Recommended Anime/Manga?

[vol.2]

NMK's 1992 arcade STG, published by Banpresto; recently got an ACA release. Loosely based on Do You Remember Love, but uses the unadorned ChouJikuu Yousai Macross title.

Ah Biru. Have you seen the recent Basement Brothers episode on Macross Countdown! ?

It's way primitive, but very fun to see the various weird Japanese systems the game was ported to.

[BIL]

Ah Biru. Have you seen the recent Basement Brothers episode on Macross Countdown! ?

It's way primitive, but very fun to see the various weird Japanese systems the game was ported to.

I hadn't, thanks for the heads-up! Great watch... Macross ultimately had a pretty good run of licensed games, between NMK's SDF1 (very good!), their SDF2 (holy fuck incredible), and the very solid SFC Scrambled Valkyrie + PCE-CD Eternal Love Song, in addition to SEGA's super rad PS2 arcade/sim dogfighter.

[Ji-L87]

While still on the topic of Macross, the stars aligned today and I took the time to sit down and watch Plus (the OVA version) for the first time. I've been meaning to see this forever but the bluray coming out was as good a chance as any.

Damn.

Beautiful.

The characters did bother me, Isamu and Myung especially. Not her indecisiveness but rather how she just ends up as a damsel in distress every time. It is easy to ignore that when the aerial action is so great tho. And in general I just love the kind of visual 90s futurism Plus has in abundance. The background art is so good and detailed.
This is probably my favourite Macross thing so far that I've seen. I think Frontier still has it beat when it comes to music but the music in Plus was interesting. Not every track is to my taste but there's a few I really like. I've been sitting on an mp3 of "Idol Talk" for years and the ending theme "After in the Dark" hits so well when it comes on.

I still have to see the Movie cut as well but that's for another day.

[vol.2]

While still on the topic of Macross, the stars aligned today and I took the time to sit down and watch Plus (the OVA version) for the first time.

Macross Plus is fantastic. I also haven't actually watched it since something like 1996, so I am due for another go. It's on my list.

[BIL]

The Macross Plus OVA is the better option, imo. Recently watched it and then Movie ver, because I'd no idea there was a MOSS-developed Macross Plus STG to go with NMK's pair. The Movie cut is more than decent, but omits a couple things I think hurt it overall.

Spoilers for Macross Plus

-the opening sortie vs Zentraedi holdouts, establishing Isamu as not just some flyboy asswipe, but a frontline veteran and battle-hardened elite. Without it, I could imagine myself asking "Why doesn't this dipshit just enlist if he wants to flirt with death so badly?" The OVA immediately establishes his test pilot gig is arguably even deadlier than the battlefront, in a time of relative peace.

-the city battle sequence between Isamu and Guld. The Movie cuts around it well, to little narrative cost; and it's arguably even kinda goofy how Guld was supposedly going to frame up Isamu with the dummy rifle, only to end up shooting him with live rounds. Womp womp! But it's just such a cool sequence for the BATTROID mode, with (iirc) nothing else like it here. I was left going "wait WTF?" when the movie cut straight from their desert mishap to the battle's aftermath.

Overall though, you can't go wrong with either. As to Plus itself, the

More spoilers

amnesia subplot wasn't really to my taste, but I thought it resolved itself with appropriate conviction. With such a well-worn plot device, that's usually how I end up rating stories that employ it.

the ending theme "After in the Dark" hits so well when it comes on.

Yes, it's amazing! Such a smouldering panoramic rush, runtime gone like nothing. I got this wonderful reverse-nostalgia from it, too, having grown up with Plus's Kanno/Yamane/Watanabe followup, Cowboy Bebop... their sharing of those stark white-on-black staff titles really added to the effect. I was already gonna watch Plus after learning of the STG, but seeing the people involved made me watch it that very evening.

[cj iwakura]

Yeah, I love Plus, and I'm glad it's out of Harmony Gold jail finally(like nearly all of the series).

Also, Bryan Cranston! And he's a great VA, too.

Also also(Alto), there's an upcoming set of Union Arena(anime card game) with a Macross set, and it's got a heavy focus on Plus(with some gorgeous 7 and Frontier cards).

[PC Engine Fan X!]

There's a brand new Gundam anime series called "Gundam EQuuuuuuX" for 2025 with episode 1 streaming right now on Amazon Prime Video. It's 26 minutes in duration -- this is the newest Gundam series to be released right after "Gundam: The Witch from Mercury" back in 2022. Apparently today, April 9th, 2025, is the debut of Gundam EQuuuuuuX exclusively on Prime Video. Check it out.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[vol.2]

There's a brand new Gundam anime series called "Gundam EQuuuuuuX" for 2025 with episode 1 streaming right now on Amazon Prime Video. It's 26 minutes in duration -- this is the newest Gundam series to be released right after "Gundam: The Witch from Mercury" back in 2022. Apparently today, April 9th, 2025, is the debut of Gundam EQuuuuuuX exclusively on Prime Video. Check it out.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Definitely on my watch list. I've been upping my Gunpla game the past couple of years after joining a local model building club. Currently working on some sets in the "Ver.Ka" series.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Just yesterday, on 4/28/2025, a fan created anime of "Heir to the Empire" debuted on Youtube. This first episode took five months of work to put together and was done by Jar Jar Jargon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6MDgq_OvWE Check it out!

The anime character of Mara Jade sure is "easy on the eyes."

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[ryu]

I recently finished reading the Record of Lodoss war light novels and went on to rewatch the OVA from the '90s. And man, my opinion hasn't changed a bit. The first couple episodes are strong, but the anime falls off a steep cliff because the plot develops too fast and characters are not given the time needed to portrait them (e.g. the anime pretty much entirely throws out the bit of character depth Ashram shows in the novels).

And rewatching a show that old becomes increasingly jarring. Anime lost a lot when it went all digital.

[BryanM]

Trying to cram too much salad into too small of a can never works out well. Usually I prefer if they just leave off where they're able to reach.

Demon King Daimao has to the most extreme example I've seen yet. The final episode contains like 10 light novels worth of content. Characters and plotpoints are raised in one sentence and resolved in the next.

---

Anyway, isn't the world of anime wildly casual about SA? Scientists Fell In Love So They Tried To Prove It has this massive tone whiplash from being in this cutesy one-note joke world as its default setting, to including some very real and grimdark characters very briefly. It's incongruent that these two things could possibly exist within the same world.

Like seeing a clueless harem protagonist walking around in the Fist Of The North Star world. Everyone around him is being murdered or enslaved left and right, but he keeps have zany rom-com antics where no one ever gets hurt.

How much suffering is in a world is kind of a bedrock feature of stories, isn't it?



.... argh, now I have an idea about a story where a harem protagonist's unreality field undoes the misery in a shithole FotNS kinda world.

Like someone's crying about their grandpa's head being torn off, and he goes inside the house to check and is like '? uh, it looks like your grandpa's fine...' and they're all very confused why their grandpa is smiling and waving at them. That kind of bullshit.

At least there would be a logical reason for why everyone would want to be his friend. He wouldn't do any heroics himself, but his bullshit field would enable people to succeed when they really, really should have failed without his plot armor bullshit.

[ryu]

Anyway, isn't the world of anime wildly casual about SA?

Sonic Adventure????

[Steven]

Anyway, isn't the world of anime wildly casual about SA?

Sonic Adventure????

Sonic Advance, actually.

[scrilla4rella]

I can't seem to get over my Patlabor obsession. As we say nowadays, it's been living rent-free in my head. I love the focus on the cumbersome bureaucracy and relatable obstacles, like traffic jams.

I just watched this NHK special on Patlabor EZY, a new Patlabor series (duh!) that is in production. It looks like it's actually happening. Nice to see some of the old Headgear folks still involved. It was also fascinating to watch them fine tune some of the visual details in a production meeting.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2099015/

It's a little disappointing (but understandable) that it will be a new cast of character. I'm cautiously optimistic.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

On Amazon Prime Video, the 12th and final episode of Gundam EQuuuuuuX streamed on June 23rd, 2025. Interesting premise with the mysterious "White Gundam" mobile suit shown in the final episode.

It shouldn't be too long before Gundam EQuuuuuuX becomes available on DVD & Blu-ray. The scenes with the "Zenova Particle Effects" are quite colorful and impressive.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[vol.2]

the 12th and final episode of Gundam EQuuuuuuX

Don't you mean "GQuuuuuuX?"

I haven't watched it yet!

I did just finish a run-through of Zeta and I'm about to start watching ZZ. I love Zeta, but I do have some complaints. The whole Gundamjacking thing reached ridiculous proportions in Zeta. So much of the plot is facilitated by enemy combatants being willingly let onto one another's warships and simply hopping into a mobile suit and running off. I get that a little kid watching something like this wouldn't really be concerned with why the mobile suits don't have a key, but it's distractingly hard to accept as an adult.

Also, Katz annoyed me so much in Zeta. I know he's supposed to come off as an incompetent and failed mobile suit pilot, but then they should have just got rid of him. Also so much of the plot, especially at the end, has to do with the fact that they just continue to let Katz misbehave and ruin things.

ZZ on the other hand is great because it's all played for laughs anyway. Zeta has really beautiful animation, some excellent space dogfighting, and some cool characters, but it fails in some important ways. It's just too serious for it's own good, so when anything goofy happens, or there's some big obvious plot hole or overt device, it sticks out like a sore thumb (the fact that it tried to takes itself so seriously really calls attention to logical inconsistencies).

As far as GQuuuuuuX goes, I will undoubtedly watch it eventually, but it kind of pisses me off that they are still doing OYW BS reboot series and also that they are calling it UC timeline when it's actually an alternate universe timeline. The only reason they are doing that is because UC is the coolest timeline and that's what people want to see in a Gundam show, but they can't even be bothered to produce something a little further along in the story. Mostly because creating a new story is actual writing work, and that costs a lot more money. Rebooting something just means reworking something that was already written. Lazy.

So what do they do? Oh, let's just call it UC, but actually it's going to be a reboot series and it won't really be UC, but all the otakus will be fine with it because we say so. Super annoying.