It took them 43 years to have a female protagonist in the main series
And we’re back. This is Part II of my Top Ten Favorite
Gundam list. Before you take a look at today’s blog I highly suggest that you look at the previous entry. If you’re too lazy for that, here’s some important text:
For the purposes of this list, the primary factors taken
into consideration when judging Gundam were 1) Functionality, 2) Aesthetics,
and 3) Cool Factor. Only Gundams were considered for this list, but not the SD
Gundam part of the franchise. The Gundams from the Gundam Build series will be
counted even though they are technically plastic models rather than actual
giant robots.
List so Far:
#10: Gundam Aerial/Gundam Aerial Rebuild
#9: A-Z Gundam
#8: Gundam Heavyarms
#7 Tequila Gundam Daniel Custom
#6: ∀ Gundam
Okay, we caught up?
Honorable Mention #2: RX-78-2 Gundam. No Top Ten Gundam
list would be complete without the original Gundam. Except this list. It’s not
on this list. Look, I appreciate this thing as a classic, but frankly it’s the
blueprint that is the basis of all other Gundam, almost all of which could be described
as “Gundam + ___ = Cool.” It just feels like even by Zeta Gundam it felt like we
had moved on. Sorry if this bugs you.
Part II after the jump.
[WARNING: This page contains unavoidable spoilers for various Gundam anime, in particular Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, so read at your own risk.]
As I continue dig back into my blog per the suggestion from
my therapist, I find myself leaning towards a post I can been wanting to write
for a number of years, and even started at some point, but never got around to
posting; a Top Ten list of my favorite Gundams. [Note: Part 2 is Here]
For those of you who may not be aware, Gundam is a
metaseries of anime, manga, novels, video games, and tons and tons of plastic
model kits that have been a mainstay in Japan since 1979. It’s best to think of
it as their answer to Star Trek, a space opera franchise with a variety of
different shows, spin-offs, and sequels. While each show has some differences,
the basic premise usually centers around giant robots as tools of war (as
opposed to superheroes, as they were portrayed in Japan before Gundam), some
sort of conflict between the people of Earth and the humans living in space, a specialized
giant robot (usually called a “Gundam”) that is significantly more powerful
than the standard units, and that war is hell and the realities of it are not
heroic but ultimately tragic.
Also it’s a giant commercial to move plastic model
kits based on all the robots in the various media. GOTTA SELL THEM TOYS!!!
(Some of) My Gunpla pile of shame
I am a fan of giant robots and Gundam in particular always
resonated with me since I was a kid. Like any Gundam fan I have my favorite units
across the franchise. When making this list I focused on three aspects:
1)Functionality:
What does the Gundam do, do well, and do better than all other Mobile Suits?
2)Aesthetics: How interesting or visually appealing
is the Gundam?
3)Cool Factor: A combination of intangibles,
personal biases, and the Rule of Cool.
A few guidelines before we start:
·To streamline the list, we’re only looking at Gundams,
not other mobile suits from various shows. Otherwise machines like the Tallgeese,
Qubeley, and The O would dominate the list.
·I have decided that the Gundams from the Gundam
Build side of the franchise will be considered, even though technically they are basically
in-universe toys and video games rather than giant robots. For the purposes of
this list, they’re close enough.
·I will NOT be counting anything form the various
SD Gundam franchise, as from what I understand those things are proper
characters instead of pilotable robots.
Honorable Mention: Barbatos Lupus/Barbatos Lupus Rex. I struggled
over this for months (yes, that’s how long I’ve been tinkering with this list).
I think the issue is that these two versions of the main Gundam from
Iron-Blooded Orphans are just different enough that I feel they don’t count as
one suit, but neither one is able to make the list in its own. If I could get a
version of this with the look of Lupus and the weaponry and performance of
Lupus Rex it would have beaten out #10 or more.
Last time I talked about the anime metaseries Gundam. Today we’re looking at the most recent addition to that series, Gundam Build Fighters. Like pretty much all Gundam series in recent memory it was produced by Sunrise and made its debut in 2013, making it the timeliest anime I’ve ever reviewed. As of this writing it has yet to be selected for import but there is some legal streaming of it around the web. In the last couple of years Gundam hadn’t been doing super great and had not lived up to the runaway success of 2002’s Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. The most recent TV show, Mobile Suit Gundam AGE, ended up being a huge flop. Perhaps that’s why the creators decided to go in a different direction for Build Fighters. Like with Mobile Fighter G Gundam this anime threw out all tropes associated with the franchise but unlike G Gundam that included the space opera narrative. This series takes the concept first introduced in the OVA series Model Suit Gunpla Builders Beginning G, an anime that is basically about fans of Gundam playing with the model kits associated with the show (which are nicknamed “Gunpla”), and takes it to its logical conclusion: have a whole TV show about young kids battling each other. To put it simply this show is basically a cross between Gundam and Yu-Gi-Oh! If reading that last sentence made you want to shake your head and close this window I don’t blame you as I had a similar reaction when I first discovered this show. Here’s the thing; it’s wrong to judge something before you check it out so let’s take a look at this crazy anime and then verbally rip it to shreds. Full review after the jump.
Today I was going to do a review of Gundam Build Fighters, the latest Gundam TV series which just finished up its run in Japan a few months ago. However it occurred to me that the Gundam metaseries is a pretty big deal but that a lot of people who read this blog might not know much about the franchise. So really I had two choices: either I write the review and have an intro that may be as long as, or longer than, the review itself OR dedicate a blog to talking about Gundam and get it out of my system. Since that’s something I’ve wanted to do for years anyway it seemed like a pretty good time to do so. For those of you who have absolutely no idea what the hell I’m talking about Gundam is a large franchise, primarily an anime, that’s extremely popular in Japan and pretty darn popular in America as well with the right people. Although it’s a bit more complicated than that the most important thing to know about it that is it features giant robots (or “mecha” as they’re often called) fighting each other with beam rifles and laser swords….and usually in space. If that sentence doesn’t at least peak your interest than I’m unsure if you and I will get along. So today I’ll be looking at the Gundam TV series. It’s important to understand though that there is a lot more to this franchise than just the cartoons. As a giant money maker for its parent company Bandai this series has taken just about as many forms as you can think of. However for the purposes of this article I won’t be going over every little thing. In fact I’ll likely be skipping or skimming over many of the spin-off movies or OVAs, of which there are a lot, so if I don’t mention a comic or a light novel series here or there just note that I likely am aware it exists and you don’t need to tell me how dumb I am for forgetting to mention it. And if I do skip your favorite Gundam related thing and it really bugs you feel free talk about it in the comment section (just don’t ramble; that’s my job and I’ll delete anything that tries to touch my Kool-Aid). We all dig giant robots after the jump.
This is the same company that put out The Powerpuff Girls.
...the f**k happened?
Now that we’ve reach Beta is Dead’s Fourth Anniversary I think it’s time for a rant. Now normally I would write a comic book rant, probably something about Stephanie Brown or something like that, but instead I think I’ll talk about cartoons. And gender. There’s been a pretty big controversy going around the internet since late November that I’ve been aching to comment on but just haven’t had the time. Well the time is now. If you are unfamiliar with who Paul Dini is (shame on you, by the way) he is the co-creator along with Bruce Timm, of Batman: The Animated Series which is still today considered by a great many people to be the best cartoon ever made. Understand that Dini is a pretty big deal when it comes to children’s television. So anyway a while ago Dini appeared on film director/giant nerd Kevin Smith’s podcast “Fatman on Batman” to talk about Batman. Somewhere during the two part interview Smith goes on a rant about how much he loves the new cartoon Beware the Batman, which Dini has nothing to do with but Smith points out that when the show gets going it’s the only Batman show to match the level of depth of BM:TAS. Then Dini destroys Smith’s life by informing him that Cartoon Network had removed it from the schedule and would probably end up canceling it if it hasn’t been canceled already. And indeed the show was put on hiatus back in October and as of this writing it has yet to have a solid return date (they said January but January is almost over) and have offered up no explanation. But Dini has an idea of what the problem is. Now you can listen to the podcast yourself here (this stuff starts around 38 to 41 minutes in) but I will summarize: companies like Cartoon Network cancel or otherwise don’t renew deep, arc driven shows like Beware the Batman because they attract the wrong demographic; families and girls. But they only want certain shows to be watched by young boys. Let me repeat his: Cartoon Network has possibly self-sabotaged and canceled their shows because they attracted too large of a female audience. That is one of the most f**ked up things I’ve ever heard. More ranting, swearing, and screaming after the jump.
Sorry this is (again) so late. I've been having a rough week and a half, I'm afraid.
Today This past weekend on the Saturday Morning Cartoon Show we “watched” Beast Wars. For those of you who may not be aware I LOVE Transformers. As it premiered about a week before I was born and my mother liked watching cartoons I have been a fan of the series literally all my life. One of my first blog posts, a SMSC blog, was a timeline about the franchise and if you recall I think of Beast Wars as being the line that rescued Transformers after the failure of the Generation 2 line. To reiterate this line of toys was created after Hasbro acquired former toy company rival Kenner and basically allowed them to do “whatever” with the TF toys since they were already in the trash heap anyway. Thus they were retooled utilizing new action figure technology and a new setting and theme. The gambit paid off big time but had it failed its likely Transformers would be vastly different today, assuming they would even exist at all.
With renewed interest in Transformers it was decided that a new cartoon, the first in years, would be commissioned to draw interest in the toys. While the storyline differed wildly form the one featured in the toy packing (The early ones, anyway) and that many fans were greatly upset by the changes I LOVED this show. It featured significantly more mature storytelling than the original Generation 1 show, borrowed heavily from the beloved Marvel comic, and had lots of character development due to having a smaller cast. Much of this formula was used in its predecessor Transformers Animated, which was also really awesome. In a lot of ways, since I was about twelve at the time, it may be safe to say that this is MY TF series more so than the original one.
Click below for more on Beast Wars (Or for my Canadian friends “Beasties”. You poor bastards).
Sorry this wasn't up sooner. I've bee sick as I mentioned earlier. Better late than never however. Also if you haven't read "Part One" of this piece there's no point into bothering reading this until you do.
Beta’s Unofficial Transformers Timeline
Part Two
The Unicron Trilogy
Or, “Japan and America: Together Again”
Beast Wars was a hit but Beast Machines was such a flop that Hasbro decided to scrap the planned second sequel Transtech and go in a different direction.Rather than start from scratch yet again they took advantage of the “Anime Boom” that was going on back in 2000 and imported the most recent Japanese Transformers cartoon Car Robots.But to understand car robots we have to go back a little.
Beast Wars II/Neo: Best Wars was a hit in North America and since Transformers were still relevant in Japan it made sense to import it there as well.It was again a hit.The problem was that Japan got tired of waiting for new seasons after the first one dropped and once again decided to make up their own crap.This time it was a mostly unrelated series called Beast Wars II (Pronounced “Beast War Second”) and a sequel called “Beast Wars Neo”.I saw a decent chunk of BW II but it was pretty horrible.The main thing I recall was one of the (robot) characters trying to put out a forest fire by peeing on it.That’s some high brow entertainment there.As time went on the Japanese public, much like the American public, missed the old days of Autobots turning into cars which led to…
Car Robots/Robots In Disguise: Similar in silly tone this show seemed to be something of a spiritual successor to Beast Wars II/Neo. The show took place on a human populated Earth with Autobots turning into cars, hence the title.It was something of a throwback to the good old days of the franchise and probably wouldn’t have made it over here if it wasn’t for Hasbro not wanting to give up on the newly rejuvenated Transformers line.Car Robots was licensed, dubbed in English, and premiered on Fox Kids (Whatever it was called at the time) as Transformers: Robots inDisguise making it the FIRST actual Transformers anime to come to America.This show seemed to be success and paved the way for a renewed collaboration between the East and the West for the first time since Generation 1.
What I got as a follow-up to Beast Wars. Sigh
Transformers Armada/Energon/Cybertron: With Beast Wars now a distant memory in the minds of Hasbro and the children of America once again interested in buying transforming robots in mass.The time was right to strike with more Super Toy Commercials.Now that Japan was back onboard a collaboration cartoon was produced: Transformers Armada in 2002.Oh God, I watched the first episode and I was done.This crap had none of the complexity Beast Wars offered, suffered from terrible dialogue, and featured a team of annoying human side characters that the previous era taught us was unnecessary.This was a cartoon for children…but dumb children (And yes I eventually saw more than the first episode).The cartoon was mostly a Japanese product and suffered from a lot of the problems most anime has when being dubbed.Its sequel Transformers: Energon continued the trend but added “Cell Shading” technology which was being used a lot back in the early 2000’s (Zoids is another example).Taking place ten years after the first series it was a flat out continuation of it predecessor.Then came Transformers: Cybertron that was originally created as a SEPARATE SERIES ALTOGETHER IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE but the American cartoon was dubbed to make it seem like it was another sequel and shrugged off all the plot holes from the last two series with a freaking hand wave (Such as dead characters being alive with no reasonable explanation)!
Who cares about plot? We gotta sell them toys!
The CEO of Hasbro
These cartoons have been nicknamed the “Unicron Trilogy” due to the underlying plot of Unicron doing something or other.I didn’t see it all so I don’t know.I guess it had something to do with Unicron existing in every reality at the same time as the same entity or some such nonsense.Except this reality, I assume, because Orson Wells is still totally dead.
The Dark Times
AKA The Modern Era
Transformer in the 2000’s was doing much better than it had in the 90’s, regardless as to whether any of it was well written.But one aspect that wasn’t doing as well was the comics.Part of the revival the franchise can be attributed to the highly publicized Transformers comic book by an unknown publishing company called Dreamwave.
Dreamwave Comic: Founded by Canadian modelfashion designerartist pseudo-artist Pat Lee this company wound up with the rights to make Transformers comics; the first in a while.The first clue that this was a bad idea was that Pat Lee, as a young kid, tried and failed to gain attention from Marvel and DC but managed to catch the eye of Rob Liefeld and was given a job at his Extreme Studio.This is the same Rob Liefeld who is at best an extremely overrated comic book artist and at worst one of the biggest reasons that super hero comic books were universally terrible for a good chunk of the 90s.
There are already numerous things on the internet that can tell you all you need to know about the problems between Pat Lee and the Dreamwave Comic but long story short it was badly drawn and Pat at some point stopped paying his employees right before the company folded taking the comic rights with it.He has become something of a pariah in the TF Fandom, though I’d call him the Uwe Boll of Transformers due to how much he seemed to let the fans get to him and how much the fans despise him.
Comic Books Are a Serious Business!
IDW would eventually start publishing TF comics of their own.It has had mixed reactions.
Kiss Players: Oh boy.This is something of a let’s say odd, entry in the Transformers universe.Basically Kiss Players is a Japanese only toy line, comic, and radio drama that ran between 2006 and 2007.Storyline wise it is set in the G1 universe, specifically the gap between Transformers : The Movie and Fight! Super RobotLifeform Transformers 2010 (AKA Transformers Season 3).The premise is about girls (Really young looking girls) making-out with kissing Transformers giving the robots power-ups.Oh, and it had a target market of men 15 years old and up.Yeah.This is a good reminder that Americans and Japanese have different sensibilities.
There was a controversy about the comic though: apparently the book was filled with a series of highly sexualized scenes again involving very young looking girls.Seriously Japan?I’ve seen some of the scans and a lot of them are pretty messed up, but seeing how it’s not in my country it’s thankfully not really something I ever have to deal with.
Apparently marriage laws are looser in Japan
Enter Michael Bay
Transformers (2007 Film): If you’ve ever seen a Michael Bay film you may have realized two things about him: #1) He likes explosions and #2) He’s only good at making mindless, soulless summer popcorn action films.By the mid-2000s Hollywood had run out of ideas for new movies and therefore had been licensing anything and everything that they could and turning it into the next big cash cow.Transformers ended up as one of these properties.With some racist Michael Bay at the helm we got this steaming pile of mediocre.It wasn’t terrible and that was the victory, I think.But it was just…lacking?“Not enough giant robots fighting” I screamed.Boy would I eat those words later.Even so virtually none of the titular Transformers said or did anything and they certainly didn’t feel like actual characters. Anyway it starred Shia LaBeouf for some reason as well the amazingly untalented Boobs Magee Megan Fox who is the only person to, after I saw “How to Lose friends and Alienate People”, make me utter the words “I can’t believe that Kirsten Dunst isn’t the worst actor in this flick.”It wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen but it was not at all a good film.
IntelligentTalentedFunnyNice Hot
Also yes I was offended by the “Black talking” Autobot Jazz but not as much as when he was killed because then it became an issue of the only heroic robot to die was the black robot.Sigh.
Transformers Animated: Born from a drunken late-night encounter between Transformers and the Teen Titans cartoon Animated was created to ride the wave of popularity of the recent film.Begun n 2008 the cartoon barrowed a few aspects from the film but not that much.This show was supposed to be aimed at a younger than usual audience; the creators warned fans this from the start.Well it turns out that this cartoon has been the one bright spot of the franchise in recent years.Like with Beast Wars it features a smaller cast of characters and had long plotlines and story arcs that could last up to several seasons.It also featured tons of references and shout outs to past series making this something of a love letter to the old school fans.The one problem I had with it was the Autobots would sometimes fight human super villains and they were almost 100% lame…except for Meltdown.He was hardcore.
This show was easily one of the best, if not the best, cartoon based on the Transformers line following many of the examples set by Beast Wars while avoiding the crap from the more recent shows.However despite its quality the sow was abruptly canceled not by its network (Cartoon Network, who seem to like canceling good shows) but by HASBRO because they didn’t want the Animated toys to distract kids from buying the Revenge of the Fallen toys!Do I even need to say it again?!
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:I could write an entire essay about why this movie was one of te worst things ever but instead here’s a quick bullet point list.
·Starring Megan Fox who’s become a worst actress since the first film
·Twice as many action spots, half as many character moments with the bots
·A running time of roughly three and a half years (Or at least it felt that way)
·Continuity between scenes is only present if Bay felt like it
·Juvenile humor that distract from the movie as a whole
·Racist caricatures that serve no role in the film itself
·Lack of acknowledgment of the fact that there were racist caricatures in the freaking movie after it premiered!
More Talented Than Megen Fox
Also Voiced By Frank Welker
The only other thing I’ll say is that no one seems to believe this was a good movie yet somehow it made a lot more money than the better receivedStar Trek despite it being written by the same writing team.The only X factor: Michael Bay.
And now here we are.The future does have a lot in store for the franchise, such as a Unreal Tournament inspired video game called War for Cybertrton due out this year. I doubt Transformers will be going anywhere anytime soon and Hasbro will continue to try to trick me into buying the latest Megatron action figure.I’m stronger willed than-
What's that? He turns into a tank and a gun? You win this round Hasbro!
For more info on Transformers check out the best wiki on the internet Transformers Wiki
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