In 4chan’s words, I’m a newfag. Or a moefag, however you decide to put it. Like many of the /jp/ denizens and unlike many of the most established editorial bloggers, my area of preference – and my specialty – will always be within the modern moe/eroge scene.
However, as we all know, level grinding to increase only one stat well result in a terribly unbalanced character. Unique skills are only useful when they can be backed up by a decent foundation. Knowing this, when I finally finished my initial trek through the world of VN adaptations and my favourites list was more or less solidified, I decided to take a journey through the annals of history – to the days before I was born, to VHS and beyond.
In today’s world, Mobile Suit Gundam is really more of an icon than a TV series or movie. It’s symbolic of a lot of things, relevant to – as they say – everyone’s interests. It can be a symbol of the early days of the real robot subgenre, it can be tangible evidence of the growth of anime as a medium, or it can simply be the spawning ground of memes that have been echoed out-of-context for decades. But either way, there is no question that Gundam is significant – and to tackle Gundam is less like watching a TV show and more like stepping into the infinite world of a ridiculously large MMORPG.
Looking at it that way, Gundam – and similar shows – make up my 10th memory of 2009, from a literal I-witnessed-the-Bright-Slap perspective and a more meta I-see-where-the-oldfags-are-coming-from perspective. Of course, my main focus is still on the general moe/VN/doujin culture, but with a bit of experience under my belt from the decades long past, I can start to understand what mecha fans mean when they debate the intricacies of LoGH and squee at the thought of meeting Tomino. I can’t promise that I’ll finish even half of the old-school anime classics in the next year, but I can say with certainty that my curiosity has been piqued to the point that I won’t automatically dismiss anything made before maid cafes and Megatokyo.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Perfectly ghostlightning and Schneider material. As for the Gundam thing, don’t worry. We’ve had the talks about the equation of Gundam fan ≠ sci-fi fan ≠ mecha otaku, so you can say it’s nothing new.
So are you actually experiencing the full old-days package by watching it in VHS copy-recorded 5 times over in crap quality and passed around in brown paper bags!? — the thought of anime-back-in-the-day is always amusing.
“It can be a symbol of the early days… to tackle Gundam is less like watching a TV show and more like stepping into the infinite world of a ridiculously large MMORPG.”
100% agreement. Probably the reason I still haven’t watched this series. I really need to take a note from your book and do so though.
I understand why it’s herculean for people who didn’t grow up to old mecha shows to get into Gundam. But I’m of the belief that you can’t go wrong the chronological way, and the MSG movie trilogy is a tried-and-tested approach to tackle the metaverse. I’m glad you had fun!
As for the MMORPG analogy… I seem to have spread myself thin in leveling, that I’m more of a hybrid mecha-moe fan nowadays.