While a part of me admires the craft behind it, I can’t deny that I kind of hate this show. The sheer crassness of it stacks up with the most cynical anime productions of all-time. That would be bad enough if the talent behind it weren’t as legendary as they are. There isn’t a moment so far that isn’t expertly calculated with the bottom line in mind. I hate that it’s going to work, too, though the people involved are too smart to go to the trouble if they weren’t pretty sure it was.
What’s happened here, as far as I can tell, is that Anno, Tsurumaki and co. did a shot for shot remake of the 1979 premiere of Kidou Senshi Gundam. Same sound effects, BGM, everything. With some tweaks to sell the current mecha designs, of course, and to set up a new timeline. And a new seiyuu for Char, which is interesting. Clearly this is an overture to win over the hardcore Gundam fans who might not be that thrilled to see their franchise being used as a straight-up pretext to peddle yuri bait (again).
What’s really ballsy, though, is that they flipped the order from the theatrical release – in which the events of this episode came before the events of the TV premiere. That’s the level of calculation going on here – in the theatre version, we need to hook in the Gundam fans before we flip the yuri switch. In the TV version, we need to capture the yuri fans before we make the unavoidable overtures to the actual franchise. As I said, part of me admires it for its sheer audaciousness – and shamelessness – and the skill with which it’s being brought off.
What a thing, seriously. When I think of where we are with the likes of Anno, Tsurumaki, and Watanabe Shinichirou it makes me glad that anime’s past is the past. I’m glad it exists – no one loves FLCL and Eva more than I do – but I’m also glad these aren’t the people setting the agenda for anime now (just exploiting it). Either way – they’re disinterested in being more than self-plagiarists or fashion chasers or unable to break out of their own gravitational field – they’re creatively irrelevant. It just makes Miyazaki Hayao that much more admirable for being a stubborn old fuck who pursues what he wants to, irrespective of what’s expected of him or the impact on the bottom line.
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