An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Mecha March

Mechs & Magic – The Vision of Escaflowne Spoiler Review

Escaflowne is an… interesting production. It’s a sprawling story spawned out of the lawless pre-2000s zeitgeist that didn’t require shows to inhabit particular genre boxes quite as insistently as you usually see in more modern works. It’s kind of a fantasy epic, technically Isekai, at least as Mecha as Full Metal Panic, sometimes a shoujo romance, and held together with sutures of psychological drama and alternate history. Whew!

Read More…Read More…

Fictional Countries, Real Robots – Full Metal Panic (Season 1) Spoiler Review

It’s March, and that means I’m once again going to take a dive into the Mecha genre. Now, I’ve looked at Mecha shows before, both in and out of March, but the Mecha shows I reviewed last time have something in common: they’re all more “Super Robot” shows.

For those who may be unaware, the Mecha genre often makes a distinction between different shows. “Super Robot” shows are ones where the Mecha (scientific explanation or not) is more of a fantastic element. They’re big, powerful, sometimes questionably machines, and defy or ignore what we think we know about physics. Little time or effort is taken to make the mechas “realistic” or believable; instead, it’s more about what’s cool. Not every Super Robot show is bright Shonen (after all, Evangelion and all its tortured, psychological offspring are still Super Robot) but many are.

In contrast, a “Real Robot” show presents mechas more as real (if futuristic) war machines. They often still get a couple technical hand-waves to explain how and why humanoid robots are the tanks or battleships of their setting, but they still try to build their robots out of nuts and bolts and make you believe that you’re dealing with a machine that humans could build and that the viewer could understand. As such the shows themselves tend to be about (relatively) realistic warefare, rather than punching out giant monsters.

This isn’t to say that Super Robot shows can’t have engineering or treat their mechas as machines, or Real Robot shows can’t have supernatural elements; it’s a spectrum, not a sharp divide. But, by in large, those are the poles.

When it comes to Mecha, Super Robot shows are more my wheelhouse, but I wanted to look at at least one Real Robot show for Mecha March this year, and thus I’m leading off with the most down-to-Earth Mecha show this side of Robotics;Notes, Full Metal Panic.

Read More…Read More…

Good Animation Does Not Equal Good Action – Star Driver Spoiler Review

Star Driver is a mecha show that presents itself as passionate and stylish. It certainly looks the part; it’s brightly colored with a fairly particular style lending flair to good standard animation, including some particularly gorgeous environments. The character movements are graceful, which extends to the show’s Mechas usually moving more like dancers than lumbering multi-ton machines. The costumes range from the colorful end of ‘normal’ to the garishly absurd, and at first the plot and setting seem to follow suit with a conflict between our chronic hero and a fun, loony group of ‘villains’ who, like Team Rocket, are more amusing in their capering than legitimately threatening. Perhaps it’s a little heavier, but this still seems like it’s going to be a fun and engaging show with some kickass action.

If you, like I, watched the first episode or two of Star Driver and thought that, then the show tricked you. The presentation stays the course, but almost everything you would have guessed about the content is pretty far from the truth. And in this case, at least, that’s not a good thing.

Read More…Read More…

An Epic About Robots, Love, and Surfing – Eureka Seven Spoiler Review

Eureka Seven is, in my opinion, a rarity in that it’s a show that gets the long, escalating epic journey just about right. Because this show is no doubt a marathon. At 50 episodes it’s not the longest anime I’ve watched start to finish, but it is in a high tier that most shows don’t go for, and you do feel the weight that time investment can bring to bear. So I suppose the question is if Eureka Seven uses its time well, and if it’s worthwhile.

Read More…Read More…

Ia Fhtagn – Demonbane Spoiler Review

In the spirit of Mecha March, this week we’re going to take a look at another deep, symbolic, long, twisted, psychological… ha! Just kidding, it’s time for Demonbane.

Demonbane (or, if you prefer, Kishin Houkou Demonbane or Roar of the Machine God Demonbane) is a property that I can only assume is the result of a series of drunken dares culminating in “I bet you can’t write and market something with panty shots of the Necronomicon as a selling point”. Needless to say, they did it, and the anime form of the slice of insanity that resulted is what we’re looking at today.

Read More…Read More…

Imitation, um, Sure is Something – RahXephon Spoiler Review

Welcome back to Mecha March! Today I’m reviewing RahXephon, aka Xerox of Evangelion. Yeah, I’m just going to come out and mention the biggest issue with this show right at the start, because it is in everything and better to just get it out of the way: RahXephon is a show that lives almost entirely in the shadow of Neon Genesis Evangelion and really, really wants to simply be its famous predecessor. Characters, themes, images… a lot of them are lifted straight from Evangelion, serial numbers filed off and remixed just enough to claim to not be just Evangelion all over again.

But does it work? Drawing influence, even strong influence, from a predecessor can be alright. Being a mimeographed copy of your predecessor, slowly degrading from replication, however, is not. There isn’t an exceptionally sharp line dividing one for the other, the “too similar” failure state from the “more of the same, but ultimately OK” pass. Even though RahXephon strives to become Evangelion, if it puts in enough of its own work, it could be fine. Evangelion had a lot of good material, after all, and didn’t always implement it perfectly, so there might be room in the shell for something else.

The task set, let’s start digging in to RahXephon.

Read More…Read More…

Tackling a Classic – Neon Genesis Evangelion Spoiler Review.

Welcome, one and all, to Mecha March! Every week this month I’ll be looking at a different Mecha show, and what better way to start things off than with the one I’m going to have to spend a ton of time referencing, Evangelion?

That is, I admit, mostly why I’m doing this. I feel like most people who read this blog already know what NGE is and have their own opinions about it, but if I’m going to talk about some of its successors, I need to put down my own thoughts. I also think it’s quite valid to look at old shows with new eyes now and again, which is part of why I spend more time outside the most recent seasons. In either case, Neon Genesis Evangelion

Read More…Read More…