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I don't have a lot to say about this one, so this will be a relatively short review. Shin Mazinger Zero was pretty cool in the first half, but I had completely lost interest by the end.

After the first few chapters, this series finally feels like it settles into a regular plot. Kouji fights Dr. Hell's goons in Mazinger, Sayaka and Boss try to help, you know, the usual. However, there is a new character in the android Minerva X, and strange hints about the setting that kept me reading to learn the truth.

The authors plays with a lot of classic Mazinger villains and story ... beats in fun, metatextual ways, but it's nothing too deep. Plenty of characters from other Nagai properties make cameos which make this feel like a fun celebration of his entire body of work. The art here is really good, especially the mech illustrations. Mazinger is one BEEFY boy this time and I love it. There are a good handful of ecchi moments, and some sick pages with attack names crossing the page in huge letters.

BUT THEN, everything takes a turn for the worse, in my opinion.

Without going into too much detail, the plot basically grinds to a halt as we dive into flashback after flashback. Every chapter starts to blend into the next one, as they all consist of nearly the same elements. There are lots of tight close up shots of people yelling, with those large, page spanning letters being used for regular sentences (Thus diminishing their impact when used for attacks). Mazinger will try something new in battle and when it doesn't go as planned, they feel the need to cut to reaction shots for the entire supporting cast that haven't lifted a finger in ages. The art quality doesn't really change, but it gets stale when the artist has to draw the same subjects in roughly the same situations over and over again.

It was in this stretch of the manga that I put it down for several weeks before coming back to it. When I did, I was hoping for the chapters to start having some more variety and excite me again, but it was still more of the same through to the end.

So, who should read Shin Mazinger Zero? If you're a fan of Mazinger, I think it's at least worth checking out. The first half does have some genuinely fun stuff in it, even if you decide to drop it before the end. If you're not interested in only reading half a manga, or reading a full manga which stagnates in the second half, steer clear of this one.

(TLDR: Gaiking is decently fun, with episodes ranging from hilariously wacky to pretty boring. If you're just looking for a cheesy classic super robot show without much substance, you're in the right place.)

I watched Gaiking over a year ago at this point, and I've had my notes for this review sitting on my computer ever since. Since I don't spend nearly as much time writing anymore, I never got around to fleshing out those notes into a full review. Rather than trying to finally write cohesive paragraphs out of these thoughts, I'm just going to post all of my headings and year-old bullet points so ... there is at least one MAL review out there for this series.


How does it look?

A little wonky, but I think pretty good.
I can't compare to much from that era since this is the first classic super robot anime I've watched.
If you can't stomach old animation, you definitely won't enjoy this.
There is lots of good stock footage for Gaiking launching and using named attacks, as well as the Daikuu Maryuu (DM) using its Volution Protect.
Sometimes a different animator comes on with a style that has a sketch-like aesthetic which I really like.
The Gaiking itself looks awesome, but the DM is kinda derpy.
It basically looks like a fat caterpillar with a dinosaur head
I suppose the pilot suits for the crew are pretty typical for classic sci-fi, but that's exactly why I love them.


How does it sound?

The theme song is admittedly not great, but at the same time I've had a blast singing along with it for the past few months.
The soundtrack is pretty decent.
There is a nice range of emotion in each of the orchestrated tracks.
Of course, everything has a crispy 70s quality to it.
The voice acting is just fine, nothing to write home about but nothing to lament either.


What does it present?

A VERY episodic series with very few multi-episode arcs.
There are a handful of 2 episode stories, and the finale technically spans 3 episodes.
Everything else is self contained with a nice ribbon tied on the story before the credits roll.

A typical episode goes like this:
The Zelans cackle about having a new plan to defeat the DM.
The Daikuu Mari-Crew goes to investigate a strange phenomenon somewhere in the world.
They discover the phenomenon is linked to local history or mythology, and it was in fact caused by some kind of robot that the Zelans planted on Earth in ancient times.
Gaiking launches and cleans up shop.

Story:
The overarching story of the Zelan homeworld being sucked into a black hole is only touched upon a few times.
Their army is stupidly evil and their people are super pacifist, so there's not much subtlety at play.

Characters
I think the characters are actually one of the series major strengths.
Most of the main cast has a few episodes dedicated to them, or to conflicts between certain members.


And that's the end of my notes! So who should watch Gaiking? I would recommend it to any mecha fans like myself: someone curious about classic mecha anime that doesn't want to committ to a high episode count for something like Mazinger Z. It was fun enough to turn my brain off, enjoy the cartoony shenanigans, and shout Gaiking's attack names along with them.

Somewhere along the way I acquired the first volume of Gundam Wing: The Last Outpost (Or Dual Story - G-Unit in Japanse). I had read it a couple times over the years, and always intended to track down the other 2 volumes, but it was never a big enough priority that I actually did. After stumbling across some convenient scans, I tore through all 3 volumes in less than a week (Which is really fast for me) and was very glad I never bought the final volumes. The Last Outpost has all the elements of a pretty decent shounen mecha series, but just doesn't have ... the time to expound on any of them in its short duration.

This manga is a very quick read, and the story moves really fast. I found myself accidentally finishing entire volumes in a single sitting, not because I was riveted, but because each page goes by in the blink of an eye. Tokita-sensei uses many large panels, and none of the dialogue is particularly dense. There just isn't much to keep your eyes lingering on any page for too long, so entire chapters of 30-50 pages would fly by much faster than I expected (I don't know the exact page counts, but there are only 4-5 chapters per volume).

Tokita-sensei's art is... decent. I didn't see any spectacular illustrations that blew me away, and the character models honestly get a little wonky sometimes, but overall it doesn't look terrible. The character designs aren't terribly inspired or unique, and look pretty standard for 90s Gundam. The designs of the Gundams themselves are pretty cool, but after a while they just start to get really busy and cluttered with accessories. On top of that, the action can sometimes be hard to decipher from the panels, and I never felt a strong sense of flow from the fight choreography. Much like the Gundam Wing anime which this shares a setting with, many of the later battles boil down to firing large laser beams at distant groups of enemies and watching them explode, which is a lot less impressive in still black and white.

The story of Last Outpost feels like the skeleton of a much longer series. Plot points will play out with the bare minimum amount of character interaction required for them to make sense. It uses many cliche story beats that are hallmarks of shounen, which could have gone over well if there was more time to build up the characters. As it stands, though, everything is so rushed that you don't have a chance to become invested in the characters, so even the cliches don't feel earned. New, more sinister villains seem to appear every few chapters, characters have secret identities that are totally obvious, and the final "plot twist" can be smelled from chapters away.

Much like the story, it seems almost every character is pulled straight from the standard shounen playbook. There's the cool and skilled older brother, the hot headed younger brother who envies his brother's skill, the girlfriend who is 100% tsundere down to her DNA, and the list goes on and on. Only a couple of characters undergo any growth or development, and again due to the short duration of the series, that development isn't very deep, nor does it have a lot of build up.

For me, the real highlight of this series are the yon-koma at the end of every volume. These short gags star characters from almost all of the 90s Gundam series. In volumes 2 & 3, there are enough pages of 4 panel gags that they almost match the length of a regular chapter. Of course the comedy isn't groundbreaking, but the chibi renditions of the characters are cute and humorous. It's in these strips that we really see how big of a Gundam fan Tokita-sensei is. Most of them hardly mention UC Gundam, which is a nice change of pace. It's cool to see someone celebrating the first wave of alternate timeline Gundam series. In the third volume there are finally tons of strips dedicated to the original UC Gundams, as well as the UC OVA series that came out in the 90s.

So who should read Gundam Wing: G-Unit? If you happen upon it, it's a decent read. You could very easily finish all 3 volumes in a single evening, and forget everything that happened within them just as quickly. I would not recommend seeking out and buying the volumes. Even though it's related to Wing, I don't think it has all that much to offer to Wing fans. It adds on some extra plot that takes place far away from the Earth sphere, yet has almost no connection to the main plot of the anime. Read this if you're a really bored Gundam fan and just want something light and breezy with Gundams plastered all over it.

Who was Jesus? Was he a prophet, a heretic, a delusional man, or truly the son of God? This is still debated to the present day, just as it was when he walked the Earth. I'm not sure whether Yoshikazu Yasuhiko is a believer or just a man fascinated by history, but he put amazing effort into creating these two full color volumes that tell not only the story of Jesus, but also portray the world he lived in, and the reactions of people to his ministry.

There's no way around it: Yasuhiko-sensei is an absolute genius at composing manga. The expressiveness of his line work ... amazes me. His art style is grounded in realistic proportions, but he knows exactly when to use exaggerated cartoonish expressions on his characters. The contorted faces of people raging make a sharp contrast to Jesus' ever stoic illustrations, letting you soak in how funny they really look. On top of just illustrations, his framing and page layouts allow you to read characters thoughts and feelings without a speech bubble in sight.

I've never been a huge fan of full color manga, but this series changed my mind. Yasuhiko-sensei coats every page in vivid watercolors to set the mood. Sometimes he's just coloring in the world the way it actually looks, but he often drowns entire scenes in powerful, single colors. The rage of crowds is palpable on pages covered in red, and pages of blue pull me down into the despair of the characters. He switches between realistic and abstract coloring schemes on a dime, and characters easily slip into little more than outlines in a sea of watercolor textures.

The story of this manga follows Jesus' adult ministry through the eyes of one of his disciples. Through his eyes we see what it felt like to give your life to literally following Jesus across the map. Yasuhiko-sensei also gives his interpretation of what public reaction to Jesus and his disciples was like, both when Jesus was exalted by the masses and angrily threatened. There aren't many surprises in the story, because it does follow a plot from 2000 years ago. There are also frequent cuts to scenes of the crucifixion throughout the manga, as if everything else is being remembered during those prolonged, painful moments on the cross. It does not go far beyond that point, ending with Jesus' empty tomb and the women being told that he is risen.

Jesus himself is portrayed as reserved and enigmatic as the man surely was. The viewpoint character Joshua is, as best I can tell, totally made up for this story (More on Biblical accuracy later). From a visual standpoint, he basically looks like Amuro from Gundam, which Yasuhiko-sensei has worked on for years. Most of the supporting cast are pretty flat, but they're not the focus anyway. All of the Apostles, Pharisees, and named people they meet are more pieces of the world and plot than they are characters.

So more on the Biblical accuracy of this manga. There is some blatant embellishment, but it honestly makes the story more readable. The character Joshua seems to be entirely made up and inserted into Jesus' circle purely so we could see the world through his eyes. At one point it is outright shown that Mary Magdalene is actually Jesus' lover, and some of the Apostles call her a prostitute in no uncertain terms. I also don't believe that Judas ever greeted Jesus with a kiss in the pages before he was arrested in the garden. In the final chapter when the women visit Jesus' tomb, the message that he is risen delivered not by an angel, but instead by a man in the tomb. There may be even more small details changed from the Gospels, but I can't be certain since I'm not a Bible scholar.

So who should read Jesus? I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in 2 volumes of gorgeous, cinematic, full color glory. I don't know how well this manga could be used as an evangelical tool to tell the story of Jesus to a non-believer, because it doesn't particularly emphasize his teachings as much as it just portrays the time period of his ministry. As someone who was raised with these stories, I thought it was a very interesting interpretation of the Gospel, so if you had a similar upbringing you might enjoy it as well.

It's no secret that Char's Counterattack illicits mixed feelings from many Gundam fans. On one hand, it's the epic conclusion to Char and Amuro's story together, but it is by no means a flawless movie. While it doesn't fix everything wrong with the movie, the manga of Beltorchika's Children represents what Char's Counterattack could have been. It was at one point submitted by Yoshiyuki Tomino for the script of the movie, only to be rejected and released as a novel, and much later as this manga adaptation. Obviously nothing can replace the glorious animation of the final showdown between the Nu Gundam and the Sazabi, ... but Beltorchika's Children has cemented itself in my mind as the definitive version of the story of Char's Counterattack.

The art in this adaptation is fantastic all around. Character expressions look authentic and varied. There are next to no exaggerated, cartoony expressions which, just like the movie, help solidify the serious tone of the story. All of the MS illustrations look consistent with awesome, dynamic poses. Every MS battle is filled with excellent choreography that is mostly easy to follow. I've never been a big fan of the Nightingale design, but I was surprised with how cool and powerful it was made to look in the illustrations. The artist duo also uses plenty of 2 page spreads to really sell the scale or impact of certain scenes, which all look gorgeous.

The overall plot of Beltorchika's Children is largely the same as the Char's Counterattack movie, with a few changes that don't affect the overall outcome. Some plot points such as the Psycho Frame being leaked and implemented in the Nu Gundam or the arrival of Federation reinforcements are expanded and make a little more sense in the manga. Additionally, having to read all of the slow political moments kept me from falling asleep quite as easily as the movie version. One significant change is made to the climax as Axis is being repelled from Earth. Without giving too much detail, it adds thematic significance to what becomes of Char and Amuro, and didn't leave me scratching my head like I do every time the credits roll on the movie.

The changes that are made mostly pertain to the characters, and I think this is where Beltorchika's Children really outshines the classic movie. None of the characters are wildly different from the original story, but the additions that are made really enhance my understanding and appreciation for their actions. Many facets of Char's motivations and goals are explicitly stated here, and reveal another side to his plan with Axis. The decision for Amuro to still be with Beltorchika itself is telling about his character, and the strength of their relationship heightens some of the stakes in the story. Beltorchika herself shows substantial growth from her appearance in Zeta Gundam, where she was protective of Amuro to the point of being a nuisance. One of my favorite changes is that Quess and Hathaway feel more like background characters. Their ill-fated romance didn't bother me nearly as much as in the movie, perhaps because the whole story wasn't condensed into 2 hours.

So who should read Beltorchika's Children? I highly recommend this to UC Gundam fans who wanted more out of Char's Counterattack. The movie has its issues, and while this doesn't fix all of them, in my opinion it adds details in all the right places to make the existing story much more satisfying. After all these years, I feel like I finally have a better understanding of Char's complicated motivations, and don't feel jipped by the Newtype bs ending of the movie.

Real quick, the Gundam: The Origin anime is the best supplement to the original series. Period. Now, there are three ways to consume it! First is the Origin manga which retells the entire original Gundam story with additional backstory, and over the last few years the additional backstory has been adapted into a series of 6 OVA movies. This year, in true budget fashion, the OVA has been recut into a 13 episode series with minimal new content produced. The TV version, Advent of the Red Comet, is one of the best seasonal anime I've seen this year. The crisp animation and story make it ... worth watching for any UC Gundam fan, and the shorter run time of the TV version may make it a more appealing option than the OVAs.

The animation in this series is literally movie quality. Sunrise dumped a lot of money into the animation because they knew UC fans would eat it up and buy the model kits (They were right). The line work on all of the characters is sharp and consistent, and adeptly adapts Yasuhiko-sensei's art style. There are a wide variety of backgrounds, all of which are vivid and detailed. All of the mobile suits are done up in conspicuous CG which looks fantastic. It lends these classic MS designs a sense of fierceness and rigidity that could only be inferred due to the soft, bubbly animation of the original anime. The colors used in the animation are somewhat drab, which also keeps The Origin from looking as candy coated as some of the original.

The soundtrack is every bit as grand as the scale of the One Year War. The crisp orchestration expertly conveys the tone of each scene, with infrequent guitars and synthesizers to spice things up. The opening and ending songs added to the TV version are hit or miss for me, some of them put me to sleep but a few left a good impression. I was especially taken with the first ending theme and its powerful refrain, as well as the final opening theme which is a remake of the classic Gundam song "Beyond the Time." I don't think I'll be defaulting to this new version any time soon, but I appreciate that they did remake it to include in this release.

According to Gundam Wiki, The Origin anime adapts volumes 5 to 7 of the manga, with Yasuhiko-sensei on board as the writer to aid in adapting his pages to the screen. It fleshes out the backstory of the One Year War, several characters from the original series, and most of all Char. We see Char's development from childhood all the way to the beginning of the original Gundam series. I think The Origin honestly does a pretty believable job setting up his character for the most part, but some plot points are needlessly contrived or depict Char doing extravagantly badass things just because he's Char. However, that did not hinder my enjoyment of it, and I still think this serves as a fine backstory even though it was not written by series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino himself.

Compared to the OVAs, Advent of the Red Comet is a much quicker watch. There are almost 100 minutes of footage from the OVA that have been omitted from the TV version. Add on the fact that the OVA has viewers sit through a cumulative 30 minutes of recaps, and the TV version saves a pretty significant amount of time. The team that recut the OVA did well picking what to omit, because you still receive the entire main plot. The OVAs go out of their way to show tons of little details and character interactions which nearly amount to fan service, so you will miss out on some things watching this version. Being that it follows the main character growing up over so few episodes, the story pace is fairly unique for a TV anime. Finally, the new opening and ending sequences are all nice to look at, with the final opening standing out in my mind as far better than the rest.

So who should watch Gundam: The Origin - Advent of the Red Comet? I can safely recommend this to any fans of the original Gundam anime or the UC timeline. I might even go so far as to suggest it as an entry point into the franchise to be followed by the original, because the OVA version is loaded with extras that can't be as fully appreciated without seeing the older series first. If you happen to watch this before the original Gundam then reach out and let me know; I would be very curious what the experience is like.

Some anon once said, "CDA is just shameless charwanking," and I think there's definitely some truth in that statement. Char's Deleted Affair, or CDA, was one of the first titles published in the monthly Gundam ACE magazine, and it stayed in publication for the better part of a decade alongside Gundam: The Origin. In addition to introducing us to Haman Karn and showing the massive political transitions taking place, CDA fills in the mysterious transition Char Aznable undergoes between the original Mobile Suit Gundam and its sequel Zeta Gundam, and paints him in many glorious combat situations while being groomed as a dignified political leader. ... While I don't think the story itself was overrun with Char fan service, the story has its fair share of problems, and I was overall unimpressed with the quality of the manga used to tell it.

(Warning: This review assumes familiarity with the Gundam franchise, so I use several abbreviations and reference events from different anime entries.)

I really wish I had more positive things to say about the art, but I was honestly let down for the most part. The best praise I can give to Kitazume-sensei's art is that it is very consistent. If you peep the first and last volume you can see a slight improvement in the character illustrations, but page-to-page all the characters and MS are on model and look just fine. The color pages at the beginning of most chapters are also nicely textured with excellent color palettes. I think most of the issues I have come down to Kitazume-sensei having a long career as an animation director/key animator, where he may not have had to put as much work into drawing backgrounds and got to focus on the character illustrations. The main reason I believe this is because the backgrounds throughout CDA are very sparsely detailed, and in nearly half the panels are supplanted with a simple gradient. In fact, he uses gradients for just about everything: walls, floors, clothing, and even hair--all gradients. Whether or not the use of so many gradients is in fact easier or quicker than other methods I can't say for sure, but to me it gave most of the pages a very cheap feeling.

Be they attributable to his key animation career or not, I had yet other problems with the art. For one, the page layouts are decently varied, but are certainly nothing to write home about. For some reason, almost every female face that he draws looks identical; I'm pretty sure you could cut and paste the faces of different female characters onto different pages and fail to notice a difference. Lastly, the MS battles, which are part of the main draw of the Gundam series, are severely underwhelming. Most of the time I don't feel like they capture the sense of motion you get from the classic anime series. It isn't until nearly 3/4 through the series that I began to notice battles illustrated in a way that actually succeeded in this, thus proving that Kitazume-sensei is capable of evoking that feeling, but he does not always implement it.

Even though the battles may lack the fluidity I would like, the still MS illustrations are done very well. As we follow the Zeon remnants to Axis, we are treated to plenty of classic Gelgoogs and Zakus with a few interesting prototypes here and there. The Federation still shows up with mostly GMs from the OYW, but slowly begins to roll out some new, more sleek models. Without giving away too much, we are also treated to Char piloting several iconic mobile weapons, including updated versions of some he has piloted previously and others that are only seen in OVA or MSV entries.

The story of CDA follows the journey of Char Aznable starting in the climactic Battle of A Baoa Qu from the original Gundam series, and ending inside the first episode of Zeta Gundam. Thus, we see not only how Char came to be Lt. Quattro Bajeena in Zeta, but also how the political situation inside of Zeon and the Earth Federation evolved after the OYW. That said, this is a political drama first and a war story second. It is very slow paced. So little happens in each chapter that there is no way I could have read this as it was publishing monthly. Of course, I can't expect action all the time when this is not a full on war period, but I am conditioned on Gundam anime with MS battles every episode, and here we could go several chapters with no more than a few pages of MS training exercises. All of this makes it feel somewhat out of place as a Gundam story, and I honestly found most of it pretty boring. The whole reason (Or the main reason, at least) that the anime skipped from the OYW to the Gryps conflict is because the stuff in between wasn't as exciting, so it jumped straight to the good part when Zeta starts. However, we do get to see the political turmoil inside of Axis build up over the course of the entire manga and pay off in one large, final conflict, as well as witness some of the events that led to the formation of the Titans and the AEUG.

Char Aznable, being the main character, does undergo some important character development. At the beginning of the story he has just accomplished his life's goal of eliminating the Zabi family, and has to find a new purpose to commit himself to. His new purpose comes largely from his interactions with the leader of Axis and father of Haman, Admiral Maharaja Karn. I will say that while reading the series it can be hard to notice any significant change in his character, because he maintains his usual calm and cool demeanor not only for the people around him, but also for us, the audience. While we do receive occasional glimpses into his thoughts, much of his character development I only realized after completing the manga and reflecting on where he started in 0079 and where he ends up at the start of Zeta. Even though this period is not the most formative or dramatic time in Char's life, it does seem to me that Kitazume-sensei (Or whatever writing team was behind him) did a fine job of keeping Char's character consistent and believable.

The other main character, Haman Karn, actually receives a lot of character development over the years that the manga covers. She starts the story as an innocent girl who has undergone traumatic Newtype testing as a child, and thus trusts very few people. Char very quickly becomes someone that she admires and trusts, and a desire to be like him and gain his approval drives many of her choices. Through a series of tragedies in the last quarter of the manga, Haman is shaped into the cold and ruthless leader that we see her as when she appears in Zeta Gundam. Unfortunately, a lot of Haman's moments of development are undercut by the manga's incessant objectification of her, which I will further detail later.

Most of the other characters are pretty flat, and serve only as pieces to move around for the plot. Some exceptions are Maharaja, Natalie, and Enzo, who are all pretty important to the conflicts in the story. As a general trend in this manga, the more one dimensional a character is, the less important they are to the plot--and there are a lot of one dimensional characters present. We also have some very brief cameos of ZZ Gundam antagonists Mashymyre and Chara that don't do much to enhance their later appearances.

So, keep in mind that Haman is 14 years old at the start of this series. It felt like nearly every other chapter towards the beginning had a few pages dedicated to showing Haman bathing or in various states of undress for no good reason other than to illicit nosebleeds. It happened so frequently that I really began to feel uncomfortable and annoyed every time it came up. One of the moments that she has to declare things that she has come to believe and state who she is as a person takes place in an onsen where the illustrations are constantly drawing our attention away from her words and to her body. Luckily this does slow down and stop altogether in later volumes, but it rubs me the wrong way that all of this objectification happened when she was closer to 14 and stopped as she approached 18.

Let me come back to that onsen scene for a moment, because it highlights another huge problem that I have with CDA. This scene was done with roughly 6 full color pages, which was one of the highest color page counts we had seen in a single chapter up to that point. "Alright," you may think, "they're just using the color pages to show us some really hot stuff!" Except they don't. Apparently in Gundam ACE where it was published you are allowed to draw a fully nude breast, but you can only give the very faintest impression of a nipple upon it, leaving any such illustrations looking eerily featureless. Thus, we have excessive color pages dedicated to watered down fan service rather than what we're all here for: the robots. That's right. Even these onsen pages are not the first instance, for several times before and after this a chapter will use all of its color pages for the same watered down fan service and objectification of Haman rather than the true spectacle that Gundam is based around. Sure there have always been bath scenes in Gundam, but they are always infrequent and often do not frame the subjects in a sexual manner because Gundam has never needed to resort to that to entertain its audience.

So who should read Char's Deleted Affair? This one is really only for hardcore Gundam fans who are itching to know how we got from UC 0079 to 0087, and find out the origins of Char and Haman's relationship. It's kind of lengthy, and not very exciting most of the the time. If all you want is a good story about Char, check out the Gundam Origin OVA series. It is much more telling about his character with some of the best production value I've ever seen in the Gundam franchise.

Seriously, how do I keep coming back to these Studio Xebec shows? They've produced so much over the years, and some of it is actually decent, but not this one. Zoids (Chaotic Century if you're American) had a huge amount of potential, but was completely watered down with flat visuals, a bloated cast of shallow characters, and way too many episodes of what amount to filler.

This show had all the ingredients to be one of my favorites. It follows all of my stupid rules to make a great mecha show:
-It keeps the same theme song throughout
-There's a robot battle in every episode
-The robots are in ... CG, which is dank as hell!
-They play the theme song at the climax of each episode to reinforce the hype

But none of this could keep me from being bored out of my mind within the first 30 episodes.

I started this show on January 1st, and finished on May 6th. That's 126 days, so 67 episodes/127 days gives just over 1/2 an episode as a daily average. Even giving myself the advantage of watching every episode at double speed, I could not bring myself to watch more than that. Let me not understate how bad that is--I have watched far worse shows at a religious one-a-day pace just to end the pain, but I was so disinterested in this show that I couldn't be arsed to spare 12 minutes a day for it.

Let's examine why this might be:

The direction is beyond uninspired. Every shot is framed well enough so the kids at home can keep up with what's happening, but forget about going above and beyond to add any visual intrigue to the show. The standout eyesores for me were the establishing shots which far outstay their welcome, and are almost unbearably slow even at double speed. The art style, which leans towards realistic proportions, does not lend itself to having expressive characters. Sure the characters are on model very consistently, but half the time they look like cardboard cutouts with a terribly drab and muted color palette. This style may have been a choice to fit with the more rigid lines of the Zoid designs, but they really shot themselves in the foot by taking away the one means by which their boring characters might have had a small amount of visual flair.

These boring characters are all pretty one dimensional. At most a character will have one defining trait, and receive little to no character development throughout the entire run of the series. I can recall maybe one or two episodes focused on developing a backstory or exploring character motivations for each of our main cast. That's one or two episodes out of almost 70. A great majority of episodes do nothing to challenge our characters on a personal level, and just involved the aforementioned regularly scheduled robot battle. The antagonists show similar levels of depth, and are really only relevant to the story if they have a powerful Zoid.

What really confounds me is that they had a lot of great ideas to work with and could have told a gripping story. In episode ONE we establish our heroes are looking for an ancient artifact/location called "Zoid Eve" that seems like it could drive a long running mystery plot, only to be cast aside and never mentioned for a vast majority of the episodes. There is a planet-wide military conflict that our characters become wrapped up in, but almost no focus on what motivated the war or its repercussions on the people of each nation. Near half way through there is a time skip, and it does nothing significant to grow or change our characters. Don't forget that they're on a planet crawling with giant robot animals that they go out of their way to show are sentient, but never pause to make our characters wonder about the morality of people's relationships with Zoids by taking the Pokemon route.

So who should watch Zoids? If you're looking to commit long term to an easygoing shounen series with abundant robot battles, Zoids is a good candidate for you. Those looking for anything of substance should steer clear.

(***review up to chapter 66--End of the Moro Arc***)

After 1.5 years since my original review of this manga, I still highly recommend it over the anime version of Dragon Ball Super. Before, I only thought of it as a quicker, higher quality alternative to the anime, but with the addition of the Moro arc it has much more to offer. The Moro arc is the longest so far in the manga, and was able to tell its epic story with appropriate pacing since there was no need to keep up with an anime version. On top of covering the events of the anime in a ... more digestible format, Toyotarou's Dragon Ball Super manga now delivers what is easily my favorite story arc of the Super era.

While Toyotarou's pen game doesn't perfectly replicate Toriyama-sensei's art style, it's a close approximation. The way Toyotarou lays out his panels is very distinct from the original Dragon Ball. This is most notable in his action scenes where he uses large, jagged panels versus Toriyama-sensei's mostly rectangular panels. Toyotarou's sound effects also seem larger and more blocky, but I can't say for sure since I've only read the original manga with localized sound effects. Regardless, the characters are all consistently on model, the fight choreography is easy to follow, and every fight is imbued with a sense of speed that you just don't get in the anime version of Super.

The manga's story is largely the same as the anime (Up until the manga only Moro arc), with the differences mostly coming down to details while the overall plot stays the same. For detailed thoughts on some of these differences, see the spoiler paragraphs at the end of the review. The manga is also missing all of the anime filler. That means the bad filler like the weird goo monster that nearly beat Goku and Vegeta, as well as the filler I actually liked such as Gohan playing Saiyaman in a movie. So while we do lose some enjoyable character moments, the overall story doesn't suffer because of it.

Now that the conclusion of the Moro arc is upon us, I can safely say that this is my favorite arc of Dragon Ball Super to date. This is the only arc during which my score for the series rose consistently with every chapter, because each chapter was of overall higher quality than the arcs that came before. Because Toyotarou wasn't trying to play catch up to the anime and condense story events to move the plot along, he was able to plan out a really well paced and structured narrative.

In this arc, Toyotarou basically made his own ultimate remix of all the things he loves about Dragon Ball. He pulled plot elements and characters from all over the place and arranged them into a beautiful celebration of the entire series. Sure, that does keep some story beats from feeling totally fresh, but it all comes together to build an epic story with more believable tension than I've ever felt in Dragon Ball Super up until now. The ending is... Kinda out there, but it brings back a lot of plot threads from throughout the arc for a final payoff.

The characters of Dragon Ball are pretty much the same as always in the Super manga, especially up through the Tournament of Power where Toyotarou's hand were basically tied to the agreed upon story. In the Moro arc, he gave Vegeta some welcome character development. While it may not be a drastic change from where his character has been in Super, he gets a chance to recognize his past sins and atone for them, and learn from his history of reckless battle strategies. On the other hand, a case could be made that Toyotarou has regressed Goku's character given some of the events in the Moro arc, but I honestly don't feel like any of his actions were out of place.

So who should read Dragon Ball Super? I urge any and all Dragon Ball fans to read this manga. If you've already watch the TV anime of Super, you're probably fine without reading the same story again, but I highly recommend the Moro arc starting at chapter 42. For anyone who hasn't seen the anime, I can only suggest that you read the manga and watch the movies starting with Battle of Gods for what I consider the best possible Dragon Ball Super experience.

***SPOILER PARAGRAPHS***
Here are my thoughts on a few specific differences in the manga. In the fight against Hit, Goku sadly does not use Kaio Ken Blue, but I enjoy how he defeats Hit by predicting where he will be after a time skip and punching there. In the Goku Black arc, Goku demonstrates his old "monkey see, monkey do" talent by using Beerus's Hakai technique on Zamasu. In the finale, we're also spared from the weirdness of Zamasu fusing with the entire universe or whatever happened in the anime.

Finally, in the Tournament of Power, Goku unlocks Ultra Instinct after watching Master Roshi dodge attacks from Jiren. The anime version where Goku gets hit by his own Spirit Bomb simply has nothing to do with the mechanics of Ultra Instinct, while in the manga he learns to use it by coalescing lessons from all of his previous masters and watching Roshi perform a similar technique. It actually makes some kind of sense while the anime version makes no sense at all.

I can't help but compare Macross and Gundam, and therefore see this movie as an attempt to make some more cash off of the TV series without animating an entire new season. However, I admire the fact that they actually animated a new product instead of reusing footage from the series, which makes "Macross: Do You Remember Love?" feel like much more of a real movie than any of the Gundam trilogy entries. Despite this, the story suffers significantly from being crunched into 2 hours, and loses much of the charm that it had before.

The visuals are really the highlight of the movie. Thick lashes ... and shimmering eyes are abundant, and the Zentradi are back with an exceedingly squishy and organic look, which is pretty damn creepy. We get a much better variety of enemy mechs, as opposed to the cavalcade of leg pods in the series. The direction is generally pretty great. A lot of motion shots utilize fantastic perspectives, and the battle scenes are overwhelming with missile spam (a plus in my book). Dialogue scenes feel the least inspired, and some of the silent shots of characters regarding each other are a little hard to read. There are a lot of close ups of hands later in the movie, and they all look really lumpy and weird, but overall this a very pretty film.

The movie soundtrack is pretty much the same as the show. I'm not sure if they produced many/any new tracks for the background music, but the new Minmay song played at the climax is beyond beautiful. One benefit of condensing the series into a movie length is that we're not bombarded with "My Boyfriend is a Pilot" over and over again. Don't get me wrong, I love that song, but I appreciate that they play it once to get it out of the way and then let Minmay sing new stuff.

Now for the dub. What a magnificently awful dub! I wish it was bad enough to be enjoyable, but it starts to wear on you around half way through the run time. The delivery is flat across the board, but I'm going to chalk that up to direction rather than acting capability because this seems like it was produced in the early days of anime dubbing. The VHS rip that I watched didn't help with its grainy audio, but it did make for a supremely dank aesthetic. I can only assume that the Japanese audio is better, so I can't wholeheartedly suggest watching it in English.

In trying to compress the story of the original it removes a lot of things that annoyed me, but it also loses the exploration of themes that really captivated me. It cuts a lot of the fat to fast track the story and hit major plot points, opening a few episodes into the series and ending about 10 episodes shy of the series finale. One consequence of this is that it removes Minmay and Hikaru's first meeting, and makes it seem like their romance comes out of nowhere when they're stranded together. At one point Minmay does mention that she's loved Hikaru for a long time, but an uninitiated audience would have no idea how or why that is. This puts the emotional stakes in our love triangle a lot lower than in the series, because both of the girls just seem to be attracted to him because of his survival skills.

Something else omitted for time is any tension between the Macross and the Earth government, again diminishing the political themes that used to be present. There is also absolutely none of the humans and Zentradi trying to rebuild and live together, which is honestly a solid choice, because that segment of the story already felt rushed in the series. This next point could be attributed more to direction than writing, but keeping track of who is fighting whom gets really difficult in the final battle. Additionally, the closing shot of the film doesn't seem to bring any kind of closure to the story, which really just confused me. Lastly, there are a couple of changes to the lore of the universe in the movie, but I think it will be up to the viewer to decide if these improve the story or not.

I can't really get into discussions about how the characters are different without major spoilers, so suffice it to say that the character development pales in comparison to the series just due to the amount of time it has to work with. I think it does a pretty good job of choosing who to focus on most of the time, but for a more in depth evaluation I'll have a spoilerific paragraph at the end.

So, who should watch "Macross: Do You Remember Love?"? I really can't recommend it to people who haven't seen the series, because a lot of it will just seem pointless and hollow, but if you've seen the original then you've already seen the better version. So if you've got a major urge to revisit some of the characters and ideas in the series, this is a nice visual treat that can give you a taste of it, but it's a pretty shallow revisitation.

~~~SPOILERS~~~
I was most engaged by the exploration and development of Hikaru's character over the years that the original story covered, but there isn't a lot of time to develop him here. He basically has a couple dog fights, camps out with each of the girls for a while, and then has to make a choice between them at the end. We don't get to see him struggle to make the right choices as much, so there isn't much reason hope for him to. Totally MIA in thus movie are the Zentradi spy trio (Which saddens me), Kaifun as a named character (So we can avoid the assheadded, creepy cousin vibe), Qamjin, and any real development of Hikaru's friends or Pineapple-chan. Max and Kakizaki are somehow even less of characters than they were before, and are really only there to show that Hikaru has friends in a couple scenes and is a normal young man, and then Max gets to have an epic showdown with Millia (Who is also never named) without any payoff after that. Focker's death was not nearly as impactful, because there wasn't enough time to develop his mentor relationship with Hikaru. Kakizaki suffers a similar fate, where he just isn't developed enough for his death to have any weight. Minmay has fewer chances to be stupid and selfish here, so I actually like her a lot more. Misa, on the other hand, is a lot weaker in this iteration. She mostly whines and wants to play house with Hikaru, and then manages to translate an ancient alien language by plot convenience.

/rant