Gundam Your Mother, or “Is That a Curse Word or Just Really Hard Metal?”

This is actually unrelated to this post (despite the matronly reference) and a response to these posts, only because I’m prompted by this post in reminding everyone that the more you spam your blog the bigger your visitor count-penis gets!

And silly Night Elf hos should just stop cluttering my game by quitting and doing something more productive with their lives, like making money.

To be fair, I do watch Gundam 00, and I enjoy it. Sunrise generally present their shows these past few years with good quality animation, solid designs, and overall good production value from OP/EDs to voice acting to even merchandising. Untying the franchise from the shows, Gundam 00 is as intriguing as anything on anime Tee Vee today as it tackled relevant and current events dealing with the world we see from mass media. Of course if you are American it does make things a little more sensitive than if you are some boondocks kid from New Zealand, or something (for example).

But you do not need to pass JLPT1 to have an opinion on bad fansubs, and you shouldn’t need to have to watch all of Gundam to have an opinion on Gundam 00. A 2 year old toddler can have an opinion on Gundam 00 (let alone a 19-year old college kid), too, but the 2-yo probably can’t justify it. Which is to say if you have a good reason to criticize something, please do tell us this good reason while criticizing. Seeing DarkMirage is patently East Asian, his inclination to rely on authority is in his blood so we cannot fault him so simply, relevant or not.

Initially I do believe, as Wildarmsheero does, that anime over time has changed. Gundam is as good of a marker as any to indicate this change because it’s been around. Face slapping Gundam characters are just not a frequent event in today’s anime marketplace (and even yesterday’s anime marketplace), granted anime in the 70s and 80s is drastically different than anime today outside of any concern for content, let alone content itself.

But what really bothers me is the kind of fans behind shows like Higurashi (although I respect intellectually what’s good about that wretched mess). It’s the kind of fans behind Nanoha StrikerS. It’s the kind of fans that really only watch whatever he likes, for whatever the hell reason why, without really seeing the kind of problems his/her behavior may bring.

Oh hey by the way Dumbledore is gay. (Yea, I’m going to dodge this topic.)

What Wildarmsheero fails at, really is being unable to focus his head-banging frustration into a tangible idea as to what’s causing that headache in the first place. I refer to a similar rant written by Wildarmsheero’s senpai (in a way) about preying on the akiba-kei. Don’t they come off awfully similar in feel?

In the land of nothing-held-sacred, can a bunch of pedofin fanboys of cartoon porn and impossible humanoid robots find themselves? Will this loose fellowship of bloggers, /b/-tards, trolls, weeaboos, pansies, artsy types, and good folks–often one person taking on several characteristics–get anywhere? Is it really socially responsible to write off Sunrise or Bandai or whoever makes anime and manga off as “capitalistic”? Aren’t they just as guilty of how things are as we are? They are in the same mess as we are in, may we be fujoshi or loser fanboy or poorly managed company with no long-term artistic vision.

Human beings are community-oriented creatures. We need each other to live to our fullest. And quite honestly what WAH complains about and what DM complains about all are very relevant. Lots of people watch Gundam 00 (if tracker numbers speak for anything). We all love our anime to be better (and compared to SEED I think 00 is hands down better, and that’s about the consensus). We all love a good DORAMA. And good flames. Just sometimes it’s at the expense of another. But even in all of this I feel the LOVE people have for the things they bang their heads into walls for. If we didn’t care we wouldn’t even bother.

I like my anime to be politically relevant, if it’s going to involve appropriate kind of politics. I like my anime make vague references to Greek terms referring to possible things from the Bible. I like big boobs in a low-cut China dress, as long as the character herself is more than just a pretty face and a walking meat rack. If for these shallow reasons why I vouch for Gundam 00, then so be it. At least, unlike many other shows this season, it hasn’t given me a lot of reason to hate it (so far the prime candidate is the mecha design).

Regarding to the core of WAH’s complaint: Last time I read the internet there are plenty of people whining about “war is bad.” And guess what, that’s what the characters in today’s Gundam do. In the 60s people didn’t whine about wars–that’s a 70s kind of thing, y’know? Japan is just catching up, guys.

Maybe WAH’s disgust towards today’s Gundam will inspire him to actually slap someone in real life. Maybe those knife-wielding little kids that delayed School Days probably didn’t get a good slap before it’s too late!