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This is a bad ova. Ito is way too serious of a script writer for Dity Pair. It feels like the people making this didn't understand the series at all. You could put any stock 80s mecha characters in the same position as Kei and Yuri and it'd probably be a better ova because it wouldn't be wasting two excellent characters. Kei and Yuri don't snipe at each other the way they're supposed to, lots of gross sexual assault themes with the plants, naked psychic children. They got Zeta Gundam in my Dirty Pair and its unforgivable. Don't get me wrong, I love me some ... Zeta Gundam. But that's not what Dirty Pair is or has ever attempted to be. This ova has no humour, some okay action, the characters all look wrong just.. feels like a waste of time. Watch literally any other 80s mecha thing cause this is so generic and boring. Can not recommend.

AKAGI, THE GENIUS WHO DESCENDED INTO DARKNESS is a lot of fun. I used this manga while I was learning to play Riichi Mahjong. It is not at all helpful for any kind of actual play but it is extremely nice for familiarizing yourself with specific tiles and different Yaku. In turn, it was kind of cool to slowly be able to understand what the hell anyone was talking about at any given time. Learning what Yaku you can get becomes very important once you get passed the first steps of learning to play if you don't want to just blindly play into whatever works ... loosely.

I'm not saying you need to learn Mahjong to read this, but god it makes it a much better time. Beyond that Akagi is just really wild. Lot's of real intense gambling over alternate rules Mahjong games. Some cheating but also just a lot of insane luck and mind games. Biggest problem with it is once you get to the part with Washizu it drags on for wayyyyyy too long. This is a good time you can probably feel free to put down whenever or skim through large chunks of.

This is Tomino's masterpiece. I don't mean that in the sense that this is a perfect anime by any means. But it is trying so much. All of his ideas are laid out plainly here and wrapped up in a very final way by the movie afterward. I would say Tomino spent the rest of his career chasing after the ideas and themes laid out over the course of this series. There is more of this in Zeta Gundam than 0079. You can see a lot of different aspects of things in this series very plainly being expounded upon in Zeta, ZZ and Victory Gundam ... going forward.

For starters, I don't believe you are supposed to like any of these characters exactly. Not on a personal level. Unlike a lot of Gundam where the main cast is kind of just supposed to be "the good guys", these are a bunch of petty people who don't have any reason to like each other, stuck in this messed up situation where they can do nothing but flee for their lives. I ended up liking them, but for reasons that have to do with how they are portrayed as events continue to unfold. The giant robot that is The Ideon's mystery slowly being unveiled over the course of the series while actually becoming sort of horrifying as the characters realize they have no control over what comes next.

And as far as Tomino themes go, this is it. The inevitability of mankind to fight over cultural differences and circumstance no matter how similar they actually are. The connectedness of us all and can we ever truly understand each other? Do we have to understand each other to love each other? The overall tone of this show is bleak but I don't believe it ever crosses into pure nihilism. This is a work that is asking the question and positing what we do in the face of the unknown, and total annihilation. I would never in my life believe Tomino thought he had the answer, that is like the one solid silver lining in his politics for me that cuts through the cynicism and a few other rather problematic things he believes. It's why I think this show is so interesting if you are willing to really dig into it.

And then just as a structure, I think it's just good sci fi. Yeah it falls into a bit of a formula but that's okay when what's there is being presented well. This is a very specific kind of show from a very specific era of anime and I think that is only a positive. I would not think to dismiss it for being so.

Ideon also has some really good sound design. I am no expert in the field of course, but I really dug the soundtrack. I can sing that Ideon Theme song by heart because I watched it every single episode.

Some things to keep in mind if you watch this, you sort of have to let go of your seriousness to enjoy something like this if that makes sense. This is a show that takes itself super seriously when it wants to but is also still very much a Tomino show and is extremely goofy when it's not being serious. It is also a Super Robot show way more than a Real Robot show. A lot of theme overlap but the big super robot is gonna be the big super robot. Be Invoked is essential to watch when you are finished the TV Series. Don't watch Contact. Anyone who tells you to watch Contact is full of it, it cuts out everything good about the series and barely makes sense.

Now if you want to talk about space battles, and mecha combat, Ideon's got that too. There are some really ridiculous and interesting designs for the Buff clan's robots and I always enjoyed seeing what they had next to throw before the might of the Ideon. There are scenes from inside of cockpits in Ideon that put most of Gundam and other mecha to shame. Just for the sheer tension and the sense of helplessness that you would have in some situations. I give this a 10 in story because it is such a wonderfully interesting mess and is lowkey responsible for inspiring lots of things that came after it. It is really going for it and because I enjoyed it so so much as someone who has been moving through mecha anime for the last year. This really felt like a high point.