Anime World Order Show # 61 – Another All-Mecha Episode To Scare Away Listeners

Are we deliberately trying to get people to stop listening to us? Not only is this episode late, it’s also nearly three hours long. THREE. HOURS. LONG. Why, just think of all the OTHER podcasts that you could listen to in the time it takes to just hear this one. Ones that you actually LIKE. Or the music you could listen to! And it’s the moment you’ve been dreading: another all-mecha podcast! Gerald reviews Space Runaway Ideon, Clarissa tells us about Gravion, and Daryl might need a helping hand with Godannar. Huh huh, huh huh.

We TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU to listen to this whole thing. Hmm, Christmas isn’t for another month and change. We should have waited before escalating to that level of dare.

Show notes? As in, something you could use to maybe, NOT listen to nearly 3 hours of our monotone droning voices? Ha! I bet you’d like to see that, wouldn’t you? Well, here you go. Not interested in what we’re talking about (perhaps as a result of hearing Destroy All Podcasts ST not be able to hate on us because we bored them too much)? Just skip to the part you like. Listening on a portable MP3 player or something else where you can’t easily fast forward? Just hit Pause or Stop or Delete or whatever once you’re bored. Don’t worry, we won’t be angry.

Introduction (0:00 – 30:37)
Nothing turns anime fans away faster than by talking about Gundam, right? Boy, 30 minute “introduction,” huh? How many emails do you suppose we answered in that 30 minutes? Seventy five? Fifty? Try ONE. That’s right. One email.

Let’s News! (30:37 – 48:27)
In an attempt to make the news segment more timely, we’ve decided to record this long after everything else, once the rest of the show is edited entirely. Hooray for Vertical Inc! The one hour block of Gerald starts here, ladies!

Review: Space Runaway Ideon (48:27 – 1:21:49)
Don’t forget to use that voicemail number! Following the news segment, it’s only fitting that we play a voicemail about the anime industry and its IMPENDING DEMISE. Gerald pops our Yoshiyuki Tomino cherries by reviewing a series that along with Minky Momo and Cowboy Bebop might just have the most spoiled ending in all of anime. Too bad everybody’s wrong since they didn’t actually see the show. OR ARE THEY? We’re too busy scoping out that SWEET afro to tell.

Review: Godannar (1:21:49 – 2:06:11)
Full disclosure: the remainder of this episode of AWO is brought to you by Chris Oarr from ADV Films, who sent us this stuff to review eons ago. Before the carnage unfolds, Daryl saw fit to play a voicemail near and dear to his heart, guaranteed to freeze any heart solid even if it was just exposed to a dreadful Hugh Grant romantic comedy. Anyway, this show is…well, we’re probably going to need to resort to pictures. WATCH THIS SPACE.

Promo: R5 Central (2:06:11 – 2:07:44)
It’s not REALLY an R5 Central promo since the entire thing is just a fake movie trailer that Mike created after being inspired by Grindhouse. Still, Mike “accepts Death Proof for what it is” yet denies that “what it is” is “a boring and crappy movie/extended Kotex commercial with god awful characters and a boring, tedious car chase.” Therefore, he is no friend of ours.

Review: Gravion/Gravion Zwei (2:07:44 – 2:37:23)
Whenever Godannar is mentioned, Gravion must also be mentioned! Clarissa fields this one since once Daryl found out that the character in it named Sandman did not perform drunken ladder sentons, he had no interest in watching it. Listen on, and bear witness to Masami Obari’s resurrection from obscurity. For Daryl, Masami Obari ceased to exist after the Fatal Fury Movie. Gerald, by contrast, owns all of Angel Blade and its sequels.

Closing (2:37:23 – 2:48:22)
Review Legend of the Galactic Heroes, huh? What if we spent several hours talking to people who were diehard LoGH fanatics instead? Regardless, that’s something on our ever-expanding “to do” pile, and so next week we try to make some headway on reducing that a bit. Daryl’s going back and reviewing the remainder of the To Terra manga as well as the new anime series, while simultaneously creating more work for himself by reviewing Volume 1 of Andromeda Stories. Volumes 2 and 3 aren’t out yet. Gerald’s finally going back and giving his final thoughts on Hakugei: Legend of Moby Dick now that he’s seen the entire series, and Clarissa’s got the honor of spearheading our Anime Weekend Atlanta convention report. With any luck it’ll come out faster than the Ninja Consultant one!

Instead of doing full-on reviews of single-volume titles, we’re going to TRY and just talk about them at the end of the show. Gerald actually started this off by talking about Xenosaga the Animation Volume 1 in Show 60, but we forgot to actually put it in the episode. For Show 61, Daryl gives a quick overview of the Blu-Ray release of the Dragon Ball Z: Broly Double Feature. So a three hour podcast where we talked about Gundam, Tomino, super robot shows, and DBZ. This will no doubt be the most reviled episode of AWO ever.

96 Replies to “Anime World Order Show # 61 – Another All-Mecha Episode To Scare Away Listeners”

  1. My problem with long running shounen shows is that there comes a point where the characters become way too powerful. I mean how super-duper-uber-sainan (sp) can a person be.

  2. So long… mentioning LOGH does not get you out of such an offense.

    I’ll be sending you my dead ipod battery as a thank you.

  3. This is ideal. I was just relistening to the first all mecha episode, specifically, the Gundam seed part. Mecha’s awesome.

  4. I haven’t played or seen Xenosaga, but I never got the backlash towards Xenogears. Unlike Front Mission, it was a fun mech rpg game. And unlike Evangelion, I actually liked the characters.

  5. I liked the review on Space Runaway Ideon.. though even while I haven’t finished the series–I can agree with the majority of the review. I just couldn’t handle the series.. it was too annoying.. (see comment in 60c)

    off topic:

    I don’t mind the long releases (3hrs pfft), just wished it was released weekly (and consistently) instead of semi bi-weekly.

    LOGH–110 episodes, I found it enjoyable. What a brisk end though. (It makes sense, and kind of fits, but seems a little rush)

  6. Excellent!

    Again, 3-hours length does not bother most AWO fans (perhaps you are just being humble and sarcastic when you infer this in the notes?), we could listen to you forever. We’re the Bildenberg of anime fandom.

    And 3 hours of mechs?

    Shit yes.

  7. If one plays video games while listening to the podcast it’s not that hard to get through.

    Or takes a nap.

  8. I’m pretty sure that Tomino directed a few episodes of Nagahama’s various romance series and even that they knew each other fairly well.

    The series you’re thinking about with Tomino directing only half of it is Brave Reideen (the 70s version, not the 2007 one).

    Reideen is an interesting beast because, as Gerald said, Tomino is a very good idea man. He sets up the characters and setting very well, but then halfway through he got sick of it and left.

    Nagahama takes over for the second half of the series. So what you get is a Tomino Beginning with a Nagahama Ending.

  9. Oh, the other thing is that in Godannar, characters DO you react to fanservice, but only the fanservice involving the people they truly love.

    It’s sweet in a way.

  10. Even though I am glad that this episode is out, I am gonna be an ass and say “finally an episode release all together and on the normal thrusday/wednesday” 😛

  11. This is my favorite episode of AWO to date and made my day while I was listening to it at work.

    I loved Space Runaway IDEON, and its nice to hear another opinion on it as whenever I try to get my friends to watch the whole thing they start talking about taking me to a war crimes tribunal.

  12. Just a correction. You guys said that Hikaruon was part of Cream Lemon. Actually that was part of the Pink Noise series.

  13. Nice to hear you guys again. Maybe I’d tend to be with Gerald on Cobra (~8 episodes in). Crass, campy and sexist enough, but also a fun sci-fi/action, kind of Bond-ish romp. Transparent robotic skeletons and silver/blue bondage Nazis FTW…or something. Oh, and while it’s unlikely that I’ll ever *see* Unico, I enjoyed your other Sanrio reviews.

    As for the current stuff…Ideon does seem a bit interesting, beyond the whole “universe is (not really) destroyed” bit. Added to the list.

    Yay for the Godannar review. Already posted my thoughts about it earlier (60c), but it was a nice review nevertheless.

    Btw…there’s quite a few SRW songs on my iPod, though most from OG1/OG2/OGs and not the main series (the horror!).

    From what you guys said, Gravion doesn’t seem that promising. Maybe the plot twists got out of hand? Sure sounds like it.

    Finally, I wonder when/if you guys will ever review any/all of Nanoha…

    dan: The issue many have with Xenogears is usually Disc 2, pure and simple. It needed more…gameplay, I guess.

  14. Daryl: You say that if I showed Godannar to an anime newbie, they’d be all terrified. But I think it would actually be the opposite–because Godannar is probably the exact image that most people have when they think of anime. It’s like you said: “Giant robots fight, and hey! There’s tits!”

  15. My iTunes came up empty-handed, and I was saddened by the prospect of another AWOless day. But I double checked, and here I am. Three hours of mecha-y goodness!

    Thank you Daryl, Clarissa and Gerald!

  16. Are you guys going to buy a Jones Holiday pack of flavored sodas this year? You guys have try the Brussels Sprout with Prosciutto? I TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU!

    My seasonal favorite is the traditional Turkey & Gravy flavor soda. It’s pretty coming back up…

  17. Don’t forget Wonder Kids, perhaps the sleaziest ero anime ever made. But it was from Nikkatsu, home of the roman porno, so I would have been bitterly disappointed otherwise.

    I’ve gone out about it quite a bit, but I really do wish you all could have been at the Tezuka exhibition at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. I met Anne Ishii there, a former editor at Vertical, and she said that they do indeed market to the “comics lit.” crowd. But, you know, many of those people have never heard of our flopped-vs.-unflopped debate.

    It occurs to me that even if you were to assume for the moment that as many as two to three million people in this country buy manga regularly, that would still be 1% of the population. I don’t necessarily think that shows the limits of its appeal–but it also means that our fan assumptions about manga are not necessarily universally held truths.

    From an editorial standpoint, I believe manga should be unflopped, and of course, almost all of them are these days. As I like to point out, the Japanese publishers don’t flop their editions of 300, SIN CITY, or HELLBOY to read right-to-left. When they read the work of American artists, they are willing to read them the American way.

    But the manga market is not as bound to format as people might assume. The best-selling Dark Horse manga is LONE WOLF AND CUB (just over a million sold in the U.S. now, I believe), despite it being flopped. The GNs of BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL do very well despite being flopped, 6 x 9″, and costing twice as much as a Shonen Jump GN.

    This doesn’t mean reading format isn’t important, but I suspect the #1 concern in the reader’s mind is the quality of the story (for them personally, not necessairly from a critical perspective)–is this something they’re really eager to read? The exact price point and reading direction are definite concerns as well, but I believe people’s desire to read the story trumps everything.

    And again, it’s important to note that the overwhelming majority of Americans are yet to get into reading manga, and really don’t know about our whole right-to-left/left-to-right thing. As a matter of fact, I would hate to see such potential new readers think that “manga = those books that read backwards” vs. “manga = cool books I’d like to check out.” Although I might personally prefer them unflopped, ultimately it is more important–much more important–that Vertical is releasing these Tezuka books, rather than which direction they read.

  18. Victory! Finally, after waiting a year, the 2nd mech episode is out, and it’s awesome.

    I’m glad that you decided to have Mike Dent and his infinite mecha wisdom on as a guest. It just wouldn’t be a true mecha episode without him!

    Anyways, the only show that I’ve seen is Ideon, and I basically agree with what Gerald said. Even though I personally love Tomino (I’ve been watching his shows since I was ten years old), I definately admit that he has some flaws as a director.

    Thanks for making me want to buy Godannar when I have no money.

    Well, that’s about it for now. I need to go listen to the rest of the Gravion review.

    PS: That one voicemail you played after the Ideon review, the “absolute zero now” voicemail, that was me. I did that one day in the summer when I was really bored. Thanks for playing it; hearing my voice on the show entertained me a lot.

  19. >Don’t forget Wonder Kids, perhaps the sleaziest ero anime ever made. But it was from Nikkatsu, home of the roman porno, so I would have been bitterly disappointed otherwise.an porno, so I would have been bitterly disappointed otherwise.< Your refering to the Lolita Anime series. One series of that was from Wonder Kids and the other was from Nikkatsu. God, the later has an ep that goes beyond lolicon. The girl in that might as well be classified as toddlercon. To Gerald since you reviewed Ideon.

    Oh and Bandai Visual has finally done it and released an anime that’s $100. The Gunbuster VS Daibuster film.

  20. I certainly don’t think calling Tomino a bad director is an audacious thing; He can be absolutely atrocious. Pacing being a big issue; I have often felt that a lot of his work could have literally been done in 13 episodes; I can’t express my dismay with Aura Battler Dunbine, which completely jumped the shark half way through thanks to a rather infuriating Dues ex machina which left the latter half of the show a mess.

    I think one of the things that “saves” Tomino, are the movie recuts of his longer TV series.

    I haven’t seen Idion, but it’s fame from it’s ending proceeds it.

  21. Finally finished the show… Wow that was long. Really long.

    It was really funny though. Probably the funniest show I’ve heard yet.

    Although I am kind of interested in what you guys think about Blame! and Battle Angel Alita.

  22. And as much as I want to like Tomino, because I think the ideas behind shows like Gundam Zeta are really good. I have to wonder how this guy managed to persist. He’s kind of like fungus that everyone’s mistaken for a flower.

  23. I’m guessing Tomino’s appeal comes from the fact that he helped incorporate the sci-fi epic genre into anime. Before that, the norm was to write shows with science fiction themes; but it was mostly robot vs robot or ship vs ship. Tomino took it a step further by trying to create a functioning sci-fi world. That is, he emphasized the utilitarian direction for mecha, and took it from a mere plaything to an everyday object.

    And in a period in which anime seems to be descending towards harem fodder, the fact that he’s one of the few writers left not trying to cash in on the moe makes him come off like a breath of fresh air to Japanese viewers who don’t masturbate to overpriced dolls from Akihabara.

  24. On the issue of flashbacks: this is one of the techniques that really reminds you that you’re watching children’s television. Even niche shows aimed at adults use the expository techniques of the crap those adults are nostalgic for. Plus it saves money.

    One of the things I have been noticing recently while watching anime is that even when I really like a show, I find myself thinking that it’s a pity it’s aimed at children (or allows itself to be bound by the conventions of children’s television).

    Even in really good anime, there’s a lot of hand-holding. I really enjoyed what I saw of Saiunkoku Monogatori, for example, but many of the shows subtler points would immediately get dragged out and explicitly discussed by some cast member on the edge of the action. Flashbacking wasn’t particularly egregious, but flashback still lay pretty thick on the ground. Saiunkoku is to me a really good but not great show: it relies too heavily on exposition, there are too many goofball comedy traits for characters that don’t need them (didn’t like the Eigetsu/Yougetsu thing at all), and the story is pretty conventional, though it does a nice job handling the every guy loves the heroine plot.

    All of these weaknesses are tied into the conventions of children’s entertainment. Things which are not explicitly presented get explained on the sidelines so no one gets confused. Characters are given hilarious stereotyped traits to keep the mood light and to help you distinguish who’s who in a large cast. The basic stories structures follow familiar paths, keeping watchers from feeling lost or confused.

    Frankly, these issues plague a lot of entertainment designed for adults, but I think part of bad writing comes from not trusting the intelligence of your audience. While I can think of a fair number of live action shows both Japanese and American which have shaken these habits, very few anime have.

    Plua flashbacks save money.

  25. Would a recap episode be the same thing as a flashback? Recap eps work for longer series to help digest the events that have taken place so far in a series. I know that this would be considered a waste of space for those whose only experience with a series is straight to DVD in the U.S. but then you have to consider that in Japan where a show is released on a weekly basis, giving the audience a recap of said events makes sense.

    I haven’t seen Ideon yet but my favorite non Gundam Tomino show woulds have to be Heavy Metal L-Gaim, even though that was kinda halfway done with Mamoru Nagano’s involvement. I really wanted to like Dunbine since the world, mecha and even the premise were really cool but I gave up on the series after vol.4. I found it too slow and the art wasn’t that good compared to other anime from 1983. Plus there were episodes that were totally pointless like the one with the guy with the salmon pink hair being drunk thoughout the whole episode.

  26. Re: halojones-fan:

    You say that if I showed Godannar to an anime newbie, they’d be all terrified. But I think it would actually be the opposite–because Godannar is probably the exact image that most people have when they think of anime. It’s like you said: “Giant robots fight, and hey! There’s tits!”

    But as I have repeatedly stated, that is also precisely NOT the image you want to reinforce to people who are new to anime. Also, I am deleting your post regarding the ending to Godannar since there are no easily implemented spoiler tags in Blogger comments that I know of. I’ll re-paste this bit though:

    The reason that the thin-pack is 5 discs instead of 7 is that ADV’s individual releases were 5-4-4-4-3-3-3. If you ever see Chris O[a]rr again, kick him square in the nuts for that shit.

    The original volumes also had some good extras as well. This show came out too late for the ADV Halloween sale, but the next time ADV has a website sale, Godannar individual volumes can be had for quite cheap. They don’t have Volume 1 + box as part of the sale, but Right Stuf does. Incidentally, Gerald ordered volumes 2 through 7 via the ADV site and they threw in Volume 1 for free.

    I must say, I do like spoiler tag functionality. Perhaps I should look into seeing whether PHPBB can be configured to allow unregistered/anonymous posting AND per-post word verification, which is the front line of defense against Internet spam posts. A certain Fast Karateer once told me that he gets over 50 spam accounts registered on his forums every single day, and I don’t want to deal with even MORE micromanagement-level responsibility.

    Once when I was tempted to switch from Blogger to WordPress in order to take better advantage of Feedburner (this was before Google owned them both), I set up a WordPress blog and imported over everything to see what it’d look like. There have been nearly 8,000 spam comments left on that site, and I have never so much as even publicized or promoted the URL to it. Short of disabling comments entirely, I don’t know how people deal with it.

  27. Nobody should be unclear on the purpose of recap episodes (or “clip shows” as we call them in US animation). They are always, always, always a remedy for deadline crunching. Some examples are more egregious than others. Wolf’s Rain, for example, went so over-budget and off-schedule, the clip shows replaced episodes 22-26 and the series had to be extended to finish. Gundam Seed Destiny had more clip shows than I can remember in any other year-long series; but most of them had a newly-animated framing device that made them seem as if they were planned out.

    Fist of the North Star had plenty of clip shows of its own, but I can’t remember any of them interrupting the story; instead they were used as transitions between story arcs and therefore kind’a helpful to viewers (but make no mistake; their real purpose was to give the animators a chance to get ahead of deadlines again). The final ep of FotNS was actually a clever idea for a clip show; it compiled all of the pre-TV series flashbacks into chronological order, which made it an interesting viewing experience. But it was still a delaying tactic to benefit FotNS2.

    The clip show has been a mainstay in US cartoons as well; many of the series I’ve worked on had a clip show or two planned into its schedule from the beginning. One series, Starship Troopers/Roughnecks succumbed to the same problems as Wolf’s Rain and used the same remedy, but did not get extended as a result…which is why the final story arc remains untold.

    Clip Shows. Love ’em or hate ’em, they are a necessary evil.

  28. Who’s that idiot on the voice mail? Talk about detached from reality. With the American dollar worth it’s weight in M&Ms right now, anything under $20 is a deal. I’d hate to see this guy’s reaction to DVD prices in Japan.

  29. Angry Otaku: Whatever. Artificially-inflated prices in Japan–supported by Region Coding, at that–aren’t really of interest to the market here.

    Daryl: Actually, that kind of segues into another point I’ve got; which is that I don’t really care about extras. I’m not excited about paying $20 a disc, for seven discs, just because the disc has a bunch of JPGs on it. I’d rather pay sixty bucks for the brick and let the extras go hang.

  30. Daryl Surat:
    >I must say, I do like spoiler tag functionality. Perhaps I should look into seeing whether PHPBB can be configured to allow unregistered/anonymous posting AND per-post word verification

    Tried implementing a 2ch like message board? Most the english based boards I see use this (well pretty much other than 4chan)

    http://www.kusaba.org/

    Not that I have setup anything like it…

  31. > To Gerald since you reviewed Ideon.
    >
    > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIq-EBpkPkU

    God that was perfect!

    Managed to get myself through those 3 hours perfect! It was not all that hard, and yet, I still have many things to say for it, but perhaps I’ll wait until a little later when I recap it to get some more thoughts. So far I’ve managed to get myself 10 episodes into Ideon before the podcast, and hope to see the rest, as I can tell I may actually enjoy this show (far better than my time marathoning EVA years back and feeling empty and depressed afterwards)!

    Godannar sounds like a cool show (shame if I missed out on the older box set). Those six episodes of the second season sounds just like the perfect Adult Swim-type formula! Hell if I had done so, I would pitch the show to them where I say it’s a show about robots, yet all that goes on for the entire series is T&A and other silly hijinks, since I don’t feel like designing any robots or animating any battles taking place for the entire time!

  32. I was also surprised by the caller who was upset over a $17.95 DVD. That sounds very reasonable. It’s important to remember that just as he is a working person who gets taxed, the same is true of the people who made the anime, licensed it, and pressed it. Don’t forget that when you buy a licensed anime or manga, the money doesn’t just go to the U.S. company–a royalty goes back to Japan on each copy sold. And of course, if you don’t buy it, they don’t get that money.

    In the end, everyone needs to get paid somehow; as I like to say, think about your own job–whatever it is–and imagine your boss telling you that from now on you’ll be paid in free download links instead of money.

  33. I’ve never heard someone jump to blame Japan’s DVD prices on region coding. If that were true, their home media market in VHS days would have been quite different (it wasn’t by the way). Fact is it’s just a different market with different buying patterns (more similar to the UK than to the US).

    And if you do want to talk about the domestic market, I’d love to what price a DVD should be to support the label behind it. Your anger is misplaced because you are assuming things about the home media/DVD business that just aren’t true.

  34. tYeah, I thought that comment by the caller was just oddball. $17 is pretty decent (unless it’s a series that your just not sure of). I don’t know, because pretty much the only DVD’s I do by are anime, $20 for 4-5 eps seems normal. Media Blasters is releasing Simoun vol.1 with six eps for only $20.

    I might someday see Godanner. Gravion far less so.

    One series that has Masami Obari character designs that I actually like is Platniumhugen Ordian. Im suprised the series never got a R1 DVD release. Maybe they wanted too much money for it. I know one series where that situation happend was Pita-Ten. They wanted way more for it than what all the U.S. industry would be willing to pay for it and the turnback wouldn’t have been worth it.

    Next time you do a mecha themed show, you should review these titles.

    Fight! Iczer-1
    Dangaioh
    Dancougar (original)
    Machino Robo Revenge of Chronos

    Maybe something recent like the new Jeeg or something from the late 70’s like Daimos since you reviewed Combattler V and Voltes V.

    I’d also say Granzort since thta’s got to be one of my favorite robo show ever, but I don’t think anyone on AWO would have seen it.

    I also think you should do a yuri themed show. You can reveiw Iczer-1 and Cream Lemon Pop Chaser with that.

  35. I think there’s probably a stronger case to be made for Ideon’s influence on Gainax directly, rather than on Evangelion directly. During their visits to the U.S. in the mid-’90s, Toshio Okada, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and Hideaki Anno all mentioned it as an influence (together with Gundam).

    Since EVANGELION was also coming out at the time, I think it was my reporting on their comments that may have encouraged the regrettable impression that EVA is somehow a ripoff of IDEON–which, as you say, is easy to believe if you’ve never seen IDEON, which most fans haven’t.

    By the way, Okada, Anno, and Yamaga just mentioned it–they didn’t, you know, go on and on about it–but the account of their early ’80s Ide Festival in Takeda’s THE NOTENKI MEMOIRS (“Shit-eating contest…Shit-eating contest…”) gives another source as well. People who organize entire cons around cancelled TV series are either a.) hustlers out to make a buck b.) hardcore fans, or, in the case of Gainax, c.) both.

  36. carl: Is the following from his IMDB profile true:

    At an anime convention in America, he had an interpreter and a Q & A session in which one fan expressed their disappointment[with the ending for the show]. Anno took the microphone and said in straight English “Too bad.”

  37. Hmm. I was too afraid of watching Goddanner before, now I think I’ll go ahead and give it a watch. I didn’t actually realize there were robots on the cover. All I saw was those joolariously big boobies.

  38. Two points for now:

    Super lame and max fail for using a cover version of the Ideon OP theme. I bet it’s off some Super Robot Wars BS soundrack or something. Altho it could also be from one of Anniki’s concerts but it doesn’t sound like a live version. Not that that’s Ichiro Mizuki singing, I’m pretty sure it’s the other powerhouse of anime, Mr. Isao Sasaki.

    Point two: You slam on UFO. Not ALL the girls wore purple wigs, only on Moonbase, and not ALL the guys wore cable net shirts, just if serving on one of the Skydiver submarines, and the gals wore that too.

    However, yes, the main cast could be found guilty of dressing…um…er…a tad FABULOUS for modern sensibilities.

    Note, please, that UFO was one of the favorite shows of the General Products crew.

    As to Ideon being the genesis of Evanglion, I think Carl’s got the right of it. BECAUSE of Ideon (and Macross and Yamato etc) General Product and then Gainax came into being, and thus Eva. I don’t think it was EVER intended to mean ‘We ripped off the plot to Ideon hu hu huh huh’.

    altho I’m still mindful of the meeting between Anno and Tomino at the opening for one of the Eva movies, where Anno is reported to have gone all fanboy and said something like “You know, I made Evangelion because of you” and Tomino is reported to have replied “Don’t you DARE blame this piece of shit on me!”

    I suspect Anno had to double his meds and hit the shirnk’s couch real quick after that…

  39. I need to stop failing and be caught up in listening to AWO eps. At least this time it’s only one episode I haven’t heard yet.

    That said, I just thought I’d let you know that, as insanely long ago as it was that this was reviewed, I bought the J-Boy anthology thanks to Clarissa’s review. I know that was forever ago, and I listened to it forever ago, but I was in Borders today and it was finally there, for the first time since I heard the review and had been intending to buy it. Clarissa mentioned it having catboys, so I had to buy it. (no, I don’t like furries; catboys are as far as I go). I still need to read it, though, so I’ll get back to you guys on how good it is.

    And I still want a Kyo Kara Maoh review.

  40. xbkikI gather Mr. Tomino was, shall we say, just a little jealous of Evangelion.

    Here are three quotes from founding Gainax members about Tomino’s influence:

    Hiroyuki Yamaga:

    “Well, I think first of all that, just as everyone in the company is different, so their influences are all different. However, in terms of influences from anime, I think that Gundam is something that can’t be ignored. It’s one of the works that made possible this new type of animation. Even if a person doesn’t like Gundam, it is something that has nevertheless been an influence.”

    Hideaki Anno:

    (Asked about who influences him) “Outside of my staff, Mr. Yoshiyuki Tomino. Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Runaway Ideon are my favorite anime besides Yamato.”

    Toshio Okada:

    “ Ideon wasn’t successful, but it is my favorite anime work. It’s Tomino’s best work because it’s about humanism…with a robot. Ideon’s fractious storyline ending in peace reflected the struggles within Sunrise.”

    Here’s an anecdote from THE NOTENKI MEMOIRS (which everyone should buy from ADV–although a book, it’s under their manga label). It’s April of 1981, and they’re all sitting around working on the Daicon III opening anime (Anno was 20, Yamaga was 19, Okada was 22–so it’s total OTAKU NO VIDEO)–

    “Okada was by far the biggest troublemaker on the set. One day, he was having it out with the rest of the anime staff, arguing about a scene in the climax. A signal fire is coming from a Powered Suit, and the smoke from the fire is supposed to turn into the Ide Gauge. But Okada didn’t like it.

    ‘The Ide Gauge is just weak!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s got no impact! We should definitely have it form, like, a stylized version of a girl’s pussy! Now THAT would be impact! We need to do something that’s never been done before–otherwise, there’s no point in doint this at all!’

    He started going off about this, and just wouldn’t back down. The rest of the staff turned to his girlfriend Kazumi (this was before she married Okada, so she was still Kazumi Amano at the time) and begged her to say something to make him stop. Even then, she was famous for her ability to control him.

    ‘Well, if you really wanna do something no one’s ever done before,’ she began, ‘why don’t you have a shit-eating contest instead? You want impact? That’s impact.’

    Okada didn’t say another word, and the ‘pussy proposal’ was thankfully laid to rest. That, however, wouldn’t be the last time Okada chimed in with some insane suggestion. After that, every one of his wild ideas was answered with the chat, ‘Shit-eating contest…Shit-eating contest…'”

    —————————-

    Personally, I feel if Kazuya Tsurumaki had been directing Daicon III, the idea would have been given serious consideration.

    As for the Anno “Too bad” quote, presumably this was said at Anime Expo ’96. But I have two pages of notes from his panel (for some reason I didn’t record it), and I can’t find a mention of it.* I do remember him saying “sorry” when he mentioned that in the future history of Gunbuster, Japan and America fought a second war, and this time Japan won.**

    –C.

    *This doesn’t mean he didn’t say it; I’ve heard that he did, too. But I don’t have any documentation for it at the momentt.
    **The booklet in the Gunbuster Gattai movie DVD goes into more detail on this. Gunbuster came out in the 1980s. when, as Daryl succintly puts it, Japan was “king shit of the world,” and it imagined that in 1996 Japan bought Hawaii from the U.S. for 800 billion dollars (to be spent by Americans on crack, no doubt). Twelve years later, the treacherous Yankees launch a surprise attack on the Japanese naval facilities at Pearl Harbor, sparking the Japan-American War. America signs the treaty of surrender four years later in Long Beach Harbor in 2012, though there is no mention if our diplomats do it wearing top hats and claw-tailed coats.

  41. HA! I made it through THREE F%^KING hours of AWO straight! Didn’t flinch once and, I might add, I listened to it on my Sony Ericsson mobile phone.

    Someone beat that!

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