PG Sized Action Base Review – Chinese Knockoff Edition
Recently I acquired a second-hand PG 00 Gundam from a modeler in Australia. In my haste to get it up on it’s stand and take a look at it I accidentally broke the little piece of plastic that’s supposed to connect the huge kit to the stand (smooth thinking there, Bandai). Early attempts to fix it were less than successful, so, to the internet I turned. Turns out you can buy display stand purposely built for the PG 00 Gundam… for only 90-fucking-dollars. $90, for just an oversize d action base? I really hope that’s just inflated due to demand and not a serious price tag from Bandai. Not willing to dump so much on so little I kept looking and found one of these…
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Review
You must be thinking to yourselves, "Really? Mahou Shoujo? What are you, 12?" Ah, yes. The Mahou Shoujo ("Magical Girl") genre – bunch of cute schoolgirls with magical powers, mascot characters, chibi humor, and fanservice galore…
Not here, my friends. Not here.
If you read my Mawaru Penguindrum review, you know I am a fan of shows that are not what they seem, and Madoka Magica is firmly in that category. It breaks almost every rule you’d associate with a show about little girls in adorable outfits fighting evil witches, and manages to do so much more than shows with a similar launching point. Madoka Kaname is a cute little girl with a nice family, nice friends, at a nice school, in a nice city. Then Madoka and her friend Sayaka discover that not only can they become Magical Girls that save the world from evil witches who curse weak humans, but they get those powers by having one wish granted to them. Sounds like a sweet deal, right?
Evangelion Rebuild 3.0 – First Trailer
Here it is, so hot off the presses that it’s not even a properly captured video!
After all this waiting anything new or unexpected? Well… no, not really. At the least it hints at more Asuka and Mari battle shenanigans. It’ll be a long, long wait until the BluRay release and eventual subbed rip here in the USA. Sigh.
Is Astral Ocean a Worthy Sequel to Eureka Seven? (Short Answer: Yes. Long Answer: No.)
(Caution: Contains some Eureka Seven spoilers and very mild Astral Ocean spoilers. I’ll just assume the target audience for this is people who watched E7 and are curious about AO.)
This might be a weird statement to see on OR, but I never considered myself a huge mecha fan (meaning a huge fan of mecha, not a fan of huge mecha… Never mind). I mean, it’s not that I don’t like the mecha genre, it was just never on the list of things I would actively seek out and I am woefully uneducated in the field (I know more about Gungrave than I do about Gundam). Consequently, I didn’t really have any expectations coming into Eureka Seven – a show that now ranks very high on my must watch list. I’m sure you already know all the superlatives – the mecha, the animation and design, the world, the characters, pacing, story – it all works extremely well, and it certainly left room for a sequel. So imagine my horror when I discovered that they decided to change everything for Astral Ocean. All of a sudden it’s 2050. All of a sudden we are just on good old near-future Earth with Americans and Japanese and… No Eureka or Renton. What the fuck?
Music of Note: Adele – Skyfall
Gunpla Display Cabinet
[flickr-photo:id=8045508403,size=n]
For me, and I imagine many other model collectors, the biggest enemy of a completed project is dust. Nothing like checking out your collection to find everything is coated in a nice layer of grey. THis is why for the longest time I’ve been thinking about getting a glass enclosure for my Gunpla models. Something nice to display them in while protecting them from the unavoidable everyday dust. Living in an apartment and putting together a full blown, wall long, built in display cabinet is out of the question (someday I will have one, damn it!).
Instead I started looking at curio cabinets, Pulaski being one of the largest and most respected manufactures. They make some great cabinets but there were two issues, the size and the cost. A good sized cabinet would not only take up too much wall space for me but cost me upwards of $1600. They’re also a lot more showy then I prefer. I tend to prefer clean lines and many Pulaski curio cabinets are better suited to stand alone in the middle of a classic dining room then a simple/mish-mashed place such as my own. Though well designed they also feature unnecessary additions (which also raise the price) such as specialized doors and a mirror back. All around they’re fantastic but more than I need and more than I want to spend right now.
Mawaru Penguindrum Review
I hate the word "fate"…
I am a firm believer that a lot of anime (especially the good kind) can appeal to non-anime fans if they just give it a try. Thus, I find myself talking about it a lot with the non-anime crowd, and by "talking" I mostly mean "defending." One of the most common charges I hear is that anime is just too weird. And it isn’t like these people are talking out of their asses. To say that anime isn’t weird would be disingenuous, but is weird really a bad thing? Would you rather have yet another generic product full of the same tired narrative and visual conventions, or do you want something new and interesting that resists classification and cannot easily be put into a mold?
ExpiredSushi’s Review of Gundam AGE
Editors Note: This is the first review by friend of the site, ExpiredSushi, the man behind the DarkHistoryDatabase. He graciously accepted a request to review Gundam AGE after posting weekly summaries and thoughts over on r/Gundam. Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoy the review! – Falldog
First off, I am only going to review the Plot and Characters. I am not picky about animation or music so I feel that it would be pointless for me to try and review those aspects. Second, I’m going to review each "Generation" separately and than the show as a whole. Each generation was different and had its own pros and cons and can be almost considered their own shows. Note: It may have been a while since I’ve seen some of these episodes so don’t expect complete accuracy.
MG Banshee ver. Titans – Complete
[flickr-photo:id=8017675862,size=n]
Ah, here it is. My latest Gundam Unicorn creation, a Banshee more specifically, themed in the lovable Titan’s colour scheme. Blue and gold has always been one of my favorite schemes, well before I saw Zeta Gundam ages ago. To see this kit come together and look pretty damn amazing, with the yellow details here and there, is a long time coming. The project was envisioned months ago before I convinced PatrickGrade (of GundamGuy fame) to part with his Banshee.