Otaku Evolution is back, baby! 2024 starts with me finally getting to a particular anime bête noire of mine, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. I just do not understand the popularity of this fizzless, lifeless drudge of a show. The "characters" are bland, the plot is largely recycled, the production values are average at best, and there's just no joy or magic to it. It's frankly one of the most soulless anime I've ever watched in my life. But it's so popular! Why?!

Well, anyway, I'm back, and it looks like I got into a little trouble over the Putin thing. Ah well.

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Holy shit. It’s been seven years since my last official update on my collection. Friends and followers have seen it change in leaps and bounds since then, but for whatever reason, none of that ever made it into a blog post here. The room, which started off with just four display cabinets against one wall, just ballooned in density. More cabinets along the sides. More cabinets in the center of the room. Custom displays on top of those cabinets to fit larger items. Then I was out of space. Not long after that I ended up moving and into house with an unfinished basement. That’s where this story beings.

The second season of the Yamato remake wasn't as good as the first (unlike in the original series), but I still have high hopes for these movies (which will probably be split up into episodes). Actually, I might review Yamato 2199 this year!

One final video for 2023, folks! As usual with my last video of the year, I go over the various English dubs of the anime I've covered in roughly the second half of the year. The strongest dubs were probably Gundam Unicorn and One Piece: Episode of East Blue, though I think most of the dubs I covered in this half of the year were at least decent. ADV's dub of Macross notwithstanding. (Yikes.)

Well fuck, I guess I haven't really painted anything in the better part of two years. The one kit I did paint in 2023 was this, the RG Zeong with the Gundam Base Limited clear colour armor.

I've been meaning to get to The Irresponsible Captain Tylor for a while now and it seems like kind of a tragedy that I'm only getting to it when The Right Stuf is going away. This is a show Rob really likes, and I can see the charm. It's not as much a biting satire as, say, Patlabor, but it does have a similar spirit of comedy, where you have a fun ensemble cast and comedy-of-error hijinks. It's more of a parody of space operas, but with enough of its own character to not just be a collage of references. It's a really fun show!

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I've been meaning to get to the One Piece in some form for quite a while, and Episode of East Blue seems like as good as any a place to start, or maybe even better, since it encapsulates a lot of the early One Piece adventures and character backgrounds. And fortunately, this also coincides with the Netflix live-action TV series, which, as I say, is miraculously good. Well, maybe it's less a miracle and more really hard work from the cast, writers, set designers, and others. It's really, really good. Go watch it!