An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

From the Apocalypse with Love – Zaion: I Wish You Were Here Spoiler Review

Zaion (or I: Wish You Were Here. Easy to see why it was localized with a proper noun added in there.) is a 2001 mini-series put out by then-relative-newcomer Gonzo, a studio with something of a checkered record, particularly when it comes to things I’ve reviewed. Their arguably most famous outing, Hellsing, debuted a week after this had its first outing.

Of course, they have pretty much nothing in common, so what’s the pitch for Zaion? The series takes place in a world where humanity is getting owned by an alien virus, we have a sci-fi mystery centered around a nanotech cyborg soldier who fights the problem, and a mysterious esper girl who might be the key to actually solving it.

Promising stuff. Let’s dig in before we think about that too deeply.

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Top Five Shows I Will Never Review

Well, it’s opposite day, so instead of dropping a review, I’m providing this: a countdown of the shows that I have no intent to ever review here… and an explanation of why.

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Lord of the Space-Flies – Infinite Ryvius Spoiler Review

Since it seems I’m going vintage for the better part of this year’s mecha offerings, let’s take a look at 1999’s Infinite Ryvius. And quickly, before saying that a show that continued its first run into 2000 counts as vintage causes my knees to start hurting.

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It’s International Politics Time! – Gasaraki Spoiler Review

Sit back, relax, and prepare your senses, because we are cracking into some vintage anime!

Vintage mecha shows, in particular, kind of hit differently a lot of the time. I have some theories as to why that is, but the most obvious is that mechs were some of the first things to be commonly animated with CG technology. Classically hand drawn mechas tend to have more weight to their movements than the smooth flow afforded by CG, which especially when you’re dealing with a real robot affair rather than a magical super robot one, can actually accentuate the experience.

This brings us to Gasaraki, a mecha show with real robots (in some senses), strange mysticism, and an extremely dense cloak-and-dagger political plot. Let’s watch it!

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Super Space Squid Battles – Ancient Girls Frame Spoiler Review

This show is a weird one. Ancient Girls Frame is absolutely a mecha show, but it’s only really arguably an anime: it was produced by a Chinese studio. But it gets listed on MAL and other anime sources, and it’s not like I haven’t reviewed more dubious entries on my blog, so while I don’t intend to make a habit of it, I’m going to let this one go.

So, what is Ancient Girls Frame about? Well, to avoid drowning you in technical terms the way the ad copy does, it’s the sort of story where humanity is under siege from unreasonable space monsters, and fends them off with super mechas we found under various rocks. In this setting, we follow a girl who wants to become a pilot of some of that ancient lostech in part to search for her sister, a former pilot, who went missing in action.

Sounds fair enough, but a concept only gets you so far.

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