天下制覇

See kids, there’s a cute mascot character! That’s totally fly!

Does anybody else find the fact that Sunrise posted an officially English subbed version to the internet and then proceeded to region-lock it to South Asia only particularly funny?

Impressions:

You know, Sunrise, even that inane show about foot tall robots made out of super-cardboard did not have the stones to put forth the idea that a 7 year old managed to create not only the strongest and specialist thing in the world, but a magically evolving thing that automatically only got more awesome with time, making it the envy of all the world for multiple generations. In a way though, I feel like they’re shooting themselves in the foot. The strength of the Gundam series has always been merchandising, and if you aren’t spitting out at least eight different themed Gundams to shove onto toy shelves, along with their upgraded versions and then super upgraded versions, then I think you’re missing out on valuable opportunities. Maybe the evil animal robots are meant to horn in on the Zoids market though. How many years has it been since Gundam Horse? Too many, and yet, still not enough.

Aaanyway, even for Gundam, this seems like they’re aiming a bit too obviously at selling toys, what with the endless ranting about how Gundams are super special, a cellphone-like key to the Gundam, having an irritating magical pet robot pet, and Doctor Light. Heck, I think if you remove every line where it’s just characters yelling Flit’s name for his crazy ideas that Gundams are going to save everything from robot dragons from outer space, then the show would be a good 2-3 minutes shorter. And since Japanese is what it is, what Sunrise claims is "Flit" comes out as "Frito," which doubles their potential merchandising possibilities. Gundam corn chips are just around the corner

Anyway, most of the episode was just fellating Gundams in general without a whole ton else going on. The animation’s not great, and the writing during the fight was almost laughably bad, particularly with how short it was and how they tried to show the super specialness of both the Gundam and enemies by neither being hurt by each other’s bullets. And then the military was astounded when he shivved it. "What power!" Uh, sure. Whatever you say. Otherwise, surprisingly mediocre production for a Sunrise Gundam show though. It certainly never looked bad, but it was definitely middle of the road for opening episodes this season with the abbreviated (and ridiculous) ‘fight’ at the end being their chance to show off a little bit and they instead did absolutely nothing.

So whatever. I don’t have any real fondness for mecha or Gundam, and this does absolutely nothing to differentiate itself from all those terrible cliches that I despise that come with the territory. If anything, it was an even more explicit excuse than usual to roll out a new toy line with how Flit won’t shut up about how Gundams are the greatest thing ever. Thanks, but no thanks.

Preview:

Gundams! In! Space!