Tag Archives: bang brave bang bravern

Snake? Snaaaake!!!: Ogiue Maniax Status Update for January 2025

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It’s customary to see the New Year as a fresh start, and an opportunity to say farewell to the previous year. I don’t expect 2025 to be an especially fantastic year, but I do know we have a lot of anime to look forward to. Witch Hat Atelier! Wandance! And more! At the very least, I hope that we can find comfort in art created by artists.

Thanks to my supporters on Patreon. I appreciate that you’ve stuck with me, and hope you’ll be safe in 2025 and on. And remember: Don’t subscribe on iOS if you can help it!

General:

Ko Ransom

Diogo Prado

Alex

Dsy

Sue Hopkins fans:

Serxeid

Hato Kenjirou fans:

Elizabeth

Yajima Mirei fans:

Machi-Kurada

Blog Highlights from December

Rawhide Kobayashi’s Favorite Anime: Delusional Monthly Magazine

I had to write about the fact that this anime even exists.

A Fine Roast: Fantôme Thief’s Revenge

I decided against all common sense to attend this concert, and it was totally worth it.

Best Anime Characters of 2024

Who are your picks?

Kio Shimoku

One last Kio twitter summary for 2024.

Closing

I don’t exactly have any big plans for Ogiue Maniax in 2025, but perhaps if I write about my lack of ideas, something fun will manifest. I really should get back around to doing a Gattai Girls series…

Best Anime Characters of 2024

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BEST MALE CHARACTER 

Laios Touden (Delicious in Dungeon)

Finding characters you can relate to is part of the fun of fiction. Over the years, I’ve found a fair many that I could connect to, but exceedingly few have spoken to the core of my very being  in the same way as Laios Touden.

Laios lives in a fantasy world filled with magic and the supernatural, where he has the unusual hobby of eating monsters, but there are layers to that passion. Sure, he wants to know the best ways to cook the beasts that populate the dungeon, but he’s not like his travel companion Senshi, who wants to find the peak of labyrinth cooking. Instead, what drives Laios is culinary discovery and exploration. More important than figuring out what tastes best is the desire to taste flavors he’s never come across before, and to eat things that might not even be considered edible to most others. If I were in his shoes, I would be the same way. He and I share a similar philosophy: “You don’t know how it’ll taste until you actually eat it.”

And if Laios were just a goofy, relatable guy, that would be enough. But there’s a depth to his silly charm. He’s basically never lost his childhood curiosity, and his enthusiasm is both infectious and a positive force on everyone who gets to know him. I could only hope to be so lucky to do the same for the people I know.

BEST FEMALE CHARACTER

Frieren (Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End)

Over the past fifteen years, it’s often felt like anime has been lacking more traditional fantasy series. Then in comes Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End to show that something more classical-feeling still has a place. It feels refreshingly new yet orthodox, and central to that success is the protagonist herself.

Frieren is an elf mage who has basically already accomplished her biggest quest ever, and is now on a journey to retrace her old steps, indulge in her hobby of collecting obscure and delightfully frivolous spells, and help guide a new generation of adventurers. Her long years mean she has lived experience of things lost to time to most, yet she neither puts stock in the old or the new just because. To her, everything is a valuable learning experience. In a way, she reminds me of a previous Best Character of the Year, Yang Wen-Li from Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

There’s something that I think sums Frieren (and by extension the themes of the series) very well: How the character Serie sees her. To most, Frieren is like a walking myth and impossibly powerful, but Serie is actually even older and stronger. In her eyes, the younger elf has squandered her years and is well below her magical potential—like someone with 30 years of experience in a foreign language only being as fluent as someone who’s been studying for 20. However, Frieren sees value in pursuing things at the pace you want for the things you value, and it’s a lesson I constantly try to take to heart.

BEST ROBOT BRO

Bravern (Bang Brave Bang Bravern)

There is possibly no character who flips his entire world on its head more thoroughly than Bravern. When you first enter the story of Bang Brave Bang Bravern, you think it’s this gritty, relatively realistic mecha story. Colors are dark and subdued. Then, when a fearsome enemy attacks that overwhelms conventional human militaries, in comes a mysterious and bright-red super robot reminiscent of 90s Yuusha anime with little need for an indoor voice, but he literally plays his own fiery, trumpet-filled theme song!

Bravern is not just a fun character—he’s a representative of a style of giant robot and giant heroics lost to time. And he’s the massive unit you want by your side, whether for the bro friendship or the bromance. Or, you know.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Laios and Frieren have a lot in common. They’re both protagonists of fantasy series that have garnered incredible acclaim among fans and critics alike. The two are so popular that you might well accuse me of making the most boring and obvious choices. Yet, while it’s often said that “popular doesn’t mean good,” that doesn’t mean popular things are automatically bad either. With Delicious in Dungeon and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End alike, you have titles that show how you don’t have to appeal to the lowest common denominator to garner love on a wider scale. 

But more important than all that stuff is this: If they met, Laios and Frieren would probably end up being incredible friends for each other. Their sense of wonder at amazement at things others overlook would probably get them talking for hours to each other. The two represent not just styles of fantasy fiction that aren’t as game/isekai-coded, but also approaches to heroes who don’t prioritize power or progress.

And as for Bravern, well, he’d probably be good chums with them too, don’t you think?

Bara Bara Obari: Bang Brave Bang Bravern

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Bang Brave Bang Bravern is like an anime that has traveled through time to reach us in 2024, but it’s not clear whether it came from the past or the future.

The show’s creator, Obari Masami, is near-synonymous with mecha. He’s been involved since the 1980s with works like Dancouga and Gravion, he’s the reason the Brave Pose exists, and they even bring him in to animate giant robot parodies in other genres. So when he announced a new series in the form of Bravern, I wondered what form it would take, especially with him as director and mecha designer. 

The answer is: one filled with shocking twists that are as baffling as they are exciting. This is very much intentional, as the initial promo material and even most of the first episode has you believing that Bang Bravern is on the grittier side, with mecha as weapons of war. The first meeting between its central characters, Japanese soldier Ao Isami and American soldier Lewis Smith, seemingly portends a story about true camaraderie on the battlefield.

Then everything goes into Obari Overdrive. A shiny red robot shows up, literally shouting all his special attacks, and a sincere level of camp. This namesake, Bravern, is a heroic sort who draws a lot from the Brave franchise, especially the bonding of kid and robot that is a hallmark of those anime. Only, Isami is a grown man instead of a wide-eyed grade schooler and reacts with a mix of awe and horror. The arrival of Bravern then kicks off a culture clash between the serious original setting and its brightly colored new reality that leaves everyone perplexed and hesitantly hopeful in the face of imminent doom.

During all this, we’re treated to the opening and then ending themes. The former is a blood-pumping super robot song that draws from the genre’s collective past, with shades of Godannar, Gaogaigar, Daiohja, and even Space Battleship Yamato. The latter features Isami and Smith in the rain, slowly undressing themselves as they sing dramatically like they’re starring in a musical. Together, these two songs encapsulate much of what Bravern is about.

And that’s only the first two episodes! 

At least one shocking revelation or pivotal moment hits every episode, in a manner reminiscent of both Gurren-Lagann and Samurai Flamenco. The stakes keep escalating in wonderfully outlandish ways so frequently that Brang Bravern feels like 52 episodes got condensed into 12. The result is a show that leaves little breathing room for major moments, but also appears to act as an acknowledgement that giant robot anime comes from a time when year-long shows were the norm—and that such an era has long since passed.

With its muscular and passionate men in a setting that’s normally about masculine bravado, Bang Bravern might give the impression that it’s queerbaiting. In reality, it’s not really a bait: The show is very gay. At the same time, it feels very different from a lot of other works in that territory. For one thing, the attractive guys are also surrounded by attractive girls and attractive mecha, making it a smorgasbord of hotness all around. And amidst all this cheesecake and beefcake, the story told by Bang Bravern cuts to the heart of living up to childhood ideals.

This isn’t really plot spoilers, but the final episode plays the opening but with added sound effects like explosions and clanking sounds. This is a reference to the fact that many giant robot anime of yesteryear would at some point change their openings to include similar SFX. I think that says a lot about the spirit of Bang Brave Bang Bravern.