Shameful Otaku Secret!

Pretty sure three years is a tradition, but I couldn’t think of 12 great blogging moments for CCY’s ongoing 12 days of Christmas project this year. Fortunately, ghostlightning gave me an out by suggesting I do what he’s doing, with moments in anime instead. Even more fortunately, CCY decided to make his 12 moments this year about pretty much whatever.

The question is, can I find 12 awesome things that my true love, cartoons, gave to me this year?

Well, here’s one, and it just about makes up for any shortcomings anywhere else.

That's not the only thing amazing about this.

This year, since my own 30th anniversary of life coincided with Gundam’s, I finally took in the original, in movie form. While I’d failed at the series, and hated most of the modern Gundam creations, this one slew me. There really are a lot of moments here, and many have had their meaning memefied into oblivion. But while “mistakes of youth” and the Don Johnson suit cement Char’s place in the Pantheon of Awesome Villains, and the Brightslap sums up the “grimdark + hilarity” recipe that makes Gundam, Char on a covered wagon is an unstoppable force of madness. It’s a universe of its own, a confusing singularity of ridiculousness that should have offended me (Planet Texas? Really?) but really just had me on the rewind button for a good ten minutes.

Double Oh Nineteen hundred seventy-nine AD. The One Year War begins. Char Aznable, the Red Comet, meets the Federation’s ultimate weapon, the Gundam, for the first time. And White Base begins its long journey.

At least, that’s what happened in the animated world.

In the third dimension, something somewhat less earth-shattering happened: I was born.

Fast forward thirty years. Gundam celebrates its anniversary with a new series announcement, international Tomino appearances, and of course a giant life-size Gundam in Tokyo, while my birthday goes by without so much as an whining post.

I have, however, set out to celebrate my thirtieth year in a truly Gundam-tastic way by finally starting my journey into the grandaddy real robot franchise. I am beginning, appropriately, with the 0079 movies.

Fifty episodes for the series is a bit of a stretch for me these days, and besides — mechafetish and ghostlightning pointed me to the movies with their helpful Gateway Gundam Chooser®.

I’m partially through the second movie, but rather than keep waiting to post, I thought I’d get out my impressions of the first.

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