The old-school anime DVD/BD news thread.

[usamimi]

Magic User's Club re-releases are up for pre-order on amazon now! http://amzn.to/20Z43Pc http://amzn.to/1RMZYHL

[SteveH]

Right Stuf announced Gundam ZZ for June, DVD and BD.

I want, but man I am going to wait until some knowledgeable people review it. I will NOT be burned on any 'crippled to prevent reverse importation' Gundam release. Yes I'm prickly about it, thank you Bandai and Zeta Gundam.

[llj]

Right Stuf announced Gundam ZZ for June, DVD and BD.

I want, but man I am going to wait until some knowledgeable people review it. I will NOT be burned on any 'crippled to prevent reverse importation' Gundam release. Yes I'm prickly about it, thank you Bandai and Zeta Gundam.

I'm with you here. I'm kind of like Homer Simpson and that Monkey's Paw "I don't want to turn into any ZOMBIE turkey or turn into a turkey myself..." and then have it turn out that the turkey is a little dry.

So it better not be missing an episode, or the OP and ED changed, or locked subs...

[gaijinpunch]

Right Stuf announced Gundam ZZ for June, DVD and BD.

I want, but man I am going to wait until some knowledgeable people review it. I will NOT be burned on any 'crippled to prevent reverse importation' Gundam release. Yes I'm prickly about it, thank you Bandai and Zeta Gundam.

Way out of the loop, but recently thought about watching Z Gundam (again) now that my Japanese is up to snuff. What happened w/ that one?

[SteveH]

Right Stuf announced Gundam ZZ for June, DVD and BD.

I want, but man I am going to wait until some knowledgeable people review it. I will NOT be burned on any 'crippled to prevent reverse importation' Gundam release. Yes I'm prickly about it, thank you Bandai and Zeta Gundam.

Way out of the loop, but recently thought about watching Z Gundam (again) now that my Japanese is up to snuff. What happened w/ that one?

Depending on when you wish to pick up the story of the American release...

Bandai America announced at the New York Toy Fair back in (oh god, memory) 2003? maybe even 2002 that Zeta Gundam was following Mobile Suit Gundam to air on Cartoon Network in the (now dead) weekday afternoon kidvid 'Toonami' timeslot. Toys were shown, including expansion of the U.S, 'MS in Action' PVC action figure line.

Somehow they got it wrong and Zeta did NOT air. Suddenly Gundam was poison. I could go on for paragraphs about that.

Later on, 2004, Bandai Entertainment released a giant box set of all 50 Zeta Gundam episodes, including for some odd reason a set of 'bottle cap' micro Mobile Suits. (those were big at the time in Japan, everybody was doing small figures on bottle caps. Oh crazy Japan). Fans were at first overjoyed, then horrified. The OP and ED credit songs were stripped out as well as any use within the show (yet I know there was an instrumental variation version of the OP that was left intact. huh.), the subtitles were TERRIBLE (which confused the hell out of everyone as many of us knew that Neil Nadelman had done the translation work as a fan long ago and he was hired for this as well), awkward and stiff and many times clearly done by someone for whom English wasn't even their SECOND language. It was crap.

It was this beast http://smile.amazon.com/Mobile-Gundam-L ... 2650304011

So Bandai re-released it later as part of the Anime Legends line. The subs were better but still had oddities that shouldn't have been, there were later statements that some things were the way they were due to Bandai Japan and/or Tomino himself DEMANDING that it was to be that way. The songs were still gone. Statements have said that Sedaka wouldn't release the rights which might be code for the actual rights holder may have wanted too much money, or that Bandai refused to pay ANY money, or there's my crazy theory: Bandai had prepped Zeta Gundam for broadcast on Toonami, which back then created their own OP and ED which were shorter. Since Bandai knew the songs wouldn't be used they chose to not make sure to have the license. Crazy theory two: Bandai said f**k the songs in order to poison the release as a reverse import to Japan. NO Japanese fan would put up with missing the OP and ED songs on the release.

And to today, it appears the new Right Stuf release of Zeta Gundam is just a repressing of the Anime Legends release. I haven't heard anyone say they gave the translation a new pass to clean up lingering issues.

It's too bad. I really love Zeta Gundam. It's the show back in '85 that made me stop hating on Gundam and learn to love it.

[llj]

Zeta Gundam was sort of the anti-Gundam. It sets up several tropes from the original series and then subverts them. Every subsequent Gundam series went back to following the original MSG template, and nobody ever tried to duplicate Zeta Gundam again. I hated how the "rivalry" thing that developed out of Char and Amuro became a Gundam standard. Zeta Gundam didn't have an actual rivalry--Jerid was hardly ever a match for Kamille, and Kamille probably didn't spend more than 10 minutes total in the series even thinking about Jerid. Zeta was also very low on the rainbow finale lightshows.

[SteveH]

Context matters. Zeta Gundam came into being due to a number of interrelated events.

a. The Yamato Boom. Feeding on Star Wars mania, Space Battleship Yamato showed that money could be made by editing TV episodes down into a feature film (that's a HUGE simplification, mind. ) after the original run of a failed series.

b. the MSV (Mobile Suit Variation) contest. Nobody remembers that like Gundam, the Gundam plamo failed pretty hard. The main problem was they were designed more along the old way of 'play model' instead of treating the subject as a real thing and making carefully designed and engineered precision scale models. (BTW, this was another lesson of Yamato, one that actually saved Bandai) Fuji Film and one of the publishers, I *think* Tokuma Shoten, held a contest in co-operation with Bandai to design and build variations of different Mobile Suits (Desert Zaku, Zaku Cannon, Prototype Dom, etc) in an attempt to push those old model kits clogging shelves. Prize (prizes?) included having Kunio Okawara immortalize the build in painted form, and Bandai making mass-market plastic models of same. Combined with the Gundam movies suddenly Gunpla became a thing. Concurrently Kodansha published 'Plamo Kyoshiro' , the grandfather of today's Gundam Build Fighters.

c. anime merchandising becomes a thing. Again, this tracks back to Yamato, but suddenly publishers, record labels, toy makers and TV networks were spending money like water, everyone was hungry for product and licenses. I have to point out that of course merchandising existed before Yamato but prior to 1978 things tended to be pushed to little kids, and severely limited. Sure, Bandai cranked out the Chogokin Mazinger Z (and sold f**kTONS of those zinc death bricks!!) but they never made Aphrodite A or Boss Borot until decades later.

I can't tell how much Zeta Gundam existed because Tomino wanted to revisit that world and how much it was Sunrise wanting their own 'Yamato 2' (metaphorically speaking of course) with Bandai itching to unleash lots of new Gunpla, my gut tells me it was more about Sunrise wanting some sweet sweet licensing money because Tomino honestly did NOT sound that pumped about it circa Sept. 1984 in Los Angeles.

There are all KINDS of dropped threads in Zeta Gundam, and I never really understood Paptimus Sirocco's magic sex voodoo but then again, Tomino is a bit inconsistent in how to write a strong, self-actuating woman, soooooo.

[DKop]

Zeta Gundam to me is the only anime that the protagonist is an a**hole. I mean, Kamille pushed cripples down mountains in those Kilimanjaro episodes if I recall. That and he would shoot Titans forces on drop to earth, then would take the blame off him by saying "WELL, THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR BEING IN THE MILITARY I GUESS!" I can't really recall any other Gundam protagonists that came after that were equal or worse than Kamille.

Yea the rivalry of Kamille v Jerid was like Judau v Mashymre in ZZ Gundam. As soon as he left the show in the beginning as the role of "anime Elmer Fudd," that's when it got more serious.

[llj]

The funny thing about people accusing Tomino's characters (and his women) of being inconsistent or temperamental is that ironically, that IS a realistic depiction of humans that I find many writers in entertainment and fiction rarely EVER observe. Now, I don't know if Tomino is *intending* that or not, but for me, his characters behaving temperamentally or inconsistently or contradicting themselves seems more fundamentally truthful to me than characters who are consistent and logically characterized.

People AREN'T consistent. They AREN'T logical. Sometimes the smartest, most intelligent and controlled people act irrationally for no good reason other than a bad day. I remember reading a Tomino bashing thread once where someone criticized how "illogical" it was that in MSG, Amuro has random hissy fits over piloting the Gundam in urgent situations where lives are at stake. Thing is, that kind of thing rings true to me as something a real person would do. You can't predict a person's actions 100% of the time. This is what I feel like Tomino almost unintentionally 'gets' about people. When one of his otherwise intelligent female characters starts acting flaky for no apparent reason (I have a feeling Reccoa is the prime example people use for this), the politically correct thing is to criticize the way he writes women, because a woman being flaky is considered BAD. But does it really ring false? Is he not applying the same standard here as with Amuro and his poorly timed hissy fits? For the record, I feel like Reccoa's betrayal was actually hinted at before she actually turncoated. She didn't really need much of Sirocco's brainwashing to push that way. It's just that Tomino doesn't punctuate every hint with ominous music or some other stereotypical dramatic anime technique.

Another example of Tomino's subtlety with characters--Emma Sheen's narcissism. Emma is otherwise a 'positive' character but every now and again she talks about how Kamille has a crush on her, which is pretty evidently untrue. In most anime, something important would come out of this or some episode would be devoted to this misunderstanding, but it's treated more as a subtle piece of characterization, and nothing more. That kind of thing just rings true to me.

Mark Simmons once pointed out that Tomino is just about the only Gundam director who ever gave women anything truly interesting to do in the Gundam universe. You look at all the other major non-Tomino Gundams out there--Gundam 00, Gundam Wing, Gundam Seed, Gundam 0080, Gundam 0083--and I think Simmons may have had a point. What the other directors were better at doing, though, was limiting criticism by simply placing their women in minor positions in the story while making them consistently "strong" and "positive" personalities where they can't get criticized. But just by being in positions of less fan scrutiny makes it sort of reductive.

[DKop]

Mark Simmons once pointed out that Tomino is just about the only Gundam director who ever gave women anything truly interesting to do in the Gundam universe. You look at all the other major non-Tomino Gundams out there--Gundam 00, Gundam Wing, Gundam Seed, Gundam 0080, Gundam 0083--and I think Simmons may have had a point. What the other directors were better at doing, though, was limiting criticism by simply placing their women in minor positions in the story while making them consistently "strong" and "positive" personalities where they can't get criticized. But just by being in positions of less fan scrutiny makes it sort of reductive.

(Looks at Nina in Gundam 0083 and gets a twisted feeling in his gut...) Yea, I can TOTALLY see that viewpoint Simmons was making. I'm surprised that God Gundam wasn't in that list, but women had an equal role in God Gundam I think. Rain was more than a partner and a later love interest to Domon, which her character improved him as a character later in the series. The only thing I got for 08th MS Team is Karen and Aina roles I thought were important, and weren't background characters at all.