I didn’t want to talk about Deux and the Psycho Gundam for fear of spoiling newcomers lol

All the stuff with Cyber-Newtypes in Zeta and ZZ was pretty cool (minus Tomino’s misogyny) so I’m excited to see Tsurumaki’s spin

We get Kycillia next week so hopefully whatever conspiracy Challia is brewing comes into focus and kicks off the second half of the show

(I kinda wonder what happened to Lt. Matilda in this timeline)

M’Quve also getting name-dropped a suspicious amount

Edit: Wait no don’t tell me

Non-Gundam Anime I watched recently:

Guilty Gear Strive Dual Rulers: This shit is so ass it wraps around to being Peak. Which is basically Guilty Gear in a nutshell and why you should always give it 100% your all when doing anything creative, because even when you fail if you were sincere enough you can succeed. Like, the show is just Daisuke Ishwatari saying “Hey guys, racism sucks and hashes the vibes so could we just punch all the racists and be done with it?” and it shouldn’t work but it does because . Also naked

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto: Extremely watchable show, somehow managing to land perfectly between detective procedural and period drama, but the main pair have a super weird dynamic that I’m just not vibing with. Honestly at this point I hope the show would actually double down on it’s feminist credentials and just go with a crack lesbian ship or something.

BanG Dream! Ave Mujica: I have a soft spot for band shows and I’ve been trying to catch up on the recent glut gifted us but I get through like 3 episodes of Girls Band Cry or Jellyfish Can’t Swim at Night and I’m all like “Man, I really just want to rewatch BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad again” and that’s the end of that. I did manage to finish It’s MyGo- weirdly enough I’ve been following the Bang Dream series for a while now as a budget K-On!, because these shows have stellar character writing that’s wildly out of sync with the production values and general… content? of the episodes themselves. Like, the stakes usually don’t go any higher than “Will the Band Get Together Again/Disband” but somehow the characters get to be weirdly rounded and fully fleshed out- and It’s MyGo is a kinda weirdly personal small-scale story centered around neurodivergency and learning to express ourselves in a healthy manner and what not… and the immediate follow up to THAT show is this high-octane Camp melodrama nonsense? Where the main character is wrestling with domestic neglect and multiple characters have mental breakdowns because of the stress of being in a commercial band… AND THEN HALFWAY THROUGH THE SMOL BEAN CAST OF MYGO COME BACK AND THE TONAL WHIPLASH IS SO APPARENT IT’S JUST SO WEIRD. I don’t really know how to process this show, or even if I like it- I only made it to episode 7 so far.

Disney really out here giving me the ultimate escapist fantasy: liberal politicians who’ll denounce genocide

I mean, homegirl picked a fight with the Space Po Po like twice now, she’s definitely Kamille coded

Also:

Safe to say that Gquuuuuux is Tsurumaki’s tribute to the whole of UC and not just 0079 specifically

Gundam gone woke, what is the world coming to 😞

Non-jokey answer: Machu really really wants to swim in a real sea- she feels constrained and alienated by life in the colony, and is searching for something authentic and real that in her head she visualizes as a sort of idealized version of earth and its oceans.

Director is Kazuya Tsurumaki who did FLCL, writer’s are Hideaki Anno (Evangelion) and Yoji Enokido (Revolutionary Girl Utena).

So far so good.

Hey, at least it’s on brand.

That said, this seemed more of the classic “Vet with PTSD haunted by the past throws away normal life to find closure on the battlefield in a tragic manner”, it just so happened the character was a woman… which probably is it’s own can of worms I’m not ready to unpack. Hurray for gender equality?

This is the director of FLCL, so we’re going at a heck of a break neck pace (me personally I’d rather take it slow) and he’s leaving a lot of character work up to interpretation and understated, but imo it’s there. A lot of Machu/Shuji’s relationship is her projecting her own desire for freedom onto him more than anything else (the entire scene with Nyaan by the canal), where even she realizes later this ep that she doesn’t truly know anything about him.

Yeah you should be good as far as background now, the rest of UC is just gravy, although maybe Char’s Counterattack would be cool if you’re up for it? Idk.

Seed was a rehash of the original Gundam except they went through the floorboards and removed all the cool leftist subtext and replaced it with techno-liberalism, and I really really hate Seed for that even if objectively it’s a mid show at worst and not really worth the ire.