#also gundam is hardly unique that it has bad things happening to people

[esperderek]

The Real Gundam?

I “love” how I’ve counted no less than four or five episodes of Witch From Mercury where you suddenly have assholes going “OH LOOK WEAKLINGS THE REAL GUNDAM STARTS HERE.” once it’s finished. That’s like basically a third of the series already aired, guys. The “Real Gundam” has been here for ages, and honestly the brutality on display on WfM is all the more potent in part because it’s been used sparingly and carefully. Like, SEEDs poppin’ people might be technically more graphic in terms of people dying, but it’s impossible to take seriously because it gets ridiculous.

I mean, that’s also ignoring the fact that Gundam has cast such a wide net that Gundam can literally be anything and in any tone. G Gundam was an over-the-top kung fu battle tournament where the main protagonist is comedically tortured with pizza in the first episode. Turn A Gundam spends plenty of time using its mech to help with laundry and watching a drunk idiot get into a barrel to float to Earth through space. The Build Fighter series is patterned after sports anime. Gundam Wing is a fever dream.

That’s not even getting into the stuff like SD Gundam, various video games (remember the JRPG on the PS2?), and other assorted media. 

And yet, somehow, it’s the Gundam series that stars a female protagonist who is in a relationship with another woman, a series that has attracted new viewers to a franchise that, lets face it, has kind of grown stagnant creatively since it retreated back into UC after Unicorn was a success. Gotta be gatekeeping, I guess.

And I mean, for fuck’s sakes, its not like Gundam is some hidden gem or long-lost series. It’s basically similar to goddamn Marvel or Final Fantasy or whatever. It’s mainstream, people pick it up from osmosis, they’re aware of its existence and that people die in it. 

[floatingcatacombs]

Top 10 Sexiest Mechas

12 Days of Aniblogging, Day 4

Mecha is one of the most intimidating genres for anime newcomers. The plots seem overly complex, the episode counts too long, and the giant robot war settings difficult to relate to. I think that all of these are valid concerns, but that mecha often gets a bad rap when most people don’t even want to try it. What both newcomers scared of the genre and hardcore mecha fans often fail to recognize, though, is that on top of the messages of the series, mechas always represent bodies. They are giant robotic representations of their pilots, the visions of their creators, collective psyches, and/or the work’s central themes. The degree of anthropomorphism, the level of abstraction with which the pilot controls the mecha, the colors and shape and size…all of these bodily elements directly tie back to the mecha’s role in the story. Of course, if mechas are bodies, then they are also vulnerable to sexualization. So let’s take all of that into consideration and chart the top 10 sexiest mechs! I’ll be keeping it capped at one entry per series, and will talk about all media, not just anime and manga.

 10. EQUUS from Concrete Revolutio

Starting off the list we’ve got a pretty weird pick, but I wanted to make sure that I shouted out this show. Concrete Revolutio is a kaiju and superhero-deconstructing delight, but when it comes to mechas it really plays things by ear and aims for the coolest setpieces possible. The protagonist’s mecha is essentially a Transformer that unfolds from a car into a centaur mecha. While the car body middle leaves a little to be desired, overall the design is a very good synthesis of Car and Horse. It’s certainly a better implementation of the centaur mecha design than say, Overwatch’s Orsia, who has a very visually muddled walking pattern because her legs are far too tiny and packed closely to each other. I’m especially a fan of the wheel joints on the knees and hooves on EQUUS, as well as the unicorn horn. Much as a centaur is an identity crisis between man and beast, Jiro is constantly in self-conflict over whether he can be a heroic protector of all superhumans or if he’s just a monster in disguise.

 9. Metal Gear Zeke from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Metal Gear Solid is one of the most iconic mecha series out there, so picking one specific Metal Gear over all the others proved challenging. The classic boxy REX, the smooth aquatic RAY, the upright Sahelanthropus, the arachnid EXCELSUS…there’s lots of good ones to pick from! It was a tough battle, but ultimately I had to go with ZEKE, the first named Metal Gear chronologically. Designwise, the railgun and Z-shaped legs are a nice touch, but it’s the story arc around ZEKE that interests me the most. A lesbian-sourced war crime machine, ZEKE was created by MSF, the nationless nation of soldiers run by Big Boss. It ended up being hijacked by terrorists from within and nearly caused a globally eradicating nuclear exchange, which is as good of a metaphor as they get for why deterrence is a fucked ideology. Accidents happen, stockpiles become more and more sunk costs, and sometimes anime girl triple agents infiltrate your military base and steal your cool robot.

8. Char’s Zaku II from Mobile Suit Gundam

Confession time: I haven’t actually seen any Gundam. I’m more of a Macross gal myself. But I felt like not having any Gundam on this list would be like ignoring Star Wars on a space opera list. Anyways, Char seems like one of the most awful bastard characters of any series ever, so I’m happy to use a spot on this listicle for his mecha. The Zaku II is infamous for being “three times as fast” as its generic counterparts despite its only difference being its red paint, but c’mon – that’s Char’s absolute moral purity buffing his ship. You deserve that stat buff if you’ve Never Betrayed Anyone In Your Entire Life, Ever.

7. Deus Ex Machina from Promare

--Promare spoilers ahead--

Promare ends, as all Trigger works should, with a whole lot of Act 3 Bullshit. Plot twist after plot twist until all of the themes dangled at in the first half no longer matter, with nonstop fighting getting more ridiculous by the second. At our protagonist’s darkest moment, their problems get handwaved away and they are handed a deus ex machina of a mecha literally known as….Deus Ex Machina. A fusion of Lio’s jet black triangle armor and Galo’s knightly firefighter mecha, the design of this mecha represents their connection and understanding of each other. Yes, of course they’re gay. Why else would it be glistening in rainbow colors?

6. Terminus typeR909 from Eureka Seven

Another mecha anime I’ve hardly seen.. but one that I definitely want to get around to! Eureka Seven just seems like a genuinely delightful time, and I’m a sucker for romance-based mecha shows as well. Anyways, the piloted mechas in Eureka Seven are named after Roland drum machines, with the typeR909 is named after the classic TR-909. They’re nicely proportioned and there’s something sweet about the cutesy magenta robot of the fleet being piloted by a 30-year old man. I guess I’m just a sucker for the gentle undoing of gendered associations and music gear.

5. Eva Unit-01 from Nylon Genesect Evangelical

All of the Eva units are quite tall and bestial and wonderful, but it’s Eva-01 in particular that really stands out due to its conspicuous tendency to disobey its pilot and go berserk, fully unhinging its jaw. NGE takes the “mechs as bodies” thing pretty damn seriously, but throws in the delightful wrench of “what if it’s not your body that’s being represented?”

4. VF-1 Valkyrie from Macross

Macross was the first popular mecha series to utilize transforming robots. What makes Valkyries so sexy is that they’re not just limited to Spaceship and Gundam forms – they have an intermediary form. In GERWALK mode, the cockpit remains exposed having not folded into the mecha headpiece yet, and the wings are still popped out. However, the Valkyire has sprouted its arms and legs already, making it capable of landing, walking on the ground, and wielding a gun pod as a rifle.  It’s kind of adorable! Stuffed to the brim with weapons and tech, Valkyries are the perfect blend of stylized and realistic robots. The Itano Circus will live on forever in our hearts as the go-to tactic when you have plenty of talent on your animation team and your mechas are armed with way too many missiles.

3. Jehuty from Zone of the Enders

While the VF-1 mecha is sexy because of its utility and folding form, the Orbital Frames of Zone of the Enders are sexy because…they’re designed with a sexual angle. They’re famous for their literal cock pits, but combined with their broad shoulders, slim hourglass waists, and pronounced thighs, they exude a strong androgynous energy. Jehuty is one of the most recognizable frames simply by virtue of being the playable mecha, but definitely one of the hornier ones too. Case in point: at the end of Zone of the Enders 2, it receives an upgrade after absorbing its sister frame to become Naked Jehuty, a stripped-down but ridiculously powerful mecha with gold sections emulating bare skin. Yoji Shinkawa’s brain is simply too big.

 2. Bohrok Pahrak

Look, I can’t just not include any Bionicle on this list. They’re some of the most formative lil’ robots to me. But which one is the sexiest? That’s not really something I’ve had to consider before. While some of the titan sets such as Roodaka and Axonn have a certain sexual angle to them, it feels contrived, carrying the same kind of creepiness as horny OC designs. The Great Spirit Robot might be the super robot of the series, but its design is rather barebones and reminds me too much of The Iron Giant. So I ultimately settled on the Bohrok, the hivemind villains from 2002’s story. While most Bionicle are a combination of biological and robotic, the Bohrok are strictly mechanical – and piloted by the masklike Krana, making them mechas! You really shouldn’t fuck the Bohrok, but there’s just something so perfect about their design. They’ve got it all – not only transformability and an orb design, but transformability into an orb design. Their hunched-over stature reminds me of GERWALK Valkyries – it’s cute and functional! As for why Pahrak in particular, well, the shields it wields are vibrators. Just ignore the fact that they’re powerful enough to seismically level mountains, and you’ll be set.

1. The Entirety of Heaven Will Be Mine

You can tell that Aevee Bee and Mia Schwartz did their homework for Heaven Will Be Mine. They understand better than anyone else that a mecha is a representation of the pilot’s psyche and body, and that damage to the mecha is indistinguishable from that to the pilot. This is reinforced by the mechas being referred to as Ship-Selves – they are literally an extension of oneself more than anything else. By looking at a ship-self, you can almost immediately infer what kind of person the pilot is, what her position in bed is, and what her fetishes are. The layer of abstraction between pilot and mecha ranges from wafer-thin to nonexistent depending on the character. The side effect of this is that since HWBM is about a bunch of gay girls in space having sloppy ideologically charged hookups, the mechas have to be designed just as sexually as everything else. And by god did they deliver on that front. Some of the ship-selves, such as Mare Crisium and String of Pearls, take clear direct inspiration from Zone of the Enders frames. The Krun Macula takes some inspiration from Char’s Zaku II in terms of color and shape, but its face chimes give it a uniquely divine and powerful feeling with no mecha parallel. This perfectly mirrors Pluto’s powerlevel advantage over all of the other pilots, and her humanoid-but-not-quite ship-self perfectly represents her faction’s goals. On the other hand, the assimilationist Memorial Foundation believes in ending the space program and grounding all ship-selves to prevent the splintering of humanity. Their mission manifests literally in that each member of the faction wears some form of bondage gear to represent their shackles to the Earth, and even their Ship-Self has a spreader bar. Heaven Will Be Mine is ridiculously horny, and it has the vision, design, storytelling, music, and everything else to back it up. Truly, the best of all worlds. And if anyone who worked on the game is reading this post.,.thanks.

[mageinabarrel]

This serves as your official notice: I have not seen Neon Genesis Evangelion. Now you can stop being surprised by that fact.

No matter how many people I tell that I haven’t seen Eva, it seems there are always more who remain who don’t yet no. It’s an amusing trend; after all, not having seen something is hardly a fact, but when it comes to Eva it seems all bets are off. Which is sort of the point of this post. While more pronounced with Evangelion because of the impact it had on the anime industry and many fans, there’s a handful of anime out there (particularly from the mid-90s to early 2000s) that people just seem to expect me to have seen. And I get it—somehow I’ve become a reasonably prominent voice in this community, and when that happens or when you’ve just been around for a while people assume you’ve seen the Big Shows.

But I haven’t seen Neon Genesis Evangelion and I don’t intend to do so until the time for me to watch it comes. Let me explain.

Back when I was first getting into anime, I watched a lot of stuff just to watch it. I sat through the entirety of things like Magical Warfare and Wizard Barristers just because they were there to be watched. Everything was new, keeping up with simulcasts was exciting (I remember stalking Crunchyroll’s front page constantly waiting for the next new episode of anything), and it felt there was no show I would ever drop because even the bad ones were anime! With an exclamation point!

I’m not the same kind of anime fan as I was then, which is perhaps an obvious thing to say, but it’s only been recently that I’ve realized how the way I engage with anime and think about engaging with anime has changed. To put it simply, I think I’ve become a better curator of my own tastes. On the whole, I don’t think the things I want from anime have changed a whole lot since I first started watching. Sure, there have been some genres and tropes and other elements that I’ve come to like that I didn’t before, but I’d argue that things like “liking anime idols” are really just a natural extension of a predisposition I always had—it just found a new expression in that specific fondness.

But what is different about my tastes now is that I’m more aware of them. I know that I like both personal character dramas and sweeping space operas, that I find particular compelling spiritual resonances in the ideas idol anime present, and that shows with particularly genuine expressions of romantic love tend to really get to me. And you know what? Those things I most value aren’t always found in the established classics? Or, even if they are, I might need some time to fully appreciate them. There’s no way I would have liked SDF Macross had I tried to watch it when I first got into anime. Heck, I probably wouldn’t have even cared to try it! And Gunbuster I started and dropped once before watching all the way through!

And Gunbuster got me to watch Diebuster, which motivated me to give FLCL another try, which—even though I didn’t really care for it—moved me a step closer to actually watching Evangelion. I don’t know if I’ve ever really thought about my anime watching as a progression until recently, at least not in deliberate terms, but that’s really what it is. As is so well known, anime is a medium with a densely interconnected history—and somehow my own history has become interwoven within it.

But I should say that just because Gunbuster, Diebuster, and FLCL are all “Golden Era Gainax” shows that all point to Eva in someway doesn’t mean that the overall arc of what I’m doing as an anime watcher is so simply. I wanted to watch Diebuster, so I watched Gunbuster first. And then I wanted to watch FLCL because it was also directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki, who I’d heard somewhere (although I don’t know if it’s true) was something of an influence on Rie Matsumoto’s style.

And another part of why I want to watch Eva is because I want to watch RahXephon, which I want to watch because I’ve come to like robot shows and because it’s part of an ongoing project I have to see all of studio BONES’ anime. 

I’ll stop indulging myself in tracing paths of interests now, but the point is that I stand on this gigantic web of anime, following traces of logic and personal taste and academic interest and straight-up whims in a trail that probably looks completely random from the outside.

But it makes perfect sense to me. And more than that, it means something to me.

More specifically, it means that I’m creating meaning out of a series of ephemeral experiences. I watch a show, and finish it, and it disappears, in a way. I can’t watch something for the first time again (although rewatching it may become its own unique dot on the map).

All this feeds into why intentionality has become a larger part of my anime watching experience as of late. The proliferation of anime simulcasting is great, but I’m not sure it’s great for those of us who are watching. It lends itself, I feel, far too easily to only engaging with things because they are there to be engaged with it. The constant rush of the new begets a near-uncontrollable appetite for mindless consumption. Which is fine, I guess. Maybe? Or not. In strictly personal terms, it’s no longer something I want from anime.

When Macross Delta came out, it was a big deal for me. At the time, I had been diving into Macross as a whole (watching the entirety of SDF with a good friend, marathoning all of Plus in a single night, experiencing Frontier) and it had been a series of events for me, memorable points in my anime-watching life. Delta‘s announcement was an absolute thrill, because for the first time ever I was going to be there for the inception and broadcast of a new Macross series. I think for a lot of people Delta was just another seasonal anime, but I didn’t want it to be that, and I didn’t treat it that way.

Does that make sense? Delta ultimately wasn’t exactly the Macross I wanted it to be, but it was still a chance to be there where the Valkyrie took off, as it were. To me, that was something special.

So maybe it’s only for my own self-satisfaction or justification of the time I spend on this hobby, but I think the ability to generate meaning out of the event of watching, it’s something worthwhile. Something special. And it’s something that I think can easily get lost in the turmoil of the weekly churn. Especially with the industry pumping out the insane number of shows each season it is, and especially when the impulse to keep up just to keep up takes over. We can watch, watch, watch, watch, and then one season ends and another beings and even the best stuff of each season quickly evaporates in our consciousness.

I’ve always been given to sentimentality, so perhaps this isn’t much of a philosophical stretch for me, but… I don’t want that. I’m all for watching anime just because it’s fun to watch, but I want to do so because I want to do so. I want to have the chance to point at a show and say, “It’s you. What I want from you is something only you can do.” And I want that anime to blush and say, “M-me, senpai? Something… only I can do?” And I’ll kabedon that hapless show, look deep into its eyes, and reply, “That’s right.” My Little Seasonal Anime Can’t Be This Cute!

And it’s not that I expect every anime I watch to sit on my heart for years to come. I have a great capacity to love shows, but I’m not that loose with my feelings of deep affection. It’s more that I simply expect every anime I watch to be more than just “that show.”

I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but maybe one way of understanding is a shift in thinking from considering shows as self-contained, and instead seeing them in the grander context of the habit of watching anime—as “events.”

I’ve written about these kinds of shows in the past. Glasslip, Gundam Reconguista in G, and Hand Shakers are each shows that I’ve valued because I decided I was going to make something out of watching them and for their experiential uniqueness. I’ve been wondering if this means that I’ve turned into a fan who is primarily interested in watching things that are “original,” but I don’t think that’s quite it. Setting aside the fact that everything is derivative, this really isn’t just about the shows themselves. It’s about watching the shows. It’s about the way that I personally imbue the act of watching with meaning.

Which isn’t to say the shows themselves don’t matter. I have no intention of having a love affair with Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor. I have standards. But if the honeymoon of just being able to watch anime because it’s anime is over, then I suppose I feel I’ve decided for myself to enter into a new stage.

And someday, I’ll watch Neon Genesis Evangelion. Really.

  This serves as your official notice: I have not seen Neon Genesis Evangelion. Now you can stop being surprised by that fact. This serves as your official notice: I have not seen Neon Genesis Evangelion. Now you can stop being surprised by that fact.