Mobile Suit Gundam

 Mobile Suit Gundam (機動戦士ガンダム) is a 43* episode original military space epic by a collection of creatives from Nihon Sunrise.  The primary creative behind the series is Tomino Yoshiyuki.  The series originally aired in the Spring and Fall of 1979.

   *Episode 15, Cucuruz Don's Island was never made available for North America.

     Set in the future of Earth, humanity has been living among the stars long enough to have people born in space in one of the fully operating space stations known as Sides.  By the new Universal Century calendar, in the year 0079 a war of independence breaks out as Side 3 decides to throw of the reigns of Earth and form its own power base known as the Principality of Zeon.  Humanity is collected under the Earth Federation and the conflict between it and Zeon becomes devastating quickly, resulting in half of the human population being wiped out before the end of the war.  A secret new weapon is being developed on the Side 7 colony by the Federation when the team that is tasked with retrieving it is attacked by a Zeon sneak attack.  The attack is devastating, resulting in most of the Federation contingent being lost of killed, leaving a young officer named Bright in charge of the new command ship, the White Base.  In addition to the White Base are three new powerful mobile suits, the Gundam, Guncannon and Guntank.  In the process of evacuating the station the White Base becomes a refugee transport and Bright is forced to enlist civilians into the battle to get back to Earth.

    A teenage boy names Amuro Ray ends up becoming the pilot of the Gundam, forced into the situation by his overwhelming desire to help those around them.  Bright is hesitant to entrust the military's most secret weapon in the hands of an inexperienced civilian boy, but desperation requires necessity.  The White Base heads to Earth, followed doggedly by Zeon forces.  Those forces are being led by charismatic masked officer named Char, who is hell bent on absolute victory.  At every the White Base escapes destruction and Char becomes obsessed with the Gundam and its pilot, seeing it as a challenge to his own brilliance and ability.  When the White Base reaches Earth their problems do not go away, they have to fight their way through Zeon help territory and when they finally arrive in friendly air space they are immediately sent out on vital missions as the Federation pushes to turn the tide in their favor.  Left with little choice, Bright remains in command of the ship and the civilians who have taken on combat roles in their journey are pressed into military service.  Amuro, the Gundam and everyone else who have struggled to survive are now faced with their mortality in what becomes the pivotal battle in the One Year War.

     Gundam is one of the fundamentals of the maturing anime industry.  A collaboration that wanted to push a more realistic hero mech narrative it is considered the beginning of the real mech genre, that moves away from the giant robot super hero aesthetic.  Gundam, while keeping with the template of a hero robot emphasized vulnerability and limitations.  The design of the mechs in the series were inspired by the power suits from the novel Star Ship Troopers with a focus on being more mechanically realistic.  Through sponsor partnerships with the toy company Clover.  The series was aimed as a young audience with an eye on moving related toy's.  Even though it was designed for children around early adolescent age, the series was largely grim and dramatic, with may characters dying on screen.  Due to failing toy sales the show was cut short of its 52 episode run, with it wrapping up in 43 episodes.  The series didn't gain a lot of traction in its original broadcast.  In the early 80's the story was condensed, cleaned up and refocused into a more consumable three movie format.  The movies along with syndication lead to a surge in the shows audience, but with adults and late teenagers, shifting the series to aim for an older audience that was eager for narrative and realism.

    TV animation in the late 70s was obviously very limited mostly due to budget constraints and the artwork for Gundam is lacking in a lot of areas.   While there was a goal to bring a more realistic story there is a lot of hand waving in regards to science and physics.  A lot of the mobile suits movements ignore their metallic mechanical structure.  Instead they move and react like magical humans like they anything found in a super sentai series.  Gundam is very much tied to super sentai but does a lot of work, largely through its story telling, to distance its self from that genre.  The core of Gundam, outside of the war and the mechs, is the concept of the Newtype, a sudden evolutionary change in humans brought on by the move into space.  The naming of the Newtype idea doesn't appear until the last arc of the story where it suddenly becomes the driving force of the conclusion.  Artwork and realism aside, I really disliked the series for the first half.  But as it closed into the final arc the intrigue and machinations became more interesting...it also doesn't hurt that the devastation ramped up.  I struggle to understand how Gundam made such an impact but that's coming from a world where it has always existed, I was born near the end of its original broadcast.  I have lived in a world where real mecha and its influence has already existed.  Its also the problem of having never watched it in all the decades of anime fandom until now and the medium has gone through such drastic changes in that time that the age and awkwardness of the original Gundam is impossible to look past.  While it may be flawed its impact on anime is undeniable and its legacy will be more important than an individual chapter.

The original series is currently available on Crunchyroll, but your better off just watching the three theatrical movie version of the story instead. 

First Look at the New Titles for the Fall of 2025

 Its time to roll into the Fall season!!  Here is a peek at the shows that I will at least watch the first episodes of...and this season, at least for me, is looking pretty dismal.

 

Yano-kuns Ordinary Days

    Class rep. Yoshida has a caring nature about her, particularly due to having to look after two younger siblings.  Her nature kicks into overdrive when the boy next to here, Yano, is cursed with misfortune and arrives to school everyday with persistent and escalating injuries.  She pushes through his easy going attitude to figure out what she can do to make his life easier, even if she can't stop his clumsy nature.

    It will be interesting to see how this story can break out of the already exhausted joke of Yano's continuous injury through oblivious personality.   It is nice to have a reverse in the detested care taker trope that has existed in anime for a long time know, where the strong male figure is compelled to care for the dojikko girl.  Yoshida feels like a motherly version of Hori Kyoko...but Yano is terribly boring and rote.  We shall see how long this lasts on the watch list but the first episode wasn't terrible.  Yano himself is a bad character and the artwork in general isn't great.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.

A Star Brighter Than the Sun

    Sae has always been taller than the other girls and in elementary school many of the boys.  On her first day of elementary school she fell in love with a smaller boy named Koki and they became close friends up until middle school.  At the end of middle school she realizes her old friend has become bigger, stronger and popular.  Can she still harbor her feelings for him, especially since theyve grown a part the past few years?  When they end up in the same class again in high school she thinks it may be time to open up to him.  But it might be tool late.

    This is a really sweet story so far.  Sae is presented as a self conscious character in a natural and believable way.  Her friendship with Koki over the years was one of mutual respect and Koki appears to be the kind of character that's nice to everyone, causing stress on Sae's internal dialogue, things we have seen countless times before.  But this one seems like it will be a nice take on this romance trope and I look forward to seeing their relationship develop.

This series is streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Let's play

    Sam is an aspiring game developer who finally released a passion project she worked on in college that received encouraging feedback on an indy game platform until a popular streamer attacks the game as unplayable, causing a firestorm of negative opinions.  Things get awkward when she learns the streamer is her new neighbor.  Side note, her day job is a corporate grunt for her fathers company and her supervisor is trying to mold her to be his replacement by treating her like...well a regular employee.

     I'm not sure how I feel about this one.  I like Sam as a character from a few angles, but all of the other characters are not to the same standard.  She seems to be surrounded by a Friends like level of agreeable companions but is too distracted with her own life to repay their attention.  She also had some sort of hospitalization as a child that incubated her dream of game development that should come into play more as the story progress's.  I will stick with this one for now, purely based on the strength of the main character, even though much of the things around her are...caricatures of reality.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll. 

My Awkward Senpai

     Kannawa is good at her job but terrible at interacting with others.  To protect her unease she has cultivated a stern and authoritative outer shell that acts as a ward to those around her.  She does this to protect herself as she doesn't know how to interact with people shes unfamiliar with.  Her plan has worked well until she is assigned to mentor her departments newest employee.  Concerned that she may be letting down the new hire she begins to change her projected personality and begin become more adept at communication...but how easy will it be to change herself quickly?

    I enjoy work place comedies as stories devoid of kids are hard to find in the anime landscape.  One of the best has to be Servant x Service and this is a bit of a far cry form that one, aside from the bust sizes of most of the women in the office...  The first episode really doesn't dig into why or how Kannawa is the way she is.  She isn't presented as a sympathetic character as her own problems are her fault.  Not sure how long this one will stick in the queue...but I'll give it a few more episodes.  I don't suspect there will be much more than the premise already laid out in the first episode.  Count on their being a semi romantic twist to things at some point.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Potion, Waga Mi o Tasukeru

    Kaede finds herself in an unfamiliar alley in a strange town out of some RPG.  After spending all day trying to figure her surroundings out she notices a book she didn't put in her backpack.  In it is a note telling her to use its pages to survive in this world.  With in are a few pages for creating potions that only require her to gather them and utter a the word generate. After crafting some basic potions over night she sells them at the first opportunity...for now she finally has money for food and a room at an inn...now what.

     I famously dislike isekai, but something made me watch to watch this, perhaps because of it not seeming like some power fantasy spectacle.  At first I was off-put by the limited animation but the first episode was fun so far, only time will tell how interesting it will really be. 

This series is not available for streaming in English. 

Spy x Family season 3

    We once again return to the world of spy's and intrigue and a bit of weird.  OK, a lot of weird.  Loid still has his mission to accomplish in order to ensure peace between the East and West for the time being...too bad it all hinges on Anya.   How closer can he get to finishing this job before the season ends and will he actually develop feelings for Yor?

    I am really happy to have this show returning...I still need to watch the movie however.  This first episode brings us right back into things with two stories reminding us why we love the good guys.  To be fair, some of the past arcs in the Academy bored me but its a central to the actual plot of the story so I have to bear with it.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.

 To Your Eternity season 3 (10/4)

    When we last saw Fushi he settled in to a long sleep at Renril as he started a plan to emesh himself into everything he could on the surface of the planet, until he eradicates the Nokker threat and peace descends.  Unknown centuries/millennia later he awakes to a world of 'peace' finding himself in modern times.  In his travels he ends up in this worlds equivalent to Japan and is adopted by a hyperactive high schooler who also believes heavily in the occult/super natural and the legends of Fushi.  Its time for Fushi to gather his companions so they may live out their unnatural lives in peace and security.

    I suspect this season of To Your Eternity comes as shock with its shift in setting for those who have not read the manga.  Unfortunately the series was not completed when Crunchyroll closed the doors on their first manga platform, so I don't know how this arc and the story ends.  But I am happy to see this part of the story animated and eagerly await its conclusion. 

This series if streaming on Crunchyroll. 

 Touring After the Apocalypse

    Two young girls find themselves in the overgrown countryside of Japan, humanity has vanished and nature is creeping into replace  it.  Yoko, who pilots the electric motorcycle is chasing after memories of her older sister and her journeys before everything changed.

     At first I wasn't sure about this show, believing it wasn't going to dig into the reason the world was devoid of people.  But about 13 minutes into it it went sideways and I think this is going to be equal part sci-fi and equal part iyashikei.  Here I was thinking it was going to be a generic attempt at capturing the heart of Girls Last Tour...but no, this seems more like a prequel to Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll. 

 Ranma 1/2 season 2

    We swing right back into the story with the introduction of a character the original anme adaptation snubbed, Gosunkugi Hikaru as he replaces Sasuke in his rightful roll and works to understand is Ranma has any weaknesses.

    Its so good to have this remake return!  The first season did a great job of breathing new life into this classic manga and wiping away the ills of the original anime.  This season is set to be a banger with the introduction of so many fantastic characters.  The big question on everyone's mind....how will they address Happosai and his...predilections in a different social environment?

This series is streaming on Netflix.

A Mangaka's Weird Wonderful Workplace

    Futami is a new manga artist who's uncertainty and self doubt does much to cripple her decision making process.  The only way she gets anything done is through her reliable assistant.   To make matters worse her editor at the magazine struggles to properly communicate in a manner that eliminates Futami's concerns.

    This is a run of the mill comedy full of cute female characters living idyllic care free lives.  It leans heavily into caricatures of the characters professions and a world devoid of real conflict.  In other words, we have another iyashikei comedy on our hands that isn't too bad.  Time will tell if its going to be memorable or not, but at least the characters aren't designed for the male gaze.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll. 

 Chitose is in the Ramune Bottle

    Chitose Saku is a talented student with a positive disposition and group of close friends.  His homeroom teacher tasks him with trying to get a boy in his class back to school, since he's been absent since the prior year.  Being the ideal person he believes himself to be, he sets out to break through the shut in's defensive walls.

    Since the first episode is largely set up and I suspect a lot of the story is going to be about this popular guy and his clique getting to know the hikkikomori otaku, its hard to say how this story will be.  After the first episode, I don't like it.  Chitose is obnoxious as is his not-harem.  Not to link myself to the dreary angry otaku, Chitose embodies the people I disliked in my school days.  But of course there is some darkness mystery around our perfect model student, who even takes slander with stride.  This story needs to do a lot of work in the next few episodes to change my mind.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll. 

Gintama - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class

    Based on omake from the original Gintama manga and shown in the TV anime adaptation, Gintoki's high school teacher doppelganger, Ginpachi, holds class for a greater period now in this stand alone series wrapping all the familiar personalities from Gintama into alternate versions of themselves.

    Its been a while since we saw anything new for Gintama and this weirdness is welcomed.  It had been even longer since I've watched anything related to it and it didn't take long to get reacquainted to the large cast of misfits.  Here's hoping this one can do a good job with the humor, but it may have a hard time with the fantastic  A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School from earlier this year.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll and anime.com

Gnosia (10/12)

    A ship of 5 refugees fled a world over run by an aggressive alien species the Gnos.  They are bent on wiping out humanity and pretend to be humans to do so. The ships computer detects a Gnos life form but is unable to determine exactly which of the inhabitants is the culprit.  The world they are trying to land on has tasked them with rooting out the danger or face destruction to protect themselves.  The people aboard the ship must play a game of social deduction to save themselves.

 Based on the video game of the same name, this is a flashy representation of the well known social deduction genre of games.  Perhaps most famously, Among Us or the boardgame Blood on the Clocktower.  You could also liken this to the classic body horror movie The Thing.  So we know the general idea of how the series will go, chock full of lies, twists an deliberate misinformation.  That alone would be meh, because all that really matters is the ultimate resolution.  Yet this story with its relatively high production value animation immediately presents an interesting world to build.  I'm not as concerned with who is the bad guy in the story, I am more interested in what the universe they exist in is like...it seems really intriguing and I enjoyed the first episode for that reason.  The ending was a bit...dumb?  We'll see is each week is just a reset of the game potentially adding different players.  I really want to know more about the world though!

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll. 

Rascal Does Not Dream of Santa Claus - anime

 Rascal Does Not Dream of Santa Claus (青春ブタ野郎はサンタクロースの夢を見ない) is a 13 episode continuation of the Rascal Does Not Dream light novel series by .  The series covers light novels volume 9 through 13 and aired during the Summer of 2025.

    Azusagawa Sakuta has begun his perfect college life with his older girlfriend Sakurajima Mai, one of Japans most beloved actors.  As they enter into adulthood they struggle to escape the complicated world of adolescence.   Right away strange things begin to occur around him, evidence of people he meets suffering from adolescent syndrome, a supernatural manifestation of internal stresses around growing up.  Unlike the issues he dealt with in high school, the new problems he works to solve seem to be centering around a strange woman dressed in a mini skirt Santa outfit calling herself Kirishima Touko.  In the past year, Kirishima has been uploading haunting songs on the internet that have been gaining traction.  Sakuta is the only one who can see the mini skirt Santa, a form of adolescent syndrome he suspects is similar to what Mai went through when they first met.  She tells him that she is handing out presents to everyone around him, various forms of adolescence syndrome, that deeply concern the compassionate Sakuta.

    As Sakuta works through the new cases of stress and uncertainty around the new people he comes into contact with, elements from his past return to warn him of a threat to the most important thing in his life, Mai.   A version of him from a more idyllic reality, warns him that unless he is able to stop Kirishima, Mai is in danger.  As he helps resolve each related adolescent syndrome he digs deeper into the psyche of the mysterious woman who threatens his love and happiness.  Could the unidentifiable songstress have a strong enough jealousy over Mai that she is able to super charge the stresses of those she comes into contact with?  An internet phenomenon around prophetic dreams begins to reveal to extent of the threat to Mai and other around him as he tries to get Kirishima to open up to him about her motivations.

    The 'long awaited' continuation of the Rascal Doesn't Dream franchise does not disappoint.  With the exception of one thing...the bungled release in North America.  The original 12 episode series was followed by three theatrical releases, all of which cover the first eight light novels.  The story is progressive and interconnected and the second and third movies were not available legally for English speaking audiences until a few episodes into the broadcast of the second series.  This means that most audiences, who missed the opportunity over a two day period over a year earlier to see those movies in the theater, were missing vital contextual information.  Events specifically in the third movie directly relate to a lot of the central plot of the Santa Claus series, particularly the existence and Sakuta's interaction with the other version of his world.  Fortunately, those movies were eventually made available for streaming, so people who had not seen them before nor read the light novels, could catch up with what was going on.

     The mistake and issues for English speaking audiences aside, this series does exactly what we should expect.   With out a change to the aesthetics or delivery it flawlessly continues the story of Sakuta and his efforts to help those around him overcome their misgiving and hesitations.  The story does a good job of translating what appears in the light novels, as it has done in the previous adaptations.  The only real complaint is...were not done.  There are still two light novels that needs to be animated and Santa Claus ends in a bit of a cliff hanger.  As we have seen in the past, it will probably be a while for those to more than likely be turned into at least one movie...and then become available for English speaking audiences.  The only resolution is for everyone to at least jump into the light novel series for those last two parts of the story.  Though...its a great idea for fans of the anime to read all of the light novels as there are aspects of the story that are interesting that they had to omit from the anime, for understandable reasons.  For more details on that, check out the series of review on the Rascal Doesn't Dream light novels.  Either way, I am very pleased with the results so far and eagerly await the finale of this story being animated!

The series is available on Crunchyroll. 

City the Animation

 City the Animation is the 13 episode adaptation of the manga City by Arawi Keichi.  The series originally aired during the Summer of 2025.

     City is less a continuous story and more a collection of antics by a wide cast of characters, much like Arawi's previous work Nichijou.  The arguably primary characters are known as the Mont Blanc Trio and consist of college students/roommates Nagumo Midori and Niikura Ayumu.  They are joined by coed Izumi Wako who lives in a different apartment in the same complex.  Nagumo is naturally talented and unmotivated, coasting through life.  Niikura is hungry for success and is secretly dedicated to the older Nagumo.  Wako is carefree and coasts through her life without any challenges, having modest success in the things she finds interesting and with very little able to dampen her mood.  The room mates struggle through the entire series with being poor college students but only attempt quick ways to change their situation, refusing to look at things in the long term.  Wako...well, we're not really sure what she ever has planned in her life.

    The rest of the cast are a misfit collection of other characters, residents of City, who directly or indirectly interact with the Mont Blanc Trio from time to time.  The Makabe family is helmed by  father Tsurubishi who runs a moderatly sucessful restaurant but is easily distracted by childlike fancy.  The oldest child, high school student Tatewaku spends his time playing soccor poorly and trying to gain the love of Wako's younger sister Riko.  The other child is daughter Matsuri who spends all of her time outside of familly and school with her best friend Amakazari Eri (Ecchan).  Together the middle school aged girls have an incredibly imaginative sense of play and wonder through out the City.  A much larger family is the Adatara clan, who's father runs the liquor store next to the Makabe restaurant.  The mother struggles to reign in all 5 of their kids, of various ages and Grandfather Adatara has a strange fued with Mr. Makabe.  There is a small group of people who run the City Magazine and a struggling manga author with in its pages, who also lives in the same apartment complex as the Mont Blanc Trio.  There is the aloof and ultra wealth Tanabe, who spends her time and her staff rewarding people for being good citizens...all be it in less than ideal ways.  The list goes on.

 As with Nichijou the series is a collection of vignettes about the wide cast off weird characters as they go about their semi-normal lives in the City.  Over the course you learn their personalities and history, building on a greeted understanding and connected-ness as it progresses.  While not as insane in its comedy as Nichijou was, City the Animation is a fine example of innocent comedy for comedy's sake.  It isn't bogged down by the need to tell a cohesive story.  That's not the point, its really just a look into the odd ball lives of the cast purely for amusement.  No lessons, no tension, just stupidity at its highest form.

    Kyoto Animation delivered a phenomenal product in their adaptation of the manga.  There are a lot of fast cuts and comedic turns as we have seen in Nichijou but what heightens this series is the fantastic creativity in panel layout and directing.  On top of that the story of friendship between Ecchan and Matsuri was pure joy and heart breakingly sad at the same time.  Delivery, character templating, casual physical comedy and absurdity at a very high form.  It's not for everyone.  Some people just want to see masculinity and power and thats OK.  Manga and anime are mediums of expression for a diverse audience.  City absolutely delivered what I needed and wanted and it hands down the best anime of 2025.  Now its time to begin reading the manga, a thing I put off since the anime was announced.

The series is available on Amazon Prime.