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Shelf Life - Clash of the Tytans


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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:21 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Fan Hulic is very apathetic about his victory, in a nonchalant, Irresponsible Captain Tyler way (although Fan is reserved where Tyler is goofy).

Or, you know, in a very Yang Wenli sort of way... Evil or Very Mad Okay, I admit, I couldn't get more than half an episode into Tytania I hated it so much, and that was even before I knew it was the poor man's Legend of the Galactic Heroes... which I will now go back to watching, since I'd just finished episode 73 before reading this review.
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Saturn



Joined: 08 Aug 2002
Posts: 513
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:39 am Reply with quote
I was gonna make a comment like "omg, don't start with season 2 of a series and do a review, because you can't really judge it!" ... but then I remembered that I totally started watching Gundam 00 on Syfy without realizing it was season 2 (they didn't label it as such!) and fell in love with it, and scurried off to Netflix to rent the first season. Sooo. :B

I'll agree on the names, but then, names that are so awesome they're distracting are a trademark of Gundam, aren't they? xD
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RoverTX



Joined: 17 Dec 2008
Posts: 424
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:40 am Reply with quote
Quote:
I also love that Dirty Pair exudes an extremely positive view of the future. In the future world of Dirty Pair there are lots of space colonies and no one appears to be particularly poor or oppressed. It's as if Japan's '80s bubble economy extended naturally into space. Despite ample reasons for it, Kei and Yuri never seem in danger of getting fired, so I suspect they are employed for life. (Or employed until marriage, a topic too big to discuss here.) Plus they have a large expense account to work (or gamble) with, another telltale sign of an '80s dream job in Japan. Contrast this with the Cowboy Bebop future, which extended the 90's Japanese recession into space (maybe the gate explosion was a metaphor for Japan's economic bubble bursting).


Ya know thats a really good and interesting idea right there. I wonder if you took other anime from different times and mapped general themes in the positive or negative direction and then compare it to consumer confidence in Japan at the time if there would be any correlation.
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Otaking09



Joined: 24 Feb 2009
Posts: 637
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:42 am Reply with quote
Wow, Erin, even you can see many of 00's inherent flaws!
I always thought that fighting... to end the fighting was just... WTF?!
I like to think of 00 as being another Code Geass, but with transcontinental distant characters, a weaker score(sorry Kenji!), and an even weaker message.
But! It's entertaining as hell.

Ironically, I'm watching Zeta as of now. But, even though I'm past the halfway point, I still don't see anything that surpasses what made me love SEED and SEED Destiny.
It's not over yet though!

Tytania.... I thought it's first half was acceptable, but... after a certain someone dies... well, it really goes downhill.
I don't blame ANN for not putting out a review on the 2nd half!

And, you should indeed root for Panty and Stocking. It's a fun, fun, fun show.
Nostalgia-induced trips galore with that one!
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist


Joined: 31 Jan 2005
Posts: 598
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:48 am Reply with quote
vashfanatic wrote:
Okay, I admit, I couldn't get more than half an episode into Tytania I hated it so much, and that was even before I knew it was the poor man's Legend of the Galactic Heroes... which I will now go back to watching, since I'd just finished episode 73 before reading this review.

That's so funny! My review was running a little long, so I cut this opening paragraph from an early draft:

"As far as I can tell, this series is like Legend of the Galactic Heroes if it were only 26 episodes long and starred only hot dudes. Also if LotGH was based on the British Empire… alright, maybe it’s not like LotGH. I mean I’ve never even seen LotGH..."

Saturn wrote:
I'll agree on the names, but then, names that are so awesome they're distracting are a trademark of Gundam, aren't they? xD

When I went to look up the names of the 00 characters I realized that basically all Gundam characters have awesome names and I'd never noticed before. (Or maybe 00 kicks it up a notch.)
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:54 am Reply with quote
Given how recently I started watching anime, I was always wary of diving somewhere into the vast sprawling Gundam multi-verse.

But then the Gundam original that I had favorited on Crunchyroll to watch on my Roku finally showed up (they are slowly grinding through their back catalog) ... so I am starting at the beginning.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:57 am Reply with quote
erinfinnegan wrote:
"As far as I can tell, this series is like Legend of the Galactic Heroes if it were only 26 episodes long and starred only hot dudes. Also if LotGH was based on the British Empire… alright, maybe it’s not like LotGH. I mean I’ve never even seen LotGH..."

Well, it's by the same author, only he never finished this work, unlike his big epic. And according to the comments posted at Theron's review, they actually changed elements of the original novels to make it more like LotGH to cash in its success.

Also, I know plenty of gals who would protest your assumption that the dudes in LotGH are not hot. Wink
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14755
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:16 am Reply with quote
Yeah! That was an awesome Super Bowl game! And I almost called it - I bet the Packers winning by 3! Laughing
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Charred Knight



Joined: 29 Sep 2008
Posts: 3085
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 4:49 am Reply with quote
I am just going to say that to this day I still don't know what Mizushima, and Kuroda where trying to say with Gundam 00. The apparent message is that humanity will stop fighting once they start to understand one another, but the plan by Celestial Being really doesn't accomplish anything but start more wars.

It was too ambitious, and it went away from what made Kuroda and Mizushima's previous work so great. As Erin mentioned the series seemed to be lacking the emotion that permeated Fullmetal Alchemist. It also had a massive cast that frequently did nothing instead of just concentrating on Celestial Being and the Innovators.

I will mention that yes, harem anime have a tendency to have their hot chicks distract from what's happening. Given the writing of most harem series, this is a good thing.
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Otaking09



Joined: 24 Feb 2009
Posts: 637
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 4:59 am Reply with quote
Quote:
I am just going to say that to this day I still don't know what Mizushima, and Kuroda where trying to say with Gundam 00. The apparent message is that humanity will stop fighting once they start to understand one another, but the plan by Celestial Being really doesn't accomplish anything but start more wars.

It was too ambitious, and it went away from what made Kuroda and Mizushima's previous work so great. As Erin mentioned the series seemed to be lacking the emotion that permeated Fullmetal Alchemist. It also had a massive cast that frequently did nothing instead of just concentrating on Celestial Being and the Innovators.


Heck, even Mizushima's Hanamaru Kindergarten, as queerly targeted as it was, contained more heart than anything in 00.

And Kuroda? Where's the guy who made the genius psychodrama that is Ryvius? Or the guy who commanded such shelled-up emotions so brilliantly in Phantom?
Heck! Where's the guy who helmed such fun, up-beat comedy from Excel and Hayate?

No matter how you turn it, something went "wrong"!
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Sailor S





PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 5:54 am Reply with quote
Why are all the figures still in their boxes? Makes it look like they're all for sale or something. As soon as I get my shelves up in my new place, my figures are getting out of their cardboard and plastic prisons and up where I can see them at any angle!
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fuuma_monou



Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 1817
Location: Quezon City, Philippines
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 6:47 am Reply with quote
Sailor S wrote:
Why are all the figures still in their boxes? Makes it look like they're all for sale or something. As soon as I get my shelves up in my new place, my figures are getting out of their cardboard and plastic prisons and up where I can see them at any angle!


Maybe he's still saving up for awesome display cases? At least something to minimize the dust magnet effect?
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doctordoom85



Joined: 12 Jun 2008
Posts: 2092
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 8:51 am Reply with quote
I don't think Celestial Being's plan was THAT hard to figure out. Since the world was forced to unite together to take Celestial Being down, the 3 major nation groups would be united and conflict would be vastly reduced (and any remaining fighting occuring in non-treaty countries could easily be death with). And if the 3 groups let their pride get in the way and chose not to unite after all, then their economy would eventually not be able to continuously try to stop Celestial Being and the groups would have to cease all conflict (granted, Ribbons' plan would never have allowed this, but it could have been an option in the main Celestial Being's eyes).

The problem was that the newly formed united government went "Big Brother" on everyone and Celestial Being had to fix that. While I could somewhat understand people not sympathizing with CB in the first season (since while we the viewers know they're honest about their goal, the other characters can't know that for sure), in the 2nd season they're clearly in the right.

I mean, the beginning establishes war is a common occurrence from our modern day to their current time period. That's like 300 years! Eventually someone had to show up, slam all their heads together, and say, "hey morons, KNOCK IT OFF!" I nearly wanted to slam my head against the wall when one AUE politician actually said, "war is a part of our national identity". Geezus. Rolling Eyes

But even if someone argues Gundam 00 doesn't end up having a message, is that a bad thing? Neither did Lord of the Rings according to Tolkien himself (he said he just wanted to tell a good story, nothing more), but I'd roll my eyes if someone said, "Lord of the Rings doesn't have a message, so what's the point?"

Actually, aside from maybe the original Gundam, I found 00's the easiest to relate to of the franchise (at least in terms of the sympathetic characters, obviously characters like Ali or Nena make me grind my teeth in anger). Granted, it took a while, I didn't really start feeling that way until about halfway through Season 1.
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Big Hed



Joined: 04 May 2006
Posts: 1607
Location: Melbourne, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 10:17 am Reply with quote
So wait... are you going to be reviewing P&S in a future column? That was kind of what I understood from the last paragraph. Either way, nothing wrong with rooting for it in my book. Smile

doctordoom85 wrote:
(at least in terms of the sympathetic characters, obviously characters like Ali or Nena make me grind my teeth in anger).


How can you say that?! Such an adorable little psycopath. Laughing

Anyway, I agree with the body of your post; nothing very complex to figure out in 00, although truth be told parts of it are quite a mess (vague movie spoiler: spoiler[gloriously so when it comes to the movie]).

Erin wrote:
Celestial Being's plan is to stop war forever... by making more war? That's the plan?


Well, one uses antivenom to counteract snakebites--yes yes, Reductio ad Absurdum, I know. Wink
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doctordoom85



Joined: 12 Jun 2008
Posts: 2092
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 11:00 am Reply with quote
Big Hed wrote:
doctordoom85 wrote:
(at least in terms of the sympathetic characters, obviously characters like Ali or Nena make me grind my teeth in anger).


How can you say that?! Such an adorable little psycopath. Laughing

Anyway, I agree with the body of your post; nothing very complex to figure out in 00, although truth be told parts of it are quite a mess (vague movie spoiler: spoiler[gloriously so when it comes to the movie]).


Sure, she's adorable, just like Ali is a terrific villain. That still doesn't make me want to slap her hard, and put a bullet into Ali's head. So yeah, I do hate Ali a lot more, heck when he spoiler[was putting a gun in Nena's face] I was like, "Ali, I hate you enough as it is, quit digging yourself deeper, grr!!!".

One thing that did irk me was Wang Lui Mei's direction. In the first 2/3 of Season 1, she was a perfectly likable character, and I even bought her PVC figure under that impression. Then soon afterward, Vol. 3 came in the mail and she suddenly became this untrustworthy person who was way too extreme in her methods. Season 2 just took her further downhill, and every time they hinted she might be taking a positive step, she just ended up taking two steps backward. Now I feel kind of awkward having her figure, but oh well.

Yeah, I'm a bit nervous of how the movie will play out. I mean sure, knowing what's up with Jupiter (the expedition mentioned in Season 1 and spoiler[the whatever-that-was we see moving in the planet] at the end of Season 2) would be nice, but Season 2 had a nice conclusive feel to it, I hope the movie doesn't screw it up, but if it does I can just pretend it doesn't exist like I do with Seed Destiny.
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