Political themes are fine as long as they align with my politics.
Lack of politics is just politics you don’t notice coz it’s how you see the world
I personally really enjoyed Alnoah.Zero for the protagonist that thinks his way through fights instead of just yelling. It’s like the anti-Gurren Lagann.
Gurren Lagann is supposed to be the starship troopers of mecha anime. It takes the whole “bigger robot” thing to the only logical conclusion as a way of lampooning the genre, but in doing it so perfectly, it became the very thing it was trying to make fun of.
In short, it’s perfect, and how very dare you.
(I liked Alnoha Zero)
Gurren lagann is cognitive behavioral therapy in anime form. Yes, this is a compliment.
To be clear, I also very much enjoyed Gurren Lagann (Believe in the me who believes in you!)
doing it so perfectly, it became the very thing it was trying to make fun of.
I don’t think lampooning was ever the goal; I think it was always just “bigger and better”.
Loved the show. Pity they never made a second season, but on reflecting, it didn’t need one.
spoiler
I know. I know. I try to forget.
It is shame, but the conclusion
to season onewas fitting
Full metal panic. Though it’s a season short of a finale and sadly unlikely to get that last season.
Holy shit is fmp actually still going??
Edit: it IS. Woooow… They made a third season in 2018. That is wild. I completely forgot about that show in like 2006. Maybe I’ll try to find the old fansubs and rewatch it all and lead into the third season.
Hey, thanks for this!
Haha well they made the penultimate season but then didn’t make the final one. At least there is a manga to wrap up the story, besides the light novels. Anyway enjoy. Who knows we might get lucky.
Replace mecha with lemmy and it’s so relevant lol
Drag Queen Diva👸🏿: Ignore these 🍪s!
I want a calzone, with extra strawberries, nuts, pickles, and a side of buns, and a donut.
Feeding the whole neighborhood. 🎃😘loving this reaction
Wait… So “Big O” really is about gay dudes having orgasms (aka a Big O)? I thought I was just overthinking it.
It’s actually about tomatoes. Over ripe tomatoes.
It’s showtime!
Full Metal Panic, Escaflowne, Neon Genesis Evangelion. “mecha story with nothing” is pretty good. Get me one of those, too.
i also slept through evangelion episode 24
I think people read too much into E24, honestly.
Anno in an interview once said it wasn’t sexual between Kaworu and Shinji. Khara also re-translated the scene again for the Netflix release and chose “like” instead of “love,” just as the original ADV translation did.
Even the original storyboard for E24 supports this, as Shinji didn’t blush and Kaworu only touched Shinjis hand, he wasn’t supposed to hold it. Anno interviewed the director for the episode, and in that interview the episode director admitted it was not the intention for the scene because they were out of time and he just approved whatever the artist had ready without really checking it.
I think people just see what they want to see in E24. Like Confirmation Bias, you know?
the kaworu episode being gay as fuck doesn’t make it sexual… obviously there’s a lot of nuance about how kaworu’s the first and only character who’s just interested in shinji without wanting something from him. compare to shinji’s disgust at misato in e23 and his reaction to kissing asuka in e15. the point is to raise questions, not draw conclusions, so abruptly and right before the climax. the point isn’t to say that shinji is or isn’t gay. but it absolutely introduces queer themes to the show at the 11th hour and it’s disingenuous to suggest that reading into them at all is somehow an act of willful overinterpretation.
Well my point is that E24 was never meant or intended to convey such themes, as confirmed by both Hideaki Anno and the episode director Masayuki Yamaguchi. Kaworu was just being a good friend to Shinji, and whether by unintentional/carelessly approved shots combined with cultural differences, or by other means, some people read into it as conveying themes or messages that it was not intended or supposed to convey. Like a person that barely knows a language saying the wrong words sometimes can lead to misunderstandings, E24 is kinda like that in some ways. There is nothing disingenuous about that, it is what the people that created the episode said about it.
at some point you have to stop relying on retrospectives and word of god for media analysis because a) the vast majority of people consuming the work have no idea what animation director c said in a hobbyist magazine interview 3 years after the series ended, and b) that’s nice but it’s not what they watched. hardline ‘death of the author’ is willful ignorance but if you have to do outside research to make a point, and that point is that the work didn’t actually depict the work, you don’t really have one in respect to the cultural perception of the work. respectfully i don’t really give a shit if hideaki anno revealed he tripped and spilled ink that makes anime gay all over the animation cels, and i fully understand the implication of 好き in the original japanese. peddle this strange brand of ‘i’m not gay for liking episode 24 a little too much’ denialism elsewhere
I don’t remember there being any politics or gay stuff so OP wants Gurren Lagann. Honestly not a bad choice.
They literally built a country, love, how the hell did you miss the politics?
I don’t know, maybe because the country in that story represents progress not politics.
Let’s say aliens invade earth, all the countries on earth join into a singular government to fight the extraterrestrial invasion. Would you say that fight for survival is political only because a world government exists?
There was a whole arc where different government officials argued over how to resolve the situation. There was a coup and everything!
I guess I remember less about Gurren Lagann that I thought.
yeah i remember a completely different show
There is no way to tell a story about a country without talking politics. The only thing that differentiates one country from another is how they do things. These “ways of doing things” are called policies. Deciding on which policies are good and which are bad is known as politics, fairly straightforward. If you are not talking about politics, you may as well not talk about the countries in your story.
As for your question, of course you can write a story in a way where there is an abstract faceless “higher-up” figure, we’ve seen these, but the moment you try to create an actual character to represent the government, it will unavoidably get political when you see that character interacting with others in the story.
IIRC, the overarching themes of personal freedom and being yourself against authoritarian/puritan environment could be considered political.
Also Leeron. Just Leeron
IIRC, the overarching themes of personal freedom and being yourself against authoritarian/puritan environment could be considered political.
I would argue the main themes of the show are believing in yourself, doing what you believe is right even when others oppose you and the abstract progress vs stagnation (do you take the risk and go out and experience the world or stay home and not get hurt but also not experience nothing). Those things can be political but I don’t think the show presented those ideas through a political lens and instead presented them as ideological beliefs.
Also Leeron. Just Leeron
Fair enough, I forgot about Leeron.
Fair points, don’t disagree on themes.
Will disagree on political vs ideological as I would believe they are the same thing.
Leeron is iconic.
The Big O would count?
I think Big O was fairly political, the city government is basically a midcentury take on corpo-fascism. The corporation controlling the city is the primary antagonist and its leader has a god complex.
Yeah, incredibly political. Particularly if you ignore the slapdash ending they had to adlib after their intended open, Chinatown style ending.
They setup a hotline after the finale where you could call and have the ending explained to you.
You know the ending is good if you have to invest in infrastructure and personnel to explain it to your audience
Sometimes I like a confusing show. It makes me feel like there’s still stories out there I haven’t heard.
Only if you watch it the millennial childhood way. In the middle of the night, with the sound too low so your parents don’t catch you, and out of order.
You should watch it, it’s very good.
Already did, and would also recommend it. 👌
rike yar yoks
ð entire ʃo can b wo/meka, & it’s still a political thriller.
Any mecha recs for me? I am kinda at the limit of good stuff of other genres. Code geass, og macross, ttgl, nge are like all the mechas I have seen and avoid them mainly because big long franchises and completionist personality which makes it impossible to just watch macross delta with cute girls, but I have to start with old ass macross, which was fine but you know…
I only like Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Macross II Lovers Again, and Macross Plus. I tried watching Macross 7 and Macross Delta, and I just couldn’t get into them. Not really sure why. Just didn’t hold my interest like the classics.
NGE also isnt really that long. It has the 26 episodes of the TV show and EoE, and then the 4 alternate movies. D&R is basically just a recap movie. Much less than something like Code Geass or Macross, and definitely much less than Gundam.
Maybe something like VOTOMS or Patlabor? What do you consider "big long fanchise? If 26 episodes + 5 movies is too much, you might be stuck with 12 episode seasonal shows and one-off movies…
Long franchise in the sense of confusing start point at this point, because their names are like ∆, frontier, iron blood, and what not. And long in the sense that its been around since the 80s and I am not in the mood for something old.
Also if the anime has like 5 movies then I’d also reconsider starting it because the commitment of a movie is bigger, but as stated I have already seen nge (and the rebuild and eoe and d&r).
Some of my favorites:
- Gurren Lagann - Some plucky youth rebel against the systems that have forced humanity underground. Very over-the-top
- Brave Bang Bravern - Extremely comedic and extremely gay, this is the story of humanity fighting against an alien threat with the help of a Super Robot who appeared out of nowhere seemingly from an entirely different genre of anime
- Eureka Seven - A boy joins a band of rebels to fight the world government in their hover-surfboard-riding mechs
- Vision of Escaflowne - Of the two prominent 90s mech shoujo isekai, this one is by far my favorite. Who knew putting a cape on a mech would make it look so gallant?
Thank you! I won’t run out of anime so soon now :D
The Big O
Mobile Suit Gundam:
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Iron Blooded Orphans - Orphans employed by a PMC manage to seize control of the company and fight for themselves.
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The Witch from Mercury - Country bumpkin goes to fancy space school where students gain standing and settle their grievances in mecha duels. Also yuri.
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00 - A mysterious organization seeks to end all war on Earth by fighting with their fancy robots.
Note: While the Gundam IP is huge, the ones mentioned are spin-offs and can be watched separately of other Gundam series.
Other:
- 86 - The Republic fights against a mechanical empire using their own mechs which are totally autonomous and definitely not piloted by undesirables.
Turn A Gundam: Moon country bumpkin visits earth, gets adopted by the military-industrial complex, gets forcefemmed while fighting against a rogue moon military in an ancient robot
I second 86. Had me in tears of sorrow once and (much more shocking) tears of joy at one point. It might be the only anime to have achieved that.
Edit: just went and watched the part I was talking about and holy smokes what a good show. Looks like it’s time for a rewatch.
A favorite of mine in the Gundam world is in the Universal Century. Gundam War in the Pocket. It’s a mini series that tells a small scale human story.
I genuinely forgot about 86, but I only watched S1. Thank you for your recommendations!
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Bokurano: for those times you are just feeling too happy and want to get brought down a bit. Didn’t watch the anime,but read the manga and saw the OP, its great!
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet: more laid back, but serious back story. A pilot from a total militaristic dictatorship lands on a water world and learns normal life from the ship inhabitants.
Blue Gender: similar setup as Gargantua, but more serious and in the other direction. Normal person in deepfreeze gets awakened in a militaristic space station after earth got overrun by bugs. Now he must adapt to the new world and society he lives in. Similar to starship troopers in some ways. But no humour here.
VanDread: much more humorous: men from a society of only men meet female pirates from a planet of only women. Besides the echi premise, they surprisingly use the setup for more than only ranchy jokes but even explore a bit, what kind of societies could grow from such setups and how would they interact.
Knights of Sidonia: great lore, great visuals, interesting ideas, phenomenally boring main plot and main characters and their dynamics
Thanks for all the recommendations! Now I have the problem of analysis paralysis from the like 15 anime everyone recommended xD
Did vandread have an ending?
The second season has, yes.
RahXephon. People who can’t think for themselves will tell you it’s a NGE ripoff but it owes far more to Raideen.
Thanks, I will think for yourself and think its a raideen ripoff instead
Okay but maybe like 15 people watched Raideen.
I watched Macross delta first, tbh it doesn’t really need much of the beginning. They mention like 3 people from previous Macross, and the one fighter. Everything else is standalone.
I did delta first, then og, 7 , and then frontier (my fav)
Edit: dammit now I want to watch delta again
I thought the 180 of macross from space odyssey to idol anime was funny. Anyways the biggest reason I watched it was because of earth wind and fire x macross mashups
It was always both. Also same.
I feel this in my bones. Even non-mecha shows like The West Wing were way better before they got all political.
Zoids?
"Throughout the recent history of the series, Zoids have been used as weapons in an ongoing war between the Helic Republic and Guylos Empire.
The setting of Chaotic Century is a few years after the most recent war between the Helic Republic and the Guylos Empire."🔗
Thought it was Code Geass for a second.
