#minovsky

[kenpiercemedia]

Anime NYC and Japan Society Announces First-Ever American Manga Awards

The Press Release: The 2024 American Manga Awards will be the first-ever awards program honoring manga: manga creators, great manga stories, and the publishing professionals who make it possible for readers in US/Canada to discover and enjoy these amazing characters and stories in English. It will culminate in a ceremony and reception hosted by author and translator Matt Alt and honor the works…

[quattroqunt]

prototypes from Stampede: The Story of Professor Minovsky

[journeytojaburo]

Ah I understand everything now (doesn't get it all)

[weirdunclegamer]

Time for another 30MM boi I am happy with! With more then one picture even!

We goin for a chonky short boi this time. Originally I had used four (yes FOUR) of those three-piece shields to give this orange guy a huge set of shield wings. An idea I've had for a long time, and I really like... but it didn't end up really working out on him like I hoped. So I took him to the desk, tore off the backpack, and started the good ol' process of fiddling.

I recommend the 30MM line to people who like tinkering with things. It's not a totally blank canvas like generic lego blocks can be, but its also pretty open ended thanks to the modular nature of the line's design. So if you liked, say, going through different body/weapon combinations in oh I dunno Armored Core or something, it feels a lot like that when doing the most typical level of customizing with this line.

Oh also Bandai may have announced that their AC6 model kits are actually gonna be part of the 30MM line and not like, the regular HG line of gundams or something so like... not saying my comparing 30MM to AC since the line existed was objectively correct but also it was totally objectively correct.

Melee weapons with guns either strapped to them or built into them are GOAT, btw, and always the correct choice. Even if I clearly did connect the guns both upside down and by the magazine/clip to the super sized blade.

[heather-m-quigley]

i could not remember where this happened without help, i narrowed it down to either tomo-chan is a girl or bofuri s1. turned out it was the additional time for blue lock 20

if you don't know, that was a gundam reference.

i wouldn't have caught it either if i didn't get into old school gundam like a month before this episode aired. 😅

[foxgirlbutt]

It feels fitting to us that the Calibarn is the first gunpla we've made that's drawn blood. It's easily the most bloodthirsty mobile suit we've built. Epyon is probably second.

Our friend got us a hyaku shiki for our birthday, and we're gonna start it tomorrow, but that kit wants a different bodily fluid

[crabcrabcrabmeat]

Newtype of ghosting 😔

[elfcow]

The really funny thing about AC6 is it does a fantastic job in-universe of justifying its CQC Core Theory ie why are we fighting in giant punchy robots when we could be sniping each other from around the curvature of the planet

For the first 3 chapters of the game, if any fight escalates more than a few hundred meters above the surface the PCA says

"I don't care who started it," and glasses everyone from orbit

The 4th chapter is an entirely-self contained dungeon dive, no air support or artillery allowed

And the final chapter not only goes off the rails in general but for some missions has some conventional warfare going on in the background while you complete specific missions that call for fast punchy robot

It's really well done and feels a lot more fleshed out than "Minovsky Particles," although there's nothing wrong with a simple solution in some stories.

I just really enjoy how it feels like the focal point of ACs develops organically from the world itself and the way conflict develops in this universe

[gremoria411]

My it sure is nice how, because I clearly tag things, tumblr has no problem with finding my old posts, isn’t it?

Sure is great when you want to return to an old topic, you can easily reference an older post, isn’t it?

Anyway, I was thinking about some of my favourite mobile suits recently, and more specifically how they fight.

The Sinanju and Sinanju Stein (strictly speaking that’s unit 2 above, but the Sinanju Stein Unit 1 only shows up physically once anyways, so I tend to conflate the two) from Universal Century, and the Gundams Bael and Zepar from Post Disaster. The Bael and Sinanju’s are thematically and functionally similar, if not so much visually, since they’re piloted by the series resident Char Clones, Full Frontal and Mcgillis Fareed respectively, and thus have a similar fighting style - high mobility and very flashy, typically dodging with minimal effort and taking out scores of foes near-effortlessly. The Sinanju Stein (Unit 2) certainly could fight like that, but its pilot Zoltan Akkanekan is…… not in a great place mentally, and as such he tends to be more brutish, always pushing the attack and closing ranks with his enemy very quickly (we only see him fight once in the Sinanju Stein before it docks with the Neo Zeong II, so it’s possible that his aggression is more due to the enemy being a Gundam, as opposed to any real strategy). The Gundam Zepar we have even less information on, but since we know both that it doesn’t have any ranged weaponry, and that most of the emphasis seems to be on the shield, we can guess it would want to get close fairly quickly, and would be well-prepared for a reprisal.

And this reminded me of something I mentioned previously when discussing non-Gundam Mecha series - I like when we know the “thesis” of the mecha. I like when we know why they were built and what the in-universe theory was in their construction (Or at the very least, we can guess, as with The Big O). It makes the world feel realer to me, and don’t get me wrong, I love giant robots, but it feels wonderfully cohesive when there’s an in-universe justification. I don’t typically forget the out-of-universe justification “to sell toys” but it feels less “Johnson, quarterly earnings aren’t looking good, make a property we can merchandise things out of” and more “Hey, this guy’s got an idea for a cool show about robots, maybe there’ll be a market for cool toys there?”.

Weird tangent on the relationship between entertainment and merchandising aside, I like Universal Century because it’s got a strong “thesis” - mobile suits were designed primarily as an anti-ship weapon that would engage at visual range, due to the effects of Minovsky particles rendering most long-range weapons difficult to aim. They’re fast, and carry handheld weaponry both for ease of use, maintenance and operability and they’re an extension of “armoured space suits”. There’s even the military angle of “a secret weapon to to win us the war against a foe that could beat us conventionally”, and I’d assumed that, with a few exceptions like Wing and G Gundam, most of Gundam followed that same thesis.

However, I realised that’s perhaps not quite true with Iron-Blooded Orphans (or at least it’d be interesting to consider why it might not be true). The above graph is an illustration of the breakdown of forces used in the calamity war, and how they were deployed depending on the field. Quote: The unit formation deployed against the mobile armors depended on where the battlefield was. On Earth and Mars, the Gundam Frames served as the main fighting units, and they destroyed the mobile armors one by one with assistance from other mobile suits and supporting units. In space, the Dáinsleifs were used as the main weapon, and were assisted by mobile suits, including Gundam Frames, and other supporting units. On the Moon, mobile suit teams like the one deployed on Earth and Mars were also used in addition to the aforementioned use of the Dáinsleif.

So I got to wondering if Post Disaster (or I guess Current Disaster) mobile suits had a different development ethos, since they were deployed largely terrestrially.

Mobile suits were only used during the Middle and Late stages of the war, which implies they were developed during it. The above Rodi and Hexa Frames were developed first, with the Gundam And Valkyrja Frames following in the later stages of the War. It’s also stated that, quote: The beginning of the Calamity War was the result of AI-equipped, self-sustaining weapon systems going out of control. Before the outbreak of the Calamity War, automated machinery was a symbol of wealth and abundance, and humans were actively promoting the automation of wars. With the risk of losing valuable soldiers reduced as the weapons were AI operated, and the introduction of the semi-permanent Ahab Reactor as a power source, mobile armors became the ideal weapon that can fight efficiently and persistently. So, it’s possible that after the Mobile Armours were unleashed, there was a rush to adapt previously autonomous weaponry into something human-controlled, with the Rodi and Hexa Frames representing these early steps. Furthermore, it’s stated that Mobile Armours acquired Nanolaminate Armour, so beam weaponry would presumably have been used in the early stages of the war.

So, could Mobile Suits in IBO be autonomous weaponry adapted for human use, as opposed to the Universal Century’s “Armoured Space Suits” line of thinking? We know that Alaya-Vijinana works best with forms closer to the human form - hence the Gundam Frames being constructed as close to the human form as possible. Another angle might be that of upsized Knights, here to slay the mechanical monsters that threaten humanity.

So it’s an interesting angle compared between the series - in one, mobile suits were built for wars in space, fought between nations. In the other, mobile suits were built to be used terrestrially, in response the threat of extinction by mechanical foes humanity unwittingly unleashed upon itself.

(Also, it’s interesting to look at how common mobile armours and automated weaponry were in the pre-post disaster setting, since I just imagine Treize Kushrenada from Gundam Wing being distinctly unhappy)

[toskarin]

when it comes to the abilities of the mecha itself, do you lean more towards the "it has really big guns" end or the "yeah this can alter space at a fundamental level" end

this is kind of a tricky question, because on paper I lean really hard towards the former (with plenty of allowance for whatever the setting's minovsky conceit is) but I also really enjoy when willpower is quantified as Something The Mecha Can Amplify

Hanachirasu, the Narahara vn, kind of lays out what I like to see most: a character's skill, if pushed to the absolute limit, edges up against magic and gives them a secret technique. I generally write my own mecha stuff with this in mind

and of course, to break that even further, "a weird guy can do something strange that seems otherwise impossible in the setting for reasons that are never elaborated" is near and dear to me as a trope. if everyone can shoot fireballs, it's not special, but if a guy walks in and inexplicably can light things on fire by touching them, I can just accept that as something incredibly hype

[thesentdowngirl]

Because of the minovsky particles

[chantilly8]

I got so many damn zeon crosses

Theyre falling off my pockets

No minovsky in the galaxy

Prevents hoes from flocking to me

[quattroqunt]

That doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about minovsky particles to dispute it

from gundam-san

[journeytojaburo]

What on earth do they have down in white base's engines that they need to decontaminate from

[sunshinemoonrx]

Char making more and more absurd claims about Minovsky Particles because he doesn't know what they are and is hoping eventually someone will correct him, versus Garma who also doesn't know what Minovsky Particles are nodding along and agreeing with everything he says to try and learn

[heather-m-quigley]