Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 2019
Feb. 26th, 2023 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAs I finished my decadal survey of “personal standout anime,” not having quite as many series now watched to consider as with previous years where I’d had more time to “get to shows later” left me just a little concerned about no possibility having altogether escaped misgivings collective or personal. Since then, I have managed to see a few more titles from 2019. However, when now considering “watching just one episode” I wound up going back to Granbelm, a show that did get on my first short list.
As a show where magical girls in an ominous world pilot super-deformed mecha, Granbelm cross-pollinates a subgenre I can work with with a genre I’ve stuck with through thick and thin. That last part of things, though, might have led to a feeling of sad inevitability at the sense the other people watching Granbelm streaming sniffed, turned up their noses at the ambiguities of its final episode, and looked back to identify earlier problems as they tossed the series on the junk pile and moved on. A bit of looking back of my own just now returning to a more positive summary from Ogiue Maniax might have helped; so too, perhaps, was noticing the casual opening of the series as the pink-haired Mangetsu goes back to school at night to retrieve one of the many boxed lunches she’d made for other students (even with a comment from her sister that’s just a matter of them wanting to save money) and does some sniffing of her own to suppose it’s still edible. From there the world transforms around her and just one of the magical mecha pilots battling happens to take some pity on her; Shingetsu winds up eating the lunch, too. I was struck afresh again by a sense of the sound effects being different from impressions of a shared anime library. The action gets to the point of some pretty grandiose explosions and introductions alike. I at least got to thinking of The Vision of Escaflowne’s own take on “fantasy mecha” without having this condemn Granbelm by comparison.
It did turn out anyway that Granbelm isn’t the latest “giant robot” series I’ve seen, although a question there is how close they come to the greater emotional if not technical demands that might have become entangled with “mecha.” I’ve also got around to lighter and indeed now more refreshing magical girl series in some of the latest Pretty Cure shows, even if I don’t recall Granbelm quite getting to the point of “to try and help others is to be played as a sucker” for all that I had a hard time finding its Blu-Ray case to open before realising I’d stuck it at the back of a shelf alongside Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
As a show where magical girls in an ominous world pilot super-deformed mecha, Granbelm cross-pollinates a subgenre I can work with with a genre I’ve stuck with through thick and thin. That last part of things, though, might have led to a feeling of sad inevitability at the sense the other people watching Granbelm streaming sniffed, turned up their noses at the ambiguities of its final episode, and looked back to identify earlier problems as they tossed the series on the junk pile and moved on. A bit of looking back of my own just now returning to a more positive summary from Ogiue Maniax might have helped; so too, perhaps, was noticing the casual opening of the series as the pink-haired Mangetsu goes back to school at night to retrieve one of the many boxed lunches she’d made for other students (even with a comment from her sister that’s just a matter of them wanting to save money) and does some sniffing of her own to suppose it’s still edible. From there the world transforms around her and just one of the magical mecha pilots battling happens to take some pity on her; Shingetsu winds up eating the lunch, too. I was struck afresh again by a sense of the sound effects being different from impressions of a shared anime library. The action gets to the point of some pretty grandiose explosions and introductions alike. I at least got to thinking of The Vision of Escaflowne’s own take on “fantasy mecha” without having this condemn Granbelm by comparison.
It did turn out anyway that Granbelm isn’t the latest “giant robot” series I’ve seen, although a question there is how close they come to the greater emotional if not technical demands that might have become entangled with “mecha.” I’ve also got around to lighter and indeed now more refreshing magical girl series in some of the latest Pretty Cure shows, even if I don’t recall Granbelm quite getting to the point of “to try and help others is to be played as a sucker” for all that I had a hard time finding its Blu-Ray case to open before realising I’d stuck it at the back of a shelf alongside Puella Magi Madoka Magica.