Ep. 008 - The Showkiller!: SEED, Megazone 23 & Tomino II

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Ep. 008 - The Showkiller!: SEED, Megazone 23 & Tomino II

Connoisseurs, Neophytes, and Newtypes! The wait is over!

Ep. 008 - The Showkiller!: SEED, Megazone 23 & Super Tomino Wars II)
Regular Version - Unplugged Version

- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED & How to Fix it!
- Anime Spotlight: "Megazone 23"
- "Super Tomino Wars II" - The Non-Gundam Series!

We got a little carried away during the segments this episode, so this episode ran a whole lot longer than the average 80 or so minutes, totalling almost two hours! Thanks to the size, there's no frills in this episode (commercials or musical interludes), otherwise it would be more of a monster episode thanit already is. This won't be the norm, as we learned that three broad topics in one episode isn't the most practical move. ^_^

We manage to cut quite the rug though and here's hoping that you enjoy the segments as much as we do recording them!

As always, thanks for listening!

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Yeah...this episode definitely ran a lot longer than we expected. We've already recorded episode 9, and I can assure everyone that it's back to the normal time length.
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Why is a 2 hour episode a bad thing. 8)
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Phew, that was a long one. I made significant progress through SRW J while listening.

I also liked SEED, and I recognise Destiny as a trainwreck, but I still enjoyed it on some level to watch it to the end. I also don't hate Shinn. I even like him a bit.

One thing though, you kinda missed the ball on Rau le Creuset. He wasn't like the Frost Brothers in the he was mad that the world rejected him. He just came to realize that humanity is hopeless and that they'll eventually destroy each other. He was just speeding up the process. He claims to have the right to judge humanity, because he himself is the result of all the negative aspects of humanity. Pride, greed, lust for power, the desire to be the best all resulted in his creation. This also affected Gilbert in that Gilbert wanted to prove Rau wrong and create a world where humanity would be at peace, hense the Destiny plan.

Rau is actually my favourite Gundam villain. Not only is his voice sexy (in both japanese and english), and his mech is badass, but he is completely right. Humans just can't stop killing each other. This is fact. You see it in the news every day. Humanity as a species will always strive to be the best. Will always strive to surpass everyone else. We are always in conflict with one another and we kill each other off in massive quantities. Even later when we look back and say "Oh how horrible that was" sure enough, a few years down the road we'll go back to killing each other again. Rau just gave humanity a chance to wipe itself out once and for all. You only see him do some backroom dealing a few times because he really didn't need to do much. Both sides were rarin' to kill each other anyways. Even when Rau was ultimately killed, he still had a smile on his face because he knew better. And sure enough, 2 years later humanity is back to killing each other.

So yeah, I love Rau. Though I'm more for letting humanity kill itself naturally, rather than speeding it up like he did. Though we all know that nuclear holocost is coming.

As for other Tomino's shows, I watched a bit of Ideon, but super old school stuff is hard for me to watch, plus I hated all the characters, so I didn't see the whole thing. I skimmed through Be Invoked though. I've seen a bit of Dunbine too. I should get back to that...

Right now I'm getting Brain Powerd and King Gainer. Saw 3 eps of Brain Powerd and yeah, it's confusing and disjointed as hell. Nine eps of King Gainer and it is a lot of fun. The fight scenes are particularly great.

You guys failed to mention Brave Raideen though. It was the show Tomino did right before Gundam and actually left half way through it. It's notable for being the first series to have a mecha of mysterious origin (as opposed to one built in some one's lab). It even got 2 (3 if you count RahXephon) remakes too (all of which are awesome).
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Destiny_Gundam wrote:Phew, that was a long one. I made significant progress through SRW J while listening.

You guys failed to mention Brave Raideen though. It was the show Tomino did right before Gundam and actually left half way through it. It's notable for being the first series to have a mecha of mysterious origin (as opposed to one built in some one's lab). It even got 2 (3 if you count RahXephon) remakes too (all of which are awesome).
SRWJ? You lucky bastard, you. ^_^

I wish we had more time to go into his career in depth including his earlier series. This segment does deserve revisiting, and when we do, I'd like to have a guest on the show who has seen his earlier works and knows a lot about him in general. There's a lot to be said about Tomino-san and we've only begun to scratch the surface.

Thanks for the quick replies, gang! Thanks to it being Super Sunday, I didn't expect any feedback until tomorrow at the earliest. Looks like I'm not the only cat here that isn't head-over-heels about the pigskin. :P
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Soul Bro Ryu wrote:Thanks for the quick replies, gang! Thanks to it being Super Sunday, I didn't expect any feedback until tomorrow at the earliest. Looks like I'm not the only cat here that isn't head-over-heels about the pigskin. :P
Not only am I Canadian, but I abhor sports all together.


And playing J isn't that big a deal. Natural I've aquired it through.... less than legal measures and it's in Japanese. Of course nukin stuff with Great Zeorymer has nothing to do with the language barrier.

You should talk about Zeorymer in a show if you've seen it.
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I can't believe that I'm not the only one who disliked most of the Ideon characters, save for Bes and Karala. Heck, when I wrote my review for it, I said that while I didn't care for anyone really, you feel great pity for them being so screwed no matter what. You know what, it probably is one of Tomino's best talents besides innovating old conventions. He simply presents characters and people are just able to agree on how they feel. I've never really seen him superimpose a person's role in the story. It's really what sets his stories apart from Wing and SEED where such unlikable or unsympathetic characters are put into such a positive light, or 00 which has the Ryouske Takahashi vibe that makes everyone seem somewhat evil. No offense to Takahashi of course who is the master of gritty mecha
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Destiny_Gundam wrote:One thing though, you kinda missed the ball on Rau le Creuset. He wasn't like the Frost Brothers in the he was mad that the world rejected him. He just came to realize that humanity is hopeless and that they'll eventually destroy each other. He was just speeding up the process. He claims to have the right to judge humanity, because he himself is the result of all the negative aspects of humanity. Pride, greed, lust for power, the desire to be the best all resulted in his creation. This also affected Gilbert in that Gilbert wanted to prove Rau wrong and create a world where humanity would be at peace, hense the Destiny plan.
They're a lot more alike than you believe. Rau is the product of a world obsessed with perfection, but he's an imperfect clone who is doomed to a short life. The Frost brothers are the product of a world obsessed with Newtypes, and even though they have a telepathic bond, they're rejected as Newtype failures. Although there are are some differences, at the end of the day both their motives boil down to "humanity sucks and should therefore be destroyed because we say so."

Rau's mysterious nature is part of his appeal, but it's also part of his problem. Like I said in the podcast, he's just kinda there for most of the series, and his development as a main villain doesn't occur until the last 5-6 episodes. With the Frost brothers, you knew they were up to something from day 1 and were working towards some objective.
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Actually, the Frost Brothers were more "Hey! Look how powerful we are now world! Who are failures now?" They wanted to show everyone that they were even better than NewTypes. They didn't want to destroy all humanity.

Atleast that's how I saw it.
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About the showkiller segment, it would be cool if you did more for others, even the ones you really liked. I agree wholeheartedly with Soul Bro that Alda Flagga needs to be explained. And I'm glad to know that others also liked Shin. Actually, the segment made me think about the issue for on particular series to figure out what could have been done. Oddly enough it would have been as simple as character motivation.
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Destiny_Gundam wrote:Actually, the Frost Brothers were more "Hey! Look how powerful we are now world! Who are failures now?" They wanted to show everyone that they were even better than NewTypes. They didn't want to destroy all humanity.

Atleast that's how I saw it.
And that's how you saw it. It doesn't mean that my comparison of Rau to the Frost brothers "missed the ball."
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I said it only 'kinda' missed it. There are indeed similarities, but in the end they wanted slightly different things.
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Loved the little Cloverfield drop-in right at the end. Keep 'em coming, dudes, there's not much like this show out there.
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You can't talk about Brain Powerd and not mention Johnathan Glenn, one of Tomino's craziest antagonists, a man who will use the sordid details of his sex life just to unnerve his rival in the middle of a battle or that the opening has more female nudity than any non-hentai work I have ever seen. I didn't have that hard a time grasping the story, I just wish some of the secondary characters got more screen time, like the girl that joined Orphan because she felt guilt about leaving her brothers behind to pursue her dream as an Olympic athlete only to learn they starved to death in her absence. Overall I felt it could have been a much better series considering the caliber of talent involved, Yoko Kanno's haunting score, Mamoru Nagano's brilliant mech design, intriguing characters, just the story felt kind of lacking.
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Good episode guys. The lack of Gundam 00 discussion enabled me to listen to the entire thing this time :P Don't apologize for the long length, the longer the better says I!

Ah, Gundam Seed, what a wonderful subject I love to discuss. Actually the well known flaws that I see with the show were pretty much all brought up (complete cloning of MS Gundam in the early episodes, clip showarama and worst of all, every single character having the exact same face!) so don't really have anything to add. If no new Seed ever comes, I shall be a happy man.

Really looking into seeing Megazone 23, will try to get it in from Netflix once I go through a few other, non-anime things first. Its influence on RahXephon, a show I liked a lot is a key reason for me, and your discussion certainly helps getting me a little more motivated to see it.

One correction on Ideon, the "classical music" on the You Tube death video isn't classical music but is actually from the show itself, from the end of Be Invoked. Great, great musical piece which unfortunately gets cut short in the video. I know you mentioned the 1 min version, there is a longer version out there with more deaths too.

Can't really complain about the criticisms of the show as I agree with them for the most part. The characters definately were unlikable for the most part. Which viewer of the show doesn't want to strangle Kasha at some point? :P Like I mention in the summaries/reviews, those early episodes are brutal but it really does pick up tremendously in the second half and the movies.

Xabungle... unfortunately like you guys can't say much about it as I only saw the first few episodes. Does not look like the best kinda show, although considering Tomino and Kogawa's involvement will try to check it out someday if I can get a decently translated version.

Tomino's flip flop style you mentioned has definately ringed out to me at times as well. For all the talk of how the guy was depressed or suicidal (which is probably all nonsence) the guy did make a lot of light hearted shows too which he doesn't get credit for. The guy certainly can make a more light hearted, but at the same time still quite serious show like L-Gaim and make it work just as good as his ultra depressing stuff like Ideon or Zeta Gundam.

Brain Powered is a show that's been sitting on my shelf unwatched for a few years now which I'll get around to someday. Seems to be the most heavily criticized Tomino show out there, but the guy has delivered so much before that I certainly owe him a view at some point in time. Will want to finish ZZ and Victory Gundam first though.

Never picked up on that Yapan = Japan thing in Overman King Gainer. Like many of his shows a rough beginning, but quite enjoyable later on. Funniest opening in anime history with those dancing characters & mecha? Perhaps.

Wings of Rean... had the same reaction as you. Watched first episode, was very dissappointed, and haven't seen anything else since. Will hopefully get around to it and summaries/reviews of it someday, just don't know when.

Won't dissappoint with the Gasaraki stuff! You should have eps 1-3 and 4-7 are all written as well, but awaiting a final review and screen captures before submission. Will get around to them eventually. O_o
I wish we had more time to go into his career in depth including his earlier series. This segment does deserve revisiting, and when we do, I'd like to have a guest on the show who has seen his earlier works and knows a lot about him in general. There's a lot to be said about Tomino-san and we've only begun to scratch the surface.
Can't wait for another Tomino segment! My one dissappointment was the lack of talk of his earlier stuff like Zambot, Brave Raideen and Triden of the Sea, which while not at the same level at all as his 80's stuff, at least showed the early promise that would eventually turn into all that great stuff he later turned out.
Thanks for the quick replies, gang! Thanks to it being Super Sunday, I didn't expect any feedback until tomorrow at the earliest. Looks like I'm not the only cat here that isn't head-over-heels about the pigskin.
Some of us need to escape for a while after the disaster of watching your 18-0 team blow the Super Bowl :( :( :( :( :(
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How I would fix seed?

Is retconing all of Destiny acceptiable? If so, I condem Destiny to the same lake of Fire as Nadesico: Prince of Darkness.

Anyway, that small piece of anger aside; Fukuda is up and out a Super Robot Director.
Gear Fighter Dendoh, which in itself is an honery "Brave" series, is a perfect example of this.
So, clearly, unless your G Gundam (as that worked, damnit) you should have someone who's got a little bit of exp on reality to some degree. I meen Gundam 00 has got the FMA guy on it and that's working gangbusters and, suprisingly, is rather sparce on the humor.
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Quiddity wrote: Some of us need to escape for a while after the disaster of watching your 18-0 team blow the Super Bowl :( :( :( :( :(
Yet they gave the rest of us so much joy that night.
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I loved the show man it was AWESOME 8) . And I have to say I still have no idea how Kira got to the Plants :roll: . I plan on buying the manga’s though one day. I agree with Chris on that whole action then flash back scene that was in the Gundam Seed shows. One thing I really didnt like was when he lost the strike and we just got so many flash back scene just really killed it for me. I mean they dont have to beat us to death by showing us 30 times isn't going to do anything but send the characters into a annoying state and turn a lot of people off the show and feature shows. Destiny was ok with me at first, I mean I always thought of ZAFT as Zeon just different mobile suits, but you can notice the similarity's so I'm like oh this is cool. But then it just started going down at about episode 20. Cagalli's character really just kind of made me hope she'd get blown up, or by some chance I hoped that some random Zaku warrior would land on the building or on her I was game for any of those. I guess someone’s going to have to explain why they changed her character’s well character. Then Heine came along and I started to think maybe he might help the other characters get better. But he blows up 2 episodes later so why even have him in the show. And I’m going to have to look into Megazone 23 and Super Tomino Wars because they do sound like good mecha animes. I also enjoyed the saying "Welcome Back To The Show That's Hitting Harder Than A Dom’s Double Axe Handle". So far my favorite one thank you Soul Bro Ryu. If you ever make shirts I'd so buy one with that saying. I hope you guys keep up the good work and you got me and many others backing you up. And if anyone didn’t like how long the show was than they lack the need to hear about the new and the old school in the world of mecha anime. 8)
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I'd also like to say I took a day working on this responce so to me that means I really like the show
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Zaku-San wrote:And I’m going to have to look into Megazone 23 and Super Tomino Wars because they do sound like good mecha animes.
Please be aware that there is no anime called "Super Tomino Wars." That was simply the name for the segment discussing Tomino anime.
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Chris wrote: Please be aware that there is no anime called "Super Tomino Wars." That was simply the name for the segment discussing Tomino anime.
That title does sound like it would make a good anime...but probably an even better game. A 30-foot tall Tomino with a beam saber and mega beam launcher, indiscriminately decapitating children and wreaking various types of havoc, done to a Yoko Kanno soundtrack.

Anyways, great show as always. I hope you guys start getting some reviews on the Palisen Files, as they're up to episode 4 now. I'm really liking it so far, although its not as grimy as Roots of Ambition, or what I've seen of the original series.

Say Soul Bro, Do you think you'd ever do a 'Gundamn! Mix tape'? I really like the mixes you do for the show. They're really well done. Just an idea :wink:
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