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Arpeggio of Blue Steel is an interesting concept on paper--a fleet of mysterious super-powerful warships appears on all of Earth's major bodies of water, and after crushing the world's navies, blockades every nation cutting them off from one another.

A story setup like this when done right could actually be incredibly interesting. What happens to an island nation like Japan when they are forced to live local again? What happens to a nation like China that still relies heavily on seafood? What about a super far flung nation like Australia?

I was expecting an interesting story, but what I got was, unfortunately, a magic ... girl harem anime. You see, in Arpeggio, each ship has its own "mental model," a physical manifestation of the ships AI. As these mental models come in contact with humans, they begin to question their purpose. Even this could be a good setup, but it is heavily reduced to just another bland harem anime.

Don't get me wrong, I like some harem anime. I enjoyed Highschool of the Dead, I loved Gate, and Princess Lover also had amazing characters. But Arpeggio is just bland overall. The interesting backstory is never explained. The characters are never developed. And everyone has like one personality trait, even the humans, that they never go beyond.

The animation is similarly bad. The entire anime is CGI, and not good CGI. The CGI is similar to the low-budget Netflix anime Knights of Sidonia. But where Knights of Sidonia overcame is poor animation with superior storytelling, Arpeggio does not, leaving the entire experience as an overall disappointment.

Do I regret watching Arpeggio? Not really. It was only 12 episodes long, and while boring, it was not excruciating to endure. However, had I known what I know now about the story, I'd have skipped this altogether. I want them to develop the world more, but I could take a pass on the characters featured in this particular outing into the world of Arpeggio.

I am a bit late to the Gurren Laggen party, having missed the peak of its popularity by almost a decade. That said, Gurren Laggen (henceforth referred to simply as "GL") is an anime that still ranks competively with the best anime coming out today.

GL is a cathartic anime in that the characters, situations, and events that take place hit all the right notes in the view to make it an overall enjoyable experience. The characters are really no frills, very little time is wasted with non-essential backstory, and only the most crucial parts of what is needed to endear them to the ... viewers are explored. This works very well, as GL has very few "filler" episodes, and only one clip-show episode.

GL also excels at telling a complete story in only 27 episodes (26 if you disregard the clip show). This is something that happened frequently in late-90s, early-2000s anime, that modern anime should return to. Too often, anime in the 2010s try to copy the Western trope of the cliffhanger, leaving their stories dangling with many open ends in the hope of securing future seasons. Often, however, this does not happen and the anime never wraps up its storytelling as a result. GL, thankfully, does not do this, and completes its entire storyarc within the span on one series. Are there more stories that could be told in the GL universe? Absolutely, but the series itself is self-contained with no need to explore anything else to be a satisfying experience.

The art of GL is also right on point. At times, the art seems rough, but as the show goes on, these rough moments are shown to be intentional animation choices meant to highlight particularly emotional or tense moments. Despite what might be considered the grittiness of its story, GL's art is bright and colorful giving its theme of the endurance of the human will a visual medium along with the dialogue and plot.

Now, that's not to say everything in GL is perfect. In particular, GL suffers heavily from a trope of early-2000s anime--the first half of the show is radically different in pacing and story than the second half. Indeed, one could stop at episode 13 and feel as if a complete story has been told, or pick up and start with episode 14 and think they are on episode 1. This is somewhat problematic because there doesn't feel like much unity between the two halves beyond the theme of the endurance of the human spirit and its ability to overcome.

Another problem with the second half of the anime is that it falls into what we might term "The Dragonball Z Effect". The situations become progressively more ridiculous, the enemies progressively more powerful, and the solutions to problems progressively more reliant on deus ex machina solutions (perhaps literally in the case of GL). While the first half has some of this, it develops a world and philosophy and pretty much sticks too it--unlike the second half which almost feels inconsistent. Basically, without spoiling anything, the first half champions the simple attitude of belief in oneself and ability of a clear sense of purpose cutting through what is and isn't possible. This philosophy works well because it means that answers are not necessary because questions aren't asked. In the second half, however, questions ARE asked, frequently, and the answers become a muddled mix of pseudo-science, gibberish, and philosophical nonsense. Yes, in the end, the human spirit and sense of self triumph over the need to answer questions, but because the questions are asked (and answered in some way) it leaves the viewer in the dust. "Just punch it in the face" as a way of solving all lives problems doesn't work when you devote so much time to explaining the hows and whys of the mechanics that make the "punch" work. This is GL's greatest weakness, it is trying to be something it isn't, and in the process it becomes a strange mixture of DBZ and NGE that mix about as well as oil and water.

All in all, GL is a super fun anime that will keep you hooked from start to finish and likely stay with you for a time afterwards. It doesn't break any new ground, nor does it challenge any established tropes, if anything it embraces its tropes and blows them over the top, and for the most part it works very well. The second half is much weaker than the first half, but not enough to ruin the whole experience. In the end, I give this anime a 9 out of 10 because the first half is a solid 10, and the second half is more of an 8.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans is a series that is obviously trying to do something "new" with the often predictable story of Gundam-genre shows. To this end, it succeeds in some places and fails in others. It is a ponderous, often slow-moving character-focused anime that actually does not focus very much on mobile suits at all.

Set in an alternate universe not explored before in Gundam, IBO follows a group of rebellious "space rats", children who are essentially corporate slaves, as they overthrow their corporate masters and work to establish an independent economic sphere on Mars.

I say that IBO is attempting to do something ... new because it breaks away, or at least attempts to, from many of the cliches of the Gundam genre. There are space colonies, but they are not the focus. The story is focused mostly on the pilots of the mobile suits, rather than the suits themselves. A lot of time is devoted to character development. The mobile suits use conventional ballistic and steel weapons, rather than lasers, charged particle beams, and beam sabers.

Where it fails, however, it does so spectacularly. There is a "Char" character here, and even a companion character with purple hair ala Garma. There is also a wunderkind almost superhuman child protagonist who is never really given any reason for his abilities. Also, a conflict between the rich on Earth and the oppressed in space is very much in line with traditional Gundam tropes. The mobile suits themselves also rely very heavily on deus ex type technology reminiscent of Minovsky Particles from the UC universe. There is also a Relena Peacecraft-esque character.

The story itself feels like someone took Gundam SEED and smashed it together with Gundam Wing. If the art weren't so good, I'd think I was watching an over-the-top melodrama anime from the late 90s or early 2000s. The series' focus on overt displays of masculinity is also an odd choice. This appears to be a universe where strong females only exist to be dominated by the men around them. All the females who start out strong are reduced to weepy whiny babies by the end of the show, whereas all the weak men become super buff macho characters. In many ways, this show almost feels like a harem anime with all the traditional harem roles filled by other men instead of women.

The series also does a relatively good job of world building--that is, setting the stage for the characters and action of the story, without being too nebulous like Gundam AGE tended to be.

Overall, as an alternative series to the traditional UC setting of Gundam, IBO is worth a watch. I actually hope they develop the world more with future series and OVAs because it feels like there is much more storytelling to be done here.

Gundam: Reconguista in G (from hence forth RG) is an ambitious project from a man who made the Gundam metafranchise what it is today. The show takes some big risks, but unfortunately, the execution leaves much to be desired.

First some back story. When Tomino produced the original Mobile Suit Gundam, he was struggling with deep depression and extreme suicidal thoughts. This led to his signature "Kill'em All Tomino" storytelling that bears a remarkable resemblance to George R.R. Martin's way of storytelling today--develop characters, get the audience invested, then give them the axe. By the mid-90s, however, Tomino was receiving treatment and ... began to reverse his dark disposition. He was less inclined to "Kill'em All" and more inclined to work out happier endings for his characters. This can be seen quite clearly in Turn A Gundam. In short, the Tomino who produced RG might as well be a different person entirely from the Tomino who made MSG in the 1970s. He is happier, more at peace mentally and spiritually, and less inclined to the brutality he once showed his characters as avatars of his own psychological struggles. However, many of his inspirations--Star Wars, Star Trek, and others--have remained the same and are quite clear in RG.

Now, the best way to describe RG would seem to be a conceptual sandbox of all the ideas Tomino came up with in the 35 years since the original Mobile Suit Gundam. We have already seen him do this once in Turn A Gundam, and now again in RG. A lot of the ideas are actually quite good, and if you use your imagination a bit, you can even see where he is going.

Also, we need to get something out of the way--RG has a lot of the usual Gundam tropes that have in many ways shaped anime as we know it today. You've got your talented pre-teen. Your Char Aznable masked enemy. Your invasion force from space. And, as often happens in Tomino, a "real" enemy revealed (twice) in the storyline that changes the way things are headed. If you are a Gundam fan of any magnitude, these can be forgiven, and perhaps even enjoyed. But they might be groan-worthy for newcomers to the franchise.

Now the problem is that all of this is done sort of haphazardly. It never really feels like the characters develop much or that there is ever a credible threat in the show. Yes, there are plot twists and big reveals, but there is not much foreshadowing done and the characters don't really go through arcs in reaction to them. Compare Bellri, the main character of RG, to Amuro, the main character of MSG. Amuro suffers clear PTSD in reaction to the events of the series, and we, the audience, experience these traumas with him. Bellri on the other hand pretty much starts and ends exactly the same way. Though he experiences much and learns even more, he never really develops beyond the person we are first introduced to in Episode 1. This is a problem that exists in ALL the characters in the show. Motivations are assigned to them, but never really owned by them.

Likewise, it seems like Tomino had planned to connect the Reguild Century more to the Universal Century, but all that really happens is a few one-off lines about the UC and some cameos of UC tech and locations. The show's main premise is that the human race has been limited in its expansion and use of technology on the planet Earth due to a system of beliefs developed at the end of the UC called "SU-Cordism". But the show never really outlines what the specifics of that system are. Indeed, it seems like SU-Cordism is a philosophy directly descended from Char Aznable's desire to clear the Earth of humans to allow it to recover, but this is never firmly established. Likewise, the signature of Tomino--Newtypes--are hinted at a few times but never expressly addressed, leaving some major questions over the evolution of humanity that had been raised throughout the UC Gundam series.

All in all, for a diehard Gundam fan, the show is enjoyable, but far from perfect. Hopefully, the places and ideas it established may form the basis for other materials in the Reguild Century that better trace its linage to the Universal Century. Though, overall, if you are on the fence about watching this series, you can probably safely give it a pass for now. For a similar series that has ideas on par with RG, I recommend checking out Gundam AGE.