Anime Thoughts: Mobile Suit Gundam
Feb. 17th, 2010 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerThere do seem to be a few ways to take the limited-time-only online streaming of several Gundam anime series. It could be the latest sign of the future arriving, but it's also easy to remember bitter proclamations kicking around about how the franchise kept getting mishandled one way or another in North America and imagine twisting "giving it away" into a final sign of defeat. (However, it also happens that a new Gundam OVA series is now being sold in the traditional manner save for it premiering at the same time as in Japan with an increased price to boot, but perhaps that's somehow easy to skip over.) Still, beyond all of that it does stick me in particular in a position of making awkward admissions. Right when I heard it would be possible to watch the English-dubbed version of the very first Gundam series, the only version of the Mobile Suit Gundam television anime itself that's ever been officially released in North America, I was watching "fansubs" of the Japanese-language version I'd got my hands on a while before. I can think of how I cling to the subtle distinction that I tend very much more towards the Japanese langage tracks not because I'm offended by the English language tracks but because I wonder if some day I might somehow become too much like those unpleasant types always complaining about them, but of course that doesn't excuse not learning Japanese, getting my hands on an "R2" DVD player, and importing expensive DVDs from Japan.
Still, as indefensible as that snobby yet stingy way of managing it was, seeing the original television anime itself was something I'd been interested in doing for quite a while. Back in the first flush of the Gundam franchise being officially introduced in North America (in the days of VHS tapes, no less), I rented the three theatrical release movies edited down and in part reanimated from the original television series. They proved an interesting enough introduction to the story and concepts and I bought them on DVD when they were released that way, but in some ways I still seemed stuck feeling a little awkward about them, somehow having the sense that they amounted at times to one self-contained unit after another until they seemed just plain "lengthy." (Later on, I watched other compilation movies of other Gundam television series, clearly enough wide open to the criticism that they grabbed bits from somewhat larger pools of footage but crammed them into much less running time until you just couldn't understand them without having seen their stories in their original forms beforehand... and yet, something about their frenzied drive somehow amused me in a way the movies of the original series itself hadn't.)
As much as I can say that of course I would buy DVDs of the original television series if they had their original Japanese language tracks and they were licensed for North America, though, that's never been an option. Close to a decade ago now, Gundam Wing seemed to have been an unexpected standout success when it got on cable over here. I remember seeing speculation that the entire franchise was poised for further success, if only it would be sold in the right way... and the official decision made was to get the original Mobile Suit Gundam itself on cable. At the time, though, that series hadn't been released on DVD in Japan itself, and it seems a decision was made to keep the Japanese language track off the DVDs sold over here so that people in Japan wouldn't import the less expensive discs. This, though, seemed to offend a lot of anime fans (as did leaving out altogether one self-contained and very much "off-model" episode), and the then twenty-year-old animation didn't seem to do well on cable either (although I do have to admit it always seems easier for me to find people complaining "other people don't appreciate the good old stuff" than to find people actually complaining about something being "old" instead of just silently overlooking it...), and in the end the whole matter seemed the crucial failing for those complaining that Gundam as a whole was never allowed to be the big success over here they wanted it to be...
After all of that, though, one day I got to wondering if anyone would ever be so bold as to make "fansubs" of one particular anime series not available with a Japanese language track and English subtitles, and to my ambiguous fascination I found fansubs of the original Mobile Suit Gundam... although, as it turned out, the person who first tried that just sort of stopped a few episodes before the end, and it was a while before another group picked up their own attempt and in that case managed to finish it. When I at last had my chance to watch through the whole series, in a large part it was a matter of returning to it. After all of that, then, I was able to be impressed by the original series. I was a little conscious of a lamentation someone once made about the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime, that when it got licensed and released in North America the fans here weren't familiar enough with the "typical" mecha anime that preceded it to see it as subverting what had come before. For my own part, I'd heard how the original Mobile Suit Gundam was an attempt to reconfigure something that had been "superheroic" before to provide an air of science fiction (although, of course, it's easy enough to cluck over how hard it would really be to get any sort of use out of a "giant robot" when you're not caught up in the visual spectacle even mecha anime still provides), but I haven't seen much of the "giant robot" anime that preceded it. One preceding show I have seen, Zambot 3, also happened to have been directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, and I can also very much see it as trying in its own way to shake up the established patterns. Still, as in a few other cases, I'm able to understand on some certain level, however simulated it may be, how mindblowing the new concepts and new presentations must have been thirty years ago. (To some, at least; I know how the television anime wasn't a huge hit and it took its compilation movies and sequel series to really turn into a "phenomenon." I've also seen Space Runaway Ideon, the next anime Tomino worked on, and can see it as returning to more familiar "giant robot" ground after what could have then been an ambiguous experiment, even if it was still trying to shake the certainties.)
In some ways, I suppose, my positive reaction to the original Mobile Suit Gundam is somehow a reaction to the ambiguities I continue to have about its first sequel Zeta Gundam, which I had heard very high opinions of before I managed to see it myself but which somehow left me not as impressed as I had expected to be. The original's opening plot, with a collection of civilian youngsters winding up in charge of an advanced spaceship and its "mobile suits" after its actual crew gets killed off in the initial attack, may seem more simple than Zeta Gundam's "rebellion against victors turned evil," but it does somehow seem to give the story more drive and direction: too many events in Zeta Gundam seemed to me to not show lasting consequences. Too, the original may in its own way help establish a theme that interested me years and years ago, before I even knew Robotech was the harbinger of something distinctive, where both sides of a conflict have some sympathetic, understandable characters on them. With Zeta Gundam, the villains seemed just that, and at the crucial start unimpressively so. Perhaps, too, I find the character Char Aznable more interesting as an antagonist with his own secret agenda in the original than when he winds up on the side of the protagonists in Zeta Gundam. I suppose it could be suggested that the final events of the original series drain some of his smooth enthusiasm, though.
For all of that, it may have been that in the final episodes of the series, as the concept of psychic "Newtypes" is built up to replace the simpler tale of a desperate war, I found myself wondering if a step was somehow missed. It did leave me contemplating going back to the movies again, aware of how they not only take out some of the bizarre variety of technology throughout the series but try a little harder to establish the concept of "Newtypes" earlier on. Too, every so often I found myself reflecting on nothing more complicated than the comments I'd heard that the Gundam mobile suit itself had been designed to put some mass in its legs to make toys of it balance properly (and, in the flush of it getting on cable, I did buy a few of the mobile suit action figures that got on store shelves up here even if the series hadn't been aired to go along with them), but in the animation the iconic design kept looking as if it was being drawn small-footed. That, though, hardly seems much of a knock (at other times, I was reflecting on nothing more complicated than that I liked the antique character designs) against an experience accomplished at last, if in a pretty shady way. And, as far as the streaming goes, I did at least manage to sample the dubbed version. While reminded of a comment I once saw, that it might be best to try and think of the dub as one made back with the show itself, as an option instead of a necessity it seemed quite acceptable.
Still, as indefensible as that snobby yet stingy way of managing it was, seeing the original television anime itself was something I'd been interested in doing for quite a while. Back in the first flush of the Gundam franchise being officially introduced in North America (in the days of VHS tapes, no less), I rented the three theatrical release movies edited down and in part reanimated from the original television series. They proved an interesting enough introduction to the story and concepts and I bought them on DVD when they were released that way, but in some ways I still seemed stuck feeling a little awkward about them, somehow having the sense that they amounted at times to one self-contained unit after another until they seemed just plain "lengthy." (Later on, I watched other compilation movies of other Gundam television series, clearly enough wide open to the criticism that they grabbed bits from somewhat larger pools of footage but crammed them into much less running time until you just couldn't understand them without having seen their stories in their original forms beforehand... and yet, something about their frenzied drive somehow amused me in a way the movies of the original series itself hadn't.)
As much as I can say that of course I would buy DVDs of the original television series if they had their original Japanese language tracks and they were licensed for North America, though, that's never been an option. Close to a decade ago now, Gundam Wing seemed to have been an unexpected standout success when it got on cable over here. I remember seeing speculation that the entire franchise was poised for further success, if only it would be sold in the right way... and the official decision made was to get the original Mobile Suit Gundam itself on cable. At the time, though, that series hadn't been released on DVD in Japan itself, and it seems a decision was made to keep the Japanese language track off the DVDs sold over here so that people in Japan wouldn't import the less expensive discs. This, though, seemed to offend a lot of anime fans (as did leaving out altogether one self-contained and very much "off-model" episode), and the then twenty-year-old animation didn't seem to do well on cable either (although I do have to admit it always seems easier for me to find people complaining "other people don't appreciate the good old stuff" than to find people actually complaining about something being "old" instead of just silently overlooking it...), and in the end the whole matter seemed the crucial failing for those complaining that Gundam as a whole was never allowed to be the big success over here they wanted it to be...
After all of that, though, one day I got to wondering if anyone would ever be so bold as to make "fansubs" of one particular anime series not available with a Japanese language track and English subtitles, and to my ambiguous fascination I found fansubs of the original Mobile Suit Gundam... although, as it turned out, the person who first tried that just sort of stopped a few episodes before the end, and it was a while before another group picked up their own attempt and in that case managed to finish it. When I at last had my chance to watch through the whole series, in a large part it was a matter of returning to it. After all of that, then, I was able to be impressed by the original series. I was a little conscious of a lamentation someone once made about the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime, that when it got licensed and released in North America the fans here weren't familiar enough with the "typical" mecha anime that preceded it to see it as subverting what had come before. For my own part, I'd heard how the original Mobile Suit Gundam was an attempt to reconfigure something that had been "superheroic" before to provide an air of science fiction (although, of course, it's easy enough to cluck over how hard it would really be to get any sort of use out of a "giant robot" when you're not caught up in the visual spectacle even mecha anime still provides), but I haven't seen much of the "giant robot" anime that preceded it. One preceding show I have seen, Zambot 3, also happened to have been directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, and I can also very much see it as trying in its own way to shake up the established patterns. Still, as in a few other cases, I'm able to understand on some certain level, however simulated it may be, how mindblowing the new concepts and new presentations must have been thirty years ago. (To some, at least; I know how the television anime wasn't a huge hit and it took its compilation movies and sequel series to really turn into a "phenomenon." I've also seen Space Runaway Ideon, the next anime Tomino worked on, and can see it as returning to more familiar "giant robot" ground after what could have then been an ambiguous experiment, even if it was still trying to shake the certainties.)
In some ways, I suppose, my positive reaction to the original Mobile Suit Gundam is somehow a reaction to the ambiguities I continue to have about its first sequel Zeta Gundam, which I had heard very high opinions of before I managed to see it myself but which somehow left me not as impressed as I had expected to be. The original's opening plot, with a collection of civilian youngsters winding up in charge of an advanced spaceship and its "mobile suits" after its actual crew gets killed off in the initial attack, may seem more simple than Zeta Gundam's "rebellion against victors turned evil," but it does somehow seem to give the story more drive and direction: too many events in Zeta Gundam seemed to me to not show lasting consequences. Too, the original may in its own way help establish a theme that interested me years and years ago, before I even knew Robotech was the harbinger of something distinctive, where both sides of a conflict have some sympathetic, understandable characters on them. With Zeta Gundam, the villains seemed just that, and at the crucial start unimpressively so. Perhaps, too, I find the character Char Aznable more interesting as an antagonist with his own secret agenda in the original than when he winds up on the side of the protagonists in Zeta Gundam. I suppose it could be suggested that the final events of the original series drain some of his smooth enthusiasm, though.
For all of that, it may have been that in the final episodes of the series, as the concept of psychic "Newtypes" is built up to replace the simpler tale of a desperate war, I found myself wondering if a step was somehow missed. It did leave me contemplating going back to the movies again, aware of how they not only take out some of the bizarre variety of technology throughout the series but try a little harder to establish the concept of "Newtypes" earlier on. Too, every so often I found myself reflecting on nothing more complicated than the comments I'd heard that the Gundam mobile suit itself had been designed to put some mass in its legs to make toys of it balance properly (and, in the flush of it getting on cable, I did buy a few of the mobile suit action figures that got on store shelves up here even if the series hadn't been aired to go along with them), but in the animation the iconic design kept looking as if it was being drawn small-footed. That, though, hardly seems much of a knock (at other times, I was reflecting on nothing more complicated than that I liked the antique character designs) against an experience accomplished at last, if in a pretty shady way. And, as far as the streaming goes, I did at least manage to sample the dubbed version. While reminded of a comment I once saw, that it might be best to try and think of the dub as one made back with the show itself, as an option instead of a necessity it seemed quite acceptable.