Have they come up with a way yet to distinguish the arcs of Gundam AGE yet? Is this the Flit arc? The Ambat arc? Whatever it’s being called or will be called, I’m calling it the first fifteen episodes of Gundam AGE.

There’s a tendency when writing positive things about this series to try and defend it from its critics. I am going to try and avoid that, because it’s a waste of time. Gundam fans are the worst for creating a non-existent ideal in their heads of what their favourite show should be. I know this because I have my own non-existent ideal that the past three Gundam series have singularly failed to live up to.

So far though, Gundam AGE gets closer than most. And here’s why.

Different body types. This isn’t even a Gundam thing. There’s some difference in body types in the original series, but nothing approaching Gundam AGE‘s array of near spherical grandfathers, underclass manual labourers with tiny legs, pretty boy pilots with hair shaped like ears, and kids with out of control blue fringes. What it reminded me more of was Leiji Matsumoto’s character design work, but that might just be the sci-fi setting as Level 5 like this sort of variation in their other works like Professor Layton and Inazuma Eleven. It’s just a little more swish coming from Sunrise than when it comes from OLM.

Just one Gundam. Gundam variants are fun, and they sell more model kits, but I do like the idea of giving a Gundam a mythical quality by making there be only one. And in Gundam AGE, it literally has a mythical quality, with the idea of a Gundam lost in the past, and resurrected by the hero Flit. Plus the AGE system is a clever way to have variants, but still keep only one Gundam in the show.

Mystery. While the show hits a lot of beats  familiar to long time Gundam fans, it does something different in making the whole first 15 episodes essentially a mystery story. That mystery is who are the Unknown Enemy? By the fifteenth episode we have an answer, but more many more questions. The characters themselves though become so driven by revenge that by the time the reveal is made, they have arguably dehumanised the enemy in their minds that the answer is meaningless. Certainly it appears that way for one of the leads.

Big Dumb Sci-Fi Idea The show has a bunch of old Gundam concepts, sometimes dressed up in new names, but it also has the big dumb sci-fi idea of the show – the AGE system. It is essentially a 3D printer that creates modifications for the Gundam based on combat data. You know who else uses 3D printers? The designers at Bandai who work on Gundam model kits. Adding to the sense that the mecha design is going from Gunpla to Anime rather than vice-versa, is that the AGE system created modifications attach themselves to the Gundam frame as if they were pieces of a model kit.

The lessons of the last 15 years of anime designed to sell toys/games, is that you have to make the characters’ experiences with the “toys” in the show as close as humanly possible to the customers’ experiences in the real world. That’s a tall order for a show about pilotable robots (compare it to the LBX robots of Level 5′s Danball Senki), but this feels like an intelligent attempt to address it. Can it do it better than the shows that have shouldered out robot shows from the daytime schedules? Time, and money, will tell.

I’m looking forward to see how the generational gimmick makes a difference as we jump 26 years ahead in the story and join Flit’s son, Asemu as he becomes the hero of the series.

Over on dynamiteinthebrain.com we have a new episode about Ninja Scroll, with special guest Niall Flanagan from Secret of The Sailor Madness.

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Over on dynamiteinthebrain.com we have a new episode about Genius Party Beyond. We also talk about some of the winter 2012 anime we’ve been watching.

Download Dynamite In The Brain – Episode 36 – Genius Party

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This is a tale of bad choices, wasted money and photos of idiots dressed as elves.

But enough about TSR, what about me?

Well I never dressed as an elf, but I did pick the wrong CCG game to play and then wasted a bunch of money on it. I would go onto to do this four more times before learning my lesson, but those are posts for another day.

Caught on the back foot by Magic: The Gathering‘s launch and subsequent success in 1993, TSR created their own CCG. With it being based on D&D one might think that they would have been onto a winner. As successful as Magic was, TSR had the grandaddy of fantasy gaming IP in their back pocket. That had to count for something? Right?

No, it did not.

The problem was they panicked.

The finished product was a mess, not unplayable, not the worst CCG in the world (we shall get to that in due time), but it was so, so sloppy and half-arsed. Rather than commissioning new original art, they just sliced up existing AD&D art into card sized shapes. Not just art, but also hex maps.

It was so devoid of detail that some of the original cards were just a name and a picture. Later on they would use photos of LARPers. I don’t know what the LARPers or the customers did to deserve that. The quality of the card stock used for the cards was pretty cheap too. The only thing it really had going for it was that you got a lot of cards in a booster.

Launched in 1994, it unfortunately coincided with my university holidays and a summer job. So I had plenty of money to spend on CDs I no longer listen to, RPGs I never played and this TSR CCG that arrived at our local games shop/club/Apple dealer. I was not alone in being tricked by the TSR & AD&D name, all our club started playing. Some bought the ridiculously over-sized rules clarification book they produced. TWICE. Some even bought their later CCG, the less rushed Blood Wars. 

I think I was into it for about a year, moving onto other CCGs in 95/96, before finally being turned off the whole CCG deal by one of the worst games I have ever attempted to get my brain around.

So, Spellfire, one more step on the road to TSR’s eventual downfall and takeover by Wizards of the Coast. It was pretty bad, and I’d have been better off without it, but at least it wasn’t Dragon Dice.

from Shameless School by Go Nagai

Over on the new Dynamite In The Brain site, we have a new episode about The Cat Returns with special guest Grace Chan. So check it out!

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The best produced, best written, bad roleplaying game ever made.

For starters, what other RPGs boast a GEOF DARROW cover? Were full colour throughout? And printed on high end glossy paper? Just as an inanimate object, Underground was better than pretty much anything else on the market.

Sorry, Ray Winninger’s Underground.

Not entirely sure why Winninger got to prefix his game. Sure, he’d written some good DC Heroes material, in particular a Watchmen adventure and the great Watchmen sourcebook. But beyond that his name didn’t mean much to me.

It came out in 1993, and it shows. I believe the original plan was for three books, each satrising a different concept of heroism, with this one taking on the American ideal, and specifically superheroes. It’s a big old allegory for the treatment of Vietnam veterans, but with super powers and big guns.

It’s Marshal Law the RPG, basically. Which is fine, as I love me some Marshal Law.

I think the other heroic ideals to be dealt with that never came to fruition were the ideal of the Teutonic Knight (there’s some sketched in background involving Germany and the Church of Scientology iirc) and some form of “Eastern Hero” (wuxia infuenced maybe?).

I can’t say for sure because I sold it a few years ago.

Despite the setting and idea of the game being right up my alley, not to mention incredibly well written, the game itself is a clunker of a rule system. I never managed to run a game, the character generation alone drove me up the wall. A friend, Barry, managed to get a few sessions out of it, before he had the PCs cross over into his D&D campaign and we forgot all about struggling with Underground.

It’s a shame, because on every other level, the writing, the art, the production, it’s a great game. Everything works together to create this game world. Except the game itself.

Over at Dynamite In The Brain’s new website, Anthony Askew and myself have a new episode where we talk about Studio 4°C’s anthology movie, Genius Party. So check it out!

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Anime’s use of CG models often attracts derision. Recently the trailer for Bodacious Space Pirates caused the assembled masses of the internet to decry its spaceships and wonder if we had really progressed much further than Lost Universe. So if I tell you that a CG animated show was one of the best looking anime of 2011 you might not believe me.

Of course, the fact the show was a series of shorts aimed at children and based on characters from a popular line of American greetings cards, may go some way to explaining your disbelief.

For that show was Suzy’s Zoo.

Based on Suzy Spafford’s characters, the show was directed by Hidekazu Ohara, who first came to my attention in his short, Professor Dan Petory’s Blues, on the Studio 4°C anthology Sweat Punch. He also worked on the Cannon Fodder segment of Memories, and oddly enough you can see some of that in Suzy’s Zoo. Particularly in how it recreates a particular hand drawn look.

It’s a technically impressive piece of work, not just in how it makes 3D models look hand drawn, it exceeds Hipira in this respect, but also the sense of weight they give the models. They aren’t just solid lumps, for example Witzy’s the duck’s feathers have a different weight to the main body of the model, leading to a much more convincing movement.

The writing is acceptable for kids animated short. It’s got some good gags, but it’s not as strong as say a Shaun the Sheep in the physical comedy department, nor as verbally funny as late period Peppa Pig (if you doubt Peppa Pig‘s strengths, I recommend the episode “Grampy Rabbit’s Lighthouse”. Brian Blessed as a shouting elderly rabbit. I think that’s all that needs to be said).

But it’s certainly better than any other greetings card character cartoons that history has spat out. I’d take Witzy and friends well animated whimsy over the wretched Getalong Gang any day of the week.

Poyopoyo is here. 

Akitaro Daichi returns with another gag manga adaptation. Which if you’ve followed his career is enough of a reason to celebrate, as he’s got a better understanding than most on how to transfer them to screen. Namely, don’t lose the gags.

Even better though, is he’s brought with him Rie Ooshima. She worked with him on the Kuruneko adaptation. And very few other people. This interview with Daichi discusses how they approached that series. In particular he mentions not using storyboards (instead just using the strips) and pre-scoring both it and Gag Manga Biyori.

On Poyopoyo, Ooshima is working as Animation Director, and it’s certainly a fuller world than Kuruneko’s. The look is more in the spirit of Daichi’s work on Legendz and Grrl Power. And while the spherical cat is consistent with the manga’s design, the human characters have been given some spit and polish to make them more charming.

Noted animal voice actress Ikue Ohtani (Merle, Pikachu, Tony Tony Chopper) voices Poyo, the cat. And vocal legend Akira Kamiya plays the father of the family who adopt the cat. And apparently the grandmother too!

While Poyopoyo isn’t Kuruneko, I’ve been waiting so long for a Daichi gag show to get picked up by someone I’m unduly excited to see it on Crunchyroll. And who knows, maybe it will foster some interest in the superior Kuruneko and Gag Manga Biyori? (SPOILER: It won’t).