How to Survive in a Mecha Anime or Manga

I’m not dead, but I would be if I wound up in a mecha setting and didn’t follow these rules.

1. Don’t mentor a younger pilot.

2. If you must break rule one, don’t be cooler than your protege.

3. Don’t fight anything powered by a black hole.

Super Robot Wars X announced

The next Super Robot Wars game has been announced, and this time there’s an English trailer from the start.

My 10 Favorite Anime OPs of the 2000s

Or “the rise of the series that change OPs really often and artists fond of caps lock”.

10. Gurren Lagann, “Sorairo Days” by Nakagawa Shouko

I love the way the third opening actually uses the later part of the song.

Incidentally, it just edged out the opening for New Getter Robo. Even on this list Gurren Lagann overshadows what it homages.

My Mecha Anime Recommendations

In the process of writing my Mecha that Changed Anime posts, I unavoidably also thought about what I’d say here.

These are my top ten (plus one) favorite mecha anime. (Note there are series with some mecha elements that I’d consider better than some of these, but aren’t quite “mecha” enough to belong on this list: Magic Knight Rayearth, Tekkaman Blade, and FLCL come to mind.)

Mecha That Changed Anime: Deconstruction and Reconstruction

Considering how the 80’s went, it’s pretty easy to imagine that mecha could have remained a genre that continued to evolve gradually, but would never be completely revolutionized again. Then again, it’s also possible the genre would have declined into a small isolated niche. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and in fact 1994 was a good enough year for mecha that I think it was clearly already rebounding. G Gundam is one of my personal favorites, but didn’t really “change anime” as much as most of what I’ve been mentioning.

Depending on how you look at it, I think it took until Magic Knight Rayearth in 1994 (the manga started in 93, but the Mashin/Rune-Gods didn’t appear early) before there was a great example of a series that had mecha where mecha were nowhere near the core concept.

Song Challenge Day 20: On an upcoming album

“A song from a new album you are waiting for to come out”

I really don’t keep track of what’s coming up very much, so I didn’t choose this from a very wide pool. But I do happen to know that “Kessen the Final Round” will be on JAM Project’s next album. (The same group three times in four days? Maybe I should have shuffled the order of the challenge.)

This song is from Super Robot Wars Z3 Tengoku-hen. The song, the game, and this video are all epic.

(uploaded by Apichat Pansotthee)

Science of Anime: Ludicrous Size

As I’ve said before, some anime like to have things so big that the square/cube law says they shouldn’t be able to support their own weight. But weight only applies when there’s gravity, right? So how about giants in space?

Science of Anime: Space terminology and scale

Transformers Energon was the terrible English dub of Transformers Superlink, which wasn’t that good to begin with. One infamous line of dialogue from it was “We warped into another galaxy on the outer reaches of the solar system.”.

That’s an extreme example of an issue that a lot of other anime have to a lesser degree; mixing up astronomical terms and/or the scale associated with them. Several series have used “galaxy” like it meant “universe”. Others don’t seem to realize how close a “moon” and a “planet” can be in scale.

Awesome Music Thursday: Libera Me From Hell

I never get tired of this unlikely fusion from Gurren Lagann.

Lagann really can combine with anything, so I guess it makes sense that this would be the series where, somehow, someone made combining opera and rap in the same song work this well.

(Uploaded by Paladin 65539)

Science of Anime: Spiral Power

In Gurren Lagann, it often seems like almost nothing is impossible, and the things that are impossible still happen anyway. Examples (and spoilers):

So in this case, maybe the question should be just how many “exceptions” to the laws of physics do we have to suspend disbelief for when we watch this series?

Would you believe just one?