Don’t worry about it.
OK, I admit, I don’t necessarily see a lot of people worrying. But just for a minute, I had a few random distracting thoughts while watching Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen episode 3.
I’ve harped in the past on the issue of believability. You might remember that, it still stings. Of course, it’s a contextual issue – believability in one particular style of anime is a totally different matter in another. In the case of Clannad, where character relationships are pretty much the only thing going, I wanted some believable interactions between characters. Is it too much to ask?
In True Mazinger, I only ask for one thing as well. Robots. Giant robots. Giant robots fucking shit up. In fact, I don’t want to believe anything at all. I want to see a bunch of shit that I don’t believe.
Nevertheless, that old demon of realism rears its ugly head in spite of my attempts to quiet it down. For instance… Kouji on a motorcycle, with Grandpa yelling at him? Or Sayaka yelling from the top of her cockpit without any apparent radio to Kouji inside the locked-down Mazinger. Dear God, how do these people hear each other?
And what, pray tell, about THIS?
Where does Ashura get that kind of leverage, regardless of how strong s/he is?
But is that really important?
Of course not.
What’s important is that, while taking screencaps for this post, I watched the ROCKET PUNCH scene over and over again. And I realized that my ass was no longer in the chair. I was hunched over my computer, wide-eyed, with my heart pounding and tiny drops of sweat beginning to form around my hairline.
Somehow, I was transported back to the very first rocket punch I saw as a kid — what’s going on here might be really transparent manipulation, but I don’t care. I’m not going to worry about that either. I’m also not going to worry about, as ghostlightning calls it, “shitting bricks and calling it a post.” Because I am building a brick fortress right now, and by the time True Mazinger ends, I hope to have a metropolis.
LULZ
I’ve built freaking Teppelin by the end of episode 4.
I’m going to find this line useful more often than I probably think. I wish I said it first.
It’s funny that my post on this same episode was about the realistic elements in Shin Mazinger. The yelling back and forth is fantastic, but it’s so epic as well. The world becomes a cozy warzone full of buddies.