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.
