I mean it also has a lot of cool episodes, character writing, and sets up Amuro’s character better.
Zeta’s deal with Amuro is that he’s someone who was a literal child soldier, who distances himself from everyone he cared about. It’s pretty cool to watch the ways he’s a jerk in small ways in one turn into much bigger problems in Zeta.
The contrast between Amuro, who pushed people around him away constantly, and the people of white base who grew closer together is some subtle but effective writing.
And like a lot of characters in Gundam, the nuances of the characters is a lot of the appeal to me.
There’s a lot of appealing goofiness in the original show too, and great arcs like everything with Ramba Ral, and the rapid fire post-cancelation storytelling of the New Texas arc where everything starts happening at a billion miles at a time and stuff gets weird are really cool.
It’s totally cool if the animation is too rough, but it has a lot of great things about it.
05th MS Team sets up the political situation but the white base crew definitely isn’t, and that’s the appeal of it.
MSG to Zeta is a neat transition, because it does such a great job of conveying the feeling of how one war leads endlessly from the consequences of the previous, and new generations have to pay for the crimes of the old.
I’m not trying to make this a best Gundam fight thing, I just…think there’s a lot of merit to the original show and it’s one of my favorite anime series ever, but it’s definitely not going to connect with everyone and that’s ok.
The best thing about MS Gundam is how many people slap Amuro. That and how he kills his own dad in the first episode, cementing him as the worst protagonist in the UC timeline
OKAY IS IT JUST ME OR LIKE THE WAY THEY SAY LOOK OUT YOURE GONNA GET ‘CORRECTED’ (scare quote gundams) have like, really dark implications?? i dunno maybe i watched too much amish mafia
anyway i finished and ugh that wasnt an ending that was YOU HAVE TO WATCH ZZ NOW which annoys me but it airing immediately after makes it make SOME sense but still i like things that end so it bugged me. i looked up the novelization and compilation movie ending which were like opposite ends of the spectrum of optimistic/grim holy shit
yeah i know all this but its still really fun to hate on armaro and all of the good stuff about original gundam has been told to me so i dont have to watch it. the original series is impossible for me to watch anyway
god its boring and camilles child soldier/dead family trauma appeals to me more than amaro, who should have just stayed in the mansion since he fucked off and disappeared in zeta anyway. begone forever amaro you had your time in the sun
WHERE DID HE GO ANYWAY?? UGH I HATE AMARO i hope he buried his head in shame after that fucking mistake comment
the most recent season of aggretsuko is pretty good, i am glad they scaled back the weird pseudo-sci fi elements of the one before that, but i still feel like the show is better when it is about fixating on weird mundane aspects of daily life in an accounting firm.* the idol group subplot was cool but i just think it should be possible to explore the same themes while still having plots that most people can relate to on a level other than, like, metaphorically. like everyone can identify with someone in a shit job who doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life, but story about someone who becomes a famous rock star overnight but feels like that isn’t her true self either is a story that most people can only appreciate as, like, symbolism. i mean they are already talking animals.
also this seems like something that probably every tv show ever is offering, but at this point the show is really making me miss, like, going to restaurants and eating and talking at the same time. but i do think this is a sign that the tide has turned in the pandemic because i watched like 3 seasons of Midnight Diner a few months ago, which is explicitly and exclusively about talking to strangers in a restaurant, and didn’t feel the same sense of longing then.
*actually wait is that even what the business is? I know she is an accountant but I just remembered she works in the accounting department of another company. I don’t think they ever actually say what they company does. Anyway this show is better than The Office and I feel like it should canonically be part of the Bojack Horseman universe even though there are no humans and only animals in this world. I love it because when you see the animal you know exactly the kind of person it is based on. The character designs are incredible.
haven’t read the entire thing but the manga adaptation, gundam the origin might be a good way to get through the original gundam cause the pages in it are beautiful. also just cause it always gets brought up, the anime with the same exact title is a prequel all about char and has nothing to do with the manga? they just titled things confusingly for no reason
I was under the impression that The Origin anime is mostly a direct adaptation of an extended multivolume flashback added by Yas in the middle of his retelling of Gundam in the Origin manga (they’re co-directed by Yas, who wrote/drew the comic). I wish I liked the Origin OVAs, but I kind of really don’t. The tone’s all off and does the narrative world-narrowing thing so many prequels and sequels tend to do. Haven’t read the manga except for a few random chapters here and there, but really should one of these days. I liked the way Yas drew Amuro in '79 more than how he did in the 2010s.
I love every single thing about First Gundam. If there hadn’t been any more to the series/franchise, it would still be a tremendous achievement.
I wish I could endorse “just watch the movies” as a view since 3 2.5 hour movies are easier to swallow than 43 half-hour episodes, but when i tried to show them to my partner I came to really sensitively feel how much they jettison the rich character work in Gundam in favor of action that moves the plot more explicitly forward.
Not that I’m telling Daphaknee to watch it or anything–they know what they want. Just finding myself unable to resist offering my perspective as a Gundam devotee.
Aggretsuko is also very good, and I like it best when its story is much more quotidian, which it really hasn’t been since season one, but I still really liked season 3, so. I love Haida very much. It’s been interesting as it goes on to see how little use the show really has for the death metal device that’s supposedly its raison d’etre, even when it becomes a major plot point in the most recent season.
Yeah the movies lose a lot. I feel like…there’s a bunch of mecha of the week episodes from MGS that probably could be cut, but Ramba Ral in particular loses a lot from the movies.
And yeah just the meticulous piece by piece evolution of white base’s crew doesn’t come through either! I love the movies and their more competent animation, plus the fantastic new songs, but it just feels…so flat for everything but a few key plot points.
The Garden of Words is 45 minutes long, and is much stronger in the first half. The contemplative mood it builds is lovely, and the relationship between the two main characters is really pretty charming. Then it tries to have a Conflict and I kinda wish it hadn’t and just stayed a mood piece.
