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Post by xiombarg on Feb 16, 2010 18:18:50 GMT -5
I'm not much of a Gundam collector or watcher generally, but I just recently surveyed the G-Gundam mechs on mahq.net and all I can say is, wow, how did I miss these guys? Who woulda thunk. It was tough for me to narrow these guys down to favorites, but I think I've done it and I'm sure you would love to hear my remarks:
Mandala Gundam wins the "beefcake" prize as potentially the most intimidating of the bunch and an obvious heir of the Charles Atlas legacy.
Nether Gundam wins the most efficient design award, as in why transform when you can be both robot and windmill at the same time (although there are quite a few contenders in this category).
Tequila Gundam is perhaps the most controversial. Is it legal to drive a mech while drunk? His sombrero is quite stunning as well.
But my big gold medal winner goes to Mermaid Gundam, who obviously tried to punch his way out of a fish, got stuck, and decided to make the most of it. That takes heart.
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Post by wewe on Feb 17, 2010 21:21:50 GMT -5
Funny how the designers made their interpretation of how countries beyond Japan would make their Gundams. Its wrong in many ways. It's just silly hilarious in my opinion.
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Post by Ben-Ohki on Feb 18, 2010 11:32:53 GMT -5
While I love that my country is represented by a mecha lumberjack... I have always had a softspot for Gundam Maxter representing for the USA... he's wears an American-football helmet, boxing gloves, and rides a rocket surfboard! I mean, I love that the Japanese designers looked at all things American and chose those perculiar interests as the defining characteristics of American culture. At first I was kind of surprised they didn't pick baseball... but then, I realize that sport is way too popular in Japan for it to be "American."  |
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Post by mechamasterj on Feb 18, 2010 17:27:20 GMT -5
Actually football is used a lot to represent Americans lol
Zulu gundam was pretty funny too
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Post by wewe on Feb 19, 2010 9:28:26 GMT -5
At the time it was being aired, sunrise probably never envisioned their show to be viewed elsewhere beyond Japan. If it weren't for Animerica back then, I wouldn't have known it.
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Post by mechamasterj on Feb 19, 2010 13:23:24 GMT -5
Nope I just think they didn't know any better
plenty of anime is and has been aired in other countries way before it gets here and that's even if it ever does reach here
think of mr po po from dbz and that's been aired in all sorts of countries lol
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Post by Magmatron on Feb 19, 2010 14:42:44 GMT -5
Overall some of the best gundam design ever, only problem with it was that everything was a gundam, it needed more cyclops.
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Post by xiombarg on Feb 19, 2010 16:20:14 GMT -5
From what I understand, G-Gundam was basically marketed for America and to sell Gundam figures to American kids, and it failed miserably.
But to put G-Gundam into perspective and to be fair to the Gundam creative group, I understand what they were trying to do, which was to bring in a self contained new show marketed to the DBZ aesthetic and age group. The similarities are obvious, right down to the same generic battle plot for every episode. But they completely missed the mark. The show was too silly and the figure concepts were too immature for American boys, unlike something like Ben10 which does hit the target audience.
Here's what I think they should have done. Where G-Gundam isn't part of the standard Gundam chronology, they should have used all their classic Gundam designs into a single new show. They could even use something of a similar battle premise, but toughen it up a bit. I know some of you guys would find this concept disturbing, but if you think about it from a marketing standpoint, what better way to bring in the coolness of Gundam to kids who have no idea what it is all about? Well, that's my take anyway.
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Post by Magmatron on Feb 19, 2010 19:10:03 GMT -5
From what I understand, G-Gundam was basically marketed for America and to sell Gundam figures to American kids, and it failed miserably. I thought this was released before W gundam  ? |
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Post by Ben-Ohki on Feb 19, 2010 19:28:12 GMT -5
It was. G was the first series to leave the "UC" continuity. And on its own, it was reasonably successful. W came the following year and was a huge hit. Which probably explains why it was chosen to be marketted in the west first. But the G toys were also brought over withing the following year or so... now that attempt to bring it west was the big failure.
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Post by xiombarg on Feb 20, 2010 0:24:40 GMT -5
Sorry, I'm sure Ben is correct.
Still, I kind of felt like G was trying to pull in the kiddies of the west?
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Post by mechamasterj on Feb 20, 2010 1:08:19 GMT -5
I dunno i liked the cartoon actually, and with what it was competeing against at the time, it was a lot better then most american cartoons. I was unaware that the toy line did so poorly though.
I would say the anime really tried to carry the super robot trend here. While it had an ongoing story (which I thought it had an interesting premise for why different countries had thier own robot champions fighting for whatever the reason was) it had the same kind of story for just about every episode, almost always ending in the God hand finisher (using the same animation just about lol) It was a damn cool finisher too, no sword, pow paunch, or anthhing just grabed the head and burnnnnnnnnnn, i guess later it turned into an energy ball or something. I dont think it fell in the lines of DBZ since DBZ was all about taking a decade to fight one guy, and most of the fighting was actually talking mixed with flash backs. hell they spent a weeks worth of episodes powering up a genki dama, actually they did that at least twice lol
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Post by nikodiablo on Feb 21, 2010 23:58:42 GMT -5
From what I understand, G-Gundam was basically marketed for America and to sell Gundam figures to American kids, and it failed miserably. I thought the G-Gundam series was made to capitalize at the rage of fighting games that were released during that period (Street Fighter 2 anyone?). Therefore the series feature dueling Gundams in arena for its main premise. However, I thought it would be more hilarious if the Hero Mechs were the funky ones like Mandala Gundam instead of the existing ones... ;D However, the series has some of the coolest Gundam design, such as the Master Gundam. |
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Post by mpchi on Feb 22, 2010 0:49:09 GMT -5
Ha. Who could forget the sight of the Mermaid Gundam?  As much as I dislike almost all non-UC gundam shows, G Gundam is the only one I watched it through, and actually enjoyed it to an extend. Its a wacky show, but got some interesting concepts and cool moments. My favorite would be Shining Gundam in hyper mode (has one of the best hot blood music) with Domon screaming his head off doing either Shining Finger or Shining Finger Sword (liked Shining more than God Gundam). Master Asia is also a great villain. So when you don't take this 'gundam' show too seriously, it is pretty fun. Even better if you understand Chinese a bit, it uses a lot of famous names from various Chinese martial arts novels for a lot of the characters' names. Very intriguing. I can see why this show didn't hit it over here in US. Its way too Japanese for their taste, really. Its basically a show that does a over-the-top funny take on the super robot genre, which you literally have to explain it to the average US audience what a 'funny take of the super robot genre' is. Not that many kids like to brag about the coolness of their Mermaid Gundam action figure LOL. |
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Post by xiombarg on Feb 22, 2010 12:50:52 GMT -5
If I had watched this on TV instead of Youtube an occasional basis I might have liked it more, but watching it on Youtube, by my third episode I realized I was just watching the same story with different characters over again. And it's only fair for me to mention that I chose to watch episodes with characters that I found particularly funny.
You guys are going to cringe at this, but I actually found SD Gundam Force to be more entertaining, and more silly, but still more entertaining.
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Post by mpchi on Feb 22, 2010 16:24:14 GMT -5
This is a very long TV show, 52 episodes if I remember correctly. So yeah, be prepared for the story to drag a bit longer than usual with some repeat and recycled animation.
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