Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 2013
Feb. 20th, 2023 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerFrom the anime series that marked the fiftieth anniversary of Mighty Atom getting on TV, I picked out a title that at last let me acknowledge a different, not quite as old franchise. After deciding not to watch the first episode of the original Mobile Suit Gundam out of a mixture of “I want to keep acknowledging the 1970s were more than just ‘giant robots’” and “I did watch it back in 2010, and more than one single series can serve to represent a whole year” I did get to wondering what following title could stand in for it. At last, I settled on the opening of that only somewhat peculiar spinoff, Gundam Build Fighters.
I’ve seen enough “super robot” anime to be willing to suppose even the original Gundam’s difficulties in the ratings weren’t altogether a matter of “being that much more thought-out and serious than anything that had preceded it.” Along with the casual statement “even ‘fantastic’ genres can be pushed in directions that can keep certain people interested in them,” though, there’s the caution “when you become interested in something when you’re young, driving it to the point where someone can only keep up with it having started back then can be dangerous when it comes to further building an audience, much less maintaining it.” Maybe it’s a dangerous comparison that can’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny, but I did get to thinking “G Gundam was an unusual take on an already well-worn formula once upon a time.”
Perhaps I am a bit more able now to recognize more of the customized Mobile Suits popping up in the first episode of Gundam Build Fighters than when I first watched it, but all in all that isn’t the only point of the show; the episode did just happen to get to the point of “there’s such a thing as dispensing too much information about the mecha.” I still haven’t quite got around to trying to buy and build a Gundam model kit, anyway. On the other hand, I am unfortunately aware of how this subfranchise continued only to run into the same “they come in as heroes but go out as bums” general reception as squashes down on the more serious Gundam series that both just preceded and followed it, and indeed what mecha series do get made beyond that brand umbrella.
I’ve seen enough “super robot” anime to be willing to suppose even the original Gundam’s difficulties in the ratings weren’t altogether a matter of “being that much more thought-out and serious than anything that had preceded it.” Along with the casual statement “even ‘fantastic’ genres can be pushed in directions that can keep certain people interested in them,” though, there’s the caution “when you become interested in something when you’re young, driving it to the point where someone can only keep up with it having started back then can be dangerous when it comes to further building an audience, much less maintaining it.” Maybe it’s a dangerous comparison that can’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny, but I did get to thinking “G Gundam was an unusual take on an already well-worn formula once upon a time.”
Perhaps I am a bit more able now to recognize more of the customized Mobile Suits popping up in the first episode of Gundam Build Fighters than when I first watched it, but all in all that isn’t the only point of the show; the episode did just happen to get to the point of “there’s such a thing as dispensing too much information about the mecha.” I still haven’t quite got around to trying to buy and build a Gundam model kit, anyway. On the other hand, I am unfortunately aware of how this subfranchise continued only to run into the same “they come in as heroes but go out as bums” general reception as squashes down on the more serious Gundam series that both just preceded and followed it, and indeed what mecha series do get made beyond that brand umbrella.