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Anshu posted:Both? The former wouldn't exist without the latter, and I don't think her character needed to be redeemed. Furthermore, reducing her importance the way they did was the most egregious example of a broader trend in the films to transfer narrative weight away from the female cast. I'm in the same boat. Grace in the TV series was an incredibly good villain, one of the best out and out unapologetically bad people I've ever seen in a series. She was a compelling, well used, well done person who was just The Worst. If she was similarly good through/during/after her redemption that would be one thing but she really isn't. The decision to turn her face and play her as just a puppet for the literally faceless conspiracy turned her from an incredible villain into a person who dies tragically, and there are many better examples of the latter than there are the former. Also I just finished Planet With, and the fact it wasn't brought up in the discussion of "Extremely good mecha anime in recent years" makes me sad because I can say I adored that series.
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Aug 15, 2020 19:52
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Darth Walrus posted:DITF was always pretty bad. Post-episode 15 is just where it became undeniable where the show had been headed from the beginning. I think it was really good for a few episodes in the middle there. It's just that after that it burned through all it's good will by not building on that emotional climax at all, and instead doing unsatisfying exposition, trying to do that exact same emotional climax again, and trying to end in a way that was reminiscent of previous great mecha series but by that point just felt completely unearned and very annoying.
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Aug 15, 2020 20:13
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Aquarion EVOL was the all the worst kinds of triangular melodrama, but at least the first half was funny.
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Aug 15, 2020 20:44
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A friend of mine who watched the original Aquarion said he spent the first half agitating for them to focus on the plot and the second half really pining for one-off episodes. I think that's a pretty fair assessment of the franchise as a whole.
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Aug 15, 2020 20:51
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EVOL is fairly decent, the first series was pretty awful though and I couldn't even make it through one episode of the third.
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Aug 15, 2020 20:56
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I still have a soft spot for Kuromukuro. Picked it up when it showed up on my feed for following the group subbing Macross Delta. Surprised I ended up liking it more.
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Aug 15, 2020 20:59
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I've said it before I'll say it again: When it comes to recent-ish excellent mecha shows Concrete Revolutio is amazing.
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Aug 15, 2020 21:06
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Omnicrom posted:A friend of mine who watched the original Aquarion said he spent the first half agitating for them to focus on the plot and the second half really pining for one-off episodes. I think that's a pretty fair assessment of the franchise as a whole. Original Aquarion was a decent if not exceptional super robot show but the ending where the planet breaks into pieces and the robot uses it's rocket punch to grab the different parts of the Earth and pull them together is exactly the kind of nonsense that I'm here for. A super robot show that hasn't been brought up yet is the 00s was Daikumaru Gaiking. I'd honestly consider it one of the more enjoyable robot shows of its decade, it's just a lot of fun all the way through.
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Aug 15, 2020 21:06
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Darth Walrus posted:Hisone and Masotan is as much of a mecha show as Evangelion is, and it's very nicely put together. I actually considered mentioning that one. It's in a weird place, where I don't think of it as a mecha show per se, but where seeing it in a Super Robot Wars or something would be a "Oh, yeah. That fits" more than anything. Something else in an interesting place relative to the genre (and I think half the reason to have genres is so that's places where things don't quite fit. Gives a good starting point to conversations) is Attack on Titan. Although it initially seems much more like a zombie story, the show has a lot in common with Real Robot anime as it goes. Really don't know the best approach to spoilers here, but the last season opens with a German inspired imperial power fighting the rest of the world with their secret weapon, 15 meter human piloted war machines. In a shocking twist, their ace pilot is the half brother of the protagonist, a glasses wearing natural genius with his own agenda. The isolated nation the heroes hail from is seemingly helpless before their onslaught, but a plucky teen who stole their weapon may be able to turn the tide. Only difference from a standard Gundam knockoff's description is that the mechs, like in Eva, are made of meat. If you count that, the mech genre's likely about to have one of its biggest hits in a long time. But even aside from that, the genre's not nearly as dead as some people treat it. Looking things up on MAL by category (which, you know, kinda arbitrary), about 300 out of the 1085 mech anime in their index are from the last decade. A lot of them suck, and it gets even worse once you exclude long running franchises and borderline cases, but there's still plenty of stuff being made.
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Aug 15, 2020 22:18
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i will always have a fondness for the original aquarion because of the basic format of the show. the pilots do confusing, offbeat training and then have simultaneous epiphanies while fighting the enemy robot which allows them to win. except, the enemy robots are escorts for the mass human abductions, which happen in the background during the flashy robot fights and are almost never actually prevented or even interrupted. very little of what the show actually focuses on has any relevance to this battle against human extinction.
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Aug 15, 2020 23:36
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Schwarzwald posted:A super robot show that hasn't been brought up yet is the 00s was Daikumaru Gaiking. I'd honestly consider it one of the more enjoyable robot shows of its decade, it's just a lot of fun all the way through. New Gaiking is one of my favorite Super Robot shows. It's an absolute blast.
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Aug 15, 2020 23:41
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Agreed on Gaiking being great; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnS6DuLix9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_p536Qb8l8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biynCbJ2Cw8 Mild spoilers for a 13 year old series
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Aug 16, 2020 00:59
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don't think i'd ever heard of gaiking before, but it was easy enough to find on streaming.
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Aug 16, 2020 01:58
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Spent the weekend rewatching RahXephon and yup, still just an incredible show. Gorgeous, soulful, strange, tragic, creepy, apocalyptic and beautiful. Still rips out my heart before gently placing it back inside after all these years.
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Aug 16, 2020 22:19
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Yeah I’m glad I took a chance on it recently. Also decided to start Xabungle. Cowboy mecha? Sweet.
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Aug 16, 2020 22:52
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Got my VF-4! A bit smaller than I was expecting, but really well engineered. And with it's family: 
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Aug 18, 2020 06:04
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God drat, who makes that milia valkyrie? I've always wanted to get some macross fighters but never knew what company or which releases were the ones to get.
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Aug 18, 2020 15:45
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Omnicrom posted:I'm in the same boat. Grace in the TV series was an incredibly good villain, one of the best out and out unapologetically bad people I've ever seen in a series. She was a compelling, well used, well done person who was just The Worst. If she was similarly good through/during/after her redemption that would be one thing but she really isn't. The decision to turn her face and play her as just a puppet for the literally faceless conspiracy turned her from an incredible villain into a person who dies tragically, and there are many better examples of the latter than there are the former. Wings of Good by had some amazing twists, but Grace was far better as a literally galaxy-brain villain trying to take over everyone's mind.
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Aug 18, 2020 16:26
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Kingtheninja posted:God drat, who makes that milia valkyrie? I've always wanted to get some macross fighters but never knew what company or which releases were the ones to get. Toynami made some inexpensive transforming VF-1 figures in just about every color scheme and equipment loadout in Macross, including Max and Mirya’s. While they weren’t as good as the more expensive figures for $20 they were hard to beat.
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Aug 18, 2020 16:30
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Kingtheninja posted:God drat, who makes that milia valkyrie? I've always wanted to get some macross fighters but never knew what company or which releases were the ones to get. It's a 1/60-scale made by Arcadia: http://anymoon.com/blog/?p=4599 I want to get a 1/60 Queadluun Rau in Max's colors to with it some day. Queadlunn fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Aug 19, 2020 |
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Aug 19, 2020 01:05
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I almost got a Hi-Metal R Millia valkyrie off Mandarake before I realized how much it would cost with shipping
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Aug 19, 2020 16:22
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Zeether posted:I almost got a Hi-Metal R Millia valkyrie off Mandarake before I realized how much it would cost with shipping Sometimes you can use a reshipper like tenso that can offer less expensive shipping or consolidate several items into one box and you can scale that way. I do that all the time with Amazon Japan stuff and a few other places that I can buy direct from but only offer SUPER EXTREME FAST SHIPPING to the US that costs $40 to ship a $5 book but a reshipper will handle for much less. Even then you can get some economies of scale if you order a bunch of items from one place. It's worth noting that EMS and SAL, the inexpensive postal service options from Japan to the US, are still offline at the moment so you're stuck with Fedex, DHL (lol) and UPS (lmao). When their postal service starts working with ours again you may see some less expensive shipping options.
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Aug 20, 2020 03:45
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drrockso20 posted:Agreed on Gaiking being great; That budget though, oof. Then again, they make the most of it. Power-ups turning robots into black silhouettes, etc. Edit: Since Mazinkaiser was mentioned, I feel obligated to link this Mazinkaiser SKL AMV because of how good it is. Argas fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Aug 20, 2020 |
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Aug 20, 2020 21:40
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Are there good subs for Daikyu Maryu or is tv-n still the only accesible version
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Aug 26, 2020 05:33
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GorfZaplen posted:Are there good subs for Daikyu Maryu or is tv-n still the only accesible version It was on Crunchyroll for a time, so I have to presume official subs exist.
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Aug 26, 2020 14:49
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You know what technically qualifies for this thread? Robot Carnival, a 1987 anthology film that was one of the first theatrical anime releases in North America. I finally got around to it through the retrocrush thing (weirdly, with a different order of shorts than any official release I'd heard of), and overall? It's pretty interesting. And much more eighties than I expected. Deprive alone would be enough to be notable, but Star Light Angel is basically one of the most 80s things ever put to screen. But most of the segments are low in mechs, focusing on more regular robots. The exception is Strange Tales of Meiji Machine Culture: Westerner's Invasion, and I think it's probably my favorite bit. An American mad scientist invades Japan with a mech that has to be fought off by plucky local youths and their mech... but everyone's an idiot, the mech technology is incredibly primitive, and in the end everyone accidentally destroys the city. Pace is brisk, jokes are good, action looks nice enough. It's not as ambitious as most of the film, but it accomplishes everything it's meant to, and it does it well. Having some Saturday morning cartoon is nice to counter the art piece nature of some of the others.
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Sep 1, 2020 12:42
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https://twitter.com/Htop_Gunder/status/1304791472097710080?s=20
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Sep 12, 2020 15:46
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That's fun. But fun and happiness is hardly in keeping with the spirit of 2020, so to balance out my first viewing of Future Boy Conan (Acclaimed director Midori Asakusa is right. It's good anime.) I started on Macross II. It isn't good anime. In fact, it's the kind of anime that explains an all-time classic like Plus existing. Without that, I'm not sure anything would wipe out the stain. (Okay, maybe that's a little unfair to judge from one episode, but OVAs charged by the episode. No sense in playing softball with a product that's supposed to earn the viewer's trust from the jump.) We all know, or should know, how Plus kicks off, right? Flashback to Dyson and company's college days, then we jump to Bryan Cranston in some of the slickest flying in any Macross. From the start, we know that Isamu's going to be fun to watch (because he's a kill-stealing rear end in a top hat who nobody likes), but he's still basically a good guy (since he keeps bailing out his fellow pilots when they're in trouble, even as they curse his name.) Even in the first ten minutes, we know what we're in for, and the rest of the episode delivers, showing us the relationship dynamics with Dyson and his old college buddies, the slow building threat of Sharon Apple, and the beginning of the test battles. Macross II starts with a shot of the villain's singer getting in a chair, then cuts to the protagonist being a TMZ photographer, disrupting a secret meeting to discuss the safety of humanity to get cheap ratings before whining about his boss not wanting to air tabloid journalism, assuming that only a military conspiracy could explain journalistic standards like "wanting concrete information before going forward". Luckily, a war breaks out, giving our protagonist an opportunity to keep his job by flying a Valk for the actual war reporter. In one of the many small touches that makes Macross II such a great work of art, this is the first time we or the protagonist's employers hear anything about him being a pilot. This leads into the big fight scene, which was... not great. The animation wasn't bad, but the fight didn't have a good flow, with only one proper circus late in. And the writing for the scenes was remarkably bad. For the supporting cast, we see the main ace pilot's flying interrupted by her wingmen asking if she was at a hotel for a date. Now, normal circumstances, this is an acceptable enough banter scene to establish how the group dynamics work. Not a great example of the genre, but it does its job. The problem is that the scene comes immediately after their mothership gets shot down, killing all aboard. Pilots making lighthearted banter in a sorty is standard. Pilots talking about their love lives when their closest friends just died choking in the void seem more like sociopaths. The protagonist's reporting is even worse. As soon as the giant hologram Minmays stop working, the protagonist wants to stop reporting, since now he's all for only reporting what the military wants shown despite complaining about censorship for most of his previous scenes. Meanwhile, the "real" reporter grimly talks about the arrogance of humans assuming they had cultural superiority. Now, thematically, that's a decent beat for a Macross series to address eventually. If culture is treated as a weapon, it's fair to question if you're right to use it. But in the context of the show, it's absurd. Of course human culture is superior. In almost a century of warfare, every alien species humans have met pretty much went slack jawed as soon as they ran into our pop music. When every outside observer on your culture starts building monuments to how great it is, thinking you're hot poo poo is less arrogance and more basic pattern recognition. And then it gets worse, with the war reporter first insisting that covering a battle is incomplete unless you literally fly into the enemy command ship, which is followed by suggesting they kidnap the woman at the controls and shove her into their two seater Valk, which seems questionable on so many levels. It's one of the most blatant examples of characters taking actions purely because the script says so I've seen, and the war reporter dying immediately after making the suggestion just emphasizes his role as a plot device. So, yeah. Macross 2 opens pretty poorly. And from what I've read, it doesn't get better.
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Sep 14, 2020 08:58
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Pretty much the only thing I've heard people say was good about Macross II is 1) some of the mecha designs are neat, and 2) that it had a neat little arcade game
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Sep 14, 2020 09:04
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I love the concept of the Macross Cannon, which is a Macross with four Macross Cannons.
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Sep 14, 2020 10:11
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drrockso20 posted:Pretty much the only thing I've heard people say was good about Macross II is 1) some of the mecha designs are neat, and 2) that it had a neat little arcade game I've played the arcade game, and it's an interesting beast. Instead of playing to survive, you play for score. You have infinite respawns, but if you don't get enough points by the end of the time limit, it's game over. Unfortunately, that kind of mechanic requires more precise tuning than even a conventional shmup, and I feel like the game didn't handle it that as well as it needed to. (Also, it had that thing most Macross arcade games do that I hate where mode shifting requires a power-up.) Still better than the show, though. I admit I kind of paid less attention after the second episode since I was distracted by an old Gundam lightgun game in another window (Instead of not shooting hostages, you have to not shoot Kai and Hayato.) but the fights are unimpressive, the protagonist isn't particularly likable, risking humanity's survival for a chance at a big scoop post-war, and the characters continue to make decisions based more on plot than character logic (the main combat pilot decides to just let Ishtar, the key to the alien invaders's plan, stay with the protagonist instead of reporting things to high command because ???, Ishtar is eager to go to a music festival on the moon despite her experience with Earth's music being entirely traumatizing because ???), but I think my biggest issue is on a premise level. The first episode suggests with the speeches from the late Dennis that you should cut a girl off from every possible hope of rescue so she won't resist because of the Implications... wait. That's just what our "hero" does. The Dennis in this show talks about human arrogance in assuming cultural superiority, and the use of song by the invaders emphasizes the point. The new villains are implied to have their own system of values and art which may be a real competitor for the Spacy. ...And then in the next episode, we learn that they don't understand the concept of love, their music is only used in war, and it's basically the Zents all over again. There's no real competition, just bad guys with mind control powers that let them be less confused by pop music. And that's a shame, because a less blatantly evil villain faction would play well off the censorship themes that come up through the show and the hero being a reporter trying to find both sides of the story. Also, when Char is in the Zeong, he had, like, a dozen hands that you needed to blow up. So that was weird.
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Sep 15, 2020 00:38
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chiasaur11 posted:I admit I kind of paid less attention after the second episode since I was distracted by an old Gundam lightgun game in another window (Instead of not shooting hostages, you have to not shoot Kai and Hayato.)
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Sep 15, 2020 01:17
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This seems as good a place to post this as any; my brother got me the Gurren Lagann Blu rays last Christmas and I'm finally getting around to watching them. Holy cow, the quality is so much better than the 480p torrents I first watched this show on, over a decade ago. Can't wait to get to the crazy sequences at the end of the show.
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Sep 15, 2020 01:45
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Schwarzwald posted:This is from a couple days back, but this is a pretty cool look at some old toys and old toy advertisements! You got it! I made a video about the history of Diaclone, one of the predecessors to the Transformers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clfu80hEd5s Give it a watch, if that interests you.
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Sep 15, 2020 01:50
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https://twitter.com/discotekmedia/status/1305678637660684290?s=20 https://twitter.com/discotekmedia/status/1305681564865409024?s=20
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Sep 15, 2020 02:48
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Gripweed posted:https://twitter.com/discotekmedia/status/1305678637660684290?s=20 Neat. Less neat, Macross II, which sucks to the end. I know that forced romance is a mech anime staple, but it stands out how little effort was put into the relationship between the protagonist, Hibiki, and Sylvie. After three episodes of traditional Cute Anime Moments between our rear end in a top hat reporter lead and Ishtar, the alien who's learning to understand the concept, the concept of love, we get an episode where Sylvie rescues Hibiki from a spaceship, then an episode where they don't share a single scene, then suddenly it's a romance because...? Also, the villains all turn good after having a love song sang at them and their evil leader killed, and within a week, everybody agrees to forgive and forget about the thousands to millions of dead and make eternal peace. One thing that stood out in the last couple episodes is how many characters the show had and didn't do anything with. Like, Hibiki has his whole cast at the news station, and they don't matter for anything, and Sylvie has her fellow pilots, and they don't do anything (not even die) and Ishtar has this other alien she eventually talks into not hating Earth, but he doesn't particularly do anything with the change of prospective. OVAs can juggle larger casts if it's done well (FLCL has the school cast, Naota's family, Canti, Haruko, the government agents, and Mamimi, for example), but they need to know what they're doing with all the moving parts, which II doesn't. It doesn't give the protagonists anything cool or interesting with their wins, either. When you look at Do You Remember Love's ending, it has Misa translate a long dead language, Hayato fly like a maniac, and Minmei sing to the largest crowd of her career, pushing them all to demonstrate the skills that made them relevant in the first place. In Macross II, the human protagonists accomplish basically nothing, with the ace pilot not flying a Valk and the reporter not reporting. They basically just provide a cue for Ishtar to sing. I know "Macross II is bad" isn't a daring and unique prospective, but it's still true. (Also, I think they implied that Sylvie's grandparents on her mother's side were Jeniuses? All she says is that her mother's side was ace pilots and that she's a quarter zent, but it's the kind of callback that shows set decades down the line love to do.)
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Sep 15, 2020 11:45
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Raposa posted:This seems as good a place to post this as any; my brother got me the Gurren Lagann Blu rays last Christmas and I'm finally getting around to watching them. Have you seen the movie versions? I'd definitely recommend watching the second movie compilation after you've rewatched the series, the end fight is even bigger and wilder and there are some changes that are just Good.
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Sep 15, 2020 16:48
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Don't skip the first movie either, the ending sequence to that is really breathtaking too
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Sep 15, 2020 19:19
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drrockso20 posted:Pretty much the only thing I've heard people say was good about Macross II is 1) some of the mecha designs are neat, and 2) that it had a neat little arcade game The soundtrack is amazing
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Sep 15, 2020 21:30
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EthanSteele posted:Have you seen the movie versions? I'd definitely recommend watching the second movie compilation after you've rewatched the series, the end fight is even bigger and wilder and there are some changes that are just Good. GorfZaplen posted:Don't skip the first movie either, the ending sequence to that is really breathtaking too Excellent, more to look forward too. I've not looked at each disc yet, I remember there being a few ova's like the rise of lord genome VS the antispirals being talked about back in the day, are any of those in there? Raposa fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Sep 15, 2020 |
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Sep 15, 2020 21:41
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