Tag Archives: gundam

Deceptive Marketing and Copywriting

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“In the future, boys will be boys and girls will be robots!”

“A story of love, dreams, and perseverance.”

“Slowly, Satou comes out of his reclusive shell, and his hilarious journey begins, filled with mistaken identity, Lolita complexes—and an ultimate quest to create the greatest hentai game ever!”

The above quotes are taken from an ad for Chobits, an ad for The Story of Saiunkoku, and the official synopsis of Welcome to the NHK, respectively. And while they’ve all got a certain catchiness or punch to them, anyone who’s seen these shows will tell you that, while the words in each are on some level true, they don’t really convey the complete appeal or feel of their stories.

I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this, other than the general sense that companies advertise their own anime and manga poorly, but maybe that’s merely by my own standards. I do fear that there is always a very real chance that because of the misleading advertising that it might lead some people to miss a show they might otherwise watch, or might lead to misunderstandings when a show doesn’t do well. To use a non-anime example, Avatar: The Last Airbender was marketed as if it were for young kids, but the story was sophisticated enough that it would at the very least be more suitable for young adult viewers. And, surprise, that’s where a lot of its hardcore fanbase is. First Gundam also had a similar problem where its initial run in Japan was not successful but when it caught the attention of older (as in older than 10) viewers, it picked up steam.

Is it all right to, in some sense, trick people into reading your book or watching your show? Is it simply a case that if you told most people that Saiunkoku was like, political shoujo, that it would turn most people away? Is this why Honey and Clover appears in Shoujo Beat when it’s targeted towards older female readers?

In that respect, does this sort of thing actually work? Is it actually pulling in new people who would be turned away from these works normally? Or is it perhaps turning people away who would otherwise be interested in reading the somewhat depressing story of a drug-abusing shut-in who feels his life is all but worthless?


Burn, Gundam, and Cut a Path to the Future

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Gundam is now a whopping 30 years old. From its humble beginnings as an almost-failed giant robot show that was just a little different from its predecessors to its current status as one of the most significant and influential franchises of all time, Gundam is synonymous with anime around the world. For me personally, Gundam carries many important memories, ones I cherish to this day. Allow me to tell you the story up until now of my own journey through Gundam.

I don’t remember when exactly in high school it was, but one day my brother (who had gotten me into anime in the first place) brought home a couple of series on VHS he had borrowed from a friend: Gundam W and Gundam. This was a year or two before Wing appeared on Cartoon Network. Watching these series, especially Wing, I was taken in by the combination of gorgeous giant robots and politics and dynamic characters.

Really though, the content of Wing and 0083 isn’t important so much as where it took me, as soon I would meet some fellow mech-heads who would bring me further into the world of mecha, even introducing me to Evangelion. You know who you guys are. Practically every day after school we would go into the high school’s computer lab and watch anime clips (with a good portion of that devoted to Gundam), discussing mobile suit specs and which ones were our favorites, and getting our first taste of shows such as Gaogaigar via video clips from that old site Best Anime. I remember thinking that the RX-78-2 design was so dated, and thought the more modern Gundam designs were far superior, falling victim to the shine and polish of the “new.” The computer lab attendant tolerated us as best as he could, and for that I thank him (rest in peace Mr. Clancy).

At this point I was hooked on Gundam in a big way. I went to Chinatown, where they sold bootleg anime on VHS, and purchased the original gundam movie trilogy as I wanted to see how it all started. I also bought Char’s Counterattack, as it was the source of the Sazabi and the Nu Gundam, two designs I had fallen in love with. Char’s Counterattack became my favorite Gundam anime, and I still hold it in quite high regard today, though the original trilogy has risen in rank quite a bit. After that, I watched X, F-91, G, 08th MS Team, a few episodes of Turn A (whatever was available in Chinatown at the time), Zeta, and even G-Saviour of all things.

I remember getting free model kit catalogs from one of the anime sellers in Chinatown, and looking at the pages over and over. I remember buying model kits and cherishing my Gundam X, my Virsago, my RX-78-2, my Qubeley, my Sazabi, my V Gundam, and especially my Nu Gundam. And I remember finding the Mecha Domain, a site which listed specs of Gundams and robots from other anime (known today as the Mecha Anime HQ) and Mark Simmons’ extremely informative site the Gundam Project (Mark Simmons would go on to actually run the official Gundam website). Naturally, my friends and I would use this information to debate who would win in fights and what our favorite designs were. We’d laugh at the ridiculous design of the Devil Gundam (“It has a head for a body!”). We’d go over to each other’s houses and play Gundam: the Battle Master 2 (I loved using Char’s Red Zaku, as it was (obviously) very very fast). When I think of being a mecha fan, hell, an anime fan, these are the times I think about first.

At the end of high school, after having spent a year as the anime club’s president and having my yearbook photo appear with a Char Aznable quote (“One chooses not to acknowledge the mistakes of one’s youth”), I went off to college. With the magic of bittorrent began to watch SEED. At this point I was separated from my Gundam-loving friends, but we still managed to talk about it. I was quite fond of SEED, and my stance to this day is that it starts off seeming like a clone of First Gundam but gradually becomes its own beast, with a unique, more romantic feel compared to other Gundam series. What really brought out this feeling towards SEED though was the introduction of Cagalli Yula Athha. Never before had I seen such an incredible female character in a Gundam series! I had previously considered Emma Sheen to be the most attractive Gundam heroine, but that was no longer the case. Cagalli’s aggressiveness and kind heart won me over in a way only Maetel, Daidouji Tomoyo, and Ogiue have been able to surpass.

This of course is why SEED Destiny was that much more painful.

I began watching SEED Destiny the semester before I went to study abroad in Japan. Watching it in America originally, it was an incredibly worthy successor to SEED. By the time I got to Japan, I was fearing for its safety and continually waiting for the episode where the crying, moping Cagalli would be herself again. That episode came, but by then it was too late. I learned a valuable lesson with Destiny, as I had originally claimed that there was no way Destiny could become worse than SEED: don’t assume things you dumbass!

It wasn’t all bad times, though. Through college, though I did not have nearly the number of mecha-loving friends that I used to, I still met a few through happenstance. I remember having an argument about Coordinators and whether or not they were a good concept. Again, if you’re reading this, you know who you are.

Now we’re pretty close to the present, and you can track my shifting views on Gundam 00 right here on Ogiue Maniax. One big thing is that early on, I still felt burned by the failure that was SEED Destiny, and I was hesitant to move onto a new Gundam series for fear that it would happen again. I’m happy to have been proven wrong, and to know that one bad show cannot take down the juggernaut that was birthed from Tomino Yoshiyuki’s head.

If you were to ask me why I was so into Gundam 10 years ago, I’m not entirely sure I would remember. Nowadays, I can see Gundam as an ambitious franchise which changed the way people looked at a genre of Japanese animation, that continually transforms itself for every new generation of fans, but I did not think about it like that back then. There were the awesome characters, and the legendary robot designs, and the fact that the villains were never stock villains, but I think what was most important for my Gundam fandom was being able to share it with friends.

And Then Emperor Palpatine Fell Into an Explanation

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The other day I went to see the movie Fanboys, about a group of Star Wars fan one year before the release of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. I won’t say much about the movie itself except that I thought it was hilarious, but it reminded me that there’s a lot of Star Wars “lore” out there. I had borrowed a Star Wars character guide from a friend long ago, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, so I decided to hop online and take a look at the compiled information on the universe that is Star Wars. Upon reading I began to feel this sense of dread.

One of the very important lessons then Western Art took from Eastern Art was the concept of negative space, that leaving spaces blank can be just as effective a tool as filling in every detail. Essentially, it means less can be more. When applied to storytelling, it means that not every detail has to be explained and that in many cases the more explanation that arises the less effective the storytelling becomes. This is what I saw with the information on the  Star Wars Universe. I saw unnecessary explanation after unnecessary explanation, as if making sense of the world and filling in the gaps is far more important than maintaining the feel of the story and characters.

The idea of fans filling in the gaps is not something that’s necessarily bad. In fact many times I consider it to be a good thing as I feel it’s a very important foundation of fandom, whether it’s imagining stories in between major events, inventing new characters, or even fleshing out one-dimensional characters. One can argue that having these complex technical explanations is one type of fan’s way of exploring the universe of the story, but once it reaches a point where it becomes some kind of hybrid canon/fanon that influences or restructures the original story, I can’t help but feel that it is done at the detriment of core vital elements of a story. Obi-Wan and Yoda learned how to maintain their identity in the Force. Why does this need an explanation? Obi-Wan is a magical old man, and Yoda is an even more magical and even older man. There, that’s your explanation.

I think one of the many reasons why I like anime so much is that it seems to understand this idea of effectively using the gaps in storytelling. It’s not just about fueling imagination so that we the viewer may fill in the blanks, but using that sense of ambiguity to excite and drive us forward. Gurren-Lagann is an excellent example, because the characters utilize this vague, ill-defined power to achieve victory after victory. They are literally powered by a lack of common sense that keeps them from questioning if anything they’re doing is truly possible. “Do the impossible, see the invisible,” as the saying goes. One does not need to explain what doing the impossible entails or how it works other than that it was driven by the hero’s desire and the support of his friends.

A more apt comparison might be Star Wars and Gundam especially given the way they’ve influenced each other, but for all of the detailed explanations and added material that has been placed into the Gundam Universe, I feel that Gundam has handled it far better than Star Wars. What even its most hardcore fans ultimately enjoy appears to be more the story and the characters and the way great tales are told, rather than little details.

Wasn’t Star Wars once in its own in a way similar to Gurren-Lagann? There was the Force as a vaguely defined aspect of the universe with vaguely defined skill sets available to its users. What’s the difference between a normal man and a Jedi? That one is a Jedi and one is a man.

Crossing Gender-oriented Genres and Fan Reaction

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I’ve been thinking about those works which cross the line between various genres of anime, particularly those which bridge the gap between “male-oriented” and “female-oriented” labels. Series like Saint Seiya and Cardcaptor Sakura manage to capture an audience beyond their main targets, while others such as Gundam Wing and Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha not only bridge the gap, they cross over and begin to set fire to the ropes.

I know I have some issues with Nanoha, and while I think it’s a fine series overall, it never completely shakes that feeling that yes, this is totally intended for guys like me who love Cardcaptor Sakura (though not in that way personally), and it is kind of creepy for doing so. I know Gundam Wing is often considered far more of a black sheep than G Gundam among male fans of the Gundam franchise, for the way it perhaps overly de-emphasizes aspects often associated with Gundam, never mind that the original series garnered more than a few female fans of Red Comet Char Aznable and his zany (dead) friend, Garma Zabi. It’s just interesting to see this negative reaction in both myself and others pertaining to certain series and our expectations of what a show should entail.

I wonder if it’d be possible for genres to swap almost completely.