Mecha anime & manga - Big robots. Other than Gundam.

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Episode 20:
"Meteors fell on Earth two years ago! The first one fell on New York."
Okay, how much of this show is recycled from the Gunboy concepts? Apparently that was meant to be about a family of refugees traveling another galaxy, too.

coughcoughVIFAMcoughcough

 

[Trollblade69]

coughcoughVIFAMcoughcough

Explain.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Explain.

iirc Vifam is basically built off the scraps left on the floor from the Two Years Vacation / family of refugees travelling concept that didn't get used for Gundam
not a bad show, does a good job of showing the cast learning to work the robots, not unlike early Toeizinger when Kouji has no fucking clue what he's doing

 

[Trollblade69]

24 episodes into Ideon. So much grappling action, and I'm wondering how much of it is because The Empire Strikes Back had just come out the same time as this show started airing.

 

[Space Police]

24 episodes into Ideon. So much grappling action, and I'm wondering how much of it is because The Empire Strikes Back had just come out the same time as this show started airing.

When they get to the moon, the fights are ripoffs of the Trench Run. I was personally amused by that.

 

[Trollblade69]

29 episodes. They finally show the Ideon Gun 28 episodes into the show, Earth now hates the Solo Ship for about the same reasons as the Buff Clan do, the Ide's power gets pretty demonstably shown to be a protective instinct to any who benefit from it that grows stronger as the need grows more dire (or is maybe just powered by presence of little kids), and Gije, being beaten by the Ideon and shunned by his people for it time after time, has decided "If you can't beat em, join em" and sneaks aboard the Solo Ship after saving Sheryl's life.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

separated at birth?

 

[Trollblade69]

Ideon episode 34.
Things have finally been straightened out in terms of how Ide works for both audience and main cast, and thus I've managed to identify a big inspiration point for Evangelion.
The way Ide works isn't simply "get stronger as the need arises", but more like a pseudo-parental protective instinct to fight on behalf of those it believes are worth defending, particularly if they're innocent souls - it cares more about the lives of those in its care than for its own self-preservation, which is probably why the Solo Ship's feats haven't been nearly as drastic as the Ideon's. Cosmo's under immense emotional anguish, and the Ideon launches an Itano Circus. Piper Lou cries in pain, and it shoots swords of light from its hands. Buff Clan kills a few newborn worm monsters, it goes berserk and drags a battleship against a cave ceiling while Shinesparking.
Pretty well explains how the Evas work - it's not just that they won't move without a pilot with deep familial ties to whoever fed their soul to the man-machine, but because it sees the pilot as their child, the Eva sees no other way to preserve their actively endangered life but to kill whatever's in front of them.

Anyway, that's gotten me wondering where the hell I can find Evangelion's OST.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Pretty well explains how the Evas work - it's not just that they won't move without a pilot with deep familial ties to whoever fed their soul to the man-machine, but because it sees the pilot as their child, the Eva sees no other way to preserve their actively endangered life but to kill whatever's in front of them.

iirc that's more if you want it to berserk in the right direction, otherwise it's mostly a matter of jamming the kid into your Ultraman clone's spinal column to override the central nervous system

 

[Trollblade69]

Finished TV.
The last episode of the show is pretty blatantly a hasty wrap-up, especially the last couple minutes where the Ide goes "Screw this, show's over, everybody's scattering through the cosmos". Though it is hilarious to see that Tomino's had a fixation on "magic fetus saves the day" from very early on. How the hell he got away with this ending is beyond me, though I assume it could be due to everyone on staff and sponsorship having no clue what abortion is and think fetuses are just "children so innocent, they haven't even committed the sin of birth yet".
Anyway, time to start on Be Invoked...which starts by showing Kitty Kitten's severed head flying across the screen not even 150 seconds in. Ain't that a tone-setter.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Finished TV.
The last episode of the show is pretty blatantly a hasty wrap-up, especially the last couple minutes where the Ide goes "Screw this, show's over, everybody's scattering through the cosmos". Though it is hilarious to see that Tomino's had a fixation on "magic fetus saves the day" from very early on. How the hell he got away with this ending is beyond me, though I assume it could be due to everyone on staff and sponsorship having no clue what abortion is and think fetuses are just "children so innocent, they haven't even committed the sin of birth yet".
Anyway, time to start on Be Invoked...which starts by showing Kitty Kitten's severed head flying across the screen not even 150 seconds in. Ain't that a tone-setter.

iirc the commercials that ran with the last ep were on nico for a while, like a Tetsujin-28 big wheels and a cool pencil box

 

[Trollblade69]

And Be Invoked finished.
Approximately 90 minutes of death, destruction, despair, and a deranged belief that the life of one unborn baby is worth more than the entire rest of the universe's sapient life (an 80s sci-fi story is really fucking trad, big shocker), and then the last 10 minutes are a curtain call for as many people as the show can remember as they float through the afterlife. I feel kinda decieved - the expectation I came into this with was that the movie ends with the entire goddamn universe being vaporized with the Ideon's destruction. It's more like the Gando Rowa blows up firing on the good guys, the Ideon and Solo Ship blow the hell up from being hit with the force of a supernova and take the whole damn Jupiter Sphere along with them, but then all the souls of everyone who died fighting over Ide fly back to an Earth devoid of life where I guess they'll reincarnate somehow?

There's also a few things I can identify from other Tomino stuff. The red crosses in Be Invoked that eventually point at Doba reminds me of that "evil intent" stuff I've heard the Gundam novelization talks about, and it may also be where the idea of The O's red cross in Zeta: A New Translation came from. There's the usual themes of "bushido-bound warriors refuse to make reconciliations or accept mutual grief and just want to kill and keep killing forever, and this is why all of humanity is hellbound" stuff that came up in Dunbine, Victory and Turn A's Black History. But most amusing is how a Buff Clan officer of the week is engaged to an idol singer and dancer named "Lady Miya", as there's a similar "Lady Meeya" in Overman King Gainer two decades later.

I don't think they ever clearly explained what the meteors were, though. Unless the idea really is some deranged moral absolutism about how to protect the innocent, the Ide must vent its power by eradicating the impure, or perhaps that it just chucks death balls at humanity out of active malice for the unrighteous. See, this is the kind of moral derangement that makes me think Tomino is at least partially responsible for Aum Shinrikyo.

 

[Space Police]

It's more like the Gando Rowa blows up firing on the good guys, the Ideon and Solo Ship blow the hell up from being hit with the force of a supernova and take the whole damn Jupiter Sphere along with them, but then all the souls of everyone who died fighting over Ide fly back to an Earth devoid of life where I guess they'll reincarnate somehow?

You may enjoy Getter Robo Armageddon, then. It has a more extreme ending than Be Invoked IMO, but it's also bittersweet.

I don't think they ever clearly explained what the meteors were, though. Unless the idea really is some deranged moral absolutism about how to protect the innocent, the Ide must vent its power by eradicating the impure, or perhaps that it just chucks death balls at humanity out of active malice for the unrighteous. See, this is the kind of moral derangement that makes me think Tomino is at least partially responsible for Aum Shinrikyo.

They were just more destruction to make a fresh slate. I wouldn't say this is responsible for Aum Shinrikyo; these are all standard Buddhist/spiritual apocalypse ideas that anime has been using since Devilman.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

looks like Nico version is down but youtube can show you the ads that ran during the last episode of Ideon

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

big spoilers for Xabungle in the video

because obviously the not Gundam thread still can't live without the bald wizard for thirty eight seconds
new "so... we're just making sure we can CG bullshit up this IP, like, in case somebody with investment money cares, uh, I mean... the fans and... uhh... yeah. In case somebody with investment money cares" is Xabungle
pretty nice
my big mind=blown was realizing that Xabungle was pulling Civil War era uniforms maybe because F Troop

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

Crossposting but it is the birthday of these two

 

[Space Police]

big spoilers for Xabungle in the video
https://youtube.com/watch?v=b74tG79Dr94because obviously the not Gundam thread still can't live without the bald wizard for thirty eight seconds
new "so... we're just making sure we can CG bullshit up this IP, like, in case somebody with investment money cares, uh, I mean... the fans and... uhh... yeah. In case somebody with investment money cares" is Xabungle
pretty nice
my big mind=blown was realizing that Xabungle was pulling Civil War era uniforms maybe because F Troop

Hopefully this gets Xabungle in the next SRW. The uniforms reminded me more of the blue Lego cowboys than anything else.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Hopefully this gets Xabungle in the next SRW. The uniforms reminded me more of the blue Lego cowboys than anything else.

I think they're F-Troop
iirc there's decent evidence it aired in Japan

 

[Trollblade69]

because obviously the not Gundam thread still can't live without the bald wizard for thirty eight seconds

I've started on Baldios now, so maybe it'll be a bit less Gundam thread in here for the rest of the month.

6 episodes in, and man I just can't help but like these characters with all their melodrama and passion. I'm also curious as to where the "use pain to resist mental attacks" trope came from, since that played a big role in the episode I just watched and I couldn't help but be reminded of Sasuke vs Orochimaru from Naruto.

 

[Registration]

Besides Macross Zero, Delta, Gargantia, is there any mecha series that have a tropical setting/vibe?