Impressions

I never thought I’d come up with a title more unwieldy than Rex Quondum Rexque Futurus: Kingship in Fate/Zero, but thanks to Yasuhiko Yoshikazu, I’ve outright crushed the previous record-holder. I’ve also changed the naming scheme of this series to make it less monotonous-looking, since this is obviously going to take up the vast majority of posts I write this year.

Anyway, my only previous experience with the Gundam franchise is the movie trilogy version of the original series and Char’s Counterattack. I watched those in particular because Daryl Surat, co-host of the Anime World Order podcast, recommended those four films as the quickest introduction to the franchise. I’m not a huge fan, but I liked them a fair bit; I’m also aware of Yasuhiko’s reputation and I’m a sucker for nice physical editions of books, and Vertical’s edition is gorgeous, so I went ahead and jumped for his Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, which adapts the original TV series.

Most of what I said here about the first two volumes of the ToraDora graphic novels applies to the recently released third volume, but there are some improvements. ToraDora still lays on the dialogue thick, but the talkiness feels less oppressive than previous volumes. Zekkyo’s varied panel layouts and ‘camera angles’ help. The art also changes occasionally, for example for a Fist of the North Star reference, though whether that was particular gag was entertaining or just awkward I can’t decide.

I finally got hold of the long-awaited blu-ray edition of FLCL, which is second only to serial experiments lain among my favourite (and most-watched) anime. Just owning the whole series gives me sufficient cause to celebrate, since I only own vols. 1 and 3 of the previous release (plus the full series as a bootleg).

I’ve read that the Japanese edition had serious problems with video quality, so North American publisher Funimation did their own remastering. The end result looks very good. There were moments when lines became noticeably jagged or the screen looked a bit fuzzy, so one could easily tell that this show came out before HDTVs were common, but I think they do look better than the original DVD release. If you already have the old DVDs and aren’t a big fan, though, it’s probably not worth the purchase.