Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Unicorn Power
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Zetabag
 Posts: 205 |
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Meh, I never had a problem with the "toyish" designs. While it is great that the story took precedence over the merchandising I don't see why he couldn't have used a more traditional design. It seems like his reasons for the design was simply to piss off Sunrise and prove that he didn't need "toyish" designs to make a great series. Last year Tomino himself admitted that he does regret some of the mecha designs for Turn A Gundam because they turned away potential viewers (at least i think that is what he was implying). I think the Turn A Gundam design is alright but I don't think its a stretch to say a lot people didn't give Turn A Gundam a chance because they couldn't get pass that mustache. Its kinda like how many modern anime fans won't give the original MSG a try because the animation is so dated. Its a shame, because if Tomino didn't have a bone to pick with Sunrise, Turn A Gundam wouldn't have been doomed to obscurity within the Gundam franchise. {Please don't over-quote. Thanks. ~ Psycho 101} |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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The Turn A design is something I hated at first, but by half way through the series it was one of my, if not my absolute, favorite mecha designs. It's like a piece of modern art, but not quite abstract.
And the show is very slow-going and enriched by character development and interaction, something Tomino rarely ever does. He's more concerned with pure scenario. I think people expected a more action-packed show instead of a more introspective one, and with the settings and character designs so foreign to the usual Gundam aesthetics, it's not that surprising, though it is disappointing, Turn A didn't light the world on fire (though I believe it did gain some measure of popularity). As far as Double Zeta getting an English dub, I can't imagine it would be any good, since they'll probably use Blue Water, like in Zeta Gundam's abysmal English version. Then again, I think I'd almost be angry if Double Zeta's dub got another studio, one that was good, because damn it, ZZ doesn't deserve a better dub than Zeta. |
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Dfens
Posts: 459 |
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I pretty much agreed for the most part with WeskerGriff.
Full Frontal not being Char was a given to me since I've seen almost every spin off they made and that was back in the day when I watched something whether I liked it or not in full. Unicorn up until that last episode I was really tempted in buying the whole show before it went out of print but I'm glad I didn't since it was so expensive and it failed for me personally in the end. As I said before Gundam will never be the mega hit above say Evangelion like it is in Japan here state side and Sunrise or Bandai just could never get that through their heads. It's not a show most women can get into and it really recycles ideas and themes from past Gundam shows too much. I tend to lean more toward the UC shows in general but have enjoyed most of the AU as well. G-Gundam didn't do it at all for me since I never really got into Dragon Ball Z as well. Would love to pick up some of the more older titles which are out of print than having to pay through the nose on Ebay. Turn-A I never liked that one part of it was it looked so un-Gundam wise for the Mechs so why would I buy it if I didn't like it in the first place? Initially I scoffed at the idea of Build Fighters but gave it a chance and it was a fun ride for the first season. The second season I enjoyed a lot more a shame that neither will ever see the light of day for home video stateside. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2402 |
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Even if you thought that at the start, does anyone really think it would be better if Char somehow survived CCA and was FF? Him surviving would pretty much ruin the ending of CCA so I think FF not being Char was great news if you thought he might have been. Now unfortunately FF's origin was never really explained and his ending was really dumb imo.
Is that really the fandom or just some rather outspoken individuals? Personally, I like AU and UC. Each has some rotten apples like V or AGE, but the main point is that they aren't really the same thing and shouldn't be viewed that way. I've seen some of those youtube videos you are talking about, but most of the people I've talked to on forums for various gundam games tend to like a mix and not really divided by UC/AU, Tomino, etc (though often there are those who just aren't familiar with the old stuff). |
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1242 |
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I absolutely loved Unicorn...until that seventh episode threw it all out the window. It wasn't the contents of Laplace's box; that was one thing that worked for me...it was the sudden insanely overpowered Newtype magic and ghost stuff, combined with endless speechifying.
Sometimes I think there's a law of conservation of suck. If a show is too awesome for too long, all the suck will be concentrated in the finale. |
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Wrangler
 Posts: 1346 |
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I love Gundam, man what mess things get after couple decades?
Unicorn was great series, sadly support for high prices in the US caused serious problems retail side of things, especially when Bandai pulled out the US market. No sane person (not everyone sane...  ) wants pay 50-70 bucks per disk of maybe 60-90 minutes of film.
Sunrise been broadcasting large catelog of their Gundam shows on Youtube for free, nevermind the fan-subbers. Question is: Is your target audience going still pay for 60-buck per disk show, when you can still watch them for FREE. My answer is economics and who your looking hook into it. Younger viewers with smaller pocket books, i say no. Older audience, maybe. Being one those people who's ran out room in my library to fit more stuff. It makes life easier to watch it on Youtube than own the thing. Future: After watching the first OVA for Origin, i was not sure if this was going work. It was excellent story, though i think stretch. If this a reimage of the original series, I'm fine with it. CGI needs be improved, in comparison to Unicorn, Origins isn't as good. If they ever get to part Origins they actually start taking on the original tv show, i may not bother to watch it. I want see Gundam franchise go to new places and not retrend the past. I truly believe Yoshiyuki Tomino doesn't give too sticks to the wind what fans like anymore. Heck I've been told that G-Reco wasn't suppose originally be a Gundam show in the first place. Eight years after being written, now Yoshiyuki Tomino relented and re-does it as Gundam show. Shocked it didn't work out aside from serious good old school style animation? I hope Gundam does better, Unicorn was good thing. Gundam Build Fighters was nice, but I hope franchise doesn't just turn into that for sake of sales of Gunpla. |
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Angel'sArcanum
 Posts: 303 Location: Toronto, Ontario |
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This may sound like heresy, but I honestly prefer Blue Water's dubs to the Japanese dubs most of the time. I've seen bits of 0079, Zeta, Wing, G along with Seed and Destiny (regrettably the only ones I've finished) and the voice work sounds very fitting and natural to me whereas playing Gundam Extreme VS and hearing the voices for everyone in Japanese, they sound very samey and/or miscast as awful as that might sound. I will say that when my friend showed me the first episode of 00 dubbed, it sounded pretty badly miscast though, so if I ever intend to watch 00, I'm going sub there. |
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the-antihero
 Posts: 726 |
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AGE's poor ratings is a result of a fanbase full of psychic wannabe idiots who decided it was bad before it even aired. Every a-hole who bitched about it had nothing to say but 'if it does this it sucks' or 'if it doesn't do this, it sucks'. And speaking of reviews, it had high praise from people who took the time to finish it and didn't put forth expectations so high that would be impossible to achieve even for all previous (and later) Gundam series. How can I possibly think highly of a fanbase with BS criticisms such as 'AGE looks like RX-78-2!! NOT ORIGINAL!!' when almost every other lead Gundam's design is based on it and not just in terms of color scheme? |
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Lynx Amali
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AGE falls apart during Gen 3, never to recover come the 4th arc. Hell, the entire third arc post the first trip to space is pretty damn bad too. You've spent all this time showing the Vagans being crazy and just in general evil, with the exception of Zehart. Come Gen 3, they've thrown that all out of the window. Unlike 00 in which case the understanding end comes at the very top and culmination of the story, Age just shoehorns it in. Ezelcant gets away free despite being a shown time and time again, to be a crazy nutjob. Had Age gone full super robot like the initial teasers looked like it would, it would've way better than the end result. Age's main problem comes from the fact it was a video game first and it shows. The final boss comes out of nowhere for instance. Age had good things mind you, mainly in terms of certain characters, the music and some of the mechanical designs. The side cast was great with some standouts (Obright, Seric, Wolf, Grodek, Arisa, etc), the music was fantastic (Asemu's theme, the OP and EDs, etc) and most of the Federation units looked nice. The only one who out of any of the main three protagonists character development wise that makes any sense is Flit. We see him go from a kid who wants to protect the people he cares about, only to lose the ability to be a 'savior,' which cripples his viewpoint, to a disgruntled old man who wants to nothing more to wipe the enemy out completely because of how many friends and family he lost. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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AGE had a lot of great concepts (generational story, the AGE system, failed Mars colonization, etc), but the actual execution was piss-poor. I mean, the characters and situations became so predictable and dull, I had to give it up sometime early into the second "age" when spoiler[the captain from the first "age" dies] and nobody even cares or reacts afterwards. I thought, "Yeah, I don't care either, why am I still watching this?" And dropped it like a hot potato.
Most Gundam TV series dubs are done by main branch of Ocean. But Zeta and G Gundam's dubs were done by their Blue Water group, known for the quality dubbing of... nothing. The Zeta Gundam English dub sounds to me like people just reading from cue cards unemotionally. The Japanese cast puts actual effort into their delivery. Blue Water is basically where Ocean sends the dub work they don't want to spend a lot of money on. It shows, because most of Blue Water's work is horrible.
I'm not sure how any of it is "sudden", unless you're unfamiliar with Newtypes in Gundam. It's not like it came out of nowhere in its own narrative, either, it built up to that. Last edited by penguintruth on Mon Apr 06, 2015 2:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Angel'sArcanum
Posts: 303 Location: Toronto, Ontario |
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@penguintruth
Yeah, as a refresher since it's been a while, I watched another clip of Zeta and I think it doesn't sound bad, but I was thrown off because I kept remembering Kamille's voice in the DWG games thinking he did the anime's dub too, but yeah his voice is a little weird, and it's not GREAT, but solid in my book. I wasn't aware that not all of the Ocean Gundam dubs were either the main studio or subsidiary Blue Water, but that's interesting. I still think G Gundam's dub is a lot of fun, our Canadian dub of Dragon Ball and GT was pretty good from what I recall (especially considering Canadian GT had an English dub of the original OP while the broadcast or edited version of US GT had that nauseating "Welcome to the Grand Tour" song) and Hunter X Hunter's dub, while quite inferior to the Japanese dub, was serviceable and kind of grew on me after some time. Just my two cents though. |
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Levonr
 Posts: 808 |
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The only BS criticisms I see are yours. Its hilarious you use Gundam fans as the excuse for why the ratings were so horrible when the main target was younger kids who don't necessarily know anything about Gundam. Thats where the ratings did so bad. Apparently the little ratings it did get was from Gundam fans because their target audience weren't interested, its the reason that later in AGE there is a more focus on school because it was an attempt to get those ratings from their target audience(children). The only reason AGE lasted as long as it did was because Bandai said Gundam sales were really high at the time(except anything related to AGE), and its mostly thanks to Gundam Unicorn. I have read that Bandai is so disappointed by AGE that they don't even want to try release it in North America. That could always change of course but I'm sure its at the very bottom of the barrel. |
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brankoburcksen
Posts: 126 |
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If they really want to take Gundam global, than in two years they should make a deal with Netflix to release a new Gundam series worldwide in 2018.
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penguintruth
Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Japanese studios tend not to like streaming services and the like that it can't have a tight control of. And yet they still want worldwide distribution. Kind of a catch-22. |
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Felis
 Posts: 80 |
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I bought all of Gundam Unicorn on DVD during Right Stuf's 2014 holiday sale and I finally got around to watching all of it yesterday. I watched the English dub and I thought it was pretty good. The next time I watch it I'll check out the Japanese dub.
Full Frontal isn't Char right? Who is he then, a clone of Char? I haven't seen Zeta, ZZ, or Char's Counterattack so I wasn't quite sure about that. My only experience with the UC timeline is with 08th MS Team and the 0079 movie trilogy. I bought both on DVD right before Bandai went out of business. I think 08th MS Team is great, but I didn't like the 0079 movie trilogy all that much. There was just too much going on in the movies, they felt rushed, going from one battle to the next. It also felt like too much was left out. I'll be replacing the movie trilogy with the TV series once Sunrise/Right Stuf re-release it. I would like to buy the rest of the UC timeline shows on DVD eventually. I hope enough people buy Sunrise/Right Stuf's DVD's so that the rest of the Gundam franchise can get re-releases as well. |
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