP)

# ¿ Dec 9, 2020 23:56

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

I said it before and I'll say it again, most early mangaka are to be blunt really bad at storytelling and their reputations mostly exist due to a combination of their artistic skills and them establishing a bunch of tropes and concepts that later creators would use much better

# ¿ Dec 11, 2020 10:53

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Started watching Obsolete on YouTube and so far it's pretty neat, particularly since the apparent motives of the aliens in wanting to trade their robots for limestone seems silly at first but makes more sense once you do a bit of research, like how it's a substance that would probably be comparatively rare in the universe at large since it requires organic life for its formation(so unlike many things you couldn't just mine some asteroid or moon for it), but on Earth it's a ludicrously common substance(approximately 350,000,000 gigatons of the stuff, a gigaton being equal to one billion metric tons), and since there's already a bunch of mostly bald apes living on the planet mining the stuff might as well save yourself a bunch of time and labor and do some trading with the natives, everybody wins

# ¿ Jan 3, 2021 03:56

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Schwarzwald posted:

Back in August there was a real cool discussion about Rahxephon (Rah Xephon? RahXephon? ??). At the time, my opinion was that it had a strong start and some really excellent moments, but was brought down by a weak middle. Classes are over for another month and I have some free time, so I figured I'd give it a rewatch and and record my thoughts on it here.

As this is an older show I will not be using spoiler tags. Reader beware.

EPs 1-3:

_____

These episodes have a heavy focus on gaze. It begins with Ayato looking at (a painting of) the back of a woman in a yellow dress. From here we cut to Ayato himself being watched by a woman with a video camera. Layers of voyeurism! We're frequently shown scenes through camera's and recordings. There's a strong shot in the first episode where you're viewing a scene directly through Ayato's eyes. This scene also suggests he sees things that other people can't. Is he perceptive, or delusional?

_{Are you listening to me, Ayato? Or were you looking at the woman in the yellow dress?}

There's a lot on belief and deception, too. The media downplays an (alien? human?) attack on the city, even as hospitals overflow. The giant "dolem" robots that defend the city are blithely dismissed, and people deny seeing one particular mecha that Ayato remembers. The government seem to be widely distrusted. It's maybe some kind of Juche state?

I dig Ayato's character. He's neither a dope nor a coward. When government agents ask Ayato to come with them, he resists. When (Haruka rescues him only to ask Ayato to instead come with her, he refuses. He's not impressed when she offers to tell him "everything about the world," and his mistrust is justified when she then pulls a gun on him. He escapes with Reika (the woman in the yellow dress), but what he doesn't catch on to is that Reika is also leading him along!

(While supposedly his classmate, Reika might as well have stepped straight out of his painting, or out of his head. She accepts a soda can from him, but she's doesn't drink it. When they talk on the phone, we shown that her number is not in use. And when he mentions her to his friends at school, they don't recall her... up until they meet her themselves, after which of course they know Mishima Reika! How could they not?)

_{The Mu have you. Follow Mishima Reika. Knock knock, Ayato.}

Reika leads him to a strange Dr. Who place that's bigger on the inside. It seemingly contains a whole rear end ocean, a separate sky, and a giant egg. Ayato falls into a trance and calls out "Rahxephon" as the egg hatches, revealing the Rahxephon robot. (Egg hatching motifs are prominent throughout.) As this happens, an illusion covering the city vanishes, revealing a Vaporwave Cyber UFO hovering above it.

(The "inside" ocean and sky are likewise an illusion. The Rahxephon is kept in a truly massive shrine, but it's in no way it's own world. When it escapes it tears a black scar in the "sky.")

_{If you have blue blood you'll wake up in Tokyo Jupiter and believe whatever the Mu want you to believe. If you have red blood, you see how deep the Reika hole goes.}

_____

A lot of the humor just sucks. A girl from class will tease Ayato and both of their faces briefly become superdeformed. Ayato will pratfall into a womans butt, and then the show will cut into still shots of both of them having ////// embarrassed faces ////// and then afterwards they're both so upset with each other and have big frowny faces >:| even though no ones really to blame.

(The woman is also 12 years his senior and very obviously into him. Did someone on staff have a thing?)

I remember not caring for this when I first saw the show in... 04, 05? and its not any more charming on rewatch. In addition to clashing heavily with the tone it dates the series. This style barely survived the end of Love Hina, and this was two years past that.

_{The ever-so-slightly-deformed cute cat is good, though.}
_____

Some things I haven't mentioned: a focus on media (shots of people listening to music, or a book title being in focus for a few seconds, etc) and watches (in particular, people looking at watches). There's a lot of dream imagery, and one of the dolems placates a violent Rahxephon by lulling it to sleep with a song. It's maybe implied that Ayato is unconsciously altering reality?

Ayato first boarding the Rahxephon is a very Yuusha Raideen-esque sequence, and the Rahxephon itself a very Raideen-esque design. Reika's design is almost certainly modeled after Mari's: she wears her red dress but in the colors of her yellow miniskirt.

Beyond those visual ques, the show leans much more heavily on the Matrix and Eva than it does on any monster-of-the-week from the 70s.

_____

Episode 3 ends with Ayato and Haruka safely out of the illusory world of Tokyo Jupiter. If I remember correctly, the show changes style for a few episodes afterwards, backing away from all the paranoia stuff. So I'll leave off here.

The Raideen connections are very much intentional, to the point that when RahXephon made it's SRW debut it was in a game that also had Raideen on the roster

Also it's funny how Raideen gets rebooted every now and then and every time it results in very wildly and weirdly different shows

# ¿ Jan 10, 2021 22:14

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Basically Muv-Luv is a very dumb setting even by this genre's standards

# ¿ Jan 24, 2021 23:34

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Personally I love the main OVA for Mazinkaiser, but I loathe the movie, part of it being that Great Mazinger gets chumped by the bad guys from his own show(it's mitigated a little once you realize he's for some reason using the crappy Great Mazinger from the start of the OVA rather than the good one from the end of it that's supposed to be almost as strong as Mazinkaiser is but still) and I've never liked at all the trope that both Go Nagai and Ishikawa liked where they introduce a potentially interesting group of new characters just to kill them off for cheap drama and edginess factor*, like is done with the Mazinger Army

*if we're being brutally honest I think both men are excellent character/robot/monster designers but lovely writers that mostly get idolized for the former fact and the fact that they originated a lot of concepts that later anime and manga creators would use much better(really this applies to most of the early wave of people in the industry)

# ¿ Jan 30, 2021 10:45

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

chiasaur11 posted:

I mean, I'm a Chainsaw Man fan, so I'm pretty sure I surrendered the legal right to complain about offing characters in bulk lots. That said, like anything else there's an art to it. Like, in Devilman, it's part of the way the manga jumps over the final battle, amping up the unsettling feeling of it. There's all these cool designs, the apocalypse is here... and then they die like everyone else. The end. Contrasting, Getter's international team in Go lasted long enough that their deaths felt like things were ramping up. You might not have cared too much that a Canadian pilot was dead, but that meant the next operation was more difficult.

It's things like the Mazinger Army specifically where I think you have a point. It was just death for the sake of death, without any real narrative payoff.

As for Kaiser, I actually kinda liked episode 5. Leaning fully into gag territory worked better for me. The action is basic, the characters are thin, and the jokes are dumb... but I like a good stupid joke, and "villain in disguise is undone by the protagonists being dumbasses" is a classic of the genre.

I think it ultimately stems from me having a very different perspective on how fiction should use death compared to most people who make it, I'm a firm believer that it needs to have purpose and it needs to be a drat good one at that and even then it should be used minimally

Part of me blames my inner Catholic for this, part of me blames lingering mental trauma from watching the Battle Angel OVA at way too young an age(I still get "Vietnam Flashbacks" about that poor dog even though it's probably been more than 20 years since I last saw it happen)

# ¿ Jan 30, 2021 12:19

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

chiasaur11 posted:

仕方がない。

I don't mind comparisons to Eva when relevant, anyway. A show so obviously in the shadow of third impact is going to have Eva comparisons worth bringing up. The problem is when the show is exclusively discussed in comparison to Evangelion. Not "Evangelion also tried to tackle this theme, here is how the approach was different", but "This show is good (or bad) because this thing is like (or unlike) Evangelion."

It definitely sounds like there was an idea for the ending from the beginning, but it was a little vague, and when the show drifted away from fitting with it, they just stapled things together and called it a day. It's not exactly unknown with mech anime (look at Zeta Gundam and the writer conflict is pretty much on the screen) and it's even more of a risk when you're doing monster of the week plots. If a character develops too much, the plot might not work as planned. (Interviews on Gudam Iron Blooded Orphans explicitly mentioned that Tekkadan couldn't grow too much, or else they might prevent the endgame.) Sounds like RahXephon didn't prepare for that possibility.

But not every mech story is about the psychological development of child soldiers. Some are about the Russo-Japanese war.

Gale! Beast Machine Corps 203 is by Ken Ishikawa, the creator of Getter Robo. A one volume manga, it's pretty easy to sum up. In 1904, the Imperial Japanese Army hires a mad scientist who makes a coal powered giant robot. It fights the giant robots of the Russian's chief scientist. Everyone's at least a bit psychotic (IJA and Ken Ishikawa manga, after all) tons of people die, and a good time is had by all. It's not deep, but it's a fast read, and it's an unusual setting for a mech manga. Worth a look if you like Ishikawa's style.

Ishikawa definitely works better with one shots and short manga than he does with long ones, Seiten Wars Flieder Bug is another short and sweet mecha manga from him

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 09:52

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:

I wonder what steps would have to be taken to make HG give up the rights, like if some rich obsessed mecha fan wanted to force their hands by deliberately tanking all their investment portfolios or something

Harmony Gold is a mafia front company so not exactly easy to take down legitimately

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 00:23

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

GorfZaplen posted:

I watched some of Yamato Takeru, a 90s fantasy/scifi mecha that had an OP I liked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONyz8CwFpa0

The character designs are unique and fun, the mecha are designs by Koichi Ohata and are all god tier, its based on Japanese myth and works that into the plot really well, for instance the main mecha is named Susano-oh, and the first thing they do upon activation is destroy a bunch of farmland, just like Susano-oh in myth! It's by largely the same people who worked on Mashin Hero Wataru and Mado King Granzort, but seems like it's aimed a slightly higher age range than those shows, with more humanoid mecha rather than SD designs and a serial fantasy story based on myth with minimal gags. Unfortunately the show is pretty dry as a result, it's pretty standard kids fare with enough occasional outstanding animation or interesting episodes to almost keep my interest but the glacial progression of the plot (the heroes are supposed to gather 7 gems to reawaken the true power of their mecha and save the world, and a third of the way in they haven't talked about this plot point at all again) and the moronic ways it keeps plot twists from occuring too early (one of the leads is actually a traitor serving the villain, and consistently demonstrates that they're an obvious traitor such as knowing an inordinate amount of information about the lead mecha, knowing and talking to all the bad guys constantly, and being sketchy in general but nobody ever figures it out even though one of the characters is smart enough to figure out any other plot twist) and also there's an old man who sexually harasses girls and doesn't do anything else really. It's also used the same enemy of the week for six episodes which is a little tiring. Basically it's on hold indefinitely unless I feel it calling me again.

I randomly ended up with a figure of that show's main mech back as a kid, kid me just thought he was a bootleg of Cell or something

# ¿ Mar 8, 2021 05:22

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Gaius Marius posted:

Why did they do that to my boy?

That's merely the first version, the trailers have shown it's going to get upgraded over the course of the story

# ¿ Mar 17, 2021 03:59

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Kinda like how Go Shogun: The Time Etranger doesn't feature the titular robot(or any robots for that matter) at all, had to take some enormous balls to make something like that as the movie tie-in for a toyetic Super Robot series

# ¿ Mar 23, 2021 20:40

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Been rewatching Big O, and man episode 18 was weird and not in the way that show usually is, also I get part of the joke is that Beck The Great RX-3 gets taken out effortlessly after it's elaborate transformation sequence and posing but it still was a huge letdown and a weak ending to a mediocre episode in a series that's otherwise pretty stellar

# ¿ Apr 10, 2021 02:22

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Ardeem posted:

We have very different senses of humor.

I've just never been fond of jokes centered around something that should be cool and impressive immediately being shown to be useless(it always just makes me feel they wasted both their time and especially that of the audience's), also everything about the Dome most of the episode takes place in just comes off as vaguely unsettling with everyone there being these deformed parodies of Japanese people who only speak gibberish and whose role and involvement in Beck's plot is never really explained(and we never really get a good idea of what exactly that plot was beyond the part with using a recording of Roger's voice to lure Big O into the ocean) and overall most of the episode just feels completely out of place in a very jarring way

# ¿ Apr 10, 2021 02:45

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

It'll probably make good SRW fodder though, that seems to often be the case with mediocre Mecha series

# ¿ Apr 10, 2021 21:21

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Gaius Marius posted:

Yeah you can really feel that, It's like they started out trying to balance it, realized the Politics and Drama was far more interesting and then had to wrap up all the World of C stuff in one episode.

I really think they shoudl've just gone with straight up AU's if they wanted to make CG sequels. The Series ended with such a bow that trying anything else would feel kind of weak.

Using Zero,Suzaku, and the C people as a type of template and creating a new world state around them to react to would've worked out better, and then they could get rid of flight units

An animated adaptation of Nightmare of Nunnaly would be fun

# ¿ Apr 11, 2021 00:48

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Plus it has another good thing going for it, it makes great SRW fodder

# ¿ Apr 17, 2021 11:18

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Dragonar is now fully subbed

# ¿ May 18, 2021 09:58

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Artum posted:

Might have to track that down, I was previously deflected by awful HK subs because the subtitles were saying magma cannon when the characters were literally saying railgun in english and it was too irritating.

The thread over on /m/ has a link to the new complete torrent they have for it, and to a MEGA folder they have for it as well

# ¿ May 18, 2021 19:23

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Gaius Marius posted:

Layzner or Dragonar what the better watch?

From what I've heard the former has better highs but worse lows plus it got canned so it has a meh ending

# ¿ May 21, 2021 07:26

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Kanos posted:

SRW does a fantastic job of papering over Layzner's faults, mostly by filling in the show's mostly empty narrative and bad characterizations with crossover stuff and other series. When all you really need to focus on is the Layzner flying around doing sick V-MAX stuff while Melos no You Ni plays it works well.

To be fair this describes how a lot of shows are when compared to how SRW uses them

# ¿ May 22, 2021 06:48

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

chiasaur11 posted:

I've talked a decent amount about old OVAs in this thread, I think.

I've seldom been complimentary about the one-shots, or at least, I've talked about how they don't really do much. It's not that 40-odd minutes is too little to get something good done, even ignoring episodes of shows. Garden of Words is amazing at 46 minutes, Zone of the Enders Idolo is a clean 55, and the first two Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou OVAs only hit 56 minutes combined. It's just more difficult, and so one-shots like Good Morning Althea just don't manage to make the grade. I've grown used to failure.

So hopefully it means something when I say "Ladius" makes Good Morning Althea look like Voices Of A Distant Star.

Ladius is, as far as I can tell, not based on anything, which here means it's based on everything. It's a very 1987 JRPG zeigeist kind of OVA, with elves and giant robots and genetic engineering and swords just kind of jammed together in the hopes it would make something interesting. The hero is Riot, a generic rear end in a top hat who's supposed to be cool. He fights a generic evil empire for control of five lenses that power a device that can do anything, and rescues a girl who's basically there just so there's a girl to rescue. (He also has a vaguely mentioned tragic backstory that's why he wants the ancient superweapon thing, but he doesn't seem to care terribly much.)

The action is dull, none of the characters develop, and the ending is the blandest kind of sequel hook. That is, the kind where you're just told "whoops, the protagonist didn't accomplish his goals. Maybe later!".

(A sequel hook that was never followed up on, naturally.)

For another phrase I've used a lot, I've seen worse. But I've seldom seen this... pointless. It was an anime that just felt like it was filling a niche in marketing, done to a reasonable standard of competence, then abandoned when it didn't catch on.

You also forgot that it has possibly the most boring opening in Mecha Anime history, when you're more boring than Gordian in that regard you know it's a stinker

# ¿ May 25, 2021 10:51

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Of the one shot Mecha OVA's my favorites are still probably Madox, Dragon's Heaven, and Cybernetics Guardian

# ¿ May 26, 2021 03:18

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

New Getter Robo has some issues but overall I feel it's the most consistently competent of the modern animated entries up to this point(Getter Robo Go is a 70's series made in the early 90's in the worst ways possible, Armageddon has a lot of messy bits due to the director change, Shin vs Neo is too short for it's own good and putting the Shin Getter Robo in so late in the OVA just murders it's pacing at the end)

But then I'll admit my opinions on Getter Robo as a franchise are kinda weird, like how I think Hien is the best of the manga entries, and that Shin Getter Robo(well and maybe a couple of the later made chapters he later added in for 90's rereleases of the original and G portions of the manga) is the only portion of the Ishikawa made manga that's actually any good(indeed personally I feel Go is incredibly overrated and is honestly pretty mediocre in most respects beyond mechanical and monster designs)

# ¿ Jun 25, 2021 09:22

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

chiasaur11 posted:

Fun fact?

Karaba had members of Gihren's Royal Guard join up, including a relative of the Zabis. (Probably the closest living heir, other than Mineva.)

Like most surviving members of the AEUG and Karaba, they went on to join the regular Federation forces.

Well them and however many Purus are still running around in the setting

# ¿ Jul 8, 2021 00:08

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Fivemarks posted:

I'm trying to get my Fiancee to watch more giant robots- she really loving loved GaoGaiGar and Argento Soma and Giant Gorg, and is a huge Transformers and Tezuka fan.

Shin Mazinger might be a good choice or maybe G Gundam

# ¿ Jul 9, 2021 03:10

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Fivemarks posted:

That'll just lead to endless arguments on if J-Decker is ruined by knowing that its director also did Boku no Pico, especially with some of the stuff in J-Decker.

On the other hand without Boku no Pico we wouldn't have the "Don't Watch An Anime Called Boku" audio and the world would be a poorer place

# ¿ Jul 9, 2021 07:15

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

I think Gaiking LODM is on TUBI

# ¿ Jul 16, 2021 19:42

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

The issue really is that the original question is wanting a Watsonian answer and everyone is giving Doylist answers

# ¿ Jul 20, 2021 05:12

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Droyer posted:

Don't really see how "The robots love him and want him there" is a Doylist answer tbh.

I meant more the replies about it being a kid's show

# ¿ Jul 20, 2021 05:54

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Honestly this is just reminding me of how much I do not like the Getter mangas by Ishikawa

# ¿ Aug 3, 2021 04:14

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Schwarzwald posted:

This isn't the case 100% of the time, but I think more shows take too much time getting to their point rather than too little.

Imagine a two cour Gridman. It probably would have been fine but it would absolutely have been a step down.

(For that matter, imagine a two cour Madoka, or Devilman Crybaby.)

I mean personally I'd rather Madoka and Devilman Crybaby didn't exist at all but that's just me

# ¿ Aug 6, 2021 00:20

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

ninjewtsu posted:

what kind of moral dispute do you have with madoka that makes you wish all the people who enjoy it didn't have it

An overly bleak and cynical deconstruction* of a genre that didn't need it that is nowhere even remotely as clever or competent as it thinks it is that actively harmed the entire medium of anime(and most other mediums that intersect with it) by encouraging everyone and their grandma to try and copy it even more incompetently, and only really succeeded because the people involved on the visual and musical side of things did an admittedly really good job that in turn made it very easy to merchandise for

Rinse and repeat my argument for Devilman Crybaby, though add to that my additional opinion that it's source material isn't particularly good either

*deconstruction is one of those concepts that over the years I've learned to actively despise as it almost never has good results cause most people who try to do that are people who think they're way more clever than they actually are

# ¿ Aug 6, 2021 02:37

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Actually I'm more than fine with Evangelion(well besides 3.33 that is)

# ¿ Aug 6, 2021 11:04

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Honestly at this point the most refreshing thing they could do with Devilman is something more in line with the original Toei anime than aping the manga again

# ¿ Aug 7, 2021 01:25