![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerNot that long, all things considered, after I'd finished watching my way through "fansubs" of the very first Mobile Suit Gundam series (right when the English-only release of it was being officially streamed online), Bandai Entertainment did get around to a bilingual release of it, not that long before it was shut down. It probably didn't make up for that, but I did get the DVDs (even as I was aware how glass-half-empty types could still lament how a standalone and poorly animated episode was still left out and the first half of the series had a trailer for Turn A Gundam, a now well-received "alternative universe" series made two decades after the original). I am aware of the comments about the movie compilations sprucing up the animation, taking out the stranger pieces of equipment, and introducing an important theme sooner, and they were where I managed to start, renting the original subtitled videocassettes back when the franchise had just made it over here at last. At the same time, sort of sensing self-contained chunks of story succeeding one another in the movies can make them feel somewhat stretched out to me around the midway point, and that's long raised my interest in the original series in a "six of one, half dozen of the other" sort of way.
I remember someone lamenting how Neon Genesis Evangelion got over here before fans really had a sense of the "giant robot" anime it had its own take on (in the context of complaining about certain off-key works of fanfiction), and I suppose I wonder what the "giant robot" anime that just preceded Gundam in the late 1970s would be like viewed one after another. "Making the mecha more mass-produced" is one thing, having unenthusiastic characters is another, and yet I also wonder if there was an unprecedented shift "from 'superheroes' to 'soldiers.'" Of course, recently having watched the first Lupin the Third series does bring the thought of too-large steps having to pay a first price to mind.
"After the apocalypse" did show up in the Gundam alternative universes, but on watching the series I began to think there's a dose of apocalypse in the original series, with the Earth littered with wrecked cities, run-down villages, shattered bridges, and human flotsam. In thinking about that, though, I began to contemplate the opening narration of the early episodes and its claim half of humanity had died in the war already. I don't know any more about what would "really" happen with that than the creators did, but perhaps seeming to downplay that idea in later series was a way to keep from "having" to delve into it.
This first time though a tale now oft-told, I got to wondering over the course of the series if some things about the antagonist Char "could" have been developed further to shake an impression they didn't change the course of the series. At the same time, though, I could also imagine being told "this is realistic; things can be sort of messy like that." This, I'm afraid, just makes me that much more aware of how I don't engage with mecha fandom very much because it points out how I like some series others are quick to criticise and don't quite like other series many hold up.
As I prepared myself to watch this first series, I did contemplate spending more of this year heading straight on to the movies, and then to Zeta Gundam, and on through as much of the Universal Century as I could manage. The thought that Gundam Unicorn isn't quite finished yet did sneak up on me, though, and in the end I opened up My-Otome instead. I suppose I couldn't quite sense the feeling talked about by others about My-HiME being a Gundam series in disguise, but then again I watched Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha not quite certain if it was a mecha series in disguise either. In any case, I'm awaiting the first volume of Gundam: The Origin (and also dug out my copies of the old Del Rey release of the Gundam novels, which start by altering the starting points of the characters and the setting, and go from there...)
I remember someone lamenting how Neon Genesis Evangelion got over here before fans really had a sense of the "giant robot" anime it had its own take on (in the context of complaining about certain off-key works of fanfiction), and I suppose I wonder what the "giant robot" anime that just preceded Gundam in the late 1970s would be like viewed one after another. "Making the mecha more mass-produced" is one thing, having unenthusiastic characters is another, and yet I also wonder if there was an unprecedented shift "from 'superheroes' to 'soldiers.'" Of course, recently having watched the first Lupin the Third series does bring the thought of too-large steps having to pay a first price to mind.
"After the apocalypse" did show up in the Gundam alternative universes, but on watching the series I began to think there's a dose of apocalypse in the original series, with the Earth littered with wrecked cities, run-down villages, shattered bridges, and human flotsam. In thinking about that, though, I began to contemplate the opening narration of the early episodes and its claim half of humanity had died in the war already. I don't know any more about what would "really" happen with that than the creators did, but perhaps seeming to downplay that idea in later series was a way to keep from "having" to delve into it.
This first time though a tale now oft-told, I got to wondering over the course of the series if some things about the antagonist Char "could" have been developed further to shake an impression they didn't change the course of the series. At the same time, though, I could also imagine being told "this is realistic; things can be sort of messy like that." This, I'm afraid, just makes me that much more aware of how I don't engage with mecha fandom very much because it points out how I like some series others are quick to criticise and don't quite like other series many hold up.
As I prepared myself to watch this first series, I did contemplate spending more of this year heading straight on to the movies, and then to Zeta Gundam, and on through as much of the Universal Century as I could manage. The thought that Gundam Unicorn isn't quite finished yet did sneak up on me, though, and in the end I opened up My-Otome instead. I suppose I couldn't quite sense the feeling talked about by others about My-HiME being a Gundam series in disguise, but then again I watched Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha not quite certain if it was a mecha series in disguise either. In any case, I'm awaiting the first volume of Gundam: The Origin (and also dug out my copies of the old Del Rey release of the Gundam novels, which start by altering the starting points of the characters and the setting, and go from there...)