#mechamarch2024

Since this is the last Mecha Madness ever, unless I decide to revive it at some point in the future, I want to catalogue the entire journey because this session has been so unique compared to the last couple years. I really enjoyed putting this together and I am glad it caused some interesting discussions on anime from some discord groups and comments sections on this blog regarding anime. But at…

Gold Medal: Vision of EscaflowneSilver Medal: Gurren LagannBronze Medal: Gundam: The Witch From Mercury The whole Mecha March journey plus the winner of this will appear in a very long post on Friday, April 5th.  Vote for the Extra Round with Patlabor vs Escaflowne by clicking on this sentence. Medal Round Results

Yup, we’re doing this. This is a series of films that I’ve avoided for the longest time. Partially because I don’t pirate anime, right? So the official releases were few and far in-between and every showing of this film in movie theaters was too far away and not at a convenient time period. I also felt like this was a bit of a reaction to the Evangelion rebuild films. I thought that this would…

Now the tournament comes to an end. Mostly. Whoever wins the gold medal has to face Patlabor for supremacy. You have until March 27th to get your vote in.  Let’s end this with some fun.  Please vote here: LinkJust to be sure, click on this sentence to vote. Round 4 Results

I feel a little sad writing this because this is a super robot trilogy that I never knew existed until it went out of print. Discotek was the publisher which released all three of the J9 trilogy (by Kokusai Eiga-sha in the early 1980’s) and the weird thing was these were pulled from print almost immediately. I mean like months after the first series was released on blu-ray in the United States.…

Setting Real Robot Into Motion When giving the history of mecha anime a quick glance, it’s been a well considered idea that Mobile Suit Gundam was the first real robot show. I disagree in a couple ways. The first one being that Mobile Suit Gundam didn’t stand by itself or appear out of nowhere, there was a through line to how Mobile Suit Gundam came into being. The second one is that Mobile Suit…

The “Then” Newer Astro Boy Created by Osamu Tezuka in the 1960’s in manga form and anime soon after, it’s hard to think of a time period where Astro Boy wasn’t big and popular. Maybe it’s because of the feeling in this world where Astro Boy is known as a foundational kind in regards to anime. What about in the 1970’s were the original black and white series wasn’t going around on reruns anymore…

An Aftermath of Go Nagai vs Toei After the rights fiasco of Go Nagai suing Toei for removing his name from Dino Mech Gaiking for the royalties, there was a long legal battle between the two. All of which meant that Toei still held the rights for a lot of Go Nagai’s properties for a while and Go Nagai moved over to Studio Knack for a while. You know, the studio that produced the horrible and meme…