Category Archives: anime

Psycho-Pass, the Forbidden Word, My Thoughts

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People have been making kind of a big deal about how the director of the new anime Psycho-Pass, Motohiro Katsuyuki, has mentioned banning usage of the word “moe” among the staff, in order to counter current trends in anime. I’ve seen some people take this as a psuedo-rallying point, a sort of “BOOYAH! In your face, MOE!” attitude. I’ve seen reactions taking it as an attack on moe, a “Why are you so unenlightened?” response. For me, when I first read about it, I laughed, not because I’m for moe or against it, but I immediately thought of how ambiguous a word like moe could be and how it can potentially impact the creative process by being so ambiguous.

Other than the information we already have, I don’t have any insight into the production of Psycho-Pass so everything from here is purely hypothetical and speculative.

When you think about actually having the word moe be a part of discussions when creating an anime, you inevitably have to deal with “moe” as a conscious effort, and I can imagine it impacting the direction of a work. This is not an inherently bad thing, but I feel that just by banning the word you might end up having to explain things more concretely, or at least in a way that doesn’t use such specialized language. In some ways, I can see how “make it more moe” as a way of describing how something should be can be about as helpful as asking someone to “make it 20% cooler,” as the My Little Pony saying goes.

To say a word is banned doesn’t meant that elements won’t slip back in. Let’s replace “moe” with “hardcore.” Imagine if the interview said, “We banned the word ‘hardcore’ from our staff meetings.” While you might not have direct references to pro wrestling or other similar material, there’s a fair chance some kind of physicality or extreme imagery might make it back in. I don’t know if it’ll really happen with Psycho-Pass, but moe does not need a specific directive for it to appear. Even without the intent behind it, it can still happen.

Roger Klotz Dubbing

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There’s been a tendency in English anime dubs of children’s shows that I’ve noticed for a while now, which is this tendency to imbue characters with ATTITUDE where previously there was none, or at the very least not such an overt presence as such. Basically, what dubs do is turn Doug Funnie, nice average guy with some decent qualities, into a Roger Klotz, a snarkier sort who’s quick to deliver verbal jabs.

After I watched the first episode of toy commercial-as-anime Monsuno in Japanese, I got this feeling that the English dub (which actually premiered months before the Japanese version) would give to characters the voices their character stereotypes expected of them. Sure enough, the nerd was incredibly nasal, and the main character, who isn’t quite Doug Funnie but is the nice sort, is cracking wise at his friends, bits of sarcasm seeping through his dialogue.

A more interesting example comes from Yu-Gi-Oh!, not so much from Yugi himself but from Kaiba. Kaiba in the Japanese version is certainly no Doug Funnie. He’s ruthless and blunt and lives by his own agenda, but what happens is that his Roger Klotz dubbing just takes these qualities to the nth degree. Where he might say something in Japanese like, “Get out of my way. I have no time to waste on you,” in English it would become, “Get your worthless existence out of my way, you dweeb. I can’t have you breathing the same air as me or it might make me sick to my stomach.” Certainly it makes Kaiba memorable in an odd sort of way, but it also gives him an entirely different set of fangs.

Have you noticed this? Is my reference to Doug too old for people at this point? Do people still watch dubs?

The High School Setting

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Sometimes anime and manga as a whole are criticized for having too many stories take place in high school or involve high school students, and indeed there are a lot of titles, both good and bad, which fall into that category. While explanations range from “that’s how old a lot of readers are,” “there is a certain ideal to high school, the moment before you become an adult,” and even “so they can sexualize teenagers,” I have to wonder if it has anything to do with high school as a point of commonality among Japanese people.

Most young people in Japan go to high school (if someone can argue otherwise, please do), but once they go beyond high school their lives start to branch out more. Some go to college, some enter the work force, some go to technical training schools, and so on. This is even a plot point in some manga which make the transition out of high school such as Initial D. What this means is that, as a writer, if your aim is to have a position in life that the majority of your readers can directly relate to, then that period becomes harder to manage because not everyone will have that roughly similar experience post-high school.

Obviously this doesn’t mean that people cannot relate to characters outside of their own experience, or that people will reject heroes in unfamiliar settings, but that you end up losing that simple and easy connection. Such a loss can be overcome and frequently is, but high school perhaps remains that time people can look back to and say “I lived in that.” They might not have the magic powers or have gone to the rich school where everyone eats diamonds, but there is the thematic shorthand nevertheless.

Paths, Finding and Pursuing: Hanasaku Iroha vs. Tari Tari

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As an anime by the studio P.A. Works about a group of teenage girls growing up and strengthening their friendship, Tari Tari inevitably draws comparisons to last year’s Hanasaku Iroha, which has both a similar premise as well as visual style. In addition, both feature similar trios: a petite main character with a lot of pep, a more serious one, and a gentler one with a sizable bust. Yet, as close as they are, I find the two shows to feel quite different, and it has to do with aspirations, or lack thereof.

In Tari Tari, each of the girls (and the guys as well) each have a concrete goal they’re trying to pursue. Some of them are more long-term, like Sawa becoming a professional equestrian, while others are more immediate, like Konatsu forming a successful choir club or Wakana composing a song to fulfill a promise, but all of them have a conceivable end point to pursue which drives each character forward. This in turn influences the pacing of the show, as the sense of looking ahead gives the show a kind of momentum.

In Hanasaku Iroha, however, only Minko truly has an objective to push her forward: becoming a great chef. For everyone else, especially the main heroine Ohana, there are no particular goals or dreams associated with them. At the very best they have things they don’t want, like Yuina’s hesitation about inheriting her family’s inn or Ohana’s pensiveness towards responding to her friend Kouichi’s romantic confession, and this lends to Hanasaku Iroha on top of the rural setting a kind of slower and more subdued “day-by-day” feel.

Essentially, Tari Tari and Hanasaku Iroha are both about teenagers becoming adults, but they differ in focus. Tari Tari‘s sense of maturation comes from the characters moving along paths they’ve set out for themselves, learning along the way as a result. On the other hand, Hanasaku Iroha‘s characters are wandering through their growth to adulthood, trying to find their paths among many. Though both are about the everyday, Hanasaku Iroha sits a little more in the present, while Tari Tari shifts a little more towards the future.

My First Mahjong Tournament!

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This past weekend I was able to attend my very first ever “Riichi Mahjong Tournament” (quotes and capitalization used to convey my sense of awe), and to put it simply, I had a blast. I managed to do well at the tournament, and accomplished a number of things I can feel some sense of pride in. On the other hand, I made a number of mistakes that are a sign of my own greenness in competition. I’ll be trying to make this post fairly accessible, but keep in mind that I’ll be throwing a bunch of terms around, so it may wind up being obtuse for those unfamiliar with mahjong.

One thing that I realized while playing with the USPML over the last couple of years or so is that my mahjong stamina is not so great, and knowing that each day of competition would last many hours I tried to make up for it as best I could. I ate balanced breakfasts (making sure to include one egg for protein content) but also tried to avoid overeating (an easy problem for me to fall into), I took effort to stay hydrated, and I avoided overly sugary snacks in order to prevent a sugar crash at crucial points. I think it worked out okay in the end, though I still felt a sense of fatigue after a while which I think compromised my play.

In general, I’m not much of a tournament person for games at all (in my life, I’ve attended one Guilty Gear XX tournament, a handful of Smash Bros. tournaments, and some online Pokemon stuff back in the day), but I have to say that it was genuinely fun and exciting. This offline tournament was an intense experience with a really fun social component, both outside the game talking to fellow players, as well as inside the game. I think on some level riichi mahjong feels especially social because the rules, however daunting they may be for players to learn, encourage a high level of interactivity where you have to battle your opponents machinations as well as your own greed and cowardice. I might even go as far as to call mahjong a kind of window into people’s souls because of how the luck component combined with the potential decisions one makes in response to them shows how people may end up responding to situations beyond their or anyone else’s control. Go watch Akagi, and Akagi’s comment about someone being “weak against coincidence” makes that much more sense.

Interestingly, unlike the USPML which consists of mostly young folks who were exposed to mahjong through anime, the Dutch mahjong scene consists of older people (most at least 40 and up I would reckon), who came to it after playing other forms of mahjong. Talking to some, they had started to tire of the other formats and found riichi more exciting and interesting. I’ve never played other forms so I can’t agree or disagree, but I feel like I can see where they’re coming from given the interactivity of riichi mahjong. There was also a smaller contingent of international European players who just do this sort of thing semi-regularly, a world for which I hold a tiny bit of envy.

As for my accomplishments (which I hope you’ll let me bask in until I get smashed the next time), I played through nine full east-south (hanchan) matches and managed to avoid getting 4th in every single game. I even had a game where I was in dead last at the end of the east round (I was down 20,000 points!) and was able to surge back with some well-timed risky play to take first by the end. On the other hand, I actually misread one tile for another which cost me a round, drew from the wrong part of the wall at one point, and even dealt into a super obvious hand because I had too much tunnel vision while playing that round.

The tournament used the European Mahjong Association’s “Riichi Competiton Rules” (or RCR), and it made for a somewhat different dynamic compared to playing on the Tenhou ladder. The most obvious peculiarity of the European rules is the restriction of closed tanyao only (which means people cannot steal tiles to make this normally very basic hand) in combination with the presence of red 5s, tiles which can easily bolster your score and can turn weak hands into monstrous ones, but the one that caught my attention the most was the points system. Normally, you begin with a set of points (on Tenhou it’s 25,000) and whoever has more points by the end wins a match, and there is the added risk where if you go under zero points the game ends with you in dead last. However, with RCR there are no default starting points and everything is counted in terms of the points gained or lost. What this ends up meaning is that it is impossible to go bankrupt, and you can lose 1 billion points and still be able to play in subsequent rounds, though your morale might be shot.

The reason this was done, I think, was so that no one felt left out early in the tournament and everyone could play as much mahjong as possible. Supporting this was the fact that the format of the tournament was almost but not quite a round robin tournament, in the sense that it was not an elimination tournament like you’d see in Saki or Starcraft where 64 players/teams enter and then 32 advance and so on. Instead, everyone got the chance to play nine games (with time limits), so everyone wound up playing roughly the same amount of mahjong overall, whether they got 1st place or dead last. It’s quite a different format, but because it fosters enjoyment I like it all the same.

There was a second factor to the scoring system as well, what is known as “Uma” or the amount of points you gain or lose at the end of a match. In the most recent incarnation of the European rules, you get added to your existing score +30,000 points for a 1st place finish, +10,000 for 2nd, -10,000 for 3rd, and -30,000 for 4th. Thus, if in a game the 4 players wound up getting 10,000 points, 1000 points, -1000 points, and -10,000 points respectively, the final score of that session would be 40,000/11,000/-11,000/-40,000, and then you carried your score to subsequent matches. Thus, if the same results happened again to each player, they would end up with 80,000/22,000/-22,000/-80,000 going into their 3rd game. The gap isn’t entirely insurmountable, but the more 4th place finishes you have, the tougher it gets, which is why I was glad to not have any.

As a result of this format, your placement in a  match alone doesn’t matter as much as your place in a match alongside your points earned, which is different from other forms of riichi mahjong. In my case, I was in a game where I was practically guaranteed 2nd place at the end of a match, and was in potential range to get 1st so I took a risk and went for a hand and ended up dealing in and losing 8,000 points. While I still got the 10,000 point bonus for being 2nd, I would’ve had an additional 8,000 added to my total score if only I had played it safer. Similarly, if you’re in 4th and there’s no chance for you to take 3rd place, do you try to get as close to 3rd as possible to mitigate the damage, or do you just play safe in case you end up falling even more, and what would’ve been a big loss is now a gigantic one?

Mahjong, especially in this particular tournament style, is a funny thing in terms of competitiveness because you really have to decide what’s more important, your chance at claiming a top spot (or even the top spot), or being satisfied with where you are and not wanting to fall further. If you’re in 2nd in the overall tournament ranking with 1st place is 50,000 points ahead of you but 3rd through 10th place all nipping at your heels, do you avoid risks and try to hold onto your 2nd place position as much as possible, or do you take a chance and aim for 1st with the likely possibility that you’ll crash and burn and fall 10, maybe even 15 places? Which do you value more? It’s an interesting psychological test, I think, and I realize in hindsight that every time I imagined myself getting a top spot I ended up doing worse. Maybe it’s a lesson I need to learn better.

So overall, I’m more than glad I decided to participate. If I get the chance to attend another one, I most likely will.

Reality TV: Humanity Has Declined

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Anime is often praised for their sheer diversity of topics and approaches to those topics, but biting comedic satire is a rather uncommon occurrence. This is what the Summer 2012 series Humanity Has Declined brings to the table, and I consider it to be the #1 show of the season.

Based on a light novel, the show takes place in a world where humanity’s population is a smallfraction of what it once was. and many of its technological advances no longer feasible given a scarcity of resources. Life in some ways resembles the 17th century more than it does the 21st. The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed woman—referred to in some material as “the Mediator” but in actuality is only ever mentioned in the show as “I” (Watashi)—whose job it is to communicate with the “fairies,” small, human-like creatures with large smiles permanently plastered onto their faces, who are a source of great frustration for the main heroine.

In the story, the fairies are referred to as the “new humanity,” a title which makes sense in two ways. First, with humanity in decline, they are now in a way the dominant species on Earth. Second, and this is in my opinion the more significant allusion, is that the fairies are like a hyper humanity. More technologically advanced than the humans, they’re able to create almost anything practically overnight (the one exception is that they are incapable of creating desserts), but their incredibly poor memories and utter carelessness cause them to make the same mistakes repeatedly. Most of the time, when asked any question, whether it’s a difficult one (“Where do you expect society to go”) or a simple one (“Where do you live”), their response is a simple “who knows.” In addition, the fairies have a tendency towards jumping on fads at an accelerated rate, accomplishing the most astounding feats of civilization only to abandon them days later. Strangely naive, the fact that they often get ideas from the humans means that, much like the Twilight Zone episode “The Little People” (or its Simpsons parody), they mirror the follies of mankind.

The humans she communicates with are also prone to folly, just that their impact is nowhere near as severe as the fairies. As such, the heroine takes this all in stride, at least on the surface. Presenting a pleasant demeanor on the surface, her inner thoughts reveal a harsh cynicism that is all-too-appropriate. In one case, she mentions to herself (and the audience) a meeting between people in her town which accomplished nothing but allowing the people to say they held a meeting so that they can show that they made an effort. The way in which the heroine casually holds back her mild disdain actually becomes one of her more charming features, and she never winds up feeling like a whiner.

The series couches its subtly dark humor in a bright, pastel palette, giving Humanity Has Declined a visual aesthetic reminiscent of a European children’s book. At first, this cute appearance can seem like a concession to convention, and in some ways it might well be, but what becomes apparent from episode to episode is that it winds up having the opposite effect. That fairytale-like surface, when combined with the actual content of the series, winds up actually making the entire show even more bizarre. Because of this, even when the show seems to be undergoing a significant tonal shift, it actually isn’t all that unusual in the context of the anime.

Overall, Humanity Has Declined is an anime quite different from the norm, whether that’s the norm of typical light novel output and adaptations, or the norm of trends in anime both new and old. It’s a clever show that’s hard to box in any particular categories (though I definitely tried), and it’s all the better for it.

What If Manga Had No Japan

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When people in the past have argued about the definition of manga and anime, the grounds of contention have had to do with this idea of manga as “by Japan, for Japan, made in Japan,” and which pieces, if any at all, are relevant in categorizing. While I have my own ideas in this regard, I want to set that aside and ask, how would we define manga if Japan ceased to exist?

A lot of these debates occur because people bring their own values and their own priorities to “manga-ness,” such as personal desire to draw manga, or a desire to have clear-cut difference to make it easier to discuss, but generally they assume that there is a Japan, that as a nation-state, as a land mass, as a culture, it will never disappear. I do not wish this upon Japan or the Japanese, but with 3/11 and the Tohoku Earthquake and the subsequent fear of radiation, there is the possibility however small, or at least the notion implanted into our (my) thoughts, that someday there will be a great diaspora or maybe the government will have no one left to govern, and that included in this movement out of Japan would be the people who work in anime and manga.

If the vast majority of people move to the same location, is that where “manga” is located? If the artists spread around the world, and have to decide whether to draw for the scattered Japanese audience or for the country they’re now living in (with its potentially vastly different culture), are they considered manga artists either way or is there now a significant difference? What if we then fast-forwarded 100 years and now those artists had children if they didn’t have any, had maybe integrated more thoroughly into their adopted homes, and now a new generation takes over for them? If young people who grew up with the made-for-new-country comics of the now-deceased artists are drawing for that same audience but influenced by those artists’ styles which clearly derive from their days in Japan making manga, are they now manga artists too?

As it stands, I must admit that these questions don’t really impact the health or condition of manga or its fandom, but I thought about it and how it might alter the notion of Japanese-ness in anime and manga, and I thought it interesting to present, even in this half-formed state.

The Meaning of “Vanilla”

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About a year ago I wrote a post wondering about the “NTR” (essentially cuckolding) genre of porn in anime and manga, and in it I had a small aside in the introduction where I mentioned the English-speaking anti-NTR fanbase that has developed in response, people who will proudly and adamantly proclaim their love of “vanilla.” At the time, I referred to these vanilla fans and their fervor as if they were an extreme response to the popularity of NTR because the intense championing of very conventional depictions of sex seemed odd (though understandable). Upon thinking about this subject again recently, however, I realized that I had overlooked something, and that one of the reasons there seems to be this contingent of vanilla supporters is that the definition of “vanilla porn,” at least according to certain fans of anime and manga, is quite a bit broader than how people would normally define it.

In general usage, vanilla (used for sex or otherwise) implies something that is ordinary and simple, and if one is being negative, bland and boring. In depictions of sex, this generally means something along the lines of missionary position between a couple. But when you look at the categories used in English to describe specific works of erotic anime and manga, you’ll sometimes get tag combinations such as “BDSM HAREM INCEST VANILLA.” I’m not making a value judgment on those other categories by any means, but I think that everyone can agree that, typically, those things don’t go hand in hand with “vanilla.”

What this has me realizing is that the ardent support for “vanilla” may be an even more direct response to NTR than I had first thought, because it ends up being defined by fans as essentially “not-NTR,” though to be more accurate it would probably be “anything that is not gay, rape, or NTR.” Given this definition-by-negation, it would seem that the most vital aspect of “vanilla” is loyalty. In this conception of vanilla, the relationships can be polygamous, they can be extreme in one way or another, but if there is a sense of betrayal or if feelings are hurt through sex, then it falls to the other side.

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A Boy and His Universe: Turn A Gundam

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Gundam is one of the most well-known, influential, and highly regarded franchises in anime history. At this point over three decades old, many changes have occurred in Gundam, but none may be as interesting or so able to fulfill its potential as 1999’s Turn A Gundam. Created to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Gundam and directed by the creator of Gundam himself, Tomino Yoshiyuki, it differs in many ways from other iterations, notably in its setting and aesthetics, but at the same time does wonders with everything it has. It shores up many traditional weaknesses of Gundam and Tomino’s work, and brings a variety of interesting twists to Gundam that don’t just come across as differences merely for the sake of them, resulting in just an all-around strong, engaging, and multifaceted story.

In stark contrast to every other Gundam series in current existence, Turn A Gundam takes place on an Earth with roughly World War I-level technology and social standards. In an age of biplanes and debutantes, the world is flipped upside down when lost descendants of humanity from the moon return to the planet with intentions to emigrate. Because the humans on Earth see this “Moonrace” as alien invaders taking away the land of their ancestors and the Moonrace sees the Earthlings as backwards barbarians prone to violence, tensions rise.

The only things keeping the scenario from boiling over and the Moonrace from wiping out the opposition with superior technology are the fact that the political scenario is not as simple as “Us vs. Them,” and the discovery of ancient and seemingly anachronistic “mechanical dolls” (what the people of the Moon call mobile suits) in the mountains, particularly the powerful and mysterious “White Doll.” Caught in the middle of this conflict is a Moonrace boy living on Earth named Loran Cehack, whose love for both his original and adopted homes pushes him to pilot the White Doll in an effort to prevent all-out war from breaking out.

There are certain phrases thrown about when reviewing anime, such as “character-based,” “theme-based,” “story-based,” and “world-based,” as if these categories are mutually exclusive or even contradictory, but Turn A Gundam is a series which strongly delivers on all these levels and more because of the way all of those components reciprocate with one another. The history of the world shapes the thoughts and backgrounds of the characters, who act within that world to create a grand story with many intricate elements, and it ultimately results in the delivery of certain themes, such as “the strengths and weaknesses of technological progress” and “awareness of history,” by taking a large-scale, global perspective and focusing it through smaller and more intimate character struggles.

This can be seen in the way the series portrays the constant clash of values and beliefs at various levels and between different people, consistently showing how many of the people involved are intelligent or enlightened or even kind-hearted in their own way, but are prone to mistakes due to the limits of their experiences. An archaeologist who cares little for religion and ceremony is so intent on digging for the sake of knowledge that he ends up exacerbating the conflict between the two sides by uncovering powerful military technology. Politician characters possess the negotiation skills and long-term thinking necessary to balance out their followers’ shortsighted and hotheaded reactions to the deaths of their comrades, but their high ambitions blind them to their own misdeeds. Qualities praised in soldiers, such as valor and daring, become problematic in the face of dangers well beyond their comprehension. As such, when these characters and many more sabotage themselves it comes across as perfectly understandable.

The cast of Turn A Gundam is absolutely gigantic, but it never comes across as too unwieldy for the show. Civilians and soldiers alike are given proper time and elaboration, and it really makes Turn A Gundam feel like a comprehensive world populated by real people. Loran is a gentle soul, but not one whose desire for peace prevents him from taking action, and over the course of the series is simultaneously built up and torn down by events both within and out of his control. Dianna Soreil, the leader of the Moonrace, is beloved by her people, but must deal with not only the difficulties of being opposed by Earth militias but also political infighting on her side. Her personal bodyguard, Harry Ord, is a loyal and admirable man, but one who over the course of the series shows how he is not blind to deception or his own feelings. Neither of Loran’s companions from the moon, Keith Leijie and Fran Doll, are soldiers or anything close to it, yet their stories about trying to start new lives on Earth are just as strong.

The Heim sisters, the adopted family of Loran (pictured in the middle below), or more accurately, the masters he works for as a servant, probably grow the most in the series. The tomboyish Sochie (left) must deal with her prejudice and anger against the Moonrace, while Kihel (right) and her uncanny resemblance to Dianna puts her in a situation central to the story, where she must push her already clever mind to its limits. Even extremely minor characters exude a sense of place in their world, and in some cases a lack of sense of place actually winds up becoming a strong defining trait in and of itself.

Also contributing to the strength of the show’s cast is the fact that the romance is actually extremely well done. Traditionally this has been a weakness of Tomino’s anime, particularly in the Gundam franchise because it is often ran through at an accelerated rate so that it can be a plot point or cause for tragedy, but Turn A Gundam manages to provide relationships which grow organically over time, particularly the two most prominent ones in the series. In these cases, the characters don’t so much have a moment where they Fall in Love, but rather as you watch them you see how they grow closer. Even the relationships which are a little more fast-paced are given reason in the series itself: in a situation like war, people start to think about their own mortality and regrets.

Possibly one of the reasons why the romance comes across so well is that many episodes are devoted primarily to showing people living out their lives amidst the backdrop of war, what might be deemed sillier episodes but which work to build the characters further. For Loran in particular, he is able to show how the White Doll, the titular “Turn A Gundam” as is revealed later, can function as more than just a weapon of destruction, and even the instances where he ends up having to crossdress (apparently an enduring legacy of Turn A if fanart is any indication) becomes both a plot point and a hint for later character development. War is shown as both the forefront and the background depending on the episode, and it creates a more robust setting as a result.

One topic that is difficult to avoid when discussing Turn A Gundam is the aesthetics of the show because of how the series visually sticks out among its fellow Gundam anime. Central to this is the fact that the Turn A itself is a far cry from the traditional Gundam design, and I remember that back when the series and its visuals was first announced there was a backlash against it. Designed by American Syd Mead (Blade Runner, Tron), the style of the Turn A, with its signature white mustache and strange angles, seemed to go against the image of Gundam that had been cultivated over the years. Even over a decade ago I jokingly photoshopped the Devil Gundam from G Gundam onto a Turn A Gundam head and called it “The Ugliest Gundam Ever.” But now, my opinion of the Turn A Gundam is that it not only looks good, but that it fits the role of a Gundam far-removed from those that have come before it. Over the course of the anime, the “White Doll” plays many roles and carries with it the question of to what degree can we break from the past, and this break in design says a lot in and of itself.

What’s even more impressive to me, however, is that each of the robot designs in Turn A are strikingly different from one another in a clear manner even, I would argue, when the person watching doesn’t have a particularly keen eye for mecha. The ostrich-like WaDOM looks nothing like the “muscular” Sumo, and even when it shares the same color scheme as the WaD their sheer difference in size makes it plainly obvious which is which. At the same time, the mobile suits of the Moonrace share a certain similar aesthetic quality which unites them thematically.

Compare this with the mobile suits of Zeon in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, where even though there is a clear direction for enemy design, it can potentially be difficult to tell a Gelgoog from a Zaku from a Dom, or from a later series like Gundam W or Gundam 00, where the “Gundam design rules” mean the differences are primarily in little details like weapon types or color schemes or what sits on their backs. With Turn A Gundam, even the retro Mobile Suits found over the course of the series by the people on Earth are so different from each other and everything around them that they gain individual identities all over again.

Like the mobile suits, the characters have a particularly strong pedigree somewhat outside of traditional mecha anime, as the character designer for Turn A Gundam is Yasuda “Akiman” Akira, a man known for his work on the Street Fighter franchise, particularly the creation of Chun-Li. Also like the mecha, the characters and animation for the series don’t seem to carry the best reputation, often times regarded as “okay” or “serviceable” due to the simplicity of the designs, but in my opinion the character designs are excellent.

The designs are deceptively elegant, and that “simplicity” gives me an impression similar to Yasuhiko Yoshikazu’s original designs from the first Gundam. Careful attention is paid to details such as clothing and hair without going overboard, and even the sparse shading contributes to a more refined and subdued look. Much like the mecha, the characters all stand out uniquely at a glance, with one notable (and intentional) exception in Kihel and Dianna.

If I had to describe Turn A Gundam using other anime titles, I would say it has the thematic elements of Panzer World Galient, half the grandeur of Legend of the Galactic Heroes (which keep in mind is still a vast amount), and characterization on the level of Eureka Seven. The show is amazing. It’s gripping in a way that shows Tomino at his finest, with its balance of heavy elements with a sort of lighthearted whimsy which also manages to enrich every aspect of the story, its characters, and its ideas. As I finished Turn A Gundam, I could feel it taking over my thoughts and emotions. It’s amazing, and I can’t get it out of my head.

The Fujoshi Files 54: Kiryuu Yuuzuki

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Name: Kiryuu, Yuuzuki (桐生夕月)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Dating
Origin: Kissxsis

Information:
Kiryuu Yuuzuki is a high school teacher and closet fujoshi who actively keeps her colleagues from learning about her hobbies. Scatter-brained at times, she develops feelings for one of her students, Suminoe Keita, but must compete with a number of other girls for his affections, notably Keita’s older sisters, one of his classmates, and even Yuuzuki’s own younger sister Mikazuki. At first against the idea of a relationship between siblings, her disapproval turns from moral to personal as a result of her own romantic interest in Keita.

Yuuzuki’s taste in otaku entertainment is fairly diverse, but she has a particular affinity for samurai-themed works such as Sengoku Mabara. She also has a preference for cosplay, and an unusually sensitive sense of smell.

Fujoshi Level:
It is not entirely clear how much of a fujoshi Kiryuu Yuuzuki is, but she does own samurai-themed hug pillows which she keeps and uses in the privacy of her own home.